The anterolateral ligament: Wrong information on the Internet - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sfgate.com/techchron/2013/11/08/anterolateral-ligament-internet-information/ <comment><USER2> > And though Second Commenter is lazy, we recognize the dismissive potato- > potahto sentiment. "Come on, don't be a party pooper." We feel that in > social situations. Don't challenge. It'll be awkward. If someone posts the > Time piece on their Facebook wall, it's a little jerky to post LaPrade's > rebuttal in the comments. That's why the good doctor's post won't have as > strong legs in correcting the record; a lot of the people who cared about > posting the "discovery" the first time will shy from posting that it > actually wasn't. It makes them look duped.

This seems to me like the most important takeaway here. I've corrected people on Facebook many times and gotten pretty nasty replies for doing so, but honestly it's for the better if just one person isn't fooled by a misleading story or outright lie.

On the same note, I give things a lot of time and thought before posting anything on any network, especially if it's opinionated.

<comment><USER3> This is one thing I will probably just never understand about people. If I'm wrong, I _want_ to know about it. Why wouldn't you?

I get that there are a multitude of reasons, yadda yadda, but it's just so difficult for me to empathize with someone who has that mentality. You _really_ want to live with a bunch of (potentially dangerous) misconceptions? Doesn't that go against basic survival instincts (lizard brain) at the very least?

<comment><USER4> _Doesn 't that go against basic survival instincts (lizard brain) at the very least?_

It's a form of tribalism and I'd argue that tribalism is the king of "lizard brain" survival instincts.

<comment><USER5> Hasn't the whole "lizard brain" thing been debunked? See for example [http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest- blog/2012/09/07/re...](http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest- blog/2012/09/07/revenge-of-the-lizard-brain/).

<comment><USER4> Sure, but it is still a catch-all term for base, low-cognitive mental processes. I don't literally think _lizards_ are tribal, if anything the opposite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That's the first time I've ever had a website involuntarily redirect me to the Play Store app. Didn't advertisers learn their popup lesson ages ago? I will no longer visit sfgate on my phone until I have an ad blocker.

<comment><USER7> Didn't do it for me, must be a specific ad in the rotation or whatever.

I bet if you told sfgate what happened, they'd get the ad removed. So maybe instead of stealing content from a website, you could just not visit that website until the problem is resolved.

<comment><USER8> I used to be a freedom advocate. But making money from ads is making me think of ways to protect that income source. I should start looking at alternative sources of income or draw up some business plans. But I am not sure I will be able to. Eventually, you will find me at an association of adsense publishers pushing for laws to make adblocking illegal. With charges equivalent to piracy or stealing. I am not joking. I seriously believe I am becoming that person.

<comment><USER9> Do better. I'm serious. Do better so that you don't have to make money from ads.

<comment><USER8> Thanks. I recently removed all ads from all but one of my websites (and got a job). The one is to study trends. Concentrating on learning for now.

Also:

1\. not hating on sites that run on ad money, which is a very valid business model.

2\. You can detect and choose to not show content, if you detect adblock(should work for casual users).

3\. Do something that reddit does - "Thank you for not using Adblock" banners or something that game-debate.com does - "Pics of kittens asking you to add them to Adblock's whitelist"

4\. You can use adblock-friendly ads

<comment><USER10> In our society many of us subconsciously or sometimes consciously turn down the volume of our own conscience, because we'd rather not come face to face with our hypocrisy, our complicity with banal and not so banal evil [1], because we don't want to give up the benefits. In the Internet tech community, its ultimate manifestation is how we pretend advertising is not evil, while deep down know it is [2].

[1] The Banality of Systemic Evil, [http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/15/the- banality...](http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/15/the-banality..).

[2] No free lunch, no free web, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6624666](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6624666)

<comment><USER8> >Advertising simply shifts the cost of the "fee lunch" to the price of the advertised products. In other words we still end up paying. It may even shift costs regressively, toward lower incomes and the less educated, in which case the poor are subsidizing the better off.

From the second link. However,

>Without more data, we can't know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Eh, the key part that was misleading wasn't "discovered", it was "entirely new". It was not entirely new. It was not even vaguely new. It was old.</comment>


Office 2019 Commercial for Windows and Mac frequently asked questions - <AUTHOR> https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/4133312/office-2019-commercial-for-windows-and-mac-frequently-asked-questions <comment><USER2> Top 2 suggestion by users is to not remove full-featured OneNote from Office [https://onenote.uservoice.com/forums/327186-onenote-for- wind...](https://onenote.uservoice.com/forums/327186-onenote-for- windows/filters/top)

</comment><comment><USER3> I am an Office 365 customer and I love it. It basically gives you 5TB if you have 5 people in the family plus office software plus free Skype minutes for 5 people. For this money you can 20% of the storage with Dropbox, let's say. So, lots of value for the money.

My only dream is to include some version of Vizio in the package.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you get side project ideas? - <AUTHOR> Paul Graham says build something that seems missing in your life. However, I think I failed to notice any.
Do you guys have any suggestion on how to find interesting ideas for side projects? Should I go to meetups and talk to more people?
Would really appreciate your answers! <comment><USER2> My 2 cents. Coding a side project is "fun hard", for a developer, while marketing and selling it is "hard hard". You could consider for your side project, an app using the API of a platform such as Heroku, EventBrite, Slack, Shopify, and so on. These platforms could help you make the marketing (a bit) easier, by exposing you to users in their app store/directory/marketplace. As a result, that's one of my criteria for side project.

As far as finding an interesting problem to solve. PG explains in a follow-up essay, I think, that most people get used to suboptimal situations. We, as human, are very good as rationalizing painful situations, processes, etc, as normal and good. You need to take a step back when something is long, boring, repetitive or annoying. Is it really necessary? Couldn't it be automated? Question your assumptions :-)

</comment><comment><USER3> Two approaches I've taken: What are the jobs in my industry that everyone does but no one enjoys? I ran a digital agency for a while. No one wanted to do maintenance work on a site, or security work. Or low budget work. We sat down and figured out more efficient ways to solve this problem and found people willing to refer the work into us.

What are the things in my company that suck to deal with? We sat down and listed out all the annoying things that we have to deal with on a day to day basis. Poorly run meetings, endless approvals on certain projects, an inflexible CMS...

Plenty of problems out there, just need to look.

One more approach: find a customer set you want to work with and grill them on their problems. What does a day in the life of X look like? What is the most painful thing about doing x? Why is that? What ways have you tried to solve that problem? Ideally x is a very boring industry or role.

</comment><comment><USER4> You are not looking hard enough!

But maybe you should find an open source project you like and see how you can start contributing in a meaningful way (meaningful to you).

Baring that, THINK SMALL. Think about one tiny thing to make, and then code the hell out of it:

\- documentation \- build process \- tests \- cross platform-ness \- packaged for distribution (deb, Rpm, pip, npm, whatever)

I say all of this because a side project is often so much more than just the thing you want to code. Most of us devs would like to share our work, and the things listed above help other devs see that this project is serious and warrants our time / effort.

</comment><comment><USER5> What I do is I look at the products I absolutely love. Then I think about if the concept can be applied to any other industry.

Think Uber for... (But seriously, don't do 'the Uber of [anything]'.

My latest side project I was thinking about a product I love and I thought about how I use Buffer for social media management. They have made my life, so much easier! From there I thought about if the concept could be applied to any other industry. I realized the messaging industry had nothing like it! Needless to say, I am not working on 'the Buffer of messaging', but that is where the idea spawned and I refined it from there.</comment>


Leading mathematician launches arXiv 'overlay' journal - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/leading-mathematician-launches-arxiv-overlay-journal-1.18351 <comment><USER2> This is excellent news. The biggest hurdle for any group of researchers getting together and doing a journal The Right Way seems to be the notion of perceived prestige that still clings to Scrooge-journals. Go Gowers!

</comment><comment><USER3> The important point is that Gowers was the one who initially stood up and said "Elsevier delenda est."

(I mean, a lot of us thought it, but he did it really loudly and prominently as an unimpeachable leader in his field.)

</comment><comment><USER4> A link to Gowers' blog post from 17 days ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10197152](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10197152)

There wasn't much discussion, just 5 comments.

</comment><comment><USER5> It seems to be all about the moderation system. I wonder if there are any books about moderation systems, describing theory (how to make sure the system cannot be gamed, how to rank entries, how to rank users, how to ensure decidability etc.)

<comment><USER3> He's deliberately making it extremely conventional in every way except where the papers are hosted. At this point the game is to gain prestige. Elsevier et al will have a hard time knocking this one down.

