Things Your Commencement Speaker Won't Tell You - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304811304577366332400453796.html <comment><USER2> Interesting read. If I was asked to give a commencement speech (which never will be, by the way), I'd cover only three points.

-Make connections to others

My boy scout leader used to say, "Humans are herd animals." Even if you're an introvert and socializing sounds like the worst torture imaginable, at least invite a friend over to watch a movie once a week or sign up for the company bowling league. The research says it will make you healthier, happier, and longer lived. Also: eat with other people sometimes. I have no idea why it works, but eating together builds stronger relationships faster.

-Volunteer

The schools and charities in this country could use a ton more volunteer time that they're getting. Go read to kids or help with math homework once a week or even once a month. Help clean up at the local emergency food shelf. Tell the local boy scout troop you'll make them a web site. If you show up on time and work reasonably hard you will likely be treated like a hero. (And if the organization doesn't treat you like a hero, find a different place to volunteer.) As a bonus, you'll look awesome if you can start a sentence with, "I just came back from reading to first graders..."

-Give some money to charity

If you have a steady job, try to give at least 2 percent of your income to charity. Keep it to one or two institutions if you can. If you give a thousand dollars or more to most charities or educational institutions you get invited to go to all the fancy benefits and events they hold. That can be a great way to make connections for somebody with ambition. Again, if you're not married, there's no better way to impress a date than to take him/her to a fancy benefit dinner where they talk about how awesome donors (i.e. you) are.

<comment><USER3> As an added bonus, Volunteering makes you feel a lot better :)

<http://www.livescience.com/4443-study-good-feel-good.html>

(first link I found, plenty of other studies)

<comment><USER4> Seems to be based on self reporting by students and they may have gotten the casual link wrong (ie happy people are more likely to volunteer to help others, therefore those who volunteer are more likely to be happy but volunteering doesn't make you happy).

At least it seems to me that people like me who don't care about strangers would get very little out if volunteering.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can't believe that five hours after this interesting essay was posted, none of the comments have yet mentioned Paul Graham's essay (also a commencement speech never heard at an actual graduation) "What You'll Wish You'd Known" (January 2005).

<http://paulgraham.com/hs.html>

I like much of the advice of that essay, which is the second Paul Graham essay local friends recommended that I read. I have all my children read Paul's essay, as we are a homeschooling family precisely to get out of the rut of the usual school pattern of learning.

". . . . In fact I suspect if you had the sixteen year old Shakespeare or Einstein in school with you, they'd seem impressive, but not totally unlike your other friends.

"Which is an uncomfortable thought. If they were just like us, then they had to work very hard to do what they did. And that's one reason we like to believe in genius. It gives us an excuse for being lazy. If these guys were able to do what they did only because of some magic Shakespeareness or Einsteinness, then it's not our fault if we can't do something as good.

"I'm not saying there's no such thing as genius. But if you're trying to choose between two theories and one gives you an excuse for being lazy, the other one is probably right."

Great stuff, still good advice for young people almost a decade after it was first composed.

<comment><USER6> He mentions that "the school authorities vetoed the plan to invite me"... why?

<comment><USER7> Read the essay, and it should quickly become clear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Excellent points! I had my undergrad graduation more than two decades ago, so get to appreciate some of these a bit differently from the twentysomething "younguns" here. If I had to pick two most important, I'd say point 1 (with the caveat that his point is generalized to _all_ socializing) and 7 (maybe not so for US but for countries where parents play a huge role in shaping kids' future career choices).

I would also add time, that's the most important thing! When you get older you'll see that a lot of the breadth-first approach to life that you can do in your youth has now become depth-first, i.e. you won't have the time or opportunity to branch out to much. So experiment a lot when you're young.

That's what I would want my son to learn are the most important things, not just to get a good job but for everything in lide: maintain and build a good network and manage time choices wisely.

<comment><USER9> I have been thinking about the wisdom I want to impart to my son.

It has inspired me to live my life differently.

Lets see if I have the follow through.

(just because you are older and have less spare time, does not mean you can't branch out a little)

<comment><USER10> What are some of the things you've been inspired to do differently?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The best and most honest commencement speech I've ever listened to was David Foster Wallace's to the Kenyon College graduating class of 2005 that has since been published as a short book. It's called "This is Water." There's a heavy liberal arts slant, but it's a great speech.

<http://vimeo.com/57350121> (audio)

<comment><USER12> I've listened to and read quite a few commencement speeches, and DFW's is the only one that made an actual impact on my life. I think to myself "this is water" at least once every day or two and it helps me to realign my perspective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Another point would be to _save_. When you're young, it's easy to spend and not save. However, it's important to get into a disciplined habit of saving - don't depend on someone else to force you to save.

Also, while it's financially advantageous to have a two-income family, once you have kids priorities might change. The better choice may be to have a parent at home with the kid(s) instead of utilizing day-care.

You're mileage may vary.

<comment><USER14> this is very bad advice. saving money with a near nil interest rate is a huge waste of money. spend money on travel, do things with the money you have, life live. It is through expanding our horizons that opportunities present themselves which lead to a far more fulfilling live.

Simply hoarding cash for the rainy day scenario seems like such an awful way to live life. Sure, don't over spend, don't waste, and don't frivolously throw money away, but money is a means to doing things.

<comment><USER15> True, money is a means to doing things. Things like paying for an unexpected extended hospitalization. Or a new refrigerator when the old one dies. Or a new roof when a tornado plays peekaboo with your attic. Or a new vehicle when someone slams into your old one. Or for that matter, putting food on the table when you're 79 years old and really don't want to do the whole 9-to-5 thing anymore.

While it's true that you can pay for most of those things with a credit card and make monthly payments, may I be so presumptuous as to point out that if you made those monthly payments _before_ you incurred the charges--i.e., put the money into a savings account, even one earning only a quarter of a percent in interest--then when you pay the bill, you pay only 100% of the charges. If you wait until after you incur the charges, and make payments on your credit card, you're going to pay 120% or more of the charges.

Saving money with a near-nil interest rate may be a huge waste of money, but not saving it, and having to pay finance charges when high-ticket items need to be paid for is an even huger waste.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Interesting read. Although I don't agree with all the points, it does shed light on the realities faced by recent college graduates.

Looking back on my own experience a decade after my graduation, point one is definitely true. The relationships you build in college are very important and I wish someone told me this when I was in college. I have lost touch with most of my fraternity friends and other colleagues which was not wise. However, I did meet my wife in college which was a great success (point four)! She remained in contact with all her friends and has benefited greatly from it.

As a parent, I can relate to point five. There is definitely constant pressure placed on you by peers to push your children into all sorts of activities (this also ties in to point seven). Just be cognizant of the volume of activities you place you child into -- children do experience burn-out, but it manifests itself in different ways (such as behavior in the classroom). There is nothing wrong with just playing in the park or pick-up games -- not everything has to be structured.

</comment><comment><USER17> The only bit of advice that I can pass on regarding UK graduations is to not get really drunk until _after_ they have taken the graduation photographs.

</comment><comment><USER18> Awesome article. But I disagree with "Don't try to be great." Yeah, it takes luck, and yeah, there's nothing wrong with being "solid." But with that mindset, you _won't_ be great, even if you're lucky. Do you think Bill Gates spent his 10,000 hours programming by accident? Was there nothing better to do? No. He was probably obsessively passionate about it, and he took advantage of his opportunity to become great. And do you think Apple made such a name for itself by coasting along, doing what everyone else does? Few people and few companies become great by not trying.

<comment><USER19> I don't think the author was saying not to put effort into anything, and certainly wasn't saying not to take advantage of opportunities. I think it just has more to do with your mindset. Are you doing things simply because you want to be "great", or is it because you actually enjoy what you do? If you're never going to be content until you become the next Steve Jobs, and that lucky break just never comes along, then what kind of life is that? You could spend a whole lifetime as a solid, successful person, and _still_ be miserable. What a waste.

I would also argue that, yes, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates just did things they were obsessively passionate about, and the fact that their passions turned out to line up well with what was marketable and under-exploited at the time was accidental luck. And working hard was their choice, but what about the many others who were inevitably working just as hard? They might've had a similar passion, but they weren't lucky enough to have the skills, timing, and luck that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs had. I would hope they don't spend their lives feeling inadequate because of that.

C.S. Lewis said, "Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it." Replace originality with greatness, and telling the truth with following your passion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I prefer commencement speeches with more of a personal touch to them, namely Steve Jobs' commencement speech at Stanford in 2005 [1]. This article definitely gives good advice but at the end of the day, it's pretty superficial. Steve Jobs tells 3 stories which beautifully take students through his life, but also give life long lessons that actually carry substance.

[1] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc>

</comment><comment><USER21> If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.

Frank Zappa

<comment><USER22> _If you want to get laid_

Zappa obviously didn't know about engineering school ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> John J. Chapman, Commencement Address to the Graduating Class of Hobart College, 1900:

 _When I was asked to make this address I wondered what I had to say to you boys who are graduating. And I think I have one thing to say. If you wish to be useful, never take a course that will silence you. Refuse to learn anything that implies collusion, whether it be a clerkship or a curacy, a legal fee or a post in a university. Retain the power of speech no matter what other power you may lose. If you can take this course, and in so far as you take it, you will bless this country. In so far as you depart from this course, you become dampers, mutes, and hooded executioners.

