How the F.B.I. Can Detain, Render and Threaten Without Risk - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/03/opinion/how-the-fbi-can-detain-render-and-threaten-without-risk.html?_r=0 <comment><USER3> Advice from my father-in-law, who is a prominent attorney: "Never, ever talk to the FBI without a lawyer - even if you want to help them as a witness... because if they don't like the truth you're telling them, they can (and often do) say you lied to them which is a federal offense. If you have your attorney, they at least know there is a credible witness present who is keeping track of who said what."

<comment><USER4> This is good advice for talking to any law enforcement really. They are not on your side if they are asking you questions.

<comment><USER5> Well this is especially (aka more) important when talking to a "Federal Agent". This can be US Marshals, Secret Service, Fish and Wildlife management, DEA, etc. (if you find yourself in this situation ask the person if they are an "1811" job series). Lying to a federal agent is always an actual felony (18 U.S.C. SECTION 1001).

Lying to a local police officer, state patrol is not always a crime (local, state laws).

<comment><USER6> Don't lie?

FBI would need to prove a lie anyway. Not the easiest thing.

Edit: Some of these responses seem to be assuming "Don't lie" is the logical complement of "tell the truth". That is not the case.

Anyway, "tell the truth" is not a _real_ strategy. That is: the sentence is essentially meaningless. We already know that _actual_ truth is impossible to capture.

<comment><USER7> So, you tell them the truth, and say "Sorry officer, I wasn't in town that day," only they later find out that there's an eyewitness who says that you were in town that day, and your credit card purchases show you buying a cup of coffee a few blocks from where the eyewitness saw you.

It doesn't matter that the eyewitness was mistaken, and just saw someone who looked like you who drove a similar looking vehicle, or that the purchase was made by your wife who was borrowing your credit card, because that coffee shop didn't have security cameras proving one way or the other.

At the end of the day, you're looked at as guilty, for a time at least, and possibly forever. You have to waste your every spare dollar hiring a defense attorney to prove your innocence. You have to fend off mobs of social justice warriors who have ruined your reputation on the internet and real life, who may have lowered your business' Yelp score to approximately zero. You have to find a new job, because your old one fired you once you were indicted, and the newspapers justified them by placing your picture on the front page as the guilty party, but only printing the retraction months later on page 18.

And this is of course a scenario predicated on the notion that your attorney is able to actually get you found innocent, and you aren't further hindered by spending decades in prison for a crime you didn't commit.

<comment><USER6> Hmm. I didn't say "tell the truth". I said "Don't lie". You may construe that however you want, I guess.

I don't see how all of what you described couldn't also happen if you just didn't say anything. The difference would be that _you now have no contradictory statements or evidence_.

<comment><USER8> If you've made no statements, you can't be charged with lying (whether the charge is actually true or not), unless you say they lie about you making statements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Skip the article and just read the opinion: [https://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/opinions.nsf/E8CAF3B0...](https://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/opinions.nsf/E8CAF3B08FAA9E8185257EE7004E2D02/$file/14-5194.pdf).

The case here decides a specific issue: whether a _Bivens_ action for money damages is available when the government violates a Constitutional right of a U.S. citizen abroad in a terrorism investigation. _Bivens_ is basically a last-ditch option where a tort cause of action is created when there is no other remedy for a Constitutional violation: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bivens_v._Six_Unknown_Named_Ag...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bivens_v._Six_Unknown_Named_Agents). But because it's a totally judicially-created construct, the Supreme Court has warned caution in expanding it to new contexts.

The opinion does not say that it is _legal_ for the Government to do what Mr. Meshal alleges it did. The question is whether Mr. Meshal can get money from the Government for violating his rights.

<comment><USER10> So it's not legal, but there's nothing you can do to stop them? That doesn't offer much in the way of reassurance to the people being tortured at the request of the FBI.

<comment><USER9> If you are being illegally detained, you can file for a writ of _habeas corpus._ In contrast, _Bivens_ is about getting money damages if you suffered illegal detainment in the past.

The scope of _habeas corpus_ (which the Supreme Court has held _does_ apply to U.S. citizens detained abroad) is broader than that of _Bivens_ because the former is explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, and the latter is a relatively recent judge-made construct.

<comment><USER11> > If you are being illegally detained, you can file for a writ of habeas > corpus.

If you are being illegally detained, its not entirely unlikely you will also be illegally denied the _opportunity_ to file for a writ of habeas corpus; if you are extremely lucky, someone who _isn 't_ being illegally deprived of their rights might figure out that you are being illegally detained and file for the writ on your behalf. But, you know, when the government's illegally detaining people, illegally denying them access to counsel, and illegally denying them access to the courts, they generally aren't also advertising the fact of that detention of those particular individuals so that other people can intervene to do something about it.

The lack of effective after-the-fact accountability, both personal and institutional, for such violations is a serious problem which makes them more likely to be continued or repeated. The availability of the writ of _habeas corpus_ to terminate the unlawful detention is obviously necessary, but nearly equally obviously insufficient.

<comment><USER12> Yup. I'm consistently amazed at the law enforcement apologists who vociferously argue about one's legal options in circumstances where law enforcement is _already_ conducting itself illegally.

Meta: I understand that HN encompasses far, far more than classical hacker culture, but the pro-authoritarian drift of this community is really becoming apparent.

<comment><USER9> A few _Bivens_ lawsuits isn't going to deter one whit an FBI that's already doing things that illegal. All it will do is get the judiciary to burn institutional capital on what is fundamentally a political issue.

There is a big difference between saying that the courts are not the right way to fix the problem and saying that what the FBI is doing is not a problem at all. Getting the courts involved in these foreign national security issues undermines the institutional capital of the judiciary. It makes it more likely that the government will get used to ignoring court authority when it comes to core domestic functions.

<comment><USER13> > _Getting the courts involved in these foreign national security issues > undermines the institutional capital of the judiciary._

The courts shirking justice when LEOs transgress undermines their institutional capital with the only group that should actually matter - <USER2> people.

When "law enforcement" can routinely violate the law yet not be charged and the victims not made whole, _equal protection_ has gone out the window. Why should anyone respect a "court" that simply functions as a rubber stamp for government activities?

<comment><USER9> If "the people" cared about LEOs violating the rights of accused criminals and terrorists, they'd stop voting for hard-line authoritarians that promise to be tough on crime/terrorism. Instead, they vote for them at all levels of government. Even Obama gained a lot of popularity in his second campaign for being the guy who put a bullet in the head of Osama bin Laden.

<comment><USER14> I doubt the pro-Republic view folds quite so easily.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A number of years ago I did consulting work for a mid sized company. 2-5 years later, my employers's front office admin called me and said "2 Gentleman from 'Dog' are here to see you." I called these gentlemen from Dog, and found that they were from the DOJ, not Dog or D.O.G. And they were really from FBI but apparently DOJ sounds better. They started by asking me about the company, and they mis-stated the name, apparently intentionally.

After listening to their questions, I said "Gentlemen, I will have my attorney call you, he will arrange everything."

These magic words, they stopped asking questions. He setup a conference call some weeks later, and they interrogated me left and right and up and down. They kept mis-stating things that I had to correct, they kept inferring malice where none was.

I had nothing to hide, but they were both ignorant and manipulative.

After they harassed the company I'd done work for 3-6 months, costing the exec they were after something like $100k+ in legal fees, they sent a letter to the exec saying they were ending their investigation.

Don't talk to the police. Ask them to put their questions in writing, hire an attorney, or just ignore them.

I was polite, and they didn't attempt to force me to answer.

Had I actually been at work that day (I was working from home) I would have come up and seen two cop-looking guys with guns and badges, I still feel I would have done the same thing, but it would have been harder.

You can't watch this enough: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc)

</comment><comment><USER16> The author and title confuse the issue at hand. The subject, a US citizen, travelled abroad under his own free will. The Due Process Clause of the Constitution only applies domestically. Had the FBI detained him on US soil and rendered him to foreign entities, that would trigger due process scrutiny.

Being that he was already in Somalia, the FBI can coordinate with host countries (and intelligence agencies) to interrogate individuals. Not only is the FBI not obligated to return him to the US, it's by no means obvious that they can forcibly extradite, even if they had wanted him returned to the US. Sure - they could request (as the State Department and FBI do all the time) - but that's a different issue.

Disclaimer: I'm not saying it's good, just that the issues (and therefore the author's conclusions) are presented inaccurately.

</comment><comment><USER17> Although I think this is still mostly a decades-old systemic issue, I think Obama has been a _huge_ factor in making this problem worse.

Every time there was an abuse, he has defended the crimes and the criminals, whether it was the FBI, CIA, or NSA.

Bush administrations' crimes? - "We need to move forward"

CIA torture - "We tortured some folks - but you don't actually expect me to punish anyone for doing it, do you?!"

NSA - "There have been no abuses". Enough said.

Even with the OPM hack, the largest government data breach in US' history, Obama has tried to push the story under the rug, so it doesn't make his administration _look bad_ \- or something.

