Confident Code - <AUTHOR> http://avdi.org/talks/confident-code-rubymidwest-2011/ <comment><USER2> Hi HN. If you get some value out of these slides, great! But please, do me a favor: don't try too hard to construct a narrative from a stack of slides which:

a) represent about 15% of the actual semantic content of the presentation; and

b) are shaped by the consideration that there's a limit to how much code you can put on a slide and have it still be readable.

A lot of this material has been covered in more detail on my blog (<http://avdi.org/devblog>) For instance, I wrote a whole article about Maybe, NullObject, and the limits of the ability to make objects falsy here: [http://avdi.org/devblog/2011/05/30/null-objects-and- falsines...](http://avdi.org/devblog/2011/05/30/null-objects-and-falsiness/)

<comment><USER3> Thank you for the note. There is a large difference between slides used in a presentation and slides intended to be read like a book. With the former, it is pretty useless to have the slides out of context. With the latter, there is no need for the author to speak. Fortunately, someone posted a video to the presentation, a better link than the initial submission's ([http://confreaks.net/videos/614-cascadiaruby2011-confident-c...](http://confreaks.net/videos/614-cascadiaruby2011-confident- code)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's a video of a recent (July 2011) version of the talk.

[http://confreaks.net/videos/614-cascadiaruby2011-confident-c...](http://confreaks.net/videos/614-cascadiaruby2011-confident- code)

</comment><comment><USER5> This is great, but I'm a little worried about the custom Maybe function that slipped in about halfway through. Unless it's part of a standard framework (like ActiveSupport), if you use it in your projects you're likely going to find that:

a) Integrating with other codebases that don't use Maybe will result in code with an inconsistent style, and

b) If Maybe (or something like it) catches on enough, you'll hit collisions where two projects or libraries have different ideas of what Maybe means. (Maybe one uses _NilClass_ , the other the custom _NullClass_ , for example.)

(The PHP community has taken this to the extreme, with developers getting burnt over and over again with differing "standard" components using the same set of names.)

<comment><USER4> Also, you can't make a Ruby object falsy. So if you overload #nil? you get fun problems like:

        obj.nil? # => true
        !!obj    # => true

<comment><USER6> > can't make a Ruby object falsy

You can override ! (see [http://www.rubyinside.com/rubys-unary-operators-and- how-to-r...](http://www.rubyinside.com/rubys-unary-operators-and-how-to- redefine-their-functionality-5610.html) from earlier this week) so !!obj can evaluate to false. But there is still this to solve:

        ruby-1.9.3-p0 :008 > obj ? true : false
         => true
        ruby-1.9.3-p0 :009 >

If only there was a #to_bool to override...

(For the record: yuck).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It seems to me that the essence of this idea is that you attack a problem in stages, and that each stage should have completely prepared you for the next.

That's where the confidence comes in; you can move forward knowing that your assumptions will hereafter _always_ apply.

Upvote for NullObject pattern -- by far my favorite pattern. Unlike most 'Design Patterns', this is a useful and non-obvious idea no matter what language you work with.

<comment><USER8> Well, hardly regardless of language--using the Maybe monad is more elegant in Haskell, for example. The beauty there is that your functions don't need to _ever_ worry about getting null input (pronounced Nothing in Haskell), and you can trivially compose functions that possibly return Nothing with functions that don't.

Also, I'm not really sure how a pattern like this would work in Java, although this could just be because my Java is (thankfully) going rusty.

<comment><USER7> Good point -- I agree that pattern matching and monads are a more general solution to the Null Object problem.

As for Java -- <http://www.cs.oberlin.edu/~jwalker/nullObjPattern/> has examples. But the case of the empty linked list is stretching it a bit. Somehow it seems to me you ought to be able to have a regular linked list where the "nothing" behaviour did not need a whole other class.

I usually explain Null Object like this:

Think of a website where you have users who might be logged in or not. A naive way to express this would be that, if the user is not logged in, your getUser() method returns null.

But then you have to keep testing for null, over and over again, before you can do anything with the user. And the user-is-null case is suspiciously similar to user-is-not-authorized-to-do-this-thing.

Solution: make a hierarchy where there's an abstract User class, concretized by NonLoggedInUser and LoggedInUser. The NonLoggedInUser returns false for all isAuthorizedTo().

Now you always have a User, it's just that sometimes that User does "nothing". So you just ask if user.isAuthorizedTo('doTheThing').

Fowler generalizes this into the SpecialCase pattern. <http://martinfowler.com/eaaCatalog/specialCase.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I disagree about the point this presentation starts from. It's a bad code that's refactored in a way that I'm not sure is more clear, but definitely makes it longer... Why not split the work to make the process clearer instead of trying to flatten what's already there? Some concerns I'd have:

Making sure message is an array even if it's X instead. Why do that at all? Why is there an "else" in the first place? It's not like you can support every possible type, so why not say - either it's an array, or you pass a wrong type?

Why is the code for obtaining message in that function? Why is a similar code for destination there? Why is EPIPE being treated the same as normal response from the process?

How about starting with this instead:

        messages = normalise_messages(message)
        command = construct_command(options)
        output = get_results(messages, command)
        @logger.info("Wrote to #{destination_description(options[:out])}")
        output

The rest is implementation details...

</comment><comment><USER10> I've seen a number of really beautiful presentations like this recently. The page source indicates that it was generated from Org-mode. How much tweaking does it get to create a presentation like this, and is there any way I could see the source?

<comment><USER2> I'm using Org-S5 (<https://github.com/sigma/org-s5>) with some rather kludgey HTML and a heavily hacked-up stylesheet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I like the attitude, but can't help thinking that using a decent modern statically typed language prevents half of the problems that this article poses to solve to begin with.

<comment><USER12> That's funny. As I was reading the slides, I was thinking about just how unconfident (in the sense of the presentation) most Java appears to me. I'm thinking specifically of the messily nested try/catch/finally blocks needed when creating a JDBC connection (finally cleaned up a little in 1.7). Or perhaps the abundance of stuff like

      if (foo != null and foo.getSomething()) {

or even weird little conventions that you get used to, like

      if ("".equals(aString))

I think with some effort, you can avoid some of this sort of thing, but it's not always easy.

(Or, perhaps you didn't intend to include Java as a member of the set "decent statically typed languages?" ;))

<comment><USER11> Java isn't the best example, no :-) For example, its checked exceptions basically force dealing with them all over the code (if you want a nice API without seventy _throws_ clauses, that is). The equals example you're giving is horrible indeed.

My personal favourite, which is C# at the moment, also has the "null" misdesign so you're right about that. Still, none of the duck typing issues exist (other than the null checking, which admittedly does undermine my point). Also, the IDE helps you do it right, which gives you more confidence _as you write the code_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I tried to code like this already, but one scenario I've found that is ruining this style is external API calls.

I'm now finding my code heading back to the old littered style whenever I have to update or get information from someone else's API just because I have to handle potential failure there and then.

Very frustrating, anyone got any insights on how they're dealing with it?

<comment><USER2> I almost invariably isolate any API calls behind some kind of wrapper facade. In fact, a lot of the presentation is about exactly that: adapting Ruby's IO primitives--which can raise various exceptions, and may return a process exit status in the form of a global variable--in code that isolates their idiosyncrasies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Confident coding comes from understanding the language.

      Array({:foo=>1}).map{|h| h[:foo]}
      TypeError: Symbol as array index

      [{:foo=>1}].flatten.compact.map{|h| h[:foo]}
       => [1]

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure what you're getting at here, other than that trying to treat an array of arrays as an array of Hashes is a bad idea.