<comment><USER6> Elsevier et al have so far played very nice with arXiv, for instance by not demanding that papers submitted to Elsevier journals not appear on it.

Technically the arxiv may right now be illegally hosting many thousands of papers whose authors actually ticked a box granting exclusive publication rights to Elsevier. Or any number of other journals. Elsevier benignly neglects this, but if you really start threatening their business model then they can make life very difficult for the arXiv.

<comment><USER7> If Elsevier tries to kill arxiv, they'll lose a huge fraction of the academic publishing market.

<comment><USER6> They certainly will, so this is something that would only happen once Elsevier is in a death spiral.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One intrinsic drawback in the concept of overlay journals is however that is does not allow for double-blind reviews. Until this is widely implemented I think the publishing process won't be fair.

<comment><USER9> 100% of the time that I've done "double blind" reviews, it was easy to guess what research group the authors were from.

And I've seen reviews where it was easy to guess who the reviewer is: "Paper fails to cite the seminal work of..."

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Scholastica's practice of charging $10 for each submission seems ridiculous: if someone submits a million dummy submissions the journal has to ask support to forgive the charges...

I think that a much better approach would be to require papers to be submitted as Git pulls adding TeX files, and then use a free code review tool like Gerrit to do peer review.

That might take a bit more learning than Scholastica, so starting with Scholastica until the journal is more popular might make sense, but using such expensive proprietary software doesn't seem to be acceptable long term, and if a tool works for peer review of code changes, it should work for peer review of articles as well (maybe with some customization if needed).

<comment><USER11> Ten dollars is nothing. As others have noted publication charges tend to run more in the thousands.

And talking of programming tools, like git, and gerrit for academic papers is completely off base. Most mathematicians will never even have heard of git.

The "free" version is something like what the episcience project is attempting.

Edit: And as yet others have said, it's crucial, especially in a structurally very conservative field like mathematics, to stay as close to the conventional model as possible.

<comment><USER12> > Most mathematicians will never even have heard of git.

Like teenagers who want to listen to their music for nothing, they would learn overnight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This makes it impossible to do blind review (review without knowing who the author was), which seems desirable. Do existing math journals do blind review?

<comment><USER14> Blind (or double-blind) review in most of academia is inherently impossible -- the people qualified to do the review will generally be able to recognize who the paper must have come from.

I agree that blinding would be preferable, but when the material itself reveals the author it's simply not possible.</comment></comment>


3D Printer build event in Cologne, Germany - <AUTHOR> http://blog.reprap.org/2011/11/reprap-prusa-iteration-2-build-event-in.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Same information in German at [http://dingfabrik.de/2011/11/24/3d-drucker-an- einem-wochenen...](http://dingfabrik.de/2011/11/24/3d-drucker-an-einem- wochenende-selber-bauen/)

</comment><comment><USER2> Oh wow, to get first-hand guidance from the pioneers of this technology. I wish I could visit Germany just for this.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can't miss this. Price is right. Knowledge is priceless.

</comment><comment><USER4> Great, can't wait so visit the workshop!</comment>


Inventions they said would never work - <AUTHOR> http://www.null-hypothesis.co.uk/science/strange-but-true/item/invention_failure_never_work_disaster

<comment><USER2> I am tired of all this thing called science.... We have spent millions in that sort of thing for the last few years, and it is time it should be stopped.

\- Simon Cameron, U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania, 1861

With the Intelligent Design debate, one could see this quote coming from a representative in this century.

</comment><comment><USER2> The Internet will catastrophically collapse in 1996.' \- Robert Metcalfe, internet inventor

Perhaps he was talking about the Eternal September?

<comment><USER3> Yes. The Internet of yore collapsed in a singularity caused by the excessive concentration of cluelessness. We are all presently living inside this event horizon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well, Popular Mechanics was technically right. I am writing this on a computer that weighs no more than 1.5 tons. Quite a bit less in fact.

</comment><comment><USER5> Lord Kelvin should probably have kept his mouth shut.

<comment><USER6> Almost all of this stuff is taken out of context. Almost all of them are statements about immediate practicality, not predictions of the future. When Kelvin said that, there wasn't even a hint of an engine that could actually power an airplane. He was basically right: in the middle of the 19th century, the Wright brothers would have failed to produce an airplane.

Likewise the Western Union quote about the telephone. The devices demonstrated in 1878 really were primitive, and competed very poorly with telegrams for rapid communication.

But yeah, it's all funny.

<comment><USER7> Agreed. When they were doing the re-creation of the Wright Flyer for its anniversary flight recently I was quite taken by just how primitive the engine was and how much mass there was just to get a few HP. The advancement in engine power to weight ratios over the next forty years is absolutely amazing if you consider how slowly things have moved for the previous hundred years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> ___Television won't be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night._ __

\- Darryl F. Zanuck, Head of 20th Century-Fox, 1946.

How I wish you were right, my dear Darryl.

<comment><USER9> Oh, but he was right! People prefer plastic boxes now. Plywood isn't nearly as fashionable.

More seriously, though, I'm pretty sure I know people who did 'get bored' of TV, so it's probably more of a personal choice...

<comment><USER10> Yeah, i was bored with it, but only after years of brain melting. If you watch TV for 6+ hours a day for 6 years you will get bored eventually. The numbers are approximate, but close in my case, i don't know how i survived 6 years of cartoon network. And its nice to see that Einstein was wrong for something, makes him more human.

<comment><USER8> Many things make Einstein more human. You should hear the story about his first wife, Mileva Maric. Quite a sad ordeal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Where is the infamous "640KB ought to be enough..."?

I'd also add Edison rejecting alternating current for powering cities, although can't find explicit quotes about it.

<comment><USER12> This has someting to do with there being no record of him (Bill Gates) ever saying that: <http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/1997/01/1484>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I hate to say it, but this sort of reminds me of the comments here when someone proudly posts their brand new website.

</comment><comment><USER14> _The machine gun is a much overrated weapon; two per battalion is more than sufficient._

If you're talking heavy machine guns, and non-mechanized battalions, then this is probably about right.

<comment><USER15> Now you know why Haig is called "The Butcher of the Somme." IIRC, the fool( a Field Marshall at that) ordered thousands to their death at the hands of just 2 German machine guns. 20,000 British soldiers died that day, a record for he Brits. Poor bastards...

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Thanks for posting this. I've been trying to track down that quote about rail travel and asphyxia (by Dr. Dionysus Lardner) for _ages_...

</comment><comment><USER11> The way we suck at predicting the future is terrifying and even kind of insulting to humankind.

<comment><USER16> I don't know - there's probably an equally large number of predictions which turned out to be right. They're just not mentioned on this list.

<comment><USER11> Ok, but that doesn't make us good predictors. It is especially frustrating to see renowned people being actually so narrow-minded in some respects.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, I'd agree - but making predictions is a notoriously tricky business.

Any statement about the future (which is, by definition, uncertain) has some percentage chance of looking absurd in retrospect - and it's a lot harder to make a correct prediction than a wrong one.

<comment><USER11> _making predictions is a notoriously tricky business_

Was it too tricky for a physicist like Lord Kelvin, the founder of Thermodynamics, to see that birds are heavier than air?

Was it too tricky for Edison to see that direct current loses the battle at long distances (because of resistance issues)?

How about Einstein rejecting the possibility of using nuclear power 10 years before he started working on just that?

Aren't these examples of narrow-mindedness of these people, who otherwise invented great stuff?

<comment><USER16> (I'm not really disagreeing with you, but) you have the benefit of hindsight.

Admittedly, I haven't invented any great stuff, but if I were to claim that it'll never be possible for a human being to travel at greater than light speed, am I going to look narrow-minded in _n_ years time? (where _n_ =10, 100, 1000)

<comment><USER11> In physics, it is always smarter to predict possibilities, as opposed to impossibilities ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This puts a huge smile on a guy who invented something brand new and either hears awesome or WTF? I work for those who say awesome and to the WTFs I will now send them this article :)

</comment><comment><USER18> A lot of misquotes there or things taken out of context, I wanted to pick one or two but then just gave up.

</comment><comment><USER19> My personal favorite:

"Everything that can be invented has been invented."

\- Charles H. Duell, U.S. Commissioner of Patents, in 1899.

<comment><USER20> That's a misquote.

