Government-grade spyware hits Mexican advocates of soda tax - <AUTHOR> http://www.bendbulletin.com/nation/5063332-151/government-grade-spyware-hits-mexican-advocates-of-soda-tax <comment><USER2> _> [NSO Group] claims to sell its spyware only to law enforcement agencies to track terrorists, criminals and drug lords_

 _> An NSO spokesman reiterated those restrictions in a statement Thursday, and said the company had no knowledge of the tracking of health researchers and advocates inside Mexico_

 _> NSO executives point to technical safeguards that prevent clients from sharing its spy tools._

Of the above only two can be true. My bet is they sell to anyone who can pay.

<comment><USER3> Governments often classify protest groups as "terrorists."

The UK government has spent millions investigating non-violent environmental groups for one example, using anti-terrorism funds, teams, and laws to do so.

Companies asking the government to squish protestors is also extremely common all around the world. I mean in the US right now we have oil pipelines which primarily benefit private companies getting built by the Army Corps of Engineers using public money and protesters harassed & beaten by police. All to reduce an oil company's costs and/or increase their profit margins.

<comment><USER4> Isn't the land simply the property of the Army Corps of Engineers, and it's being built by a private company?

The USACE is a weird organisation. It's part of the US army, but almost exclusively does domestic civil engineering and public works.

<comment><USER5> The land was illegally annexed by the government. The Sioux signed a treaty that was broken by the US, were offered money in compensation for the land, which they refused. That land abuts the reservation's surface water sources. Without it they have no water security, an asset they consider priceless.

The ownership remains contentious.

<comment><USER6> That land was stolen from the Arikara/Sahnish by the Sioux using guns and horses acquired from trading with Europeans. The descendants of the Arikara/Sahnish now live on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation.

The venue to resolve this dispute was in the courts and the timevto do it was Years and decades before there was a project planned for that land. However, if we're really going to go down this absurd path, let's take the entire Standing Rock reservation away from the Sioux and hand it over to the Arikara/Sahnish.

<comment><USER7> I find that history interesting.

What absurd path? I honestly don't understand what you are getting at.

<comment><USER6> The absurd path of the court of public opinion and a cultural marxist framed discussion of the "oppressed vs oppressors". Protesting on land that is currently recognized as private land is depriving its owners of its use. If the ownership is in dispute, the venue to resolve that dispute is in the courts. Literally no one cared about the land until a pipeline was going to be placed on it.

FWIW, my original source for this information is a friend who is 1/4 Sioux and thinks the protest is absurd. I've fact checked his claim. The Sioux only occupied the land east of the Missouri river in pre-contact America. The Arikara/Sahnish were agrarian people driven off their land by the Sioux.

<comment><USER5> The problem with going to court is precedent. The Sioux don't want the court to rule in favor of the government. That would set precedent about the government's ability to force the exchange of native land for fiat currency.

The problem is that in the west private ownership carries with it a right to destroy. If the army corps wanted to build a wind farm on the plot, there wouldn't be a problem. They want to build an oil pipeline over the water supply.

If a disaster were to occur, there is court precedent for abdicating the company of any responsibility for cleanup.[0] The present administration's Indian Affairs appointee wants to preserve this privatization agenda at all costs[1], so there's even less likely recourse if damages should occur.

0\. [http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-06-28/india...](http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-06-28/india/32456094_1_ucil- union-carbide-india-ucc)

1\. [http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-tribes- insight-i...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-tribes-insight- idUSKBN13U1B1)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Seems like "Big Sugar" is increasingly behaving like the new "Big Tobacco" as they gear up to fight against regulation and taxation.

<comment><USER9> The sugar industry has been doing this for about as long as the tobacco industry. They've been using their influence to poison nutrition science for decades and steer modern dental practices.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar- in...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-industry- shifted-blame-to-fat.html)

[http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jou...](http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1001798)

<comment><USER10> Big Oil has done this in the past too. I remember reading 'Private Empire' about ExxonMobil and the previous CEO was funding all of these PHD researchers to challenge climate science research in the early 2000s. They were quite successful at it too.

Fortunately when Rex Tillerson (current Secretary of State), who was trained as an engineer, took over ExxonMobil he stopped the company from taking a climate denial position and took some minor steps to reverse that position, such as investing in some green tech companies. This was largely due to the fact they got a bad name from doing it and they otherwise had a very rigid clean cut image. So it's important to call these companies out when they do it. Despite what people think corporations _do_ respond to bad press.

Especially companies run by engineers and scientists, they can be persuaded to stop being anti-science. Now if only we could get more STEM people into politics on the right... One thing lawyers aren't known for is an affinity for numbers and science.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Here is the original report from Citizen Lab:

[https://citizenlab.org/2017/02/bittersweet-nso-mexico- spywar...](https://citizenlab.org/2017/02/bittersweet-nso-mexico-spyware/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Using the software in a way that reveals its use seems ham-handed, perhaps its not a sophisticated actor using it in this instance.

But that is in some ways even more disturbing. It shows the capability is so available that even the unsophisticated are able to use it.

<comment><USER13> > _Using the software in a way that reveals its use seems ham-handed, perhaps > its not a sophisticated actor using it in this instance._

Or the message they want to pass is "we're tracking you", and that's more powerful than anything to get from actual tracking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> _> The soda industry has poured over $67 million into defeating state and local efforts to regulate soft drink sales in the United States since 2009, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest._

Why don't these companies just pivot harder towards diet sodas? Seems like a win-win.

<comment><USER15> Personally, I'd really prefer to not pay inflated costs for soda, should I choose to consume it.

I am however completely and 100% fine with paying a higher i.e. health insurance premium due to my soda drinking habit (or any other habit that causes my health risk to be higher).

I'm just not a big fan of 'sin taxes' \-- though I could be persuaded if they were actually put to use in the same way that the health insurance/risk concept would be; I'm just not convinced that's actually what would happen in the long or short term.

<comment><USER16> I agree with the idea that sin taxation is stupid in the sense that there's a moral component involved. The tax in this case is essentially an indulgence. That said, I see a benefit in taxing soda and cigarettes in particular because they impose a substantial externalized cost on society that isn't reflected in their price. With smoking its lost productivity for smoking, sickness, secondhand smoke, etc. With soda its increased diabetes, weight, secondary issues (joints, etc.).

I do love me some regular Dr. Pepper, but it's so bad for me I rarely drink it any more. (Admission: I still drink diet soda. I had to acquire the taste.)

<comment><USER17> Please pardon me nitpicking on one phrase from your comment - it's not directed at you but at the discourse that often ensues when selective taxation is discussed. There was a soda tax on the ballot where I live last election season and I got more junk mail opposing it than _all the other political mailers put together_ \- completely wasted as it passed anyway :)

I absolutely reject the notion that tax on soda or other potentially-addictive substances are a punishment of the consumer for poor moral choices. Making sugar expensive is simply an effective strategy to lower consumption by shifting the equilibrium point for consumer purchases.

We have a family friend that's disabled, she's an adult but only able to read around a 4th grade level. She's seen her grandmother die of diabetes, her mom has it too and the friend herself is fat. But notwithstanding the healthy food we give her when she visits or stays with us, and no matter how many times we remind her about how to choose between different kinds of food, if she goes into a store on her own and has money she's more likely than not to buy 2 quart bottles of soda and drink one of them immediately.

It's really hard for some people, especially kids, to resist getting jacked up on sugar. The younger they do so the more likely they are to develop lifelong eating habits that are going to give them painful and expensive medical problems and send them into an early grave. There's no moral component involved at the consumption end for me because many people are just not smart enough to carry around the idea of healthy eating and to choose it over the marketing signals that surround them. The younger they get exposed to an addictive substance, the more difficulty they're likely to have resisting the temptation to consume it.

I am utterly indifferent to the economic situation of shareholders in the crap food industry. They don't have a right to make money out of people; it's usually _the suppliers_ who make the moral argument about consumers needing to make healthy choices and tax being a horrible punishment. That's just an attempt to shift the entire burden of responsibility onto consumers at the same time that the suppliers are spending a fortune on marketing to kids. Frankly most of the drug dealers I've met in my life had more of a moral center than the professional lobbying and marketing people I've known.

<comment><USER18> While that is pretty sad, it is also an extreme case and it sounds like she either needs a caretaker or she needs a better caretaker; I would say the same thing about children: they are the parents responsibility.

And whether you reject the notion the fact of the matter is that it is still going to punish every responsible person with a new tax that will go into the general government coffers.

<comment><USER17> It's not an extreme case; it only seems so because this person is disabled and it's surprising to discover that this superficially adult person has the mind of a 9-year old. I'm using that to draw attention to the fact that kids often make terrible decisions, and there are a lot of 9-year olds buying a lot of soda whose future negative health outcomes are easy to overlook because marketing has trained people to associate soda with healthy people having fun.

