The HTTP OPTIONS method and potential for self-describing RESTful APIs - <AUTHOR> http://zacstewart.com/2012/04/14/http-options-method.html <comment><USER2> If you look at the Django REST Framework project you can see this kind of behavior by default. For example:

<http://rest.ep.io/pygments/>

Notice the OPTIONS button on the top right of the browse-able interface. For example:

$ curl -X OPTIONS <http://rest.ep.io/pygments/>

{"fields": { "lexer": "ChoiceField", "code": "CharField", "style": "ChoiceField", "linenos": "BooleanField", "title": "CharField"}, "parses": ["application/json", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded", "multipart/form- data", "application/xml", "application/yaml"], "renders": ["application/json", "application/json-p", "text/html", "application/xhtml+xml", "text/plain", "application/xml", "application/yaml"], "name": "Pygments Root", "description": "\nThis example demonstrates a simple RESTful Web API around the awesome pygments library.\nThis top level resource is used to create highlighted code snippets, and to list all the existing code snippets.\n" }

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome! I had no idea Django was doing this already.

<comment><USER3> It doesn't, this is the name of the project: "Django REST Framework". <https://github.com/tomchristie/django-rest-framework> :) It deserves more attention, it's put together well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, nice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That is a way to make non-REST API be more like REST.

REST APIs _must_ be self-describing from the start. Those kinds of responses should be sent for GET requests!

This is a must-read clarification from Roy, as most "REST" APIs are less RESTful than HTML pages built on top of them:

[http://roy.gbiv.com/untangled/2008/rest-apis-must-be- hyperte...](http://roy.gbiv.com/untangled/2008/rest-apis-must-be-hypertext- driven)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure. I'm not so interested in arguing about the nuances of what REST really is. Even Leonard Richardson gracefully sidesteps the arguments by talking about resource oriented architecture.

The part the interestes me most is documenting the parameters so that web services can better understand how to work with each other, instead of someone like me pouring over the docs and writing mundane glue code to tie Twitter search features into a service.

<comment><USER5> Check out Google's API Discovery Service[1] and a video from the 2010 I/O Conference[2]. It may not be the best basis for developing a RESTful standard but there's some good stuff there. I especially like how they demonstrate building an API in that video. I'd like to see some open source projects built around this concept (instead we keep seeing similar services that aren't open, often incomplete and unusable).

[1] <https://developers.google.com/discovery/>

[2] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyu5ZxGUfgs> (~35:30 is where they actually demonstrate building an API)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have for quite some time wanted to see self-describing information/functionality akin to WSDLs for JSON-based web services/APIs.

There's something quite nice about being able to have a program intelligently build up knowledge of how to interact with an API, and be able to build a set of objects from a definition to facilitate that interaction. It's a serious weakness in non-XML APIs.

Full disclosure: I particularly do not like XML-based web services, so please don't misread this as a cheap shot at JSON APIs. I prefer JSON, but programming against APIs would be so much nicer if there were a WSDL for JSON APIs.

</comment><comment><USER7> I was thinking a little today about self documenting web APIs in a similar vein to command line tools. An example of web service APIs that currently expose capabilities in a machine readable manner are the OGC Web Map and Web Feature Services (WMS, WFS) which accept a GET with a request parameter of GetCapabilities and return service metadata as XML.

</comment><comment><USER8> Web browsers will send an OPTIONS request when you try to send an xhr to a different domain. See the Mozilla post on this: [http://hacks.mozilla.org/2009/07/cross-site- xmlhttprequest-w...](http://hacks.mozilla.org/2009/07/cross-site- xmlhttprequest-with-cors/)

<comment><USER9> Yes; the info that returns is in headers, though, which could work just the same even if the OPTIONS response also includes REST action details in the body and/or other headers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Funnily enough I saw this for the first time today when doing an XHR to a different domain and was intrigued. Amazing how even with tools/tech you use every day, you can still learn new things!

</comment><comment><USER11> It would be really interesting to see this in combination with JSON-LD for linking (meta)data.

<http://json-ld.org>

</comment><comment><USER12> The OP says almost no-one uses it, but as a concrete (admittedly non-RESTful) example of one of the few users, Subversion does use OPTIONS.

<comment><USER13> Pretty sure Subversion's HTTP access "inherits" the use of OPTIONS from its WebDAV roots, actually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Anything worthy of a document should have its own URL. OPTIONS could potentially be used to provide that URL:

[http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www- tag/2003Feb/0138.htm...](http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www- tag/2003Feb/0138.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> I discovered this when I was debugging a Netbeans generated REST Webservices. The web UI makes clever use of OPTIONS in order to list the available services and their parameters automatically :).

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd be interested in seeing the format it uses. I want to start working on a standard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I noticed before that some times the Safari in iOS (5.1) will send OPTIONS requests. In Rails, the router will simply route them, so they are definitely easy to use, however, the issue is that most apps will handle them as GETs, so it may break things. I rebooted the iPad when it was doing this and the behavior stopped, never finding out why this was taking place. I have not noticed it again.

</comment><comment><USER17> Given a series of increasingly sophisticated verbs and language processing, there should be no practical reason why machines could not use and write APIs to talk among themselves and build their own interactive services. Too sci-fi for now?

<comment><USER18> With sufficient metadata about resources this would be perfectly feasible. My thought, though, is that maintaining that metadata (so-and-so needs access to such-and-such, which changes oh-so-often and which is typically a binary blob 0.5-3MB, or whatever) would in the short term be more work than just writing the interfaces by hand. For large systems it might work, but man, who's going to want to fix the system that writes the APIs when it breaks?

<comment><AUTHOR> What I'm trying to write for Sinatra would generate that documentation automatically. You just make your resources and endpoints like you always would and (hopefully) the gem will generate an appropriate JSON object describing them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We've started working on a spec for the response body. <https://github.com/anodejs/RestDoc>

</comment><comment><USER19> I'd personally like to see some form of JSON-RPC catch on, which could then be used here.</comment>


Why you should use Rails over PHP - <AUTHOR> http://www.sentia.com.au/blog/5-reasons-why-you-should-use-ruby-on-rails-for-web-development-over-php

<comment><USER2> I'm not really a fan of big and magical frameworks. So the existence of Rails doesn't actually make me think Ruby is superior to PHP, although I need to try Sinatra. That being said I like Ruby's OOP. But in the end all OOP is the same. In my opinion, if you're an experienced PHP developer, and you're looking to expand your skillset, gaining another standard web development OOP language isn't going to change much of your value proposition. I would look closer into things like Node, Golang, Rust, Functional languages and Python (for scientific computing). Getting skills in Ruby in Rails seems like you're just adding another web dev language to your existing web dev language capability. It's all about MB vs MC.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is not quite as in-depth an argument as one might have hoped for. If you really have so many reasons for the superiority of Rails over PHP then don't beg the question.

I mean, if this were serious, it would be "Why you should use Ruby over PHP" anyway, wouldn't it? If you want to compare frameworks, compare Rails and Laravel.

</comment><comment><USER4> Interesting. I do feel as though Rails could replace PHP as a mindshare as time goes on.</comment>


The Ascent of Man - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ascent_of_Man

<comment><USER2> The Ascent of Man is utterly fantastic. It, along with Civilisation[0] and Connections[1] are among my favourite documentaries ever.

Here's an excerpt from Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe on Jacob Bronowski[2]

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilisation_(TV_series)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilisation_\(TV_series\))

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_(TV_series)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_\(TV_series\))

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bNK97nIsKs#t=141](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bNK97nIsKs#t=141)</comment>


SSA and the Lambda Tribe - <AUTHOR> http://wingolog.org/archives/2011/07/12/static-single-assignment-for-functional-programmers/

<comment><USER2> To someone like me who's interested in compilers but doesn't have deep understanding of their workings, this is a really fascinating article! I appreciate the history, maybe should dig in to some of the linked papers ...

</comment><comment><USER3> I skimmed this article, but it really deserves a nice bowl of cereal and a comfy chair to go with it. This looks like serious fun. More like this please!

</comment><comment><USER4> The slides to Zadeck's keynote at the Static Single-Assignment Form Seminar, 2009, are worth reading for the history:

<http://www.cdl.uni-saarland.de/ssasem/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed! I liked Wimmer's notes on SSA in HotSpot too, though for other reasons. Too bad there were no slides for the GCC experience report.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> great article! It reminds me of Curien's work on categorical combinators, where the machine definition is given by the equational axioms of the model, in this case the cartesian closed categories.

I don't think McCarthy was informed by the lambda calculus either. I've heard his background was in functional analysis and he was motivated by symbolic differentiation when inventing lisp. I'd be interested to know this history better.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, his first papers and presentations on lisp already delved into basic pattern-based symbolic differentiation. What a brilliant guy...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> wingo, is this line a typo?

       let t1 = f t1

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep. Fixed, thanks.</comment></comment>


George RR Martin: 'When I began GoT I thought it might be a short story' - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/nov/10/books-interview-george-rr-martin <comment><USER2> > When I began, I didn't know what the hell I had. I thought it might be a > short story; it was just this chapter, where they find these direwolf pups. > Then I started exploring these families and the world started coming alive

Talking about the difficulties of estimation. At least he managed to publish a few books. Imagine that he waited to publish anything until the complete work is finished. Sounds familiar?

<comment><USER3> > At least he managed to publish a few books.

Beyond that he released a number of them in rapid succession. For a while there the ideas must have just been coming as quickly as he could jot them down. Then, for those who are in the know, he quickly ran into an issue where continuing the plot threads he had setup all came to a confluence point where decisions needed to be made before he was prepared to do so.