<comment><USER15> I think the point is that Array(h) destroys the Hash, whereas [h].flatten will leave it intact, adding another unexpected gotcha to Array().

Array's terrible friend Integer() implicitly crashed my app in production before, so found that interesting to know; not necessarily related to your talk though. :)

<comment><USER16> [h].flatten on the other hand of course breaks horribly when someone decides that one of the values is meant to hold an array.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Recently I have been thinking a lot about Dependency Injection. It has clear benefits - like in testing - but there is also something that resonated with my preferences on a different level. It has been puzzling me for some time until I identified it - DI let's you code with less digressions: [http://perlalchemy.blogspot.com/2011/10/concentration-and- fl...](http://perlalchemy.blogspot.com/2011/10/concentration-and-flow-or-yet- another.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> _Array("foo\nbar") # = > ["foo\n", "bar"]_

Listed as a gotcha, but it only occurs on an old version of Ruby (1.8). Nowadays, it'll work like so:

 _Array("foo\nbar") # = > ["foo\nbar"]_

</comment><comment><USER19> Browsing 69 slides was painful in Mobile Safari, but the big picture message + simple example is good: encapsulate code to improve readability (it's not just for classes in OOP).

The modeling of: writing prose <-> writing code

reminds me of: micro air vehicles flying <-> birds flying.

</comment><comment><USER20> I've been thinking about exactly this problem. I'm now re-organizing my unit and integration tests into some coherent order, which I hope will help refactor to a better code base.

Any thoughts out there on how to organizing tests to support "confident code"?

</comment><comment><USER21> Click or use arrow keys to navigate.

<comment><USER22> The former doesn't work on iPad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This might be heresy, but how could one do something similar in Go? Would it be worthwhile?

</comment><comment><USER24> So removing error handling makes code "confident"?

There were some other good points in there about encapsulation, but communicating to users properly trumps looking pretty to programmers.

</comment><comment><USER25> I _really_ like the basic idea, but there do seem to be a few potential drawbacks.

(1) Performance. Coercing values that might have been the target type to start with is wasteful. Extracting secondary paths into separate functions is wasteful.

(2) Readability of non-primary paths. Extracting non-primary paths into separate functions might make them harder to follow. Error paths matter. They often demand greater diligence than the happy path, so sacrificing them for the sake of the happy path would be bad. The increased _length_ of the code bothers me a lot less than that. Namespace pollution could also be a concern in larger projects. If the code is reused, great, but if it's single-use then this refactoring would be bad for maintainability.

(3) Complex recovery and variable scope. The cow example is fine, but a lot of real code has to deal with much more complex error conditions. This is not just a matter of what can fit on a slide; handling more complex errors introduces _fundamentally_ different issues. Often you need to know how far you got in order to unwind properly, and that information is likely to be contained in local variables. In some cases this means you should nest functions more, but this also destroys the "narrative" structure plus look out for points 1 and 2. In other cases it's just not even feasible, so splitting the error path into a newly-created function means having that function parse what really should remain _local_ variables.

The idea of preserving narrative flow is good. The conceptual framework of input, action, output and error is immensely useful. Given these caveats, though, identifying one style as "bold" and one as "timid" is just an immature appeal to emotion. It's not timid to write efficient code, or code that respects separation of concerns. It's not bold to write code that preserves its own simple structure at the expense of everything around it. This could be framed as selfish vs. cooperative code, making the opposite emotional appeal, and be just as valid. The goal is to write _clear_ code, and this is just one way that applies in some circumstances and not others

</comment><comment><USER26> fantastic

</comment><comment><USER27> Really sucks it do not work for ipad..

</comment><comment><USER28> I don't understand is Ruby still good for programmers or Cowsays: "no it is not" ?

</comment><comment><USER29> > Windows > Sorry :-(

And that's what happens when your programming language does not have a decent deployment ecosystem.

<comment><USER30> That's not a Ruby issue, it's a cowsay issue. Unix base supports it, Windows doesn't. Ruby actually has a great deployment system. And the author's general point, despite him being an obvious Ruby programmer, is that efficiency and confidence are more important than scrambling to cover your bases, and what the latter means in coding behavior. The examples would differ, but his point is universal.

<comment><USER29> Mea culpa. I did not realize that it was an interface to cowsay, instead of an implementation of it.

There is something to say to say about using a platform-dependent utility for a talk of an eminently portable language, but i do not think that is necessary here.</comment></comment></comment>


Porsche 918 RSR Hybrid official pictures - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/photos/porsche-918-rsr-hybrid-official-pictures/#3766922 <comment><USER2> Gorgeous. Its front quarter views reminds me a lot of the 3rd generation RX-7 which I think is one of the most timeless automotive designs. I find it a bit funny that a hybrid is sporting Gulf-esque racing livery and sponsored by Mobil.</comment>


WTF are CDRs? (other than a potential trillion-dollar market) - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/02/wtf-are-cdrs/ <comment><USER2> It sounds like China is pushing digital currency just like what the US did to buy it's own debt.

[http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=25161](http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=25161)</comment>


Two years of work and we're not sure if it's any good - <AUTHOR>

Me and my colleagues have been working on this CRM Solution for 2 years now. We' put it live a few months ago and although we feel it's a good product, I think we need a lot of feedback to make it "stand out".
There's a free trial going on with no obligation so any feedback is appreciated.
http://www.web3box.com/lp/?target=pm&source=daniel&medium=hackernews
Best, Daniel G <comment><USER2> It looks alright. I suggest you look into minicrm's work since they expand very well. What kind of customer interviews have you done in these 2 years?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Richard,

We're a web development company and all our "research" (the most over qualified term I've used today) has been done by giving our customers the CRM, letting them use it, and implement various changes to solve particular requests coming from them.

In a few words we listened to what our current customers needed and built the software based on their needs.

Thanks a lot for your feedback on this.</comment></comment>


New: StarCli: CLI to find trending repos on GitHub by date - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/hedythedev/starcli <comment><USER2> sorry to see your other post removed from here. seriously what the hell was wrong with it? did anyone give you any reason?

<comment><AUTHOR> nope, but the topic is currently debated almost everywhere on the internet... and has been for years. just wanted to see how people thought about the rename. thanks

<comment><USER2> And I thought this place is good to discuss anything. I've added it myself now too. I mean.. i have no words, world is mad

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> nice job! looks good, written in python

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks ;)

<comment><USER4> Please don't use multiple accounts and/or get friends to upvote or comment. It's against the rules ([https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)) and HN readers are extremely good at spotting it and will flame you when they do.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, I was rushing and did not take the time to read the rules. I am new to hacker news so I'm not very used to being here. I'm really sorry for my actions and I guarantee that It won't happen again. How do I delete the post?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Freelancing without specific skills? - <AUTHOR>

I know that this isn't a typical question for HN since most people are either programmers or at least aspiring programmers.
I am however a HN reader for a year or so and, what can I say it's a great site.
One thing that's been bugging me for a long while though is that I wanted to start freelancing for a long while now but didn't have to until now. Right now I'm in a bit of a financial tight spot and I'd like to earn something on the side.
The problem I've always had though is that I don't have any specific skills that I could "sell". I'm not a programmer or designer or any other specific job title that I can come up with.
I am one of those typical geeks without a cause. I like technology I like messing with it and I have a lot of general knowledge about the IT world but nothing specific.
I am really good at solving general tech related problems, finding solutions to problems and things like that.
Right now I'm at a difficult point, money is kinda tight right now and earning something on the side would really be helpful but I'm not sure what I could do with my current skill set. On the other hand if I start learning some skill right now it would probably take a few months, in the very least, until I'm good at it and can start offering it as a service.
I hope that this sort of question is allowed on here, I've taken a look at the rules and I have often seen "how do I start freelancing" types of questions here so hopefully I didn't break any rules.
If anyone can offer some advice I'd really appreciate it.
Thanks Antonio <comment><USER2> Maybe you can find a second job? Freelancing without a specific set of skills is a really tough start. Generally when people hire a freelancer they are looking for a skill set that allows them pass off a complex project/task to an outside professional rather than hire another employee.