 _I would say the same thing about children: they are the parents responsibility._

I know you would, and I think your reasoning is foolish. Many parents are clearly not responsible, either from indifference or ignorance. I am fine with government acting _in loco parentis_ in a very narrow way (even for adults) because the negative health outcomes and their associated costs are predictable and lowering those costs has demonstrable overall utility. Available information shows this policy to function better than waiting for people to get a responsibility transplant and just shrugging our shoulders about kids who end up suffering because of their parents' poor guardianship.

How are you being 'punished' if your soda costs $0.50 more? When I smoked cigarettes I didn't feel punished by their continually-rising cost. I'd rather pay for something with a large negative externality at the point of purchase than in the form of income tax, since it's likely to be more efficient. The Coase theorem tells us that aside from transactional friction, it is no more expensive to pay up front than later, and in its role of insurer of last resort the public interest is best served by minimizing the predictable scope of the problem.

The fact that revenue ends up in the general fund is irrelevant; the objective is to _reduce consumption_ , and soda taxes have been demonstrated to be effective in that goal. In case you're not familiar with the geography, Berkeley and San Francisco are only about 20 minutes apart by subway and travel between them for work or leisure is very common.

[http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2016.3...](http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2016.303362)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> What the heck is "government-grade" spyware? 3X the cost but doesn't work?

<comment><USER20> I would assume they're referring to spyware that's sophisticated enough that it was likely state-sponsored, a la stuxnet, as states usually are the only entities with the resources to develop spyware of that level.

<comment><USER21> I don't buy that for a minute. There are so many amazing developers out there who could absolutely do this independently.

<comment><USER22> Capable of writing the code, yes I agree there are others out there more than capable. But part of what makes stuxnet and others of its kind limited to Govt. sponsored is the amount of funding required to do the research to write the code. Very few malware developers are going to go purchase a Siemens nuclear refining centrifuge (plus controlling equipment) so they may reverse engineer it and figure out how to break it. Someone had to buy one, then realize if you stop it suddenly enough times it will break.

<comment><USER23> What kind of features are included in government sponsored spyware vs the regular kind?

<comment><USER24> One or more Zero-Day exploits

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> "Government-grade spyware" reminded me of the deleted scene from Napoleon Dynamite.

"Do you want to die Napoleon?"

"Yeah right. Whose the only one here who knows illegal ninja moves from the government."

[https://youtu.be/IdAZJNEYuEs?t=20s](https://youtu.be/IdAZJNEYuEs?t=20s)

</comment><comment><USER16> I wonder if somebody with a bone to pick with a soda tax works in a bureau that has access to this weaponized malware. Seems like the most plausible case to me.

<comment><USER26> More plausible to me is that someone in the Sugar Industrial Complex bribed someone in a bureau that has access to this malware.</comment></comment>


Amazon to start air delivery network with leasing deal - <AUTHOR> http://in.reuters.com/article/air-transport-sr-amazon-com-idINKCN0WB1PK <comment><USER2> This is something the carriers have known was coming for a while and I wouldn't expect it to hurt their bottom line much (and it might end up being a benefit). When you cater to dominant customers like Amazon, you end up operating around their peaks and valleys. Amazon buys so much that if the carriers wanted to keep up with Amazon's demands, they would probably suffer utilization hits whenever Amazon is not peaking.

If Amazon assumes the risks of volume variation, they gain a lot of scheduling flexibility (flying later at night, etc.), and they can better level load their volumes across their carriers and themselves. This is a win for both Amazon and their carriers.

<comment><USER3> In the short term, this is probably true. However, can you see a future where Amazon increases their own fleet to the point where it hurts other carriers? I certainly do.

<comment><USER2> I think in the long term you can expect to see Amazon directly competing with other carriers in retail parcel delivery, so yes.

However, the carriers have a very difficult job, and contrary to popular belief, they are phenomenally cost efficient given the constraints placed on them. Amazon may try to undercut on price, but given the cash flows and margins of large carriers, _any_ significant pricing discount would introduce negative cash flows that could cripple even a behemoth like Amazon. And by significant, I mean anything more than 2-3% off of the rates that UPS or FedEx charges.

Given the constraints and inherent difficulty of the business, I would imagine the impact would be no different than if DHL tried to re-enter the US market.

<comment><USER4> UPS is a miracle in motion, go to a bit distribution center sometime.

<comment><USER5> I heard back in January that amazon was hiring up ups managers like crazy and forming a partnership with ATSG. Would have been a good time to buy ATSG, which has jumped quite a bit on the news.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As someone who worked in retail distribution in a past life, I wonder if this is simply an easier way to move product between their distributions centers. If goods land on the east coast they can fly them straight to the west coast and vice versa. It also gives them ability to rebalance their DC inventory as the planes would just be going point to point. The details they didn't release which have me wondering, who is going to handle the loading / unloading? Are they planning on building their own sites at airfields or are they going to contract that out?

<comment><USER7> Planes are what 100x the price of trucks per pound? For just rebalancing send trucks. Or more realistically make a new order for the other coast.

<comment><USER8> Based on shipping stuff via overnight air and normal ground frequently, I'd guess the difference is more like 5-10x.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think it'll be very interesting to see the compensation that Amazon gives its pilots. Personally I like well paid, well rested pilots as a general principle. It's also a good thing from an insurance/liability perspective. A 767 coming down into anywhere populated is a rather scary proposition, as we're probably all too aware.

<comment><USER10> Pretty sure these are wet leases and the lessor provides crew.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> US Regional/Charter airline pilots used to be horribly underpaid until the new ATP experience requirements in 2015.

Go Airlines just signed a new pilot contract for $60k/year for pilots and $35k for co-pilots.

<comment><USER12> > Go Airlines just signed a new pilot contract for $60k/year for pilots and > $35k for co-pilots.

That's still insanely low given how much pilot training costs. I've heard figures over $35,000 to go from unqualified to a commercial pilot, and that is if you shop around and look for some free flight hours. It could easily exceed $40K is you're in a rush.

<comment><USER13> When you think about it, it's not really that much different in salary/investment than say your average liberal arts degree. What's crazy to me is how low the pay is for someone who is directly responsible for other people's lives.</comment></comment></comment>


Why Are We Better Than Google - <AUTHOR> http://blog.getyouram.com/why-are-we-better-than-google

<comment><USER2> Was I looking at the wrong screenshots, or something? Why are they comparing a calendar view with a list view?</comment>


Silicon Valley and the Threat to Democracy - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedailybeast.com/social-media-shreds-the-social-fabric-one-click-at-a-time <comment><USER2> Obvious bias shown by the article's author, but yeah the basic premise that social media is destroying meaningful discourse and the democracy that depends on same rings very much true.</comment>


What are the worst parts of PHP? - <AUTHOR> Would you ever consider a job in PHP? Are the worst parts of PHP blockers for you? Tell me about your experiences! <comment><USER2> Worked on PHP on-and-off for more than 15 years. Jobs in PHP can sometimes pay well, but the PHP labor market is fairly saturated, so you're more likely getting underpaid than well-paid.

Here are some of the reasons I don't use PHP anymore:

1\. Code bases often written by near-amateurs, so almost always a headache to work on

2\. Terrible type system (and unpredictable type coercion) mean that the code has to be written with great discipline or it's going to be buggy

3\. Inconsistent signatures of built-in classes/methods/functions means that it's almost impossible to remember anything, so you need to consult documentation (or inline completion) constantly

4\. Very generally, a community that likes magic (see: Laravel) -- ease/speed is prioritized over correctness/explicitness, which means maintaining large PHP projects is often a nightmare

<comment><USER3> Irony, thy name is PHP. Your name means "hypertext pre-processor" and was conceptualized first and foremost to be a web dev language. But you're now often being turned down in the web dev world in favor of general-purpose languages!

<comment><USER2> The web is used radically differently now than it was 22 years ago in 1995. Also, PHP wasn't designed to be the platform for large code bases maintained by multiple people. It wasn't really designed at all, as its creators have said publicly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> >Would you ever consider a job in PHP?

Heh. Most of the programming work I get is with PHP. I wish I could find work _not_ in PHP. I'm still paying off a degree for building business applications in C# - and trying not to forget C# because I never use it. I can't seem to get a chance to forget PHP.

To me, the worst parts of PHP are, first, that the language was designed and intended to be used the way Wordpress (and many small hacky sites) use it - with PHP, HTML, Javascript and CSS all mixed together.

And second, that PHP isn't aware of context - it doesn't treat XML as objects (the way Hack does with XHP) and doesn't escape variables by default. One either has to manually escape every instance of every variable with a function whose name is too damn long (htmlspecialchars) or use a framework which does that for you.

The second point entirely undermines the purpose of PHP, and turns the first into an utter minefield.

<comment><USER5> Automatic escaping would not work anyways, you need to escape for the appropriate context (HTML, JS, CSS, JSON, XML...).

You don't have to use a framework, just use one of the many composer packages available like Twig for example...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am working on a nice PHP 7.1 codebase where we just started with DDD. It's awesome.

Yeah there is quite a bit of legacy code still there (the application is over a decade old), but all the new OOP code is nice to work with and we are getting rid of the old one slowly over time.