As a practical matter, a mere failure to speak out upon occassions where no statement is asked or expect from you, and when the utterance of an uncalled for suspicion is odious, will often hold you to a concurrence in palpable iniquity. Try to raise a voice that will be heard from here to Albany and watch what comes forward to shut off the sound. It is not a German sergeant, nor a Russian officer of the precinct. It is a note from a friend of your father's, offering you a place at his office. This is your warning from the secret police. Why, if you any of young gentleman have a mind to make himself heard a mile off, you must make a bonfire of your reputations, and a close enemy of most men who would wish you well.

I have seen ten years of young men who rush out into the world with their messages, and when they find how deaf the world is, they think they must save their strength and wait. They believe that after a while they will be able to get up on some little eminence from which they can make themselves heard. "In a few years," reasons one of them, "I shall have gained a standing, and then I shall use my powers for good." Next year comes and with it a strange discovery. The man has lost his horizon of thought, his ambition has evaporated; he has nothing to say. I give you this one rule of conduct. Do what you will, but speak out always. Be shunned, be hated, be ridiculed, be scared, be in doubt, but don't be gagged. The time of trial is always. Now is the appointed time._

</comment><comment><USER24> When I graduated, it felt like the hardest part of my life was going to be over, and I was going to reap the rewards of my hard work in school. So no.. I don't believe in commencement speeches.

<comment><USER25> Did a commencement speaker tell you it would be smooth sailings? I imagine the cookie cutter speech would involve something like "it's going to get tough, keep your head up".

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> _4\. Marry someone smarter than you are_

Hard for this to work for both spouses, I guess....

</comment><comment><USER27> Aaron Sorkin from last year - <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwvilfPWHYI> \- 'there are some screwups heading your way'

</comment><comment><USER28> The only thing I would change is #10 -- Don't try to be great. I would change it to "Do great things, but don't strive to 'be great'". Obsession with "greatness" has destroyed nations.

</comment><comment><USER29> >Don't try to be great.

What the hell?

>Being great involves luck and other circumstances beyond your control.

Certainly that plays a roll...but to neglect your own agency in becoming "great" is idiotic.

<comment><USER30> If you set out to be great simple numbers mean you will most likely fail. The famous "mid-life crisis" can easily result. Best to accept that you most likely won't change the world, and be satisfied with things you can reasonably achieve.

<comment><USER29> I suppose it's the defeatist attitude that bothers me.

Yes, most people will become nothing, because they were never anything to begin with. But why not embrace your potential and fight for greatness. Humility, important - just as is managing your expectations, but acting powerless is so disturbingly passive and disappointing.

You define your greatness, and you fulfill that destiny. Acting as a passive being in life is boring, and meaningless. Accepting mediocrity is just one more step towards insignificance. Grasp your purpose through greatness and find something more rewarding that "accepting you won't change the world."

The "greatest" people want to change something, want to make things different, want to leave a lasting contribution - having that desire should be universally human. Farmers and factory workers are the ones who "accept their insignificance in civilization."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Be sure to click on the embedded video. The segment by Conan O'Brien is particularly insightful.

</comment><comment><USER32> Can anyone else read the article. The above link just asks me to "log in".

<comment><AUTHOR> works fine for me, but one reason could be, that you read a bunch of wsj articles. in chrome, you try opening an incognito window(private mode) , & try loading the page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> My undergraduate commencement speaker was Charlie Rose. Wonderful speech.

</comment><comment><USER34> The 11th thing your commencement speaker won't tell you?

"You just spent four years of your life here, and are now six figures in debt as a result. You didn't have to do that. Hopefully in that 4 years and with that six figures, you learned how to educate yourself without this institution."

<comment><USER35> Yeah, I'll just call myself a surgeon and pick it up as I go along. No problem!

Who needs to spend time learning from best academic minds in CS? I can just tweet to some jackass Javascript 'rockstar'!

I'll just teach myself philosophy by reading these library books! I don't need some stuffy Oxford tutor who has been doing it for their whole life passing on their knowledge one-to-one!

Civil engineering? Making mistakes is how you learn!

I don't need a network and credentials! I'll just apply to this government policy institute with my GitHub profile and some retarded PHP library.

You people are fucking deluded. I can't believe tech has become so anti- intellectual.

<comment><USER36> I agree with you. Part of going to college is using their funding to get access to their equipment. Most people have no chance of getting to use a particle accelerator unless they go to uni or work with one.

You also get to hang out with a bunch of people doing similar things. You compete with them; you learn from them; you learn by teaching them.

You get to talk to people who have done important things in the field you're working in.

Of course, this is all in the ideal situation. Unfortunately modern education seems, for many people, to be "cram 'em in to get the funding". The education is secondary. Certainly some universities in the UK appear to be just extensions of 6th form education, and not the launchpad into proper academic rigorousness that they should be. (Not all, obviously. There's a lot of great work coming out of uni's.)

<comment><USER35> Here's what I think people are missing: if you don't go to college then you don't know what you don't know. These people with no education think they know it all anyway, but that's because they're blind to what they could have learned.

It makes me angry because it's so fucking arrogant! There are people working at colleges who have a lifetime of experience, hundreds of peer-reviewed publications and grants, and people just think they can teach themselves all of that without any of their help!

<comment><USER37> The anti-intellectualism in tech is quite surprising today. I find it shocking that we live in the age of CS yet great professors are quitting their faculty jobs to do startups and working at Google. I think the problem is lack of social status and compensation mismatch. Physicians still get some respect. Professors and researchers don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Most commencement speakers are double outliers.

1\. They're highly successful. Most people aren't.

2\. The validation of an academic meritocracy where many top members (compared to anything else in society) hate the corporate world means that they're likely to be people of merit. Most highly successful people aren't.

They're great at inspiring, but they've had just too much good luck to know how the world really works and what people are actually like. You have to fail in a hard-core sort of way that most people wouldn't survive to get that understanding.

<comment><USER39> This is why I love Steve Jobs' commencement address at Stanford. He was brutally honest. I love how he attributes much of his success to _not_ having a college degree.

<comment><USER40> "I love how he attributes much of his success to not having a college degree."

I love the part where he talks about Reed College and says something along the lines of "It was almost as expensive as Stanford" and he chuckled. The camera pans to the audience, and you can see the Professors behind him just stare with a straight face. Kind of seemed like he reminded all the students in the audience (and some adults I am sure) that they are now carrying around a mountain of debt.

<comment><USER41> To be clear, you are much more likely to graduate with debt from a low to mid- upper tier private college than you are likely to graduate with debt from a wealthy school like Stanford, due to the fact that Stanford can afford to spend a large amount on financial aid.

Exceptions always abound, though, and there are always a few who fall through the cracks (and these people tend to show up on HN attacking my assetions :) )

<comment><USER40> Exactly. I have always found that funny. Schools like Harvard, Stanford, MIT are often on on par with, if not somewhat cheaper (factoring in the "school brand-name"), than lower level schools. Stanford also pays for your education if your house-hold income is less than 100k.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


I think I am stuck, job is boring me, what now? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
I am a long time user who created an anon account.
I am thirty years old. I recently moved half way across the US for a new job. I work in tech, advertising side. I found that my new job is, well, boring. I find myself giving half efforts, procrastinating, and not interested or invested. Funny thing is, I am paid more, work less, and worry less than in my previous role. I don't want to let my new team or clients down, but I just can't get my get past this mental hurdle. Has anyone else experienced this scenario? How did you get past it? Any questions I should ask myself to reasses what I am doing?
I don't want to be a broken cog in the machine. From a moral perspective, I feel that my current stance is immoral (underperforming due to personal sentiment).
Thanks in advance for any input.
PS. I have taken up plenty of hobbies, but I still lack the "job" motivation I had before.
In my last role, I managed a team of 4+ smart folks and was also an individual contributor. Now am I solely an IC. <comment><USER2> Are there any other technologies or domains that interest you? Perhaps spend your free time learning more about them and practicing. When you are comfortable you can then try to pivot to a role that uses those.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I can't edit this anymore: I wrote the post on a whim. Let me know if you have any questions for me.</comment>


Lessons from the Cuckoo's Egg - <AUTHOR> https://davefernig.com/2020/01/12/lessons-from-the-cuckoos-egg/ <comment><USER2> An awesome book that does still teach a lot of valuable lessons. Sadly, pretty much the same lessons it taught back when it was written. Maybe more people should actually read it.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is Cliff Stoll's bread and butter now: [https://kleinbottle.com/](https://kleinbottle.com/)

</comment><comment><USER4> I read this book a couple of weeks ago. I found it gripping and exciting, and read it very rapidly. I recommend it.

<comment><USER5> I, too, just read this, but while I found it quite gripping, it repeated bits of info over and over, making it quite annoying when reading it in a short space of time. Would have worked well as a weekly serial in a newspaper, but needed a solid edit before going into novel form. Good story though.

<comment><USER6> I also read this book a few weeks ago after having stumbled upon it in a HN reading list somewhere. Though enjoyable, I have to agree wholeheartedly with your statement about it being pretty repetitive. It started off really good but I was happy when I finished reading it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> When I had my little ISP in Phoenix way back in 1993, I would give a copy of this book to every new customer (along with a copy of Trumpet Winsock).