From what I understand extensive revisionary work was done. Entire sections and chapters of the story were rewritten to accommodate for the new trajectory for the adjusted plot lines of various involved characters. And, this is my least positive memory of all of this, he actually brought in some outside help to ensure he was capable of undoing what has been dubbed as the "Meereenese_Knot":

[https://gameofthrones.fandom.com/wiki/Meereenese_Knot](https://gameofthrones.fandom.com/wiki/Meereenese_Knot)

For a less "as far as my terrible memory can remember" version of what I explained above here is a quote:

> "The first three novels each came out within two years of each other, in > 1996, 1998, and 2000 respectively. However, it took another eleven years for > Martin to write the fourth and fifth books, A Feast for Crows (2005) and A > Dance with Dragons (2011). Partially, this was because A Feast for Crows and > A Dance with Dragons were originally one novel, which grew so long that > author George R.R. Martin later decided to split it up into two books (the > events in both happen concurrently but follow separate characters)."

Three novels from 1996 to 2000. Another 11 years for the next two. Here we are, patiently waiting, for the 6th book of the series, "A Dream of Spring".

Of course the majority of people loudly banging their shields complaining about Martin's lack of shipping have probably never undertaken the task of writing a feature-length novel before. I'm sure an even more comical percentage of those have actually released a multi-art series with anywhere near the outrageous amount of characters, named placed, and other in-world lore or detail that make G.R.R.M.'s work feel so "real" and "lived-in".

I know I've never sat there while reading only to think, "Oh, there's this many more pages before it's done? This is such a boring slog." Entertainment is a word that I feel falls short of describing the type of enjoyment I get out of the Game of Thrones series.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> GoT is a good example of people being irrationally self-entitled.

Every time the subject comes up on Reddit, there are people who are genuinely mad at the guy like he wronged them for taking so long to end-cap the series.

It reminds me of the subset of my forum users who get out their pitchforks just because I, the creator, haven't been around for a while, like I owe them yet more of my free time. Or as if they've paid me money and I'm squandering it.

<comment><USER5> Not that it excuses bad behaviour of fans, but I think there are a lot of people genuinely concerned that GRRM is going to die before he finishes it. They've seen it happen before with the Wheel of Time series.

<comment><USER6> I have a feeling GRRM is concerned about dying a little more than his fans are concerned of him dying... If there is a legitimate reason to believe he'll die (age, obesity, unhealthiness etc) then maybe he doesn't even want to finish the series and enjoy his last years of life doing something else?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I know it's not really the done thing but I wonder if he'd be happier if he just hired a team of writers to finish out the series for him based on his outline.

<comment><USER8> He has two fans help him out.

<comment><USER9> I think that was just for 'The World of Ice and Fire'

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> From the article "I was going to sleep thinking of Aegon and Jaehaerys and waking up thinking of them and I couldn't wait to get the typewriter."

Find it surprising that he uses a typewriter. never heard of writers using typewriters in this day and age.

<comment><USER11> I remember reading that he still uses a DOS computer to write his novel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I always wondered why there is so little magic in the stories universe?

Why do white walkers have acceess to magic but no one else?

<comment><USER13> Because it's just too simple an instrument to use, and viewers instinctively know it.

<comment><USER14> Isn't that like saying science is just too simple of an instrument? Or Money? Or personal ability? Or power to command people to do what you demand? It's not as if magic has no rules, nor limit. It's depends on what the write makes with it, like with every other ressource and plot-tool.

<comment><USER15> While magic and its limits are indeed defined by the author, the problem with fantasy worlds with widely available magic is that it usually ends up permeating the universe and being at the center of the story. Think of Harry Potter or LOTR or even going back in history to the tales of King Arthur. Game of Thrones is not a fantasy tale as much as a human one.

George Martin chose to make the story about people and the struggle for power and ideals and everything else that is human. And even with magic being barely a presence, it still is a force able to radically influence the game - but not much more than money, or armies, or human ability, which are still powerful enough to be relevant.

I think if magic was more widely available, it would either have needed to be trivial, not powerful magic, or these other resources would have suffered.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


More Turing-completeness in surprising places - <AUTHOR> http://kristerw.blogspot.com/2016/01/more-turing-completeness-in-surprising.html <comment><USER2> After Rule 110 nothing can surprise me about Turing completeness anymore.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd like to see more writeups on Turing-completeness in a certain situation and a usable alternative that's Turing Incomplete. There's a lot of discussion of the problem with little of the solutions. This is important as busy IT people or even hobbyist coders Google for solutions they can incorporate into their code.

I'm doing my part working from someone saying System F was Incomplete along with its Haskell tie-in that removes that. Collecting papers on extensions, transformations, certified compilation, FP compilation, etc. for people trying to build on that in the future. Still push state machines with interface checks for imperative style as that worked in high assurance development.

Other than that, what can I do about the problem in all its manifestations? I'm not a domain expert in the problem or the spots it appears. Don't see much in solutions outside LANGSEC teams or prior work from high assurance (eg interacting FSM's). Need more work on alternatives instead of just spotting Turing Completeness and developing demos of it.</comment>


We don't support Internet Explorer, and we're calling that a feature - <AUTHOR> https://paydirtapp.com/blog/we-dont-support-ie/ <comment><USER3> Aw man. As a bootstrapping web business guy, I can say I've had way more problems with supporting iPads and iPhones than IE. IE costs me $0 to support, and I don't even bother (nobody asks!). Supporting hip and popular Apple browsers can run me a grand in a fast minute. Pleasing early adopters without working really well on the iPad3 is a tough sell.

I think startups fighting to support < IE9 is a done decision (don't do it). Start worrying about mobile and tablet platforms instead. 'cause the future, it's knocking.

I'm not crazy about getting an iPad myself, but I'm starting to feel cornered into spending hundreds of $$ on one just to keep those early adopters happy. I think this is where the real browser/device compatibility discussion is, not around IE.

<comment><USER4> I'm confused why you believe you need hardware for testing? iOS simulator should be plenty sufficient in any standard dev environment...

<comment><USER5> Buying a mac to run the simulator on is much more expensive than buying an ipad.

<comment><USER6> You can get a refurbished Mac Mini for around the same cost as a new iPad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is not supporting IE, and there is blocking IE.

You are blocking IE - I know because I changed my user agent on my firefox browser and you blocked me, and that is not cool!

You don't even offer an option to let me try anyway!

Use feature detection if you must, ignore IE completely in testing if you wish, but do not actively block it or you are just as bad as those who only support IE.

<comment><USER8> Completely disagree. There are two very major problems with this idea:

1\. Your reputation suffers when users encounter issues while using the browser that you don't support.

2\. The support cost of "letting users try anyway" is non-zero, and probably significant.

<comment><USER9> As a counterexample, let's consider Google's blocking of Opera. Google routinely blocks Opera when rolling out new stuff. I kind of get it, because of your point 1.

However, they sometimes offer a "try anyway"-link and sometimes not. The times that I can not easily "try anyway" makes me dislike Google much more than the times that I "try anyway" and it ends up broken in funky ways.

Bottom line; Yes, your reputation suffers when users encounter issues. Your reputation _also_ suffers when users encounter the big blocking issue of not being welcome at all.

<comment><USER10> I think there are some differences here:

Google are trying to keep existing users happy with the "try anyway" link. This is a new business, and they have decided they don't want to support IE.

At worst, this annoys die-hard IE users, but they're not your customers anyway.

The danger of adding a try anyway link is that people will click it, then still call and complain that your site doesn't work _even if you place a huge disclaimer telling them IE is unsupported_.

Finally, your website may do things that not only break in IE, but can cause your users to lose data when it does break. Yes, standard backups, never deleting data rules apply. But there is time spent either recovering, or explaining to users why you won't recover data for them.

<comment><USER11> One thing to bear in mind is that Opera employs "web openers" who will lobby and actively help Google to support the browser (so that "try me" link may not be as superficial as it looks). That said, blocking IE is silly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > _"In reality we've received exactly zero requests for IE support, angry or > otherwise."_

Why would someone bother contacting you when it appears that your site is broken? In other words, the call to action doesn't display technical competence - indeed it implies a level of technical incompetence which probably is not justified.

"We're really sorry, but Paydirt isn't playing nice with your browser" doesn't inspire confidence in the product - it doesn't suggest a high level of customer service, either. Would I really want to trust something as critical as invoicing to this company?

Furthermore, not supporting IE doesn't scale well. At 10,000 users 1.6% is $1600 a month in revenue. At 100,000 it's nearly $200,000 a year in potential revenue - all for what is mostly a one time expense.

Finally, where does this leave room for expanding services such as letting my customer's see their project in real time?

I don't see a business case for it. I'm not saying that there isn't one - <USER2> that it hasn't be made.

<comment><USER13> 1.6% is 1.6% no matter how big the number is...

Personally, if my app were making 12 MILLION DOLLARS a year I'd either a) not care about that $200k a year or b) I'd then have the resources to do something about it

If I were these guys I'd support Spanish and French long before I'd bother chasing that 1.6%, but no one is being critical of them not doing that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly. There are many ways to alienate potential users (missing languages, missing features, etc). In the early stages we've learned the importance of focussing on the biggest bottlenecks first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> You may have mis-interpreted the fact that because 1.6% of your users have IE, that means that you're in a space where those customers won't use IE.

What it may mean is that you don't have very many customers. If you were mainstream, you'd have more IE users... just like the rest of the Internet.

It's okay not to be mainstream... but, if time tracking is a competitive and profitable space, your competitors may be happy to share this blog post with their prospective users.

<comment><USER15> I think it's more critical than just having less IE users in that space... The thing is, 1.6% of total traffic does _not_ equal 1.6% browser usage.