I know the pressure is on to earn more money right now, but I encourage you to take the long view and start learning a higher level skill that is in demand so that 2 years from now you have more options.

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://jake-jorgovan.com/blog/remote](http://jake-jorgovan.com/blog/remote) Jake's post might seem off topic, but he actually spends the first part of the article describing how he developed his web development skills (a couple of months) and started freelancing. Give it a read, it has a few good pieces of advice and it's quite inspirational.

Cheers from Italy!</comment>


On Charging Money: A Post for Freelancers - <AUTHOR> http://www.roborooter.com/post/1288/on-charging-money/

<comment><USER2> It's a pleasure to see my writing on Hacker News. I freelanced for 5 years and highly recommend it to anyone trying to break into any industry. It gave me the freedom to learn though working then any one job would have. I would go back in a heart beat, except currently working with a great team at a finance company. I've got some great projects ahead of me that I want to do before I'd consider moving on. I'm also learning more then I've ever had to before and it's exhilarating.

This post was written mainly for my brother and a few friends who are currently freelancing (web designers, graphics designers, and computer technicians) here in New York City.</comment>


Editmode: Make any website editable inline - <AUTHOR> https://editmode.app/ <comment><USER2> From the description ("make any website editable inline"), I expected this to be a browser extension or similar that would allow you to change the content on _any_ website. I find instead that it's a CMS sort of thing, and is just a way of editing content on sites that you control and set it up on.

But in case anyone wants the other:

      document.designMode = 'on'

It's pretty cool. Basically it makes the whole page a contenteditable. Many years ago browsers had more involved UI wrapped around design mode (which was also exposed in the menu), with a formatting toolbars and such.

<comment><USER3> But then you can't do anything with the changes, right? Like Inspector, it's all lost when you reload the page.

<comment><USER4> You can still have JS running on the page, e.g. to periodically walk the DOM tree and save changes to disk.

<comment><USER3> Huh, clever! I wonder if anyone has built that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I also think Mavo is a pretty neat tool for this: [https://mavo.io/](https://mavo.io/)

<comment><USER6> This tool definitely seems very close in spirit to mavo, but paid. I didn't last long enough after the autoplaying video to learn if there's anything it can do that mavo doesn't do (maybe hosting services?) that's worth paying for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Every 5 years or so there is one of those CMS with edit inline, I always wish them the best but they usually don't stick around?

Good idea but bad idea?

<comment><USER8> I built one of the first of these in the original dotcom boom. The reason ours didn't stick around was because it just wasn't that difficult of a problem. People were willing to pay a little for a CMS, but not a lot. They thought editing live on the page was pretty nifty, but didn't actually add enough value for them to pay extra for it. As the web matured, and more people were capable of putting together web pages, the floor dropped out of the pricing for such tools.

So it isn't that there is a problem with the concept - most people like the actual app. It just doesn't solve a problem that people are willing to pay much for, which makes these types of CMS tools interesting, but not great businesses.

<comment><USER9> _I built one of the first of these in the original dotcom boom._

It's weird to hear that the idea has been floating around for so long. I'm working in yet another version of it. Would you mind pinging me by email? It's in my profile.

I wouldn't like to repeat errors. You say people are not willing to pay for it, maybe there's some other way to add value...?

<comment><USER8> I added my email to my profile - feel free to reach out.

But in short, my work is and always has been around content management. However, the value of my products is no longer the ability to put a document online - there are plenty of solutions for that. My recent products offer value by making the document authoring part of a larger workflow solution, tailored to improving the lives of people who consume the documents, and helping build products that allow content to flow between people, sites, and systems.

That may be overly vague, but the point is the value comes from workflow, not individual documents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Beware, page has auto-playing video with audio about half way down the page.

</comment><comment><USER11> We use a similar (but clumsier) tool for our Gatsby site. It excels for quick content changes. However, for us specifically, we found that we didn't really edit the content as much as we anticipated, and that most of our quick changes boiled down to styling changes instead. So maybe an ideal product for us will allow editing of styling as well as text? It'd probably look a lot like webflow.

<comment><USER12> Heh, this reminds me of my discovery, circa 2001, of a content manager who'd created a workflow for editing a key landing page:

1\. visit page in prod

2\. use browser's "save complete page as..." feature

3\. edit the resulting HTML

4\. SFTP her edited version to the server (a 3rd-party landing page SaaS platform)

She published changes this way for weeks (months?), mutually oblivious to her colleagues' standard workflows, before I tracked this down as the source of the mysterious "problems" with the nascent homegrown CMS used by the content team.

<comment><USER13> All things considered, I would defend her right to do so today, I think.

<comment><USER12> I guess it wasn't obvious from my description that her rogue DIY workflow coexisted with a small team's properly-supported workflow involving a CMS, revision control, asset pipeline and test environments.

<comment><USER13> No, I get it, more of a comment on the unnecessary complexity of a lot of sites that have a minimal amount of dynamic content or user interaction, and yet implement very complex workflows for the content editors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Technically speaking, this is a super awesome product.

But is it really needed? I could see this opening up issues with security if multiple people have access — and if only one person has access, then why not simply forward the finalized changes to someone who can commit and push instead of sending it to someone on the marketing team?

</comment><comment><USER15> Founder here. I launched the site about 6 weeks ago on ProductHunt to gather feedback and am currently building out a larger offering and preparing to open the doors to the public in a few weeks - inline editing will continue to be part of the value proposition, but we're also going to focus on building the simplest content API possible, which was a surprisingly large request among the early signups. Would love to answer any questions people have. Will post to show HN again when we launch the updated site and product in a few weeks.

<comment><USER16> Can you clarify what you mean by "simplest content API"? Is it going to be a headless CMS?

<comment><USER15> Technically yes, but we'd like to also be used for storing content used by web apps - the CMS is designed for web sites. An analogy that might work well here is the difference between Redis vs. Postgres. Redis = optimised for key/value data at high volume, Postgres - optimised for relational data. That's how we see ourselves vs traditional CMSes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> TinaCMS is similar and open source, works with Gastby/Next

</comment><comment><USER18> clicked Api, got "Error loading swagger, check your console! ",

console:

Cookie "_strings_session" will be soon rejected because it has the "sameSite" attribute set to "none" or an invalid value, without the "secure" attribute. To know more about the "sameSite" attribute, read [https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Web/HTTP/Cookies](https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Web/HTTP/Cookies) api This page uses the non standard property "zoom". Consider using calc() in the relevant property values, or using "transform" along with "transform- origin: 0 0". api TypeError: Handlebars.templates is undefined application-d45c746a70f556a197d941960cdabf73f08287b8182fe84439e83435d7c0fa7b.js:31:29766 Element to highlight #swagger_sidebar not found universalModuleDefinition:1 Element to highlight #Users_post_login .content not found universalModuleDefinition:1 Element to highlight #Users_post_login .samples not found universalModuleDefinition:1 Element to highlight #sample- Users_post_login_body not found universalModuleDefinition:1 Element to highlight #Users_post_login .sandbox not found universalModuleDefinition:1 Element to highlight #Users_post_login .samples not found universalModuleDefinition:1 Element to highlight #swagger_sidebar .scope- selector not found universalModuleDefinition:1

</comment><comment><USER19> This looks cool - wish this worked with Jekyll!