<comment><USER8> Ah, Trumpet Winsock - and then Windows 95 spoiled that party!:)</comment></comment>


The Person in the Ape - <AUTHOR> https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/states-mind/person-ape?page=all <comment><USER2> > _We know that apes remember past events in detail and plan for the future; > they are masters of mimicry, learning to use human tools simply by > observing; they can understand spoken language and communicate with gestures > and abstract symbols; they methodically cooperate to hunt and defend their > territory; they maintain unique cultures, passing down particular toolmaking > techniques, dialects, and habitat-specific survival skills from one > generation to the next; they form lifelong kinships, mourn their dead, and > are just as dependent on social intimacy as we are; they can recognize their > reflections and have a sense of self. They are, in sum, highly intelligent, > self-aware, autonomous individuals._

All of that can be said about many other species -- certainly about dolphins or elephants, for example.

Just because an animal shows intelligence doesn't mean we're cousins, or, more to the point, animals don't have to be closely related to humans to be intelligent.

In just a few years, Youtube has done more to help understand animals than all of Western philosophy, from Aristotle to Descartes.

Some cows can open barn doors with their tongue. Birds play. House cats prepare and implement pranks against fellow cats, or dogs.

Although it's a sign of progress, it's bothering that we are only looking for signs of intelligence into creatures that most ressemble us morphologically.

<comment><USER3> It doesn't seem to me at all like we're only looking for signs of intelligence in apes. We're looking for it in everything. The article even references advocates for the legal personhood of great apes, dolphins, elephants, and whales.

You give Youtube way too much credit. Science has done more to help understand animals than all of historical philosophy. Youtube has done more to spread that understanding to laypeople.

<comment><USER4> I disagree. Watching animals doing amazing things on YouTube has completely changed how I see animals. I'm sure I'm not alone. Scientists can't be everywhere to capture amazing behavior, but YouTube can

<comment><USER5> YouTube is just distribution. It's like crediting heavy trucks for winning WW2, or crediting YCombinator News's CDN for writing this witty and insightful message.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This debate is called Great Ape Personhood[0]

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

</comment><comment><USER7> discussion from a couple weeks back: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15916978](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15916978)

</comment><comment><USER8> I feel it. It's good and perceptual, you might say it breathes, but how is it significant in any way. Off topic?

newb enjoyed only.

<comment><USER9> There's only one criterion for a good HN post: does it gratify intellectual curiosity? All topics are welcome as long as they do that.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)</comment></comment>


Functions Should Be Short And Sweet, But Why? - <AUTHOR> http://sam-koblenski.blogspot.com/2014/01/functions-should-be-short-and-sweet-but.html

<comment><USER2> "Easier to read" is the biggest advantage IMHO; I don't find that they are "easier to write": for me it's more immediate to write code in a big dirty main, than in small and self-documenting functions. But there is no choice: you _must_ refactor your code if you want to understand something later

</comment><comment><USER3> I must point out that not all software is CRUD boilerplate that can be nicely condensed to small chunks. Arbitrarily splitting a complicated algorithm implementation, just to make a every piece less than N lines seems like some weird variation of cargo cult programming.

<comment><USER4> I thought the same thing as well. For every best practice there is a counter- example. In the case of a simple procedural task that doesn't have any independently executable pieces, the value of splitting it up into sub-methods is debatable. All else being equal, it sometimes comes down to whether the sub-tasks have an intuitive mapping to English, if they don't map well to English or there are cross-cutting concerns or ambiguities underlying the names of the methods then I'd say it's a net loss to readability and better to just have one big hairy method.</comment></comment>


Too Rich to Live? - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703609004575355572928371574.html?mod=WSJ_hps_LEFTTopStories

<comment><USER3> Many of the wealthiest people in America opposed the repeal of the tax in the first place - <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1170874.stm>

Warren Buffet has been quoted as saying "The idea that you get a lifetime of privately funded food stamps based on coming out of the right womb strikes at my idea of fairness."

There's a strong argument for high estate taxes on the principle that the inheritance of wealth is inherently anti-democratic. Most historical dictatorships have been based on the simple principle of compound interest. In Britain two thirds of our land is still owned by just 6,000 people, most of them aristocrats. I think any American would be a fool to forget that their nation was founded as a rejection of British serfdom, and that their nation is perhaps the only one in history that has not lived under the tyranny of oligarchy. It seems to me to be no coincidence that America is almost unique in the world in not having a common cultural sense that economic wealth inevitably translates into political power.

For a contemporary example of the perils of unearned wealth, we need look no further than Russia - in less than two decades it has descended to a state of pure plutocracy, based on little more than unchecked accumulation of wealth and simple corruption. Those opposing campaign finance laws and regulation of that sort would be wise to look at the career of Vladimir Putin as a cautionary example of what happens when wealth is allowed to dominate democracy.

I consider myself a classic liberal, on largely utilitarian grounds - <USER2> believe that a free market is good for us all and that any regulation of that market is likely to do more harm than good. However, I fail to see the harm done to society by considering a dead person's assets to be essentially 'dead money', beyond that which is necessary to sustain his family. If you truly wish to have a lasting influence on the world after your death, trust laws give you ample opportunity to leave a permanent economic legacy. The likes of Gates, Buffet, Carnegie and Rockefeller seem to recognise this. I fail to see what good comes of inheritance, but do see a long history of great wrongs resulting from it. From the perspective of this Brit, inheritance seems to be more fundamentally un-American than most things condemned as such.

<comment><USER4> The majority of the harm, as I see it, stems from the government attempting to regulate the market and the unintended consequences of that regulation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very wealthy people have the resources and probably the smarts find ways to lessen tax liability - setting up trusts, moving money offshore, etc.

<comment><USER6> Yes, very wealthy people... like a two-income family of programmers that saved 20% of their money and invested prudently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> And with this law passing, the death of the family farm is complete. Now instead of the midwest being full of family farms passed from father to son, we'll only have corporate farms, since the typical family can't come up with the cash to cover half the value of their land that now belongs to the government.

I have little sympathy for the mega-millionaire trust fund kids this impacts, however, the estate tax completely destroys a way of life for millions of people in fly-over-country that has existed for generations. Sad.

<comment><USER8> Family farms in Iowa have been dead for a generation. My brother is the youngest member of his "future farmers" group - he's 55. Corporations manage most of the land in my county, and its not very different elsewhere.

<comment><USER8> Anyway, most canny farmers have incorporated. The heirs get stock, not the farm. So taxes are avoided/deferred.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What's the hit on passing your estate to your kin BEFORE you die?

<comment><USER10> Gift tax is similar (has been 45%, might go up), on amounts over $10,000.

<comment><USER11> It's now $13,000 as of last year, I believe.

<comment><USER12> Charitable giving is exempt, though...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> To counterbalance the tone of impending doom in some of these comments and the article, it's worth remembering that the article is from WSJ and might bear the _slighest_ hint of bias. J

</comment><comment><USER14> a 45% estate tax? That seems kind of insane! Is that on all your assets, or the property you own, or what?

I can't believe the government gets half of everything you've got when you die. What ever happened to wills?

<comment><USER15> The argument for this is that you're getting a large windfall (and in most cases you haven't done anything to earn it) so you must be taxed on it.

<comment><USER16> That argument happens to be full of shit. Even if you win $36 million in the lottery (surely the stereotypical "windfall"), the feds won't tax you 55%. The highest marginal tax rate is 35%.

Estate taxes are morally repugnant. If the idea of people passing along large fortunes to bratty kids is so bothersome, take comfort in the fact that money tends to "find its level". Spendthrift fools will eventually lose it all to mismanagement anyway. It might take more than one generation, but it'll happen.

<comment><USER17> Estate taxes are only morally repugnant if you believe that the children of the elite have a unique right to the accumulated wealth of the society (which tends to build up in those who own property and capital). Why should all of us whose ancestors for generations actually built this society with their hands end up with nothing while the man whose ancestor was a robber baron, land speculator, or plantation owner receives a handout of a giant pile of cash? Especially when such dramatic wealth inequalities severely distort people's economic behavior, depressing the overall growth of the whole economy and wealth of the whole society?

<comment><USER14> It's not that the children are entitled to it, but the deceased wanted to give it to them. It's their assets, shouldn't they be allowed to decide what to do with them?

<comment><USER17> Why? By common cultural and legal convention (and in my firm opinion), the accumulated wealth of most countries partly belongs to all who are citizens. You're suggesting that the rest of us cede complete social and economic control to those who own property. Such is the typical libertarian utopian ideal, but in practice the result is a sort of quasi-aristocratic society with sharply limited opportunities for those at the bottom.

If you change your perspective, recognize that every fortune depends just as much on the context and the society it was built in as it does on the individual who built it, that our definitions of wealth and property are essentially arbitrary human constructions, defined to be whatever we can mostly agree on (through our institutions of government), and decide that the accumulated wealth created by all our ancestors should "rightfully" (another human construction) belong somewhat to all of us, then suddenly inheritance in general becomes a way for some people (the rich) to take our property (that is, your property and mine and everyone's) and give it to a few people that they personally selected.

Now, in practice, there's some kind of balance between these positions (full inheritance or no inheritance), because again, our culture and laws in a republican society are based on what we can agree on. In America, there's more of a cultural and legal emphasis on inheritance and personal wealth than in any of the Scandinavian countries, for example.

But for someone to say that the very concept of broader societal input into inheritance is "morally repugnant" is in my opinion a pretty narrow and socially destructive morality, and I'm glad I don't live in a country where a small elite has enough power and influence to impose such cultural definitions through force.

<comment><USER18> As with all these funny little arguments I'd like to ask a simple question.