If all your IE visitors are seeing is a landing page and a message saying "sorry, we're too lazy to support for your browser", then of course they'll turn around and never come back. If they were to let IE users through, that number would most likely jump up - significantly.

I know a couple of hardcore IT guys and programmers that are really happy with IE9, and hate Firefox and Chrome with a passion. It happens!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > _I've spent literally hundreds of hours trying to get sites to render pixel- > perfect across various versions of various browsers_

Why? This is a sub-optimal approach. The same machine with the same OS and the same version of the same browser can render very different looks just because they user has different settings.

How do you know that your user even has a visual display? Does it matter to you if they have a portrait or landscape display?

> _future versions of IE will probably be standards compliant_

Are you saying that all your code is standards compliant and you're not using any browser-specific extensions?

<comment><USER17> I can answer second one. 60 counts for -webkit, 58 counts for -moz, 17 counts for -khtml.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> One thing I hate is websites that block me from trying to use a site based on my browser. Give me a stern warning and let me use at my own risk. I'm not defending IE this has happened just as much in firefox and chrome for me.

I applied for a job recently that wanted me to take a test that required IE and windows. I passed on the job because that test was a fail.

</comment><comment><USER19> The web, like anything, has costs and benefits. A big benefit is that you and develop and deploy an app once, centrally, and anyone can access it from anywhere, on any sort of web device. The cost of that is that you can't control how they're accessing it. To have the benefit, you have to accept the cost.

By shirking the cost of providing even some level of support for IE, you're ditching the benefits afforded to the part-time copywriter who needs to stay at her desk and work her lunch hour during the office job she keeps to make ends meet. You're ditching the benefits afforded to the business owner on the road whose laptop won't join the hotel wifi and has to use the hotel's "business center" to issue the invoice needed to meet his mortgage payment. You're ditching the benefit of a happy customer evangelising the product to a colleague, and wanting to give them a quick demo by logging in on whichever laptop is currently hooked up to the meeting-room projector.

The times when a user doesn't have control over their environment are the times when they need a product to come through for them the most. Especially when that product is their means of getting paid.

Not being able to offer "amazing things with canvas" to IE (or any browser) is okay. Not offering support to be able to log in and perform a set of basic key tasks from any browser whatsoever is, to my mind, throwing away one of the biggest benefits the web can offer as a platform.

</comment><comment><USER20> I target a similar audience (freelancers). If anything, a feature would be supporting IE, especially when your app does a lot with CSS3 and bleeding edge HTML5 stuff.

And features need to be justified. Planscope (<http://planscope.io>) gets less than 2% of all traffic from IE (chart: <http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2205912/iestats.png>), and for actual accounts there's only been one person with IE - and that was a client that one of my customers invited in. 5 minutes later, Chrome Frame was added and everyone was happy.

I've also recently built a social network for amateur gardeners. The average age was probably 50. Did I ensure IE was fully supported? You bet.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good feedback. Thanks bdunn.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> My personal web projects always start with standard-conforming HTML with forms and links. They're fully interoperable contributions to the world-wide web and should be usable by every browser and robot written in the last sixteen years. I call that a feature, and I'm disappointed that so many devs set their sights lower.

<comment><USER22> That's nice. The problem is that Internet Explorer doesn't conform to these standards. What do you do in this situation?

<comment><USER21> IE has a nasty habit of sniffing content or examining URLs and disregarding the actual media type of a resource, but it hasn't come up much in practice, and otherwise I haven't seen any showstopping problems in talking HTTP and rendering semantic HTML. Its CSS and javascript are a mess, but those are optional, and I'd be embarrassed to release anything that would become completely unusable without them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Ignoring almost 30% of the internet and calling it a "feature" doesn't make it the right thing to do, or the smartest thing to do.

As you grow and (hopefully) become more successful you may start running into friction from IE users who want to use your service but can't.

Once you've saturated the market of other browser users, how will you continue to grow?

When you get there I think you might regret not investing in IE support today.

What about your application is SO compelling and SO difficult to support in IE that you can afford to ignore that entire market segment?

</comment><comment><USER24> I didn't support IE until, much to my chagrin, I discovered about 30% of my hits were from IE. Fortunately, simply putting the !doctype meta-tag (or whatever it is) fixed almost all my issues (at least for IE 8+)

<comment><AUTHOR> Very wise. This post is by no means a prescription for everybody. We're lucky that our demographic tend to use stronger browsers. Actually, when I exclude blog traffic the IE percentage drops further. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> If you are spending a lot of time fixing html/css issues in IE6, 7 or 8 it maybe due to over using floats and clears. Especially for elements inside a container block which are spread apart from each other like elements in a header block (

 or  if HTML5).

For the header block where you have elements spread apart from each other the better solution is to add position: relative in the div id="header" and then absolute position the elements within the header (i.e. div id="logo" and on the ul for the navigation; float the li(s) though).

Using floats, margins and clears to position the MAJORITY of your elements will prove to be frustrating once you test in IE (6,7 & sometimes 8).

<comment><USER26> This is interesting because I use a pseudo-grid system with plenty of floats and clears. For some reason (research), it seems to look perfectly fine in IE 6+ and Quirks Mode.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> > We don't spend hours debugging obscure IE bugs

IE "bugs" are rarely obscure. Most "bugs" are actually as-intended behavior, which is documented on MSDN. Do your homework.

> Sensible browsers can do amazing things (canvas, SVG animations, CSS3, web- > sockets, blazingly fast JS), and limiting usage to these lets Paydirt take > full advantage of these new technologies.

As was mentioned earlier, graceful degradation renders this point moot. Web pages _do not_ need to look and function the same in every browser.

> Originally, we feared that we'd receive a torrent of angry emails from avid > IE users. In reality we've received exactly zero requests for IE support, > angry or otherwise.

Ignorance begets ignorance. The lion's share of people that use IE aren't technically savvy. They're people like parents, uncles or even grandparents. Why expect them to know how to send complaints when they barely know how to use a web browser?

> We work harder when we're happier, and skipping the dirty work of IE makes > us very happy.

Clearly you were never working hard to begin with. Supporting IE is much easier than Internet FUD makes it appear.

> Who knows – future versions of IE will probably be standards compliant, > super fast and reasonably secure.

You mean like IE 9? A little-known fact is that IE 4-6 were the most innovative browsers of their time. `innerHTML`? IE; event listeners (`*tachEvent`)? IE; editable text content (`innerText`)? IE. Those are some pretty important additions from a platform that seems to get no respect.

Cut the browser elitism and get a clue.

</comment><comment><USER27> I don't read articles espousing insular design practices, and I'm calling that a feature.

</comment><comment><USER28> Your blog doesn't support comments. Is that a feature too?

As a developer I sympathise, but as a user I don't. I can understand not supporting IE 6 and 7, but not supporting 8 and 9 is not a feature, it's a lack of feature. It's saying that you aren't prepared to work with me the way I want to work.

It may be the right choice, but don't sell as that it's not.

</comment><comment><USER29> IE market share has been going down for years, but it's still more or less 70%

That means that by not supporting IE you don't get 70% of the market. Early adopters come and go, but "hockey stick" growth like the one Pinterest got? that comes from the mainstream market that uses IE and doesn't knows what Firefox is, and thinks that by Chrome you mean actual chrome...

But as I said IE is going down, and when it hits 50% in 2 years or less that will be the time to stop supporting IE.

<comment><USER30> 70%? This looks like worst case scenario to me. Here we have IE hovering about 25%: <http://www.ranking.lt/en/rankings/web-browsers-groups.html>

<comment><USER29> Over THERE, also Chrome is the leading browser in Latin America, but how big are those markets?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I never saw any app or website that would have a that low percentage of IE usage.

Anyway, if you have been working with html&css for more than 1 or 2 years it should not be hard to at least degrade gracefully on ie8+.

Personally I don't even think it is a choice, ie is still 30% of world average, supporting it is a must.

<comment><USER32> It really depends on the site though. I get almost zero IE traffic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Graceful Degradation - look it up.

The baseline compatibility should be "functional but not necessarily beautiful".

Not wasting time getting pixel-perfection in IE is wise. Blocking IE is retarded.

The fact that you haven't even considered using Chrome Frame says a lot about your dev skills. Or, you know, lack of.

</comment><comment><USER34> Ten years ago you were an elite web developer if your site worked well in browsers other than IE. Today you're an elite web developer if you can make your site work well even in IE.

<comment><USER35> Getting the vast majority of sites working in IE9 is trivial (no changes required). IE8 some changes, but not a major hassle. I don't support IE7 or before. If you use a lot of HTML5 features it is hit or miss on all browsers.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right. My recent encounters with IE9 have been pleasantly surprising (and I bet IE10 will be quite competitive), but for us the numbers are so low that, at least for now, a broad sweep feels OK.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Apparently, they don't really know what they're doing...

        function cj() {
            try {
                return new a.ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP")
            } catch (b) {
            }
        }

I guess this JS code is not for IE support...

</comment><comment><USER37> This widely depends on your geographics.

Writing from Brazil here : still over 70% of the visitors, on average, to most sites I monitor are using some version of IE.

So claiming a "feature" like that down here would be like rejecting 70% customers on a popular mall because they're not wearing red shoes(or some other arbitrary reason).

<comment><USER38> They are not selling the product in Brazil.

<comment><USER39> They are on the World Wide Web. If they aren't intending a world wide customer-base, they are missing one of the major features of the web.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I don't really understand why this is newsworthy. If I made a website that had almost exclusively IE usage and chose to only support IE, would that be a feature? No, it'd just be an appropriate use of my development resources.

</comment><comment><USER41> I support whatever my client needs. They pay, I code. End of story.

<comment><USER42> I believe HN had a story linked a few months ago where supporting IE was specified as a separate line item in the budget, forcing their clients to really contemplate the costs (in both time & money) supporting such a broken browser family. If that's what you mean, then kudos, as I think it's a great learning moment for clients.