[http://everything2.com/e2node/Everything%2520that%2520can%25...](http://everything2.com/e2node/Everything%2520that%2520can%2520be%2520invented%2520has%2520been%2520invented)</comment></comment>


The 10 Python Conferences Happening at PyCon 2011 (part 1) - <AUTHOR> http://pycon.blogspot.com/2011/02/10-python-conferences-happening-at.html

<comment><USER2> Yes, I finally finished the schedule over the weekend: <http://us.pycon.org/2011/schedule/>

</comment><comment><USER2> Also, we just signed QNX (<http://www.qnx.com/>) as a Diamond level sponsor!</comment>


Lots of bugs in 32-bit x86 Linux entry code - <AUTHOR> https://firstname.lastname@example.com/ <comment><USER2> Relatedly, Ubuntu no longer builds for i386 as a complete architecture: [https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel- announce/2019...](https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel- announce/2019-June/001261.html)

They are still building i386 packages for use on 64-bit kernels, for the sake of precompiled 32-bit software (games etc). That's scenario B from Simon McVittie's reply in this thread, and it sounds like that's not affected.

<comment><USER3> I was able to upgrade from Lubuntu 16.04 to 18.04 for my 32bit IBM Thinkpad T42 using do_release_upgrade. It's not downloadable on the website, but I think for 18.04 the build is still there.

<comment><USER2> I think they've stopped building them in 19.10. 18.04 is an LTS supported for 5 years, so users of i386-only CPUs are fine until 2023.

<comment><USER4> I have a load of 32bit laptops, "I'll put ChromiumOS on them", nope, that's not a thing any more. OK, err Linux? Apparently not. Could put Windows 10 on them I guess.

<comment><USER5> You could try Debian, which is essentially Ubuntu minus some themes. I doubt Debian will drop i386 support soon (I just searched and couldn't find hints of an end of support of i386)

<comment><USER6> But then you'll have all these kernel bugs.

<comment><USER5> What do you mean?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I remember being an early adopter of 64-bit Linux with my Athlon64 back in the day. Lots of stuff was broken and I got a lot of debate on whether it was any faster or worthwhile at all. It's really cool to see the technology curve go full circle.

<comment><USER8> Completely off topic but...

Althlon64 was a swift kick in the nuts for Intel, but AMD really didn't followup until Ryzen. I wonder if they're going to stick around and fight this time.

<comment><USER9> Sometimes when the swift kick in the nuts is delivered to an 800-pound gorilla, it doesn't matter if you stay around to fight, you're outclassed.

This time, AMD may have stepped up with a steel pipe. We'll see how well they can use it...

<comment><USER10> > This time, AMD may have stepped up with a steel pipe. We'll see how well > they can use it...

:-))))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hah!

> And the developers in question should have an appropriate degree of > nostalgic adoration of segments, gates, and other delights from the i386 > era.

</comment><comment><USER12> > We need real CI resources

It would be easy to boot the 32-bit kernel in a VM as part of a CI pipeline and then run some automated tests to catch issues like this.

(Unless by "real" he means non-virtualised? Is there anything about these bugs that would only reproduce on bare metal?)

<comment> TD-Linux I think the issue is not the hardware needed but simply the cost of the extra compute. Linux doesn't have an "official" CI server but relies on third parties running it, and none of them want to spend $ on compute for an architecture they will never use.

<comment><USER13> The hardware cost should be negligible. The relevant cost is labor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "I strongly suspect that there is at least one bug left."

:)

<comment><USER15> That probably would be a valid addition to any bug fix in a large project, to be honest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Maybe because nobody uses 32-bit x86 anymore?

<comment><USER17> No, that's the i386 architecture, which is still well supported AFAICT. x86_32 is a funny architecture that requires 64 bit chips but uses 32 bit pointers.

[http://www.h-online.com/open/features/Kernel-Log-x32-ABI- get...](http://www.h-online.com/open/features/Kernel-Log-x32-ABI-gets- around-64-bit-drawbacks-1342061.html)

<comment><USER18> No, see the source from Linux kernel:

[https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/arch/x86/Kconf...](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/arch/x86/Kconfig)

For all x86 processors, now there is a name "X86_32" which "depends on !64BIT" (i.e. 64BIT flag has to be off).

and there is a name "X86_64" which "depends on 64BIT" (i.e. 64BIT flag being on).

Under new convention X86 is a common prefix for both 32 and 64-bit kernels for x86 processors, and the suffix _32 means the kernel uses only 32bit instructions, and _64 that it uses 64bit instructions.

And also, there's handling of an old arch name "i386" which is recognized to mean 64BIT is off and if only "x86" is seen as arch name then there is a prompt that asks 64BIT yes or no. It also notes that the old name used for kernel with 64BIT off was "i386" and the old name used for kernel with 64BIT on was "x86_64".

Finally, the support for X32 ABI (allowing running executables which use 64-bit instructions but only "short" 32bit pointers in 64-bit kernel [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X32_ABI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X32_ABI)) is enabled in my 64-bit distro:

        ~$ sudo grep -P G_X86_X?\\d{2}= /boot/config-$(uname -r)
        CONFIG_X86_64=y
        CONFIG_X86_X32=y

The first line means this is a 64bit kernel for x86 processors, the second that X32 support is enabled on that kernel.

In short, there are two kinds of X86 kernels:

X86_32 -- formerly known as i386

X86_64 -- formerly known as x86_64

and an option for existence of X32 ABI in X86_64 called CONFIG_X86_X32.

<comment><USER19> Beatuiful, high-value reply. Thank you for making the connection to upstream and unpacking things with good, concise exposition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Edit: I am possibly wrong here, and confusing this with an issue that was reported earlier

</comment><comment><USER21> Url changed from [https://lwn.net/Articles/805539/](https://lwn.net/Articles/805539/), which points to this.

Submitted title was "Essentially no upstream development resources dedicated to x86_32 Linux"

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Oh, the freeloading. How much more CI do we need...</comment>


Mozilla Publishes Do Not Track Field Guide - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mozilla.com/blog/2011/09/08/mozilla-publishes-do-not-track-field-guide/

<comment><USER2> Also news today is Mozilla's announcement of a special blog focusing on privacy: <http://blog.mozilla.com/privacy/>

</comment><comment><USER3> > We have more users who've turned on DNT within Firefox than are using > Adblock Plus ... we're seeing almost 5% of our user base with DNT enabled

That's a staggering pair of statistics. More people care about not being tracked than not being shown ads, and there is a significant number who don't mind ads but don't want to be tracked.

<comment><USER4> It's easier to turn on DNT (set a preference) than use Adblock plus (know about it, find it, install it, restart, choose a blocking list).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I implemented DNT a couple days ago on Playtomic. I think it's a great idea and I hope it reaches near-100% adoption with harsh penalties for companies not respecting it.

</comment><comment><USER6> I really don't mind being tracked, as long as I can turn it off occasionally or when a guest is using my computer.</comment>


Survey of Expert Opinion on Intelligence - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289619301886 <comment><USER2> A good book on this topic was The IQ Controversy, the Media and Public Policy (1988) by Mark Snyderman and Stanley Rothman. A forthcoming book by a co- author of The Bell Curve is

Human Diversity: The Biology of Gender, Race, and Class (2020) by Charles Murray.</comment>


Dynamic Permission Allocation in Cassandra 1.1 - <AUTHOR> http://www.datastax.com/dev/blog/dynamic-permission-allocation-in-cassandra-1-1

<comment><USER2> The Cassandra team seems to be very well-managed since the 1.0 release (and leading up to it).

<comment><USER3> Thanks! It really is an open-source success story, IMNSHO.</comment></comment>


EtherPad Open Source Release - <AUTHOR> http://etherpad.com/ep/blog/posts/etherpad-open-source-release

<comment><USER2> They also released internal development notes, goals, TODO list, design decisions etc. Check out *.txt files.

[http://code.google.com/p/etherpad/source/browse/trunk/infras...](http://code.google.com/p/etherpad/source/browse/trunk/infrastructure/ace/easysync- notes.txt) [http://code.google.com/p/etherpad/source/browse/trunk/infras...](http://code.google.com/p/etherpad/source/browse/trunk/infrastructure/ace/notes.txt)

Thanks for sharing them!

<comment><USER3> Yeah, and I really hope the paypal password in billing.js is not the real one: [http://code.google.com/p/etherpad/source/browse/trunk/etherp...](http://code.google.com/p/etherpad/source/browse/trunk/etherpad/src/etherpad/billing/billing.js)

<comment><USER4> Nope; it's for the PayPal sandbox.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thanks to The Google & The Etherpads!

I fully expect to see 30 different sites offering this now, and HN to be full of links to them tomorrow.

<comment><USER6> For those of us who have been working on side-project competitors for a few months this is a worrying prediction, and quite probably correct.

Can HN name any niches that they feel should be filled with a similar product?