</comment><comment><USER6> the parts after "<?php"

Seriously though, I would think long and hard and be unlikely to take a job requiring more than a trivial amount of php. For me its tough to structure well, the stdlib is inconsistent so it means constantly having to look at the documentation, etc.

</comment><comment><USER7> Are we talking about modern PHP or pre-PHP7?

<comment><AUTHOR> Lets say both, I'd like to hear your perspective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> PHP.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't get the job so I should be thankful!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> In many ways OO PHP is starting to look a lot like Java. Verbose and overarchitected code. It was a good templating language for C modules, not so good when you try to shoehorn it into solving every problem that you have.</comment>


An outline text mind map - <AUTHOR> https://freetxtmind.github.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> FreeTxtMind is an excellent tool for you to use to write outlines and see the connections between ideas in your outlines. You can rearrange the connections in your mind maps by simply cutting and pasting lines from your written outlines.</comment>


Apple, Google, and Others Urge Obama to Not Weaken Encryption - <AUTHOR> http://www.tripwire.com/state-of-security/latest-security-news/apple-google-and-others-urge-obama-to-not-weaken-encryption/

<comment><USER2> Maybe heighten cooperation between federal agencies and these huge tech giants, but weakening encryption or legislating standards would only be harmful to the consumer.</comment>


Just tell me if I'm related to a Nazi - <AUTHOR> http://justtellmeifimrelatedtoanazi.com <comment><USER2> I don't understand. Please explain?

<comment><AUTHOR> John Oliver from Last Week Tonight put up this link for awareness to to fight on Net Neutrality.

<comment><USER2> I don't understand the url though.

What does this url have to do w/ net neutrality?

Why is it at justtellmeifimrelatedtoanazi.com ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Please stand up against Net Neutrality and leave your feedback.

Go to [http://gofccyourself.com](http://gofccyourself.com)

Click the Express link then leave a comment:

Proceeding: 17-108

"I specifically support strong Net Neutrality backed by Title 2 oversight of ISPs."

</comment><comment><USER3> Express link seems unresponsive at the moment.</comment>


Beorg – an Emacs org-mode companion for iOS - <AUTHOR> http://beorgapp.com <comment><USER2> If someone is looking for the equivalent on Android, I'd recommend the free and open source Orgzly[0][1].

[0] - [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.orgzly](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.orgzly)

[1] - [https://f-droid.org/packages/com.orgzly/](https://f-droid.org/packages/com.orgzly/)

<comment><USER3> Last time I'd looked, I was unable to find such an app. This is what I've been looking for! Thanks!

<comment><USER4> I looked at this a while ago, and actually took another look about two weeks ago when I got a new phone and it has come on in leaps and bounds since I last (quite quickly) wrote it off.

I've got it set up to sync with nextcloud (through nextcloud app directory sync) and same with my laptop and it's proved a pretty solid and reliable way to stay on top of stuff.

I've used it to migrate away from stuffing everything into Google Keep (in a general move away from google) and have ended up preferring my current config after living with it for a week or two.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is fantastic! Unlike MobileOrg, it does not require a separate step in emacs to export and import data. And it shows the files in ways that are more useful.

Being able to review my tasks on the toilet will make org-mode ten times as useful. :)

There are in-app purchases to donate $0.99, $2.99, or $7.99. I bought all three.

<comment><USER6> I would just straight up ask for money if I were the developer.

<comment><USER7> That's exactly what it is... Donations via in app purchase.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's quick and painless to sync with Dropbox - kudos to the developer. I've been looking for a decent iOS app for org integration and it looks like my search ends here.

If I could make a suggestion though, it would be really nice if it supported subdirectories. I suspect that most people, like me, don't keep all their org notes in a perfectly flat hierarchy. Being able to go into subdirectories and view notes would be a great help.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is exactly what I've been looking for and I was starting to think I'd have to build my own iOS Org mode app. Found all of my Org mode files in Dropbox, and even found some TODO's that I hadn't completed back in 2011. Great piece of work and again many thanks.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've never used orgmode but heard of it frequently. As a non emacs user would it make sense for me to try it out and could some one give me a brief explanation of the benefits?

I'm a heavy tmux and vi-user so I already practically live in my terminals.

<comment><USER11> I started with making todo lists. It was easy to mark each row as TODO or DONE. I was able to indent underneath each todo to make sub tasks, and fold each section up and move it around easily. Then I found a way to add due dates to each item, and then view them all in a calendar view. I also found that I could add tags to each item, and then filter by tags. So if I had a question for my coworker I would tag that todo under his name and I could retrieve that later.

Between tags and dates, you can stop worrying about the order of your todo list items and just throw new ones in there, and still easily find them because they're now structured by date and tag. You can also export your calendar and do other exports as well.

I feel like I've barely scratched the surface of what org mode is capable of, but that's how I was able to dip my toe into it and pick up new functionality over time.

If any org-mode wizards want to point out some other big use-cases that I've missed then I'd love to hear about that. I think some people even outline and publish books using org-mode so it's quite a deep system!

Edit: I should also add that I came over from tmux+vim by using spacemacs, which is a vim-mode oriented distribution of emacs which comes with its own opinionated set of plugins and "layers" that you can easily add. It's worth a look if you're emacs-curious

<comment><USER12> That's quite informative. I've been using Emacs for over 25 years, including maintaining to-do lists, but have never dipped my toes into org-mode. Time to give it a try.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Would you consider adding support for checkboxes?

I like to make grocery lists with org mode checkboxes, and this app doesn't seem to allow editing them.

<comment><USER14> Editing of outlines is in the works. Whilst checkbox support won't be in the first release it is in the roadmap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I hope this will jump start me into learning emacs and org-mode. I always put it off. Because I just can't get into learning it.

<comment><USER16> I just quit learning emacs, I was learning e-lisp and spacemacs and trying to customize the IDE to be close to a pycharm experience.

It just didn't seem to be possible, I could get a graphical debugger for a while until I found realgud and even then there's no support for a locals window or doing console input

Find symbols, the anaconda implementation by default just gave me a list of matches without context or file/line number etc which isn't very useful.

It just felt like there can't be enough users with enough demand for things you get in an IDE for it to be worth getting into Emacs for programming.

I'd love to get all comfy with a very customizable text editor but none seem there: Emacs => above Atom => similarly missing some basic python debugging features VSCode => Evil microsoft and I think had limited support for customizing windows (If I wanted to use a customizable text editor and not an IDE the first thing I'd need/want to implement would be embedding Jupyter cells.

<comment><USER17> > Jupyter cells

There's an emacs lisp for that..:

[https://github.com/millejoh/emacs-ipython- notebook](https://github.com/millejoh/emacs-ipython-notebook)

<comment><USER16> Thanks but I knew that this existed, it's more the other IDE things for python that didn't seem great - featured debugger (locals, watches) and a find-symbol that gives you more than just a list of matches (eg. return results with more details and context).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Very cool. I'm curious about how it compares to MobileOrg ([http://mobileorg.github.io](http://mobileorg.github.io)), which is also available for Android btw. From a first glance it seems much more polished.

<comment><USER19> An Orgzly comparison would be more interesting. It's the better MobileOrg

[http://www.orgzly.com/](http://www.orgzly.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Do you have a recommendation for the best way to synch files which may be all over my computer?

<comment><USER19> Syncthing, using it for the exact same reason

[https://syncthing.net/](https://syncthing.net/)

<comment><USER20> But how do Beorg and Synchthing play together?

<comment><USER19> Does Beorg also sync to directory? Pick it up from there, done

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I like the calendar integration. Reminders integration would be nice too.

This is a nice app but it has lots of potential as well. Integration with Workflow could open up other possibilities as well.

</comment><comment><USER22> This app looks promising and I'm definitely considering supporting further development of this app.

I have an org for time keeping, is it easy to do time keeping on the phone ?

<comment><USER5> It doesn't look like it supports clocking in or out.

<comment><USER14> This is on the roadmap, but a little way off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This app looks really cool! Will give it a go for a week or so! For now it looks promising, I will be more than happy to donate!

</comment><comment><USER24> This is awesome, I hope it gets updated to support editing of existing files.

</comment><comment><USER25> This is very nice, but I do wish we could edit files, not just view them.

</comment><comment><USER26> Will you be supporting other cloud services than Dropbox?

<comment><USER27> It says it supports WebDAV-based cloud storage. It would be really nice, given its on iOS, if it supported iCloud.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> But can Beorg be run in Emacs?

</comment><comment><USER29> Any equivalent for BeOS?</comment>


Show HN: I'm building a cloud cost tool for Terraform - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/aliscott/infracost <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN, author here. I'm looking for feedback from devs/devops engineers on the tool in general as well as:

1\. What is your biggest pain point with cloud costs?

2\. Any ideas on how to handle non-baseline costs? - data transfer costs and other usage-based costs are often a significant portion of the bill and are also the hardest to predict and track down.

