Building a Better Tech School - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/14/education/edlife/cornell-nyc-tech-planned-for-roosevelt-island-starts-up-in-chelsea.html?hp

<comment><USER2> "In fact, no professor has an office, not even the dean, and Dr. Huttenlocher insists they will not when the campus moves to Roosevelt Island, either. Instead, each person has a desk with low dividers, and people can grab conference rooms as needed — much like the headquarters of a small tech company."

This sounds a lot like what we currently have in my university and it is hell. Right now it's only for PhD students but next year junior staff will share our pain. Communicating is all good and everything, but academic/research work also require quietness. In fact, I would even argue that it requires quietness more often than it requires communication, which is why all these "communication-first" offices drive me insane.

Or am I the one that is wrong, and everybody else is able to "focus" the noise out of their head?

<comment><USER3> It's not just you, it's common sense for anyone who has developed anything new. Im _extremely_ sensitive to verbal distraction. I have no idea where these geniuses came to the conclusion that replication of the social properties of a train station or walmart somehow facilitates better outcomes. I guess it's because the people calling the shots are removed from in-depth thinking and spend most of their day running their mouth or being bored and wanting to run their mouth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have to give a big kudos to Ted Krum on page 3 - going back to school 20+ years after you graduated to re-learn computer science with kids half your age is really a beautiful story. I wish him the best of luck and I really hope he finds a good job in his old/new profession.

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't get it. This is a small accomplishment the benefits of which likely won't extend beyond a small subset of an already incomprehensibly minuscule portion of business and CS students. This sort of program might be great for Cornell students, but is unlikely to have an impact on education in general. Cornell (as with all Ivies) is in a fundamentally privileged position because it has the clout to court city officials and the endowment to expend billions on land and building costs to open a campus in the heart of NYC. This sort of projects is absolutely untenable for the universities that serve the other 95% percent of aspiring technologists and entrepreneurs. It's a novel idea and I wish them well, but I simply can't get excited about a development that is almost exclusively limited to the elite.

</comment><comment><USER6> Who hasn't wanted this type of education? This new campus isn't driven by radical new ideas, it's being driven by what students and businesses have been crying out for for a long time; a practical, hands-on education with the bullshit cut out. The story makes me really sad because it's Cornell doing it with a class of 8 people. The chances this "ground-breaking" "innovative" program will be open to or have any effect on me? 0. But queue the hype- machine, lets drown Cornell in good press and praise.

I will be rooting for the online education platforms to provide this level of education.

<comment><USER7> Why wouldn't this have a positive effect on you?

For one, if you are in New York or the Tri-State area, then a new (hopefully prestigious) tech school should at the very least pull more attention and business to this area, and hopefully educate future engineers that will fill empty spots in industry. It's true there are only 8 students this semester, but they don't even have a campus yet! According to Cornell's timeline, students will be moving to Roosevelt Island in 2017, at which point I'd imagine there will be at least a few hundred.

 _cite_ : [http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2013/01/cornell-tech- wel...](http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2013/01/cornell-tech-welcomes-its- first-class-students)

Second, if Cornell Tech succeeds, it would help provide direction to other states and universities who would like to do something similar. As an article in the nytimes stated previously:

"Colleges and universities across the country — a great many of which are scrambling to find new ways to finance scientific research, as well as new ways to profit from the fruits of that research — are watching closely. In the last year, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has announced the creation of technology schools by both Columbia and New York University. And Cornell's president, David J. Skorton, said he had been visited by representatives from other cities hopeful that the Cornell NYC Tech model might work there, too."

 _cite_ : [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/22/nyregion/cornell-nyc- tech-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/22/nyregion/cornell-nyc-tech-will- foster-commerce-amid-education.html?pagewanted=all)

I hope that online education prospers so that more people can learn what they need with less barriers (low supply, travel, cost), but I think that's mutually exclusive to what Cornell is doing.

I think we need to ask a question for college students: Where does Cornell Tech find itself among the list of prestigious CS Masters Programs?

I also think we (the hacker news community, and engineers in general) need to pool together and see what we want Cornell Tech to turn into. It's a very rare time that we get to see a University in its early stages, and given that it seems Cornell Tech cares heavily about technology, they may listen to what we have to say.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm frustrated by courses that provide a small set of tech projects to work on which have no real purpose or audience, leading to disposable effort. I'm frustrated by fantastic teachers educating students in topics that the teacher has very little interest in.

I'd love to see more schools embrace informal interdisciplinary collaborative opportunities to build projects that aren't disposable but have a real purpose. I've been working with my local startup community to integrate further with my university to provide practical projects for courses, mentorship for those who need it, integration with the local industry, and speakers to inspire them. I think it will provide students with more engagement in the learning process, and teachers with the opportunity to discuss the issues that they're very much interested in.

Learning by doing, but having a purpose for doing. Maybe there would be investor interest when they're finished, but regardless the goal would be to build something that people are actually going to use. Using and teaching the latest technologies, and relating it to the curriculum which is often based on fundamental concepts.

<comment><USER9> There is a supply/demand problem in this approach: finding a unique project for every student or group of students that

A) Uses the libraries or techniques the students need to learn about

B) Hasn't already been done or requires meaningful improvement

C) Doesn't need to be done with stiff reliability or time constraints

D) Doesn't involve an excessive proportion of uneducational grunt-work

is an incredibly difficult challenge, and solutions simply won't scale. Besides, there is moral hazard involved: you don't want the system to devolve into a free labor source, yet the incentives for those in charge are aligned to encourage development in that direction. You go to school to learn techniques that are difficult to learn on the job and that you are unlikely to learn on the job, goals which are subverted by having students work in what begins to look more and more like an unpaid (or negatively paid) intership.

<comment><USER8> We already have the option to work on 'entrepreneurial projects' for our capstone (final year) projects--in contrast with industry-sponsored projects-- but the resources and entrepreneurial mentorships aren't provided.

For the smaller project courses, I just want to see the option of getting marks for contributing to a fun/useful _real_ project. The rest of the list could stay the same if the professor chooses. There would never be a lack of projects.

Our capstone project is already an unpaid project. The industry sponsors just pay for the materials you need. You do work for the company for marks, and you hand over all rights to your work. Nobody has a problem with it. It's practical experience, and it's a requirement for your degree.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I live in Manhattan in NYC and there are several things wrong with this school.

A huge draw to NYC for really smart people that this school wishes to draw is living and working in Manhattan, esp. the southern part (near Greenwich Village) where NYU is located also not far from Silicon Alley (Union Square) or Google (Chelsea). This part of the city is very multi-cultural and fun to live in and "very high value" for making contacts in the words of Richard Florida. Instead, they are going to put the school outside of Manhattan on a separate island (boring, boring, boring).

Second, Technion, the partner school has a very, very low tuition(e.g. a few thousand dollars equiv). This school will be charging $45K per year or so. Even in the US some of the best engineering schools (e.g. U. Illinois/Urbana) is less than $20K in state. By charging such a high tuition, the school will be selecting for high wealth families that can afford a $250K education. Instead, they should be charging tuitions along the lines of City University of New York (CUNY).

<comment><USER7> MIT - $42,050 - <http://web.mit.edu/facts/tuition.html>

Cal Tech - $38,084 - [http://www.gradoffice.caltech.edu/documents/124-2012-13_esti...](http://www.gradoffice.caltech.edu/documents/124-2012-13_estimated_budget_grad_students.pdf)

CMU - $40,000 -<http://www.cmu.edu/hub/tuition/graduate/index.html>

Plus this is only a 1 year program, so the $250k tuition doesn't really apply.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> <http://tech.cornell.edu/program/>

<http://www.cornell.edu/nyc/>

Not a lot of info on curriculum, this seems similar to Zipfian Academy discussed a few days ago, or a certificate program in Data Science at the Univ. of Washington, but you get a Masters

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5508261>

<http://www.pce.uw.edu/certificates/data-science.html>

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm going to look across the Hudson in awe. Well, technically, I can't see Roosevelt island but you get the idea. I hope they do some awesome meetups there</comment>


How a reclusive computer programmer became a GOP money powerhouse - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-a-reclusive-computer-programmer-became-a-gop-money-powerhouse/2015/10/05/1af0c1bc-50b7-11e5-8c19-0b6825aa4a3a_story.html <comment><USER2> > The payments — to support both Cruz and Fiorina — have added to the air of > mystery around Mercer. Is he motivated purely by conservative ideology? Or > is there something more, such as translating his big-data expertise into > campaigning? Cruz is building an aggressive voter targeting operation, > bringing in a pro-Republican company specializing in personality profiling > that has been paid millions by Mercer-backed political committees.

He supports the Club for Growth, NRA, American Crossroads, and GOP Congressional candidates and has since he became wealthy.

Its pretty clear its purely ideological.

I'm not sure why he is considered a "mysterious reclusive" type figure given he has been doing so for nearly a decade.

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2013/10/11/he...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2013/10/11/heres- who-pays-the-bills-for-ted-cruzs-crusade/)

[http://blog.oregonlive.com/mapesonpolitics/2010/10/wealthy_f...](http://blog.oregonlive.com/mapesonpolitics/2010/10/wealthy_financier_is_mysteriou.html)

He might have been "mysterious" 5-6 years ago when he had only done a couple of things but at this point? Really?