<comment><USER7> Make it more technical. Monospace, syntax highlighting, version control, TeX, markdown. Would also make an interesting mash-up with Bespin.

<comment><USER8> <http://cometdemo.lshift.net:8080/> ?

<comment><USER9> Crashed in 10 seconds.

I'm like a walking bug plague.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Not completely related but, super interesting that etherpad actually started as appjet.

via crunchbase: _AppJet intends to simplify the process of writing web applications. The applications are programmed on a web based text editor in the simple but powerful JavaScript programming language. JavaScript is used on both the server and client side._

I guess they ended up realizing that the code editor was a better product/market to go after than the app creation/hosting itself.

Also, interesting that pg invested in the angel round as well, post-YC.

More: <http://www.crunchbase.com/company/appjet>

</comment><comment><USER11> Man, I can't wait to build this locally. In its raw form I expect it to work great for essay writing, etc., but I can imagine all kinds of cool modifications, like allowing cross-pad hyperlinks. Let the hacking begin!

Edit: I realize that a local build makes very poor use of etherpad's killer feature--its super-fast realtime collaboration--but the biggest draw for me was actually their "playback" mode.

<comment><USER12> Yes, a cool feature would be to let multiple etherpads talk to each other. Sort of like Google wave :)

Also imagine HN (or any other forum) working on some sort of similar platform. Threaded chats I would say.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, the three things I wanted to see in EtherPad was XMPP support, easy embed and email name association.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I want it so I code do:

        % etherclient foo.txt
        etherclient accepting from http://example.com/as213

Then I can share the url with co-workers. The pad is initialized with the contents of foo.txt and then updates are sent.

Then make it be more project based. Then integrate revision control.

Perhaps I should sleep instead of reading code.

</comment><comment><USER15> I have my last final today. This comes as a perfect school-is-over-and-i-can- start-hacking-again gift! I'm hoping to be able to integrate LaTeX export into this so I can collaborate on LaTeX reports without having to download and build manually.

<comment><USER16> I had the same thought.

Let me know if you want to collaborate. <email@example.com>

<comment><USER17> I too had a similar thought :) I'm booked until mid January, but would be interested in collaborating then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> <http://netherpad.com>

Sponsored by PBworks!

Or if it's easier for you to remember:

<http://etherpad.pbworks.com>

<comment><USER19> Alternatively you can use: <http://ietherpad.com/> Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Yay! Now we can do remote pair-programming totally within our internal network (the IT Policy goons are quite unhappy when it comes to using cloud-based services).

<comment><USER21> _remote pair-programming_

Doesn't that defeat the supposed purpose of pair-programming?

<comment><USER22> > the supposed purpose

Which is?

I think with shared input, shared editing buffers and a voice communication channel you're pretty much there.

<comment><USER21> Ah, if there's voice communication, then yes. Voice comm is important.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Huh, looks like the whole thing, client and server, are written in Javascript. I think I would be fine with that. Beats writing it in C++ that's for sure.

<comment><USER24> There is a ton of Scala in there.

<comment><USER23> Where? I only sampled a few directories, couldn't find anything except js.

<comment><USER24> Check the 'infrastructure' at the root.

<comment><USER23> Oh, thanks. I had assumed that whole appjet thing was some kind of framework, not the actual EtherPad server.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Does this mean it definitely was talent (including know-how etc) rather than technology or market acquisition?

<comment><USER26> Not necessarily: maybe Google also wants to use some of the acquired technology, which they now can in its open source form. They're just not stopping anyone else from using it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Awesome! You guys handled this incredibly well, and open sourcing with an Apache license is super classy. Can't wait to see what comes of this, and starting up our own internal instance. Thank you!

</comment><comment><USER16> Wow, that was fast.

Huge thanks to both the Appjet team and Google for doing this.

</comment><comment><USER28> Anyone feel like digging into the code and doing a writeup about the "secret sauce" - how they managed to make the real time stuff so responsive?

<comment><USER9> non-blocking Event I/O, server-side + client-side JS.

Cf. node.js for infrastructural style (but with Scala in Etherpad's case)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29>
        $ sh bin/rebuildjar.sh
        using JAR jar...
        usage: cp [-R [-H | -L | -P]] [-fi | -n] [-apvX] source_file     target_file
               cp [-R [-H | -L | -P]] [-fi | -n] [-apvX] source_file ...     target_directory
        including etherpad JARs...
        using cached JAR-etherpad...
        updating...
        java.io.FileNotFoundException: ../../build/appjet.jar (No such file  or directory)
    	at java.io.FileInputStream.open(Native Method)
    	at java.io.FileInputStream.<init>(FileInputStream.java:106)
    	at sun.tools.jar.Main.run(Main.java:175)
    	at sun.tools.jar.Main.main(Main.java:1044)
        done.
        cp: build/appjet.jar: No such file or directory

Anyone got any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks like the cp failed. What operating system is this on?

<comment><USER30> From cp usage message, it seems to be a Mac. But compilecache.sh seems to be handling properly for Darwin based systems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Awesome, following the directions, it took just a few minutes to get a local copy running. I used to run my own online word processor, written about 6 years ago for my own use, but a few thousand people signed up to try it. It is tempting to run an EtherPad instance for my business clients, and another one for my friends and family. That said, eventually I think that Wave will be awesome so sticking to that makes the most sense. Investing a lot of time to get into the EtherPad codebase seems like a slippery slope to non- productivity.

</comment><comment><USER32> Hopefully this will lead to strong community around real-time eventual- consistency text synchronization. Here a link to etherpad's implementation of their magic algorithm: [http://code.google.com/p/etherpad/source/browse/trunk/etherp...](http://code.google.com/p/etherpad/source/browse/trunk/etherpad/src/etherpad/collab/ace/easysync2.js) \-- though it's pretty tightly integrated with their editor component, "ACE".

</comment><comment><USER14> I've wanted to add a feature like this into userscripts.org for a long time!

stop! compile time

</comment><comment><USER33> Coming to the competition : <http://uxoo.com> Now what? A feature race? Back to the problem of monetizing a website based on free software, where there is little to no entry bar.

</comment><comment><USER34> ...and it's offline. Whole repo now 404s.

[edit] Appears Aaron is re-importing the tree as I type. Paths have all changed to be under trunk/trunk...

[edit2] Back to normal paths. Not clear what has changed.

</comment><comment><USER35> First of all: Thanks!

Does anyone knows the minimum requirements? I was planning to deploy it on a low cost vps, but I suspect that it's going to need at least 1GB of ram.

<comment><USER31> Right now, on my MacBook, the RSIZE is 204M.

Not too much memory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Well, that sure isn't being evil. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER37> I just took a quick look around, but is all of the server-side code down in JS as well?

<comment><USER30> I took a quick look too and it looks like its javascript calling over to Java using Liveconnect (<http://www.mozilla.org/rhino/scriptjava.html>). The infrastructure folder contains support for Rhino.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> <http://piratepad.net/>

</comment><comment><USER39> Oh boy! I'm gonna have some fun this weekend!

</comment><comment><USER40> the mob has spoken

<comment><USER41> The mob is sated....for now.</comment></comment>


Eleven Ordinary Twenty-Somethings With $250B Riding on Their Lives - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-09/meet-the-spy-11-kids-with-250-billion-riding-on-their-lives <comment><USER2> I wonder if this is related to the rule against perpetuities; basically in some jurisdictions you can't have a trust that exists forever even though that doesn't really matter for an ETF.

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

<comment><USER3> yep, it is, new york is one of the states where that rule applies

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is really confusing, I wish Matt Levine would take it up. Could someone perhaps explain exactly what's going on here? I get that they use the names of these children, but they didn't say if there was more to it. If it's just the names it could be anyone. How does it tie specifically to each child?

<comment><USER5> He did. It was in today's column.

In describing what would happen if all of them died and the trust had to be shut down:

"...money could move from SPY I to SPY II by passing a basket of S&P 500 stocks from SPY I to a bank trading desk, and from that trading desk to SPY II, without ever selling it in the market..."

"...the assets of SPY I would pretty efficiently move over to SPY II, and the price of the underlying stocks would not be affected. Some retail investors wouldn't want to move, because the move would trigger taxable gains for them, but over 20 years that problem would mostly go away as they cash out naturally. By 2039, the trust's accelerated end date, SPY I would be pretty small and the real S&P 500 index ETF action would be in SPY II. No one would have to dump stock along the way, and the short-selling supervillain would never be rewarded for his evil deeds."

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > SPY as we know it will cease to be on Jan. 22, 2118, or 20 years "after the > death of the last survivor of the eleven persons" -- whichever occurs first. > The structure doesn't provide those people with a financial interest in SPY.