Obama got it wrong. You don't "move forward" by ignoring the problem. You move forward by admitting the problem exists and then _punishing_ those responsible. The criminals in the government can't continue to have jobs or even keep their liberty as if nothing happened, while through their power, they have destroyed many lives.

<comment><USER18> It bothers me too. However, I wonder if it's realistic to think a President will ever fight or hinder the national security or law enforcement establishment, especially publicly. Off the top of my head, I can't think of one who has (though they may change the rules, as Obama has), no matter what they say during campaigns.

Loyalty is the #1 rule of any organization, and publicly turning on your own subordinates would appear exceptionally disloyal; look at the price De Blasio paid in NYC for mild criticism of law enforcement. The President has over a million people working for him/her in the executive branch; he/she is highly dependent on them to get anything done and done properly. Also, President's jealously guard their power and authority; they are unlikely to take steps to significantly reduce it.

I suspect the only remedy will come from outside the executive branch, such as Congress or the judiciary. (Part of the reason the US has 3 co-equal branches of government is for situations like this one.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Same anti-constitutional way the TSA does every day?

BTW the FBI has never, ever, found themselves in the wrong after shooting someone, apparently they are perfect, infallible human beings.

Not for decades. Because trust them, only they investigate themselves.

</comment><comment><USER20> The FBI is our version of the Gestapo of Nazi Germany.

<comment> vezzy-fnord The Geheime Staatspolizei were actually remarkably inefficient, relatively understaffed, highly bureaucratic and reactive over proactive. The FBI are significantly more competent, I'd assume.

<comment><USER21> J. Edgar Hoover took power of the FBI's predecessor in the mid 1920s and was a contemporary of the Gestapo and early KGB so he probably learned a lot about how to do and what not to do as a secret police force.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Simply more proof that the laws have become illegitimate tools of power for the elite and corrupt. American is no longer a democracy in any meaningful sense of the word, but a tiered society of those inside the halls of power, given extraordinary and unaccountable powers to detain, torture, murder others and the meek who suffer such atrocities.

It's laughable and sad anyone appeals to the court system for a remedy when they simply are a rubber stamp, but what do people expect when secret courts and NSLs abound?

Voting won't help, legal redress won't help, what then can you do?

<comment><USER23> I know to what you allude, massed rebellion, but I really think that is not the answer. Look at the Tea Party for an example of how voting still works and really well. Eric Cantor, the former House Majority Leader, was 'sniped' in a primary vote: To quote from wikipedia: "In the June 10, 2014, Republican primary, despite internal campaign polls placing him 30 points ahead of his opponent[59] and his spending advantage (Cantor outspent his opponent 40 to 1),[60] Cantor lost to Tea Party candidate Dave Brat in a major upset, 44.5%–55.5%. This made him the first sitting House majority leader to lose a primary since the position was created in 1899.[61][62][63][64] His loss in the primary was described by the Los Angeles Times as "one of the greatest political upsets of modern times." ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Cantor#2014_Republican_pr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Cantor#2014_Republican_primary_and_resignation)).

What more can be said? YOUR VOTE COUNTS!

EDIT: Sorry to derail the comment thread on the article.

<comment><USER24> > Look at the Tea Party for an example of how voting still works and really > well. Eric Cantor, the former House Majority Leader, was 'sniped' in a > primary vote

> What more can be said? YOUR VOTE COUNTS!

Except... the Tea Party has failed rather miserably on most of their core objectives, particularly their single biggest one: repealing Obamacare.

Over the last five years, we've had some legislation passed that the Tea Party was happy about, but most of it is right in line with the preexisting core Republican platform. The Tea Party candidates haven't done a great job of preserving their own careers - Sarah Palin is a no-name outside Republican circles at this point, Michelle Bachmann left Congress, and Rand Paul's best successes have been when he _strays_ from the Tea Party line.

They've done a good job of making noise so that people know their existence, and they've done a good job of making themselves a force within the Republican party, but arguably, they've worked _against_ their own interests more than they've advanced their agenda by helping to decrease the relevance and/or power of the Republican party[0]. Much as I don't like Boehner, the fact that he had to step down is a symptom of the deepening problems that the Republican party has, not a symbol of the success of the Tea Party.

The Tea Party makes for a great foil to the Democrats, which makes it easy for the Democrats to capitalize on a fear of the tea party in their own campaigns. The Tea Party cost the Republicans the Senate in 2010, and while they didn't cost the Republicans the House, I maintain that the Republicans succeeded _despite_ the efforts of the Tea Party, not because of it[1].

[0] Look at how they cost the Republicans the senate race in Delaware and nearly lost Alaska as well, both of which were previously sure wins for the GOP.

[1] Oh, let's not forget about Olympia Snowe, whose decision not to run for re-election was influenced by the threats of a primary challenge from the right. Snowe ended up being replaced by King, who caucuses with the Democrats.

<comment><USER25> It doesn't matter what the Tea Party has done, the point is that they won a bunch of elections against way more established politicians.

The candidate with the most votes wins, not the most powerful one or the one with the best ideas.

<comment><USER24> > It doesn't matter what the Tea Party has done, the point is that they won a > bunch of elections against way more established politicians.

Actually, it does matter, because accomplishing policy goals is the point, not electing candidates that (claim to) support the name of an ad-hoc 'party'.

If the Tea Party is succeeding only in electing candidates who claim to belong to the Tea Party but don't actually advance the Tea Party agenda (either because they don't actually care to or because they're unable to), that's a failure.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Chinese hacker group caught bypassing 2FA - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/chinese-hacker-group-caught-bypassing-2fa/ <comment><USER2> Are these attacks able to be used against 2FA apps that use the same underlying software?</comment>


SICP (Python Version) - <AUTHOR> http://www-inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs61a/sp12/book/index.html <comment><USER2> It's a shame that Berkeley dropped Scheme in favour of Python. In the words of the former CS61a teacher, Brian Harvey, who's retiring [1]:

"In an ironic development, while the Berkeley CS faculty pretty clearly regard the Python-based course as the future of 61A for Berkeley CS students, both the UC Online people and the team at Stanford developing technology for massive online courses are excited about adapting 61AS to their formats. So, down the road, it may be that everyone except Berkeley students can study SICP."

An also[2]:

"You can learn to program in any language. But it's not just an accident that the authors of SICP chose Scheme as their teaching language. The big ideas in the book — the ones that alumni in the real world tell us they're using in their work — express themselves best in Scheme. Indeed, saying it that way puts the matter backward. Gerry Sussman (with Guy Steele) invented Scheme before he turned (with Hal Abelson) to expressing the ideas behind Scheme in a course. SICP is Scheme, in tutorial form."

BTW, if you have some free time and want to learn Lisp, do yourself a favour and go watch the old Scheme-based lectures on Berkeley's webcast; they're awesome.

PS. I do most of my professional work in Python.

[1] <http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/retire.html>

[2] <http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/proglang.html>

<comment><USER3> I definitely agree with all that you've said. On the other hand, as someone who doesn't live in the US and could never afford that kind of education, I don't really care.

I am actually grateful that I now have access to what looks like a great Python book _in addition_ to the existing SICP book and videos.

I can't wait to read the _Distributed and Parallel Computing_ chapter.

<comment><USER4> If you want to learn Python and you already know a programming language, you'll probably be best served by Python's official documentation: <http://docs.python.org/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As someone who took the Scheme version and is now teaching the Python version, there are without a doubt aspects of the course I miss. The old Scheme course just had a kind of elegance to it.

We are still striving to teach the same material, just in a different language. This class is not at all a class about Python, just as the old course was not a class about Scheme. The course content is almost the same: functional programming, data abstraction and data structures, OOP, interpreters, parallel and distributed computing, declarative programming.

We have unfortunately had to sacrifice some _great_ aspects of the original class, eg. the metacircular evaluator. The hope is that in exchange we have a more natural OOP system, better support for parallel and network computing packages, and much more modern implementations of distributed computing.

[disclaimer: these are my own opinions, I do not speak for the department]

</comment><comment><USER4> It seems to me that this version has much less to offer than the original. After reading only the table of contents and the first chapter, I feel as though it lacks many of the qualities that make the original such a classic in my mind.

Most of these qualities have nothing to do with Lisp. SICP had a tendency to take things slow. The presentation of the material reflected how programs are actually structured -- the text incrementally built on itself much in the same way that abstractions are built on other abstractions.

While reading through the first chapter of the Python version, I felt as though I was being bombarded with tidbit after tidbit without the richness of explanation featured in the original.

One thing that's missing is metalinguistic abstraction. This is something that's comparatively easy to do in Lisp, so it's understandable that it's been left out of the Python version. Unfortunately, that chapter of SICP is often an eye-opener for even experienced programmers.

Parallel and distributed processing are certainly welcome topics, and will probably become necessary (if they haven't already) as we continue moving into the Information Age.

Overall, however, I didn't get the feeling that this work keeps the same spirit as SICP. I think an almost one-to-one code translation of the first three chapters would have been better.

<comment><USER6> I don't understand what justification there is for calling this "SICP for Python." I'm sure it's a fine Python textbook, but the table of contents bares little resemblance to SICP.