<comment><USER41> Yes, I do mean that. I will support modern browsers, but legacy stuff is additional (though not that much really).

I consider anything older than IE8 to be legacy.

On the other hand, if I put out a product that is aimed at the enterprise market then I will support older stuff. Enterprise moves at a different pace.

Story time: I once found myself working in the banking industry only to discover they used .NET 2.0. This on 2011. They also had a bunch of Win2000 machines. My job was to make a system that ran on all.

Pulled it off, but it opened my eyes to how big business works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I get annoyed when people are too lazy/incompetent to support IE6, but blocking IE altogether is beyond stupid.

Don't get me wrong, I see the benefits and if dropping it makes sense (hint: it doesn't make sense when you quote average IE6 figures, check your own analytics and justify losing that many users), but quite frankly if you can't handle IE9 then I have no confidence in your product.

<comment><USER24> > I get annoyed when people are too lazy/incompetent to support IE6

That's kind of a strange sentiment, especially considering IE6 is basically extinct in the wild (unless you are targeting users of pirated copies of Windows in China)...

Also, I think many people these days have better things to do with their lives than f--k around hacking in circles in CSS to get things working for IE6...

<comment><USER43> > That's kind of a strange sentiment, especially considering IE6 is basically > extinct in the wild (unless you are targeting users of pirated copies of > Windows in China)...

Incorrect, at least in the UK. If you believe the general stats that are pushed (hint: don't) then that would be the case, but we test on a client-by- client basis for many large sites and there are still a decent number of people using IE6, enough to justify a few thousand on making a site IE6-capable.

> Also, I think many people these days have better things to do with their > lives than f--k around hacking in circles in CSS to get things working for > IE6...

I can't wait for IE6 to die, but for most of our clients 2% of users would easily pay off any cost for us to handle IE6. For now, we follow the Yahoo baseline (<http://yuilibrary.com/yui/docs/tutorials/gbs/>) at minimum and make sure that our sites work in IE6.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I don't want to be a dick, but PayDirt isn't all that complex. Don't see what the big deal is here. Even if 1.63% of their traffic is IE... It's still 1.63% of potential customers you're theorectically dismissing. I also find it rather shocking that your IE traffic is so low. Are we talking about requests or unique visitors? What group are you advertising at?

</comment><comment><USER45> I agree with not supporting IE, but calling it a feature is just a rationalization on not providing support for it, and a nice spin at it.

<comment><AUTHOR> True, it's really just a spin. It's a benefit for most of our users because we can use the time more productively to improve the product and support in other ways. In the zero sum game of the 24 hour day, an hour saved is an hour earned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> There is a lot of danger in defining yourself in terms of what you DON'T do.

For example, I don't know what your company DOES do, but I know you have devoted time and energy to taking a pissing-match stance against a browser.

This is not new, for many years there are many sites that block IE or serve IE users special pages that say "let me help you get a better browser in a highly-condescending, smug, and self-righteous way". You are not inventing anything by putting in this browser blocking.

Anyway, not my problem really.

</comment><comment><USER47> There could be somewhat of a chicken-and-egg thing happening here with their low IE take-up. On IE 9 the slideshow on the home-page doesn't work, it just says "... loading fancy-pants slideshow ...". If I came across that as an IE user, I wouldn't be signing up.

There is also the demographic for their product, which is the more-likely reason for low IE rates. I wouldn't be surprised if the big Mac-OS screen shot on the home page turns off Windows users as well.

<comment><USER48> In fact, they don't want you to sign up if you are an IE user. You can't even.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> It's real simple, medium and large enterprises are on IE 7 and 8. Technical end users are on Chrome and FF 80% of the time, the rest is a mix but it's less than 10% IE 8 and below. This application is not targeting enterprises, it's not a big deal.

We have a product that is enterprise only, if we didn't support IE 7 or 8, we'd have no business left. This is a few years out of date to be news, the guy's done well to get his free advertising.

</comment><comment><USER50> Can someone with a windows machine proxy this into IE and see if anything is broken? I can't believe there is much overhead in making things look fine in IE(>=9). Especially a straight-forward site such as theirs.

I haven't heard of paydirtapp before, but now I'm stuck with the impression that they are silly. Trying (and succeeding) to get publicity by being silly.

I should make a post about banning users on iOS 3.x, or perhaps all Opera users?

</comment><comment><USER51> "trying to get sites to render pixel-perfect across various versions of various browsers" - That is a big part of the problem. Now, I have designs I have to get pixel-perfect, so I feel their pain, but when developing your own app, you can opt to not go for pixel-perfection.

I don't believe their statistics, but their target market is much more likely to have multiple browsers and is probably willing to jump into a different browser if IE isn't supported.

But I think it is a dumb move to block IE9+. There is no good reason for it. They didn't give one in their blog post, and I have yet to run into a situation where if I am using web standards that I had many issues with IE9. Nothing I've had to hack around enough that I would want to block it. Seems like either an anti-Microsoft for the sake of being anti-Microsoft or just front-end devs not worth their salt (cause a front-end dev worth their salt wouldn't use user-agent detection to block IE in the first place, they'd use feature detection at least.)

</comment><comment><USER52> Also see: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3784750>

</comment><comment><USER53> Users don't understand. Browsers are browsers, and for a vast majority of users, IE came with their machine. You aren't going to provoke thought, you'll just lose potential users.

I can understand not supporting legacy IE. Not supporting modern IE doesn't make sense. It seems a lot like nerd rage misdirected.

</comment><comment><USER54> Another company I won't be dealing with...

</comment><comment><USER55> Can someone at MSFT comment? How is the IE team composed? Is it a threat at MSFT, to be placed on the IE team? "If you don't start performing, we're sending you to work on IE"?

<comment><USER41> I for one would love to work on the IE team.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Actually, I think people aren't considering the fact that some of the people using IE will download a supported browser.

<http://paydirtapp.com/ie>

I wish more sites would nudge users to upgrade to a "modern" browser, including IE9. Microsoft is silently pushing IE10 to most IE9 users, so within a year only around 10% of users will be on a non-HTML5 browser. Assuming IE10 or latest Chrome and Firefox will be a giant step.

</comment><comment><USER57> Sadly a lot of folks are still stuck with Internet explorer. I still make it to a point to make my web app work at least in IE8 and above and make it seamless as possible.

What I would do is that I'd give users with old browsers a plain version of the site. E.g. No transitions, animations, etc.

Supporting Internet explorer is a pain in the back, but a good developer and designer will do his best to provide availability. That's what I learned so far in the past 6 months.

</comment><comment><USER58> Interesting - I wonder how folks would have responded in the 1990s if someone had stated "We don't support Macs, and we're calling that a feature."

<comment><USER59> I'm unclear as to how this is even remotely relevant. Mac compatibility has been a pain in the ass for.. err...... who again?

IE compatibility has been a pain in the ass for pretty much every web developer everywhere up until very recently.

<comment><USER58> I'm thinking desktop apps - most companies would create PC-only versions of software in the 1990s -- or PC-first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Regardless of paydirt's decision, IE's tw0-year release cycle isn't doing any help to stem this sort of perception. IE10 will be awesome, but it has to ship and MSFT has to transition all users of IE6-9 onto IE10 or another browser that will stay current. If users stay abandoned in IE8, the greatness of IE10 doesn't count for much.

</comment><comment><USER61> Hmm -- never heard of them -- neither has Quantcast or Compete. Alexa knows who they are -- says their users spend a whopping 86 seconds on the site.

Tweet from dbushell // David Bushell hipster apple developers @paydirtapp _block_ IE. Every sentence in this article I reply with "You're Doing It Wrong." paydirtapp.com/blog/we-dont-s…

F o l l o w e d

</comment><comment><USER62> Read the whole article and all these comments and I'm still waiting to hear what makes this a quote unquote feature. Making a decision is not a feature, otherwise Friday team lunch at Chipotle is also a feature.

</comment><comment><USER63> Hey Paydirt: Your Site Works Just Fine in IE <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3945353>

</comment><comment><USER64> I like to stay on the horn for a few seconds when people do extra stupid things while driving... that's kinda what you're doing to people using IE. Good job

</comment><comment><USER65> We don't support Internet Explorer, and we're calling that a feature*

*An option few have, so don't be ignorant and categorically mimic our approach.

FTFY.

</comment><comment><USER66> yay! Something I did with my homepage <http://adnansiddiqi.com>. Try it on IE :D

<comment><USER36> Do you know that your site works OK on IE9 when changing the UA?

Ironically, your site page does not include a doctype so it is interpreted in quirksmode [1]...

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quirks_mode>

<comment><USER66> Yes I do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> This would have been interesting news in 2007 when ~70% of the internet was using IE and the versions that people used were hard to support. Now, it just seems like silly bragging. I can understand silently not supporting IE because of the features that aren't present, but shouting that you don't support IE in 2012 and calling it a feature just comes off as arrogant. My first reaction is, "so what?"

<comment><USER8> You seem to be missing the point. That we have come so far in the browser wars that IE can be unsupported as a valid business strategy is a pretty big deal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> Well done! I expect the contrarians to pour in screaming about not leaving anyone out and elitism and corporate users and blah blah blah... But seriously, fuck IE. if you don't have to support it then don't! More power to you! My biggest wish as a developer is for some major site to stop supporting IE. I do feel for the users but I feel it's a necessary evil to get the IE team to either ditch or fix Trident or whatever engine they use nowadays. There is no other browser that is more fragmented, unpredictable, or harder to get anything rendered correctly in than IE. if just one major site stopped supporting it then just maybe Microsoft would finally fix their broken browser. We are forced to write far too many unnecessary lines of code just to support a single browser when the rest of our front end code pretty much works effortlessly in the other browsers.

