Gabriel García Márquez, Literary Pioneer, Dies at 87 - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/18/books/gabriel-garcia-marquez-literary-pioneer-dies-at-87.html?_r=0&assetType=nyt_now&gwh=570AEB18E30D9E2DEB245EFDC150909D&gwt=regi&assetType=nyt_now <comment><USER2> Oh my. A paragon of magical realism and my second favorite author. Rest in peace.

Liking storytelling alone is sometimes not enough to like Marquez, you have to love language too. He uses (some might say abuses) language to impact his storytelling, often using incredibly long, convoluted sentences to weave his narrative. It can be hard to follow, sometimes intentionally, but I find it enormously _satisfying_ to read and follow along with his brain. Like slowly drinking a maple syrup of words.

One of the best examples is the first 15 or so[1] pages of Autumn of the Patriarch[2], where the narrator winds this thread of what has happened slowly, using sentences that span pages, until you realize a shift from what has happened to a sort of what is about to happen. Then a fist slams on the table and the realization strikes you that the first part of the description was a kind of set up, this beautiful ruse. I wish I could be more descriptive but it would give away the delight. It's a great book about terror and despotism.

Marquez is not the kind of thing you can read in a noisy environment. At least I can't. I adore him so much. I could write a eulogy for days.

If you've never read him, please take a moment to read one of my favorite short stories, _A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings_

[http://simonsarris.com/lit/a-very-old-man-with-enormous- wing...](http://simonsarris.com/lit/a-very-old-man-with-enormous-wings)

(I've hosted a copy of it (and many more short stories) for ages because most of the copies on the web are plagued with ads and miserable formatting)

If One Hundred Years of Solitude seems too long for you, I urge you to look into some of his very excellent shorter books, such as Autumn but also Of Love and Other Demons[3] and Love in the Time of Cholera.[4]

(Chronicle of a Death Foretold is even shorter, but I do not recommend it as the first Marquez book you read!)

[1] It could be the first 10 or 30 pages, it's been several years, but I am certain it's one of the better (and shorter) examples of his style.

[2] [http://www.amazon.com/dp/0060882867](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0060882867)

[3] [http://www.amazon.com/dp/1400034922](http://www.amazon.com/dp/1400034922)

[4] [http://www.amazon.com/dp/0307389731](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0307389731)

<comment><USER3> > Rest in peace.

I, on the other hand, hope that the three men that Marquez's close friend Castro had executed for trying to get to the US on a boat will rest in peace. Not to mention all the dissidents who died in his prisons.

Marquez lived in Cuba and for decades witnessed the daily suffering and poverty of the Cuban people. The endless monitoring of Castro's secret police. The constant rationing of basic necessities (though not for Castro or Marquez, who lived lives of luxury).

He was a master of writing about the lives of the people of Latin America. But he walked the streets of Havana, saw what anyone could see, and never wrote about any of that. Perhaps he was too busy sharing a fine repast with Fidel and Raul to get around to it.

<comment><USER4> I have no love for Castro (maybe some contempt), but I think Marquez here is approximately as culpable as Shostakovich, which is to say not. He was a writer, not a reporter, and if we try to pull an artist down to the level of politics it's a lose-lose if we're successful.

<comment><USER5> On one hand, I largely agree with you, about the utility of holding someone responsible for what they _didn 't_ do, which would have been at great personal cost.

On the other hand, I believe Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn would like to have a word with you. Out back, in the alley.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Many years later, in front of the firing squad, colonel Aureliano Buendía would remember that distant afternoon his father took him to see ice."

Best opening line of a book ever. RIP.

<comment><USER7> Not to be pedantic, but the Rabassa translation reads: "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."

<comment><USER8> Prefacing pedantry with "not to be pedantic" doesn't make what you're about to say not pedantic.

<comment><USER7> Fair enough. My intention was to avoid attacking the original quotation while still maintaining the actual translation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Let's not forget that GGM was a life-long socialist and a supporter of the Cuban revolution.

He spent many years living and Cuba and he considered Castro to be one of his best friends. He was a firm supporter of Chavez, and looked forward to the day that Simon Bolivar's idea of a united Pan-America would be realized. Because of this, he was prohibited from entering the US during the Reagan administration.

As much as I love his works of fiction, my favorite book of his is the first volume of his autobiography, Living to Tell The Tale. I've been patiently waiting for news about volume 2 and 3 ever since the first one came out in 2002. I have never heard anything about these -- whether they were ever written remains a mystery. RIP to a magnificent man who brought so much pride to the people of our scarred continent.

<comment><USER10> If I had a hundred up votes button that could only be used once, I would have pressed it now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "One Hundred Years of Solitude" was the only book that everyone in my family ever read, me, my wife and my three kids.

"Mr. García Márquez, who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982, wrote fiction rooted in a mythical Latin American landscape of his own creation, but his appeal was universal. His books were translated into dozens of languages. He was among a select roster of canonical writers — Dickens, Tolstoy and Hemingway among them — who were embraced both by critics and by a mass audience." from the article.

But the article doesnt begin to do the book justice. The mythology is Colombian but it all is real to the reader. It is very worthwnile to read One Hundred Years along with a literary biography of Marquez. It was a wonderful experience for me. BTW my taste is purely science fiction.

</comment><comment><USER12> My favorite Marquez story is that he never used adverbs ending in -mente, so he called his English language translator (Edith Grossman) and requested that she not use any adverbs ending in -ly.

<comment><USER13> Hahaha. Definitely different in English. Adverbs I can think of in English that don't end in -ly: Fast, slow, quick, well. That's all I've got off the top of my head.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I read six of Garcia Márquez's stories in school - my favorite was "The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World"[0] ("El Ahogado más Hermoso del Mundo"). If you're looking to get a taste of his writing but don't have time to read an entire book, this short story captures his style very well.

In a similar vein is "An Old Man with Very Enormous Wings" [1] ("Un señor muy viejo con unas alas enormes"), which was referenced in R.E.M's music video for "Losing My Religion[2]

[0] [https://hutchinson- page.wikispaces.com/file/view/The_Most_Ha...](https://hutchinson- page.wikispaces.com/file/view/The_Most_Handsome_Drowned_Man.pdf)

[1] [http://www.ndsu.edu/pubweb/~cinichol/CreativeWriting/323/Mar...](http://www.ndsu.edu/pubweb/~cinichol/CreativeWriting/323/MarquezManwithWings.htm)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=if- UzXIQ5vw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=if-UzXIQ5vw)

</comment><comment><USER15> I absolutely adore this man. I was lucky to be given a portuguese-translated copy of "one hundred years of solitude" at the age of 16. I read it back then and loved the story itself and specially the beautiful writing style. About four or five years later I read it again in the original (even though I don't speak spanish very well) and was even more amazed about the beauty of it and about how _my_ interpretation of it changed. I loved everything I have ever read from him, but I loved "one hundred years" so much I even feel ashamed of trying to use my own words to describe it.

</comment><comment><USER16> Can someone provide a quick summary of what was it that made Marquez so prominent? I had not know much about him at all.

FYI, if like me, you have trouble accessing the article, and using Chrome, right-click and open in an incognito window.

<comment><USER17> He's "a man terribly pleased to have hobnobbed with so many Presidents and Archbishops"

He opened the flood gates of saccharine magic realism which haunts Latin America literature to this day.

<comment><USER18> Disagree, but upvoted.

Magical realism in general and Garcia Marquez in particular are more critically problematic than many realize.

I don't think this thread should gloss over that entirely, even if the tone of objection is unlovely.

<comment><USER19> Nah, you're both wrong, and what's worse, you're holding strawmans. Not the time and place for this, my dudes.

<comment><USER10> Yup. Speaking ill of the dead is awful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> His books were part of my adolescence, but "One Hundred Years of Solitude" was the essence of my formal education, I am sad he died but I am utterly glad he's lived.

<comment><USER17> I am indifferent that he died and I hate to say this, but it should have been better to literature if he never existed as writer.

<comment><USER21> If you so "hate to say this" why have you said it twice in this thread?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> RIP. I felt a shock when I discovered this when I woke up. He is probably the author that has influenced me more strongly in my literary tastes. Gabo wasn't just a great writer but loved by many in spanish speaking countries. His mastery of the prose and outstanding ability on his craft are laudable but Gabo was as well a great person. A friend had the chance to meet him in the context of his PhD, I guess I'll forever envy her for that.

Being this my first HN comment (thanks Gabo for the strength) I'll go all out with a second unrelated part of the comment, less emotionally charged but perhaps more HN-like:

There are many comments in the thread about the translation of the first sentence of "One Hundred Years of Solitude". Translating is such a hard task, there is no way part of the meaning/subtleties will not be lost in it since languages are not one to one. And even if we get to pass most of the meaning keeping the flow will be so hard except for very similar languages (spanish/portuguese). What is an impossible problem for computers is one as well for translators, we can only hope they give as a tasty human take on the task. I wonder if one day automatic translations of literary works will have a "style" options to simulate different translator sensibilities or we will settle for a winner-algorithm takes all the translations.

Something more I'd like to share, I'm very curious if other people feel the same because part of my homemade theory of the language depends on this :). I'm lucky enough to read high level literature in different languages, however even if I can appreciate it, the pleasure I experience while reading Spanish is in a different level. Somehow a similar experience happens while talking, I feel more strongly bound to spanish in a very subtle way, it's not something I usually notice, just on some occasions. I only started learning languages after 8. A possible reason is how the brain gets bound to words and language when very young, another is that I have lived more emotional experiences in that language. The second hypothesis would have to explain why I do not feel that way in french even if I've lived in Paris 10 years. Obviously one case study, apply a grain of salt ;)

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm so 'proud' to see this here, hard to think of something to say so I'll put one of my fav quotes from him:

"She discovered with great delight that one does not love one's children just because they are one's children but because of the friendship formed while raising them."