Do you mind sending me some money that you have since it somewhat belongs to all of us? I mean really, like cut me a check and mail it? Or instead are you going to be like every other person sane person out there that says, I earned it, I keep it?

Your argument is invalid because during the accumulation of wealth by people, there are taxes at each stage where society claims it's cut. In essence, a death tax is double taxation.

<comment><USER17> I send "you" a check every time I do any work, in the form of an income tax, paid to the government. I can both believe that you have a partial stake in the portion I send to the government, and also not see the social benefit in sending _you personally_ a check.

What's your point?

> _every other person sane person out there that says, I earned it, I keep > it?_

These naive and self-important "sane" people have not thought very hard about the problems of running a society, or at least don't have much experience with its practical constraints (and I would guess also have little close experience with non-functional governments/societies such as those in most of the developing world).

> _Your argument is invalid because [inheritance tax] is double taxation._

There is no "law of the universe" which prevents our duly elected representative government from deciding to tax both income and inheritance. My "argument" is that we make these essentially arbitrary decisions about how to organize ourselves (our economies, our property systems, our governments) via a process which involves agreement and compromise (and a fair amount of disagreement and controversy too, of course; no one ever said governing ourselves would be easy).

Since you haven't addressed "my argument" _at all_ (as far as I can tell from your response you didn't even read/comprehend it), I do not understand the basis by which you have decided that it is invalid.

<comment><USER18> _people have not thought very hard about the problems of running a society_

It depends on what type of society you are trying to run. Are you trying to run a society full of social benefits (handouts) or a society of individual accomplishments?

 _My "argument" is_

What is your argument? The following sentence is simply a description of how we arrive at where we are and not why.

<comment><USER17> > _Are you trying to run a society full of social benefits (handouts) or a > society of individual accomplishments?_

Neither is a good characterization (both are shrill bullshit buzzwords intended in this context to limit discussion).

Trying to run a society with reasonable physical infrastructure (transportation, public utilities, public health, etc.), a functioning economy, a low unemployment rate, a decent standard of living, a lack of structural violence, a support for individual freedoms, protections against fraud and abuse of information asymmetries, a legal framework under which to peacefully resolve disputes, an ability to respond to disasters and foreign invasions, a government which is responsive to the changing needs and circumstances of its citizens and responsive at a local level to local differences, etc.

* * *

The why is in my opinion best described in Machiavelli's _Discourses on Livy_ , Montesquieu's _Spirit of the Laws_ , Tocqueville's _Democracy in America_ , and Madison/Hamilton/Jefferson's _Federalist Papers_ (and you might look at Locke, Rousseau, Hobbes, etc. too if you're feeling extra ambitious). The complexities are somewhat longer and more involved than is appropriate for this venue.

If you haven't read it, Tocqueville's book is truly fantastic, highly recommended to anyone interested in democracy or American government, and just about as relevant today as anything written since.

<comment><USER18> Of course it's to limit the discussion. That's the reason to ask. If you believe in individual accomplishment then a death tax is abhorrent to that cause. If you believe in social benefits and wealth redistribution based on society having a part in the deceased's property then it's legit. I'm simply asking where you stand, and from how you respond, you don't stand for anything and it's impossible to carry on in such a case. Don't give me some list of books to read as if I'm some peasant trying to talk to some magnate. You have a definite flourish but there is no point to your jab.

<comment><USER17> > _If you believe in individual accomplishment then a death tax is abhorrent > to that cause._

You keep repeating that like a mantra (which would be unsurprising for a Republican political candidate given that it is part of the official party platform and talking points for the last couple decades, and is pushed endlessly by the Heritage Foundation, Club for Growth, and similar organizations), but you haven't (and they never do either) actually explained the logical connection between the two parts of that statement (and you keep dodging every other question and ignoring every other answer).

I believe in individual accomplishment, and I believe that estate taxes are quite reasonable and well justified by essentially all of the commonly accepted moral principles of mainstream philosophical liberalism on which the society and legal system of this country (i.e. the US) are based.

Basically, you are attempting to establish your logical claim with no logic, and no explanation of any kind, simply through inane repetition. That's not a discussion. That's a religious crusade.

By the way, "abhorrent" is usually reserved for things like torture and mass killing. Its use in relation to changes in the marginal tax rate are absurd.

<comment><USER18> Then you don't really believe in individual accomplishment. I've stated that the wealth that is created is taxed as it is made. Taxing wealth more after a person dies just to transfer it to the inheritor is a slap in the face to the person that created the wealth in the first place. Society has no claim on a dead mans property as the property has been paid for by the income taxes each year, sales tax of the state, property taxes, SS, and all the other little taxes out there. By taxing property/wealth after death and ignoring the taxation that already occurred on that wealth you simply support redistribution and do not support individual accomplishment. I have to repeat because you don't seem to acknowledge this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm sorry, I have zero sympathy for anyone distraught over this issue. If you're contemplating whether to live or die based on how much tax will be collected from your estate, then I have an easy answer for you: your life obviously isn't worth even a penny, so might as well get it over with.

As for the issue of the tax itself, there is something to be said for using estate taxes to prevent the establishment of an aristocracy. I wonder how strong the correlation is between the estate tax rate and the wealth divide...

<comment><USER14> If you had children and a lot of money, were old and racked with health problems that left you bedridden, and the date of your death was by all accounts sometime in the next two years, would you actually insist on living an extra year and saddling your children with hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes on the things you pass on to them?

There may not be a clear answer, but is it so insane to even _contemplate_ these things? The elderly are not being greedy- they don't benefit monetarily. They are trying to care for their children in the last way they can, similar to those who choose to take out life insurance. Would you similarly condemn a parent who dies protecting their children from danger?

<comment><USER19> So you're comparing dying in order to protect a life with dying in order to avoid excess taxes?

The question is not "life == money" vs "life < money" vs "life > money", the question is why are you attempting to compare life and money in the first place?!?

<comment><USER14> I'm not equating dying to protect life with dying to avoid taxes. The first point was, it can be seen as reasonable to die to help your children. The second point is my stipulation that to say it's only _ever_ reasonable in the case that your children are in mortal danger is silly.

If you value your life very low (for example, you are bedridden in the hospital, terminally ill, on the verge of death and will be in excruciating pain for the rest of your short life) and the well-being of your children very high, why is that so crazy? Soldiers in a country being invaded can go to war and die to protect their families from enslavement, rape, pillaging, and so forth, not just from death, and no one (well, usually) criticizes and demeans them for that. Are soldiers the only ones allowed to do that?

I can sense you're balking at the part money plays in the equation, and you do not like when money is assigned value beyond pieces of paper. Consider that the people making these decisions are likely not thinking of the dollar amount of the inheritance. I would bet they are thinking of the amount of good (whether getting lots of money = good can be debated, but let's assume it does, or at least assume they believe it does) they can do for their children when they pass. Being taxed on that money means giving up a lot of that good.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Clues in Sony Hack Point to Insiders - <AUTHOR> https://securityledger.com/2014/12/new-clues-in-sony-hack-point-to-insiders-away-from-dprk/ <comment><AUTHOR> Assuming that NK was not responsible, although the FBI and Obama explicitly claimed to know they did. Is the US government going to apologize to a dictatorship, double down, or ...?

<comment><USER2> The US Federal Government is good with playing six degrees of Kevin Bacon. I think somewhere in this mess is an alleged tie to NK. I also think they will eventually come out with more information when they are ready.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you shop for clothes online? - <AUTHOR> Google? Via favorite brand or retailer website(s)? Only offline? How do you find out about sales? Via email newsletters? <comment><AUTHOR> Working on a startup in fashion and curious</comment>


Ask HN: Looking for NYC-based technical co-founder for green meta-retail site - <AUTHOR>

Fully-functional, uniquely positioned green/social impact ecommerce site seeks a co-founder to help oversee site development, co-raise capital, and grow the organization with the existing founder. The existing founder is strong in finance and business development and has founded three Internet startups to date. The perfect co-founder will be strong in technology but also capable of confidently co-pitching the company to potential investors.
This is the perfect opportunity for someone interested in the environment, helping small businesses thrive, and doing something positive for the planet to walk in as a partner and have an immediate impact on the direction of a startup that, with a small round of investment, can be launched in a very short amount of time. The site is real and it's 95% of the way towards being launch-ready in a basic form with plans for continuous improvement. Launch fast, update often.
The company is a for-profit venture, although it's social impact is beneficial, thus it fits the profile of traditional and social capital market investors. It is funded by the founder and friends&family to date.  Co-founder salary will depend on successfully raising a round of capital. Existing founder realizes the importance of the role to be filled by this new co-founder and that will be reflected in the equity package presented to the right person.
If you have a strong business background, but not a technical one, and are looking for such an opportunity, feel free to contact us.  A third co-founder who significantly increases the company's potential is not out of the question.
The company is based in New York City and the code for the site was written by a reputable local contracting firm.
Contact email@example.com <comment><USER2> HNers,

I have personally known the founder of the above startup for a decade and can vouch for her abilities as both a serial entrepreneur and as a genuinely good person. This isn't her first time doing this, so she has a track record. And, although the funding climate is a bit bumpy these days, there are some unique opportunities specifically in NYC for startups, startups that help local (and non-local) businesses, and for social impact startups in general.

There are plenty of 'looking for programmer to implement idea as described on the back of a napkin' situations out there (and I'm not knocking them -- those can be amazing), but this is different. And there is plenty of room for innovation as the site evolves over time.