</comment><comment><USER20> Ggg

</comment><comment><USER21> dgdgdf</comment>


Map of gang territories in San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1PD1YdFZWhv_-1o6ZulmPoLMkQAM&hl=en_US&ll=37.811004381575664%2C-122.32459035205079&z=12 <comment><USER2> I used to live on Apgar Street in North Oakland. I can confirm, at that time, the North Pole Gang was active. A shooting happened right in front of my house.

Other than that, you would see people hustling but they didnt really bother me or my housemates besides asking for a smoke now and again.

For the record, in two years, we were never burglarized, mugged or otherwise. The worst that happened to me is I was attacked by a juvenile pitbull that was being trained to fight. The owner apologized.

Were we just lucky? Seemed like most of the violence was gang on gang violence.

That being said, my (future) wife, who lived on 55th came home one night to greet the SWAT team at her house. Someone had been running around the neighborhood with an AK-47 and they thought he might be hiding in her backyard.

College.

<comment><USER3> About a year ago, I got hit on the head (hard) with a metal pole at 9:30 AM, on my way to BART to get to work. The guy asked for my phone. I was too disoriented to take it out of my pocket. He grabbed my earbuds (but didn't get my phone) and walked away.

I lost a lot of blood and had a bad concussion. In the ambulance on my way to the hospital, I couldn't recall my zipcode. I needed seven large staples in the back of my head. After that, the mental fog persisted for about two weeks and I wasn't productive at work.

Up until that point, nothing bad had happened to me. Thankfully, I'm ok now, but I'll never live in Oakland again.

<comment><USER4> At the risk of appearing politically incorrect, what race/ethnicity was the guy?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What's the source for this data?

Is "West Street" the name of a gang? If so, it appears that there are many micro-territory gangs that named themselves after streets. If not, what are all these areas that are named after streets for?

I would assume that areas tagged with similar names are part of a larger gang, but that's not made clear here either (are all the "Lower Bottoms" areas part of one group, or affiliated sub-groups?).

</comment><comment><USER6> There are dozens of these maps for Chicago (and I presume most large cities). I'm not sure how credible they are; for one thing, they disagree with each other (and not in the sense of turf changing hands); for another, they can sometimes get basic things wrong (for instance, North Ave in Chicago isn't the "Heroin Highway", which is a slang name for I-290).

Here's one:

[https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?mid=11VXioHjuHZgvv8...](https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?mid=11VXioHjuHZgvv8CFj_YspG4ULlc&hl=en_US&ll=41.90596614316312%2C-87.7484250073486&z=13)

What's crazier is that there are bulletin boards all over the web with gang members discussing gangs. Like: it's not a secret; you can just read their message boards.

<comment><USER7> At least in my neighborhood the entire idea of turf is questionable. The sets are small & the alliances so quickly rotated through that you just don't see large scale, long term turf holding.

Anecdotally this seemed to happen in the summer/fall of 2007. So it's not new.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Dolores park is gang territory? Is being a day-drinking yuppie considered gang activity?

<comment><USER9> I once dated a girl who said her ex was a cocaine dealer in the Mission. Born and raised in the neighborhood, him and his crew would have constant scuffles with other small 'gangs' over drug territory. Once he was stabbed multiple times during an altercation over which crew had rights to sell coke at Beauty Bar. She told me this while we were sitting in Dolores and she saw him and his crew smoking weed and drinking in the sun.

Edit: Looking at the map it's kind of interesting that Beauty Bar is on 19th street, which according to this map is on the boundary of three gang territories. I've always felt that the mission is a still sketchy place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Would be interesting to overlay this with instances of gang-related violence. How much occurs at or near the boundaries?

<comment><USER6> Probably not that much (even if you accept the notion that this is really an accurate description of SFBA gangs). This isn't West Side Story. There aren't "rumbles". Even in this SFBA map, these gangs have minimal territory. Violence tends to occur when people drive through other territory, run into each other outside anyone's territory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It would be cool to know where the data for this came from.

</comment><comment><USER12> What's the source for this?

</comment><comment><USER13> Where's the Sand Hill gang territory?

<comment><USER14> The whole Bay Area

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Nothing in The Excelsior?!

<comment><USER16> I know! There are some unsavory folks in our hood; surprised it's not on the map.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> heartbreaking when you see elementary schools in blue on the map.

<comment><USER18> I once walked in on my 15-year-old brother and his friends watching what looked like a home video of some guys in wifebeaters apparently standing around doing nothing. I asked them what they were watching, and they said it's a gang video. I got interested so I ask them some more questions, and they went off describing local gang activities, their sources of income, etc.

A few years later, I was taking a criminal justice class at a nearby community college, and the term project involved working with local law enforcement to understand criminal activity. When we got to talking about gang activity, I realized I already knew a lot about what the sergeant was saying, and I remembered that encounter I had years ago with my brother. I mentioned it to the sergeant, and he told me about pee wee gangsters and how they have been an increasing problem recently.

I'd forgotten about all of that until just now, and I hadn't realized how disturbed it all had made me feel back then.

<comment><USER19> Did your brother actually get involved with gangs, or was he and his friends just curious?

<comment><USER18> At least one of his friends peddled hard drugs, but I don't know where the drugs came from. And it seemed to be more than mere curiosity. I could sense their desire for that lifestyle, and they were clearly getting social cues from those videos. The way they used words, they way they dressed, etc.

To my knowledge, it was fortunately "just a phase" and they're now more or less normal, functioning suburbanites with mediocre desk jobs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Who made this?! Is it old? There aren't too many gangs around anymore, just crazies.

</comment><comment><USER20> Didn't know I lived in a gang neighborhood..

What's the source for these?

</comment><comment><USER21> kinda weird the hells angels club in dogpatch isn't mentioned...

<comment><USER22> That's because they're a motorcycle club, not a gang. ;)</comment></comment>


Six questions you were afraid to ask about Google's EU antitrust case - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/19/17586258/google-eu-antitrust-explainer-play-store-android-search-fine-apple <comment><USER2> I really hope that Google just goes away from the european market (I'm european). Sadly that's not probably going to happen.</comment>


William Tutte, the humble math professor who cracked top Nazi code - <AUTHOR> https://uwaterloo.ca/magazine/spring-2015/features/keeping-secrets

<comment><USER2> Amazing. I always knew him as the discoverer of the Tutte Graph, which was the first known counterexample to what at the time was the most promising route to proving the Four Color Theorem:

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

Later I learned about the Tutte polynomial of a graph, which I believe ranks up there as one of the deepest and most unexpected relations in mathematics.

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

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> "Tutte's extraordinary achievement — breaking the complex German Lorenz code without ever seeing the machine that generated it — is said to have hastened the end of the war by about two years and saved millions of lives."

"The Lorenz code machine — used by Adolf Hitler and senior members of the German High Command to communicate high-level strategy — was believed to be unbreakable, and trusted with the most sensitive, highly strategic information. Alan Turing's Enigma, on the other hand, was used to send tactical messages between individual formations and units, notably ships and submarines."

</comment><comment><USER3> Prof Graham Farr of Monash University told Tutte's personal story at my show once. [http://thelaborastory.com/stories/william-thomas- tutte/](http://thelaborastory.com/stories/william-thomas-tutte/)

</comment><comment><USER4> related: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorenz_cipher](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorenz_cipher)

</comment><comment><USER5> This page is really hard to read, the text is too light and too thin. See [1]. Not to mention the header is too big.