<comment><USER24> I've never heard of this man before, nor read any of his books, but that is an _excellent_ quote.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> My first favorite novel in spanish was of GGM, "Relato de un náufrago"(The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor). Many don't know but the full title is actually "Relato de un náufrago que estuvo diez días a la deriva en una balsa sin comer ni beber, que fue proclamado héroe de la patria, besado por las reinas de la belleza y hecho rico por la publicidad, y luego aborrecido por el gobierno y olvidado para siempre."(The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor: Who Drifted on a Liferaft for Ten Days Without Food or Water, Was Proclaimed a National Hero, Kissed by Beauty Queens, Made Rich Through Publicity, and Then Spurned by the Government and Forgotten for All Time.)

</comment><comment><USER26> Here is a great interview with him in The Paris Review [1]. I love when he says,

"It always amuses me that the biggest praise for my work comes for the imagination, while the truth is that there's not a single line in all my work that does not have a basis in reality. The problem is that Caribbean reality resembles the wildest imagination."

I know the Caribbean very well and could not agree more.

[1] [http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3196/the-art-of- fic...](http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3196/the-art-of-fiction- no-69-gabriel-garcia-marquez)

</comment><comment><USER27> As a programmer and a poetry/book lover, it is sad news, plrease have a 5min break from whatever code you are writing(on your free time of course) to check this author out!

</comment><comment><USER28> This is one of the reasons I keep reading Hacker News. It's a great source for cutting-edge tech news; more importantly, it's also a great source for important news.

<comment><USER29> I agree but as I read this I had a morbid thought - I'm posing it wondering if anyone else relates. I couldn't help but think, now that he's dead I can dig into his works without the fear of being overrun by his output. It is as though death has given me a little bit of an upper hand.

I think I should go to bed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Oh no... GGM was an underappreciated author in non-spanish speaking world (in spite of wonderful, gift translators... he was just an intrinsically difficult author to translate because of the poetic quality of his writing IMHO). Cien Anos de Soledad was one of the first non-trivial, non-english books I read. RIP.

edit: okay, removed 'really'.. I think he was underappreciated on a popular level, even though he was very well appreciated on a critical level.

<comment><USER31> Do you think so? He's rated very highly in the Anglosphere I would have thought, he won the Nobel prize for lit. and witness the NY Times obit. here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Can someone tell me what is the theme of "One Hundred Years of Solitude" as applied to modern society? I read the book awhile ago and appreciated greatly the various character sketches.

Unfortunately, the literary criticism that I sought out back then at liberal arts college, focused mostly on the metaphor of the European colonialism on Latin America (industrialization of the town with the rubber-plant, and the subsequent massacre of the residents after some kind of rubber-plant revolution, consequences of military rule and violent overthrows as embodied by Colonel Buendia and circular nature of the history, Spanish colonialism past long felt after Latin America became independent).

Tbh, I'm not really interested in the whole multiculturalism and ethnic studies rehashing the white guilt trope. However, I find the obsession of the various characters fascinating, the scientific obsession of the original patriach that eventually descended into madness, Colonel Buendia making little gold fishes, the incestuous natures of the whole family, some ethereal nympho character that doesn't speak a word and then one day transcend to haven much to the horror of the venerable matriarch. What is your interpretation of the book?

<comment><USER33> I cannot do a literary critique. But I can tell you that when I was 17, I started reading "One hundred years of solicitude" and couldn't stop until I finished the whole book. I felt enchanted, it is a feeling that I never had either before or after. I read it in Spanish, (my native tongue) so your mileage may vary.

<comment><USER34> I think sometimes it is OK to be simply enchanted. (Well I think it's always OK, but ...) I tend to favor literary "analysis" that dwells on that feeling of enchantment, tries to explain it to an extent, and sometimes even re-create that feeling. I'm not sure an overarching "meaning" is always really needed.

For several years I followed the mailing lists dedicated to several of my favorite authors, and at the same time took literature classes at university. Both were great, but I'll always consider those mailing lists my "real" education in literature. University was mostly good for learning to write a certain kind of essay, and how to read in ways that are valued by tenured professors (which isn't exactly a bad thing--these are smart, interesting people).

<comment><USER32> > University was mostly good for learning to write a certain kind of essay, > and how to read in ways that are valued by tenured professors.

Not to be pedantic, but what specific value did you find in academic literary critique? My personal experience in University wasn't very positive. I found most books/papers to be derivative or more of a documentation of humanities people's self-referential knowledge (e.g., explaining all of the literary (Grego-Roman, Biblical and Celtic) allusions and historical context in "Ulysses"; and therefore, all of these allusions fit in this grand theory of {Hegelian Dialectic, Post-modernity}).

IMO, it kind of defeats the purpose of literature if one has to be so well versed in the Western cannon or whatever cannon to appreciate a narrative which ultimately conveys a human experience. A humanities grad student once explained to me that in literary analysis, the creativity is "in the interpretation as opposed to the creation for the author." I don't understand why in a subjective experience as literature, why an academic's word is then more valuable than mine or a monkey's. But I'm curious why you have a different perspective as for why professors in humanities have good perspective on literature.

<comment><USER34> Well, I'm not sure I have as strong of a position on this as I should. The way literature is talked about in university isn't really the way I would ever prefer to talk about literature really, but it was enlightening in the same way that doing anything strenuous outside of your comfort zone can be enlightening. The essays themselves, if you had a demanding prof, could be an excellent chance to practice analytical thinking and learn to compose your thoughts on paper.

In general, I don't think there's a compelling reason why Writing Composition has to be tied so closely to Literature. And really of the two most demanding essay-writing profs I had, only one taught literature. (The other taught symbolic logic and a Frege/Russell/Wittgenstein seminar I took.)

You're right that most the essays are derivative and bad, but I think that's general to all writing--fiction, non-fiction, academic writing, whatever. It's all usually derivative and bad because it's really hard to make something that isn't. And while there is a taste for those name-dropping "look what I've read" essays, I never had a prof that didn't also appreciate a tight, close reading. I always stuck to close reading anyway, as I suspect most people on this forum would. (It feels less bullshitty to look at one or two small things extremely closely, than to fling around loose references to god knows what theories and famous names.)

It's interesting that your friend said that. I'm not sure I understand completely what is meant by that, but here's my personal take on it: I think literary criticism should be subject to the same scrutiny that the original literary texts are. And if a work doesn't partake of creative exuberance* like an excellent novel or poem might, then I can't really be bothered to care about it. I think literature should respond in kind. Some criticism does this, and is breathtaking in the same way reading Whitman, e.g., can be breathtaking. Bloom's little book Anxiety of Influence, for example, is something I found beautiful and strange in a way I had never before encountered.

I don't think academic literary critics really see what they do as an artform necessarily, so my view is probably a very marginal one, and one they might scoff at. I don't even know of a sub-discipline that promotes criticism-as- artform, so maybe I'm just weird. Probably weird.

In the end I try to take a soft stance on this because I want to leave room for the idea that other people may enjoy things that I don't. I would never talk about literature the way they do outside of the pressures of "academic success," but perhaps they find it to be genuinely thrilling. If so, I'm only happy for them, and wish them the best. Many of them had an obvious passion for literature, including one prof who was completely looney-tunes for Shakespeare. :-) And that's nothing but delightful.

* - which isn't to imply there need be an exuberant style.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> A deeply thoughtful literary great, to rank among the likes of Dickens, Cervantes and Dostoyevsky in my mind. Love in the Time of Cholera changed me, just like Crime and Punishment did. It affected me more than any other book has. At the time of my life when I read it, I felt that it spoke to my personal sensibilities. I followed that up with Memories of My Melancholy Whores, which I honestly think is his absolute masterpiece.

Gracias Señor García Márquez.

</comment><comment><USER36> I read Marquez's master piece '100 Years of Solitude' in my native language Malayalam 25 years ago and it got etched into my mind forever. In the next 2-3 years I read almost all the works of Marquez available in English. Later a lot more Latin American Authors including Borges, Huan Rulfo, Carpentier, Manuel Puig, Fuentes,Cortazar, Paz etc. became popular among the reading public in my region, but GGM was the one who started it all and remains one of my favourite writers of 20th century. Have a feeling that Marquez' did his best in the short story genre - despite his reputation as a novelist.

It is a coincidence that one of the first magical realist novels of my mother tongue - 'Khazakinte Ithihasam (Legends of Khazak)' also got published almost at the same time as '100 years of Solitude' was being published in Spanish and both works present highly resplendent and almost spiritual language and journeys (almost untranslatable).

Opening line of 'Legends of Khazak'\- 'When the bus finally reached Kooman Kavu, the place did not seem unfamiliar to Ravi'.

<comment><USER22> It has always struck me how Magic Realism seems to be so prevalent in the literary tradition of such distant and otherwise unrelated areas as South America and India.

I am no expert in any of the fields that could try to provide an answer to this so I'm unable to provide a data-backed explanation. All the explanations I can think about are quite "magic realists" so better suited for a short story than for hacker news ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> And now we may never know why Mario Vargas Llosa punched him in the face.

<comment><USER38> Well we kind of know some details at least[1]:

 _Mario strayed. He fell in love with a beautiful Swedish air stewardess whom he met while travelling. He left his wife and moved to Stockholm.

Distraught, his wife Patricia went to see her husband's best friend, Gabriel. After discussing the matter with his wife, Mercedes, he advised Patricia to divorce Mario. And then he consoled her. No one else quite knows what form this consolation took... Eventually Mario returned to his wife, who told him of Gabriel's advice to her, and of his consolation._

[http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2010/10/the- nobe...](http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2010/10/the-nobel-is-the- best-revenge.html)

<comment><USER37> I actually asked Llosa about it when he spoke at my college about seven years ago. His reply was something along the line of, "I don't talk about that."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In his autobiography he tells a story I love.