I guess my post raises at least two potential questions:

1) Why am I not stepping in as a co-founder? Answer: I'm busy with my own startup. Additionally, she's a good friend of mine and I've learned again and again that working with friends is, in the long term, often high risk with more downside than upside.

2) Who can vouch for me? No one on this site perhaps, but even if there were, it's turtles all the way down. :-)

       Scott</comment>


Show HN: Ulaxi calculates whether UberX, Lyft, or Taxi is best for your trip - <AUTHOR> http://stenographer-arithmetic-82316.bitballoon.com/ <comment><USER3> Some things I find interesting after accidentally mapping from my work to SF:

      Your trip is 2812.3 miles and will take 2455.1 minutes.

1.7 days? I found it hard to believe it would only take two days to drive the width of the country, but other maps/sources show the same time, minus breaks of course.

      Uber rate: $4957.94
      Lyft rate: $6328.86
      Taxi rate: $9087.01

For 21 miles per gallon using premium (my car; ugh), the cost of a one-way trip driving yourself is $561. If ownership cost of the vehicles is assumed the same, the hourly rate for your driver is almost $108/hour (though i'm sure there's some taxi-specific costs i'm missing).

It really makes a striking case for how inefficient hired transit can be. But the above are transit options for a single passenger that can happen at any time or schedule. What about mass-transit options?

A Greyhound bus ticket from Baltimore to SF is only $244 and two days, 15 hours. There are five transfers.

An Amtrak train ticket from Baltimore to SF is only $318, and three days, 5 hours. There are three transfers.

And a one-way Delta flight from BWI to SFO is $171, and 10 hours 49 minutes. There is one transfer.

<comment> a-priori The IRS calculates that the cost per mile to operate a car in 2014 is, on average, $0.56 per mile. This factors in the fixed (amortized cost to buy a car) and variable (gas, maintenance) costs.

Based on that, the cost to drive 2812.3 miles one way is actually $1574.89.

[http://www.irs.gov/2014-Standard-Mileage-Rates-for- Business,...](http://www.irs.gov/2014-Standard-Mileage-Rates-for- Business,-Medical-and-Moving-Announced)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Got a new URL up! I can't change the URL in the original posting :(.

[http://stenographer-arithmetic-82316.bitballoon.com/](http://stenographer- arithmetic-82316.bitballoon.com/)

<comment><USER4> Thanks. We changed it.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is my first program in a decade - programmed a bunch in high school but fell away in college / post college.

Eager for feedback on UX & code structure :).

</comment><comment><USER5> Thanks for sharing -- happy to offer some "instant feedback":

* Alert windows are jarring. My first instinct when I saw it was "ok, thanks for telling me who to take, but why are you telling me this in a vacuum?" \-- and THEN I saw that you give a comparison. I'd skip the alert window entirely -- just show the list and at the top (or highlight, etc.) show the winner.

* It would be SUPER cool if you could calculate whether Surge Pricing / Happy Hour is in effect so the user doesn't have to manually make the choice in the drop-down. No idea if that's possible but the less work you have to make the user do, the better.

I'll keep playing around and edit with more thoughts...

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for feedback! It's pretty clear people don't like the alert window, so I'll remove that.

What I liked about the alert window is that it displayed results, on same page without needing to scroll, on a mobile device.

Would you be OK with scrolling down to the see the results?

Re: your second idea, that's definitely come up a lot. They don't have API so it requires a hack around. Are there phone apps out there that read the status from another app? I'm not really thinking of any at moment, but maybe if an app could use the phone to open another app and then read from the screen, that could work...

<comment><USER6> Uber has a mobile website - you could either scrape the site (probably much easier than trying to scrape an app) or capture the traffic and build your own kind of API. There's a service called gargl that says they do that kind of thing, although I haven't got around to looking at them yet.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hm interesting! I had not heard of gargl - may check it out. This is a hard feature to implement without their permission. There is a benefit to Uber / Lyft, if there was a direct link to their apps.

Stack overflow q said exactly same thing - [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11878609/is-it- possible-t...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11878609/is-it-possible-to- scrape-from-a-mobile-app-in-real-time)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> atom-morgan Great work. It does exactly what it says it does and helped me validate the choice I made a few weeks ago. I picked Uber and according to your app, it's the cheapest option for that route. Going forward, I'll probably use this. As for feedback.

First, I'd kill the alert message. You show the pricing by company anyways. Maybe highlight the cheapest option but I wouldn't use an alert window for it.

Second, I'd make changes to the background image. There's nothing wrong with the image at all, it's just that a tiled background like that seems a little dated to me.

Anything more than this feedback and I'd feel like I'm completely changing your design, not helping to improve it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for feedback! It's pretty clear people don't like the alert window, so I'll remove that.

What I liked about the alert window is that it displayed results, on same page without needing to scroll, on a mobile device. Is there a way I could hide/unhide dev elements to make the inputs disappear and results appear in their place? Or what were you imagining?

I agree tiled is dated - I wanted to launch something rather quickly so this feedback is great to help prioritize what tweaks to make.

<comment> atom-morgan Absolutely. You may end up doing something else but you could definitely hide/unhide an element to show your results. Check this out as an example: [http://jsfiddle.net/atommorgan/8Fjsq/](http://jsfiddle.net/atommorgan/8Fjsq/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly what I imagined - thanks for the link!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Are you taking into account the new Lyft pricing from last week? [http://www.lyft.me/help?article=1263247](http://www.lyft.me/help?article=1263247). Comparing it to the UberX rates [https://www.uber.com/cities/san- francisco](https://www.uber.com/cities/san-francisco), it seems like Lyft should be always $0.50 more (when there is no happy hour/surge), unless I'm missing something.

<comment><USER7> I realized I could just look at the JS and I can answer my own question...so yes your Lyft rates need updating :). Cost per minute is now 0.3 and cost per mile is 1.5

[http://www.lyft.me/help?article=1263247](http://www.lyft.me/help?article=1263247)

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow that was a huge drop on the mileage side. No I was not aware of that - <USER2> began coding this last week of March so missed this update. Thanks!

<comment><USER7> Looks like Uber adds $1 to all rides now if you want to update your fare calculations [http://blog.uber.com/saferides](http://blog.uber.com/saferides)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Are the rates displayed invalid when routing outside of the San Francisco area? I see the callout, but it still seems to work..

<comment><USER9> Each city has different prices and availability. I assume this will work for anywhere, but will use SF prices.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's exactly right - works anywhere Google Maps directions works, but just applies SF rates.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I was wishing for something like this just this weekend. I do my own search through each of the apps every time I look for a ride. You should think about turning this into an app.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback, and glad to hear you'd like to use it!

I like the idea of turning into an app. That has its own learning curve, so I did web app to test idea first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The pricing isn't quite accurate. During non peak times, its approximately $9.50 using Uber from home to my office. The pricing was showing about $7.50.

</comment><comment><USER12> CPU Limit Reached

You are seeing this page because website has reached CPU usage limit of the server, and it was temporarily disabled.

<comment><AUTHOR> Dang! Well now I know the limits of that free service, which apparently is not that much.

I'd be willing to pay for a more stable host - do you have any recommendations?

<comment><USER13> Is it a static site? Then bitballoon.

Dynamic? Heroku, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, DigitalOcean, AWS EC2, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tip!

Got the site on an alternative server. Not the prettiest url but does work!

[http://stenographer-arithmetic-82316.bitballoon.com/](http://stenographer- arithmetic-82316.bitballoon.com/)

<comment><USER14> BitBalloon founder here, cool site!

You can change the URL to something nicer from the UI - just click "Edit Name" and pick something like ulaxi.bitballoon.com :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've taken a car home from work multiple times. These prices are accurate. Good work!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - glad to hear!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Server error.

<comment><AUTHOR> Alright got the site on an alternative server. Not the prettiest url but does work!

[http://stenographer-arithmetic-82316.bitballoon.com/](http://stenographer- arithmetic-82316.bitballoon.com/)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are the best and worst big companies? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> It entirely depends on your perspective - there's no objective criterion by which your ? makes sense. For me, I think any job in the financial sector has a pretty healthy "evil" quotient, but then there are plenty of people who would look at my job in defense and say that's "evil". It's all relative.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea, the drug industry is another one full of evil.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Best and worst for what?

There are lots of magazine articles that do "best and worst" lists -- for example: best companies to work for. What are you looking for feedback on?

<comment><AUTHOR> I was thinking least evil and most evil.

<comment><USER3> But then you have to define good and evil. I personally think there is good and evil in all things. And having no job and no job prospects because the economy sucks for some reason or other is a pretty negative thing in its own right.

So, I say again, what really are you asking here? (Serious question, not trying to jerk you around. Given the lack of other replies, I suspect no one else really understands what you want either.)

Peace.</comment></comment></comment>


Sharks and underwater cables (report from 1987) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/1987/06/11/us/phone-company-finds-sharks-cutting-in.html?pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> The original link just displayed a blank white page for me.

Anything with underwater cables is very interesting to me (for some weird reason) so I had to go find the article.