[1] [http://contrastrebellion.com/](http://contrastrebellion.com/)

</comment><comment><USER6> What a wonderful blank white page. It really tells the story of secret code breaking. It is still so secret that nobody can know anything about it.

</comment><comment><USER7> Article doesn't seem to ask/answer any of the obvious questions such as

a) were Enigma and Lorenz related? Did the work to crack one help crack the other?

b) wasn't the development of computers the main breakthrough at Bletchley? whose work was the biggest contributor there?</comment>


Gene Wilder Has Died - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37215553 <comment><USER3> Willy Wonka (screenplay by the genius Roald Dahl) has one of my favorite scenes in film and I invite you all to watch it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sz9jc5blzRM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sz9jc5blzRM)

> In 1970, when originally offered the lead role in Willy Wonka & the > Chocolate Factory by director Mel Stuart, the great Gene Wilder accepted on > one condition. "When I make my first entrance," he explained, "I'd like to > come out of the door carrying a cane and then walk toward the crowd with a > limp. After the crowd sees Willy Wonka is a cripple, they all whisper to > themselves and then become deathly quiet. As I walk toward them, my cane > sinks into one of the cobblestones I'm walking on and stands straight up, by > itself; but I keep on walking, until I realize that I no longer have my > cane. I start to fall forward, and just before I hit the ground, I do a > beautiful forward somersault and bounce back up, to great applause." Asked > why, Wilder said, "Because from that time on, no one will know if I'm lying > or telling the truth."

Quote from: [http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/06/part-of-this-world- part...](http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/06/part-of-this-world-part-of- another.html)

<comment><USER4> I wonder if younger folk today watch that and think how quaint, old and dated it seems... or if they see it and wonder if their current modern cinema fair is really missing something these strange films had.

<comment><USER5> It's a great sadness to me that many children have grown, and will grow, up with the perception that the vastly inferior Tim Burton remake is the definitive version. The film starring Wilder should be included on future releases of the former as a public service.

<comment><USER6> I never understood this. The Tim Burton version of the film isn't a remake of this one. It's a direct adaptation of the book and is vastly more faithful to the source material than the GW version of the movie. Why people continue to compare them as if they're the same thing is weird to me. I enjoyed both almost equally but for entirely different reasons. Why others can't is beyond me...

<comment><USER7> How is it more faithful to the book?

I also really like both of the films but I don't see how either is more or less faithful to the book.

<comment><USER8> It shares the same name, and some scenes are more faithful - like the squirrel room, which became a room full of geese in the original film.

<comment><USER9> But in the Burton film, ultimately, it's a story about Wonka reconnecting with his estranged father, explaining all of his weirdness and childlike behaviour as being somehow related to this event. Charlie is a second runner in that respect from the moment Wonka enters the screen.

My other issue is that Depp is insufferable, irritating and took the "child- like" description to an extreme. I dislike the Burton version more than I dislike the Hitchhikers film... which is to say, a lot. Both took a well trodden and loved story and changed it in a way that seems to add nothing to the narrative. The Hitchhikers film[1] fell back on the "but Douglas Adams never told the story the same twice in any medium" as an excuse. I don't believe Burton had that one to fall back on. Especially as Dahl felt Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory didn't capture his vision for the movie[2].

[1] [http://www.therobotsvoice.com/2011/05/the_15_worst_things_ab...](http://www.therobotsvoice.com/2011/05/the_15_worst_things_about_the_hitchhikers_guide_to.php) [2] [https://uk.movies.yahoo.com/why-roald-dahl-hated-willy- wonka...](https://uk.movies.yahoo.com/why-roald-dahl-hated-willy-wonka-and- the-chocolate-120115179.html)

<comment><USER10> Regarding your footnote [1], it wasn't entirely an excuse. Most of the new things people hated in the movie were from Douglas Adams himself (he did almost all of the film's many, many drafts), because he never could tell the story the same way twice. You can almost tell there was a telephone effect in Douglas Adams writing, revising, rewriting his own drafts so many times for the whims of Hollywood executives. The interesting bit of final irony being that when Douglas Adams passed Hollywood passed it off to British directors that didn't meddle much further with the final draft beyond what happens naturally when you cast it and storyboard it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My favorite scene, and it's an absolute masterclass in comedic technique, is from Woody Allen's _Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex_. The moment his Greek patient confesses: "Doctor, I'm in love with a sheep!" Without saying a single word, Wilder's expression goes from jesting to confusion to amusement to fright to intrigue and back again through the entire gamut of possible human response. He sputters and strains. It's all right there on his face! We feel the tortured struggle occurring within his mind, grasping for any semblance of assessing the situation and formulating the appropriate thing to say. It's truth is it's genius!

<comment><USER12> Found it! [https://youtu.be/B94lP-fZyLk?t=40s](https://youtu.be/B94lP- fZyLk?t=40s)

<comment><USER13> I sheepishly clicked the Up Next Video link:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbMa7BpPsNc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbMa7BpPsNc)

<comment><USER14> "Sheepishly"!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Young Frankenstein is my all time favorite comedy

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072431/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072431/)

It just has the right mix situational and sarcastic humor. I usually re-watch it every couple of years. Gene Wilder is just so good in that role.

<comment><USER16> Wilder also came up with the idea for the movie and wrote the first draft of the screenplay: [http://www.screenplay.com/downloads/scripts/youngfrankenstei...](http://www.screenplay.com/downloads/scripts/youngfrankenstein.pdf)

<comment><USER17> I did not know that, it's interesting to know. However, Mel Brooks did direct it, and I wonder how genius it would have been without his direction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRb3u0PtEZE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRb3u0PtEZE) is how I always think of him.

<comment><USER19> What did you expect? "Welcome, sonny?" "Make yourself at home?" "Marry my daughter?" You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons.

He'll always be the Waco Kid to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Very sad. Young Frankenstein was probably my favorite movie as a kid - <USER2> Frau Blucher scene[1] always made me laugh. He'll be remembered (and watched) for a very long time, which I suppose is the greatest honor an actor can receive.

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

<comment><USER13> Young Frankenstein is filled with so many wonderful moments. "Igor, help me with the bags." "SED-A-GIVE?!"

I just wish they hadn't opened with a coffin jump scare. It sets the tone of the movie as horror and it took 14-year-old me a while to realize it was a comedy. Fast forward _many_ years and I couldn't get my young daughter to watch it because that first scene scared her.

<comment><USER21> "Damn your eyes!" "Too late!" I laugh every time.

And I can never meet a girl named Abby (including my niece) without murmuring to myself "Abby...Normal..."

<comment><USER15> Just the setup and the props are hilarious, like the slot in the door with the label "Brain Depository / After 5:00pm slip brains through slot in door"

The first few times I had missed that, and then kept finding little things like that or bits of dialog I missed (English is not my first language it took a while to catch some phrases in it).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> As a Gene Wilder fan I was once digging for things to watch on Amazon and stumbled on a documentary narrated by Gene Wilder. I wouldn't have even noticed it but when I saw his name He'd been out of the limelight for so long I thought "wow, what could have made him agree to do this?" So I watched it.

I can't recommend it enough. It's called "EXPO - Magic of the White City" and is as about the 1893 Chicago Exposition. It takes about 10 minutes to really get started and it's got some cheesy stuff but it was fascinating. I've shown it to several people and they all got sucked in.