If SPY ceased to exist what would be the effect on the markets?

<comment><USER2> People would just shift their holdings to SPY2 or something before the expiration and there would be no effect.

<comment><USER7> What if they all died without warning, on the same day?

<comment><USER8> Then you still have 20 years to switch everyone over.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd be concerned that there was some tradeable pattern to the end of such a fund that may translate to an increased risk of death for the named parties.

<comment><USER5> According to Matt Levine, the underlying stocks would not have to be bought and sold if the trust ended and a new one was created. So the trusts wouldn't incur taxes and it shouldn't affect the price of the stocks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can someone post a tldr for those who can't read the article proper?

<comment><USER11> "Thanks to a quirk in the legal structure used to set up the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust, known as SPY, more than $250 billion rests on the longevity of 11 ordinary kids born between May 1990 and January 1993."

By law funds require a determines termination. They tied it to the death of "random" kids. The fund will end in 2118 or 20 years after the last of these eleven kids (chosen, "voluntarily" by their parents, as token people) dies

It' relatively clear and straightforward, but the article does not explain what happens when the fund terminates.

<comment><USER12> There's only one way to find out. And if these kids start dying mysterious deaths, we'll know that someone has decided to go that route.

<comment><USER4> I was just thinking this would make a great plot of a spy novel. Since it began so long ago, I think Robert Litell would be perfect

<comment><USER13> I totally got a Robert Ludlum vibe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I hate it when you submit a story and come to find that someone else already submitted it before you. /rant

Of course it's a good story.

</comment><comment><USER15> Eleven ordinary twenty-somethings??? They're not ordinary at all. They are Spy Kids.</comment>


It's time to stop spending taxpayer money on Elon Musk - <AUTHOR> http://dailysignal.com/2016/11/13/its-time-to-stop-spending-taxpayer-dollars-on-elon-musk-and-cronyism/ <comment><AUTHOR> Aren't these same subsidies available to GM, Ford, GE, and another other solar company? Is the author just upset that one particular company has been better able to build products customers desire in these markets?

I don't see anyone complaining that GM is getting a subsidy for the Bolt. Or the oil companies' subsidies.</comment>


Intel: EUV-Enabled 7nm Process Tech is on Track - <AUTHOR> https://www.anandtech.com/show/13683/intel-euvenabled-7nm-process-tech-is-on-track <comment><USER4> Intel had been sayinga lot of things lately that didn't turn out true. Xpoint claims, 10nm schedules, etc.

Is is probably a safe bet to ignore any news from there until they actually deliver anything and read independent benchmarks.

It is really sad, they used to be very correct in their communication.

<comment><USER5> See this panel about Intel's "project crush" and the defeat of the 68000 [1]. Intel inside was yet another brilliant marketing campaign to take pricing power from the OEMs.

Intel at its core is a marketing company. If they also happen to have the best tech that is nice too but not a necessity.

[1] [https://youtu.be/xvCzdeDoPzg](https://youtu.be/xvCzdeDoPzg)

<comment><USER6> > Intel at its core is a marketing company

That's an absurd hyperbole.

<comment><USER7> I don't agree with his point, but I can see it. For years CPU performance has largely been irrelevant, but they convinced the market to over pay on underperforming hardware.

Intel inside is great marketing and creating different brands of processors like i7 vs i3 independent of form factor pulls the focus away from absolute performance. Getting software manufacturers to customize for your chip again gets out of playing the actual head to head game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A worthy thing to note, the guy who invented finfet, Calvin Hu, was a TSMC CTO.

Immersion litho inventor Burn Lin was TSMC's RnD VP.

Full depletion tech - <USER3>

Modern metal gate - <USER3>

Copper - IBM/TSMC

First EUV initiative at TSMC was started in... surprise, 2000!

TSMC does play a very long game. Intel was great at commercialising "latest and greatest tech" quick, but TSMC was always ahead at mastering yields, and delivering more "mature" processes for mass manufacturing.

P.S. Calvin Hu made a hybrid Lambo for his masters back in 1979! [https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~hu/Hybrid%20car%20Chronicl...](https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~hu/Hybrid%20car%20Chronicle%201979.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER9> Of course Intel would say this - even if it wasn't on track.

They don't want people jumping ship, so have to at least set the expectation that things are progressing.

<comment><USER10> You think it's obvious that Intel would commit securities fraud?

<comment><USER11> By your analogy they already did with 10nm. ( And arguably 14nm )

<comment><USER10> I didn't make an analogy. And, I was replying to the fact that my parent said they would _lie_ about it.

It's one thing to have been wrong (even carelessly) about 10nm (more than once). It's another to say that a company officer would intentionally lie (to a group of professional investors no less)

<comment><USER4> Like they did with their initial xpoint announcements? They were cutting zeros off their performance numbers for months to come :p

If that wasn't lying, I don't know what is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If it is on track then one would expect at least a description of that track, but all I see is dates related to 10 nm and that was years late. They cleverly skip that by not offering a hard date but stating 'four years after 10 m', but that's not yet a done deal.

Intel is still in the planning stages of manufacturing capacity and there is zero proof that there is an actual POC or workable process yet to mass produce 7 nm devices at all, which is going to be _much_ harder than 10 nm to get to acceptable yield.

I'll park this one right next to 'home fusion' and '5cts / KWh installed Solar Power' until there is more proof, I would be quite surprised if there really are mass produced devices for consumer use anywhere in the next 5 years, if the 10 nm experience is any guide somewhere in the next decade is more realistic so this isn't really news.

<comment><USER13> Doesn't AMD with TSMC 7nm basically ready to go? TSMC is already talking about 5nm.

While you might not see it in consumer hardware from Intel anytime soon, you will from AMD.

<comment><USER14> Isn't TSMC's "7nm" more comparable to Intel's 10nm?

<comment><USER15> On paper, yes.

In practice, TSMC's 7nm node is actually functional, and producing working chips.

Intel's 10nm... well, is garbage, because they were overconfident.

Now Intel has to either rework their 10nm node, after wasting many years of work on nothing, or just jump straight at 7nm, which seems equivalent to TSMC's 3nm node plans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> To me, this sounds entirely plausible. Trying to describe a semiconductor process by a single number is almost as abstract as describing a song with a single number. First of all, the definition of that number is somehow vague. It describes only a single design rule, the gate width of a transistor. But that already assumes a certain fundamental layout of the transitor, which no longer applies in advanced nodes with for example fin fets and all kind of 3d structures. It also does not account for all the many hundred design rules characterizing that process. To compare two processes, you not only need to account for the transistor density, but also the performance characteristics, like energy used, leak currents, switching speeds and so on.

With the 7nm process, TSMC seems to have clearly pulled ahead of Intels 14nm process. The delayed 10nm would be competing with the TSMC 7nm process. The 10nm sound not very advanced, but it hides that other parts of the process were very aggressive in specs. As everyone in the tech industry knows, complex projects can get stuck easily. Sometimes for obvious mistakes, but often hitting a road block, where no one expected one. So for whatever reasons, the 10nm project was quite delayed, we will see in 2019 if they manage to hit the market at their current schedule.

The 7nm project is run independantly from the 10nm process, so it runs on its own time scale. If they are not directly based on each other, it is quite plausible that they made a completely different set of design decisions and thus were not hit by the same road blocks the 10nm process had. As the 7nm process is in an earlier phase of its development, it might of course have just not reached some of the road blocks yet, but it is not necessary that it does run into the same problems as the 10nm one.

</comment><comment> dis-sys People need to be very careful about Intel's definition of "on track". A couple examples below -

In 2016, Intel confirmed that "10nm chips still on track for 2017"

[https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/02/16/intel- corp...](https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/02/16/intel-corp- confirms-first-10-nanometer-product-on.aspx)

In 2017, Intel announced that "Intel's 10nm process technology is on track to commence manufacturing in 2H'17"

[https://newsroom.intel.com/newsroom/wp- content/uploads/sites...](https://newsroom.intel.com/newsroom/wp- content/uploads/sites/11/2017/03/Kaizad-Mistry-2017-Manufacturing.pdf)

<comment><USER17> Technically they did sell some 10nm chips in 2H'17\. It's just that the GPUs didn't work at all and the CPU cores had poor yields and worse power usage than 14nm so they got shuffled off to obscure OEMs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hearing how much commotion news from semiconductor industry been making recently in the mainstream media, it seems that people have only began to realise it now that semiconductor manufacturing is the "water tap of of modern civilisation" \- not facebooks, amazons, googles, or other dotcoms.

</comment><comment><USER18> And still the 8700k costs are up and are there for a few month now.