<comment><USER4> Nor does much of the content.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I took 6.001 at MIT in the 80's. Clearly, Abelson and Sussman did not choose Scheme because of it's popularity in industry, not even then. Nor did Barbara Liskov expect us to use CLU professionally, but that was the language for 6.170 back then (I think they teach it in Java now).

So this movement to "port" SICP to Python or whatever other modern language seems to misunderstand the purpose of the book.

Come back in another 25 years and let's talk about which version of the book is still considered classic.

<comment><USER8> I also took 6.001 in the '80s and loved it, although the hardware was totally inadequate for Scheme. Code ran painfully slow. I adopted C and programmed in it for 12 years before coming back around to Scheme.

I just pushed some new Scheme code to my photoblog service, OurDoings, before I came here and saw this post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is even better read using Crunchy (<http://code.google.com/p/crunchy>) running under Python 3. Crunchy styles the code, making it more pleasant to read, while inserting a Python interpreter whenever it detects some code, allowing to reproduce (or modify) the examples, instead of simply passively reading them.

</comment><comment><USER10> I still haven't heard a good reason why universities are switching away from Scheme...

I'm not one to claim "we must follow the old ways" just for the hell of it. I can understand the desire to look out at the world of programming languages (which is much larger today than it was when Scheme was invented), but there was a reason to pick Scheme for the original: it's simple.

Python, with its "batteries included" philosophy is a poor choice because it misses the original intent. With Scheme, you have to invent everything. With Python, you just have to look up the documentation.

Honestly, I can't for the life of me understand why they didn't replace Scheme with Lua.

<comment><USER11> > Python, with its "batteries included" philosophy is a poor choice because it > misses the original intent. With Scheme, you have to invent everything. With > Python, you just have to look up the documentation.

Your point doesn't hold.

With Racket, which is the recommended scheme, you don't have to invent everything - you just have to look up the documentation. And if you think you won't use Racket, or use #lang htdp or something in Racket; these are artificial restrictions and students can very well be asked(like you are asking not to use batteries with Racket)to respect them while coding in Python.

There are other reasons to prefer Scheme over Python, but this isn't one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Looks just like another programming introduction using Python. I fail to see the connection to SICP.

<comment><USER13> Except for the first statement on the page that it is derived from SICP, of course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I would pay money to have this as a well-designed iBook.

Maybe I'll settle by downloading it for Instapaper.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> UC Berkeley is also using the original SICP in its CS 9D class,Scheme for Programmers.</comment>


Hello, Lua. (Apple opens door to interpreters on iOS devices) - <AUTHOR> http://www.appleoutsider.com/2010/06/10/hello-lua/

<comment><USER2> The title and blurb is misleading.

You need permission from Apple on an application by application basis. Interpreted code is to be used in a "minor way" for "minor features". Thus, writing an entire iOS app in an interpreted language (such as Lua) does not seem likely to be allowed.

I'm not a lawyer though. Of course, Apple is fickle and contradicts itself often. Indeed, I would not be surprised to find Titanium gets free reign and Corona does not, or vice versa.

<comment><USER3> Why go to all the work to embed an interpreter when it only has "minor" uses? I can't see any reason to embed something as large as Lua in a mobile app if you aren't going to make good use of it - I would think this would include only something like parsing/interpreting algebraic expressions, e.g. for a calculator. I guess since it's on a case by case basis though, it could mean anything, and they could decide it means something different than it originally did at a later date.

<comment><USER4> Well, consider a "Core Wars" game. The players program their entities using an interpreted language but the game overall is in Javascript, Objective C, or C++. That's the kind of thing they're talking about. It's minor in the sense of interactions with the API, but it may seem major in another sense that programming entities is the purpose of the game.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have altered the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further.

<comment><USER6> If we don't like parts of the deal as it stands and they altered one of those parts for the better, do we really want to pray that they don't alter it further? Witty quote and all, but it seems out of place here.

<comment><USER4> Perhaps you think the parent post is abusing HN guidelines unfairly? It would be a shame if I had to leave in a garrison of redditors here.

<comment><USER6> What? I didn't mean "out of place" as in it shouldn't be allowed to be posted here. Just that it didn't seem applicable to the situation.

<comment><USER5> Something like "you should explain a joke, it's like dissecting a frog. It's messy and the frog doesn't survive the process" went a quote whose original source or exact wording I can't find now.

For what it's worth I meant it in the sense that euccastro pointed out. Not that this particular change made things worse, but that entering into a deal which one of the parties can arbitrarily change doesn't make for the stablest of work environments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting. I'm surprised this change hasn't been covered at all by the tech press.

So does this 100% clear the way to use tools like Unity or Appcelerator? I'm particularly interested in Appcelerator (starting a droid/iPhone app in a few weeks) and there isn't a clear statement on their website about this change.

Update: I've emailed appcelarator about this change and requested clarification; I'll update again when I hear back.

Update 2: still no word from Appcelerator. I've spent some time digging through their forums and I think they just don't know what's going on either. It seems like they are just waiting to see what happens today when people start to submit iOS 4 Apps. I guess we'll know the answer becaus of this either way, hopefully soon.

<comment><USER8> No, absolutely not. It says in the article that this is not for platforms that completely "take over" the app. This change is for Objective-C applications that want/need to use Lua or other include languages for minor features, like how Tap Tap Revenge uses Lua for its immersive themes.

<comment><USER9> Apple will fight a losing battle if they specify mode of execution to limit frameworks. Sure it will slow others down, but what happens when someone creates a foo to objective-c compiler - for eg flash to objective-c or mono to objective-c.

<comment><USER10> > but what happens when someone creates a foo to objective-c compiler - for eg > flash to objective-c or mono to objective-c.

They already exist and are specifically forbidden by the license (or were last time I checked): the previous update added the requirements that applications be originally written in a supported language, forbidding the usage of a cross-compiler.

Now I'm guessing if it's your own for your own stuff (think GOAL) it's going to fly unnoticed, but the minute a cross compiler gets enough traction, you can bet its binaries are going to be fingerprinted and banned on sight.

<comment><USER9> Stuff like this makes me very unhappy. Everyone programming in the same language and using the same frameworks. Sounds right out of a pink floyd video or an apple commercial from the 80s. To repeat a popular meme - the more I grow up, the more I realise that maybe the Sith were upto something ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's nice to see that Apple is starting to warm up to the idea of giving "express written consent" to apps doing things that _might_ be considered to run afoul.

If that got implemented on a larger scale, the concerns of developers who say "I don't want to develop an app, then get it rejected with no warning" could be alleviated.

A step in a more moderate direction benefits everyone.

</comment><comment><USER12> This might sound like big news but nothing has changed really. Apple has always accepted for example games that use Python or Lua invisbly as part of their engine.

</comment><comment><USER13> Will Unity be allowed to include mono's .NET runtime as their scripting host then? There's little practical difference between that and a game scripted with Lua.

</comment><comment><USER14> IMHO this doesn't help at all. The core issue is that I can't make an app that runs on multiple platforms. I know that cross platform is against Apple's best interest, but I just don't care. I won't be writing Apple applications.

<comment><USER15> I'd go so far as to argue that platform lock-in is only in a vendor's best interest in a narrow and relatively short-term way. In the long run, platform lock-in actually undermines the incentive to innovate and compete on merit. Eventually they became ripe targets for disruption and the cycle begins again. I think a rational actor with a 10-year investment horizon would want open competition to keep themselves honest.

Either way I applaud your decision.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> So nowhere explicitly is lua enumerated in the quote from apple. Is there any particular reason why the posted write up references lua as opposed to i dont know perl or erlang? Are there historical reasons for its preference, as the wiki on lua lists in its use in games?

<comment><USER17> You just answered your own question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Hmm, so Gambit/Chicken Scheme are now fine again if you use them as interpreters, but beware of compiling the Scheme code down to C. This is bizzarro land - the interpreter will use more CPU time and therefore more battery power, one of the reasons Flash isn't included.

</comment><comment><USER19> Correct me if I'm wrong. But this refers only to unsupported interpreted code right? Ruby for example, is OK according to this section?

</comment><comment><USER20> Does this mean that I can finally fulfill my dream of porting my WOW add-ons to the iPhone?

</comment><comment><USER21> Question: How do you go about getting "written permission from Apple"? What's the standard way of doing this (is there one)?

<comment><USER22> Email email@example.com.

<comment><USER10> That one didn't work for me, but I got an answer on firstname.lastname@example.com, for what it's worth.

<comment><USER23> What'd he say?

<comment><USER10> Well it was about the announcement of WebM, his reply was basically the one he'd given about Theora (<http://hugoroy.eu/jobs-os.php>) but shorter and less involved: that WebM is likely subject to existing patents, just like h.264, and that the talk about free-as-in-beer (on top of free-as-in-freedom) is likely a wish. I asked a followup question (on whether Apple would consider the idea, and if Apple's existing patent protection re h.264 wouldn't cover most of the threat landscape in WebOS) but didn't get any further reply.