But we live in the real world and my wish isn't likely to come true. We do, after all, still have to think of the poor users who are either ignorant of the alternatives, still using IE due to inertia, or couldn't even upgrade to a version of IE that worked nicely (that is, if it existed)if they wanted to due to being stuck with their version of Windows Vista Home Office Extended Premium Plus which can't be upgraded to the new Windows 7 Midgrade Basic Premium Exclusive Edition Service Pack 10million which is the minimum version of Windows that'd run such a browser for less than the cost of sacrificing their first born child. Internet Explorer 9 was a noticeable improvement by far but not good enough still. Version 10 looks even more promising. Too bad they make it so that only the smallest fraction of Windows users can upgrade to them.

<comment><USER69> I have more trouble with Firefox than modern versions of IE.

I also have a Pentium III that's running Windows 7 and IE9 now (and will be able to upgrade to IE10), and if that can upgrade to IE9, it's utterly and completely disingenuous to claim that the "smallest fraction" of Windows users can upgrade to it. Instead of being rational, you come off as a sneering cheerleader and, y'know, that can entirely be your bag if you want to pick it up and run with it, but it'd help if you at least used your mouth for talking instead of parts down below.

<comment><USER70> Is it rational to claim that if you upgraded a Pentium III computer to Windows 7 you aren't in "the smallest fraction" of users of old computers?

<comment><USER71> The point is having a Pentium III Win 7 machine covers using a Pentium 4, Athlon XP, and all those other old computers to install IE9 - covering the biggest fraction of users through backward compatability.

<comment><USER69> Correct, thank you.

You can run Windows 7 on pretty much anything that will run Windows XP. "It costs money to upgrade" may prevent you from doing so, but at this point, after _a decade_ , it's not Microsoft's problem if you're not willing to spend the money. They're not obligated, nor should they be obligated, to avoid using their new stuff (Direct2D, for example) in order to continue to target XP users.

<comment><USER52> To be more precise, not everything, but yes generally most Win2000-era and later hardware.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The idiocy of crowds - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/09/23/the-idiocy-of-crowds/

<comment><USER2> And a worthy reply: [http://www.howardlindzon.com/two-idiots-log-into-a- crowdfund...](http://www.howardlindzon.com/two-idiots-log-into-a-crowdfunding- site-and-crowds-are-not-idiots-just-a-little-more-dangerous/)</comment>


Struct with "main method" as an entry point - <AUTHOR> https://www.tabsoverspaces.com/id/233805 <comment><USER2> It's not clear to me what's interesting about this. main() is normally a member of a class but can also be a member of a struct. Is that it? Are there some consequences that I'm missing?

</comment><comment><USER3> Reading the code I thought it was Java. Only the tags of the articles hint it is C#.

Why can't people state what language they are talking about in this kind of articles?

<comment><USER4> "Why can't people state what language" <> "the tags of the articles hint it is C#"

(This was an earlier version of Python.)

<comment><USER5> "doesn't equal" ≠ "is the opposite of"

<comment><USER6> Nor is it monoid composition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This was the whole basis of C#'s grandaddy C++, was it not? Thinking "What if structs didn't just have data, but methods?" The Class was born, but it is basically still a superset of 'struct'. I guess the wrinkle here is that is specifically a main() but the article payoff singularly fails to deliver. "This compiles" is rather unenlightening.

<comment><USER8> Struct in C# means type has "by value semantics", whereas class in c# means "reference type", so the keywords have a quite different usage compared to C++, where it's about whether public/private is default. Still a frivolous and "so what" blog post though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Apparently, everything can be a blog post today.

<comment><USER10> I understand your POV, but I did have a blog with tiny snippets of things that surprised me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I just went to the toilet.

<comment><USER12> Write a blog post about it, and post it here.

<comment><USER13> Well, now, this is the fundamental I/O question of life, is it not?

TFA concerns wild variations on the ingredients.

Somebody had to be the first one to put pineapple on pizza, and to put main() on a struct.

So everything is ultimately related.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is not interesting in the least.

The author "discovered" that the static Main method in C# can live in either a class or a struct. However, this distinction _does not matter_ as its simply a static member; the enclosing type is not instantiated by the runtime. In fact, the class that declares Main is idiomatically declared static since in general you don't need to create instances of it.

The author should find a more interesting topic before advertising his blog on HN.</comment>


System on Chip wrapping the SERV RISC-V soft processor - <AUTHOR> https://www.rotwang.co.uk/projects/serv.html <comment><USER2> Worth noting that the new ESP32-S2 board has a RISC-V co-processor[1], and SeeedStudios recently released the Sipeed MaixCube with a K210 RISC-V[2] as the main processor (and a screen etc for $25!! I've ordered one).

[1] [https://maker.pro/esp8266/tutorial/a-comparison-of-the- new-e...](https://maker.pro/esp8266/tutorial/a-comparison-of-the-new- esp32-s2-to-the-esp32)

[2] [https://www.seeedstudio.com/Sipeed-Maix- Cube-p-4553.html](https://www.seeedstudio.com/Sipeed-Maix-Cube-p-4553.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool work! Thanks for the article. It's writeups like this that made me want to "upgrade" from emulating RISC-V in software to designing a core (I'll try VHDL though).

<comment><USER4> I read this recently, might be helpful to see some of the choices (not all RiscV): [https://justanotherelectronicsblog.com/?p=705](https://justanotherelectronicsblog.com/?p=705)

Edit: A list of riscv implementations: [https://github.com/riscv/riscv-cores- list](https://github.com/riscv/riscv-cores-list)

<comment><USER5> We need a better list, but it would be quite some work to make it. I'd like a list of performance, size, implementation language and bus interfaces.

I've been looking at this one for high end (1.9 DMIPS/MHz!):

[https://github.com/ultraembedded/biriscv](https://github.com/ultraembedded/biriscv)

Google/lowRISC has this one:

[https://github.com/lowRISC/ibex](https://github.com/lowRISC/ibex)

I'm using picorv32 right now on Lattice ECP5- running code out of SPI-flash, but I added an instruction cache for speed.

It's amazing how many RISC-V things are happening all at once right now.

Anybody know of any free RISC-Vs with floating point? It would be helpful to have something similar to ARM Cortex-M4F.

Edit:

From the "riscv-cores-list" I see WARP-V, which I'm not interested in due to "TL-Verilog". But its FPU is this:

[http://www.jhauser.us/arithmetic/HardFloat.html](http://www.jhauser.us/arithmetic/HardFloat.html)

So all of these RISC-Vs should have optional FPU support based on HardFloat :-) (not that I have any idea of the size of HardFloat).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow! This looks _really, really_ promising. I can't believe they got it to run on the 5280-logic-cell Lattice chip. This is perfect for a low-cost FPGA + soft-core platform.

I'm going to try out gcc RISC-V compilation and see if I can get a program to boot!

Shameless plug: We use the 5280 LC chip for [https://webfpga.io/kickstarter](https://webfpga.io/kickstarter)

</comment><comment><USER7> Wonder the hardware. Gone a few ice around but it is either 1k or 8k. Is that core workable on these?

</comment><comment><USER8> This is really great work and quite well documented .. I can't help but wonder at the .. high granularity .. applications in the audio-synthesis world, where SERV's could be deployed at scale to assist in timbrality .. I guess this might be very useful in a DSP context for things other than MI-synthesis too .. definitely going to check back to see where this goes ..</comment>


Daily Sampling Reveals Personalized Diet-Microbiome Associations in Humans - <AUTHOR> https://www.cell.com/cell-host-microbe/fulltext/S1931-3128(19)30250-1?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS1931312819302501%3Fshowall%3Dtrue <comment><USER2> > Data from two subjects consuming only meal replacement beverages suggest > that a monotonous diet does not induce microbiome stability in humans, and > instead, overall dietary diversity associates with microbiome stability.

That is useful

<comment><USER3> >two subjects

The conclusion is interesting but thats not much of a sample

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is one of those results that are not particularly surprising, but important to have. I'm glad that it got published.

</comment><comment><USER5> > Interestingly, the reported diet of two subjects (11 and 12) consisted > primarily of a nutritional meal replacement beverage in 4 different flavors > (Soylent, Rosa Foods). We refer to these subjects as "shake drinkers."

 _puts down bottle of soylent_</comment>


Ask HN: I'm about to take a big step in my life. I would like your opinion. - <AUTHOR>

I'm a frequent reader of HN (I check the front page at least twice a day.) I've created this account so that I could ask your opinion on a big step in my life I am thinking of taking. I value your opinion.
I'm almost 20 right now and in my third year of college. I have never been successful with members of the opposite sex ever since puberty. In high school and college I was perceived as being socially awkward by those I came in contact with. Being unable to find intimacy and being a total virgin (never touched a girl other than while shaking hands) and my poor social life has made me very depressed.
I think a significant part of my problems can be solved if I loose my virginity, so I'm thinking of closing the chapter with a "girlfriend experience" hooker.
Do you think loosing my virginity to a hooker will solve my problems? If there are any others who have gone through similar problems as I have and come out of it, what would you suggest that I do? <comment><USER2> No. Sex, in and of itself, doesn't solve anything except horniness. And the horniness comes back real quick with a vengeance when you're college aged :-)

Do everything possible to get out of your room and meet women while you are in college. Be neatly dressed: doesn't mean trendy or a fashionista, just wear ordinary clean clothing. Join clubs, take up a hobby, randomly walk around with a smile on your face.