<comment><USER3> The article is also odd that it says "The role of a multimillionaire bolstering Cruz's candidacy stands out in part because of an apparent contradiction." There are plenty anti-establishment donors in the party, plus it ignores an important part of Republican party history (Goldwater for example) and how patron-style donors effect change in the party.

I would say the article uses a lot of loaded words to try to create controversy and contradiction where none exists.

<comment><USER2> > I would say the article uses a lot of loaded words to try to create > controversy and contradiction where none exists.

Yeah. They are trying to be clickbait-y and ignore the substance that actually exists. [e.g. The influence of patron-style donations]

<comment><USER3> Patron-style donations have a very interesting history in American politics and its a true shame that a journalist didn't take the time to recount some of that history instead of going for clickbait. I guess I can understand some of it, since patron-style donations are often done as a counter to the power and money of newspapers and later TV.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The title makes it out like he is a reclusive lone wolf programmer. He is the CEO of renaissance technologies, a hedge fund with 275 employees. I really feel misled and like they trying to portray him as a mysterious, dangerous loner. As a computer programmer, I take offense.

Here is an interview with James Simmons, the founder of Renaissance, fascinating guy.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNznD9hMEh0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNznD9hMEh0)

</comment><comment><USER5> From a 'tech culture' standpoint, if anything this is a reminder that there are many more computer programmers and companies (wealthy and profitable ones, even) who operate outside of Silicon Valley bubble and the 'tech industry.' Though it sounds like Mercer and Renaissance Technologies operate in the Wall Street bubble.

(Bubble meaning enclosed monocultural environment, not necessarily economic bubble.)

<comment><USER6> RenTec is pretty well known for it's aversion to the Street & that culture.

<comment><USER7> Yes. The type of person RenTec hires are people like Peter Weinberger or Leonard E. Baum, names I'm sure people here know. Mercer has a doctorate in computer science and is an expert in speech recognition and machine translation. Aside from CS types, it hires a lot of mathematicians, as well as scientists with the normal scientific experience of drawing conclusions from data.

Wall Street is very different. IT is considered to be barely a step up from the people who clear out the garbage pails, even if you are a Java programmer that is making $175k a year (which is considered nothing). There are many signs of this. One is that in IT, a managing director might have hundreds of IT personnel working for him (on Wall Street, titles like partner, managing director etc. have some importance). In an important, major profit center division or group, it seems like every other person is a managing director.

Hedge funds like RenTec, DE Shaw, Two Sigma, PDT should not have to exist. Investment banks should have been able to spin out groups that do what they do and keep those tens of billions under management. The Wall Street culture and corporate politicsmis such that this can't happen, so these quant/ML hedge funds pop up and get tens of billions of dollars to manage. Which then pay their top quants hundreds of millions to billions of dollars. This can not happen in investment banks. Investment banks have seen these tens and, collectively hundreds, of billions go out the door, but they are big bureaucracies with office politics and inertia, they're taking steps to try to reclaim some of it, but the genie has already left the bottle to some extent.

<comment><USER8> That is precisely what happened with PDT, correct? It was spin out from MS

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> OK, in the 90's I interviewed at this company, and had not thought of them since. Basically (according to a guy I interviewed with) they looked for patterns in stock prices and then tried to predict when to buy based on similarity to past patterns, independent of knowledge of world events etc. I don't know if that was all they did at the time, or just a part of it. Anyway, I had been a SCO Unix and Linux admin and they were looking for someone to manage their laptops, which they had Solaris on at the time (but were unhappy with). I had done some fractal analysis in my grad work and they were at least passingly interested in that ... I'm really happy I didn't go that route.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, I seriously doubt they were looking to hire you for your ability to manage laptops...

</comment></comment><comment> vezzy-fnord Seems to have a reasonably prolific history of academic publications, but suddenly ceased in 1995: [http://dblp.uni- trier.de/pers/hd/m/Mercer:Robert_L=](http://dblp.uni- trier.de/pers/hd/m/Mercer:Robert_L=)

<comment><USER2> Yeah, he seemed to have stopped around the time he started working at the hedge fund and what little was published after 1993 might have been started before he worked there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> People don't like change.

Wealthy liberals in coastal communities are NIMBYs. The only time you get change is when the number of renters (and voters) greatly outnumbers the home owners.

Wealthy conservatives do not want regulations because changing the rules force them to reconsider their business.

</comment><comment><USER12> Interesting that he chose to donate to two candidates with almost no chance of winning the election. Makes me wonder where his real allegiances are.

<comment><USER13> Most political donations are consumption spending, not investment spending. Lots of people enjoy donating to a political race. (I'm not one of them, but I have my own consumption spending that would bewilder others.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > they fed reams of parallel French and English texts from Canadian > parliamentary records into a computer.

Wait a minute, where did I hear about this recently?

</comment><comment><USER14> Rennaisance Technologies as in mrsync? Good software.

</comment><comment><USER15> I want to be like him.

</comment><comment><USER16> Oh what a shocking surprise: a hedge fund guy is pouring money into the GOP.

<comment><USER17> Hmmmm.... it looks like the rich are supporting Democrats more than Republicans....

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/31/democrats- wealth_n_...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/31/democrats- wealth_n_5062088.html)

<comment><USER18> I'm not sure your link supports your claim. The article focuses on wealthy congress people. It does mention Democratic leaning districts having a higher average income:

"Across the country, Democratic House districts have an average per capita income of $27,893. That's about $1,000 higher than the average income in Republican districts. The difference is relatively small because Democrats also represent a lot of poor districts, putting the average in the middle."

That income level is not considered "rich". As for presidential races: "In the election, Romney carried only one income group: people making $100,000 or more, according to exit polls."

You may also want to look at the money Republicans have raised for the presidential race including super PACs. Republicans have a much larger war chest due to large contributions from many very rich people.

<comment><USER19> How about this from yesterday:

 _How did the Democrats become favorites of the rich?_

"The party and its candidates have come to rely on the elite 0.01 percent of the voting age population for a quarter of their financial backing and on large donors for another quarter."

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/07/opinion/how-did-the- democr...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/07/opinion/how-did-the-democrats- become-favorites-of-the-rich.html)

The NYT ain't exactly Fox news.

<comment><USER20> That article says that the democrats are getting a growing share of their funding from wealthier donors, while Republicans are getting a larger share of their funding from obscenely wealthy donors.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Thanks netgames.io for endless hours of fun - <AUTHOR> Found this hobby project on HN few days back. I had bookmarked it and played with some friends over zoom today well into the night. It was a blast. Really well built project. Thanks!<p>If the author is lurking here, would love to learn about the tech used to build it. <comment><USER2> I'm the creator of netgames.io, very glad to hear you've enjoyed yourself :). I'd be happy to share a few details, but it's far from a shining beacon of best practices.

At the moment it's a single node.js server using socket.io for communication between clients and the server. The server holds the game state completely in memory, which is updated in response to game state changes sent by each client. The single-threadedness of node.js serialises all these changes to form a globally consistent game state, which is pushed wholesale to clients whenever it changes. Clients are stateless (almost), rendering only what the game state dictates. There's no database or user accounts, everyone just has a UUID assigned to them.

I've seen a large increase in traffic due to the current pandemic (142k users over the last 28 days, about 40x the norm), which has put a lot of stress on my little AWS micro (sorry about the outages). I've made a lot of performance fixes but ultimately I'll have to make this scale across multiple servers if growth continues. Current plan is to start games on whatever server they land on (load-balanced), and have a master task which knows what games are being played on what servers for the purpose of game discovery and room code collisions.

Oh and because I was a thoroughly mislead individual when I first wrote it, it's largely written in CoffeeScript... slowly migrating to Typescript :)</comment>


The FreeBSD Foundation falls short of its 2012 fundraising goal by 50% - <AUTHOR> http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/ <comment><USER2> I didn't even know they were fundraising. Added my donation.

Edit: Not sure if you're aware, but the paypal donation mechanism is triggering your spam detection:

This is an automated message.

The message you sent (attached below) requires confirmation before it can be delivered. To confirm that you sent the message below, just hit the "R"eply button and send this message back (you don't need to edit anything). Once this is done, no more confirmations will be necessary.

This email account is protected by: Active Spam Killer (ASK) V2.4.1 - (C) 2001-2002 by Marco Paganini For more information visit <http://a-s-k.sourceforge.net/>

Also, it's encoding non-alphanumerics within the ASCII range in the forwarded message from Paypal. For example, "$" is being encoded as "=24", which makes it look like Paypal took two orders of magnitude more money than donated.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for donating!

I'm not affiliated with the FreeBSD Foundation, but I created a thread on the FreeBSD forums about the spam detection issue so hopefully the message will make its way to someone who can look into it:

<http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?p=200149>

<comment><USER3> The problem was that paypal payments come in "from" the donor rather than paypal, and paypal was exempted but not all e-mails that were from paypal but listed as from the donor. This has now been solved.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It is only the 9th. Look at the marks of this year against prior years:

December 09, 2012: $260k ($500k goal)

December 14, 2011: $210k ($400k goal)

December 16, 2010: $210k ($350k goal)

Early Dec, 2010: $195k ($350k goal)

December 26, 2009: $250k ($300k goal)

It looks like the last weeks of December are a big time for donations, and they're seeing an early surge relative to prior years. It surprises me that FreeBSD is even this well-funded. Who still uses it?

<comment><USER5> > Who still uses it?

Dell, Citrix, F5, Juniper, Netapp...

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

<comment><USER4> Dell bought an existing company.

Cisco bought an existing company, and the product is stagnant.