Not sure if this is a legit upload but it's on YouTube [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cpOQE5KJJds](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cpOQE5KJJds) Or Amazon [https://www.amazon.com/Expo-Magic-White-Gene- Wilder/dp/B004S...](https://www.amazon.com/Expo-Magic-White-Gene- Wilder/dp/B004S77VGW)

If it weren't for Gene I'd never had known about such an amazing topic. Thanks Gene!

<comment><USER23> Last Spring I read Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America. It's about the same 1893 World's Fair in Chicago.

It's non-fiction, but written in a novelistic style. I absolutely loved it, I can't recommend it enough.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Is the grisly Reaper mowing...? :(

Alternatively...

Do you know what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he ever wanted? He lived happily ever after.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'll always remember him from Blazing Saddles.

<comment><USER26> and See No Evil Hear No Evil with Richard Pryor.

<comment><USER27> I watched that again recently on Netflix. It was fantastic and yet another movie they could _never_ make today.

<comment><USER28> I also love the movie, but why do you think they couldn't make it today?

<comment><USER29> Put simply, films like _Blazing Saddles_ made fun of racism without necessarily making fun of racists. They showed the institution as silly and absurd without having to look down and mock the people beyond an initial "Well, yeah, they're bumpkins". A modern film would likely lampoon them mercilessly and dehumanize them.

Additionally, the comic talent those films drew from comes from a very different lineage. Folks like Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor and Mel Brooks have a very different frame of reference for how to do comedy, how to pace it, how to deliver it. I find that modern comedians, having come up with the increasing HBOfication and Comedy-Central-style shows, tend towards very similar schticks: generally progressive-leaning (though the non-progressive stuff is awful redneck pandering as well!) inclusionistic near nihilist little screeds on stage. These tend not to lend themselves to being cast as anything other than a reflection of their own brand in a movie.

I won't really make the "Movies are all PC" argument, because that's silly and overused, but I will say that from a pure marketing standpoint it's difficult to sell a movie as thoroughly dirty as say _Sleeper_ or cleverly offensive as _Blazing Saddles_ : audiences are not interested in that sort of comedy anymore in a world of _Soul Plane_ and _Larry the Cable Guy_ and so forth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> "A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men." One of my favorite quotes from Willy Wonka.

</comment><comment><USER31> Young Frankenstien is one of the funniest movies of all time. Every scene a classic. If you haven't watched it, I highly recomend it.

RIP Mr Wilder

</comment><comment><USER32> "From that fateful day when stinking bits of slime first crawled from the sea and shouted to the cold stars, "I am man.", our greatest dread has always been the knowledge of our mortality. But tonight, we shall hurl the gauntlet of science into the frightful face of death itself. Tonight, we shall ascend into the heavens. We shall mock the earthquake. We shall command the thunders, and penetrate into the very womb of impervious nature herself." -Dr. Frederick Frankenstein, Young Frankenstein.

</comment><comment><USER33> _The Producers_ will always be one of my all-time favorite movies. Gene Wilder was a fantastic actor.

</comment><comment><USER34> Good night, Herr Doktor.

<comment><USER31> This comment is perfect in every way. It made me laugh, then it made me cry. Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> How many people remember that Gene Wilder was in Bonnie and Clyde?

Or maybe I should ask how many people here have even seen that movie with Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway?

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061418/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061418/)

<comment><USER36> I do! I remember it well.

</comment></comment><comment> gm-conspiracy Also, a great buddy comedy w/ Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor:

See No Evil, Hear No Evil

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098282/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098282/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1)

</comment><comment> gm-conspiracy Also a good comedy, Haunted Honeymoon:

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091178/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_11](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091178/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_11)

...with Dom DeLuise in drag.

</comment><comment><USER37> Still my all-time favorite song in a musical: Pure Imagination [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ- uV72pQKI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ-uV72pQKI)

</comment><comment><USER38> He lived a long and accomplished life. I can only hope to be as as successful as him.

Good day!

</comment><comment><USER36> Wilder combined with Mel Brooks... that's a high-water mark.

It's nearly criminal that he wouldn't make any more movies after Gilda died, but I admire the gesture.

</comment><comment><USER39> huge fan of him and especially Young Frankenstein. so much so that I created a character in a comedy story named Heinrich von Hexenhammer as a homage to Gene's definitive mad scientist:

[https://reddit.com/r/DSPR/comments/1m4zrl/when_heinrich_met_...](https://reddit.com/r/DSPR/comments/1m4zrl/when_heinrich_met_betty_a_scene_from_book_2/)

</comment><comment><USER40> Rest in Piece Gene Wilder This quote and other ones will never forgotten "You get nothing! You lose! Good day,sir!"

</comment><comment><USER41> dammit 2016.

</comment><comment><USER42> Love his acting and the great romance he had with Gilda Radner.

</comment><comment><USER43> Wilder and Pryor were the dynamic duo. Loved those movies.

</comment><comment><USER44> May you rest peacefully in the land of your imagination.

</comment><comment><USER45> Probably the nicest man who ever lived.

</comment><comment><USER46> Metacomment: As I've gradually shifted from reading, listening, or watching news, which I increasingly find almost wholly irrelevant, if not downright insulting, to expose myself to, I'm relying on curated sources, and HN in particular, to a larger degree.

So this is the first I'd heard the news, some 13 hours after posting as I write.

One thought that occurs is that HN has something rather good going on, in its incentives, audience, financing (HN isn't a revenue center, but does feed awareness of YC), and resulting informational production. Developing it further might be of interest, or finding a way to tap into it to produce a higher-quality "what's happening of significance in the world" product (feeds and filters off of HN already exist, e.g., the HN subreddit, basRSS).

And a substantial part of that is the culture that's been specifically cultivated. Researching the issue of trolling online, I happened across a post from nearly two weeks ago (which I'd missed in first appearance) on _Time_ magazine's "how trolls are ruining the Internet" article. HN admin and mod dang offered a rebuke to an uncharitably rude comment, in this thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12322114](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12322114)

The context for _that_ was my experiences in the past week in a new community which turns out to be quite centrally founded on the principle of pervasive anonymity. An interesting premise, but difficult to get right. My venture there didn't go well: [https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/500ysb/the_imz...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/500ysb/the_imzy_experience_well_that_escalated_quickly/)

There's also the premise that news itself is often simply unproductive and unhealthy, and its different formats, particularly television/video, but also radio and print, have some fairly deep psychological influences, despite the fact that individual stories often have little personal impact -- we can neither do much about them, nor they to us. This isn't _always_ the case, but the factors that _do_ make news matter, relevance, context, background, and an exposing of the powers and reasons behind events, is rarely part of the modern product, which emphasises shock, reaction, outrage, and distraction. Not only mainstream commercial television, but the "better" sources -- BBC, CBC, NPR, PBS, _The New York Times_ , _Telegraph_ , and _Guardian_.

[https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad- ro...](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-rolf-dobelli)

I receive a local paper. I'll listen briefly to headlines. I occasionally read news sites directly online. But whether it's me or the media, something seems changed, and relevance is largely missing.

Just to give an example, the local paper where I'm visiting carried a story this morning about an "artificial leaf" development by a university research team. The story ran a half page, from a news service billing itself as ecological news -- one of the many wire-service pieces that fills what's left of the business section of the paper on Mondays. Hoping for an explanation of the design, mechansim, or product, in that half page, there was one sentence revealing _any_ of this, and I quote:

 _Here's how it works: The energy of the sun rearranges the chemical bonds of the carbon dioxide._

Read it for yourself: [http://www.chicagotribune.com/bluesky/originals/ct-uic- artif...](http://www.chicagotribune.com/bluesky/originals/ct-uic-artificial- leaf-bsi-20160822-story.html)

Literally the entire remainder of the article was noninformational filler. A paragraph or two of which on why synfuels-based energy storage is useful, I can understand. But ... this isn't even _pretending_ to inform.