BE PLEASANT. Seriously. Practice smiling if you must, but no one wants to talk to a grump. Talk to people. A big mistake is to confine yourself to talking only to attractive people. Talk to anyone who will respond and shut up if they don't. Say hi to that strange chick at the bus stop: the one with the lazy eye, a unibrow and a humpback. She's a person, be nice to her. Greet people with a "hello" and a smile, hold doors for strangers, help the old lady with that heavy bag of catfood.

In short, become a nice person and people will want to be around you. Once that happens, the whole women/intimacy/sex thing tends to take care of itself. The species has managed to propagate itself basically forever. That wouldn't happen if it was terribly hard to hookup.

In order to meet girls, you have to talk to them. Most of them won't just walk up to you and bite you on the ass. Get out of your shell, stop worrying about being awkward. Trust me, the women are also worrying about stuff that you would think is trivial: we all have our insecurities.

Wasting money on a hooker is avoiding the responsibility for changing your own life. You'd be better off spending it on a therapist.

</comment><comment><USER3> My God listen to these people. Apparently screwing a hooker will begin a downward spiral into Dante's seventh level all the while your dick is burning and boils and legions burst from your forehead.

Listen, I'm going to let you in on a little secret: Sex is overrated. Now, of course it's a lot of fun. Of course it's infinitely better when you have an emotional connection to the person you're with, but that line about it being like oxygen - only mattering when you aren't getting any - is bang on.

So, if you are curious about how it feels and would like to have the experience, go for it. Hire a good looking high end escort and enjoy your night. It's not a life changing experience, so don't treat it like it is. Getting married and having a kid are life changing (more the latter). Having sex is not.

Now, having sex is not going to be a cure all for your depression because it simply isn't that big a deal. That can work two ways: You figure it out and get on with life, or you realize there is something larger there - I'm going to assume the lack of a person to share your life with.

The latter is simple to solve really. Stop trying, and seize the opportunities as they arise.

</comment><comment><USER4> Don't do it; you'll regret it. Listen, you're not the only one that's gone through this. Everyone who invested his/her early years obtaining hard skills (such as technical skills) at the expense of soft skills (such as being comfortable in a group and around the opposite sex) has this problem. You're not broken or defective. You're just starting to play basketball for the first time among a group that's done nothing -but- play basketball. Don't expect it to come naturally; it will take time, and that's ok. Again, there's nothing wrong with you. I don't know anything about you, but I've known 1000 people, including myself, who have gone through this, and I'll happily bet you one million dollars that in months from now you'll look back at this like so many things in our lives: painful and normal.

So do you want to play basketball? Don't hire a pro for an hour. Just play. Get on dating sites and date. The hardest thing about dating is the fear of rejection. So here's what you do: you get rejected. Plan on it. And pat yourself that you even got on the court to play at all -- it's a very scary thing to do. You should know that if you can get through 20 rejections, you'll get someone. It can happen earlier, but this is probably the outside chance. So with each rejection (and it happens to EVERYONE, trust me) remind yourself that you're one step closer to meeting someone.

Just remember that you've got friends here, so don't be shy to ask anything else. And good luck.

</comment><comment><USER5> Don't waste your time/money. It's not going to be all Hollywood-esque.

You'll pay a couple of hundred dollars to a woman of unknown history who will be uninterested in you (though she may play the "girlfriend" part well enough) and at the end of it all you'll have no more insight into the female sex then when you started.

</comment><comment><USER6> It will not solve your problems.

It will give you experience with the act itself but not with the process of "getting there" since the deal is already set and the outcome already known. What you would learn from the experience will be just about the act itself (which is really no big deal) but nothing about the part where you have a problem which is the social interaction that comes first. And once more, the social interaction that comes first is not really all that geared toward sex, so this experience could harm your capabilities by reinforcing this wrong perception that you seem to have.

You just need to understand treat this as something you need to learn. You need to learn social interactions, some people have it naturally, some people not so much. Your goal should be to learn by observing, trying to understand the situations, trying to understand the point of view and perception of people without asking direct questions.

</comment><comment><USER7> Your love life problems will solve themselves if you solve your broader social life issues first. A social life is a bit like most things in life in that you get better at it and find it easier the more practice you get at it.

Paying for sex or a pretend relationship is not some magic pixie fairy dust that will suddenly make you the life of the party.

On the off-chance that you may suffer from social anxiety disorder or exhibit an autism spectrum syndrome, you may wish to consult with your doctor at some point. But not straight away.

P.S. I was first "successful" with a member of the opposite sex when I was 26. _shrug_

</comment><comment><USER8> Ask Reddit.. Also, no don't do it. Virginity is not your problem. Talk to a therapist.

</comment><comment><USER9> Getting a viral std is 1-way function. You'll definitely get HPV and maybe herpes.

If you are socially awkward that means you have terrible body language. Read a few books about body language. Why don't you work on your social circle, get more friends then you will get invited to more parties, then when girls meet you they will be more open to you because they met you through a friend. Beyond that join a gym, smile, be funny, not desperate and your girl problems will go away.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's not going to help you solve any underlying problems, but it will at least lead you to one big conclusion: sex doesn't have to be a big deal. You'll do it, realize, "hey, that was fun... but not as big of a deal as I thought."

That isn't to say that sex isn't important, emotional, or connecting -- just that most of the time it's mediocre, and not worth the build up that you put into it.

I suppose that could be summed up in the "difference btwn sex and making love" cliche.

</comment><comment><USER11> In addition to the risk of disease, arrest, and robbery, something like that could also jeopardize your chances if you later want to work in a job requiring a clearance, background investigation, or polygraph.

Can you try to find some new activities or clubs there to participate in? Not being fake or untrue to yourself but small steps that push you outside your comfort zone? Dance, theater, athletics?

</comment><comment><USER12> Just do it. Don't overcomplicate it. Sex is \- Fun \- Does not worth thinking about it too much \- Does not solve any problems (Sex with a hooker solves hooker's financial problems only)

p.s. Use a condom.... and avoid repeating it in future at all costs(addictive)

</comment><comment><USER13> It won't help your social life, but it will get a mental monkey off your back so you can get on with more important things. Do it!

</comment><comment><USER14> Trust me, just forget about the girlfriend thing and embrace your productivity. Seriously, i'll bet you're the productivity king right now. I used to be you, I did some amazing work, I had the work ethic of a new immigrated china man looking to bring his whole family over, I was working 16 hours a day... and I LOVED IT. When I got my first girlfriend (at 20) my productivity crashed. The emotional roller coaster that women put me through, it was too much. We broke up after 3 months, and I immediately started dating a girl (its been almost 2 years now) who was a mechanical engineer (closer to my level of introverted) Life is more stable, but i'm nowhere close to where I used to be. A girlfriend is almost like another full time job, except it costs you money instead of earning you money.</comment>


Online Petitions are a Sham - <AUTHOR> http://infovegan.com/2010/08/11/how-we-do-it-in-washington-dc

<comment><USER2> Very valid point, most petitions are in fact a sham.

But given that exercises like these are incredibly important to the viability of organizations -- organizations whose mission/cause/work you presumably agree with -- wouldn't it be pretty bad if everyone just stopped taking part in these?

The bottom line is that these petitions work and allow organizations to carry out a mission that their members do in fact support, whether or not the petition is a sham. It's definitely a problem that they have to resort to doing crap like this, but until there is a better way, I don't see what else they can do.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've interviewed political consultants on Mixergy.com who told me that they use petitions to collect email addresses and get new donors and activists.

It's a pretty open secret.

</comment><comment><USER4> The sun rises in the east.</comment>


India announces plans for a Mars mission in 2013 - <AUTHOR> http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/india-announces-plans-for-a-mars-mission-in-2013.aspx?pageID=238&nID=27844&NewsCatID=374#.UCtnBISQa1I.twitter <comment><USER3> (Indian citizen fwiw)

As much as I like India and its space program, it is also true that these kind of grand pronouncements happen from time to time and are not taken very seriously here. And when the announced missions/projects do happen they are _inevitably_ over budget and delayed.

E.g: cost of an unmanned _lunar_ probe in 2008 - US $ 90 million (source <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan-1>)

costs for a lunar lander/rover, proposed for _2016_ (delayed from the original plan for 2014) - projected cost - US $ 80 million. Note this is the _projected_ cost (source <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan-2>)

Thus, I'd be very very skeptical of a mars probe actually being launched in 2013 at the same amount of money as was spent on a lunar probe 4 years ago.

See how that $80 million keeps repeating? Must be the maximum budget you can sell to a technically illiterate politician. ;-)

That said, I am all for India trying to explore space, with whatever constraints. Eventually there will be a Mars probe and that is great.

<comment><USER4> Chandrayaan-1 was a pretty successful mission by all accounts though despite not lasting. It found evidence of water pretty much straight away, which was worth the budget all on its own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am sorry but the attitude of half of this thread is simply disgusting; from 'haha' to you better provide food before creating space missions. I was just as skeptical about the budget and our capabilities (Yes, I am an Indian - <USER2> that wasn't obvious already) but I, even after having actually suffered from poor infrastructure and have seen failed launches as well as people suffering from hunger, support the cause wholeheartedly.

If you have a problem with how your government's aid money is being spent in India, please go forward and lobby for the aid to get cut off. How we spend our tax money is a decision that we should be allowed to make.

Honestly, I am surprised that HackerNews has the sentiment of pointing out expenditures on science to be extravagant and unnecessary by using social conditions as excuse, while there is so much more we could save by changing our military, social or economic standpoints. US's military budget was $663.84B in 2010 [1] while United Nations budget was just around $5.2B during the same time [2] and it's not that United States is all free from hunger or food insecurities [3]. So please, whichever country that you belong to will have issues just like us. We probably have a lot more of those than you do, but we have the right to decide which of those do we want to tackle now at the expense of being behind in our long term goals. And I request you to keep your preferences to yourself and stop forcing your morality/ethics/logic onto us in such private matters.