While writing 100 Years of Solitude he listened to The Beatles' A Hard Day Night album on repeat. After the book was published he received a letter from a group of Mexican college students who asked him if he was listening to A Hard Day's Night when writing the book, because they felt the album in his words.

<comment><USER39> What a nice story, thanks for sharing. Which autobiography is this one you are talking about? I loved 100 Years of Solitude...

<comment><USER40> I think probably OP is referring to "Living to Tell the Tale" which is the only autobiographical work Marquez wrote.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Many people in the US, when asked about Colombia, think of negative things; drugs, etc. Also, down in Colombia, the Caribbean coast was often looked down upon by those from the capital -- seen mainly as uneducated people with strange customs and a different way of talking. Gabriel Garcia Marquez uplifted not only the image of Colombia world-wide, but also the image and culture of the Caribbean coast. I am proud that my family is from that region and he made me proud to tell the world that I am Colombian. May he rest in Peace.

Also, I think this quote (from an article in NPR) sums up why he's so admired in Latin America:

"Garcia Marquez is speaking about all the people who are marginal to history, who have not had a voice. He gives a voice to all those who died. He gives a voice to all those who are not born yet. He gives a voice to Latin America."

</comment><comment><USER42> The spanish department at Princeton was kind enough to let me take a Spanish class while a visiting post-doc. It was great for learning Spanish. But it was so, so painful to see the sorts of pretentious bullshit that the undergraduates were inspired to produce by reading pieces by Marquez, and other South American authors writing in the "magical realist" style. I remember enjoying "Love in the Time of Cholera", and I am sure Marquez himself was great, but in general that sort of crap is exactly what you don't want your children wasting their time studying at university, and potentially misdirecting their professional lives thereafter through an underapprecation of the fact that there is aesthetic beauty in actual real stuff and facts about how the world really works.

</comment><comment><USER32> OT but tangential any magical realism authors to read? So far, I got Marquez, Jorge Louis Borges and Murakami. And preferably recommendation should be good to provide philosophical consolation to a code monkey worker-bee in the capitalist society.

<comment><USER43> _Master and Margarita_ by Bulgakov? Not sure if it is considered a work of magic realism, but elements are there for sure.

<comment><USER44> This.

One of the very best books of the century, by an often underappreciated author. When I first read it I didn't know Bulgakov and was amazed that such an interesting and beautiful novel could exist.

And yes, it is generally associated with magical realism as far as I know, although more loosely.

\- Adolfo Bioy Casares, a friend of Borges' and another great argentine writer. See Diary of the War of the Pig

\- Italo Calvino, an Italian writer whose writings you may find of interest in a smiliar (although more wondrous) vein

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> His writing was like poetry and song, all in one. Second best opening after "A Hundred Years of Solitude":

"It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love. Dr. Juvenal Urbino noticed it as soon as he entered the still darkened house where he had hurried on an urgent call to attend a case that for him had lost all urgency many years before. The Antillean refugee Jeremiah de Saint-Amour, disabled war veteran, photographer of children, and his most sympathetic opponent in chess, had escaped the torments of memory with the aromatic fumes of gold cyanide."

</comment><comment><USER46> I once met this american guy who told me in fluent spanish that he went and studied the spanish language after reading one of GGM's books because he wanted to read it in it's original language.

</comment><comment><USER47> Much of what I read of his was in Spanish, a second language for me, but even so I could see his command of language was incredible.

Things like, in "Relato de un náufrago", the story teller has emotional ups and downs each chapter - and García Márquez carefully chose ___words_ __that sounded emotionally up or down, giving a sense of rising and falling on waves through the whole story.

That, detected by someone whose Spanish was "solid" at best - what a joy it must be for a native to read.

</comment><comment><USER5> " _In his novels and stories, storms rage for years, flowers drift from the skies, tyrants survive for centuries, priests levitate and corpses fail to decompose. And, more plausibly, lovers rekindle their passion after a half- century apart._ "

"Less plausibly"! _" Less plausibly"!_

Geeze. Someone needs to teach these goobs to write.

</comment><comment><USER48> Coincidentially, a few weeks ago I put Marquez on my to-read list. Bein a native German, my first choice was naturally the German translation. English wouldn't be a problem though, so I wonder which one I should choose. Granted, in the end the books shouldn't suffer a lot from translating.

</comment><comment><USER49> 100 years of solitude will stand as one of the world's greatest literary works for the next ~1000 years. RIP GGM

</comment><comment><USER50> "Do not allow me to forget you" ― Gabriel García Márquez

(we won't forget you)

</comment><comment><USER51> Gracias por todo Gabo!</comment>


Sea Ice Growth Slows Long-Term Decline? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/wintertime-arctic-sea-ice-growth-slows-long-term-decline-nasa <comment><AUTHOR> Title is highly misleading imo.

Article does talk about 'negative' impact of climate change.</comment>


What is Kubernetes and why should I care? - <AUTHOR> https://learnk8s.io/blog/what-is-kubernetes <comment><USER2> Long story short:

* Kubernetes helps you manage your containerized applications at scale.

* You can swap out the container engine you are using. Docker is one option.

* Applications are wrapped in containers

* One or more containers are wrapped in pods.

* One or more pods runs on a node.

* The master manages all the nodes.

* Pluralsight is a good resource to get started.</comment>


Chef engineer resigns following death threats - <AUTHOR> http://www.geekwire.com/2014/chef-pledges-better-police-open-source-community-engineer-resigns-following-death-threats/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+geekwire+%28GeekWire%29

<comment><USER2> >GigaOm reports that the dispute arose around tools associated with a workflow management tool known as Berkshelf, which Vargo worked on. Some in the community preferred an alternative solution, and directed their anger towards Vargo.

So because someone doesn't like the tooling, he gets death threats? In what world is getting angry a solution (or accepted) when disagreeing with something you get for free?

<comment><USER3> Welcome to the society of the overly entitled. If something in the world is not exactly to your specific liking, you're allowed and even encouraged to go completely over the top in response in order to demonstrate your disagreement. Death threats are just an opening salvo, that's kid stuff compared to what you should do if you're REALLY peeved about something.</comment></comment>


Emacs-niv: An Emacs package for replacing "你" with "妳" (female version of YOU) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/gujiaxi/emacs-niv <comment><USER2> In my attempt to answer the question, why, I learned something interesting:

> The creation of gendered pronouns in Chinese was part of the May Fourth > Movement to modernize Chinese culture, and specifically an attempt to assert > sameness between Chinese and the European languages, which generally have > gendered pronouns

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-specific_and_gender- neu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-specific_and_gender- neutral_pronouns#Chinese)

So Chinese used to be gender neutral, then was made somewhat gender un-neutral to match european languages in an age of colonialism. Meanwhile English has been getting more gender neutral, as pronouns like the singular "they" became widespread. So I'm still wondering why this project is trying to introduce gender splits in a language that doesn't already have the baggage that English has.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the point of the project is to arise the gender awareness by emphasizing the un-neutrality literally. Since there are gender issues especially in the field of technology, Silicon Valley as an example, female needs more attention. <They work near bay area.> \-- <Shey work near bay area.></comment></comment>


New Pompeii Graffiti May Rewrite History - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/kristinakillgrove/2018/10/16/new-pompeii-graffiti-may-rewrite-history-in-a-major-way/ <comment><USER2> When you say things like "rewrite history" the implication is one of significance.

The month Vesuvius erupted is fairly irrelevant. There aren't any consequences to the fact changing. Pompeii is quite important in historical understanding of Rome, you would expect "history rewriting" discoveries to really be something. This isn't. Mildly interesting perhaps.

<comment><USER3> This theory on it happening in 1631 might scratch your itch:

[https://www.stolenhistory.org/threads/79-a-d-no-more- pompeii...](https://www.stolenhistory.org/threads/79-a-d-no-more-pompeii-got- buried-in-1631.121/)

<comment><USER2> The first article on the frontpage of stolenhistory.org is about how triumphal arches were, in fact, teleportation devices.

So no, whacky conspiracy theories don't scratch any itches.

<comment><USER4> Do you know if there's a report button here? That guy's comment should be removed.

This conspiracy theory he posted makes this entire platform look bad. And that's not even considering the missinformation it could spread..

<comment><USER5> I suppose the link was posted ironically.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's a fun collection of ribald Pompeiian graffiti (NSFW): [http://www.pompeiana.org/Resources/Ancient/Graffiti%20from%2...](http://www.pompeiana.org/Resources/Ancient/Graffiti%20from%20Pompeii.htm)

 _" O walls, you have held up so much tedious graffiti that I am amazed that you have not already collapsed in ruin."_

</comment><comment><USER7> This has been known for years. See this blog post from 2013 for example: [https://garethharney.wordpress.com/2013/06/07/the- forgotten-...](https://garethharney.wordpress.com/2013/06/07/the-forgotten- coin-dating-the-destruction-of-pompeii-and-herculaneum/)

The key piece, among other circumstantial evidence that was already known for decades, is a coin found many years ago and not this graffiti.

</comment><comment><USER8> What a nasty website.

* video that floats over the text as you scroll

* empty gray thing that drops down from the top for no reason (prob. trying to display an ad, but UBlock Origin stops it?)

* when you page through the image gallery every new image makes the page jump-scroll down

* oh goody another floating video on the right side now

* image caption obscures bottom 1/5th of each image.

bleagh.

<comment><USER9> You need Noscript. I didn't see any of those things and didn't even think about it until reading your comment; then I looked at the Noscript icon and saw that it had blocked scripts from forbes.com.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> To be honest, the walnuts and clothing are more convincing to me than a date without year. But it could be.