<comment><USER2> Variable costs have to be learnt from historical data. Maybe u can do something neat with resource tagging</comment></comment>


Systemd integrates gummiboot for boot safety - <AUTHOR> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=systemd-Gummiboot-Boot-Loader

<comment><USER2> Gummiboot recently added support to create a single EFI executable that contains the /etc/os-release file, kernel parameters, bzImage and initrd [1] You should then be able to sign this file and configure UEFI Secure Boot so that only files signed by you can be booted. I guess that's the reasoning behind it.

[1] [https://plus.google.com/+KaySievers/posts/GisPmPBsqfK](https://plus.google.com/+KaySievers/posts/GisPmPBsqfK)

</comment><comment><USER3> Why don't they just directly integrate the Linux kernel while they're at it? (Not sarcastic, I'm seriously curious.)

<comment><USER4> There is no way their coding standard etc would get past Torvalds?

<comment><USER5> If they integrated the kernel _into_ systemd then Linus wouldn't have any say over it. ;-)

<comment><USER4> Ugh, i can see it already. Fork the kernel, and stop trying to get kdbus into the Torvalds maintained version...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Source Book in APL (1981) - <AUTHOR> http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/apl/Papers/ASourceBookInAPL <comment><USER2> OK so it will eventually load if you bang it enough.

This is a collection of papers written Ken Iverson[1], some with his frequent collaborator Aden Falkoff. The most important, longest, and latest (1980) is Iverson's "Notation as a Tool of Thought" from the CACM.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_E._Iverson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_E._Iverson)

</comment><comment><USER3> Most (maybe all) of these papers are available in HTML at the Jsoftware site:

[http://www.jsoftware.com/papers/](http://www.jsoftware.com/papers/)

</comment><comment><USER2> target domain softwarepreservation.org appears to be down with an internal error.

<comment><USER4> 33 minutes later, per HN.

It's there -- just slow. Took a couple of minutes for the PDF to come down.

P.S. Here, I should have just done this, before:

[http://wayback.archive.org/web/20150908083715/http://www.sof...](http://wayback.archive.org/web/20150908083715/http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/apl/Papers/ASourceBookInAPL)

<comment><USER2> Top level came up once, now back to 502 gateway error. (Acts like it's hosted on somebody's personal system out of comcast.)

<comment><USER2> When it finally comes up I'm surprised to find it's an offshoot of the Computer History Museum, though odd it isn't hosted out of their normally bulletproof site, computerhistory.org.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I understand staying true to the source material, but light brown/ochre on white background is barely readable... Especially with old school print type on a screen.</comment>


A School for Hackers? - <AUTHOR>

Is there one? Who would be interested to join or open one? <comment><USER2> Theres the Certified Ethical Hacker course, <http://www.eccouncil.org/>

</comment><comment><USER3> What exactly would you be trying to get out of this school? Define what "a school for hackers" means to you.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I am thinking of a virtual school - like eccouncil + community elements. What do you think?

</comment><comment><USER4> Are you talking about a virtual school or a real physical school?

</comment><comment><USER5> Is it true? I would like to know and joint if there is one.</comment>


Where did MIT go? - <AUTHOR>

Am I going crazy or did MIT used to be labeled and colored dark gray on Google maps?
All the other universities in the area still have their own special labels.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=mit&ie=UTF8&ll=42.358163,-71.090984&spn=0.026385,0.054245&z=14 <comment><USER2> That's right! It used to be in another color. Quite strange but not very important I guess; probably only an error.</comment>


JQuery-lite – All the benefits of jQuery, without the bloat - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/collinglass/jquery-lite/blob/master/jquery-lite.js

<comment><USER2> also without the functionality. really cool!</comment>


Ask HN: How do you keep up to date with your field? - <AUTHOR> We are reading blogs less often [1], and most of us here are in fields that are rapidly changing. What works for you in keeping up to date?
The answer for me has been learning a little bit from hacker news, a little bit from coworkers, a little bit from meetups, and a few good aggregations of the best posts in marketing, entrepreneurship, js, etc. But, it feels like there has to be better ways to do it.
I am curious to hear good ideas.
[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13966190 <comment><USER2> By "field" I assume some area in IT.

My primary source of breaking news is Hacker News. The links provide me with a good general overview of what is happening overall in IT.

In my specific niche (MBSE/PLE/GenProg/IoT/CPS) I visit [http://modeling- languages.com](http://modeling-languages.com) for field specific general (isn't that an oxymoron?) news. Other than that I read IEEE and ACM journals and papers published by practitioners whom I follow. I also read the blogs of a small number of people who have genuine knowledge to share.

As far as programming languages and frameworks go, I only deep dive on an as needed basis (which is rarely). There is way too much conflicting information, especially in the area of JS frameworks.

IMHO many programmers are caught up in the jack of all frameworks / languages / tools drama. We are paid to deliver dependable solutions to real problems on time and on budget. The many distractions only reduce our effectiveness.</comment>


Cryptojacking: The Hot New Type of Attack on Data Centers - <AUTHOR> https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/security/cryptojacking-hot-new-type-attack-data-centers <comment><USER2> It's not new.... it's been going on all year

[https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/coinminer- cam...](https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/coinminer-campaigns- move-to-the-cloud-via-docker-kubernetes/)</comment>


Jsonpickle (early beta) serializes python objects to JSON - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/jsonpickle/

<comment><USER2> Apparently there is also this:

<http://code.google.com/p/jspickle/>

Also, I wonder why both of these projects want to invent their own proprietary format instead of using JSPON or something similar.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you are using Google AppEngine, jsonpickle should be good to go since it depends on simplejson. The other project, jspickle, requires cjson so probably won't work.</comment></comment>


2d game engine for lua - <AUTHOR> http://love2d.org/

<comment><USER2> I often wonder why Lua isn't more popular in general - it's really a pretty good language. Seems like it exists primarily in the game environment. Or maybe it's just because World of Warcraft uses it and thus the elephant in the room makes the search results look skewed.</comment>


Ask HN: Looking for technical co-founder (FemTech project) - <AUTHOR> Hey everyone! I've been working on a side project that I hope to transition to full-time in early 2020. I have a consulting + VC background that's focused in digital health. Only requirements are (1) that you can provide the technical expertise I lack :) and (2) you're passionate about expanding access to functional medicine resources. Extra bonus if you're passionate about women's health / hormonal imbalances specifically. If you're interested in learning more visit our website (pollie.co) or Instagram (handle: pollie.co). Shoot me a note at firstname.lastname@example.com to set up a time to chat! <comment><USER2> It's unclear to me why step 1 assumes a diagnosis by a doctor different from any eventual provider.

For friends of mine who have had hormonal treatment difficulties (PCOS, thyroid, etc.), it's been getting an appropriate diagnosis in the first place that has been the biggest problem.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd like to praise you for listing what you bring in, what is expected of the co-founder, what the product does and how to contact you. There have been many similar posts in the past where some, sometimes all, were missing.

You could try adding 'Ask HN' to the title. Posts in [https://news.ycombinator.com/ask](https://news.ycombinator.com/ask) needs less upvotes.

And add yourself to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20926006](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20926006)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: do advertisers pay for impressions if I'm using adblock? - <AUTHOR>

I use adblock plus, so I almost never see online ads. The only website I've found smart enough to address this is hulu. What about all the others? Do they charge for impressions even if I can't see an ad? <comment><USER2> Yup. The ads are removed on your client, not on their server, so advertisers end up paying for impressions that you never see (if they're paying for impressions).

<comment><USER3> How do you know? Usually Ad-blockers replace the ads, so the server doesn't deliver the ads.

<comment><USER2> What do you mean? To my understanding, the ads are removed from the HTML before/during rendering. Unless that ads are on an external server and a request hasn't been made before the ad is removed from the page, a request should be registered and an ad subsequently served.

<comment><USER3> yes the ads are removed _before_ rendering, and the ad is never delivered.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Trumps lawyer allegedly flipped - <AUTHOR> https://nordic.businessinsider.com/lanny-davis-cohen-flipped-on-trump-has-evidence-of-russia-conspiracy-2018-8?r=US&IR=T&utm_source=reddit.com <comment><USER2> Cohen already pleaded guilty to multiple charges, so it will be interesting to see what kind of deal he gets offered for helping the prosecution. At this point, he has nothing left to lose by holding onto the information?</comment>


Amazon exec: We priced the Fire phone wrong - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2014/10/30/amazon-exec-fire-phone-priced-wrong/ <comment><USER2> How is it possible that this article talks about Amazon slashing the price of the phone from $199 to 99 cents without ever mentioning that neither of these are actually 'prices', but arbitrary numbers used by advertisers to make the required $1000+ contract seem more appealing?

Lest anyone misunderstand, the 32GB phone actually costs $449 if you want to buy one, and the quoted prices require the purchaser to sign a two-year contract for service. I can see why the advertisers benefit from this approach, but I can't understand why the public is complicit. Is it that people don't want to think about how much they are actually paying?

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure why everyone seems to think carrier subsidies are a con. Amazon isn't getting that $1000+, they get whatever the non-contract price is of the phone. Carriers subsidize some of that cost in-exchange for some guaranteed cash flow for 2 years.