      [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States
      [2] http://www.un.org/en/hq/dm/pdfs/oppba/Regular%20Budget.pdf
      [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger#In_the_United_States

<comment><USER6> You have the right to determine how you spend your _own_ money. Whilst you are still taking handouts from other nations, then it is not a private matter.

The US does spend a lot on their military, and they may have some very deprived areas where people have less food than required (but I highly doubt anyone in the US starves to death).

Likewise, though, the US doesn't have young girls whose job it it to collect other peoples faeces with their bare hands [1]. I would say a country that has that doesn't need a Mars mission.

[1] [http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=o0vpXaPf_9AC&pg=PT62&...](http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=o0vpXaPf_9AC&pg=PT62&lpg=PT62&dq=dalit+girls+rose+george&source=bl&ots=LaJva0SDkZ&sig=J9aTmU9mmbzMD6ZPNUja5SkF03g&hl=en&sa=X&ei=1ZMrUOGDBuOi0QXZ7YG4Bw&ved=0CEwQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=dalit%20girls%20rose%20george&f=false)

<comment><USER7> As I walked out of the Van Ness MUNI station in San Francisco last night, I walked by at least 20 homeless people, just lying on the street. A couple on wheelchairs, the rest just lounging around. A few of them reeked of urine and feces.

And this is in, arguably, one of the richest cities in America.

So while this situation (homelessness, mental patients going without care, hunger), how dare the USA spend so much money on a Mars mission? On the military? Heck, why does the City of SF spend so much money on America's Cup, Outsidelands, etc. when thousands of people are homeless and on the streets? Yes, you may say that the City spends money on them too; but then why are they still on the streets?

Do you see my point? If you were to apply the same logic (or lack thereof) that you're applying to India to any other country (even the US), you will get the same answer: don't spend money on anything.

BTW: India is not "taking handouts" from other nations[1]. India is actually _giving_ handouts to others; e.g., they've given billions in aid to Afghanistan to aid in its re-construction.

[1] <http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/politics/us-foreign-aid.htm> couple of 100M doesn't qualify as a "handout" for a country the size of India. That's like me donating $5 to Obama's campaign and then expecting him to have dinner with me. WikiPedia link of top 25 countries; India does not feature in them: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_foreign_aid>

<comment><USER8> > As I walked out of the Van Ness MUNI station in San Francisco last night, I > walked by at least 20 homeless people, just lying on the street. A couple on > wheelchairs, the rest just lounging around. A few of them reeked of urine > and feces.

> And this is in, arguably, one of the richest cities in America.

You're conveniently ignoring several points. First of all, San Francisco draws homeless from all over the nation because it (a) has good weather year round and (b) is quite liberal and will tolerate and help the homeless. Unlike India, in much of the US, being homeless during the winter means that you will quite literally freeze to death. So the homeless tend to congregate in places where the weather is favorable for outdoor living year round. The fact that San Francisco is rich is a result of Silicon Valley, which developed where it has because of the proximity of the Stanford campus. So the two issues are not exactly connected.

More importantly, attempts to help the homeless on the streets of SF have been made over and over (and are ongoing). Many of these people _refuse_ to leave the streets. Some of them even enjoy it. Many others suffer from mental disorders, but we can't force them to live in asylums (which was the case until the 1980s) - that would be inhumane, or so the argument goes.

As for India, its level of poverty is so staggering that any comparison to America or another first world nation is entirely pointless. Let's see what UNICEF has to say about child malnutrition, for example[0]:

> Malnutrition is more common in India than in Sub-Saharan Africa. One in > every three malnourished children in the world lives in India.

So India has worse child malnutrition than even _Africa_. How you can even begin to compare this to some bums on the street in SF is entirely beyond me.

0: <http://www.unicef.org/india/children_2356.htm>

<comment><USER7> My point was: the OP took one negative fact ("young girls carry feces") and proceeded to paint the whole country of 1.2Billion with that. That game can be played by pointing out the homeless in SF too. See how silly it looks?

<comment><USER8> The OP was wrong in using manual scavenging as an example of a lack of economic progress, when it is actually an example of a lack of social progress, as I mentioned in a reply to him[0].

However, I don't believe that the homeless problem in SF can be compared to the manual scavenging problem either, because of the difference in terms of degree of severity. One is the result of millenia of systematic oppression, while the other is the result of people refusing to get help for themselves even when it is offered for free. Caste-based discrimination is a much bigger problem than homelessness is in India. If you don't believe me, you should watch the video linked in my other comment[0] - caste-based discrimination is much more widespread than most upper class Indians know or are willing to admit.

However, none of that changes the fact that economic progress is also sorely needed in India. The sort of progress that lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in China and educated them hasn't even begun to start in India.

The reason why it appears like India is doing so well is because if only 5% of the Indian population is well-educated and contributes significantly to the global economy, that's 60 million people - the size of a large European nation. So when (by my estimates) ~10% of the Indian population does so (as it has over the last 10-20 years), it creates huge ripple effects in the global economy. And Westerners especially notice when it occurs in service-based industries that they have direct contact with.

But that doesn't change the fact that hundreds of millions of Indians are impoverished and suffering from conditions worse than those in sub-Saharan Africa. When it comes to social development, the only parts of the world behind India are those that have been or continue to be torn apart by war. It's particularly damning when you consider that India's independence was achieved with relatively little bloodshed and that it hasn't had any military coups or dictatorships since independence. Compare this to the likes of countries like Germany, Japan, and South Korea, which rose from the ashes following WW2 and the Korean War to become first world nations. China suffered from enormous devastaion during the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward, and yet it has made huge strides over the last 20 years and continues to do so unabatedly with each passing year.

0: <http://hackerne.ws/item?id=4386845>

<comment><USER7> "One is the result of millenia of systematic oppression, while the other is the result of people refusing to get help for themselves even when it is offered for free. "

Have you wondered why so many of the homeless are people of color?

I used to live in upstate New York. By chance I happened to venture into a local reservation. I was shocked to see the conditions they were living in; especially given the fact that the area gets pretty darn cold in the winter.

Both of these groups (blacks, as well as native Americans) have been the victims of discrimination for centuries.

But people don't waive this fact all over HN any time the topic of NASA comes up.

<comment><USER8> I don't deny that blacks and Native Americans have been treated poorly, and that they still face discrimination. However, that doesn't change the fact that those people you see on the street are there because _they refuse the help they are given_.

San Francisco is one of the most liberal cities in the country. There are dozens of upper middle class yuppies _pleading_ with the homeless to accept their help.

> By chance I happened to venture into a local reservation. I was shocked to > see the conditions they were living in; especially given the fact that the > area gets pretty darn cold in the winter.

Native American reservations are, by their own choice, given a high level of autonomy by the US government. Once again, these people have made a conscious decision to reject help given them. Every single one of these people has chosen to live on a reservation when they could benefit from everything that modern America has to offer. Now, I can see that on a macro level, what the immigrants did to the Native Americans must seem horribly unjust, and therefore their descendants don't exactly want to accept the US government's help. However, on an individual level, these are individuals who have a clear path to bettering their lives that they simply refuse.

This is incomparable to the systematic suppression of millions upon millions of people that occurs to this very day, both on a macro and micro level, in India.

<comment><USER7> You are really clueless, aren't you? The problems that you see on reservations are the _direct result_ of centuries of oppression. It may look different to you than the situation in India, most likely because you're probably white and male, and hence belong to the side that's been oppressing; but the situation is the same. Systemic denial of equal rights, denial of services, forced segregation from the rest of the society .... fundamentally, it's the same.

You may disagree, and I don't blame you; but having lived in India and the US for equal parts of my life, I see the same patterns.

<comment><USER8> You're the one who seems to still be incapable of understanding what I'm saying. _I don't deny that discrimination has occurred in US._ I never have.

The difference is that significant steps have been taken to combat discrimination in America, whereas there is a general apathy towards that in India (and most of the developing world). Trying to equate the two is completely nonsensical, as is trying to equate the level of poverty in America, even on a reservation, with that in India.

> having lived in India and the US for equal parts of my life, I see the same > patterns.

As an Indian who has managed to make it to America, I don't think you're in any place to comment on what life is like for poor Indians, particularly those facing endemic caste-based discrimination. Their experiences are completely foreign to you, just as I wouldn't claim that I understand what African Americans or Native Americans go through.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "$82 million" mission? That budget doesn't even cover the fuel cost for a rover. Production of Pu-238 for the rover has been estimated at over $90 million, this does not include planning and starting costs.

Add to that the fuel for the launch vehicle; and fuel for the the cruise stage.

I can't trust this article.

<comment><USER10> I am surprised that it costs lesser than India's unmanned moon mission (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan-1>).

If ISRO can pull it off for under $100 million, that would be quite an achievement. Given the recent commercial interests in space, there might even be an opportunity to become financially independent by offering services for others.

<comment><USER5> Indian organisations are notorious in having extremely low estimates that later blow up to 4-5 times. So while I have more trust in ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization), their numbers might be off by a factor.

<comment><USER11> The same is true for many other space missions, and quite frankly doesn't matter.

For example, check the projections on the James Webb space telescope and see for yourself how the costs doubled and tripled. IMO we shouldn't look at it in terms of those costs; even if double and tripled they are not that high. Look at their effect on the larger picture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Anyone who thinks India doesn't need a Mars mission, please raise your hands up.

Done, good. Now you've given your opinion. Please sit down and shut the F up.