Even with AMD.

Don't think Intel has too many issues getting there existing stuff on the market

<comment><USER19> People have said Intel contracted out fab capacity that is competing with the 8700k, because they expected to be moving to another node and having excess capacity on that one but now they don't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> "On track". Really? After how many years of delays?

</comment><comment><USER21> This reminds me of the story "the boy who cried wolf."

</comment><comment><USER22> I've seen a big activity increase at EUV OEMs.

</comment><comment><USER8> >Intel: EUV-Enabled 7nm Process Tech Is on Track

As it was so for the past 10+ years :D

</comment><comment><USER23> anandtech is an unofficial spokesperson for Intel. Team red ftw.

</comment><comment><USER24> Let's see it ship before we believe the hype.

</comment><comment><USER25> I will believe it until it shows on Amazon.

</comment><comment><USER26> Intel also claims to be well on track for 5G, however SemiAccurate begs to differ:

[https://semiaccurate.com/2018/11/12/intel-tries-to- pretend-t...](https://semiaccurate.com/2018/11/12/intel-tries-to-pretend-they- have-5g-silicon-with-the-xmm-8160/)

<comment><USER11> I hope We start banning Semiaccurate article. It has no place on HN.

<comment><USER27> Please elaborate why.

<comment><USER11> Every single News out of the Site about Intel/ Nvidia are either inaccurate, technically false, fake news or hyperbole. And all of its headline are nothing but drive you to buy thousands dollar subscription for their "professional" detail report.

Where is the $20B 10nm customer going bankrupt? Why is the 8160 Modem fake, just because it is reusing a photo? I could still have given them points if any of its statement or rumours had any technical or business merit. But it doesn't. As much as I support AMD and likes to bash Intel, this is not how Journalism should work.

<comment><USER28> This, plus the obnoxious, childish writing style. It's a tech tabloid.

<comment><USER29> Sooooo it doesn't appeal to your taste? I like it. There, your point has been countered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> 7nm? TSMC: Hold my beer

</comment><comment><USER31> On track to being a flop

<comment><USER15> Intel's 10nm was a flop.

With 7nm, Intel seems to have taken a more sane approach, but their 10nm failures and setbacks costed them a lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> EUV is semiconductor industry's equivalent of commercial fusion: every 5 years, the prognosis is made that we will get commercial EUV in the next 5 years. And like that for the last 30 years.

<comment><USER11> You will just have to look at ASML stock price and revenue. They are the only one doing EUV. And it is nothing like Fusion.

TSMC will have multilayers 7nm EUV in 2019, Full 5nm EUV in 2020. Samsung has 7nm EUV sampling and are toying with the idea of EUV NAND and DRAM.

<comment><USER8> Really full EUV in 2020???, makes little sense. Even TSMC 7FF uses plain non- immersion litho for metal 7 and on.

<comment><USER11> >makes little sense.

They are doing 7FF+ in 2019 with few steps in EUV already. GF and Samsung also have similar schedule. You don't have to trust me. You could look at their investor meeting notes or report from Anandtech.

<comment><USER8> Yes, but they are not gonna be using EUV for every layer. The only way it makes economical sense is where they replace horrific SAQP layers with a single exposure EUV pass, and use conventional litho for the rest to maximise throughput.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Their "on track", even if true, doesn't mean for Moore's law, does it?

x2 density in 4 years is not my Moore's law.</comment>


Ask HN: Joomla or Rails? - <AUTHOR>

I plan to build a simple community portal that allows to review, evaluate and discuss software products - imagine it as judysbook.com for software.<p>Now my question: is it easier and faster to construct something like that using a CMS like Joomla (that I have never used before) or
to build it from scratch and on my own in RoR (given that I have already built 2 rails-applications)? Or are they even better solutions - like lighweight open-source CMS I am not aware of? What about maintenance and later customizations? <comment><USER2> Unfortunately I cannot come close to recommending Joomla. Looking through the core code of the system is an exercise in frustration at best. While the code is not necessarily all super-bad the documentation is lacking in the extreme.

I would recommend starting from scratch in Rails. That way you'll have control over every aspect of the design and function of the system and it will be you alone that is responsible for the quality of the code and the system overall...

</comment><comment><USER3> Most experienced admins who have used all of the various php based CMSs would probably recommend Drupal over Joomla. Drupal is considered better when it comes to security and customization. Joomla addons have a stigma of being generally insecure.

As others have said, you'll get up and running faster with an open-source CMS, but you can get bogged down trying to customize it. If you're not a designer, you might want to pay for one to customize a template/theme for you. I can't tell you the number of wasted hours I've spent trying to customize the look of a CMS, but working with CSS and templates just isn't my thing.

If you're really into design and it's not a big deal for you then using rails could be a better answer as long as you keep it simple, as you said. The backend should be pretty straight forward, though you can get bogged down in the details.

I'm sending you an email with some additional info. My startup could help you out, but I'm planning a formal launch next week so I don't want to publicize it here too much.

</comment><comment><USER4> Here is the question I have for you, are you versed in php? If you need to add functionality etc to Joomla, how long is that going to take you to ramp up? Balance that against the time savings you get from ready made components. Also, if you have never used Joomla or anything else that offers 'snap together components', try actually doing it, how easy is it to take the 2 or 3 you want to use and put together, is it really seamless? You might find, that you can do more coding yourself using something else and still save time.

</comment><comment><USER5> A CMS will probably get something up faster, but writing your own code will definitely be better for later customization. Maintenance really depends on what you build. How much do you want to fine tune and customize?

</comment><comment><USER6> Joomla is a mess and I wouldn't recommend it for a dev.

It's much more of a CMS for designers, than any sort of framework for developers.

</comment><comment><USER7> Joomla is a toy compared to Rails.</comment>


China slams 'clean network' plan and reminds world of USA's ECHELON snoop-fest - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/07/china_responds_to_us_clean_network_plan/ <comment><USER2> At this point US has lost all credibility when it comes to privacy and security. While everybody was watching China, US has implemented exact same Orwellian nightmare at home where every citizen is tracked [https://www.coindesk.com/tiktok-and-the-great-firewall-of- am...](https://www.coindesk.com/tiktok-and-the-great-firewall-of-america)</comment>


We Can't Just Assume that Facebook Will Do Its Best - <AUTHOR> https://www.zeit.de/digital/internet/2019-01/privacy-katarina-barley-data-protection-facebook-ad-targeting-mark-zuckerberg <comment><USER2> "If an algorithm doesn't work, then responsibility lies with the person who deployed the software. Real people cannot become laboratory rats for the testing of an algorithm."

I'm wondering what the HN opinions are on this view. My guess is that the argument will be that this will stifle innovation. But Facebook has such clout that algorithms have very direct effect on people, up to even the security of a state. I hear Facebook was a major contributer to the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya. Is algorithm deployment subject to (government) audit? Or are there alternatives to ensure the algorithm does nothing bad?

<comment><USER3> I think letting governments have power to control which algorithms get deployed is a bad thing. Instead, individuals need to cultivate a better intuition on how and why granting a large amount of power to a single entity is detrimental for them in the long term. They also need to develop tools and heuristics that lessen the probability of this happening.

Power needs to be distributed as much as possible, so that no single entity can do a large amount of damage and have a large amount of leverage. In other words, Facebook only has as much power as the people using it let them have. The people need to become acutely aware of this and act accordingly.

<comment><USER4> No. We have elected representatives to study these questions in depth. You can't ask every citizen to be an expert in ethics, genetics, medicine, computer sciences, virology, etc. so they can make the obvious/good/true/rational choice.

That's why societies have laws. So we can know what to do or not when faced with such questions instead of passing the burden to the individual under the guise that it's "freeing people".

<comment><USER5> > _No. We have elected representatives to study these questions in depth._

Except the elected representatives are dumb as rocks. I'm sure they studied how the cookie law would work really in depth before voting on it. That's why the cookie law worked out so perfectly, right? Oh wait, it didn't do ANYTHING other than cost companies millions of euros and wasted the time of the general public. It had ZERO benefits and a CS student could tell you that the way it was designed it could never have any benefits. I guess the only benefit of the law is to show that lawmakers continue to be incompetent at technology.

> _That 's why societies have laws. So we can know what to do or not when > faced with such questions instead of passing the burden to the individual > under the guise that it's "freeing people"._

Societies have laws so that the regular person thinks that everyone plays according to the same rules, but that's not true in practice. Laws are intentionally written to be vague and not consistently enforced. This has led to a situation where there are so many laws that everyone breaks several every year and as a result if somebody higher up in the chain doesn't like what you're doing they can use the state to harass you with.