<comment><USER4> The full freight of the phone, plus the cost of off-contract service with somebody like Straight Talk ($50/month for unlimited everything for me, they throttle me to 128Kbps after 5GB of data), is much, much cheaper than the initial buy-in plus the delta of the monthly carrier bill.

The situations where carrier lock-in makes sense are few and far between (generally around large family plans), and outside of those situations you're paying hundreds of dollars extra over the life of the phone and the contract.

<comment><USER5> Pretty soon with all this throttling, people aren't going to be able to have meetings, do large code pushes, video chats etc at the end of the month when everyone's rigged data plans dry up.

The last few days of the month for me online is always spotty, slow, and pretty much unusable.

We are being held hostage by our telecoms, slowing business to a crawl because they want you to upgrade. I have upgraded to my broadband highest tier and still get throttled, the extra speeds cause faster depletion of that bandwidth limit on purpose. Speed and limits both need to increase.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It wasn't priced wrong, they made the wrong phone for the price.

It is possible to produce a $650 off-contract phone (the only useful comparison given the variance between carriers) that's desired. They just failed to do this. The Samsung Galaxy flagships sell like hotcakes at this price range.

They set out to make a premium phone and failed - they've cut the price and the phone still isn't moving off shelves. I sincerely hope that this is just PR-speak and that Amazon doesn't seriously believe pricing was the key point of failure.

</comment><comment><USER7> They don't even mention the real issue of the Play store, or lack thereof. The real reason nobody seems to want it is that the apps aren't there, and they tried to substitute some silly gimmicks in hope that nobody would notice. If they Play store and the rest of the Google apps were there, I bet it would sell fine at the original price. Without them, they're having trouble giving them away.

Of course, that would mean kowtowing to Google, and the real purpose of the Fire line of Android forks is get Amazon out from under Google's thumb. They're welcome to try, but I'm not about to sacrifice my experience to help them.

The deeper issue yet is the still open question of the third ecosystem. Apple and Google have theirs already. It remains to be seen if there is room for a third, but plenty of companies are opening their wallets to try. IMHO, Microsoft looks to have the best shot at it now. For Amazon, it's hard to see them pulling it off when the core of what they're working with is a fork of Android. How are we supposed to believe that they're ever going to be better than Google is at Android?

<comment><USER8> Amazon doesn't need Google to run a competitive app experience. The Android APIs are mostly open source and Amazon can copy them.

The problem is that Amazon is hard on developers, doesn't let them set prices, won't automatically approve new apps and upgrades, gives new apps harsh conditions, and doesn't promote developers' apps to a large user base.

Amazon could have a better user and developer experience but thinks it's Apple instead of Google. But only Apple is Apple.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Still, $83 million of unsold phones is a lot, even for a tech giant like Amazon."

The article refers to this twice, and I can't figure out why. That's not a lot of unsold inventory compared to the disaster the Fire phone was. I would have expected a much higher number than $83 million. That's equal to not quite 1% of their cash. The real damage was to their reputation, that was a far greater hit than $83 million. Dud products taint all of your other products by association (especially those in the Fire lineup).

</comment><comment><USER10> I would never buy a phone that requires me to repurchase thousands of dollars of apps, games, music, movies, books, etc. For the same reasons I stay away from Kindle Fire. Until there's a consumer law requiring companies to honor your digital purchases of the same intellectual property on difference marketplaces, I'll stick with the devices running the monopolistic Google Play.

</comment><comment><USER11> erm, they slashed it to 99c, as the article mentions, but it still has not gotten any significant traction - full blown write off.

it's just a shit device by a company that seems to try to emulate apple on some fronts, but without the taste or acumen for proper hardware and software.

AWS and Kindles are great. never seen a Fire tablet in wild.

<comment><USER12> Amazon's Lab 126 is micromanaged from two states away by Jeff Bezos. It's a toxic environment where only yes-men can thrive. It doesn't help that Jeff Bezos runs Amazon like a miserly cornerstore Wallmart - looking everywhere he can to cut corners, to the detriment of his staff and his product.

I'm impressed that they have been able to iteratively improve on the Kindle. Given what I have seen, I would hazard that with upper management's obsessive spotlight focused on the Phone and Tablet, the Kindle developers have been able to get on with their work.

The same may be the case for AWS - no longer a sexy new market, and consequently able to get on with it's work.

<comment><USER10> I've heard terrible things about Lab 126 and I'm happy I've turned down several of their job offers already. I hear backstabbing is daily business over there, everybody can submit an anonymous reviews for your coworkers to your manager, and the whole environment is a zero-sum game. I'm a big fan of Jeff Bar, Werner Vogels, and, of course, Jeff Bezos, but, I guess, this is another instance of "far from the sight, far from the heart"!

<comment><USER12> IMHO, Jeff Bezos is at the center of the problem.

<comment><USER10> You probably are right. I like him as the guy who shaped out Amazon the way it is today (AWS and the store), but I'm not sure I'd be willing to work for him. The whole Android forking and Appstore was a terrible idea although I understand the motives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The phone market, ironically, doesn't have network effects, because any phone can talk to any other phone. But it does have _scale_ and _timing_ effects, because developers decide which platform(s) to develop for, in part, by the number of buyers, and buyers decide which platform to buy based on how well developed, and both accumulate platform inertia over time that defeats any minor advantages of later, alternative platforms.

The lack of network effects means that you _can_ get both developers and buyers to adopt a new platform--it's not hopeless--but the scale and timing make it difficult enough that any new phone platform now would need to offer a _major_ advantage, or it shouldn't bother.

It would have to be something remarkable. Maybe Amazon, as a major retailer, could have done something along the lines of Apple Pay, but where the phone carrier got a cut of each purchase transaction in exchange for a special, reduced rate plan that made Amazon phone take off as the standard phone for schoolkids. Or Amazon stays close enough to standard Android to make development easy for Android developers but then leverages their AWS to make some sort of deal such as Amazon phone apps get _free_ server-side infrastructure and services on AWS. Or anything ordered through the phone gets Amazon Prime delivery and you can stream Amazon Prime video and music through the phone for free.

Whatever, they need to come up with something that offers a remarkable advantage to some market segment or not bother.

<comment><USER14> Cell phone certainly have network effects, it's just that they're all software. You're right the carrier doesn't really matter at this point but there's no way I would switch from iOS to Amazon's phone because there just isn't any software available. Even if we ignore the stuff I've already purchased, there are tons of little games and utilities and other fun things that are never going to come out for a fourth tier platform.

Even with all the money they have Amazon can't really force people to make software for their phones. Microsoft has tried the "buying developers mindshare" thing for Windows mobile and it hasn't worked well for them. They're still in third place by a giant margin.

At this point you can't subsidize yourself into having a first-class software ecosystem. It would just cost way too much.

And since Amazon doesn't want to be just another Android vendor, they're not going to let standard Android software run on their phones. At that point they need an insanely compelling feature to get people and "easy Amazon shopping" isn't that.

Why should I get a phone for one dollar that has almost no software when I can get an iPhone 5c for free on contract with a ton of software and accessories? I know they're also good Android phones available free on contract.

<comment><USER13> The network effect I'm talking about is the N-squared growth in value of a network of N nodes where each of the N nodes derives most of its value from the number (N-1) of other nodes. The phone system overall has this property, so does Skype, so does Facebook, but no carrier, handset maker, or OS does, because their users aren't limited to interacting with the other users of the same carrier/handset/OS.

Instead, the existing players have a benefit resulting from their size that is more of a scale advantage, in that the N users tend to have access to more things if N is larger, but those "things" are not primarily the N-1 other users. There are more iPhone apps than Android, for example, yet Android sells more units and is growing faster. Scale matters, number of apps matters, but other factors are very significant, too.

Apple, therefore, does not have to be the #1 phone maker to make the most money, nor would a new entrant have to have huge scale to have a profitable business. Unlike a network effect business, a new entrant would not have to appeal primarily on the basis of how many other users it already had but, instead, on what value it offered.

And you mention that Amazon couldn't get you to switch from iOS because of the number of iOS apps as if the 2 billion phone users out there all care primarily about the number of apps they'll probably never use. Yet Android phones outsell iOS with fewer available apps, and the average Android user buys far fewer apps than the average iPhone user. A significant fraction seem to be satisfied with just the apps that come with the phone and never buy another.

It's not unreasonable to assume that there may be many market segments that would be fine with a few thousand apps covering 99%+ of usage PLUS something _else_ they value more highly than the long-tail iPhone apps. Phones and phone plans that specialize in offering something more valuable than Yet More Apps might appeal to many people. Shoppers might care more about Amazon Prime than than the one game app they have to give up if they switch. Parents might care more about a managed kid phone with kid features and a kid rate plan than about Apple's app store.

Since the value of phones is not primarily the number of your maker's installed base squared but is based on so many possible things, I think there is room for new entrants as long as they offer something more significant to a market than the extra apps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The article mentions Amazon's Fire Phone 2-star consumer rating, but this piece of information has to be taken with a grain of salt.