Citrix bought an existing company, and the product is stagnant.

F5 went to Linux many years ago

Juniper is still FreeBSD. They win this one ;)

NetApp has a port to Linux, but is still shipping FreeBSD. 50/50.

Nokia/CheckPoint went to Linux (SecurePlatform)

<comment><USER6> > NetApp has a port to Linux, but is still shipping FreeBSD. 50/50.

This is the first I've heard of this. Source?

<comment><USER4> [http://partners.netapp.com/go/techontap/matl/sample/0206tot_...](http://partners.netapp.com/go/techontap/matl/sample/0206tot_monthlytool.html)

<comment><USER6> That post is 6 years old and ONTAP has been through at least 3 major releases since then.

Additionally, the post states that the purpose of ONTAP on Linux was to simulate ONTAP for testing & education purposes. In 2006 this was probably the easiest way, but those needs have been met for years by the VMware images NetApp provides.

So, this almost certainly does not exist anymore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Do we really need FreeBSD anymore when we already have Linux? I am genuinely curious from a technical point of view what important differentiators there are in FreeBSD,i m not interested in license or philosophy differences.

<comment><USER8> Why the downvotes? The dude is genuinely curious.

<comment><USER9> I guess

a) because he disqualifies the license as a reason, even though it is actually the reason GNU came to be, without which what most people call "Linux", that is - GNU/Linux would have had little to stand on. So license on its own is an interesting enough reason.

b) because one second of googling would have shown that FreeBSD has numerous technical (his criterion) things that Linux does not yet at a comparable level, including (from the top of my head) ZFS, jails, dtrace.

d) because there are also things which are not license or technical details which matter (project management style, for example)

Comments like the GP can alternatively be phrased: "I'm a bigot about reasons things happen in the real world, and also I'm too lazy to look up if what I believe is actually true. Lazyweb, prove me wrong", and it would get about as many downvotes.

<comment><USER10> WRT b:

<http://duckduckgo.com/?q=freebsd+v.s+linux> (and g! doesn't help any more)

The "best" resource I could find between those two searches resulted in:

<http://www.wikivs.com/wiki/FreeBSD_vs_Linux>

I'm not sure of the quality of the results of that page.

Regardless, we've gone well beyond "a second of googling."

> Comments like the GP can alternatively be phrased...

Comments like yours can be phrased "I'm a hateful liar who reasons that unless you blindly accept certain opinions as fact, I'm going to assume that any questions is bigoted. I'll also knowingly require that you search using Google, claiming that you'll find an answer there, though when someone does search, it will immediately discredit my comment. After all, if it only took a second, I could have provided the link that answered the question."

So, by all means, provide the search we should have used that explains what and why the technical advantages of FreeBSD over various Linux distros. It only takes a second.

<comment><USER9> Well, it took me all of 3 seconds to google "why choose freebsd over linux", and a few more to verify that most of the results I get on this page are relevant. Your google-fu may be weak, or duckduckgo may be.

Tip: if you are in search of information, rather than self-confirmation, try to prove the opposite of what you believe, rather than search for confirmation to your ideas, or even "balanced" info (because you are ALREADY biased, and you need to counter that bias).

Don't attribute your own faults to others. You seem to do a lot of that in your post above.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I set up a monthly donation. I think the foundation would benefit from more marketing. Similar to other commenters, I wasn't even aware of the foundation prior to this HN post. Now that I know what to look for, the "Foundation" link on the freebsd.org home page is obvious, but I'd never actually noticed it before.

</comment><comment><USER12> That's odd. I usually receive a donation letter about this time of the year. Anyway, chipped in.

I couldn't get anywhere without FreeBSD running my servers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for donating!

EDIT: The fundraiser letter is on the website, if you still want to read it: [http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/announcements.shtml#fundrai...](http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/announcements.shtml#fundraising)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Just donated. I feel the FreeBSD foundation could have made a bit more noise about this; I almost completely missed it ...

</comment><comment><USER14> If they want to hit their goal, they should really hire Jimmy Wales to send uncomfortable pictures of himself staring you down. Worked great for Wikipedia...

</comment><comment><USER15> Just donated! Didn't realize there was a donation drive going on.

I'm a huge fan of BSD and would love to see it on EC2. :)

<comment><USER16> Uhh... FreeBSD _is_ on EC2...

<comment><USER15> Let me rephrase. I'd like to see it as a first class citizen along with Linux and windows.

<comment><USER16> We're working on it, and progress is being made - FreeBSD is in the AWS Marketplace as of a few weeks ago, for example.

Unfortunately I can't talk about things Amazon is doing to help with this, but I have seen ample evidence of Amazon's interest in and effort towards making this work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So where's Apple in this story?

<comment><USER18> I think theres a misconception that OS X is in a huge debt to FreeBSD, or even runs it at its core. Apple runs a custom kernel, no relation to FreeBSD, with a mixture of *BSD user land tools--more NetBSD than FreeBSD the last time I looked, but certainly both. That's not nothing, but also not a situation where I'd expect Apple to be donating much.

<comment><USER19> But there are many other "Big Corps" specified on the FreeBSD portal. Aren't they obligated in some form or the other to be funding FreeBSD?

500k appears to be quite a nominal amount when you put all these "Big Corp" names together. Or is this fund raising set apart from what the "Big Corps" pay? Not sure how this works...

<comment><AUTHOR> The 'Donors' page on the FreeBSD Foundation website shows both corporate and individual sponsors (and roughly, the amount donated):

<http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/sponsors.shtml>

Sadly, the number of corporate ($$$) donors has dropped off in the last couple of years...

<comment><USER20> I see Google on the list of corporate sponsors. Do any Google services use FreeBSD?

<comment><USER21> Given how large Google is I'm certain they use FreeBSD in some form somewhere. Still it's kind of fun seeing Google who is predominantly Linux-based as a major sponsor and not Apple which likely ship code from the FreeBSD project in every device they sell. Also nice seeing Juniper contributing back but I can't see anything from Cisco...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> A couple of more recent posts on the state of the fundraising campaign:

"FreeBSD end-of-year fund raiser on target" [http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/FreeBSD-end-of- year-f...](http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/FreeBSD-end-of-year-fund- raiser-on-target-1766330.html)

"FreeBSD veteran confident of reaching fund-raising goal" [http://www.itwire.com/business-it-news/open- source/57855-fre...](http://www.itwire.com/business-it-news/open- source/57855-freebsd-veteran-confident-of-reaching-fund-raising-goal)

</comment><comment><USER23> I had no idea they needed money until I saw this here. I went straight there and gave them some.

</comment><comment><USER24> Very surprised to see donors list -Netapp is there but not EMC!!! <http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/sponsors.shtml>

</comment><comment><USER25> Just donated 50 bucks! FreeBSD rocks!

</comment><comment><USER26> paypal removed egypt ages ago and never add it back, cant seem to able to donate

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you donate through Network for Good? It's the preferred donation method anyway (Paypal is the backup):

[https://npo.networkforgood.org/Donate/Donate.aspx?npoSubscri...](https://npo.networkforgood.org/Donate/Donate.aspx?npoSubscriptionId=5785)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Is there a website that consolidates data on tech nonprofit finances?

Like givewell or whatever with a tech filter?

</comment><comment><USER28> Just waiting for the first person to announce that *BSD is dying, a la the ol' Slashdot trolls.

<comment><USER29> Well, here you go.

We (rsync.net) are based entirely on the FreeBSD platform, and have been since we first offered offsite backup in 2001. Our principals have been server and desktop users since 1998.

Further, we built JohnCompanies (the first VPS provider)[1] entirely on FreeBSD and jail.

So with that disclaimer, we are compelled to point out that the high water mark of FreeBSD ... coherency ? completeness ? stability ? ... was 4.11 in 2005.

John Kozubik posted this long and detailed rundown of the situation in January of 2012:

[http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd- hackers/2012-Janu...](http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd- hackers/2012-January/037294.html)

[http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd- hackers/2012-Janu...](http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd- hackers/2012-January/037331.html)

and there was much agreement and nodding of heads. $50k over five years was committed by Kozubik to support a new development trajectory:

[http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd- hackers/2012-Janu...](http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd- hackers/2012-January/037369.html)

There is a good litmus test going forward. If you see 8.4-RELEASE, and see 8.x supported as "production" and not "legacy" well into the 9.x lifecycle, things are getting better.

If you see 10.2 and 11.0 and so on before you see 8.4 or 8.5 then FreeBSD is just a research project.

[1] Yes, Verio was doing that weird virtualization thing with their e10ks (or whatever it was), but in October of 2001 we were the first to make available what anyone today would recognize as a "VPS".

<comment><USER7> Interesting to hear that rsync.net is based on FreeBSD. Just from curiosity, why don't you use a linux distro? What benefits does FreeBSD offer for you compared to Linux distros. What disadvantages would you count. (I mean if you ever had a chance to make a comparison).

<comment><USER29> Our current answer is that our platform is ZFS based, and given the muddy waters with Oracle and Solaris and so on, it's more responsible to deploy ZFS on FreeBSD.

But JUST BARELY. We've had our ZFS roadmap in place since 2009, and only just finally deployed in 2012. Our intention originally was to switch to Solaris, with real support contracts and contractual commitments and so on, but then Oracle came along.

So then we had to come back to where we've been all along, since the beginning of JohnCompanies[1] - with FreeBSD.