YMMV

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is crap, the changed condition is still unacceptable. These conditions are a deal-breaker for me. I would have considered buying an iPhone and developing on it, but because of this stupid other-language-prohibition, I will never buy an Apple product. I bought a Nokia N900 (Maemo / Debian / GNU / Linux phone). I'm very happy being able to run anything on it without having to jail-break or break license terms. Also it runs at up to 1.15Ghz, which is faster than the iPad and newest iPhone.

<comment><USER25> You will hurt their market share incredibly doing so. They will also care.

<comment><USER26> I wish I had enough karma points to downvote you.

<comment><USER15> I have enough, I'll do it for you. Just because you can't fight the man and win all by yourself doesn't mean you shouldn't fight him.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Well, RJDJ/Trippy is an app that I've had on my iPhone for years (2?) now, and it includes the Puredata language interpreter, so I don't see how this is new news .. surely there have been exceptions to the Interpreter rule, just that people may not have noticed them ..</comment>


Google Redefines Disruption: The "Less Than Free" Business Model - <AUTHOR> http://abovethecrowd.com/2009/10/29/google-redefines-disruption-the-%E2%80%9Cless-than-free%E2%80%9D-business-model/

<comment><USER2> So when MS bundled Internet Explorer, that was bad because it was using its profits from selling Windows and Office to subsidize its entry into a new market. Now that Google is using its ad revenue to build a mobile operating system (not its core business) and bundle really good value-add, that's good?

Details: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft>

Is our memory really that bad?

<comment><USER3> Microsoft had a monopoly on desktop operating system sales. The question at issue wasn't whether bundling unrelated products is bad in principle, but whether it amounted to an anticompetitive practice because of Micorsoft's complete control of the market.

Our memories are fine, you just picked a poor analogy.

<comment><USER4> Actually, during that period, I was often vexed that very few separated the good idea (bundling a web browser free) from the bad (anticompetitive OEM deals) -- at least in the national papers. It all got lumped into Microhate.

<comment><USER5> sorry, i downvoted you by mistake :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Thought it was a rather insightful read, even if it gives new names to old things. It also makes me wonder what the next thing will be to marginalize the internet, just as the internet marginalized the OS.

A lot of this strategy hinges on people using google as a default search, and advertisers using it to perform targeted advertising. I think when you see another way that people find out about things they want to use (and pay for), that'll be a time when the tides turn. (saying it now, it sounds obvious)

</comment><comment><USER7> "Less than free" sounds a lot like what i would normally just call "revenue share".

<comment><USER8> As easy as it is to be cynical about this sort of thing, coining a new phrase brings a fresh perspective, and additional abstraction.

Whereas before I thought of service pricing and revenue share as two separate things, now I see them as part of a coherent strategy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> _Naysayers to these assertions will likely have the same retort – quality is key. They will argue that Google's turn-by-turn apps are inferior to their well honed market leading products. ..._

I don't think this is credible just from watching the demo. The GPS devices aren't connected to the internet. Satellite data, street view, and maps search with voice are pretty killer. They're ahead of my Garmin on features.

More videos here:

<http://www.google.com/mobile/navigation/index.html#p=default>

<comment><USER10> And traffic data with alternative routes to use. The connection makes it easy to report congestion and get updates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Dumb question: why is turn-by-turn so hard if you already have map data?

<comment><USER12> Dunno, but from the top of my head: one-way streets, no-left-turn-allowed- here-signs, prolonged roadworks. Perhaps the map data doesn't even map up actual streets that well (does this road go over that one, or is it the other way around?).

<comment><USER13> But Google Maps can already provide directions from A to B, and these factor in one-way streets, etc., so Google should already have that data, right?

<comment><USER14> Apparently they used to buy that data from the big two.

[http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/2008/09/google-maps- drop...](http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/2008/09/google-maps-drop- navteq.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't think consumers will see it as being cheaper than free. I think they'll see it as something that's part of the phone (service) they pay for.

<comment><USER16> I think by 'less than free' the writer of the article meant 'subsidized by Google searches' - that is, not only Google gives away Android for free, it also pays a share on the income on Google ads clicked on the devices to carriers.

<comment><USER15> I was reacting to the last paragraph:

> Another perhaps even more important factor is that when a product is > completely free, consumer expectations are low and consumer patience is > high. Customers seem to really like free as a price point. I suspect they > will love "less than free."

I don't see how customers will see stuff from Google on their Google phone as "less than free".

The carriers will get subsidies, but they're not the ones who will need "patience".

So I don't see how the writer can justify that last paragraph. Am I missing something?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The point about Chrome OS also being a revenue-sharing OS is a very perceptive one. Existing Linux distributions already get significant revenue by shipping a customized Firefox with a Google search box. Giving a share to the manufacturer is the logical next step.

Revenue sharing seems to be a common evolution for many business models, where the infrastructure exists to support it.

</comment><comment><USER18> Couldn't you argue that they already have used this model before -- with FireFox? Stretching it a bit further, couldn't you say PayPal used the "less- than-free" model by giving their customers money for joining and for sending joins in its early days?

</comment><comment><USER19> It's going to be really hard to compete with Google on these offerings as a 3rd party mobile platform provider or a GPS software provider when there main product is up against a quality product given away to improve the overall advertising business.

</comment><comment><USER20> At this rate everything will be made free and supported by advertising, at which point there will be nothing left to advertise.

<comment><USER21> i don't get it? please clarify!</comment></comment>


Female  foreign correspondents - Code of silence is finally broken - <AUTHOR> http://www.propublica.org/article/breaking-the-code-of-silence

<comment><USER2> The problem with blaming a mob is exactly that. You're blaming a 7 year old and you can't really point a finger. I suppose blaming the victim is easier. It allows people to cope with an injustice that has them wonder what they would do if it was them. The first thing that comes to most people's mind is _"I wouldn't go there, period"_ , or _"I would be extremely careful"_.

These are journalists and this is news. Their work requires that they go and report it. I like to believe that having done this for a while they are aware of the dangers and take some measures of precautions, but sometimes a bad call can change all this. It's not their fault, they're human.

However, saying that these journalists' bosses are clueless and that Ms. Logan speaking up might change their opinion when it comes to sending a female is a bit naive. They've also been doing this job long enough to have heard hush stories of what goes on in those remote areas in time of crisis, and what happens to journalists male or female.

What I would like to know is what steps are taken by news companies to ensure their people's security while in harms way to bring us those scoops. Why do we have to wait until the damage is done to start pondering on these questions? Also, I'm wondering if the bravado reporter's cliché isn't a little bit to blame for journalists taking abuses silently. Maybe the solution to the problem might even be really simple and has just never been introduced, because the culture has people believe that they need to wear their stigmas as a badge of honor to be considered for the journalism's pantheons.

</comment><comment><USER3> I know this is probably a very unpopular opinion, but I'm going to say it: women reporters simply should not put themselves in this kind of danger. Journalists in general shouldn't feel the need to be somewhere their safety isn't secure. But the fact is women are at a much higher risk of assault in many situations because of their gender. Mobs of mostly angry men with no police presence around are precisely the places women shouldn't be. Is one's safety really worth a few more descriptive words of rose pedals and sacrificed goats?

In most cases the story isn't whats going on in the mob, but why the mob is there in the first place. One doesn't have to be physically in the middle of it to do excellent reporting. In fact, it seems to me that this idea is one of the problems with modern 'journalism'. It's completely superficial. Just throw your reporter in the middle of the hurricane, record them saying "wow its really windy" and you've done your job. I'll take real in depth reporting from the sidelines over sound-bites and photo-ops any day.

<comment><USER4> Journalists in general shouldn't feel the need to be somewhere their safety isn't secure? Really?

I'm certainly glad they do it. That's how we get information and it's also a means of limiting atrocities (notice the targeting of journalists in Egypt, the expulsion of Al Jazeera one of the few news outlets regularly available to Egyptians).

And journalists can't do their job if they're standing on the outside looking in. Being in the mob is not limited to saying "there's a mob here", it's also how you establish and maintain contacts and sources.

Your opinion may be "Very unpopular", but I would also categorize it as myopic and unfortunate.

<comment><USER3> I'm not saying they should never set foot in a war-torn nation or anywhere with civil unrest. But there is reasonable danger and unreasonable. Walking into the middle of an angry mob in Egypt as a woman is unreasonable.

>Being in the mob is not limited to saying "there's a mob here", it's also how you establish and maintain contacts and sources.

I disagree. There is very little value gained from being _inside_ the mob. Contacts and sources can be made from the sidelines or once the mob has dispersed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sexual assault is one of those things that lots of folks are afraid to talk about because it seems too easy to offend people.

I'm not surprised to find zero comments in this thread.

<comment><USER6> I don't think it's difficult not to offend people. Just use common sense and don't say things like "She had it comin' for dressing like such a slut". I mean, I hope everyone agrees that rape is a bad thing and so is justifying it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think this kind of thing gets portrayed differently depending on where it happens. Happens in Egypt and people might try to blame to reporter, if it happened in a big American city I think the blame would be squarely on those that committed the act. Do we hold different parts of the world to different moral account?