Whatever I write would pail in comparison to a thread posted a few days earlier:

Link: [http://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore- space-a...](http://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore- space-a-1970-letter-to-a-nun-in-africa/)

HN discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4372563>

<comment><USER13> I'm pretty shocked that HN wouldn't be in favor of any and all efforts to advance the space race. Everyone (deservedly) showers praise on Elon Musk whenever SpaceX has a successful launch, but when India wants to push the envelope the response is totally opposite.

Some awesome stuff has come from reaching for big goals with a constrained set of resources in the past. I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of jugaad innovations the Indians can bring to the table in the aerospace sector.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> India has achieved quite a bit with its space exploration. It is the same space programme that has provided Indians with satellites that are applied to agriculture. The IRS-P6 Resourcesat has been deployed for studying cropping patterns [1]. I am sure other satellites have been used for various other agricultural applications. Frankly this "feed the poor first" meme of the western media [and some disillusioned folks] is quite irritating. The meme only goes to show that the western media does not really appreciate achievement from a "developing country".

When India was on its way to launch its first rocket [way back when], some parts of the rocket were carried by the ISRO scientists pillion riding on a bicycle. Time magazine, in true western style, ridiculed that inicident. (Unfortunately I am not able to find references for this. So recounting from memory here.) Now after the moon shot with Chandrayaan-1, we know who had the last laugh.

However, on this particular occasion, I think this announcement is a populist one. The Central Government has nothing to show in terms of achievement. The government's image is severely tattered, what with all the corruption charges, policy paralysis, lack of any real economic progress, etc. Nothing like whipping up some nationalism to distract the people from noticing the lack of government performance.

Without the political context, I am guessing this Mars mission might provide scientists with 1) Insights on developing long range space travel 2) Insights into instrumentation technology 3) Robotics related tech

And India has had collaborative associations with several space agencies from different countries. It is only adding to the already existing space related body of knowledge.

All the disillusioned folks who think they are entitled to dictate policy decisions on account of their country giving "handouts" to India, feel free to take a hike.

[1] <http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2025000>

</comment><comment><USER15> If 80 million sounds too less for this mission, let us assume it balloons to 500 million. Even then look at the benefits it would bring. Make talented engineers/scientists stay in India and not migrate to places where 'more interesting' stuff is done. Check. Inspire a whole generation of people to take up science and engineering and to dream of thinking big, and actually have the confidence of knowing their dreams can come true. Check. Assorted scientific/industrial/capacity creation benefits. Check. All this at the miserly sum of 0.025 percent of your GDP. I think it is a very wise investment.

</comment><comment><USER16> For those wondering why India doesn't first feed its citizens, here is a relevant post: [http://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore- space-a...](http://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore- space-a-1970-letter-to-a-nun-in-africa/)

<comment><USER17> I don't buy it.

India is struggling with implementing solutions to issues that appear to be more-or-less solved for other countries; such as a working road network, public transport in most cities, picking up and distributing food harvests and a 24-hour supply of electricity. If a mission to Mars might provide fundamental insights into solving such issues, other countries seem not to have needed them.

Added later: I don't believe this mission to Mars has nothing to do with good old South Asian jingoism, and outdoing the geographical neighbour I shall not name.

<comment><USER11> So we should drop everything and focus on that alone?

We are also struggling with a massive brain drain. Such missions are going to inspire an entire generation and maybe create a sense of satisfaction and achievement. I, for one, do not doubt the importance of those in nation building.

Extrapolating from the words of Dr N D Tyson, the total spending on such space missions is not as high as we may think it is. India's GDP is good enough to not look at a space mission with a jaundiced eye.

<comment><USER17> > drop everything and focus on that alone?

Strawman. I'm not suggesting dropping _everything_. I'm only opining that a mission to Mars should be of lower priority than fulfilling basic infrastructure needs, which may be a source of satisfaction to a larger chunk of the population than the much smaller elite that can actually understand what a mission to Mars is all about.

<comment><USER18> Maybe. But consider the cost here is comparable to building anything up to at most a few tens of miles of decent quality highway. It's a tiny investment to start with.

And this money does not magically dissipate - a lot of it effectively functions as subsidies to create high-tech jobs in the country, and a decent chunk of it will find its way back into government coffers as tax.

Demonstrating the ability to send probes to Mars could also do wonders for Indian companies that wants to compete for international satellite launch business, for example.

It could be a waste, but it could also very well turn out to have a good enough ROI to increase the amount of cash available for basic infrastructure needs.

<comment><USER19> Good point. I don't understand the anti space exploration crowd's argument of putting poverty before space. It's not like they are bundling 80 million dollars into a hollow spaceship and dumping it off on mars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> While India is one of the poorest countries on the planet, and spends less than 1% of GDP on science and technology, India also produces largest number of engineers and a large number of science graduates every year. The country has more than 3million employed in IT jobs (not callcenter/BPO). India's space program is quite developed and ISRO's track record is not too bad. And yes, India produces more than enough food to feed its populace and more. The issue is one of primtive distribution chains, bureaucratic apathy and corruption. Foreign aid do not address these issues and is very meagre compared to India's GDP and government spending power. India needs to reform from within and that is a cultural journey.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm so glad the UK government gives them millions of dollars in aid every year. FFS.

<comment><USER21> "Pranab Mukherjee and other Indian ministers tried to terminate Britain's aid to their booming country last year - but relented after the British begged them to keep taking the money..."

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/9061844...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/9061844/India- tells-Britain-We-dont-want-your-aid.html)

<comment><USER22> Yeah they could at least distribute that money to the super poor, instead of turning round and smugly saying how its peanuts and they don't need it. There are folk there who would kill for a peanut to line their bellies.....literally!

<comment><USER11> You are confusing the two issues. India is capable of feeding its poor. The bureaucracy are too damn apathetic and corrupt to bring that into effect.

But why should the ones who want to make a difference be subject to criticism that they don't deserve?

<comment><USER22> So building a launch system capable of landing a rover on Mars is the answer then? Its hard to confuse the point im attempting to make. I will make it clear. They should concentrate on their own populating, Government and infrastructure before they even consider attempting something like this, because in the end, who is actually going to benefit from it?

A Government with these problems should be considered criminal when they cant actually provide their population with the basics.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/08/business/global/a-failed-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/08/business/global/a-failed- food-system-in-india-prompts-an-intense-review.html?_r=1)

<comment><USER23> I don't think there is any confusion in point you are making. The fact is the money that has been earmarked for this venture (even you account for any cost overruns) is a meager amount to what India already earmarks to spend (spends) on infrastructure, education, health etc. For example the budgetary allocation in current year for Rural Infrastructure is ~ 13 billion USD, Education is ~ 6 billion USD [1].

The sad fact is that even though India spends large sums to address the social problems, due to endemic corruption the results are far less spectacular. Spending money on ventures like space exploration doesn't really come in the way of addressing the social problems we have.

1\. <http://indiabudget.nic.in/ub2012-13/bh/bh1.pdf>

<comment><USER24> My opinion on this general debate is neither here not there but I must call you up on your assertion that India is spending a lot on its population:

> For example the budgetary allocation in current year for Rural > Infrastructure is ~ 13 billion USD, Education is ~ 6 billion USD [1].

That's really not a lot! The UK spends about 150 billion USD on education each year, which is about 2300USD per capita. Dividing 6bn by the population of india at 1.2bn, that's 5USD per capita.

That is to say, the UK spends 460x as much per person on education as India. And people would say the UK can't afford a Mars mission at the moment!

<comment><USER11> I can't argue with that number much, nor provide any real defense in India's favor, but do consider that the cost of living and labor in India is far far lesser than in the UK.

Returning to my earlier argument, this isn't about any sacrificial costs. There is enough budget for everything including infrastructure development and a space mission as far as the Indian budget is concerned. The problems at the grassroot are not due to lack of spending power but corruption and broken implementation practices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Corroborated. <http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/article3775271.ece>

</comment><comment><USER26> haha

<comment><USER22> Yeah that was my initial reaction as well, I just don't see it happening at all. I mean, we have to be serious here, they are going to put a Rover or something on Mars for $80 Million?!.......Nah.

I'm not saying that's they wont EVER, but they have to join us on planet earth before they start dreaming of other planets.

<comment><USER26> Yeah. How about providing electricity to villages and providing actual+reliable broadband connectivity to the country. People die of hunger and cold in India.

<comment><USER25> Well. That never stopped them from turning nuclear - more than a decade ago - in the face of international sanctions.

<comment><USER26> I'm not saying they won't be able to do it or something like that. I'm just saying they just need to raise the standard of basic human living first and then start glorious missions like this. The problem with India is that it's a hollow vessel. They pretend to be glorious to the rest of the world but actually they can't even solve the most basic human needs. So much poverty, Homelessness, Electricity, Roads, Communication, Health Care, Education, Human Rights. Almost everything is fucked up in this country except "Bollywood".. (well the movies are actually more fucked up than anything else but at least bollywood is a financial success ;)

FWIW, I'm from India.. sort of.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


NSA Risks Talent Exodus Amid Morale Slump and Trump Fears - joatmon-snoo http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-cyber-nsa-idUSKBN1672ML <comment><AUTHOR> Is this necessarily a bad thing? Arguably, the NSA as an institution does unconstitutional things. Breaking it up and sending the resources out into private industry might free a lot of value that nobody would otherwise see, and keep the US government from surveilling its own citizenry and then using the information against citizens.

</comment><comment><USER2> The way they reacted to Snowden brought this upon themselves . Requiring every cyber "warrior" to have a TS//SCI clearance at a minimum rules out 90% of the black/grey hat hackers is absurd

<comment><USER3> The TS/SCI is one thing but intelligence agencies also sit on polygraphs. I know of people who had full scope polygraph's which were not adjudicated for 2.5 years. Those people gave up and went elsewhere.</comment></comment>