Cached version: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?safe=off&sclien...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?safe=off&sclient=psy- ab&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F1987%2F06%2F11%2Fus%2Fphone- company-finds-sharks-cutting-in.html)

Page 2: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?safe=off&sclien...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?safe=off&sclient=psy- ab&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F1987%2F06%2F11%2Fus%2Fphone- company-finds-sharks-cutting-in.html%3Fpagewanted%3D2)</comment>


MSC06-C. Beware of compiler optimizations - <AUTHOR> https://www.securecoding.cert.org/confluence/display/seccode/MSC06-C.+Beware+of+compiler+optimizations

<comment><USER2> Previous related discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8270136](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8270136)</comment>


Meet the Muslim-American Leaders the FBI and NSA Have Been Spying On - <AUTHOR> https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/07/09/under-surveillance/ <comment><USER2> As one of the resident HN muslim users I think I should mention that within the muslim community nearly everyone assumes they're under some kind of surveilance whether it be targeted or indiscriminate. I mean the fact that Faisal Gill was nominated for special consideration is the icing on the cake.

I think over time more and more Americans are going to start to wake up and appreciate that the freedom loving utopia that America is percieved to be has slowly become a creeping monolithic police state. I don't say that to be controversial or alarmist but just to state what is in my view a fact.

What I'm interested in is whether Americans:

1\. Care.

2\. Care enough to change it.

3\. Actually can change it.

My personal belief is that all three are no.

<comment><USER3> To be frank, reasonable people are nervous because muslim ideology, as published, matches the modus operandi of things like ISIS, the states of Pakistan and generally middle eastern countries to some extent.

And frankly what also makes me horribly nervous is that when talking to muslims that are clearly well integrated, at work, or when going out. I can't get them to condemn terrorist behaviour. Not even when we're talking obviously immoral behaviour, like the 1972 olympic attack (just to avoid 9/11), or today ISIS' modus operandi. When it comes to the obvious religious extermination policies that exist in places like Pakistan or Bangladesh, or all over the middle east, again, it does not seem to be possible, in my experience, to hear condemnations of that behaviour. And frankly, when going over the behaviour that muslim history claims "the prophet" had, like exterminating Khaybar, men, women and children over a trivial conflict, again you can't get muslims to condemn that behavior. He, by the way, did not just kill them, but tortured them first, forced kids to watch family members' executions and worse.

They just deny it exists, how it's all a massive conspiracy against islam, muslims, those countries or some other such claim that they can't defend at all. Regularly muslims suggest that the whole of the quran, hadith and other sources has been falsified just for the purpose of that very discussion.

Knowing that these are well-integrated muslims, not "normal" ones is worrying, very, very worrying. To be honest, if someone were to try something like ISIS is doing in Iraq[1] in America, I am absolutely convinced there would not be serious opposition to that from the American muslim community.

I don't get how we can ever really live together with this religion. There simply is no interest in doing that on the muslim side. Yes there is a period of calm that has started with the WWI extermination of the Caliphate by the Turks. I feat that period is ending, and things will get much, much worse in the medium term.

I know I'll get downvoted for this, but I feel this is a legitimate concern.

[1] [http://rt.com/news/166436-isis-execution-video- iraq/](http://rt.com/news/166436-isis-execution-video-iraq/)

<comment><USER4> This is religious flamewar concern trolling. Please do not attack entire classes of people on Hacker News and please do not post anything like this again.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for this comment. I actually upvoted the parent out of emotion when I read it, for I personally would agree with almost everything it said.

However, when I read your comment, I realized that I don't know that many muslims personally (maybe 1-2) and I have never bothered to raise these topics with them to see how they would respond. So, it is not right for me to assume that they wouldn't criticize these events, especially given that there is a plethora of atheist ex-muslims online, which makes it credible(and to an extent obvious) that there are many more closeted atheists or otherwise liberals within the community, all of whom would prove the parent flat out wrong

<comment><USER6> The problems still exist. The religious leaders of all Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) are still not doing enough, see my other comments here. Muslims alone can't be expected to change anything if others aren't willing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a very a sensitive topic to talk about, and I might be tempted to say more on this, but I won't, For the sake of all good things. I cannot agree 100% with either of the sides, on this issue. But a good way to think about this situation is this:

If you go search for a lion in a jungle, you would probably find one. If you do, you will feel ever threatened to live near that jungle compared to when you were unaware of his presence and just living in your space, and the loin keeping to his jungle.

Spying similarly makes you ever-so conscious of anything that borders the line of what you agree and disagree with.

People who have photographic memory suffer from a similar curse. If they have seen a murder scene, they cannot ever forget it.

Forgetting is a good thing. This sort of spying doesn't leaves a room for Forgetting much more for Forgiving.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm floored that I had to find out about this story on _television_ because the story fell off the front page so quickly. Something about the process here is broken.

</comment><comment><USER6> Reading the document, all the five presented cases are the FBI cases, not NSA. They are also listed as the FISA cases. The title is intentionally misleading.

<comment><USER9> Um, which federal agency do you think files the paperwork in court on behalf of the NSA?

(Hint: It's the other federal agency mentioned in the Intercept's headline. Second hint: This agency is home to the National Security Branch, created in 2005. Third hint: it's listed as one of the 17 "member agencies" of the intelligence community here: [http://www.intelligence.gov/mission/member- agencies.html](http://www.intelligence.gov/mission/member-agencies.html))

<comment><USER10> The picture in the article shows "NSA", "CIA" and "FBI" listed for various cases in the "Responsible Agency" column. The cases that were highlighted in this article all had FBI listed as the responsible agency.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is one of the most profound revelations so far. Yet, HN just buried it off their front page. Wow.

<comment><AUTHOR> Infuriating. I also just lost the ability to downvote posts and comments...

<comment><USER4> > I also just lost the ability to downvote posts and comments

That is false. You really should follow the HN guidelines and take such matters up with us at email@example.com. Why post, or even think, untrue things about your HN account, when it's so easy to find out what's going on?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I come back a few weeks or months later, and find that HN is _still_ silently killing NSA stories. This _was_ near the top of the front page, until I refreshed and it disappeared, ranked 25 among the new stories despite 13 points and 2 comments.

Stay classy, mods. Signing off now :D

Edit: Currently ranked #72, probably well on its way to the fourth or fifth page. At least on [https://lobste.rs](https://lobste.rs), I might be able to see a modlog explanation if it gets removed there too.</comment>


Super Mario Bros theme performed by an RC car on a row of liquid-filled bottles - <AUTHOR> http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/14/super-mario-bros-the.html

<comment><USER2> i loved it, but methinks this belongs on digg

<comment><USER3> I agree. Not everything that gets to the front page of reddit should be posted here, that's what reddit's for.</comment></comment>


JQuery.popeye - an inline lightbox alternative - <AUTHOR> http://herr-schuessler.de/blog/jquerypopeye-an-inline-lightbox-alternative/# <comment><USER2> Too slow on my FF3. It still shows a div with a scrollbar and unformatted links even after 30 seconds. Still loading. Took a look at the design the last time I loaded it. Its cute.</comment>


An animated GIF that shows its own MD5 - <AUTHOR> https://shells.aachen.ccc.de/~spq/md5.gif <comment><USER2> Here is the explanation:

1\. Generate a gif for each possible digit in the first column

2\. Append collision blocks to each gif to make a 16 way collision

3\. Repeat for each digit

4\. Hash the final product

5\. Replace each digit with the correct digit

From [https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/5y03g9/animate...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/5y03g9/animated_gif_displaying_its_own_md5_hash/)

<comment><USER3> Why would you do it that way, rather than:

1\. Pick a target MD5

2\. Make whatever cutesy animation you want showing that number

3\. Append collision blocks to the resulting gif to make it match the target MD5

<comment><USER4> Because this attack is not feasible against MD5 with current state of the art cryptanalysis.

Instead collisions between files are demonstrated by appending bytes to two files until their hashes match.

<comment><USER3> Ah darn, for some reason I thought there was a practical preimage attack on MD5. I must have been thinking of CRC32 (which is just useless for this sort of thing.) My mistake.

<comment><USER5> CRCs are linear, all 'attacks' are efficient on them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Took me a couple of minutes looking at this to realize why this was interesting.

It's like a baby being born holding its completed birth certificate.

<comment><USER7> This sentence has forty-five (45) characters.

<comment><USER8> Reminds me of a fun problem I encountered as a younger lad:

This sentence has three as, one b, two cs, two ds, thirty-six es, three fs, three gs, eleven hs, nine is, one j, one k, three ls, one m, eighteen ns, twelve os, one p, one q, eight rs, twenty-six ss, twenty ts, two us, five vs, seven ws, three xs, four ys and one z.

I eventually found the solution by iteratively updating the approximate distribution of each letter and finally sampling [1] - not sure if there is a better way!

[1] solve_2 in tsh.py at [https://bitbucket.org/akxlr/tsh/src](https://bitbucket.org/akxlr/tsh/src)

<comment><USER9> you use a gradient descent approach, but there's no way to guarantee anything like convexity, right?

I bet you can construct a language where a solution exists, but all of its neighbors' errors (using the topology implied by your gd function) are local maxima.

<comment><USER8> Right, it is definitely not convex in any way and gradient descent is basically useless (and not very interesting because all it really means here is try perturbing each count by one and look for improvement). I left that there as an initial attempt at solving the problem but I don't use it in my solution (except for the call to `gd(iter(gd(v)))` where I explore the neighbouring solutions to each sample point, which is probably not necessary).