Phone's Amazon page was bombarded with fake reviews from activist groups that are trying to get Amazon to switch to renewable energy sources: [http://www.amazon.com/forum/top%20reviewers?_encoding=UTF8&c...](http://www.amazon.com/forum/top%20reviewers?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=Fx2Z5LRXMSUDQH2&cdThread=Tx2KUEQB4ZJ9B8C)

<comment><USER16> Even if you discard _all_ the one-star reviews, I wouldn't be excited about the rest of the ratings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It had nothing to do with price.

</comment><comment><USER18> I was expecting them to meet the Nexus line at $299, since Amazon's M-O with tech devices is to make them cheap, affordable, and locked in to their ecosystem, a la the Kindle, Fire, TV, etc. I was going to buy one at that price for the novelty of Amazon's first phone.

Then they released it at the price for the most premium phones on the market.

I'm pretty sure 95% of the tech world saw this coming.

</comment><comment><USER19> Even at 99 cents I won't consider it. At&t is a non starter for me. In my eyes, they got the carrier wrong.

</comment><comment><USER20> Features I didn't want; features I wanted it didn't have.

</comment><comment><USER21> *wrongly

<comment><USER22> Actually, wrong can be an adverb just like quick in 'real quick.' See: [http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wrong](http://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/wrong)

<comment><USER23> And, for the prescriptivists out there, don't fall victim to the recency illusion. The usage of "wrong" as an adverb, like the usage of "they" as a gender-neutral singular pronoun, is many centuries old.</comment></comment></comment>


Wildfire Risk in California Mapped - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@defensibleapp/wildfire-risk-in-california-mapped-1f47e6640b6b <comment><USER2> direct link to map. Type in any California address or place and the map will zoom you there: [https://www.defensibleapp.com/](https://www.defensibleapp.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> apropos of fuego</comment>


Spirit Gets Stuck, Makes a Big Discovery  - <AUTHOR> http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/02dec_troy.htm?list66646 <comment><USER2> Off topic. I like to imagine that when we start to colonize mars, our two robots will be recovered and put on display in reverence. Someplace where everyone can see them, much like the statues of important human figures.

I've been following these guys for so long, so this is really awesome/sad.

<comment><USER3> Same here. I'm so impressed these have been in operation for 6 years!

<comment><USER4> It is even more impressive keeping in mind that the planned duration for the mission was three months (90 sols, to be precise).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very verbose and longwinded article. Summary: Rover gets stuck straddling a crater. Wheels sping uncovering sulfates. Sulfates are associated with volcanic steam vents.

<comment><USER6> I think they intentionally did that to make science appealing and interesting to people who otherwise couldn't care less. I think they did a good job with that article.

I like that. We need more people to be interested in science and less on reality TV and celebrities.

<comment><USER5> From my experience as a science blogger, they failed miserably because they weren't telling a story. The way it read is that they are constantly delaying getting to the point.

They need to tell a story. Maybe something like "Many many years ago, Mars was covered with steam vents <insert image of a steam vent on the red plant>. How do we know? Ah, we had to get stuck to find out." That is an interesting story. Delaying is not.

<comment><USER7> They told a story, but it was about the rover, not Mars. If you're trying to appeal to non-scientists, that's probably the way to go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A very interesting TED talk on Mars rovers: [http://www.ted.com/talks/charles_elachi_on_the_mars_rovers.h...](http://www.ted.com/talks/charles_elachi_on_the_mars_rovers.html)

Apparently NASA didn't expect them to function this long; on the dusty Martian surface, the solar panels should have been covered with dust completely, leaving the rovers dead long ago. It's a lucky coincidence that "sand devils" on Mars had been cleaning the solar panels and keeping the rovers alive.

<comment><USER9> Windshield wipers?

Seriously though, NASA is very PR savvy. Announcing the robots' lifespan as three months was probably just to make sure they would overdeliver.

Still an awesome accomplishment.

<comment><USER8> Wipers sounds like a good idea. Not sure why they didn't implement it in the first place.

Now that actually makes NASA look bad if they go around claiming that here was a problem that we could have taken care of by just adding a good old windshield wiper, but guess what? we didn't. But luckily we got saved by the fact that Martian sandstorms had been doing this job for us, which by the way we didn't know until we actually went there .... That doesn't sound very PR savvy to me.

<comment><USER10> Putting "Windshield Wipers" on the probes to another planet isn't exactly like going down to Auto Zone and picking up a few strips of black silicone.

Wipers would have to survive the extremes of space and the surface of Mars. They would need motors, which require heaters to keep them from freezing (increasing the amount of energy the probe needs). They would increase the weight of the craft, increasing costs or requiring them to leave off other features. They would have to be extensively tested, like the rest of the craft -- especially the mechanical elements. Imagine the press if they got to Mars and found their expensive wiping mechanism had jammed and would be useless. Finally, if the dust of Mars was charged at all, the wipers would have just rubbed the dust around on the panel, so they could have ended up with functional wipers that did no good.

The mission was designed so that it could complete its high priority scientific objectives in three months, and the probes were engineered so that they had a high probability of surviving for three months.

Dust accumulation was not expected to be a problem in the high priority part of the mission, and since it was a hard (expensive) problem to address, it was not addressed. It was happy circumstance that previously unknown phenomena on Mars meant that it ended up not being a problem at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What are the chances of using the rover's arm to pull it out of the sand-pit when it gets stuck? Or is it to underpowered to be of any help?

<comment><USER12> either: It doesn't reach down that far, or it can't lift, or they haven't thought of that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> NASA needs a TL;DR version of their articles.

<comment><USER14> I know! I read the first few sentences and they mentioned this amazing discovery, but it forced me to scan down about half way through the article to actually find out what it was..

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The image looks like there's a puddle of water.

</comment><comment><USER16> I thought this has something to do with the supernatural.</comment>


Human Cells Eat Nanowires - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human-os/biomedical/devices/human-cells-eat-nanowires <comment><USER2> Oh this is very cool. Glad to see Bozhi's work getting some attention. A friend of mine is co-mentored by Bozhi and my graduate advisor, and was working on some very neat experiments using this technology to trigger specific responses in T-cells. Basically, the gold nanowires can be used to trigger a membrane voltage differential, and theoretically trigger a calcium flux and then a downstream immune response without an antigen. I know they had successes with nerve cells, and I'm hopeful the T-cell results will show similar success.

Edit: Properly reading the article, it looks like this is either slightly older work, or a different experiment from the one I'm familiar with, which did show success in nerve cells last time I saw the talk on it (and used gold, or gold-silicon, my memory is fuzzy now, nanowires).

<comment><USER3> My thought was immediately gone to using these nanowires to trigger excitatory bursts in localized areas of the brain, solving issues like microseizures (or possibly large scale seizures also) or performing extremely precise electrical therapy. However as the article says, these cells don't have the same transmembrane transport mechanisms (wrongly called phagocytosis by the article) they relied on so this would need more research, but the fact the wires can generate an electrical potential across the membrane is huge in itself and the rest can come.

However, the application of drug transport is also amazing. Currently a lot of research is performed on lipid transports (microbubbles, etc.) or capsule-like nanostructures to carry hydrophilic or oversized molecules across the cell membranes. Stimulation of membrane-mediated transport for any molecule just by attaching a chemically inert nanowire to them would be AMAZING.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is this different than cells self-impaling on asbestos fibers because the Si nano-wires are smaller? In the video from TFA it showed some cells with wires going through them that were longer than the cell's diameter.

<comment><USER5> This was my question as well. There are some studies showing that carbon nanotubes can be as dangerous as asbestos, so it seems likely silicon nanowires could be as well:

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/carbon- nanotube-d...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/carbon-nanotube- danger/)

However, if they can make the nanowires shorter than the minimum dimension of a human cell then it likely wouldn't cause the same sort of cancers as asbestos.

<comment><USER6> >if they can make the nanowires shorter than the minimum dimension of a human cell then it likely wouldn't cause the same sort of cancers as asbestos.

It seems like a tiny knife floating around inside the cell would still cause problems, including genetic damage.

Or did you mean it wouldn't cause the same sort of cancers, but rather _new, exciting_ cancers? :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Eat" is used very inappropriately here. As far as I know the cells aren't burning the nanowires for fuel. A more correct term would be that silicon nanowires can cross a cell membrane through phagocytosis, which I don't find that surprising.

<comment><USER8> Eating is the process of mechanical consumption, not metabolism.

<comment><USER9> No, if that were true then using a suppository would be "eating". Dictionary definition definitely implies food/nutrition.

[http://www.dictionary.com/browse/eat](http://www.dictionary.com/browse/eat)

There are non-nutrition definitions, but those concern wear/destruction of a large object by a small object, not engulfment of small object by large object.

<comment><USER8> [ define eat ] -> put (food) into the mouth and chew and swallow it.

We say, for example, "the child ate the book" even if the book wasn't nourishment.

Obviously using a suppository isn't eating, because you don't eat with your butt. Unless you're Cartman.

<comment><USER10> Does someone with a feeding tube eat?