If laws were truly about knowing what to do then it would be impossible to graduate from mandatory education without having studied every single law that will apply to you in most circumstances. Furthermore, vague laws wouldn't be written and would get removed from legal codes. Furthermore, laws that are only selectively enforced would be removed, because laws can only be just if they apply to everyone consistently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This headline just needs a two word response: "Of course!"

Facebook the company needs to be changed drastically by strong external forces (maybe governments, though the effects could include some harm too). It will not do anything on its own while Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg are stil at the company and/or have influence (which they will have, for a long time...at least the CEO will).

<comment><USER7> I wouldn't trust the US government any more than I would trust Facebook the company(Speaking as a non US citizen). Many countries governments are less transparent than publicly traded companies. Governments often act with shady 'national security' and geopolitical interests, or sometimes even elections in mind, but at least public companies more or less motivated towards increasing shareholder value.

I do rue the dominant narrative in much of HN and the mainstream media, who is the more dangerous actor, FB vs NSA? My bet is on the NSA.

<comment><USER5> Speaking as a European, I would trust the US government over the German government at least.

<comment><USER6> Could you please elaborate on what aspects you're referring to and provide some links?

From one perspective, as far as pervasive mass surveillance and exchange of surveillance information are concerned, the U.S. in the Five Eyes group has more influence and impact than Germany in the Fourteen Eyes group.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What German ministers have to say about Schufa Holding AG running undisclosed rating algorithms on the entire resident population of their country?

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm curious what a solution like "All Machine Learning algorithms, and the data that taught them, must be open-source and easily accessible by the public" would look like.

It'd allow for public scrutiny at the algorithms that run our lives. It'd essentially mandate thorough vetting of how anonymous and/or biased the data being fed into these algorithms is.

Which would be interesting

<comment><USER10> You really don't want that. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_data_leak](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_data_leak)

<comment><USER9> Well the idea would be that companies would be forced to actually figure out how to properly clean data or forced not to use it out of public pressure

<comment><USER5> It's probably not possible to clean data like that. Just a few slices of a person's life are enough to uniquely identify them. So all you're asking then is effectively a ban on machine learning.

<comment><USER11> Apple and others have poured a lot of resources into a concept called "differential privacy" that can mathematically guarantee privacy for data in a machine learning context.

It's rather well known, so you should probably read up on it before espousing strongly worded opinion weakly connected to the current state of the art.

<comment><USER10> I don't think anyone has managed to train differentially private models with acceptable performance, and releasing raw data in differentially private way seems impossible to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't know that i'd trust a company that would intentionally steal millions of dollars from children.

[https://www.revealnews.org/article/facebook-knowingly- duped-...](https://www.revealnews.org/article/facebook-knowingly-duped-game- playing-kids-and-their-parents-out-of-money/)

<comment><USER13> That's harsh - they do not intentionally steal money from children.

They intentionally use children to steal their parents' money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Trust is gone and it will be the end of the big Facebook (website).

I think Facebook (company) is lucky with Instagram because that's where the people are going right now.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, if the Zucker doesn't destroy it

Though I have to say that at least in its current form, the ability of Instagram to spread crap is limited

<comment><USER16> > Though I have to say that at least in its current form, the ability of > Instagram to spread crap is limited

That proved to be untrue:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/technology/russian- interf...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/technology/russian-interference- instagram.html)

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/dec/18/instagram...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/dec/18/instagram- facebook-russian-propaganda-ira)

> But two new analyses of the Russian online propaganda campaign by the > Internet Research Agency reveal that this view of Instagram was as rose- > colored as, well, an artistically filtered Instagram post.

> "Instagram was perhaps the most effective platform for the Internet Research > Agency," states the report by New Knowledge, an American cybersecurity firm > which analyzed data sets from Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

> During the period studied by the report's authors, IRA posts on Instagram > garnered more than twice as many engagements (such as likes or comments) as > IRA posts on Facebook – 187m on Instagram vs 77m on Facebook – despite the > fact that Facebook offers many more ways for users to interact with content, > and Instagram has no native "sharing" button to promote virality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> On the contrary, we should assume that Google, FB, MSFT etc etc will do the worst (for users /society) if it's better for their bottom line. Their trust level is in negative territory, it was zero a few years ago.

<comment><USER16> > On the contrary, we should assume that Google, FB, MSFT etc etc will do the > worst (for users /society) if it's better for their bottom line. Their trust > level is in negative territory, it was zero a few years ago.

All the refrains that try to excluse/explain corporate misbehavior by claiming that that only duty of a corporation is to create value for its shareholders are only tempting a massive regulatory response in the future.

If capitalist ethics are unused to justify socially unethical and immoral behavior, don't be surprised when democracies start to turn against capitalism...

<comment><USER18> It's always worth remembering that the term "Banana Republic" is as originally used to describe countries where the local government had been effectively taken over by United Fruit Company [1] to the extreme detriment of the local people.

The lesson here is that you can't trust large corporations to act ethically and if you can't trust you need to regulate them.

(That a clothing company rather insensitively chose Banana Republic as a trade name sort proves that you can't legislate against bad taste).

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_republic](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_republic)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Like almost all articles criticising Facebook, this has a prominent 'like on Facebook' icon/link. It is first among the social media logos. Unlike most articles criticising Facebook, their logo is not fixed and permanently visible, so they must be getting really serious about their criticisms.

<comment><USER20> > Like almost all articles criticising Facebook, this has a prominent 'like on > Facebook' icon/link.

The "voting with your wallet" logic doesn't work very well with operations at the size and impact of Facebook. Zeit may be dependent on Facebook for profit. That's why some people ask for regulations. Companies should not be expected to act as moral agents.

You should also know that journalists writing for a paper has little to do with business strategies of the owners.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> (I'm not sure why the mods changed the title as it's quite important to note that this is is an op-ed by Katarina Barley, the German minister of justice)

<comment><USER21> _Please don 't do things to make titles stand out, like using uppercase or exclamation points, or adding a parenthetical remark saying how great an article is. It's implicit in submitting something that you think it's important._

...

 _If the original title includes the name of the site, please take it out, because the site name will be displayed after the link._

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

I'd say that applies to author names, too. Besides, I think she's written the article in her capacity as minister of consumer protection, the fact that she's also simultaneously minister of justice isn't all that relevant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is a classic tactics by politicians: instead of reprimanding the judicial system for refusing to do their job properly, they cry and whine publicly in order to get the consensus to create more laws, which often guarantee more power to the government and also the creation of special regulatory bodies where they can put their people with a juicy governement salary.

All the problem described in this thread could be solved with laws from 25 years ago. Facebook stealing call and contact data? No, they can't do it. No, GDPR was not needed. No, putting a phrase in a ToS that nobody reads is not enough to save a company from being destroyed in court in case of serious wrongdoing. Friendly fraud? Also a crime, just use the existing laws. Calling the users dumb fucks? Not a crime. Manipulating the users emotion or testing the algorithms on users? Also not a crime and I don't see why it should be.

Of course, it's much easier for the judicial system to not bother with those big companies by applying the existing laws. Why risk getting attention from such powerful people? And after all, if they were to apply the existing laws, then the poor politicians would have much less fake crisis to work with in order to expand the role of government and make money.

This is how the whole government thing work. Proved since the beginning of time. Trust them even less than Facebook.

<comment><USER23> >All the problem described in this thread could be solved with laws from 25 years ago. Facebook stealing call and contact data? No, they can't do it. No, GDPR was not needed. No, putting a phrase in a ToS that nobody reads is not enough to save a company from being destroyed in court in case of serious wrongdoing. Friendly fraud? Also a crime, just use the existing laws.

Even if it's true that these are illegal, you're not going to be able to ascribe a "crime" to someone you can charge ex post facto. At most, you might see a lawsuit that results in a settlement for a small number of affected individuals, which is going to be accounted for already by Facebook's legal team in their decision to implement these polices.

We _do_ need new laws here. The fact that Facebook feels so free to do these things means that they are unafraid of current law, probably with good reason.

<comment><USER22> If facebook's actions are illegal now, they are illegal now, there is no ex post facto. Can't talk for the US, but for example the "friendly fraud" could be considered fraud in many European countries, since it brings profit to facebook by inducing people into error. The punishment includes jail time. You do need someone to start a lawsuit, of course, and that's what the judicial system should do when the fraud is repeated. But do they do it? Nope, instead we just have the politicians whine that they need more power. What a surprise.