</comment><comment><USER11> > This new graffito may not rewrite history, but I am more convinced than ever > that an early fall date for the eruption is the one I should use when > formulating hypotheses about and interpreting data from the human skeletal > remains.

Markets?! We need laws regulating editors. The headline they provide is bullshit.

<comment><USER12> Changing a date would literally _rewrite history_ without dramatically affecting most historical understandings.

<comment><USER11> According to the article itself, it either may or may not. So why say anything about it?</comment></comment></comment>


Chatroulette Improv Piano Player Removed from YouTube - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2010/03/22/merton-removed-youtube/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29

<comment><USER2> _"This is a new, edited version of the original Video #1. I had to make some changes in order for YouTube to be happy with it.

My apologies to all of the subscribers for being summoned here just to see a repeat post, but there was no way around it.

For the record, the original video had 4,238,658 Views. At the time of its demise, it was the Top-Rated YouTube Video of All Time. No shit."_

</comment><comment><USER3> It appears that two people featured in the video requested that their faces were removed. He has now uploaded an edited version. <http://www.youtube.com/user/PianoChatImprov>

<comment><USER4> I wonder if they were even verified. Like, could I go on there now and just say I'm the first dude, and ask them to take it down? Or would Google request that I send in a picture to prove it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "most of the people in the video didn't know that they were becoming part of a viral video."

If we only knew the formula for viral videos, ad agencies would be all over that. Unfortunately/Luckily, there is no such formula..

<comment><USER6> They do know, I have a friend who works at a seeding agency, and they know very, very well how it works.

Make it funny/stupid/sexy enough, and people will watch it.

A couple of good examples of this:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xfBNxNds0Q> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USYa5iH3f3s> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJmqCKtJnxM>

Don't know if the latter was launched as a viral campaign, but my point is that you know it and the brand it was from if I'd phone you up and shout "WASSUP".

Marketing is a lot scarier that you think.

<comment><USER7> _you know it and the brand it was from if I'd phone you up and shout "WASSUP"._

I doubt that most people would. They know the meme; they remember the commercials, but what brand? I mean, without looking, I believe it was beer, but I'm not totally certain even of that.

<comment><USER8> I recalled immediately that it was Budweiser and I haven't seen it in years. I wasn't even old enough to legally drink when they originally aired.

My memory (usually block it out to begin with) in recalling brands from commercials is terrible so I'm inclined to believe most people would remember. But we are both just guessing.

<comment><USER9> I knew that it was Budweiser even though the commercial never aired where I live. Heck, I'm not even sure you can buy Budweiser here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> How is this gonna work then? Will he have to take down every video that someone complains about, losing all the views and everything? That sucks. Maybe he should start uploading to a new site.

I wonder if Ben Folds will get similar complaints, forcing him to upload an edited video as well. Perhaps by that dude on the toilet (Hey BAM! ...on the can.)

<comment><USER10> Maybe he should start asking people for their permission.

<comment><USER11> The thing is that by the nature of ChatRoulette that's hardly possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> ironic that people on chatroulette care about privacy.

<comment><USER13> People go to chatroulette to talk to another random person, not to be broadcast to the whole world. It's not any more ironic than "rain on your wedding day".

<comment><USER14> But people on chatroulette are broadcast to the whole world, just one person at a time.

I know that sounds cheeky, but chatroulette users are already taking chances with privacy, they're letting some random stranger view into their lives. Maybe they're not expecting a record of their interaction to be made, but even that isn't that good of an expectation considering chatroulette videos started showing up on YouTube almost as soon as chatroulette started.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Logging on with a live cam to ChatRoulette to begin with seems to me a pretty clear way to abandon your privacy . . .

It's interesting that the takedown revolves around privacy - I get it at some level, but still.</comment>


This Is What It's Like to Not Own a Smartphone in 2018 - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/40522828/this-is-what-its-like-to-not-own-a-smartphone-in-2018?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits <comment><USER2> >All the reasons why I was happy to live without a computer in my pocket four years ago still hold true today: Certain choices are easier to make without digital temptation, like reading physical books on my commute and being fully present with my friends at meals. But there are new reasons, too.

These reasons are quite absurd and a bit silly. There's no benefit to reading physical books above digital ones, and if you want to simply because you like the feel, you'd choose physical anyways! And if you can't make yourself "fully present" at meals simply because you have the _option_ of doing something else, you either have a terribly uninteresting friend group, or a complete and utter lack of self-control - in which case a smartphone is the least of your worries.</comment>


Paul Krugman Reviews 'The Rise and Fall of American Growth' by Robert J. Gordon - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/books/review/the-powers-that-were.html <comment><USER2> You've got to hand it to someone who uses our lack of flying cars as proof that innovation has slowed.

Then there's this later on: "you or I could walk into a 1940s apartment ... and we'd find it basically functional. We'd be annoyed at the lack of television and Internet — but not horrified or disgusted."

But obviously these intense, abrupt changes of hygiene aren't going to be indefinitely repeated; there's only so much filth to remove. And it's not as if there haven't been dramatic shifts in standards of hygiene since then, although they're a bit subtler--look at the chart here on frequency of showering, for instance: [http://www.businessinsider.com/charts-that-will- restore-your...](http://www.businessinsider.com/charts-that-will-restore-your- faith-in-humanity-2013-5)

Of course no one can be certain what the US's economic future will look like, but it seems absurd to argue that all the big changes are over and things will mostly stay the same from now on.

</comment><comment><USER3> Good thing Krugman hedges his review at the the end: _" Of course, Gordon could be wrong: Maybe we're on the cusp of truly transformative change, say from artificial intelligence or radical progress in biology (which would bring their own risks)."_ because everything I read about AI and robotics portends at least as big a change as steam engines, electricity and cars.

</comment><comment><USER4> pk;dr</comment>


How to force yourself to truly validate an MVP? - <AUTHOR> We are starting out with a new product. Of course full of ideas and assumptions. It's even a struggle to come up with a landing page version for validation.<p>How perfect should the landing page be? <comment><USER2> I would put something up and try to get someone to fill it out. I ran some national google ads with a landing page I was testing and was able to get a lead in about 15 minutes. And was able to get rough idea of lead costs. You don't have to keep it up it just gives you a better idea of numbers. then keep adding to your sign up funnel. and go from there. maybe add a survey at the end with a 6 mo free offer or something to keep incorporating feedback and building a list of initial trial customers. I wouldn't spend a lot of money on advertising <$100-$500 until you have something people can use.

If your disagreeing then build the easiest, cheapest version to test the disagreement.</comment>


Microsoft XBox Next delay rumors abound - <AUTHOR> http://semiaccurate.com/2012/09/04/microsoft-xbox-next-delay-rumors-abound/#.UEjnF0mOZ0M.hackernews <comment><USER2> _Note: This is a specific term with a very specific meaning, if you don't understand what it implies, SemiAccurate does do technical consulting_

Seriously? "We're going to use this acronym and not define it, but if you want the words actually spelled out you can pay us for that." I would guess that PoR means Process of Record, but I'm not willing to pay to confirm that.

<comment><USER3> ....and that's where I stopped reading.

<comment><USER4> Indeed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd like to see HSA computing get so much adoption by being used in both next- gen consoles. I think it would open up a lot of possibilities in the future.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is the first I've heard about a delay, seeing as how this product hasn't even been announced yet.

Premature much?

<comment><USER2> I would guess that SemiAccurate's audience for this article is the developers who are awaiting an SDK / test hardware. I would imagine that software development has been ongoing for some time if the article is true in saying the release date is Sept 2013, but they need actual hardware to test the games on. Insiders might be more in tune with this news than you or I.</comment></comment>


Giant Lego Machine Generates Churning House Tracks - <AUTHOR> http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/blog/giant-lego-machine-generates-churning-house-tracks

<comment><USER2> For the confused "House Tracks" means music, not something to do with dwellings.

From the title I thought this might be some kind of 3D printer.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. I was half-imagining an in-house railway system made of Lego pieces, somehow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very nice.

 _" When this machine learns your job, what are you going to do?"_

</comment><comment><USER5> Interesting. Not a fan of this type of "music", but it could be cool to tie my production system in Minecraft (logistic pipes) to play different sound effect each time some item was requested or produced. Perhaps the results would be similar and I would get an instant feedback on how well the system is running.

</comment><comment><USER6> I saw this in person last year but unfortunately by the time I got to the exhibition some of the parts had been pulled off by visiting children (I assume) so only the drum section was working. Brilliant though!</comment>


The Perimeter of Ignorance (2005) - <AUTHOR> http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/read/2005/11/01/the-perimeter-of-ignorance <comment><USER2> The charge against religion is unfair. It is not necessary that religious people must embrace ignorance. Jesus himself said 'I am the way and the truth and the life'. There is an argument to be made that Christianity's focus on truth at all costs helped science rather than hinder it

Also from Laplace's Wikipedia page [1] : A frequently cited but apocryphal interaction between Laplace and Napoleon purportedly concerns the existence of God. A typical version is provided by Rouse Ball:

Laplace went in state to Napoleon to present a copy of his work, and the following account of the interview is well authenticated, and so characteristic of all the parties concerned that I quote it in full. Someone had told Napoleon that the book contained no mention of the name of God; Napoleon, who was fond of putting embarrassing questions, received it with the remark, 'M. Laplace, they tell me you have written this large book on the system of the universe, and have never even mentioned its Creator.' Laplace, who, though the most supple of politicians, was as stiff as a martyr on every point of his philosophy, drew himself up and answered bluntly, Je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là. ("I had no need of that hypothesis.") Napoleon, greatly amused, told this reply to Lagrange, who exclaimed, Ah! c'est une belle hypothèse; ça explique beaucoup de choses. ("Ah, it is a fine hypothesis; it explains many things.")