<comment><USER8> Many people's view of the middle east in general includes men that view women like slaves, while they might hold their own countrymen to a higher standard. In other words, no one wants to believe that men in America could think/act in such a backwards way so they are more likely to pin the blame on the men in an attempt to say, "See! Those guys are the outliers!" On the other hand, they view the Middle East in general as a 'dangerous place' that is 10x more dangerous when you're a woman, so the compulsion is to ask, "Why were you even putting yourself in that dangerous position?" (effectively placing the blame on the victim)

I'm not stating that the above is right, but that's my take on why it happens.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> <offtopic> I am wondering about the HN ranking system. This post gets 24 upvotes 8 comments in 2 hours and still not showing up on the front page </offtopic>

<comment><USER9> It's likely that many people have flagged it as offtopic, which offsets the positive votes. I think it's a fine article, and would be happy to run across it elsewhere, but flagged it in an attempt to keep HN more focussed.

I mean no offense by this, but am getting scared by how many front page articles right now have no specific hacker content. Ironically, I find your self-declared offtopic comment more on topic.</comment></comment>


Verizon CEO: A Third Mobile Platform Will Emerge In The Next 12 Months - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/21/verizon-ceo-a-third-mobile-platform-will-emerge-in-the-next-12-months/

<comment><USER2> >"The carriers are beginning to coalesce around the need for a third ecosystem," said McAdam.

But can the carriers cause that to happen if not enough consumers want the third choice? In other words, how much influence do the carriers have here?</comment>


Commission to present revamped ePrivacy proposal - <AUTHOR> https://www.euractiv.com/section/data-protection/news/commission-to-present-revamped-eprivacy-proposal/ <comment><USER2> You'd think Europeans would want to foster a real tech market before trying to regulate it but I guess it's cheaper to just leave the expensive heavy lifting to the US and China.</comment>


Silicon Valley Falls to Earth - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/04/silicon-valley-falls-to-earth/557585/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Oh god. Atlantic, I love you but this one is over the top. Let's not do the whole "Silicon valley companies are in trouble because Facebook is in trouble". Nobody goes around saying "Food companies are all finally getting the comeuppance they deserve: General Mills was slapped with a lawsuit"

This is that thing where you pick a non-central example of a group member, and then generalize that group member's characteristics onto the entire group. You're better than this.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nah. Those guys control who shows up in search, ads, aggregated news, trends, Facebook, and (increasingly) on screen. They basically determine who gets elected. They won't make the mistake of not censoring someone they don't want to win next time, and the members of Congress will not make the mistake of screwing with the very company that can (and does) help them win elections.</comment>


Myth of the Brown Recluse - <AUTHOR> http://spiders.ucr.edu/myth.html <comment><USER2> Black widows have a much worse bite than brown recluses. A black widow bite won't kill you, it'll just make you hurt so much you'll wish you were dead. There's antivenom but it's not without its own side effects so sometimes your best option is just to "ride out the pain." Contrast this with brown recluses, which rarely bite and when they do it's often painless and easy to treat.

I have so many black widows living in my house I've given up trying to get rid of them. I leave them alone and they take care of flies and leave me alone. No brown recluses live in my state, but still people here worry far more about the benign, nonexistent brown recluse than the much more potentially dangerous and prevalent black widow. Or they get all bent about the big tarantulas here, which are so harmless that little kids (who know the truth) collect them and keep them as pets.

Snakes are a similar story. We have a lot of rattlesnakes where I live, and they're dangerous if you get bit and don't go to the hospital. A better plan is just not to get bit, and that's generally pretty easy with a snake unless you surprise it. I relocate rattlesnakes when I find them in my yard and my neighbors call me to relocate them from their yards, but the prevailing mentality in most people is to kill the snake first and ask questions later. Which is a shame since most snakes in the U.S. are nonvenomous and all snakes decrease the population of vermin like rodents that carry nasty diseases like plague and hantavirus.

People need to get over their prejudices.

</comment><comment><USER3> I live in Kansas, and hate spiders in general. However, I am not particularly afraid of the rather common brown recluse. What scares me are the black widows (quite rare in central Kansas). Kinda funny that in California the black widows are less feared than the recluses!

<comment><USER4> My uncle was a doctor in Kansas City at a pediatric hospital. He was a toxicologist, and specialist in brown recluse spider bites.

The author of this piece and my uncle most likely knew each other well, it seems they've published papers quoting each other and some pop news stories about brown recluse spiders mention both of them.

Brown recluse bites are definitely thing, and particularly dangerous for small kids. Not super common, but he threat is real.

One article says he used to see about a dozen bites a year, which increased in recent years to about two dozen.

Just because Rick Vetter wrote this article specifically about not finding them in Cali, it doesn't mean they're something to be ignored where they're more prevalent, ie the Midwest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> No brown recluse spiders and (soon to have) recreational pot... it's practically paradise compared to Oklahoma!</comment>


Email sent to a developer on supporting 10.6 and up - <AUTHOR> http://inessential.com/2010/02/14/email_sent_to_a_developer_on_support_10_

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a possible comparison to supporting various web browsers in web apps, but I'm not sure the correlation between upgrading and spending money on software applies.

</comment><comment><USER2> I could see this argument for dropping 10.4, but plenty of people are still on 10.5 because Apple didn't release a PPC version of 10.6.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure that the people still on the PPC architecture are worth targeting. It's been 4 years since Apple switched to Intel. If their hardware needs haven't evolved in that time then I'd assume their software needs haven't changed either; that or they're on the cusp of buying a new machine anyway.

<comment><USER2> In my case, it's because hardware seems to have stayed mostly flat over the past 5 years or so. If I bought a new portable machine to replace my 12" PowerBook, it would probably be a netbook. But today's netbooks aren't any faster than my PB, so why sideways-upgrade? I do still buy and upgrade software routinely (in some cases software upgrades have actually made my machine faster than it was years ago, e.g. with the Firefox speed improvements).</comment></comment></comment>


Tired of typing in Slack? Use Webspeech recognition API to chat hands-free - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/crackleware/slack-webspeech <comment><USER2> By the time I'm speaking to my computer so it can TTS into Slack so I can converse with my colleague sitting at the next desk I might as well rotate my head 90°...

(EDIT: I should also add that at any point in time my colleagues may be spread over Massachusetts, New York, California, Oxfordshire, London, Britanny, Victoria, Lower Saxony and that's when they're not travelling. But we also use it for conversations when we're in the same office.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Now they just need a voice synthesizer on the other end to convert the text back into speech to the person doesn't have to look at it, but can just listen to it instead. Man, that would be convenient!

</comment><comment><USER4> Yeah caus everyone (outside of America at least) loves speaking out loud to inanimate objects.

</comment><comment><USER5> Why should this be specific to Slack? Can't this just use OS-level speech-to- text functionality?

(Just like other input devices, e.g. keyboard and mouse)

<comment><USER6> Because the JS targets Slack HTML to insert the recognized text from the webkitSpeechRecognition API.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Something something open plan something something noise. Neat hack, though!

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm not tired of typing in Slack, I'm tired of the fact that most of my co- workers use it, which in turn forces me to type and waste time in it.

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't understand the appeal of slack over IRC.

<comment><USER10> embedded media, searchable archive, ready-made webhook integration, synced history across machines, proper support for multiple logged-in clients (and lately, I'm really impressed with how well the voice chat works compared to, say, skype).

Yes. There's a solution for all of this with IRC, but some of it requires specialised clients, servers running somewhere and some of it requires you to write additional code.

We're in the business of writing code for our core product, not for our internal chat server.

I'm not entirely opposed to writing code for our infrastructure that's not completely product-related but if I can have something that works out of the box for a reasonable amount of money, then I will go that way.

OTOH, when the problem concerns some dependency of the product in any way, then I'm totally willing to go much greater lengths of doing the work on our end than most of other people.

Because every single piece of the puzzle you control fully is a piece you won't have to find a replacement for in a hurry sometime in the future.

But company-internal chat? If Slack breaks (or gets too expensive), there are ton of alternatives all of which would be more or less equal replacements.

<comment><USER11> IRC clients already exist that can do most of these things, like [https://thelounge.github.io](https://thelounge.github.io)

/Shameless plug

<comment><USER12> It looks like I have to run and administer my own server, and I don't see any support for uploading media or searching previous conversations.

The demo is pretty, though.

<comment><USER13> Uploading media is best done by using something like ShareX pointed at an internal server though so that you don't send important information outside the company.

The number of times I see people write root passwords or financial info in Slack is scary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm also tried of reading in Slack. Please add TTS too.

<comment><USER15> A product with these two features already exists under the name of skype ;)

Technically, you'd just need this STT solution to write a log somewhere (pastebin?)

<comment><USER16> And before Skype, actual phone calls! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've been wondering how long it's going to be before we have enough computrons in our phones to do real-time full text voice recognition, with the aim of sending over a voice model to the other side (or not) and subsequently sending only text. You get huge compression for long conversations, making phone calls possible under stupidly bad bandwidth and packet loss constraints.