[1] JC deployed with FreeBSD since the first VPS product rollout was based on jail, so that was that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Maybe it's time to charge for FreeBSD for commercial use.</comment>


BOXEN - a framework for managing almost every aspect of your Mac - <AUTHOR> http://boxen.github.com/

<comment><USER2> I just tried to post this. I think this is quite interesting but would be more useful if we could import it over to production servers. I would love to have a discussion on this.</comment>


Yugoslavs Find No Paradise at McDonald's (1988) - <AUTHOR> http://articles.latimes.com/1988-05-26/business/fi-4963_1_yugoslav-television <comment><USER2> Explanation is easy, but understandably it's very hard for an American to grasp such a concept of life. People in Yugoslavia didn't work a lot, it's true, but not because of some lazy Sloven mentality, but because they simply didn't have to. And it even didn't make much sense to work hard in socialism, because you could work a little or you could work a lot, at the end of the month you would still earn the same salary as everyone else. But it was OK for the majority. You had a decent living, no stress, health care was good. Country wasn't rich, but society was much more non-consumeristic back then and generally people had a lower expectations, so none of us who grew up there felt that we are missing something big. We were mostly part of the middle class and had our jeans and TVs and VCRs and music systems and ZX Spectrums and Commodores, watched MTV and listened to r'n'r, had long vacations and a chance to travel the world or spend summers in our parents' holiday houses on the Adriatic seaside. Social differences were not big, everyone was more or less equally poor (or equally rich). I know it sounds unreal from the todays world, but it was a really nice country to live in. Of course, such system was not competitive enough to be sustainable without external financing, so it all started to collapse in 90s, and then it progressed into wars and nationalism and now life is not like that anymore. Now people are happy with their 8hx7 work at MacDonald's, because there are other even worse ones...

<comment><USER3> But it's the people who want more who drive progress. Which is why the thing collapsed - take away the desire of those few to be and do better, and the whole system stagnates rather quickly...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _According to a recent domestic survey, average Yugoslavs work efficiently for only half of their eight-hour workday. The rest of the time is spent reading newspapers, conducting private business or having interminable private chats with colleagues over coffee._

According to a recent domestic survey, average I.T. managers work efficiently for only 10% of their eight-hour workday. The rest of the time is spent reading email, conducting pointless meetings, or having interminable private chats with colleagues over "best practices".

<comment><USER5> Some disclosure:

I've been born and raised in Canada and my parents are immigrants from the former Yugoslavia. I've taken many extended trips back home and I have to say that "working efficiently for only half of their eight-hour workday" is overstating their efficiency. Socialism destroyed work ethic in Yugoslavia amongst other things. The villagers and farmers were the only ones who had any work ethic left as they were primarily subsistence farmers on the "receiving end" of socialism if you will. They were the ones who left to work and settle in other countries.

People with money aren't viewed as investors, but crooks. Anyone who turns a profit is suspected of stealing. Almost no one understands the concept of looking for work or creating their own job. It's sad.

<comment><USER6> Well, to be fair, anywhere the Habsburgs ruled is like this because that's the way their empire worked. You _could_ only get rich by exploiting others or engaging in corruption - or be born into it because your ancestors did that.

<comment><USER3> I think it was the communism - it was a really bad economic system that was so out of touch with the reality of human beings and the past thousand years that people had no other choice but to engage in corruption (bypassing the system).

<comment><USER7> There's the communist revolution, which gave power to people who were not fit to wield it. There's the dekulakization, which liquidated millions of people who knew what they were doing. Then there's the forced collectivisation...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As person from country that was in former Yugoslavia i can say that situation is not simple as Americans see it. Yugoslav variation of socialism (yeah, it is important to yell that it wasn't communism) had flaws and advances. In short:

1\. Humans come first. Even before money.

2\. But, but, lot of people exploited 1. due bad organization, nepotism, ...

Because of 1. people had, for example, health care and education for free (best universities included), but because of 2. -> system wasn't always in favor of people that actually work (even for others).

People, at one moment, voted for capitalism -> now we don't have free health care and education, but most of people from 2. are still here. Worst from both worlds :-( But when i look at Scandinavia it looks like they knew how to minimize 2. and also have 1. at the same time. So if i ever choose to leave current place it will be Scandinavia ;-)

<comment><USER9> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Former_Yugoslavia_2008.PN...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Former_Yugoslavia_2008.PNG)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The article, and all the comments here are missing the main reason for this behavior. I'm 36 now, and I live in Serbia. When Socialism was ruling, all the companies were owned and run by the state. The wages were determined by the company you work for. Difference in wage for same position in some non- profitable company and a profitable one, would easily be 20x. So, the only thing that mattered was not your knowledge, but whether you could get a job at shoe company or oil refinery. Getting one in oil refinery was much better. The other thing is that people got fired really, really rarely. So, you get the job and you're settled for life. Even pensions are much higher and provided by the state.

Now, when a foreign company enters, esp. one with reputation of being a big, profitable business, people would assume that getting a job there is the same, or even better than working at a big domestic company.

Sadly, this is still true for many people today. We have a lot of foreign companies here now, and many people have got the job, just to quit days or weeks later. Main complaint being: there's too much work. People only stick and work in companies where wages are 40-50% above the average wage in domestic companies. We still suffer from low productivity.

This is slowly changing, and I assume it will be much better in 5-10 years. 7-13 year old kids who are in school now are growing up in a different kind of system, and their parent are also young enough to have sane perspective on state of things. They enter the workforce in 5-10 years from now.

Our main problem now is current youth, who were raised during the war, whose parents could not teach them good value system, because all they could see on television was that criminals and people waging wars are idols for boys, and folk singers for girls. Also, many criminals earned a lot of money during the war and seeing them go unpunished was really a bad message to all children. Those children are 15-25 years old now, and a lot of them simply have no goals in life, see no perspective and either want to become criminals themselves or leave the country.

</comment><comment><USER11> I really liked this article. It's startling to someone as old as I am to realize that many Hacker News participants are too young to remember Yugoslavia as an intact country. In general, the transition from regimes in eastern Europe controlled by national Communist parties (whether part of the Warsaw Pact or not) to the current melange of national governments in a larger number of countries in that region is already a distant memory or unknown to many young people, while still remembered as an unimaginable future possibility to people my age.

On the subject of the first McDonald's restaurant in a country, my wife (who grew up in Taiwan) and I went (on my suggestion) to the opening day of the first McDonald's in Taiwan in early 1984. We waited in line outdoors at least an HOUR, and when we finally got into the restaurant, the workers inside all looked shocked at the number of customers still in line to order. People in Taiwan are used to working hard, but that was a level of intensity of desire for a particular restaurant's food that was baffling to the young new hires there. I think everyone in Taiwan who had ever been to any country with a McDonald's, both locals and expatriates, were there to see what a local McDonald's would look like.

After my newlywed wife had her first McDonald's hamburger, she asked her American husband why I went to the trouble of waiting in line so long for such indifferent food. That was sheer nostalgia on my part--by then I had been away from the United States for two years. Here in the United States, I can and do go two years at a time without eating a McDonald's hamburger, just because I can. But felt I had to have the hamburger in Taiwan at my first opportunity, just because I couldn't before. I think for a while that McDonald's store in Taipei had the worldwide record for highest weekly gross sales of any McDonald's location, eventually to be surpassed by the first-ever McDonald's in some other country. You can now get good service from diligent young workers in a McDonald's all over Taiwan.

<comment><USER12> That reminds me of how one of my favourite memories of the Czech Republic was seeing young couples having romantic dinner dates in McDonalds.

It actually took me several weeks to understand that to them the McDonalds was a _special_ place; an affordable restaurant with an air of foreign mystique ...

<comment><USER13> Was that also in the 80's? I'm in Prague now and I don't think anyone sees McD as special. Starbucks seems to have that appeal, although I find Costa Coffee much better. But I spent May in Kyiv and they _love_ McDonald's there. I was told it's seen as a very good deal.

<comment><USER12> Oh my god; I'm getting old. That was about 8 or 9 years ago :)

Just to be clear, 95% of people sitting at McDonalds would just be eating their schlep, while these couples would sit starry eyed between them.

Also, if you're talking about Prague: that's not Czech Republic as many Czechs like to say ... it's a different world all unto itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That McD's in Belgrade is actually the place this American first tried a Big Mac. It was pretty good.

The trend of demanding more work for less money is hardly restricted to Yugoslavia, though - it's crippled America, for one thing, but Western Europe loooves to exploit Central Europe for cheap labor, even though Central Europe's cost of living has come up to Western levels now.

</comment><comment><USER14> Just to say that the TV series mentioned in the article, Dynasty[1], was really popular then. My parents watched it as well.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynasty_%28TV_series%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynasty_%28TV_series%29)

<comment><USER15> TV has always presented unrealistic expectations. Look at the hit show "Friends" \- there's no way that group of people could afford apartments that size in NYC with the jobs they had (waitress/chef/copywriter/actor).

<comment><USER16> See [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FriendsRentContro...](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FriendsRentControl)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Not directly related to the article, but it seems to me that a really big difference between McDonald's employees in the US and those in the countries of former Yugoslavia is that in the US, McD's employees are young people who either never went to college or who dropped out, or those who see it as a way to support themselves while they're in college (since I'm not from the US I might be wrong here, feel free to correct me). In the countries of former Yugoslavia (well, at least in _my_ country) unemployment rate is so high that even having a college degree doesn't guarantee that you'll get a job. I have a friend who is a professor of history and geography, he's 31, and he makes a living flipping burgers at McDonald's. He simply couldn't get a job as a professor anywhere. He's not exactly thrilled with what he makes, but he doesn't have a lot of options.