The basic idea instead is to treat each letter count as a random variable, and ask what the distribution of each count is. In particular, each letter count can be expressed as a sum of (a mapping of) the other letter counts, so if you know the distribution of all other letter counts you can improve the distribution of the letter of interest. Initially assume uniform for all counts, then iterate until convergence. The images in that repo show the distribution of some letters at various stages. After doing this for about 10 iterations you stop seeing any improvement (the letter distributions are as 'peaked' as they are going to get), at which point I drew samples until I found a solution.

<comment><USER9> Alright, I admit that I skimmed, came across a bunch of GD code at the beginning and assumed that you just got lucky with a very greedy approach, sorry :P.

The update function you wrote on the distribution space is continuous, and distribution space is compact (since there's no way to have more than N of any letter), so there is necessarily at least one fixed point.

Fixed points could still be sources though, right? It clearly wasn't, but I'm curious to know if you got lucky, or if you merely didn't get unlucky.

I wonder how effective your code would be on the following self descriptive sentences (base j).

For instance when j=2, "100 1,11 0" has 4 ones and 3 zeros as described.

Does your code consistently find solutions as you increase j? At what point does the computation become unfeasible?

<comment><USER8> Nice! I admit I don't have a good understanding of the analysis, but if you mean "does repeatedly applying f to some starting point v, like f(f(f(...(v)))) eventually lead to a solution" the answer is definitely not - you can be right next to a solution and not get there by GD or by applying f. My function `iter` applies f over and over, but this was another failed attempt at a solution.

I will endeavour to try your problem, is it related in some way to a well- known problem?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's like a quine almost. My favorite quine is...[http://aem1k.com/world/](http://aem1k.com/world/) (view source)

<comment><USER11> Have you seen this one? It's insane:

[https://github.com/mame/quine-relay](https://github.com/mame/quine-relay)

<comment><USER12> It's awesome how it can maintain the image layout in the source code through those 100 transformations.

I wonder whether it reads its own source code file to detect where to put the spaces for the image, or is it all encoded as data in the ruby program itself? I suppose it's the latter (otherwise it wouldn't qualify as a quine), but I can't figure out how it is encoded.

<comment><USER13> It appears all the languages' code is encoded in the `code_gen.rb` file:

[https://github.com/mame/quine-relay/blob/master/src/code- gen...](https://github.com/mame/quine-relay/blob/master/src/code- gen.rb#L1030-L1056) < VB

[https://github.com/mame/quine-relay/blob/master/src/code- gen...](https://github.com/mame/quine-relay/blob/master/src/code- gen.rb#L120-L146) < PHP

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There's an explanation of how this 'attack' was composed here: [http://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/44463/how-does- the...](http://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/44463/how-does-the-attack- on-md5-work-that-allows-a-file-to-show-its-own-full-hash)

<comment><USER15> The answer there doesn't explain chosen-prefix attacks, which are more powerful than building a collision out of a single prefix. They require much less flexibility in the fire format; building the PDF for shattered.io wasn't trivial exactly because the SHA-1 break didn't allow choosing two prefixes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> In similar spirit, a Zip archive holding itself, by Russ Cox: [https://research.swtch.com/zip](https://research.swtch.com/zip)

Infinite recursion!

</comment><comment><USER17> Title checks out.

        > md5sum md5.gif
        f5ca4f935d44b85c431a8bf788c0eaca  md5.gif

<comment><USER18> Never knew that md5sum took a file argument. I've always `md5sum <foo`

Slightly embarrassing, but at least I wasn't `cat foo|md5sum`

<comment><USER19> The output format of md5sum and other checksum programs is well-defined, which lets you use the -c switch to verify. This is the format you see in checksum files when downloading source tarballs, distro ISOs, packages, etc.

        $ echo hello > fileone
        $ echo there > filetwo
        $ md5sum fileone filetwo | tee /tmp/ck
        b1946ac92492d2347c6235b4d2611184  fileone
        c4ff45bb1fab99f9164b7fec14b2292a  filetwo
        $ md5sum -c /tmp/ck
        fileone: OK
        filetwo: OK
        $ echo oops > filetwo
        $ md5sum -c /tmp/ck
        fileone: OK
        filetwo: FAILED
        md5sum: WARNING: 1 computed checksum did NOT match

Edit: Of course, nothing wrong with using stdin:

        $ wget -q -O- https://shells.aachen.ccc.de/~spq/md5.gif | md5sum
        f5ca4f935d44b85c431a8bf788c0eaca  -

<comment><USER20> What's the -O- for?

<comment><USER21> -O is the file to write output. plain - means stdout. so, run wget and print results to stdout. tip: add -S to include response http headers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Wow! I'd love to read about how this was made.

<comment><USER23> soheil heard, and your request was granted ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13824445](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13824445)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Reminds me of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupper's_self- referential_form...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupper's_self- referential_formula)

<comment><USER25> I was a bit disappointed when I found this out about it:

"The formula is a general-purpose method of decoding a bitmap stored in the constant k, and it could actually be used to draw any other image."

That makes it less of a self-referential formula in my opinion, and more of a cool formula that can print any bitmap.

<comment><USER26> Yeah, the title is misleading. There's nothing self-referential about this formula.

Now, if the formula was also capable of drawing the constant k, THAT would be exciting.

<comment><USER27> Jakub Travnik has got your back. [http://jtra.cz/stuff/essays/math-self- reference/index.html](http://jtra.cz/stuff/essays/math-self- reference/index.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Not as impressive but similar idea: [https://github.com/ziqbal/jpegfit/blob/master/61081.jpg](https://github.com/ziqbal/jpegfit/blob/master/61081.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER29> Would love to know how this was made, if anybody knows

<comment><USER30> This was posted to reddit yesterday, here's the discussion:[https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/5y03g9/animate...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/5y03g9/animated_gif_displaying_its_own_md5_hash/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I think this uses one of the available GIF extensions (e.g plain-text, custom data, or other) since gif is a block based binary file. Animation blocks in one part of the file, then for the other blocks you could just put random data (which is ignored by the GIF parser) until you find the MD5 collision.

</comment><comment><USER2> I wonder if it being an animated GIF as opposed to just an image has anything to do with it.

<comment><USER32> Surely it does: you have much more combinations in animated GIF than static GIF so it is easier to make "unvisible" changes to the file to get the MD5 hash displayed on final GIF slide.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> [https://xkcd.com/688/](https://xkcd.com/688/)

</comment><comment><USER34> I can't imagine how you'd begin to do this.

<comment><USER35> Just a wild guess, but I imagine you would start by designing the gif animation to depict a plausible MD5 hash, then modifying the file in such a way that you make the file MD5 hash match the one depicted in the animation.

Very impressive!

<comment><USER36> But any 128 bit value is a plausible MD5 hash. Modifying the file to make that value is akin to doing a preimage attack right?

<comment><USER37> Yes, that's probably the point of the maker. To prove that they can do a preimage attack.

<comment><USER38> No, it's just some fancy tricks with collisions. A preimage attack is still far beyond our current technologies

<comment><USER39> It's important to note that technologies here means not only our hardware technologies but also our cryptographic knowledge.

There is a chance that there are unknown flaws in the MD5 algorithm that make preimage attacks far easier to compute.

Our compute power is also growing cheeper, which would let us solve harder preimage problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> This is incredible, it's like winning the lottery except that you can play incredibly fast with almost no cost for each try.

</comment><comment> mh-cx That makes me wonder if it's also easy to create a string that is its own MD5.

<comment><USER40> This is called a fixed point, that is an X such that md5(X)==X. A quick google for "md5 fixed point" shows some claims that the probability that one exists is about 63% ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=614027](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=614027)) but no examples of a known one

<comment><USER41> Also the "real" fixed point wouldn't be necessarily ASCII

So you could have two types: one where the hash matches the input bytes, another where an hex string is inputed and that matches the hex representation of the hash

<comment><USER42> Also EBCDIC and UTF-16

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> That is really amazing. How was this done?

<comment><USER44> I bet this has something to do with the fact (or so I'm told) that MD5 is broken.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Writeup by @angealbertini coming soon

<comment><USER45> Dubbed HashQuines; here are PDF and PostScript too: [https://twitter.com/i/moments/838685002703466497](https://twitter.com/i/moments/838685002703466497)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> How did you do that!

</comment><comment><USER47> b12092fb2bf87e09ab9e9ad6fc55f3c5

</comment><comment><USER48> Now do a SHA1 one ;)

<comment><USER45> People are reusing the collision in many interesting ways, but I don't think it helps in this case.

Two "different" EXEs with same SHA1/MD5 with different outputs: [https://roastingbugs.blogspot.com/2017/03/eat-more- hashes.ht...](https://roastingbugs.blogspot.com/2017/03/eat-more-hashes.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Verified correct with [http://onlinemd5.com/](http://onlinemd5.com/) :-)

</comment><comment><USER50> WOW!</comment>


German energy company wants to build flow batteries in old natural gas caverns - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/business/2017/07/german-energy-company-wants-to-build-flow-batteries-in-old-natural-gas-caverns/ <comment> ju-st 120 M€ [[https://www.pv-magazine.de/2017/06/22/ewe-plant-bau-eines- ba...](https://www.pv-magazine.de/2017/06/22/ewe-plant-bau-eines- batteriespeicher-mit-120-megawatt-leistung/)]

750 MWh

\</comment><comment>

160 € per kWh.

LiIon is currently at ~170€/kWh (200USD). LiIon prices will drop more until 2023 but 160€ is still a very good considering this is a research project.

<comment><USER2> Tesla Powerwall battery is $5,500 for 14kWh. That's $392/kWh.