<comment><USER2> I wonder what modern AI could do with vocoded signals. That's super low bandwidth (and sounds it) but I'm sure some modern software could do a good reconstruction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I use Slack because I'm tired of speaking.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I packaged it as Chrome extension:

[https://github.com/crackleware/slack- webspeech/commit/afae06...](https://github.com/crackleware/slack- webspeech/commit/afae0670ca1783f0c3186d65ffe82b862eb59a08)

Featuring TTS (optional).

</comment><comment><USER19> Nice! Better solution would be a chrome plugin

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitively!</comment></comment>


How to Write with Style (Kurt Vonnegut) - <AUTHOR> http://literature.sdsu.edu/onWRITING/vonnegutSTYLE.html

<comment><USER2> I've always suspected Vonnegut's classification under "fiction" rather than "science fiction" is a result of the way his books are written. The man's all style - he could pretty much write about any subject and I'd find it interesting.

<comment><USER3> Ironically, that's exactly contrary to his first point -- to write about something you care about.

<comment><USER4> That isn't necessarily true. You are mixing up defunkt's reading about something he may not care about with the prerequisite that the author care about the subject to write well about a subject.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "And lucky indeed is the writer who has grown up in Ireland, for the English spoken there is so amusing and musical."

Jaysus! Hasn't a bleedin' notion what he's bleating on about there; we're not like that _at_ all, like. A right lula.

<comment><USER6> for some reason I read that with a Scottish accent.

<comment><USER7> And I heard it totally Cockney, not that I hear much of these accents outside of the telly (that's what you call it right?).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Vonnegut's writing about writing is good, but PG's essay about essays is better: <http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html>

I also recommended: <http://www.paulgraham.com/writing44.html>

<comment><USER9> PG's essay on essays helped me a lot when I was stagnating. particularly his metaphor of a river. looking at the overall flow of a piece and shaping it with editing has immensely improved my writing. I now enjoy deciding whether to make an essay inductive or deductive, and playing with the order in which I introduce things to create weird effects (used a lot by one of my favorites Douglas Adams).

<comment><USER10> I've come to value structuring an argument so that it mimics the process of reaching the conclusion.

For example, I might write an essay on gender. When I start, I might think that there are two genders: male and female. By the end, I might have concluded that gender is meaningless. If I stopped there, my essay would be: gender is meaningless because a, b and c.

However, I find it more interesting to rewrite and end up with a journey through my abandoned conclusions. This allows the reader to reason along with me as they read, thus strengthening my conclusion. For example:

1\. There are two genders: male and female because a and b.

2\. a and b are faulty because c and d. Gender as a continuum between male and female fits with c and d.

3\. c and d are unsound because e and f and g. Gender as a vector of n points on n continuums might work.

4\. ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is neat, thanks! Vonnegut is one of my favorite authors; I would read his books instead of reading the assigned books back in high school.

<comment><USER12> My school had us read Slaughterhouse Five. I wish they gave us one of his other books though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> A wonderful essay that I haven't seen before. Thanks for posting.

</comment><comment><USER14> A great essay by one of the true geniuses of American literature. His books should be required reading for every high school student in the country.

RIP Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

</comment><comment><USER15> PG recommends sending drafts to friends for revision. Does anybody know of a website/forum/mailing list where one can do this?

<comment><USER16> Email the draft to people you know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17>
       Forbidden
       You don't have permission to access /onWRITING/vonnegutSTYLE.html on this server.</comment>


Changing One Species to Another - <AUTHOR> http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/venter.boot07/venter.boot07_index.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting quote from Craig Venter:

 _Now we know we can boot up a chromosome system. It doesn't matter if the DNA is chemically made in a cell or made in a test tube. Until this development, if you made a synthetic chomosome you had the question of what do you do with it. Replacing the chomosome with existing cells, if it works, seems the most effective to way to replace one already in an existing cell systems. We didn't know if it would work or not. Now we do. This is a major advance in the field of synthetic genomics. We now know we can create a synthetic organism. It's not a question of 'if', or 'how', but 'when', and in this regard, think weeks and months, not years._

Maybe the future is not in pure software, but software + genomics.</comment>


Ask HN: How do I find good computer science related research papers - x-curiouscase-x Recently I read a bunch of research papers and found those to be quite insightful. I have been struggling to find good research papers as there is an ocean of results in a single google search and quite difficult, as a beginner, to go through all of the results. Are there sources where I can find such research, not necessarily very recent . <comment><AUTHOR> Try Google Scholar: [https://scholar.google.com/scholar](https://scholar.google.com/scholar)

Microsoft Academic: [https://academic.microsoft.com/home](https://academic.microsoft.com/home)

and BASE: [https://www.base-search.net/Search/Advanced](https://www.base- search.net/Search/Advanced)

All three for all kinds of scientific, technical and scholarly areas.

</comment><comment><USER2> highly recommend

[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbfYPyITQ-7l4upoX8nvctg](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbfYPyITQ-7l4upoX8nvctg)

[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCM42XWqRoruK6bNkgbgoJMw](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCM42XWqRoruK6bNkgbgoJMw)

[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZHmQk67mSJgfCCTn7xBfew](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZHmQk67mSJgfCCTn7xBfew)

<comment> x-curiouscase-x Thanks ,these seem to be quite good. Watched only a couple of videos yet , but got the idea of how this is useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> [http://www.arxiv-sanity.com/](http://www.arxiv-sanity.com/)</comment>


Ship Ahoy: Inside Blueseed's 'Googleplex Of The Sea' - <AUTHOR> http://www.informationweek.com/smb/onlocation/ship-ahoy-inside-blueseeds-googleplex-of/240147663

<comment><USER2> Best of luck with this, Max, Dan, Sam, & co! The state of US immigration laws is disastrous, and getting the govmt to do anything is like steering a cruise ship. Will parking one 12mi offshore be a wake up call?</comment>


Cross-site request forgery - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-site_request_forgery <comment><AUTHOR> I had not read up on this. Good to know. news.ycombinator looks pretty safe with all the random fnids.

<comment><AUTHOR> On second thought you might be able to do it here if you scraped the fnid before you rendered your page. I have not tried it so I don't know if the fnids are user specific, if not it should work.</comment></comment>


DMTK: Distributed Machine Learning Toolkit from Microsoft - <AUTHOR> http://www.dmtk.io/ <comment><USER2> This is very exciting to see these distributed deep learning frameworks open sourced by top companies. What I do not understand is why amazon AWS and other top cloud service are not integrating these frameworks in their services. Training a distributed neural net should be as simple as defining the model and specifying the resources.

<comment><USER3> agreed - though I'm somewhat saddened to see that this library doesn't seem to be getting the same positive reception (in terms of scoring / comments) as Tensorflow did yesterday. Am I right and if so, is there a technical reason for that?

<comment><USER4> NO GPU, not for production use.

<comment><USER5> You do realize there are a fair amount of machine learning algorithms that do not run efficiently on the GPU right? Deep learning isn't the only method out there...

<comment><USER4> Fair enough! None that I'm interested in, however.

<comment><USER6> Come on, keep an open mind! Random forests still work great!

There's still some love for genetic algorithms _somewhere_ , right?

...Right ??

<comment><USER7> Someone make me a painting of a shriveled genetic algorithm dying in a random forest..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is very interesting. I was very surprised that Tensorflow did not use a central parameter server, and this looks like a good foundational parameter server to build something like DistBelief on top of from Microsoft. I wonder if they have a Deep Learning module that they will open source eventually. Microsoft has a few tricks they used in some of their recent papers and it would be interesting to see them in a production quality system.

<comment><USER9> Here Jeff Dean explains why there is no central parameter server in Tensorflow: [https://youtu.be/90-S1M7Ny_o?t=28m59s](https://youtu.be/90-S1M7Ny_o?t=28m59s)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I was doing some research for a small demo. As a proof of concept, implementing a small ConvNet using WebGL shaders. But in the course of my search I stumbled on this very broad and interesting patent granted to Microsoft Corp.

Processing machine learning techniques using a graphics processing unit

[http://www.google.com/patents/US7548892](http://www.google.com/patents/US7548892)

Pretty amazing when you consider they wrote the application a decade ago! There is no arguing we are experiencing a golden age and an embarrassment of riches provided by ML toolkits and GPU cloud capabilities. But further inspection of patents in the space brought up this gem, in which Emotient is attempting to patent the crowdsourcing of training data...

Collection of machine learning training data for expression recognition

[https://www.google.com/patents/US20150186712](https://www.google.com/patents/US20150186712)

</comment><comment><USER11> That they're providing a distributed LDA implementation with and O(1) Gibbs sampler is a big deal. I haven't played with it yet but the numbers they are reporting relative to cluster size is orders of magnitude improvement.

</comment><comment><USER12> Wow, more surprising than this being open source from Microsoft, it is based on MPI.

<comment><USER3> and looks like Linux first class citizen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Where's the GPU support?

<comment><USER13> Sitting in your future pull request.</comment></comment>


Inside TechStars: How Accelerators Decide Who to Accept - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/magazine/201204/max-chafkin/future-techstars-step-forward.html

<comment><USER2> The process for getting accepted sounds brutal.

I don't know..if I'm starting my own company I feel it's a little demeaning to go through this process.