</comment><comment><USER18> I lived in Yugoslavia and are saddened to see it being destroyed, but, now living in US, it will be 10 yrs, I see a lot of things that remind me of old Yugoslavia. Americans are especially defensive when you point out those things, unlike people in Yugoslavia which had less illusions, yet enjoyed and were also aware of all benefits. It was great country to live in, I don't think in US you can't enjoy a level of freedom and carelessness like it was possible in old Yugoslavia.

I think only Asian countries can be good examples of working hard and good work ethics. US is not, it is excellent example of a lot of other good things. If you don't think this is true, just look at Yahoo to name one.

</comment><comment><USER19> Truth be told this article is exactly why a lot of (mostly untraveled) people from the US have a really distorted view of the rest of the world.

<comment><USER20> What an odd interpretation of this story—projecting a Yugoslavian problem onto the US. Sounds like "blame the US" diversion to me. McDonald's is a company of US origin but the Yugoslavian work ethic is a thing that would exist even if Ray Kroc had never been born.

Also: I think US citizens are a lot more well-travelled than you assume. Sure, they work hard and don't get much holiday time, but they do travel quite a lot in their free time.

<comment><USER21> Counterpoint: [http://travel.state.gov/passport/ppi/stats/stats_890.html](http://travel.state.gov/passport/ppi/stats/stats_890.html)

The US citizens you hang out with, sure. And certainly, a lot of US citizens I know now are well-traveled as well. But I moved away from an area in central Pennsylvania where there were families who had lived in the same county since the 1600s. Friends who had, by their mid-twenties, never gone so far as New York, let alone across a national border.

It's certainly a mistake to think that all Americans are ignorant and sheltered, and it's great to see that more and more Americans have passports, but it's still very accurate to say that Americans are mostly untraveled.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I remember some people on HN saying that having the right to a job would be better than having a minimum income. As I understand it the various communist countries are an excellent case study in why this is a bad idea.

<comment><USER23> I think a minimum income is a good idea in a society where there's little demand for unskilled labor. As long as the basic income is priced below the average wage of skilled labor, people will still have incentives to find employment... but those that can't, still have a minimum quality of life that should be expected in the first world.

<comment><USER24> New Zealand (and probably many other nations) provides a system similar to this where you either have a job and earn as much as you're able (based on negotiating skill and to some extent actual job skill) or you are unemployed and receive a benefit which is supposed to cover your basic living costs.

Without defrauding the system, you are better off getting a job as it provides you with a better income. Despite this, there are still a significant number of people who would rather remain unemployed than contribute productively to society. Many of them defraud the system or engage in crime to boost their income.

I think I would rather see the government guaranteeing a basic job rather than offering benefits for any length of time. Supporting somebody legitimately between jobs is fine. Somebody who hasn't worked in a year should be sent to a labour camp until they decide to find better employment.

<comment><USER22> >Somebody who hasn't worked in a year should be sent to a labour camp until they decide to find better employment.

Considering recent trends, now seems like the last time you would want to lock people into wage slavery.

On top of that, in a situation like now where you have tons more hands than jobs to make use of them, this policy seems like it would only exasperate the situation in times of economic repression.

This idea is literally considered the Bad Future(TM) in Marshall Brains Manna[0]. And I can't say I disagree. I don't want to live in a world where those homeless people I see on the street are rounded up and sedated somewhere. Especially if one day I might join them.

Not to mention that this basically outlaws several kinds of professions. (Freelance artist, Consultant)

[0]:[http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm](http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm)

<comment><USER24> Is asking people to contribute to society really comparable to the Bad Future? Having read your link, I would say it's more akin to rules 8 and 9 of the 4GC

There's nothing wrong with being a freelancer, or deliberately homeless, or simply taking a break from work in order to pursue your own projects or goals. However, if you choose to claim a benefit and do so for an extended period (i.e. >60% of the time for a year or more) then I think it's fair for the government to say "from now you work for NZ, or relinquish your benefit".

It's unreasonable to burden society just because you're lazy and unmotivated

The ridiculous utopia portrayed in Manna would be nicer, of course, but we aren't there yet. Right now everything has a cost, including lazy beneficiaries, corrupt politicians and jaw-droppingly stupid government projects. I can't see any way to fix those problems but I am allowed to hope for a world where one day we can

<comment><USER22> >However, if you choose to claim a benefit and do so for an extended period (i.e. >60% of the time for a year or more) then I think it's fair for the government to say "from now you work for NZ, or relinquish your benefit".

That's a little different, and more reasonable.

And yes, I mainly linked that story for the Dystopia part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> "Trained employees are quitting because they find they have to work like Westerners and get paid like East Europeans." That says it all. You always get what you pay for.

<comment><USER26> Also, I bet the food prices aren't correspondingly low. I remember when McDonald's started expanding in Brazil a couple decades ago, prices were ridiculous (like $8-$9 equivalent for a big mac meal) but people still lined up around the block for the novelty and addictive quality of the food.

<comment><USER27> Brazilian here. It's still about that expensive, and still very popular.

<comment><USER28> There's a chain restaurant in the USA advertising itself as genuine Brazilian cuisine. Looks like about $40/person or I believe thats about 100 Brazilian Real per person.

I'm betting that a typical Brazilian Cuisine restaurant in Brazil charges much less than 100 Real per person. That would fit my guess that they're a specialty destination which can charge pretty much anything they want... for awhile, while the novelty lasts.

(Edited to add, lazy me, I googled around and found an article online from 2012 claiming a single dude should expect to spend about R$350/month on food, so the local Brazilian restaurant in the USA is asking for more than a weeks worth of groceries equivalent, which would be pretty high end dining in my USA local experience)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> A monthly paycheck for these employees that were determined to quit was $170. In other words: if you worked at McDonald's, you couldn't afford to eat at McDonald's.

<comment><USER30> Why does that matter? I've heard that arguememt for other industries, that workers should be paid a wage that they can afford the product they are making. I've never understood it though.

<comment><USER31> That just can't work. Imagine every Ferrari worker being able to afford a Ferrari. What would that mean for a price of a Ferrari, eh? The price would have to go up, and then the wages, and then the prices and so on.

<comment><USER29> My statement wasn't meant as a general argument, but was just referring to this specific case - namely, inexpensive fast food. In order for the comparison between American and Yugoslavian work ethic to hold, you'd have to lower the American salaries to the point where they cannot afford McDonald's food. Let's see how that impacts their productivity.

<comment><USER32> The point isn't anywhere near as clever as you think it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> A nice documentary about my former country. Created by Pan Am to entice tourists to visit.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5B6eBAuhvEY&feature=youtube_...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5B6eBAuhvEY&feature=youtube_gdata_player)

<comment><USER33> Also this is the Serbian version of a "hamburger". Quite frankly I'm surprised that McD's is still in business. [http://s3.amazonaws.com/foodspotting- ec2/reviews/1075384/thu...](http://s3.amazonaws.com/foodspotting- ec2/reviews/1075384/thumb_600.jpg?1322258078)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'd be curious to see how things are today at McDonald's in the Yugosphere.

<comment><USER5> Excellent, actually. I was just speaking with someone yesterday about how McDonald's is executing a long-term strategy very effectively. They appeal to children without offending adults. The population in the region places a high emphasis on eating home-cooked meals and domestic cleanliness. They've managed to make a name for themselves without having too much negative stigma being attached to them for being "fast food" which is casually viewed as an American malaise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> This article has literally zero substance and seems to be entirely circumstantial. A single interview with one Yugoslav about a single business. A ridiculous claims this has something to do with watching dynasty.

Unless of course you put a lot of stock in the "according to a recent survey" part.

I'm actually surprised how many people appear to be discussing this seriously, or why this was even submitted. Can anyone explain what is interesting about this?</comment>


Show HN: Startupwoot.com – Submits your startup on 100+ sites - <AUTHOR> http://startupwoot.com

<comment><USER2> It sounds like a useful service, but I'm not going to pay you $49 to submit to "100+ sites" without first knowing what those sites are. You need to post a list of sites you submit to, or at least some general description of them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Got it. Infact now i am planning to open source the whole project on github.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> So someone showed their site that submitted to 3-40 sites, and within 24-48 hours you make/submit a clone that submits to 100 sites?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know which site your are referring to. I made this list for my own startup and thought maybe others can benefit too.</comment></comment>


New motivational iPhone app Promishare for FREE is launching today - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/promishare-positive-goals/id886762439

<comment> her-ur Design and the purpose of app is awesome. Already lives in my iPhone. Thanks!</comment>


How WikiLeaks Just Set Back Democracy in Zimbabwe - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/12/how-wikileaks-just-set-back-democracy-in-zimbabwe/68598/

<comment><USER2> So Mugabe was spared from having to manufacture one piece of evidence against his political opponents. It doesn't look like there is much to set back in terms of democracy. The Atlantic folks are really clutching at straws with regard to Wikileaks.</comment>


Easyping – uptime monitoring made super easy - <AUTHOR> https://easyping.io <comment><AUTHOR> Hey Hackers, I've just launched my 1st solo project ever - easyping - <USER2> would love to hear your feedback as well as your advice.

The idea was to create an affordable, simple, yet powerful tool for busy makers to track their sites' status with instant alerting.