<comment><USER11> I was on a feeding tube at 17 years old, and the doctor referred to it as "a way to absorb nutrients without eating".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This article contains a crapload of speculation that goes well beyond what was actually accomplished:

>"But before Tian's group can turn the phenomenon into a tool, they must first understand how exactly a cell will eat a piece of silicon nanowire, and what happens to it once it's inside the cell. That's what the group did in today's report. [...] The process is called phagocytosis"

>"phagocytosis (from Ancient Greek φαγεῖν (phagein) , meaning "to devour", κύτος, (kytos) , meaning "cell", and -osis, meaning "process") is the process by which a cell—often a phagocyte or a protist—engulfs a solid particle" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phagocytosis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phagocytosis)

So, here is what was really accomplished here (according to this summary). Some researchers asked: "How does a cell eat a silicon nanowire?" They got the answer: "by eating it".

That said, it seems like a useful thing to know that this substance will be phagocytosed. I wish they gave more context though, eg is the nanowire biologically inert, is there something special about the silicon here, etc.

</comment><comment><USER13> Anyone else that think that this might be a bad idea?

<comment><USER14> I think bathing yourself in a tub full of nanowires is a bad idea.

I think experimenting to determine why and how cells do this, and if it is potentially useful is fun/interesting science.

<comment><USER12> >"fun/interesting science"

I thought science is not supposed to be fun. It is supposed to be filling out an endless series of grants, which no one will ever inspect very closely, that have mind numbing page-length, formatting, etc rules along with satisfying other miscellaneous approval paperwork and IT/safety training.

<comment><USER14> Oh that is true, I meant fun and interesting for me. I'm sure every day is a slog for those poor souls doing the actual work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> They call them nanowires, but it might be reasonable to call them a nanoshiv.

<comment><USER16> after correctly doping them with gallium/arsenic/etc. we can call them nano- chips/computers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is interesting, and I guess I have a few questions, for someone knowlegeable out there:

Can these nanowires be fabricated on an on-chip array?

If so, how densely?

I'm assuming that they are electrically conductive, so can we create control circuitry to run them at the previously mentioned density?

Can those circuits be made bio-compatible?

If all there are true, then this might be a good upgrade for existing neural interface devices, depending on longevity.

</comment><comment><USER18> Anyone know why these cells so readily do this?

<comment><USER19> [https://youtu.be/wMFPe-DwULM?t=28s](https://youtu.be/wMFPe-DwULM?t=28s)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> > Silicon nanowires are ... so thin they are essentially one-dimensional.

Interesting wording.

<comment><USER21> I'm no expert on any part of that but wouldn't a wire be two-dimensional?

Or was that the point of your comment?

<comment><USER22> No expert here either, but I suppose that meant the wire has essentially only "length" (e.g. x dimension), and no "thickness" (y dimension)?

<comment><USER23> *No "thickness" in either the y or z dimensions -- Let's not forget we have [at least] three :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> How might this be used in synthetic biology?

</comment><comment><USER25> Can it be used to cure cancer?</comment>


Apple Drops iPhone Developer NDA On Released Software - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/01/apple-drops-iphone-developer-nda-on-released-software/ <comment><USER2> I wonder how much the new Android phones and all of the Android buzz in general weighed on this decision. With a competing open platform out there, Apple was clearly at risk of losing developer mindshare and support.

<comment><USER3> I agree that it's probably a factor in the decision, but the approval process is probably a greater concern to developers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I saw this comment about the timing of the NDA-drop on slashdot. I'm figured I'd cross-post it here, even though it isn't mine. Don't mod me up. :)

[http://mobile.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=982211&cid=25...](http://mobile.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=982211&cid=25221937) "They wanted to wait for the Android release so the API could not legally borrow too heavily from the iPhone API. At least, that seems like a reasonable guess..."

</comment><comment><USER4> At last! Though it did take them much too long to get around to it, they finally did the right thing.</comment>


Notch puts 0x10c on ice - <AUTHOR> http://www.usgamer.net/articles/notch-puts-0x10c-on-icecommunity-heats-things-up-by-going-diy <comment><USER2> This doesn't surprise me at all. To be blunt, Notch's work has continually been very... half-assed.

I first felt this when I played Minecraft; with successive patches and new added elements, it always felt as if Notch had had an idea, and gone to implement it, and then never bothered to flesh it out or work out the kinks. The Nether and portal system was pretty sorry at release, with basically nothing to do in the nether; rails and carts were always minimal given the possibilities as well as having various non-obvious mechanics that were somewhat frustrating; and so on. I feel you can really see this with the help of the modding community, where often a poorly implemented idea like villages or what not is decently fleshed out by someone who had a strong interest in it.

After Notch stopped working on Minecraft, and even before, there was talk of Scrolls, and the suit with Bethesda; after some time, that sorta fell by the wayside, was eventually handed off to the rest of Mojang, and Notch went to work on 0x10c. And now that, too, has been left in incomplete form.

I dunno whether its a matter of expectations, where the massive fan responses he gets damages his creativity, or if he just loses interest in projects (I have no lack of half-completed works laying around myself) but at this point I'd rather hear about a new project when its close to completion or released, rather than as he develops it.

<comment><USER3> Yep. Look no further than the top comment on Hacker News to find a dismissive comment that explains exactly why the case in question is very half-assed.

You guys should really give Notch a break. He's a human like everyone else. It must be incredibly hard to work under the pressure of 100,000 derisive hackers that will use every opportunity to point out why he is inadequate. My reaction on this story is rather to call him up and go have a beer and relax somewhere. That's what you do when someone fails a project. You don't start pointing out all his previous flaws and explaining why his effort was doomed in the first place. That's antisocial. Can you imagine saying something like this to his face? Can you imagine someone saying this to _your_ face?

<comment><USER4> I don't agree with your call for sympathy, because Notch is the one who advertised Minecraft on 4chan and Reddit and sold early access to betas. He's the one who advertised 0x10c as a followup.

His work ethic has been criticized in the past because features introduced in one version of Minecraft would be abandoned by the next and remain incomplete. Bugs would remain unfixed for long stretches of time. There wasn't a public bug tracker (if there was any at all), so users had to list bugs themselves on a fan wiki page.

To claim that criticm is "antisocial" and that we should instead treat him as a best friend to have a beer with is an odd notion. Unless Notch is your personal friend, he is just a programmer working at a company, and the only relationship you have with him is as a customer. If you sell something, get used to criticism.

<comment><USER5> He made a game, by himself, that was awesome and genre busting and fun to play even when it was in the "alpha" stage. Millions of people played that version of the game and millions of people loved it. Just because it wasn't perfect doesn't diminish that achievement.

<comment><USER4> I don't see where in my post that I diminished its sales.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think this happening wasn't wholly unexpected, and probably a good move for Notch's mental health. 0x10c kind of arose out of the haze following Minecraft's popularity explosion (For reference, it was announced on 3/31/12, a month before the XBox 360 version of Minecraft came out). Since then, a lot of things have happened to Persson and the people around him, both personal and relating to games, and he's had some time to acclimate. If he's like most people, Notch's head would be in a fundamentally different place now than it was at the time 0x10c's core ideas were fleshed out, and it's really hard to improve and expand a game you're working on alone when so much has happened.

The community's response is really interesting! Judging by what the article said ("The community will not use Persson's code, story or even the game's title"), the only thing they're really keeping is the game's environment and its core ideas (which are really cool! You have a space ship with a user- programmable computer, and a big open world, EVE-style!). I wonder how much of what is said about the project's organization is spin, though, because "several departments" sounds uncharacteristic of that community (or any smaller open source project, really), especially given the loose, idividual- oriented nature of other notch-related projects (things like the Catacomb Snatch remake[1] and the very splintered Minecraft modding community)

[1][http://catacombsnatch.net/](http://catacombsnatch.net/)

<comment><USER7> Minecraft was making obscene amounts of money well before the xbox release. (Something like 100k a day in 2010, according to a quick google.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Having watched the discussion around 0x10^c for the past year, it's hilarious to see all the comments (reddit, twitter, etc) where people seem to think it would help if Mojang just hired a large team to "pick up the pace". Notch was struggling to make the creative vision coherent - throwing manpower on the problem to "just start implementing it" would just have locked down the incoherencies and made the project unsalvageable.

Given how seemingly intolerable the pressure on this game has been, it makes sense to just drop it. Maybe once the thing cools down and no-one is watching, he'll become motivated to work on it in quiet.

Which leads naturally to some wild speculation: If _I_ were Notch, and just got some renewed motivation to develop the game, I would have just told everyone "I have stopped - project's dead" so I could work on it in peace.

<comment><USER9> By hiring large team they might have accidentally hire someone who would pick up the vision and carry it further. Who knows, maybe Notch would join back in if he saw someone expanding on his idea and making things happen.

I think I abandoned a lot of projects because no one shared my passion for them to the point of actually owning and developing parts of them. If no one cares enough about the idea to work on it then maybe I also shouldn't.

<comment><USER10> _By hiring large team they might have accidentally hire someone who would pick up the vision and carry it further._

Please don't use this hiring advice.