It feels like you have a manager or a boss again and you somehow have to convince them that you are worthy. I left this mentality back at my corporate job.

If we can't discuss is at equals, I'm not even interested.</comment>


Importance of OKR Template and How to Create a Template via Excel - <AUTHOR> https://corvisio.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> If you have a business that aims to improve itself, it is better to set goals to reach higher points. Aiming a far distance will make employees discover their real potential. Therefore, business can go further. To organize goals that have been set and enter progress, OKR template is used commonly.

For detailed information about how to set goals and what is OKR you can visit our blog! [https://corvisio.com/okr-template/](https://corvisio.com/okr- template/)

</comment><comment><USER2> Misleading title</comment>


Do Facebook B'day wishes mean anything? - <AUTHOR> http://gauthamponnu.com/blog/2011/do-facebook-bday-wishes-mean-anything/ <comment><USER2> I have a friend who once spent an entire month logging in every morning and setting his birthday to the current day. And yes, he did get many, many erroneous birthday wishes from people who didn't notice anything was up.

As for me, I don't list my birthday to anyone. I don't like receiving those post floods. (In fact, really, the only information I list is contact info, since I only use FB for keeping my contacts up to date.)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a brilliant experiment. Proves my point. But, not keeping ones birthday listed prevents the true contacts from reaching out to you. I've people who call me up on my birthday who although reminded by facebook at least called me up. Granted, it's not sincere, but at least we have fun catching up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I reached a similar conclusion a while back and actually ended up writing an app that would automatically wish friends happy birthday when I was trying to get to grips with the facebook api: <http://blizzardsystems.co.uk/dr/node/44>

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha ha ... That's a great tutorial and a brilliant idea. It could prove to be quite useful. But, somehow I can't bring about myself to using it - seems like loosing my last bit of humanity.</comment></comment>


Eclipse 4.4, Luna, released - <AUTHOR> http://eclipse.org/org/press-release/20140625_luna_release_train.php <comment><USER2> I'm a fan of eclipse, but this release reveals an interesting thing about the organization, they aren't very effective at communication.

If this had been an intellij release, a bunch of screenshots would have been on their main page and each main feature would have had a small explanation. As I write this, one of the commenters has mentioned 'dark theme.' Forget about being on the main page, I had a hard time googling it.

Ironically, as far as I know, it was eclipse which started "New and Noteworthy" pages with each release (that's development release, not even main release). Every google link to such pages is now broken as well.

As intellij is picking up steam, eclipse is actually regressing (at least in the marketing department).

<comment><USER3> It's an open source foundation with a set of loosely distributed set of projects and teams.

The New and Noteworthy screenshots are here for Luna: [https://www.eclipse.org/eclipse/news/4.4/eclipse_news_4.4.ph...](https://www.eclipse.org/eclipse/news/4.4/eclipse_news_4.4.php)

I would report a bug against the old N&N pages not being available (via Community): [https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/](https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/)

<comment><USER4> That is an excellent new features guide, but it really needs to be placed alongside a release announcement on the front page. Also these 2 links seem similar but are really different, a bit confusing:

[https://www.eclipse.org](https://www.eclipse.org)

[https://www.eclipse.org/home](https://www.eclipse.org/home)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The EGit/JGit teams also shipped an update for Luna

What's new: [http://wiki.eclipse.org/JGit/New_and_Noteworthy/3.4](http://wiki.eclipse.org/JGit/New_and_Noteworthy/3.4) [http://wiki.eclipse.org/EGit/New_and_Noteworthy/3.4](http://wiki.eclipse.org/EGit/New_and_Noteworthy/3.4)

Find the new release here: [http://eclipse.org/jgit/download/](http://eclipse.org/jgit/download/) [http://eclipse.org/egit/download/](http://eclipse.org/egit/download/)

JGit is also available via Maven Central: [http://search.maven.org/#artifactdetails%7Corg.eclipse.jgit%...](http://search.maven.org/#artifactdetails%7Corg.eclipse.jgit%7Corg.eclipse.jgit%7C18.104.22.168406201815-r%7Cjar)

</comment><comment><USER5> Ian Bull's annual top 10 Eclipse features (for Luna this year):

[http://eclipsesource.com/blogs/2014/06/25/top-10-eclipse- lun...](http://eclipsesource.com/blogs/2014/06/25/top-10-eclipse-luna- features/)

</comment><comment><USER6> "includes 61 million lines of code" sounds scary, even if it's much more than an IDE these days.

<comment><USER7> I've spent a lot of time excising built-in, uninstallable plugins from Kepler so I definitely find myself agreeing with this.

I won't bemoan free software and when Eclipse works it's great but boy howdy could it do with a Mozilla->Phoenix/Firefox style split where a lot of the things that are integrated into the base install (are there really people using things like Mylyn?) are removed, leaving just the bare IDE.

<comment><USER8> Why not go with a minimal install?

Eclipse Platform and JDT runtime binaries do the trick here. Add-on must-have plugins as needed. Eclipse Standard has a whole bunch o' kitchen sink...

<comment><USER9> Where would one download those?

<comment><USER8> from the drops[1]

[1] [http://download.eclipse.org/eclipse/downloads/drops4/R-4.4-2...](http://download.eclipse.org/eclipse/downloads/drops4/R-4.4-201406061215/)

<comment><USER10> It's not even obvious from this page that this download is a "minimal" install.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Love eclipse but it's definetly a Java/JEE/JVM IDE. Other projects (JDT,PDT,...) are just not that much maintained.

Netbeans while it has far less features than Eclipse in more balanced when it comes to web tech support.

<comment><USER12> So by JDT you mean something other than the Java Development Tools of Eclipse, I guess.

To me, Eclipse has been mostly stable/stagnant for many years (4.2 has actually felt like a regression from 3.x, in that the UI lots some features, like how/where to position views).

NetBeans had been lacking, but the current version seems to have improved lot for Java development (I last tried it several years ago), and it has always looked much better than Eclipse, IMHO. (Ironically, the fake-native Swing looks much nicer than Eclipse with native scrollbars+buttons, but non-native everything else like the tool-, sorry, "Coolbar" and its weird tabs (incredibly ugly, esp. the "new" ones).)

The interesting changes to Eclipse to make it more future-proof have been under the hood, I think, like a more modern plugin runtime (but I don't really know details on that one).

<comment><USER11> Sorry i mean the javascript/webtech plugin,forgot the name JSDT perhaps,need to check it. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Does anyone know why Ubuntu still ships with version 3.8 as standard, and Eclipse 4.x isn't in the repositories at all?

My searches show some rumbling about 4.x performance problems a few years ago, since resolved.

<comment><USER14> I find it easier to just download the Linux tarball instead of installing the platform and plugins from aptitude.

<comment><USER13> I did that a few times, but it was a pain. I strongly prefer using the apt repositories since things integrate well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm in the process of migrating to IntelliJ. The 4.x releases broke the plugins I wrote and I couldn't figure out how to get them working again. Stuff like incremental builders. Life's too short.

Too bad. I've used Eclipse since the alphas. It's muscle memory for me.

<comment><USER16> After over a decade of using Eclipse, I switched to IntelliJ about two months ago, and I'm very glad I did.

I was actually able to retain mostly the same keymap (I use a heavily customized Emacs/OS X/Eclipse keymap), so I didn't have to retrain my muscle memory much. IntelliJ's keybinding configuration is very flexible, and most of the features I like from Eclipse exist in IntelliJ, and it seems like everything has a keybinding. There was a few things that I couldn't get quite the same, but they were minor enough that I've adjusted (e.g. Emacs-style incremental search isn't quite the same -- it's just as effective, but the keystrokes/behavior for exiting out of it are different).

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Importing all my plugins right now. Excited to try out dark theme, but last I checked it didn't quite look right on Win unless you modified your os chrome...

edit:nope, still doesnt look good. i guess the problem is with swt delegating as much as poss to the os, but still :(

<comment><USER8> Have you considered installing a screen inversion program on Windows and then stripping out all the wasted space from the Eclipse UI?

That way you'll have your total dark Eclipse (not just themable parts) of the fun.

I don't grok themes, in my Eclipse there's not a pixel of wasted space (short of toggling the main menu which I haven't figured out yet). How Eclipse looks is moot when it looks like VIM ;-)

<comment><USER17> I can control the space with Jeeeyuls plugin which I use, however Windows only seems to invert the entire desktop or nothing. Do you know of an inverter that can target per executable? (basically launch only eclipse inverted)

<comment><USER8> Good question, I installed the program "NegativeScreen" on a Windows 7 VM awhile back, can't remember if the inversion spans the entire desktop or if it's per connected monitor (strongly prefer the latter).

Give it a shot, on Linux here so not sure what other options are available. If you can get per screen inversion then you're golden.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> A cool thing about the past couple releases is that Eclipse is not a "forklift upgrade" any more. All you need to do is add

[http://download.eclipse.org/releases/luna](http://download.eclipse.org/releases/luna)

to your "Available Software Sites" in your Install/Update preferences and then check for updates.

<comment><USER19> Thanks, I didn't realize you could do this. I've already updated via tarball but maybe will try this next time.