Enjoy & stay safe!</comment>


A Primer on Shooting in Manual Mode: Aperture, Shutter Speed, and ISO [video] - <AUTHOR> https://petapixel.com/2019/08/14/a-primer-on-shooting-in-manual-mode-aperture-shutter-speed-and-iso/ <comment><USER2> I know almost no professionals who shoot on manual mode outside of studio settings. The computer is almost always better at guessing things like light and temperature. The only time manual mode is used is when you're in a studio where light, movement, etc are controlled.

Instead, shoot on aperture mode. Adjust to your desired depth of field according to the ambient light. Use ISO setting to adjust further for light. Finally, when you see the camera is under/over exposing, use the built in exposure compensation slider to adjust for lighter or darker pictures. Pay attention to and trust your exposure histogram.

Now you can very quickly (I can't stress how important quickness is) adjust for the perfect picture. And when the action changes, you'll know quickly which of the three knobs you need to turn.

Leave manual mode for the studio.

<comment><USER3> Professional wildlife and product studio photographer here. We certainly do shoot manual mode outside of the studio, just not with film.

With auto-ISO, "manual" camera mode (which refers to manually setting aperture and shutter speed) becomes an automatic exposure mode because the camera is metering the scene and adjusting ISO automatically. It is also possible and practical for certain applications to use "full manual" mode which also involves setting ISO, especially for something with a mostly-fixed scene such as astrophotography.

While camera-adjusted ISO and post-processing lightening (moving the exposure slider up in lightroom) are similar, the reason post-processing alone is not enough is because of dynamic range. Each camera sensor has a certain number of stops of light it can capture. If you're within that range, you can adjust in post and arrive at an image similar to what you would've got had you exposed in the camera. If you aren't within that range, you clip the highlights or shadows.

There are a few reasons why manual mode is beneficial. They mostly relate to speed and accuracy of control. First, aperture and shutter speed have different effects on the result of the image (depth of field, and motion- stopping capability respectively).

For example, I went to the shoreline on Monday and photographed birds. There were terns flying around protecting their young, the young wandering and gaping for food, while osprey were fishing just offshore. For terns and fast- moving birds, shutter speeds in excess of 1/2000 sec are necessary and there are many times when 1/3200 sec is not enough. Meanwhile, the tern chicks being about 25ft away mean that depth of field is shallow because the subject is near (minimum focusing distance on that lens is about 19ft). So an aperture of F8 for chicks is helpful but F5.6 is better for the further subjects and faster motion.

There's no good way to have a camera adjusting multiple settings (ISO and either aperture or shutter speed) because it doesn't understand the circumstances. In order to do this with aperture or shutter priority camera modes, you would be constantly switching the dial between aperture and shutter priorities which requires a button press and command dial turn, as opposed to ONLY adjusting the desired setting using one of two command dials.

<comment><USER4> I love being in full manual and being able to adjust the shutter speed and aperture without taking my eye off the viewfinder. I did it more as an enthusiast and was able to get some decent "motion" pictures at a local racetrack.

Did a few weddings/senior pictures as side gigs but what I enjoyed the most was the thrill of getting the 'shot' in action moments where you have a split second and that is it. Also hiking some trail to be at the top of the summit to get a perfect sunset is also very rewarding.

Some of my photos can be found [https://www.timsoperphotography.com/norwayspeedway](https://www.timsoperphotography.com/norwayspeedway)

Simple website using zenfolio which has been abandoned as I now have a tech job that is full time so I don't have as much time for my photography hobby anymore.

<comment><USER3> Couldn't agree more about action shots, they're my favorite!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm a new/novice photographer... As a technically minded newbie I quickly mastered all the technical stuff like the exposure triangle, and efficient operation of the camera/lenses. By far the most challenging thing is being there at the right place and at the right time to capture interesting, well- composed images. Even subjects that never move change under different lighting conditions, and it turns out there's near infinite possibilities to how you can compose a shot of the same subject.

I read somewhere that a common saying in photojournalism is "f/8 and be there", and that's really the funnest part of the hobby IMO.

<comment><USER6> "f/8 and be there, for ages", would be my motto.

I've lost count of the times that I've got a great picture simply because I stuck around for half an hour or more, especially when photographing wildlife. Animals can exhibit some superb behaviours if you give them long enough and don't simply walk on after you've got the first shot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> With current digital sensors exposuring correctly doesn't even matter that much any more because of iso-invariance when under exposing photos. There's som uch information that wow. And yes, the auto exposure capabilities of the camera's are awesome if you have learnt how they work in different situations and how can you use them without fumbling.

Knowing the holy trinity (aperture, shutter speed and ISO) is still good to know and learning to use them in manual or in priority modes makes you understand the basic idea, how everything is related and what kind of settings are good for different situations.

I ended up being serious photography enthusiast. For me the currently most interesting thing to learn, is to try to make good photos with all-mechanical film Hasselblad without any automatics. That actually forces to think and plan a lot more about what you want before taking the photo. Also, really calculating holy trinity values in your head is fun (especially when you need to take into account additional nd filters and polarizers etc.

So if you photograph, try to shoot with different kind of gear and ways of photography. That teaches you a lot.

<comment><USER8> _With current digital sensors exposuring correctly doesn 't even matter that much any more because of iso-invariance when under exposing photos_

It still matters a lot if you're not controlling the shutter speed and want to freeze action. Some cameras prefer 1/30 or 1/60 second exposures but faster shutter speeds with higher ISO is an improvement, due to iso-invariance or even just the ability to adjust RAW files.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's amazing how amateur photographers seem to think there is something magic about pros... the difference between a Pro and a Keen amateur is almost never about the last 5% in exposure accuracy or focus accuracy. It's about getting to the right place and shooting the right subjects.

I am not a pro photographer but have been shooting lots of photos for years and have sold photos.

I notice most of the discussion here is argumentative and authoritative and tries to take the form of "always do it this way". "Always do it this way" is always dangerous and not very creative. I also notice the discussion here mostly does not differentiate between _ambient exposure_ and _flash /strobe exposure_. It's important to keep in mind any time you are using a flash you're balancing two separate exposures.

I use manual exposure regularly even though I have a "Pro" camera that has great autoexposure built in. I less often use manual focus as well even though I've got a camera with world class focus capability.

I use Aperture priority the most. I rarely use Shutter speed priority. It almost never does what I want any better than manual mode. I will occasionally use it for certain types of intentionally blurred shots where P pan the camera.

I tend to use full manual for _ambient_ in tough light situations that don't change. I am very very likely to use full manual for _ambient_ exposure any time I am pulling out flashes, particularly for off camera flash. Aperture- priority mode ambient exposure + AE flash exposure is almost always a recipe for disaster.

Another case for manual is "expose to the right" (ETTR). I am more likely to do that with exposure compensation but it can be a good reason to use full manual if you are using a camera where ETTR matters.

Perhaps the most impressive technical thing pros do to me is getting shots of super fast songbirds, swifts, swallows, etc.. that takes some serious practice. It is not just cause they have "Pro Autofocus". I've got one of those cameras and I have a pro level super telephoto (barely big enough for an entry point for birds) and it is still very hard to get those shots in focus. It doesn't matter how good your camera is if you can't even point it at the bird because the bird is that fast! Say you have (or rented) a 400mm, 600mm, 800mm super telephoto that costs as much as a car... it probably isn't a zoom. Good luck pointing that thing at the spot of action when stuff is moving, it's very hard.

<comment><USER10> I agree so much with the first statement. I got the cheapest Nikon DSLR on amazon and won a surf photography contest the first day I took it out to shoot because I was in the right place at the right time with perfect lighting. The others in the contest were pros and had way more experience and more expensive equipment. Knowing the subject you are shooting also helps a ton.

Shutter priority mode is my go to for surf pictures because it matters a lot to make sure you take shots at the right time during a wave.

<comment><USER11> "f/8 and be there" is the somewhat hackneyed phrase which covers this in the documentary photography space - the subject is much more important than the technical details.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I usually shoot in full manual with Live Exposure Preview and Live View (I use mirrorless so the viewfinder supports this as well). My camera (Sony A7) supports something called zebra, which hatches in areas that are overexposed.

Generally I use manual mode because I know exactly what kind of shutter speed I need given my motion and lighting (avoid blur), while attempting to stay under ISO 500, as the images become poor for pixel peepers over that.

I think if I were to be forced to use an Auto mode I would probably want to be able to specify "optimization priorities" to the camera. Maybe "Keep the ISO low at the expense of aperture" or "Get a fast shutter speed at any cost". But then it's hard and unnatural to set up, than to flick a few dials and see what the screen shows.

It also helps that I shoot with post in mind, so sometimes I under or overexpose on purpose when I know I can recover those highlights and shadows in post. It helps to take pictures at diff exposure levels and play with detail recovery to get a sense of how the sensor behaves with noise when boosting shadows or recovering highlights, and correlate that to what you see in live view.

</comment><comment><USER13> I thought this was going to be about using manual mode on your smartphone camera. Is that even possible?

<comment><USER14> There's a variety of apps that give you manual control. Apple has provided RAW access to sensor data for a few years now and I think some Android manufacturers beat them to it. You're still dealing with a tiny sensor but you can practice and get your mind around the concepts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Like many skills, learn to do it for yourself and then you'll be able to make much more informed decisions about when to use the computer to automate things for you.