Where do you get the $200/kWh batteries from?

<comment><USER3> You're comparing a small consumer product to a large industrial installation? Tesla's Powerpack is an industrial-scale system.

<comment><USER2> Tesla Powerwall is a consumer product.

[https://www.tesla.com/powerwall](https://www.tesla.com/powerwall)

<comment><USER4> Large installations are a different product:

[https://www.tesla.com/powerpack](https://www.tesla.com/powerpack)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow, this sounds like a promising concept I've never heard of before.

To me, the main three questions are round-trip efficiency, max storage time and environment impact.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanadium_redox_battery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanadium_redox_battery) mentions 75% to 80% efficiency, though I don't know how well that applies to such big systems.

[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.194...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.194.9741&rep=rep1&type=pdf) mentions a better environmental profile compared to lead acid batteries, but that might be a low bar.

</comment><comment><USER6> If this can be proven to work it could be a real difference maker to smooth out energy swings. I don't know about other areas but here in Michigan we have a number of abandoned salt gypsum and ore mines that would all be candidates for this technology.

<comment><USER4> There is also [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludington_Pumped_Storage_Power...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludington_Pumped_Storage_Power_Plant)

Which is about 10 times the power and more than 10 times the storage of the proposed battery.

It's currently used to shift baseload generation from nighttime to daytime, but it could be used to store solar for evening and nighttime use.

The only real blocker to siting more is that people freak out about local environmental disturbances. It's about 1.5 miles of shore out of hundreds of miles of dunes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > German researchers had developed better components for a large, stationary > battery that used negatively and positively charged liquid electrolyte pools > to exchange electrons through a reasonably priced membrane.

Seriously? If those electrolyte pools were substantially charged, the electrostatic forces would be humongous.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, that's messed up. Not only that sounds like a capacitor's description ("negatively and positively charged pools") rather than battery's, but also "liquid electrolyte" is a patent tautology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I remember that there were also plans to use the old coal mines in the Ruhr area as water pump storage batteries. I don't know if this was just an idea or if someone did a study on how feasible this would be.

<comment><USER10> [https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/03/german-coal-mine- may...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/03/german-coal-mine-may-be-prime- for-pumped-storage/)

> According to Bloomberg, North Rhine-Westphalia State Governor Hannelore > Kraft recently confirmed that a project to turn the coal mine into pumped > storage will move forward after mining activities have stopped.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've been hearing about Vanadium flow batteries for a long time, and it would be great to see them finally deployed on this scale.</comment>


Lots of new features for wolfram alpha - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wolframalpha.com/2009/12/21/new-features-in-wolframalpha-year-end-update/#more-4555

<comment><USER2> The amazing thing about it is that it is an 'answers engine'. Unlike web search engines, it does not try to return relevant web pages to a particular search term. It treats your query as a question and attempt to compute an answer. Its internal databases are already massive. It is a much higher bar to say 'we want to get the answer'.

More intriguing in a recent interview with David Cohen from New Scientist Stephen Wolfram claims to have found a model which describes the universe using cellular automata (even containing something that looks like general relativity).

PS Missing a small textbox to LaTex the output!

<comment><USER3> he said something along similar lines on the wolfram blog just prior to alpha's release: [http://blog.wolfram.com/2009/05/14/7-years-of-nksand-its- fir...](http://blog.wolfram.com/2009/05/14/7-years-of-nksand-its-first-killer- app/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's an interesting concept ... but they claim ownership of the output of their engine.

That's perhaps reasonable based on what they're doing, and certainly their right, but it drops my interest in it to near 0 (note that based on my personal circumstances anything I do is non-commercial).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Look! Support for functional programming and pure functions: [http://www.wolframalpha.com/examples/ComputationalScience.ht...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/examples/ComputationalScience.html)</comment>


Mention Monitoring Academy - <AUTHOR> http://get.mention.com/academy/

<comment><AUTHOR> Growing your business is as simple just listening - provided you know how. Monitoring can help you build your product, expand your reach, sell more, and help customers better.

Learn how the top B2B SaaS companies have use monitoring for success in their business. Each week, one expert will show you just what they did and how you can adapt the strategies for your own business growth.

Lesson teachers include experts from CloudPeeps (@ShannnonB), Mailjet (@denisechan26), CoSchedule (@njellering), General Assembly (@goekp), Simply Measured (@ashleyennis), Workable (@_roblong), Instapage (@dustiarab) and Customer.io (@lethargarian).</comment>


Limiting Your Child's Fire Time: A Guide for Concerned Paleolithic Parents - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/limiting-your-childs-fire-time-a-guide-for-concerned-paleolithic-parents <comment><USER2> > In the end, just remember that fire, like most innovations, is both a > blessing and a curse. Sure, it's made our lives easier, our survival > likelier, and will probably lead to the greatest evolutionary paradigm shift > in human history. But it's also dangerous, destructive, and, yes, possibly > infested with demonic forces that wish us ill.

Reminds me of a quote to the effect of "I'm not sure what the future holds, but I know I won't approve."

I wonder what parents 100 years from now will have to say about today's handwringing over computer time.

On the one hand, it may seem impossible that a parent would deliberately subject a child to such overt sabotage of future professional prospects.

On the other hand, future parents may be astonished at how much leeway kids today have with respect to information devices - in much the same way that today's new parents can barely believe there was a time when kids walked and rode bikes to school on their own, and generally ran around the neighborhood more or less unsupervised.</comment>


Rust 1.44 (async/await on embedded) - <AUTHOR> https://blog.rust-lang.org/2020/06/04/Rust-1.44.0.html <comment><AUTHOR> My personal favorite feature of this release: It enables the async/await language feature to work on #[no_std] targets. This means that with an appropriate executor, you can run async/await code on embedded microcontrollers!

Ferrous Systems have written a blogpost on what async/await can look like for writing embedded firmware: [https://ferrous-systems.com/blog/async-on- embedded/](https://ferrous-systems.com/blog/async-on-embedded/) With Rust 1.44, this now becomes possible on the stable release of the language (previously you needed nightly). Very exciting.

<comment><USER2> Meanwhile in C++ land, the recently standardized coroutine feature even requires a heap allocation in order to work.

I can't help but think that the best minds among language designers and systems programmers have probably already jumped ship to Rust.

<comment><USER3> > The call to operator new can be optimized out (even if custom allocator is > used) if

> The lifetime of the coroutine state is strictly nested within the lifetime > of the caller, and the size of coroutine frame is known at the call site in > that case, coroutine state is embedded in the caller's stack frame (if the > caller is an ordinary function) or coroutine state (if the caller is a > coroutine)

Basically if you limit yourself to only functionality supported in Rust you'll never actually generate an allocation. Once you start using features Rust doesn't support you need to provided memory via some means.

[https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/coroutines#Heap_a...](https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/coroutines#Heap_allocation)

<comment><USER4> We'll have to wait and see how finished coroutines implementations perform, but I'm leery of the fact that sidestepping heap allocation relies on compiler optimizations. Optimizers can be fickle and in a language like C++/Rust, I like being 100% sure that the abstractions are zero-overhead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I know you US people are going through tough times and I deeply sympathize with you, but I'm not fan of political ads in release announcements. There are countless more serious problems in the world that would also deserve some publicity, but I don't want to see them there. If I'm alone with this I'm sorry and I'll shut up.

<comment><USER6> Agreed. Tech is and should never be political.

These kinds of statements also basically says you are not welcome if you decide not to support movements like BLM. Perhaps as a user it does not matter, but imagine if you were a maintainer?

Best to keep these discussions out of Rust and other projects as much as possible. So yes, you are not alone in this.

I have to point out however that there are aspects of just pure human decency that should be a given in any kind of collaborative project.

<comment><USER7> > Tech is and should never be political

I'm curious, do you think internet companies should refrain from releasing statements about political issues like net neutrality or the Patriot Act?

<comment><USER6> No, but I think that's more comparable to e.g. the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (only the opposite). Even then, it's outside the scope of these software projects, in my view.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> BLM has nothing to do with Rust. The fact that the core team thought that it's appropriate to project their political opinions in Rust release notes is honestly an embarrassment.

<comment><USER9> Not nothing to do with Rust. There is a connection. People. People write and use Rust and people have opinions.

We've got major UK banks, with no presence in the US, making statements on the situation. Why shouldn't the Rust dev team, who are in part US citizens.

<comment><USER10> Next we see release notes with hints to wear masks or go get the vaccine or whatever because marks and vaccines are for people and people write Rust. Also buy a gun because people. and vote X for president because people. Lets justify every crap in release notes because people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For in depth information on what specifically was merged see: [https://github.com/rust- lang/rust/blob/master/RELEASES.md](https://github.com/rust- lang/rust/blob/master/RELEASES.md) (These are the official release notes.)

</comment><comment><USER10> My personal favorite feature of this release is that I didn't read it. Stooped right as I saw their political balderdash smeared all over a f*cking release announcement. STOP THAT CRAP!</comment>


The Day Israel Attacked America - <AUTHOR> http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/specialseries/2014/10/day-israel-attacked-america-20141028144946266462.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Relevant link: [http://pr.aljazeera.com/post/101339900710/israel- knowingly-a...](http://pr.aljazeera.com/post/101339900710/israel-knowingly- attacked-us-military-ship-in-1967-al)

</comment><comment><USER2> Sounds interesting, but this article is devoid of useful information. Where's the link to the film?</comment>