<comment><USER9> Heh. It wasn't intended as such. Just an observation what might happen if you have too much money, not enough ideas about what to focus on and you start hiring awesome people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This makes me sad, because I was really excited for that game. I even wrote a small QuickBASIC to DCPU-Assembly compiler with Go [1] for it, which was a nice Go learning project for me.

I hope that someone will pick up this great idea and build a similar game, where programming is a first citizen and you can do crazy stuff that was planned for 0x10c like programming your own spaceship, sharing code with others on floppy discs, and so on.

[1] [https://github.com/M4v3R/DCPU-Bas](https://github.com/M4v3R/DCPU-Bas)

<comment><USER12> I think the DCPU16-stuff can be reused in other games

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > was put on hold indefinitely last week

This article is entirely false. The game has been put on holds for a year or so. More than 6 months ago people already knew that Notch gave up. No news here.

edit :

also if anyone is interested in the genre, it has been posted many times on /r/0x10c : check the game "Starmade". It's almost what Notch wanted to do, without the computer part.

<comment><USER14> > More than 6 months ago people already knew that Notch gave up.

I don't know about "people," but I certainly didn't know it. I was just checking the website [http://0x10c.com](http://0x10c.com) as recently as a few weeks ago.

<comment><USER13> I'm talking about /r/0x10c

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I left my startup last year. I didn't sell it, but had saved enough money to last me 3-5 years. It's enough to make me feel free to work on whatever is important to me.

One of the unintuitive things I have struggled with is that now that I can do anything, I have a hard time choosing to invest time in something unless it feels like "the one" project. It has to be so important it was worth saving so hard and leaving my startup. So the bar is much higher for what I spend my time on. I realize this feeling is stupid, but it doesn't stop me from having it.

I bet being wealthy and having a huge hit feels similar. Notch probably feels MORE like giving up on any given project because he second guesses himself. Since he can work on anything, it HAS to be amazing, or why else would he choose it when he can choose anything?

<comment><USER16> > One of the unintuitive things I have struggled with is that now that I can > do anything, I have a hard time choosing to invest time in something

Thing is, when one can choose between a lot of things, all of which seem awesome, one tends to be unable to choose (or choose all of the things and do everything half-assed or not finish anything). Human trait.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The community-based clone's website is [http://trillek.org](http://trillek.org)

Really, it should have been linked in the article...

<comment><USER17> After skimming the forums, I am slightly worried. They are establishing the management tree and throwing endless ideas at a wall. I hope they actually release something, because I like the concept. But, they are also starting from, almost, scratch.

[https://github.com/trillek-team](https://github.com/trillek-team)

<comment><USER18> I would say that establishing a management tree makes semi-sense, since they seem to have a bunch more people working on it from the get-go that you'd usually have. In that case, I can see why they'd want to arrange who's working on what.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There's something I call manic-depressive programmer syndrome. It used to occur infrequently, but -- I think -- because tools have gotten so much better (everything from the quality and speed of compilers and class libraries to the speed of hardware) it's becoming more common. We get a fantastic 1.0 product that never gets followed up. At best you see bug fixes and updates, but the extraordinarily promising core never gets expanded.

I'll cite some examples:

* TextMate

* Silo 3D

* The Hit List

* Hypercard

Each of these is characterized by being developed by a very small team (sometimes one person), being extraordinarily impressive out of the starting gate, and never developing to its full potential.

<comment><USER20> I heartily disagree that it used to occur infrequently. It has occurred as long as people have been programming.

<comment><USER19> You're probably right, but I don't have examples to hand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Meh, I feel like I got more than my money's worth from minecraft. Notch doesn't owe anyone 0x10c. AFAIK, no pre-payments were made.

</comment><comment><USER22> Lots of comments here about the stick-to-it-iveness of Notch. I bet it was shaping up to just not be terribly fun.

Sometimes that happens with a game and no amount of tweaking the mechanics can push it over that hump, the foundational idea was just flawed.

</comment><comment><USER23> He didn't think the game was fun so he stopped developing it. This sounds like something a lot of game development companies out there could learn from.

<comment><USER20> I wonder if the obsessive focus fans developed on writing ASM, to the exclusion of almost any game mechanics, might have something to do with that

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This was kind of expected IMHO. Notch has had a helluva lot of stuff happening in his life.

It was fun whilst it lasted though. Check out my DCPU13 in PHP [https://github.com/jbrooksuk/DCPU16](https://github.com/jbrooksuk/DCPU16)

</comment><comment><USER25> I've been following the development of Rodina[1], which is a similar game except that it uses Lua instead of a DCPU, and has made decent progress in the past year. It will also follow a release early, release often way of working, with the first release by the end of this year. I'm far more excited about Rodina that I ever was about 0x10c.

[1] [http://elliptic-games.com/](http://elliptic-games.com/)

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm personally more excited about Elite: Dangerous. [http://elite.frontier.co.uk](http://elite.frontier.co.uk) by David Braben (from Raspberry Pi)

It will have a scientifically based galaxy with rotating an orbiting planets which I think is very important in a space game like this, it also features a mass multi-player dynamic galaxy.

It's shaping up nicely as you can see from the newsletters [http://us2.campaign- archive2.com/home/?u=dcbf6b86b4b0c7d1c21...](http://us2.campaign- archive2.com/home/?u=dcbf6b86b4b0c7d1c21b73b1e&id=eb767c006f)

and youtube channel [http://www.youtube.com/user/FrontierDevelopments/videos](http://www.youtube.com/user/FrontierDevelopments/videos)

<comment><USER27> You mean Elite 4, the game he's been promising to deliver for over a decade? :)

That's E:D sorted ... I hear that the Star Citizen fanboys are quite rabbid and sure to turn up shortly. Brace for impact!

 _looks nervous_

<comment><USER26> They had a successful kickstarter campaign [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1461411552/elite- dangero...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1461411552/elite-dangerous)

It also has a solid release date set for March 2014 and they are right on schedule, alpha testing will start this December.

It's not as if he can now run away with the money and postpone it for another decade.

<comment><USER27> No, but he's bit off more than he can chew I think.

Also, Star Citizen - using CryEngine and non procedural systems. _snigger_

This, gentlemen is why there are no good space games out there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> +1 for the great choide of title. The article is actually about the community taking over development, which is not really proven 1 week after starting the idea. It's not like cataclysm (a zombie rogue-like) where the developer built a running program and a community around that peace of software and now they finished a Kickstarter and developed the program some recognizable steps ahead. After a week of forming a new team it's not even clear if the team itself will hold up.

</comment><comment><USER29> He created a masterpiece for today's younger generation - what the c64, 2e and trs80 did for others. An engine for building creative thinkers in today's locked down digital architectures.

It's the experiencing exploring that's important not the artifact. That's not on ice.

</comment><comment><USER30> Saw this one coming. The question is: what is he working on, then?

<comment><USER31> Business development, management and relaxing.

<comment><USER18> Or Ludum Dare this Friday...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> People lose interest in their projects all the time, the only difference here is the hype that surrounded this one.

</comment><comment><USER33> Am I the only one who reads it as "Zero Existence"?

</comment><comment><USER34> Hint: before complaining do what Notch accomplished with Minecraft.

That said, I'm sorry too about the news because I was really excited about the 0x10c plot / idea.

</comment><comment><USER35> Anyone else completely forget about 0x10c? I thought it was cool, but it's been so long that I'm not even bothered.</comment>


California Health Care exchange cost $360 Million to build/maintain - <AUTHOR> http://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/news/2012/05/31/accenture-wins-health-exchange-contract.html

<comment><AUTHOR> _$183 million for initial development_ \- this is TWICE what the national system was given

Holy cow. And they teamed up with CGI

<comment><USER2> But not what it used to get to the official launch. The figures are reliably available, and I remember $92 million initially for the web site, and real close to $300 million at last count.

In one way, this doesn't sound excessive: the California site cost almost certainly includes integration, which the Federal CMMS disastrously took upon themselves to do, it probably includes backend work not in the Fed's CGI Federal website contract, and while the site is not one of the four reported to be working really well, we're not hearing Federal level horror stories about it.

On the other hand, having various states do their own sure sounds like an unreasonable amount of duplication. How does it make sense, except to fatten the coffers of contractors ( _cui bono_ ), since the whole system fails hard if the Fed's site fails? Which among other things does subsidy calculations for all, and we'd hope would compartmentalize access to sensitive entities like the IRS.

I can't see us reasonably blaming CGI, especially if it's CGI Federal, for any of this mess (disclaimer, I briefly worked for AMS just before CGI bought the part I wasn't working for) . _No_ team of programmers can win if they're getting constant change orders,right through the week before launch. And that's the most obvious of signs that the people managing them didn't have the right stuff.</comment></comment>


Data analysis made easy: Text2Code for Jupyter notebook - <AUTHOR> https://madewithml.com/projects/2283/data-analysis-made-easy-text2code-for-jupyter-notebook/ <comment><USER2> It would be great for at least most basic and mundane SQL. Especially because there is a lot boilerplate for simple things, that would be easy to leverage.</comment>