In 1884, however, the astronomer Hervé Faye[52][53] affirmed that this account of Laplace's exchange with Napoleon presented a "strangely transformed" (étrangement transformée) or garbled version of what had actually happened. It was not God that Laplace had treated as a hypothesis, but merely his intervention at a determinate point

It is unclear whether Laplace himself was an atheist, and Newton was definitely not.

"[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre- Simon_Laplace"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Simon_Laplace")

<comment><USER3> > There is an argument to be made that Christianity's focus on truth at all > costs helped science rather than hinder it

In certain respects, such as Roger Bacon's advocacy of the scientific method and Gregor Mendel's discovery of the rules of inheritance, perhaps. In others, such as the Church's persecution of Galileo and Giordano Bruno, perhaps not.</comment></comment>


RefHeap - <AUTHOR> https://refheap.com/

<comment><USER2> It's built from the ground up using Clojure... and it uses Pygments to perform its core task?

Just saying, doing the equivalent of Pygments for the 10 most important languages (your call which) and having an end-to-end Clojure solution might be a more impressive calling card than being the first Clojure web app to wrap Pygments.

<comment><USER3> Yes. The entire _site_ is built with Clojure. We do use Pygments. Pygments is as much a general tool as it is a Python library, and a very good one on both counts. We didn't see much point in writing our own syntax highlighter that would almost certainly be buggier than Pygments and support a fraction of the languages that Pygments already supports.

Responding to edits:

I agree, there'd certainly be a bigger coolness factor to that. However, we're trying to build a useful site here for anyone who wants to use it. Pygments is mature and does what we need and a whole lot more.

<comment><USER2> Well, just to be devil's advocate here, Pygments supports a lot of languages very few people care about (Befunge, Dylan, Modula-2 --- for that matter, how many people need to syntax-highlight their ANTLR grammars?) --- and it's also worth pointing out that the language count in Pygments includes a lot of duplicates --- and it does a somewhat poor job with a few important ones (like ObjC).

I'm a fan of Pygments (it's kind of a secret weapon; we don't just use it it to syntax highlight), but that also means I'm acutely aware of how straightforward a syntax highlighting pasteboard is to build on top of it. For that matter, so is Github; Gist is powered by Pygments.

I'm really interested in Clojure (I'm kind of shopping for a next language, I like Lisp, and I'm pretty sure the next thing needs to be a JVM language), so maybe I'm just hoping to get people to make ambitious things I can look at.

<comment><USER3> Well, I definitely want to point out that we are not trying to claim we've done magic here. If that's how it sounds, I apologize. Believe it or not, we _are_ putting a lot of work into this site. We have some fun ideas we want to play around with, but writing another syntax highlighter just isn't one of them.

On the other hand, I'm happy you're interested in Clojure! I'm sorry that our project might not be the one to put you over the edge on it, but I definitely hope something does. :)

<comment><USER2> I'm not trying to talk you off the project so much as I am encouraging you to consider reinventing this particular wheel in Clojure as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not sure I get it.. it's another pastebin, with syntax formatting? Not much of a description on the site.

<comment><USER3> <http://blog.refheap.com/blog/2012/01/06/brave-new-world/> The launch blog post might make things clearer.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Respective blog post regarding their launch.

<http://blog.refheap.com/blog/2012/01/06/brave-new-world/>

</comment><comment><USER5> since you use sequential document names, people can (and will) scan through / search / index what is posted. maybe that's what you want, but it might be more useful if the names were random and sufficiently long to be sparse, so that they are "invisible" unless you know the url.

<comment><USER3> You can make pastes private (which gives them a non-sequential URL) if you're logged in. We're considering allowing for anonymous users to have private pastes as well, perhaps with a time to live on them.</comment></comment>


More Teslas on the Road Meant Hours-Long Supercharger Lines over Thanksgiving - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedrive.com/news/31274/more-teslas-on-the-road-meant-hours-long-supercharger-lines-over-thanksgiving <comment><USER2> this definitely feels like a quirk of the route. kettleman city is right in the middle of the la-sf drive along the 5. it's also basically like one of two stops that has more than just some fast food restaurants, and a good place for kids to run around.

breaking up the monotony of the ~400mi drive stopping at the halfway point because the range is likely just short of the destination (and i assume even shorter if there was traffic due to snow, plus range reduction in cold, plus the elevation through the tejon pass), plus all the other stops along the 5 being much smaller or more inconvenient...

i'd be much more curious about how to handle this kind of demand in usage. i drive a gas car and the gas station lines on this route can be atrocious too, but people are done in a matter of minutes so it makes no real dent on travel time.

<comment><USER3> I imagine a semi trailer rigged with a battery, grid connection, and a set of chargers for seasonal surges. Maybe even a deployable solar panel array, but I suspect the PV panel would be too constrained to be much more than a show piece.

<comment><USER4> You mean like this?

[https://cleantechnica.com/2019/11/28/tesla-rolls-out- literal...](https://cleantechnica.com/2019/11/28/tesla-rolls-out- literally-100-car-portable-superchargers-for-holiday-carmageddon/)

<comment><USER3> Hey now I can claim to think like Elon Musk!

<comment><USER5> Too bad your idea that traveled back in time wasn't "A giant solar dish powered by a space x laser in space"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So some bigger charging stations are needed in some inter-city locations. Not that hard. That's the Madonna Inn, by the way, a famous sex hotel since the 1950s. Maybe they could offer a deal where you get valet charging with a short stay.

 _This_ is a serious charging station, in Shenzhen.[1] 637 chargers.

[1] [https://thedriven.io/2019/05/24/worlds-largest-charging- stat...](https://thedriven.io/2019/05/24/worlds-largest-charging-station-in- shenzhen-powers-all-electric-taxi-fleet/)

<comment><USER4> > That's the Madonna Inn, by the way, a famous sex hotel since the 1950s

Not sure what you were _trying_ to say here, but the implication is that this is a dingy, sleazebag motel, only trafficked by hookers and pimps.

For the record, that's absolutely untrue.

<comment><USER7> It's a pretty fun hotel with theme rooms and a really cool cave bathroom.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This major city, east coast HN driver had zero supercharger lines going to and from the Midwest. Maybe the author should have put "In California" in the title?

<comment><USER9> California appears to be the sample of what full electrification implies.

<comment><USER10> Given Tesla charges for use of Super Chargers now and the cost of electricity dominates build out cost, they should be able to build out enough infrastructure in a cost neutral way to stay ahead of the curve.

<comment><USER11> Huh. Strange then that they aren't accelerating the construction of chargers.

<comment><USER10> They only have so much capital and probably spending on new factorise instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is largely due to the crazy free-supercharging giveaways Elon has been giving away like candy. I see so many Tesla drivers using superchargers as their primary charing spot. Hanging out in their car playing Cuphead or shopping at the target, and topping their battery to 100% taking 1+ hours to do so.

For people like me who charge at home, I just want to quickly jump into a spot and get 90 miles range to get me home. Should take 15-20 minutes max to get my battery there, but waiting line sucks.

<comment><USER5> Nobody is driving out to kettleman city because they get free charging.

That said, "free" anything brings out outlier behavior that even the most nominal charge would prevent. (the $10 copay for doctor visits is the same thing)

<comment><USER13> They aren't driving out to Kettleman for free charging. But, they are stopping there en route because free charging is available.

With gas stations, that doesn't happen - you just stop wherever you want. If there's a line, you go to the next station.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Really, all these long lines show is how our recharging infrastructure is > woefully behind the demand for electric vehicles. Initiatives like Electrify > America are a solid start, but even its 5,000 chargers won't come close to > matching the convenience promised by a gas station. What we need is a > massive national investment—public, private, or a combination thereof—to > create a fast-charging network to rival the pipes, trucks, and pumps that > make 87 octane flow like water for most folks.

Tesla has already invested $400 million in their network, and continues to expand it (Electrify America was part of a settlement VW had to agree to as part of Dieselgate, hence why they can't be VW branded). It's clear legacy automakers aren't interested in making the investment, nor state or national governments.

Lots of Superchargers under construction in California (where these queues were): [https://supercharge.info/map](https://supercharge.info/map)

<comment><USER15> Does Tesla continue to expand it relative to the number of Teslas sold? I was under the impression that the stalls per vehicle count has been getting much worse ever since the Model 3 launch.

Although to do the calculations correctly, you'd want to normalize for charge times which have improved with M3 + V3.

Cutting free lifetime supercharger access has probably reduced the day to day load on the network, but isn't going to do anything at all to help with peak use around holidays.

<comment><USER16> They now have a mobile charge station with a bunch of chargers on it that will help with peak times.

[https://www.tesmanian.com/blogs/tesmanian-blog/tesla- mobile-...](https://www.tesmanian.com/blogs/tesmanian-blog/tesla-mobile- superchargers-megapacks)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Yeah, we need a few more years (or more!) before DC fast chargers are mainstream. We need other companies to build them too.

<comment><USER18> Other companies are building them but they're building CCS chargers. Tesla's still using its proprietary plug in North America. Tesla should switch their cars and chargers to CCS (and allow other EVs to use them) to broaden the charging infrastructure for all drivers.

<comment><USER19> Current CCS specs are lacking - a 200 Amp limit on DC charging means most EV's can only charge at ~60 kilowatts. The connector is unwieldy and large. The standard doesn't provide the ability for cars to put power into the grid (something that EV makers really want to do because then they can cash in on the lucrative reactive spinning reserve/frequency control market). The connector also doesn't have any way to measure voltage drop across the high current pins, so a bit of dirt could easily cause the whole thing to melt into a gooey mess.