</comment><comment><USER16> For those saying they have to use Manual because of unevenly lit subjects or background light: I use a combo of spot metering + lock exposure toggle.

I can then recompose and keep shooting. No need to dial my SS or ISO manually.

The only time I play with shutter speed is if I want to introduce motion blur or freeze action.

Or when doing night photography on a tripod, I don't want the camera raising the ISO because it's trying to compensate for motion blur that doesn't exist.

<comment><USER17> Spot metering is one way to do it, but you might find it's actually slower than using full manual once you get enough experience in a particular area (for example backlit stage shows). In full manual, you'll set your exposure and adjust on the fly in a single click as the light changes. Spot metering is slower because you have to find a decent spot to meter, then lock exposure, then go on to actually focus, frame, etc. It takes an extra few seconds and 2+ movements just to spot meter where adjusting your ISO is a single movement is much quicker (and can be done while you are framing for example).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> We actually had to learn about and do a small manual photography project for my wildlife biology class in school. The idea was that we needed to learn to take proper pictures for samples and other things under different conditions. It actually ended up being pretty fun and made me appreciate more the work that goes into taking really nice pictures.

</comment><comment><USER19> Does anyone have a recommendation for a good (affordable?) camera? I was thinking about the BlackMagic camera but I am not sure if it's worth the $2K for it's amazing video functionality since I rarely take videos. A budget intro camera would be awesome!

<comment><USER12> Blackmagic has 4K and 6K cameras now, which in my opinion is close enough to megapixel counts sufficient for stills. One of the main reasons I love the design of them (disclaimer I do not have one, opinion from web only) is

1) Touch screen UI that doesn't seem that bad 2) Power over USB-C and charge at the same time 3) Record to external SSD. I don't like trusting SD cards so this is a huge one.

With this said, if these features aren't important to you and you're just starting out, a Sony NEX can usually be had for like 150 CAD $ or so, and will produce quite good shots and can shoot RAW.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> >> I know almost no professionals who shoot on manual mode outside of studio settings.

Small sample size. Also greatly varies depending on the particular gear, shot, genre, etc...

Completely agree that aperture mode is an amazing and effective tool/method.

</comment><comment><USER21> I only use manual mode. Would never shoot in anything else.

You have complete control.

Iso, shuttered speed, and aputure need to be adjusted according to the situation.

All profession photographers I know shoot manual exclusively.

</comment><comment><USER22> Is it just me or now everytime the word shooting is mentioned I always think a mass shooting and more bad news ?

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm not a professional by a long shot, but I agree with the other commenters who say that half-manual modes (A and S) are very useful in all situations. The video was good, but I don't think he went into enough detail how the 3 settings are related. But first some history...

I took photography in high school when we had Pentax K-1000 manual film SLRs. The ISO was fixed at whatever film you put in, usually 100 or 400. Then you had to set your aperture and shutter speed for the correct exposure. There was a needle (essentially a volt-meter hooked to a photo-diode) in the viewfinder that indicated when the exposure was correct for the film ISO. Typically you would choose a speed or aperture for the scene you wanted, and adjust the other to get the exposure needle correct. To be honest, it was annoying and fiddly, because if you chose the speed wrong, you'd have to take your eyes off the viewfinder to set the dial. But it was really good for understanding how the 3 settings were related.

What I found much more convenient were cameras that had the half-auto aperture-priority mode where you manually set the aperture, and the camera sets the speed. As explained in the video, having aperture-priority means you are actively choosing the depth-of-field and you can change it for each shot if you want. You can increase the depth of field to make everything sharp, or you can reduce the depth of field to put bokeh in the foreground or background. For example, if I'm in the mountains and see pretty flowers in the foreground, I can quickly take 3 shots, one with the mountains in focus, one with the flowers in focus, and one with both--to see which is the best.

Shutter-priority is similar, where the shutter speed you choose determines the motion blur. For example, if you're shooting your kid on a bike, you can choose a high speed to make everything frozen, or you could choose a low speed and follow the subject to give a background motion blur--and you can take both shots within a second of each other.

As the other commenters say, this is what has carried over into DSLRs and can be really useful. Once you learn the trade-offs and choose A or S mode, you have a lot of control over the image. The inner ring of the lens usually controls the aperture in aperture-priority mode, so you have exposure control on your left hand holding the barrel of the lens. And with auto-ISO, the camera will increase the ISO so you can still shoot at 1/60 indoors to avoid motion blur. You never have to take your eyes off the viewfinder while adjusting the exposure and you have a lot of control over the outcome of the photo. With practice, the hand motions become automatic, and you can make split-second changes to capture a beautiful shot of that fleeting moment.

</comment><comment><USER24> Did anyone else disagree with his explanation that ISO was like " camera generated light"?

<comment><USER25> It's actually very clever I think. I know exactly what it does, but I have had a hard time explaining it to people who don't know about analog gain, noise floor and such things.

I usually resort to "high ISO makes your camera more sensitive in low light, but the images get smudgy if on too high an ISO".</comment></comment>


Show HN: Simulation of common page replacement algorithms in C - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/selbyk/pagesim

<comment><USER2> I so could have done with something like this for my Operating Systems exam last week. Never the less, it looks great!

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, yeah. It's from our second programming assignment where we were asked to implement 2 of the algorithms running one at a time, but I decided to completely rewrite it so I could compare all the algorithms side by side using varying methods.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Don't rush to conclusions - it's educational, not representative of real life performance.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I eventually want to add more realistic mathematical models to pull page refs from (exponential decline or something similar).

Using random page calls, the algorithms all perform approximately the same when there is a much higher discrepancy in the real world. When selecting algorithms to use in real use cases, the system page calls are monitored and then replayed into simulators like this one.

Still a few things to do before becoming practically usable, but it's good to compare the mechanisms of each paging algorithm and see how they work. I plan to add a configuration option so that it can be slowed to the point that someone could follow along with the algorithms.</comment></comment>


Ask HN:  How can I access Java from Lisp? - <AUTHOR>

I'm working on a simple little utility that I want to write as a personal project.  I want to use Lisp so that I can learn more about it, but I really need to access some Java code.<p>Obviously clojure is a choice, but I've already used that for a project and I'd like to try something new.  I've looked at Armed Bear Common Lisp, but its java integration seems somewhat... verbose.  Are there any other options here? <comment><USER2> Don't worry about verbosity, Armed Bear Common Lisp is the way to go. However, I think you'll have to alter some of the code in it because when it loads up scripts, it places them in the _armed-bear_ or _script_ package (I can't remember which).

</comment><comment><USER3> Rich Hickey released a few things for Java-Lisp interop before he decided to start over completely with Clojure.

See <http://jfli.sourceforge.net/>, for example.

There are other approaches (JLinker, etc.)

</comment><comment><USER4> <http://clojure.org></comment>


How Videogames Trained a Generation of Athletes - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/01/ff_gamechanger/ <comment><USER2> Have only read the first page, but it seems rather far stretched. Playing for time is an age old strategy, why should it have come from a video game?

<comment><USER3> I'm not a football fan, but it seems singular to me that an amateur at the sport would react instantly to an unexpected situation, sprint down the the length of the field, and then with the deafening roar of the crowd in his ears and the lights exploding in his face and the goal line mere inches in front of him and unseen defenders nipping at his heels and visions of being the hero dancing around in his head would suddenly remember "I'm in this for the game, not the touchdown: pivot right and get them to waste six seconds." except due to heavy, heavy operant conditioning.

<comment><USER2> I must have missed the part where it says the guy was an amateur at the sport? The article describes him as "(team xyz)'s Quarterback...", so I assume he played a lot and had a lot of training? But even at school sports, we were habitually playing for time. It's just what you do if you are in the lead and the end is near.

Also, I am sorry, but catching a ball in football can hardly be an unexpected event.

<comment><USER4> Catching a ball off a deflection is pretty surprising, and you generally don't see players spontaneously considering things and deciding to run out the clock when the end zone's in front of him and defenders are behind him, especially not in a situation where you need the touchdown to win. Grinding down the clock in football is generally accomplished by play selection, with the use of a running game rather than a passing game, because incomplete passes stop the clock. The only other example of this that I know of, and a much more dramatic one, is Brian Westbrook's kneel-down on the 1 yard line -- [http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-network- playbook/09000d5d80547...](http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-network- playbook/09000d5d80547e6f/WK-15-Anatomy-of-a-Play-Brian-Westbrook-s-game- clinching-kneel-down)

<comment><USER2> I don't know football at all, so I can only take your word for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Semi-relatedly: the more I do engineering management, the more I feel like I've gone back to playing WoW.</comment>


Why I bike without a helmet - <AUTHOR> http://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2012/10/20/why-bike-without-helmet/dl2fLQOOVBfYf7Xu1KpCcI/story.html <comment><USER2> Can't wait for the follow up, "How I'm dealing with my Traumatic Brain Injury"

Seriously, I get that one can rationalize away : _" I have never been in a bike accident nor experienced a close call, though I know what has happened to less fortunate bikers. I try to be cautious: I don't fly through intersections, and I always look both ways. I believe the helmet has limitations and won't protect me in many kinds of accidents. "_

Helmets do one thing really really well, they mitigate brain trauma. Sure they look stupid, sure they are bulky, sure they take time to put on and put off. When you lose control of your bike, or it is taken from you by circumstances beyond your control, a helmet will give you a fighting chance to avoid having your greatest asset made irrelevant.