(There's a _Science_ article which reveals slightly more: [http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6298/467](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6298/467))

The remainder of the paper is similarly loaded with anti-information. A brief news roundup buried in the back of the first section contains what little actual news is present, again largely wire articles. There's perhaps a well- written article every week or two. Op-eds are occasionally, though rarely, considered. A friend characterises the columnists as largely writing about themselves or to each other. And yes, this is the same Tronc product John Oliver lampooned, with absolute justification, consummate skill, and delightful effect, on HBO a few weeks back.

Oliver's right: the media business environment stinks. But Tronc have stopped even trying.

So: HN, an intelligent audience, a diversity of views, a fostering of civility, even in disagreement, principled readership, and quite frankly a really boring design asthetic, are all soft-power influences shaping a quite useful information stream.

Thoughts kicked up by seeing this headline in the story list.

And yes, beyond that, I'll miss Wilder, a gentle but brave comic genius of our age.

<comment><USER47> Thanks for the thoughtful reflections. I'm glad I saw this.

<comment><USER46> You're welcome.

I'll add, you've spanked me at least once for an off-flavour comment (on the Slashdot aquisition story). Interesting thing there was that your guidance prompted me to go beyond my first impressions (I was, and remain suspicious of the company which bought Slashdot), and turned up a fairly messy past. Might still not excuse the tone, but that ended up strengthening the basis for the sentiment considerably.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> How is this relatable to Technology?

<comment><USER49> Humans involved with technology also sometimes have favorite actors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> i enjoyed his portrayal of steve jobs

<comment><USER51> Very dry humor. Upvoted amidst a storm of downvotes.</comment></comment>


Why You Should Care About Brexit - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@alexanderbcampbell/why-you-should-care-about-brexit-1d37afbdc136#.lsrfodtyw <comment><USER2> I do care and I am thrilled that the UK made the right decision.

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://bit.ly/2925W6M](http://bit.ly/2925W6M) :-D

<comment><USER2> What are you hiding behind that url shortener? [EDIT] Ah, some youtube video [https://archive.is/uNUCo](https://archive.is/uNUCo) If you want to shitpost try a webm.

<comment><USER3> Or you could explain why you feel the way you do and (s)he would have been able to have a discussion instead of shitposting.

<comment><AUTHOR> +1 That _was_ my reply... "Yeah, well that's just like, your opinion, man."

<comment><USER2> So be it. I can just copy-paste a previous comment of mine.

The EU is a horrible, undemocratic, wasteful bureaucracy. If Britain can trigger its collapse then good. It is a shame that Greece didn't manage this economically (yet).

The cookie law. Farm subsidies to produce and then dispose of product. All languages being tolerated in the parliament requiring a full 2D matrix of translators. Their civil servants getting paid ridiculous salaries, tax free. The fact they shift between Brussels and Strasburg every other week.

Oh, I say this as a Brit expat living elsewhere in the EU. I fully expect to get deported when we/it/they leave. I just wish I had a vote.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Redis 2.2.0 is out - <AUTHOR> http://redis.io/download

<comment><USER2> Great job! Congratulations Redis team!

I have been using Redis in different projects during more than a year now and Redis has become a part of my standard "stack".

It's a good hammer, thanks to it's list-set-hashes-etc support.

</comment><comment><USER3> Release notes are here:

[https://github.com/antirez/redis/raw/1a6281f52f6025a7c3304c3...](https://github.com/antirez/redis/raw/1a6281f52f6025a7c3304c3937cccf52deee48bb/00-RELEASENOTES)

A quick scan through there doesn't show anything hugely new and exciting, but a lot of good, solid improvements, all packaged up in a in a stable release.

<comment><USER4> 2.2 was exactly an "optimization" release, to bring what we had at a better level of maturity.

Basically we'll try hard to don't add things to the API in the next releases, but just to open to new use cases changing the "backend" part, with cluster support for large fault tolerant deployment, and with diskstore for "bigdata".

However there are a few important new things in Redis 2.2 from the point of view of the features, I think the main ones are:

* non blocking replication, so that now slaves are able to serve data even when trying to resync with the master.

* Check and Set with WATCH.

* Write operations against keys with an expire set.

* LRU eviction of keys in 'maxmemory' mode.

* Support for SETBIT/GETBIT/SETRANGE/GETRANGE, basically this turn the string data type into a random access array.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> How do you update? Is the binary format compatible?

<comment><USER4> Yes, just stop the old and start the new :)

But warning, very old clients will not work as 2.2 completely dropped the support for the old protocol, that was only "discouraged" with 2.0.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sinmple and great</comment>


Show HN: Voicegain Speech-to-Text Python SDK - <AUTHOR> https://pypi.org/project/voicegain-speech/ <comment><AUTHOR> SDK provides both large vocabulary speech-to-text, as well as speech recognition using grammars (either GRXML or JSGF).

Grammars can be used as a poor man's NLU as they are able to return semantic tags plus allow for fuzzy matching to the actually spoken utterance.</comment>


Pghero 2.0: A performance dashboard for Postgres - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ankane/pghero <comment><USER2> Awesome.</comment>


Lufthansa flight has near-miss with drone near Warsaw - <AUTHOR> http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/07/21/uk-airlines-drones-lufthansa-idUKKCN0PV1EE20150721 <comment><USER2> Remember the Penny Arcade comic where "normal person + anonymity + audience = total fuckwad" [1]? I think what we have here is "normal person + anonymity + airplane = airspace incursions".

[1] [http://www.penny-arcade.com/S=0/comic/2004/03/19](http://www.penny- arcade.com/S=0/comic/2004/03/19)

Drones take away the risk of consequences for your actions. It's kind of like bicycle/car accidents. Driver hits a bicyclist. Bicyclist leaves the scene of the accident in a body bag. Driver drives away with some scratches on the car. With that kind of outcome, there isn't much incentive for the driver to drive safer -- his ass is not on the line.

Drones are the same way. Crash your drone into an aircraft and kill 300 people you've never heard of? Oh well, you just walk away. Much easier than learning the rules for navigating controlled airspace.

<comment><USER3> There's something about drones that seems to engender this - it's like people think the word 'drone' means 'thing which is outside the normal scope of consequences'. Like, for example, people are actually _shooting other people 's drones down_[1]. And when Amazon talk about using drones for delivery, the first response in any discussion is "what's to stop people stealing the drones?"

You're right, drones are like the internet of the sky.

[1] [http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2015/06/29/court_rul...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2015/06/29/court_rules_that_neighbor_has_to_pay_for_drone_he_shot_down.html)

<comment><USER4> I wonder where people could have gotten it into their minds that "drones" operate above the law, or that their operators can kill whomever they please without consequence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder why "drones" have recently gained so much mindshare.

It is true that _autonomous_ drones are a new thing. But 90% of the reporting I see on "drones" is about small radio-controlled aircraft, which have been around since well before the computer.

Is it just that the possibility of a "smart" drone is drawing attention to the other kind, as well? Or is there something specifically about quadcopters that captures the public imagination?

<comment><USER6> A large part of it is their ability to keep themselves stable. That opens up a huge range of uses that weren't there previously, as well as reducing the chance you'll break it the first time out flying it.