I can completely see why Tesla is holding off switching specs until CCS improves or another standard comes to take its place.

<comment><USER20> > _"Current CCS specs are lacking - a 200 Amp limit"_

There is no 200 Amp limit in the modern 150-350 kW CCS chargers being deployed by networks like Ionity and Electrify America.

Tesla, of course, already uses CCS in Europe. A Model 3 can charge at over 190 kW on European CCS chargers. A Porsche Taycan (800V), 270 kW.

<comment><USER18> And here's a demonstration of a Tesla Model 3 charging on an Ionity CCS charger:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPrVZtzAqX4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPrVZtzAqX4)

Gets up to 499 amps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think Kettleman already has 10+ V3 Superchargers. I suppose that explains why there can be 50+ cars in line without getting the hours-long wait times of SLO.

[https://electrek.co/2019/11/13/tesla-upgrading-largest- super...](https://electrek.co/2019/11/13/tesla-upgrading-largest-supercharger- station-v3-technology/)

To be fair, hours-long wait times can happen on normal weekdays too (SJC for instance) when there are a bunch of locals using them.

Surprisingly (not really), the same issues that apply to food, gas, and rest stops on holidays also apply to Superchargers.

</comment><comment><USER22> Could someone rent a trailerable generator bring a large CNG or diesel tank, and set up a temporary charging station on busy days like Thanksgiving and Labor day?

Quick googling found e.g. a CAT generator[1] that has output sufficient for charging 20 cars (150kW per 2 cars in a Tesla supercharger station).

Sure it's not green, but if it's one stop once or twice a year, surely that's better than driving a gas car year round?

1: [https://www.cat.com/en_US/products/new/power- systems/electri...](https://www.cat.com/en_US/products/new/power- systems/electric-power/mobile-generator-sets/1000001247.html)

<comment><USER23> This is the first time I can remember stuff like this happening. I assume this is the kind of thing nobody is really thinking about until it happens.

I think this is how the popup charger at Burning Man worked.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> In addition to more stations, they need better batteries with better range. A gas powered vehicle can go SF to LA without a fillup. Since the EVs need more frequent fillups, it puts more strain on the stations.

<comment><USER24> And it's a double whammy since not only do they need more frequent fill-ups, but the fill-ups take way longer compared to pumping a tank of gas (even with fast charging). It seems like a major hurdle to true mass market EV adoption.

<comment><USER10> How often do you folks make a 400 mile trip to LA?

I did a 250 mile trip from Bay Area to Central Valley. Stopped for 20 minutes on way back in Coalinga to add 80 miles of range at 400 miles of charging per hour.

<comment><AUTHOR> I get down to 100 miles of range in my non-EV, and I fill'er up. Having a reserve is important. Spending 20 minutes for 80 miles seems ludicrous given that doesn't even meet my minimum reserve requirement and is very expensive in terms of time. Even with the advertised new chargers they're rolling out, they provide 80 miles of range for a 5 minute charge. Progress for sure, but the non-EV bar is much higher.

Gas powered cars get 500+ miles of range with a 5 minute fillup. And the range is not dependent on other variables such as battery age or ambient temperature. What's the EV range at 5F (-15C) - a pretty common temp in the winter? What if the batteries are 5 years old?

A gas powered car is going to need far fewer fillups per week than an EV, and be far more flexible - its one less thing you have to think about and plan for.

Those extra fillups required by EVs require more stations to be built - including at your home and place of work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Hopefully future EVs will support rapid charging. If you could top your battery to 80% in 5 minutes that would be a game changer for EV stations. At that point, you could integrate them into a more traditional "gas station" style service.

</comment><comment><USER26> Mophie needs to make a battery case for the Tesla's!

</comment><comment><USER27> Maybe its a trick by TESLA to force the owners to buy solar roofs and powerwalls. This lets the economy grow. Just a little bit.

</comment><comment><USER28> I think recharging is a transitory solution anyway. The real game changer will be automated battery swaps.

Imagine stopping at the charging station and having the entire battery pulled out and replaced with a charged one, pit-stop style. It completely neutralizes the #1 complaint about how long batteries take to charge, since there should always be a supply ready-to-go at the station.

This would be an automated, underground mechanism - you wouldn't even have to leave your car.

It will be faster than filling up a tank with gas.

<comment><USER18> Nio has implemented battery swapping in China:

[https://www.topgear.com/car-news/big-reads/power-shift- batte...](https://www.topgear.com/car-news/big-reads/power-shift-battery- swapping-our-way-across-china)

I don't see it catching on. It's too much logistical hassle. Battery packs can't be delivered as easily as fuel or electrons.

<comment><USER29> They're not really delivered though, they'd be swapped and charged onsite ?

<comment><USER30> And then you'd have people who would try to rort the system by swapping a bad set of batteries with a good set from the station, and then sell it for a profit.

<comment><USER28> There would be measures in place to prevent this, of course. They'd have to be more robust than Redbox scanning for fake DVD returns, but you could sign the battery firmware, do challenge/response, etc. before allowing the swap to happen. All automatic of course. And if your battery turns out to be an elaborate fake - well, we know whose car it came from, considering they drove it to the station with a license plate attached.

<comment><USER30> > you could sign the battery firmware, do challenge/response, etc. before > allowing the swap to happen

so either you're only allowed to swap batteries at these authorized stations (akin to today having a car that can only use petrol purchased from a particular brand of station), or it's trivially easy to swap it yourself (or with some easy to obtain equipment, like today's car oil change).

If it's the first case, then these cars are DRM'ed to hell and back. Not a good world for the consumer.

If it's the latter, then battery swapping will happen. It's [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham%27s_law) applied to batteries.

<comment><USER29> You could very easily have standards in place to ensure compatibility between garages ?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


California bill to add more housing in single-family neighborhoods blocked - <AUTHOR> https://sf.curbed.com/2019/5/16/18617019/transit-housing-bill-sb-50-approproations-committee-suspense-wiener <comment><USER2> California's housing crisis benefits existing homeowners, and this group has the greatest sway with legislators. It seems like a ponzi scheme, even if it's not intentional: people who can't afford to live here move away, and are replaced by wealthier people who can. Eventually we're going to run out of wealthy people and the whole thing will come crashing down.

<comment><USER3> > _California 's housing crisis benefits existing homeowners, and this group > has the greatest sway with legislators_

Because they vote. New York renters are a powerful contingent. Because they vote.

A large fraction of California has self-selected out of the political process. That is the root of a lot of its problems.

<comment> B-Con Also because they exist. People who would move to CA but don't because of the housing problem can't vote to fix the issue.

<comment><USER4> To be fair democracy needs some type of locality limit to keep it in the specific sovereignty's influence; US citizens don't get to vote in Canadian politics just because some people in Maine are thinking of moving over to Montreal

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In cupertino there was a similar drive and a similar movement to stop it.

The slogan for the people against it were saying "Don't turn cupertino into condotino!" There are a lot of condos in cupertino now.

</comment><comment><USER6> > But opponents of the legislation argued that the changes anticipatedunder SB > 50 would have unalterably diminished the quality of life in many California > neighborhoods dominated by single-family home development.

Interesting. The quality of life in such neighborhoods seems to me to be some of the lowest in the nation. Sure there are worse places but overall, in my experience, such neighborhoods have no stores, no desirable public lands where people spend any time, and really nothing at all other than houses and ghost streets. One needs a car to go anywhere. There is nothing to do, no one to see, and no one to interact with. It's no wonder people who live there end up using drugs and coping with a ton of anxiety and depression. It's one of the worst places to raise teenagers and young adults especially ones not old to drive. Having lived in such neighborhoods all my life, I still can't understand what people are talking about in regards to the quality of life. The quality of life is shit. But I can see putting up with that for more money. I guess that's what they mean by quality of life. Low taxes and home value appreciation.

<comment><USER7> Based on what I see on Nextdoor and from anti-housing groups in Seattle, I suspect quality of life is coded language for "undesirable" types moving in. If you make your city affordable, you don't get to live in an enclave where everyone has a 7-figure net worth and went to Stanford.

<comment><USER8> Yes, and the effects of that on local schools as well.

<comment><USER9> Our local school in California busses in out of district students. By their claim, they can offer higher quality education with more students because the state funding scales faster than the burden.

<comment><USER10> That's atypical of most high income, high quality districts in California. E.g., Palo Alto is currently fighting with Stanford over a housing expansion because of the impact of additional students at local schools.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Who blocked this? I am a California voter and I do not recall having any say over this blockage.

<comment><USER12> From the latimes article, it was a state senator from the Los Angeles area: "Sen. Anthony Portantino (D-La Cañada Flintridge), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, announced at the beginning of the committee hearing Thursday that Senate Bill 50 would not advance this year, meaning the bill would not be debated again until 2020."

Edit: Here is a video of him saying that despite the crisis, he doesn't think the bill is right, and maybe something better will come along [https://twitter.com/BryanRAnderson/status/112911212601702809...](https://twitter.com/BryanRAnderson/status/1129112126017028096)

<comment><USER11> As Chairman he blocked it from even being voted on... looks like I know who to axe on the next elections.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The bay area will lose more experienced older workers if the only way to exist here is to share an apartment with other young single people. Companies should care about this.

<comment><USER8> Companies should move out of the Bay Area.

<comment><USER14> Yup. The more that move out of the Bay Area the better. There are a lot of other nice places to live. It would be awesome for those nice places to get good tech jobs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Thanks for writing. A veteran who has VA loan entitlement wouldn't be extending this benefit to anyone else, but he or she could look to have the new spouse as a co-borrower on a new VA loan. You can talk with a Veterans United loan specialist in more detail at (431) 300-7649 email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER16> [http://archive.is/KUDl1](http://archive.is/KUDl1)

<comment><USER17> lol for all the 220.127.116.11 users!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> If defeating NIMBYs was easy, it would have been done a long time ago.