By the way this is documented in the FAQ: [https://wiki.eclipse.org/FAQ_How_do_I_upgrade_Eclipse%3F](https://wiki.eclipse.org/FAQ_How_do_I_upgrade_Eclipse%3F)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Excited about this release, and I am going to try it right away.

But I have to mention my pet peeve. The downloads are through mirrors, over http, with no checksums! What could go wrong?

<comment><USER21> So you are the reason why some downloads have checksums?

Paranoid much?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Is there a way to launch a specific run/debug configuration using hotkeys now? Someone knows?

</comment><comment><USER23> Anyone got a screenshot of the dark theme?

edit: never mind I saw the youtube video. Looks cool.

<comment><USER7> >Looks cool.

If you say so... [http://imgur.com/HAKnRwU](http://imgur.com/HAKnRwU)

<comment><USER17> SWT on win :P Awesome till customization required. Who said native was a good idea again for ui? I'm starting to see why Swing can be preferable. I wonder how well JavaFX does with theming.

<comment><USER24> The Darcula theme in IntelliJ with Swing looks really good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Does it have full screen mode yet?</comment>


There Is No Island of Trash in the Pacific - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/the_next_20/2016/09/the_great_pacific_garbage_patch_was_the_myth_we_needed_to_save_our_oceans.html <comment><USER2> Here's the problem: [http://i.imgur.com/KW0d1qh.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/KW0d1qh.jpg)

That's a google image search for "pacific garbage patch", and about half of the results are pure fiction. Photos of heavily polluted inhabited areas that are not actually part of the pacific gyre. Many articles reproduce these pictures from other sources and just assume they are photos of the garbage patch (a typical "citogenesis" problem: [https://xkcd.com/978/](https://xkcd.com/978/)).

This is very important because it bears directly on the credibility of scientists and of environmental activists. Once you lose credibility you rarely get it back. Many, many people (even some scientists, sadly) believe that action is more important than truth. That "doing the right thing" is paramount, even if you have to twist the facts a teensy bit to make them more palatable to the masses. But the masses are fickle, and they pick up on these things readily, with the result being a loss of credibility.

It's very difficult to always avoid the temptation of the easy, quick short- term gain, but the importance of maintaining scientific discipline should always override that impulse.

</comment><comment><USER3> What is the myth they are referring to?

I haven't been following any stories about the Pacific Gyre in the mainstream media, but I've always understood it to be a region in the Pacific where garbage seems to concentrate because of ocean currents. Much of the garbage isn't visible as it floats just beneath the surface.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StNZ3XUBDYw#t=1m17s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StNZ3XUBDYw#t=1m17s)

<comment><USER2> The myth is that it's a particularly gross and garbage choked area. I've seen many articles and comments about it which have used pictures of garbage strewn Manila harbor as illustration, for example. The reality is that if you were in the middle of the Pacific gyre you could look overboard and not perceive anything special, because mostly it's an increased abundance of tiny pieces of plastic, most of them floating under the surface. Unfortunately, like many issues, people have a hard time caring about things unless they're fairly blatant. It's a big reason why "charismatic megafauna" tend to be poster children for endangered species.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is the word "myth" here being used in the sense of being true but connected to storytelling nevertheless?

Because the Great Pacific Garbage Patch really exists.

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

 _The patch is characterized by exceptionally high relative concentrations of pelagic plastics, chemical sludge and other debris that have been trapped by the currents of the North Pacific Gyre.[2] Because of its large area, it is of very low density (4 particles per cubic meter), and therefore not visible from satellite photography, nor even necessarily to casual boaters or divers in the area. It consists primarily of a small increase in suspended, often microscopic, particles in the upper water column._

 _Research has shown that this plastic marine debris affects at least 267 species worldwide_

Also, overfishing is real. Colony collapse disorder is real and affects wild bees. Monarch butterflies and others are becoming extinct. So are tigers and many other species. (although the trend has been halted for tigers).

The human population explosion and energy use explosion that grew even faster are the problem. Regardless of how efficient we get, we can't sustain such population growth indefintely. And Capitalism is extremely efficient at exacerbating negative externalities - whether factory farms, private prisons, weapons manufacturers or manufacturers of anything (plastic etc.) the incentive is to exploit negative externalities as much as possible to have more customers pay more money faster. The collective effect is perpetually increasing money velocity and increased velocity of exploiting externalities.

<comment><USER5> > _Is the word "myth" here being used in the sense of being true but connected > to storytelling nevertheless? Because the Great Pacific Garbage Patch really > exists_

From TFA, which pretty much says the same thing with different words:

> _In fact, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch was barely visible, since it > comprised mostly micro-garbage. It can't be scanned by satellites, or scoped > out on Google Earth. You could be sailing right through the gyre, as many > have observed, and never notice that you're in the middle of a death-shaped > noxious vortex. The patch is such a wishy-washy phenomenon, with wishy-washy > impacts, that its extent can't be described with any certainty. ("No > scientifically sound estimates exist for the size or mass," notes the > National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.)_

What doesn't exist and is a myth is the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" as usually described in the media (the miles of visible floatsam, actual whole garbage thrown in, etc).

<comment><USER4> Just because the flotsam isn't visible doesn't mean it doesn't exist. The concentrations of the garbage are quite high. And being microscopic, they're very hard to clean up.

<comment><USER6> They're not saying it doesn't exist, they're saying it's been exaggerated to death to the point where the actual thing doesn't resemble the myth at all. There is no floating trash island, it's not "twice the size of texas", and in fact as stated in the article no scientifically sound estimates to it's size exist. The story was told as basically an iceberg of trash the size of a continent in the middle of the ocean and that's not at all what it really is. It exists, it's a problem, but it's not the mythical thing it's made out to be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I guess we'll find out more soon: [http://www.theoceancleanup.com/updates/show/item/announcing-...](http://www.theoceancleanup.com/updates/show/item/announcing- the-aerial-expedition/)

</comment><comment><USER8> You want to look at the largest instances of ocean pollution in world history? Look at submarine warfare in WW1[1] and WW2[2]. Millions and millions of gallons of bunker oil spilled out, not to mention all the chemicals, explosives, and other bits of nastiness in contained in the cargo of those ships.

[1] [http://www.naval-history.net/WW1LossesaContents.htm](http://www.naval- history.net/WW1LossesaContents.htm)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ships_sunk_by_submarin...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ships_sunk_by_submarines_by_death_toll)

<comment><USER5> Sounds like a lot, but compared to industrial pollution since WWII those are probably just "drops in the ocean" (pun intended).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Slate (especially their headline writers) is kind of notorious for a style of smug contrarianism mixed with condescension. It's unreadable.</comment>


Lessons in PR (Why I chose not to court Techcrunch) - <AUTHOR> http://industryinteractive.net/ideas/lessons-in-pr-why-i-chose-not-to-court-techcrunch/

<comment><AUTHOR> The lesson learned (and I'm sorry if you had to read between the lines a bit) is that Techcrunch and the other major outlets aren't the only course for marketing your product. I could have busted my ass making putting together everything I'd need to make Arrington raise an eyebrow, or I could focus on trying to get the word out in locations where I was more likely to get conversions. I chose the latter.

To be honest "There's no glamorous future for Mailmanagr, as well." pretty much sums up this article. It may be a good product, but its aim is not to be a high growth start-up and technically its just a component to an existing app.

Yes, it is just a component to an existing app, but it's a component that customers seem to want, and that the original app's developer didn't seem interested in building (but who can ever tell with 37signals).

</comment><comment><USER2> 'Lessons in PR' implies that there was actually something learned, or at least that something worth learning is being presented.

Nope, just a guy explaining why he chose to market his Basecamp specific web- app via 37signals. Dur.

</comment><comment><USER3> To be honest "There's no glamorous future for Mailmanagr, as well." pretty much sums up this article. It may be a good product, but its aim is not to be a high growth start-up and technically its just a component to an existing app.

Best place for a start-up lesson? Probably not.

Should you not target techcrunch, even if your app would most likely not get covered, in order to maintain the exclusive nature of your launch? Sure, if you got a good plan B.

<comment><USER4> _To be honest "There's no glamorous future for Mailmanagr, as well." pretty much sums up this article. It may be a good product, but its aim is not to be a high growth start-up and technically its just a component to an existing app._

What?! Over half of Techcrunch-covered "businesses" are not even that: useless weekend projects without use nor future. By the way, I got an email from a co- worker today about Mailmanagr with subject "Check this out, it's pretty cool".

Last time I got an email like that was about Google's "Street View" feature.

P.S. I am not affiliated with Mailmanagr in any way.

<comment><USER3> Really? I thought Techcrunch has been moving away from those weekend apps and more towards the ones with potential to have "mainstream" appeal. Aka venture fundable apps. Plus mainstream tech news so he can get interviews on CNN.

I go to mashable for "weekend apps".

Of course, they have a lot love affair with Twitter and Arringtons ego.

At $5/month per user is a very low margin thats only reaching a market based on another non-mainstream apps userbase. This would definitely be considered a side project that regardless of TC is not very ambitious or PR worthy.</comment></comment></comment>