The reason why FB and big companies in general are unafraid of current laws is that they know they won't be applied. It's a big hassle to punish the rich and the corporations, because people working in the judicial system just don't care about making big enemies. Also it's a pain in the ass because there are two thousand layers of limited liability they have to uncover before they can put the responsible people in jail. It's much easier to focus all the energy on some poor guy selling some weed or a small business not submitting the right form at the right time. Punishing them need zero effort, they can't defend themselves properly and their punishment justifies the work of the judicial system.

Elected politicians should be the one to keep the judicial system in check, but they don't have an incentive to do so that it starts to punish rich people FIRST. In the end the people, by showing support for "more laws" they only get more laws, which will cost more money to the taxpayers and also will make life difficult for the small business while big business won't care and will even be advantaged by them. All this aside from the fact that it doesn't make sense to make another law when there is already a law.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> So are we back to having dozens of facebook spam every day? Can't believe a nearly 2 day old facebook spam story is still on the frontpage.

Facebook is a private company. It will do its best for its shareholders.

And as best as I can tell, what this german minister of "justice" and a segment of the politcal and business elites are complaining about is that they don't get to control facebook. These authoritarians want to control what people read, what people say and how they think. No different than saudis or the chinese or the russians complaining about facebook.

If you don't like facebook, stop using it. If germans don't like facebook, create a german version of facebook. Frankly, the germans should be more worried about the nazi/stasi-esque german intranational spying. It's strange how the people complaining the most about facebook and its privacy violations/spying are also the leaders in spying on its own citizens. I doubt even china spies on its own citizens as much as the british and the germans do.

<comment><USER25> people hate facebook because trump won and brexit passed and they hate that the people didn't listen to the elites.

<comment><USER26> I assume this is sarcasm.

<comment><USER25> you just think it's a coincidence that all the fb hate started after trump got elected?

<comment><USER27> It didn't.

<comment><USER25> yes it did. atleast the latest wave of intense fervor. it started when people claimed russian bots on fb affected election. of course there's always been some criticism but not to the same extent

<comment><USER27> > atleast the latest wave of intense fervor.

That's moving the goalpost to a subjective location. But if you never saw intense criticism of Zuckerberg and his company on HN before the 2016 election outcome, then you just weren't paying attention. The "dumbfucks" comment was what, a decade ago?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Monolith That Breaks Up Itself - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/rebellion-defense/the-monolith-that-breaks-up-itself-c9513c732367 <comment><USER2> This feels all to familiar to a Java developer and similar to what they do in k8s with the genericapiserver component but not to the full extent described in the article. It's interesting to see how the service container pattern appears in other language ecosystems. The nice thing about go's module system is that it feels like a monorepo without the tooling feeling separate to the language. So splitting up a repo into different repos doesn't come with the versioning hell when working with maven

<comment><USER3> > So splitting up a repo into different repos doesn't come with the versioning > hell when working with maven.

Damn you hurt me with this one. You can use 100 plugins and versioning with Maven in these scenarios is still a rat's nest. But using a monorepo can make CI/CD for individual services just as messy :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [https://outline.com/rtuEXC](https://outline.com/rtuEXC)

</comment><comment><USER5> Hate to be that guy, but why is this Medium post paywalled? I don't think it makes sense for an enterprise blog that also advertises career opportunities.

Is it some sort of bad default from Medium's side?

<comment><USER6> Paywalled for me too. It's ridiculous to use Medium for corporate content at this point. This company has paywalled a front page HN story.

<comment><USER7> I think the writers decide if it is paywalled (if it is they get paid). Still would prefer just having ads but I guess adblock is too popular for its audience.</comment></comment></comment>


Former NOAA Scientist Confirms Colleagues Manipulated Climate Records - <AUTHOR> https://science.house.gov/news/press-releases/former-noaa-scientist-confirms-colleagues-manipulated-climate-records <comment><USER2> John Bates has an extensive blog post describing his allegations on Judith Curry's well-known blog: [https://judithcurry.com/2017/02/04/climate- scientists-versus...](https://judithcurry.com/2017/02/04/climate-scientists- versus-climate-data/)

It was submitted to HN yesterday but got 4 points and 0 comments: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13574012](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13574012)

Posts submitted to HN in the last month about the effort to back-up climate data from a suspected erasure by the Trump administration got 448 and 85 points. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13488334](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13488334) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13487843](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13487843)

[EDIT]

Bates:

> I read with great irony recently that scientists are "frantically copying > U.S. Climate data, fearing it might vanish under Trump" (e.g., Washington > Post 13 December 2016). As a climate scientist formerly responsible for > NOAA's climate archive, the most critical issue in archival of climate data > is actually scientists who are unwilling to formally archive and document > their data. I spent the last decade cajoling climate scientists to archive > their data and fully document the datasets. I established a climate data > records program that was awarded a U.S. Department of Commerce Gold Medal in > 2014 for visionary work in the acquisition, production, and preservation of > climate data records (CDRs), which accurately describe the Earth's changing > environment.

[EDIT2]

Rebuttal post by Peter Thorne, who was in Karl's group, although was not an author on the key paper:

[http://icarus-maynooth.blogspot.ca/2017/02/on-mail-on- sunday...](http://icarus-maynooth.blogspot.ca/2017/02/on-mail-on-sunday- article-on-karl-et-al.html)

<comment><USER3> If I may summarize the blog post to characterize the allegations more accurately than the House press release:

NOAA scientist used as the basis for a major climate paper a data set which was in an alpha stage in terms of post-processing. This preliminary data should have been at least indicated as such but was not done in the paper submission. The exact differences between the alpha version and released version is not documented, and the dataset used for the paper hasn't apparently been located, so finding the differences is difficult.

Notably, Bates doesn't seem to be accusing Karl et. al. of actually manipulating the data to get spectacular results. Rather, the allegation is that the rush to put out the paper induced Karl et. al. to bypass transparency rules designed to prevent, well, suspicion of the data being manipulated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Worth a read for some background on this:

[http://www.popsci.com.au/science/the-house-science- committee...](http://www.popsci.com.au/science/the-house-science-committee- claims-scientists-faked-climate-change-data8212heres-what-you-should- know,450206)

<comment><USER5> _" The source of their evidence, according to Committee spokesperson Thea McDonalds, was a Daily Mail article."_

This is not politics, this is trolling and it takes trolling to a whole new level. It feels as if the wildests redditors are in charge in the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> [http://www.popsci.com/regardless-house-science-committee- cla...](http://www.popsci.com/regardless-house-science-committee-claims-noaa- scientists-probably-didnt-manipulate-climate-records) is another view of the record which is certainly more detailed than the original press release, which contains a single quote and 0 context.

</comment><comment><USER6> The wording in the linked article is surprising and disconcerting:

"This fact has always been a thorn in the side of climate change alarmists, as it became difficult to disprove the slowdown in warming."

That is some fairly loaded language, including "climate change alarmists."

I am disappointed that taxpayer dollars are being used to put out official government writings that improperly vilify people with no context.

Someone who is concerned about climate change is not a de facto alarmist.

</comment><comment><USER7> Given the source of this release, I am incredulous, and suspect that the internal disagreements referenced were more akin to bikeshedding or perhaps just entirely fabricated for the purpose of political ax-grinding.

</comment><comment><USER8> Probably to do with the current administration's agenda to discredit climate change...

</comment><comment><USER9> Agood account of this can be read on Ars Technica [0]

[0] [https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/02/article-names- whistl...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/02/article-names- whistleblower-who-told-congress-that-noaa-manipulated-data/)

</comment><comment><USER10> The actual Karl paper:

[http://science.sciencemag.org/content/348/6242/1469.full](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/348/6242/1469.full)

</comment><comment><USER11> All I have to say is look at the source... .gov might as well be .ch or .ru or .tk links anymore. Since Trump took office it's quite hard to believe anything is more than actual propaganda.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> quietly removed from front page

Edit: Not [Flagged], but not getting karma from further upvotes to story.

Edit2: Down voting comment has begun.

<comment><USER12> User flags affect rankings even prior to the '[flagged]' tag appearing. There are plenty of submissions with higher and lower upvotes. As you're aware, the ranking algorithm isn't public, in large part to prevent gaming of the system.

If you have questions or concerns about the ranking, contact the mods via the Contact link in the footer.

Please stop with the conspiracy innuendos. You're likely getting downvotes just for that, and now for commenting on downvotes.

<comment><AUTHOR> >Please stop with the conspiracy innuendos.

Simply documenting. Last time I pointed out a post had been "shadow flagged" (because it didn't say [Flagged]) I got told off.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12473904](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12473904)

I'm sparing someone else from being told off if they notice my post before it is [Flagged]</comment></comment></comment>