<comment><USER3> The cost of wearing a helmet is very low compared to the gain of having been wearing one during an accident (which could very well be caused by someone other than the cyclist).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I had a nice pleasant surprise when reading this on a mobile device, I ignored the banner as to download the app, and halfway down the article, I was suddenly taken to a download page with no means of dismissing.

This happened three times.

</comment><comment><USER5> I can see doing risky things and accepting the risks (mountain biking, bringing but not wearing your life preserver kayaking, etc.). Just don't tell me you have a "good reason" for taking those unnecessary risks.

</comment><comment><USER6> Head wounds aren't very fashionable. Needs lesson in statistics.</comment>


Anonymous To Release Documents Proving BOA Committed Fraud on Monday - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/03/12/955682/-Anonymous-To-Release-Document-Proving-BOA-Committed-Fraud-on-Monday <comment><USER2> I likely will not be surprised by whatever they release. I will be _genuinely_ surprised if anything comes of it. This news strikes me in the same way as a headline proclaiming "US Congress is beholden to special interests" or such.

I guess it's good in that we will have something concrete to which one can refer when trying to convince the friends and family to join a credit union.

<comment><USER3> _I guess it's good in that we will have something concrete to which one can refer when trying to convince the friends and family to join a credit union._

This is the big lesson of this release: don't buy shady companies, even when they are cheap, because they will ruin your reputation.

Bank of America Home Loans was probably largely above-board with respect to its lending during the mortgage crisis, but then they decided to buy Contrywide, which was ... not so good. Now they get to take all of Countrywide's losses, both financially and in terms of public relationships. _Countrywide_ didn't misbehave, _Bank of America Corporation_ did, because Countrywide is defunct. And then people close their BofA accounts to make a statement, even though there was no relationship between BofA and Countrywide when Countrywide was being bad.

That said, this is all just speculation. Maybe this is actually about BofA. But I kind of doubt it.

<comment><USER4> Anecdotal experience here, but my father who had a Countrywide home loan before BoA took over has lamented that change since the first day. The big issues for him have been customer service, at Countrywide, the people he talked to were personable and handled things in a timely manner. While dealing with BoA, the people he talked with couldn't wait to get him off the phone, accused him of fault when there was an issue with the bill caused by BoA, and took forever to deal with said issues. He has been trying to get his loan refinanced for 4 months now, but they have a queue, and they only process 8 refinances a month. Makes a lot of sense...

Now this doesn't prove anything towards what Anon is going to release, but it just shows, to me at least, that BoA very likely is not so innocent in all this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thank you Anon, you may be freedoms last hope. Wish I was joking.

<comment><USER6> No kidding, when the last hope for freedom is a bunch of bored teenage kids hanging out on a anime related board, we are so fucked.

<comment><USER7> "Every joke is a tiny revolution." --George Orwell

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _"I seen some of the emails… I can tell you Grade A Fraud in its purest form…" read one tweet. "He Just told me he have GMAC emails showing BoA order to mix loan numbers to not match it's Documents.. to foreclose on Americans.. Shame."_

This is about as persuasive as a 419 letter. Someone who is only semi-literate is unlikely to have a firm grasp of legal issues.

<comment><USER9> I suspect lawyers in all non-english-speaking countries may disagree with you. Equating poor english grammar with low intelligence is making rather a lot of conclusions from little data.

<comment><USER8> Did I say anything about intelligence? No.

Is someone with poor English grammar skills likely to have an accurate understanding of either US legal codes or the legal implications of BoA's internal memos...both of which are written in English?

I can read and write French, but it's been so long since I did so on a regular basis that I'd probably have difficulty writing a postcard in that language. Would you trust me to perform legal analysis on a pile of French documents? Because if you would, I'd like to be paid up front, in cash.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I still don't understand why if this is srsly damning evidence that WikiLeaks, who hypothetically had it first, didn't lead with that before pissing off every government that can read English. If they'd led with bank fraud they'd be held as heroes by the government/ press, all the more hilarious when they later bite those same hands. Running things in this order means the last leak wasn't nearly as effective and this one is likely to be tarred by the reputation of those who brought it to light.

There has to be some bit of the story we don't have here to make a bunch of very smart people act this way.

<comment><USER11> My guess: because it's somewhat tangential to their sekrit plan. Namely, pissing off the governments and forcing them to pick one of "secure and hobbled", "leaky and embarrassed", or "nothing to hide".

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Original source: [http://www.zerohedge.com/article/hacker-collective- anonymous...](http://www.zerohedge.com/article/hacker-collective-anonymous- release-documents-proving-bank-america-committed-fraud-monday)

<comment><USER13> Original original (Gawker) source: [http://gawker.com/#!5781158/what-does- anonymous-have-on-bank...](http://gawker.com/#!5781158/what-does-anonymous- have-on-bank-of-america)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> While Monday's better than, say, "250k slowly over the course of a year" (looks like it's only at 5500, could be more than a year...), can someone explain to me why one should wait? Maybe letting the Japan news die down a little bit or something?

<comment><USER15> Basic marketing - the idea is to get something, anything, noticed by the major media, and the only way that will happen is for it to be trending on Twitter or something.

The same principle as having an announcement splash page to gather a mailing list, so when you launch you can tell everybody on it and try to get a critical mass going.

Attention inertia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why not just release the documents and let them speak for themselves? The fact that he feels the need to hype their release makes me suspicious that the extent of fraud might not be that great, thus the need to hype it ahead of time to make it seem like a bigger deal than it is.

</comment><comment><USER17> One thing to consider: If these emails did contain evidence of fraud, the evidence would not be permitted in a court of law because the evidence was obtained (I assume) without warrant and illegally.

<comment><USER18> IANAL, but I'm pretty sure it's not admissible when the _government_ obtains it without warrant and illegally. When evidence is revealed by someone else acting illegally, it's fair game for the government to use it.

Angelo Mozillo is free, though, so I'm not getting my hopes up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> They've been released: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2321373>

</comment><comment><USER20> Oh no oh no oh no Anon pissed off Assange!! Whatever will he do..

</comment><comment><USER21> as financial people continue to invent securities and investment instruments that have no basis directly relating to the demand and supply curve of physical items and than use that to directly bet against their very own customers putting firms and countries at huge risk will see an increase on whistle blower reports on all layers of the financial con games..

While some of Anon methods are certainly illegal. Which is the greater good Anon in jail or the fraudsters with the title financier..

There are unfortunately for this Financier Business Women and Man class far more people that got harmed than helped which should not weigh in on this debate but does explain the motivations ...

We are taking workers future earnings to 'bail out these bastards' so maybe the slightly illegal stuff has no point for debate here until we start seeing financiers in jail..

If you think that is harsh..

In the US laws on books that banks cannot be directly involved in liar loans.. ...all loans have to have verifiable collateral either assets or combo of income and credit ratings...its covered by Uniform Commercial Code, FDIC, Federal Reserve requirements, etc..

This is not the only area..remember when banks recently refused to revalue and write off loans? They had US Congress, etc pass new accounting laws that make it no longer illegal to continue with those very bad valuations..

<comment><USER22> I'm troubled by your implication that the end justifies the means. That path leads to evil.

I also think you're not understanding finance very well. There's no rational reason to insist that financial instruments must be "directly relating to the demand and supply curve of physical items". There are plenty of good reasons for such instruments, facilitating risk management [1] and liquidity in the markets.

[1] Of course, in this case, the particular instruments did the opposite of risk management. This is because their risk models were flawed. I agree with you regarding the moral hazard created by gov't meddling, making it so that financial institutions don't need to learn lessons about ensuring their risk models are based in better-understood methods, or are at least very conservative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> In case it wasn't obvious before: "Anonymous" is Wikileaks.

<comment><USER24> It is to be expected that a pseudo-organization concocted (or shall I say "arisen") to combat a government which is itself magnificently designed to quickly and thoroughly shut down any organization formed in its opposition, that such a resisting force might have a hard-to-understand structure, purely out of necessity.

Basically, there's a virtual firehose of disgruntled people, and then there are a few (a "few" in this context meaning a few hundred) smart people who facilitate their efforts to do damage to the system they collectively revile. For example, I doubt that the creators of LOIC have ever used it themselves. Assange used to break into systems himself, but these days he just makes it easier for other people who break into systems to report what they find.

In the case of Wikileaks, these facilitators are at least themselves organized, lead by Julian Assange. In the case of Anonymous, they are less organized, spread across lots of random IRC channels, wikis, and imageboards, so that even the people running the show don't know who is running the show.

Such a system would, of course, collapse immediately, if there weren't a constant, massive influx of disgruntled people with Internet connections and plenty of free time to read through bugtraq archives and free online hacking guides, and the recklessness necessary to not care if you get caught (notice how various arrests haven't stopped anyone). Those who don't get caught, they eventually start teaching other people, providing kids who wander into lcirc asking "how does I hacked BoA" with the information necessary to make it happen. Recall that the hack that took down HBGary wasn't technically astounding; it was a combination of HBGary's total incompetence and Anon's willingness to try shit until it worked.

So, could this be Wikileaks operating under the banner of Anonymous, and is Wikileaks itself a part of Anonymous? It's hard to say, because Anonymous is itself more of a phenomenon than a group, a criticality accident of discontent, if you will. They both operate on the same principles, though.

(see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticality_accident> )

<comment><USER25> I don't agree with everything in your assessment, but I applaud you for thinking/knowing beyond "4chan did it".</comment></comment></comment>