</comment><comment><USER19> Really insightful story. I do hope that we'll soon find a way to solve the California housing crisis!

</comment><comment><USER20> I have seen a lot of luxury apartments springing up but, not actual homes people can buy. That is a problem.

<comment><USER21> It's largely illegal to build units that are sufficiently small to be affordable. Zoning requirements in most places have square foot minimums and amenity requirements (such as parking).

That said, even "luxury apartments" give the wealthy a place to live rather than bidding on existing housing stock, and so do relieve price pressure on older buildings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Url changed from [https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-housing-single- fa...](https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-housing-single-family- zoning-senate-bill-50-dead-20190516-story.html) to one that seems to contain more info and is less paywalled.

</comment><comment><USER23> "We'll do anything to solve the housing crisis!"

"How about building more housing?"

"Anything but that!"

<comment><USER24> People currently living there don't see it as a "housing crisis". They see it as "too many people coming here, trying to change our single family house peaceful residential neighborhood into bigger buildings".

So "how about limiting influx of new people / new development?"

"Sure, let's do that"

I understand newcomers may disagree with that approach, out of understandable self interest.

But implying people currently living there are clueless or more selfish by defending their interests?? Trying to make newcomers sound morally superior? Come on.... You can do better that than that.

<comment><USER23> So their plan to solve the housing crises essentially involves trying to keep new people out of the SF Bay area? Keep in mind that this is an area that heavily prides itself on being diverse and inclusive.

People aren't clueless for defending their interests, but they absolutely are being highly deceptive in the way they are going about it. Many even go so far as to try and claim that increasing housing supply will actually _increase_ prices. There was even a ballot initiative to ban market rate housing construction in central San Francisco.

<comment><USER24> Again, from the people living there, what's the housing crisis?? Yes, they are trying to limit how many people are coming in, that's obvious. This is different from inclusive and diversity issues. This is about 100 new diverse people rather than 1,000.

Again you can disagree with them, it is fair, but I think their approach is perfectly understandable, and if you want to argue and debate, no one should assume they are hypocritical or morally inferior. I read thosr comments all the time on HN.

The minute you say "housing crisis", you show which situation/point of view you're coming from. It's not a crisis that "needs" to be solved with more housing, it is just your viewpoint.

<comment><USER23> It's not an _assumption_ of hypocrisy. It genuinely is hypocrisy. A group of people are praising themselves for their inclusivity, while pushing for exclusionary policies. If they want to pursue these policies without being hypocritical then they need to change their messaging to be transparent about their desire for exclusion rather than inclusion.

<comment><USER24> Are you saying that unless one welcomes an infinity of people in their backyard, one cannot be inclusive?

I think you should explain and defend the policy you wish, instead of critizing an imaginary adversary by putting words in their mouth.

If you want more housing, hoping that prices will go down, say so. If you favor a SF Bay area looking progressively more like NY City, say so. Many people are very happy in NYC. And prices are also very high there.

Just expect some people to frankly disagree with that proposed evolution, and don't attack them by being non inclusive: this is not the question. Misrepresenting their arguments is not helping further your point of view.

(whose incumbent said "we will do anything to solve the housing crisis?" in your original point?)

<comment><USER23> I'm saying that if one supports policies with the intended effect of excluding people from moving into one's neighborhood, it's hypocrisy to call oneself inclusive.

> If you want more housing, hoping that prices will go down, say so. If you > favor a SF Bay area looking progressively more like NY City, say so. Many > people are very happy in NYC.

Yes, absolutely. Build more housing and build denser housing. This is what pro-housing people have been saying for years.

> And prices are also very high there.

There's 8 million people in NYC instead of 800,000 in San Francisco.

> Just expect some people to frankly disagree with that proposed evolution, > and don't attack them by being non inclusive: this is not the question. > Misrepresenting their arguments is not helping further your point of view.

Pointing out the contradiction of one's purported values with their actions is not an attack. When people support exclusory policies like rent control and curbing housing development with the goal of reducing the ability of people to move there, they are being exclusive. This is not a misrepresentation. People who support said policies while simultaneously purporting to foster an inclusive community are indeed being hypocritical. This is not an attack, this is a factually correct observation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The simplest solution to all this is limiting the number of houses a person can own. You only NEED one. Two is more than enough. Three is excessive.

It's not gold or silver or stocks and bonds.

People need houses to _live_ in. Other investments don't have practical value. If people want to protect their assets, do it outside real estate.

<comment><USER26> This is an example of ridiculous government overreach. Should fit right in for California.

<comment><USER27> It's drastic. I'm not taking a position either way because I don't know enough about the tradeoffs. But it's _really_ bad out there, particularly here in SF; maybe worse than you realize.

When mobs of zombies start shuffling out of the Pacific and swarming coastal cities, you call the National Guard and impose martial law, "government overreach" be damned. And when things reach this level of dysfunction in the housing market, it is appropriate to start rationally examining practices we've always taken for granted in the past like unfettered real estate investment.

<comment><USER26> It's my opinion that if the proposed resolution is to strip people of their rights, then the resolution isn't worth the brain power used to discuss it.

<comment><USER27> I don't really want to get drawn into this because – again – I don't have an opinion one way or the other, but I have to point out that just because you're able to do something today doesn't mean it's automatically a "right" that needs to be "stripped" from you. We adopt reasonable legislation all of the time which restricts legal activity in various ways. When the SEC issues guidance on some little-known regulation that affects the way that hedge funds are allowed to account for certain trading costs, nobody worries that important rights are being eroded. Their investment activities will be a little bit more restricted, but they have tons of money anyway and they have plenty of other options. Maybe you can see by analogy why I wouldn't be terribly impressed by owners of multiple California properties crying about their rights if some reasonable light-touch restrictions were added that slightly threatened their future revenues.

<comment><USER26> Yes I've noticed that many times people don't feel the need to defend other people's rights because it wouldn't also affect them directly.

<comment><USER25> I would be forced to sell many pieces of property I do not want to sell if my ideas were implemented.

I don't think it's my right to own all that. I don't need it. Someone else does. Unfortunately, they can't afford it and I can. Doesn't make it right.

<comment><USER26> You definitely have rights to your property, it's one of the most important ideas established in the Constitution.

It's also your right to give that property away if you like.

<comment><USER25> You need to consider the difference between something being right and something being _a_ right.

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

Article 23 of the declaration states: "Every Person has the right to own such private property as meets the essential needs of decent living and helps to maintain the dignity of the individual and of the home.[10]"

\-- This is not the case with real estate in America. It isn't dignified.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It was an awful bill. It removed density limits in any jobs-rich area (so basically all of the Bay Area). It forced any single family zoned area to allow fourplexes.

This would have greatly changed the character of neighborhoods that people have lived and invested in for decades. If you can't see the political problem with that, well, you might want to learn more about California politics.

<comment><USER29> what's wrong with fourplexes? i live in a neighborhood full of them and think they're great. they add a lot of character without additional massing, and the additional density unlocks commercial areas that are a walk away.

<comment><USER28> That's great that you like your neighborhood. Presumably you thought it was the best choice for you.

I don't want to live in a high density area, so that's why I chose to live somewhere else.

<comment><USER29> fourplexes fit in with single family homes[0]. what makes you averse to a fourplex in your neighborhood?

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

<comment><USER28> More people - more noise - more traffic - more fuss.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This bill would have created enormous resentment on behalf of homeowners, the ones who would have watched ugly four-story boxes go up in their neighborhoods. They would have wondered why the problems of the big cities were being dumped onto them, and the answer is found no farther then Weiner's list of campaign contributors.

[https://votesmart.org/candidate/campaign- finance/129655/scot...](https://votesmart.org/candidate/campaign- finance/129655/scott-wiener#.XN3G26Z7mV4)

<comment><USER31> The McMansions are uglier anyway. Is your right to not look at ugly boxes more important than other people's right to have a home for less than $2 million?

<comment><USER30> This bill doesn't propose upzoning the kinds of neighborhoods where the "McMansions" are. Those houses are generally speaking way out in the suburbs and exurbs. SB 50 targets regions close to major cities, and most of that are "old growth" neighborhoods.

And, to your second statement: if people do indeed have a "right" to a home less than $2 million, they can exercise that right. It just might not be in Palo Alto.

<comment><USER31> Alternately, if people want to exercise their "right" to not look at apartment buildings, they should move somewhere rural where land is cheap enough that no one builds them.

<comment><USER8> That's exactly what people did ~60 years ago. Bought some farmland way outside San Francisco, built houses and a community. No because a few billionaire execs want to keep their companies close to their houses, we are going to tear it all down? By all means, densify downtown San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose. But I don't understand the perverse desire to add density to far suburbs.

<comment><USER32> One big reason to densify the suburbs (speaking of the bay area in particular) is that they're in Silicon Valley and that's where most of the tech jobs are (e.g., Apple, Google, Facebook, etc.). These cities are willing to let companies come in and collect that sweet tax revenue but are not willing to allow sufficient housing to be built to house all of those workers.

<comment><USER8> What sweet tax revenue are you talking about? Cities would make more from a car dealership or an Apple store than a mega office complex. Regardless, it is easier to move the office than build housing for the office. Incentivize companies to be downtown SF/SJ/Oak near transit if density is the goal. Building medium density mid-peninsula is a mess of an idea that will end up creating as many commuters as local workers.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Build your own 2048 with SpriteBuilder and Cocos2D – Part 1 - Ben-G https://www.makegameswith.us/gamernews/384/build-your-own-2048-with-spritebuilder-and-cocos2d

<comment><AUTHOR> SpriteBuilder is a really nice tool. I started using it when it was still called CocosBuilder and I've used it for a game project [1] and had my own small fork with awful additions that were only relevant to the game I was working on.

I recently (as I started working on a new game) downloaded the newest release and I was really impressed. It is possible to quickly build rather complex UI scenes and game scenes.

I've actually just used it for a small iOS app side project, that only requires a minimal spartan UI and this way I can leverage Apportable [2] and easily release that app for Android, too. (hopefully, I'm not that far yet)

[1.1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9J0mleRrcdQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9J0mleRrcdQ)

[1.2] [https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/flick-a- fruit/id771895296?mt...](https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/flick-a- fruit/id771895296?mt=8)

[2] [http://www.apportable.com/](http://www.apportable.com/)

</comment><comment><USER2> Why is 2048, an entirely stolen game and an example of all that is bad for real programmers, getting so much play on Hacker News? I don't understand this community supporting outright theft.

<comment><USER3> Shall we generate a list of "stolen" games? Duke Nukem, Warcraft etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The lack of indentation in the code snippets makes this painful to read.

<comment> Ben-G Thanks for pointing this out. Seems to be an issue of the syntax highlighter. Will fix it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The irony of building a game for iOS which is a clone of a JavaScript game which a clone of an iOS game doesn't escape me.

<comment><USER6> Are you certain Threes isn't a JavaScript game wrapped in Phonegap/Cordova?

<comment><USER3> It's too smooth and polished to be a JS/HTML game IMHO.</comment></comment></comment>


How Secure Channels Attempted to Intimidate a Critic and Failed Spectacularly - <AUTHOR> http://popehat.com/2015/09/04/how-secure-channels-attempted-to-intimidate-a-critic-and-failed-spectacularly/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Popehat+%28Popehat%29 <comment><USER2> Ms. Murphy's bio page describes her as a "guerilla marketing expert", and perhaps that is what this is. If leveling ridiculous accusations at your critics using obviously fake Twitter accounts is "guerilla marketing" than perhaps I should look into it, because it sounds fun, and I've always wanted to have a Director level title.

<comment><USER3> Gorilla marketing perhaps. "You say what gorilla no like, gorilla beat you up."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> tl;dr - Dee Murphy, Director of Marketing for _Secure Channels_ , created an anonymous twitter account in order to sling mud at at a prominent _Secure Channels_ critic. However, one of Ms. Murphy's tweets from the anonymous account was composed of a screenshot showing her original twitter profile and a browser tab titled "How to take a screenshot on your Mac".

<comment><USER5> In addition, the product which is marketed as "unbreakable" and "unhackable" technology, appears to be a rebranded version of someone's free product. Further, it introduces a security flaw (the company hardcodes its gmail account and password into the software, which is used for password reset).

<comment><USER6> Can we call such a clown convention a "company"? It seems they lack a degree of seriousness that one might expect from a firm in which investors have invested capital.

<comment><USER7> I think you overestimate the rationality of investors. Just because someone has lots of money doesn't always mean they are clear thinking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> That screenshot was so outstandingly bad I almost want to believe that someone elaborately staged the screenshot to make a Secure Channel exec look incompetent... but Occam's Razor prevails.

<comment><USER9> Let's not even get into how she tweeted a picture of the text of another tweet, which is a rather _roundabout_ way of just retweeting something.

<comment><USER10> It's usually done to preserve a tweet that could end up getting deleted.

<comment><USER11> Which is meaningless due to how easily screenshots could be doctored. It's no better than "this is what they said".

[http://i.imgur.com/jcnkw71.png](http://i.imgur.com/jcnkw71.png)

Having multiple screenshots from multiple sources increases the likelihood of legitimacy - but doesn't guarantee it. 20 people can easily get together and doctor the same statement.

<comment><USER10> It's no more reliable than "this is what they said," but it adds a step to the fabrication: I could just type random quotes and attribute them to a Twitter account, sure, but it would take _effort_ to fake a screenshot.

<comment><USER12> For anyone who's passingly familiar with HTML and the web developer tools built into modern browsers, it's barely more effort than "this is what they said". In most cases it's literally right-click, Inspect Element, double-click the html node and replace it with the contents of your choosing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> at-fates-hands This should really serve as a lesson for startups on how _not_ get your name out there.

In an industry (infosec) that's built on reputation and experience, you can't just go into it and start running your company like the "Price is Right" and offer all kinds of gimmicks to get people to buy into your product.

The way you win is to humbly hand over your source code to the community, have them pen test it and then graciously accept any advice or flaws they point out. Then work tirelessly to make it better and prove you take the people and the other companies in your space seriously.

Infosec is no joke either and you shouldn't treat the people in the industry like a bunch of idiots. This is a prefect example of a lifelong sales guy, using worn out sales pitches to try and sell his product like an infomercial.

<comment><USER13> Anyone who needed that lesson but still wants to play in infosec is likely too dumb or arrogant to learn from it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I appreciated the comment on TFA from their former lobbyist. Those creatures rarely crawl out from under cover, but apparently this one is really pissed about not getting paid. I want to give NIST the benefit of the doubt on this one and assume that the "deal" he cites was actually just, "we'll call you, sometime, we promise!"

</comment><comment><USER14> I almost feel bad for Murphy. This is super embarrassing "icing on the cake" of a situation that shows incompetence in not just technical ability, which I would think could be expected from an executive at such a technically focused startup, but marketing itself- which I would imagine is supposed to be her expertise.

</comment><comment><USER15> "Unbreakable" worked for Oracle Corp, so why not "Secure Channels?" ;-)

</comment><comment><USER16> Omfg. That Android code sending the email using their gmail account was unbelievable. I'd hate to think "real" security companies have cruft this bad, but...

</comment><comment><USER17> Could a mod get rid of the #wsa-endnote-1 at the end of the URL?

<comment><USER18> And the utm_* tracking query parameters...

<comment><USER11> But then you can't have fun with them!

[http://www.stilldrinking.org/trolling-marketers-for- profit-a...](http://www.stilldrinking.org/trolling-marketers-for-profit-and- pleasure)

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/utm- mangler/ngddln...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/utm- mangler/ngddlnhlmdnjphddadgonpfhccgjhfji?hl=en&gl=US&authuser=1)

(The questionable one mentioned in the article was removed from the add-on.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's funny how the Titanic was deemed unsinkable. Every time someone calls their shiney new think 'Un'-something, nature seems to conspire against them :)

<comment><USER20> The Titanic was dubbed unsinkable by the press, not by Harland and Wolff nor the White Star Line.

Driving a liner full speed into a stationary iceberg is not really the fault of nature any more than having a tree jump out in front of your car :-)

The Titanic was actually one of the safest designs afloat in her time.

<comment><USER21> Well, if it had collided full speed with the iceberg it probably wouldn't have sank

But yeah, the unsinkable was a good dose of press sensationalization</comment></comment></comment>


A cellphone with no flips, no folds - just a very low price - <AUTHOR> http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/12/technology/wireless13.php

<comment><USER2> The Motorola F3 has been selling at this price point for a year I believe - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_FONE_F3>

You can pick up pay as you go Nokia S40's for £20 or so these days too.

The tricky part is designing a UI for illiterate users.

<comment><USER3> Do you know if the F3 will work with T-Mobile in USA?

<comment><USER4> There are two versions of the F3; the 850/1900 MHz variant works with any GSM carrier in the US (AT&T/T-Mobile/etc).

I bought one for $40. The calls sound clear, the battery lasts for 5+ days, and you can run over it in a car without breaking it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The most striking thing is not the no flips, no folds... there's no screen.

<comment><USER6> And that probably means there's no addressbook either. I don't know if I could go back to remembering all those phone numbers.

<comment><USER7> Well, either it has some features like that, or the pic is just an artist's impression, given that it has an enter key.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> $20?! What, is it made of diamonds?

My current phone is AT&T's $10 Go Phone (some kind of LG), and it has a color screen, customizable menus, and better voice quality than my previous phone (an LG flip phone). It's also light, small and has decent battery life.

Of course, I'm just waiting till I'm eligible for an upgrade so I can get an iPhone . . .

<comment><USER9> Maybe they are not subsidizing the cost of the hardware with the service price?

<comment><USER10> In India, handsets are never bundled with the service.

<comment><USER11> They aren't in most countries - AFAIK, bundling with the service is mostly a U.S. phenomenon. That's why you only see SIM-locked GSM phones in the U.S.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "good old days when telephones were made for talking"

Finally. Just what I'm looking for.

<comment><USER13> Agreed! The first thing I thought when I saw that phone is, "that's EXACTLY the phone I need!"

I work in a secure facility, where cameras are not allowed. Do you know how hard it is to find a phone w/o a camera in it these days? It's actually a PITA! And that's just silly... :)

<comment><USER14> I know some folks working in secure facilities who actually drill out the camera lens with a drill press and fill the hole with a drying cement. It's effective, if a bit... draconian.

Though I heard a month or two ago that the regulations for some secure sites have been changed to allow cameras on phones. Several people I know who have not gotten cells are now looking at getting them because they can keep them when at a secure site.

This is all experience with military contractors in St. Louis, so your mileage may vary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'd really be interested in a phone with slots for 2 or more SIM cards. Can you get those?

<comment><USER2> Not as far as I know but you can get dual-sim hacks in most market phone shops. See <http://skydeck.com/blog/thisisbroken/the-xphone/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This could really catch on. It's hip.</comment>


Apple Store designers appear to have forgotten about Chicago winters - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/12/apple-store-designers-appear-to-have-forgotten-about-chicago-winters/ <comment><AUTHOR> This seems to be a general theme at Apple lately: they are much more concerned with how their products look than whether or not they are actually functional.</comment>