<comment><USER3> I was thinking about this recently; seems like affordable consumer quadcopters are a consequence of the availability of cheap, lightweight solid-state accelerometers. Why are accelerometer chips cheap? Because they're ubiquitous in phones. Why are they ubiquitous in phones? Because Steve Jobs wanted the original iPhone to be able to tell which way up you were holding it.

(also, due credit to laptop hard drive 'freefall sensors' as another contributor).

Combine that with the cheap lithium battery and digital radio communication chipsets, also driven by phone volumes, and that's why 'radio controlled helicopters' are no longer a niche hobby, and instead a danger to aviation.

<comment><USER7> Chris Anderson talks a lot about the smartphone-drone connection here: "How I Accidentally Kickstarted the Domestic Drone Boom" [http://www.wired.com/2012/06/ff_drones/](http://www.wired.com/2012/06/ff_drones/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This article needs to be more specific about what they mean by "drone". I thought this meant a military drone until about halfway through the article, and I only inferred that it was talking about a quadcopter or hobby RC/UAV plane from context.

<comment><USER9> Pro tip: Whenever you read "drone" in a news article you can almost always safely replace it with "unmanned aerial vehicle" with no loss of information. Journalists currently do not make the distinction between (semi-)autonomous military "drones" and hobbyist "drones".

<comment><USER10> > Pro tip: Whenever you read "drone" in a news article you can almost always > safely replace it with "unmanned aerial vehicle" with no loss of > information.

I don't think that replacement _adds_ any additional information, though. As someone who doesn't follow drone/UAV stuff too closely, your suggested substitution does not really clarify the identity of the subject for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Police caught the guy. Probably. He admited to fly his drone in that region at the time, but had no idea he was so close to the airport.

The uav has gps and logs position and time, so they will know for sure eventually. It's illegal to operate drones there, the guy can go to prison for up to 8 years.

Source (in Polish) [http://www.rmf24.pl/fakty/news-incydent-z-dronem- zatrzymano-...](http://www.rmf24.pl/fakty/news-incydent-z-dronem-zatrzymano- mezczyzne-ktory-prawdopodobnie-,nId,1856592)

</comment><comment><USER12> Do drones really pose that large of a threat to a commercial aircraft?

<comment><USER13> They can. From what I've read the real problem is much like birds. If they get sucked into the jet engine then they can do a huge amount of damage. More than a bird even because of the fact that you've usually got a good bit of metal and a lithium battery or two. That's enough to take out the engine just like a bird but with the lithium battery that's going to get splattered around there's an increased chance of fire starting that could make even losing one engine a really bad prospect. Combine that with the fact that the plane is likely to be at a low altitude and it's unlikely that the plane will be able to glide somewhere it can safely crash land at either an airport or long stretch of road.

<comment><USER14> > More than a bird even

A lithium battery is going to get chopped up and spit out the rear of the engine - if it manages to get in the intake to begin with, which is a huge _if_. There's ZERO chance any of that lithium would stick around long enough to cause a 'fire', whatever that means. It's not called a 'jet' engine for nothing.

<comment><USER4> How much experience do you have with the lithium polymer batteries commonly used on hobbyist drones?

I've been flying for a little over a year now and personally seen some pretty gnarly LiPo failures in that time.

I would _not_ want to be flying on a plane with one of those hitting the turbines. Would you?

<comment><USER15> I think the worst thing is not the fire, but what happens if the wiring gets gummed up on some blades and unbalances the engine. These things turn at a crazy number of RPM, so even a small amount of weight off-balance could cause them to vibrate and self-destruct catastrophically if it hit the right harmonic.

<comment><USER13> Given the speeds I'm not even sure it'd take that. The debris being sucked in I think would be enough to break/bend a blade or two which would unbalance it just as easily. Making even more debris for the rest of the engine.

<comment><USER14> Those blades are crazy tough and the battery is the least of your worries when ingesting a drone. I'd be more concerned about the motors doing the damage to the blades.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Just like laser pointers in cockpit - find the culprits and charge them with $MANY counts of reckless endangerment. This endangers the lives of every passenger and lots of people on the ground!

</comment><comment><USER17> Engines on planes are made to chuck a flock of birds without exploding, i think the plane would have been "fine" (aka no human casualties) even if it did hit the drone.

Assuming it was a quad-copter not an actual military drone.

<comment><USER18> Speaking of which, why do we keep calling hobbyist quadcopters and such "drones"? Using the same word for unmanned military bombers and (relatively) harmless toys seems a bit counter-productive.

<comment><USER19> Same reason my 550lb glider and a 100-ton B-52 are both "airplanes." It's a general word that encompasses a lot.

The problem isn't so much the use of the word "drones" but the lack of any further qualifiers on it. Sometimes it's evident from context (an article about military drone strikes isn't talking about a 2lb quadcopter, for example) but sometimes it's not, and I think writers need to be a little more careful with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is it possible to get a description of the drone ? It's size, behaviour, speed, etc.

I was very surprised to learn that the "drone" seen above nuclear power plants in France has been discribed by a witness as to be ~7 meter in diameter, flowing at an altitude of ~200 meter, at slow speed and silently.

<comment><USER21> There are firms that build them specifically for industrial inspection purposes, eg Blue Bear Research Systems in the UK. Unless the witness was qualified (eg a pilot or surveyor or similar) I would take size/height estimates with a giant pinch of salt, most people are awful at estimating those things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Couple months ago, I was looking out the window on approach to LAX and spotted a metallic helium balloon, maybe 200-400 meters past the end of the wing. As far as I can tell it was not a threat, and I've not been able to find an instance of one causing engine problems, but it was a bit unnerving.

<comment><USER19> I've spotted a few balloons at altitude while flying. Once I saw a red and blue balloon tangled together which had somehow got to spinning. From a distance it looked like a strobing light. Neat effect.

Anyway, I definitely wouldn't worry about those. They'll shred to pieces before they cause any damage. A couple of pounds of heavier-than-air drone hardware is a different matter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> By the way, although 100 meters may sound like a comfortable margin bear in mind that at 100 knots (just around stall speed for a small jet coming in to land) that distance will be closed in under 2 seconds.

</comment><comment><USER23> So did they hit?

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

<comment><USER24> came here to say this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is strange, in my country you are forbidden by law to fly a drone near an airport (which I find as an appropriate law).

<comment><USER11> It is forbidden, they caught him, guy says he didn't knew he flew so close. Faces up to 8 years in prison.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> How can a commercial drone take down a plane? Isn't that sensationalism?

<comment><USER27> Moderate sized birds can take down airplanes and helicopters _and have done so in the very recent past_. Why is everyone so loathe to admit that flying these near aircraft is insanely dangerous?

<comment><USER19> I personally think it's an over-reaction to the over-reaction to 9/11.

We were presented with, "Terrorism is unbelievably dangerous! The slightest provocation can take down an airliner. We're all gonna die unless we take extreme measures!"

A lot of people pushed back so hard the other way that they got to, "Air travel is totally safe no matter what and there is never any danger from anything."

For someone without much domain knowledge, "We need to keep drones away from airports so an airliner doesn't get brought down in a collision" probably sounds about the same as "We need to ban all liquids in containers larger than 3.3oz, unless it's contact lens solution in which case it's totally cool."

<comment><USER15> Things flying into the engines of operating aircraft, _especially_ during take-off and landing, is an extreme hazard that has been documented in many, many cases. Anything airborne poses a serious hazard to aircraft, even tiny particles of ash.

This is nothing at all like the threat posed by liquids. That's a response to binary explosives and is misguided at best. Powder mixtures can do just as much damage and they don't screen for those at all.

<comment><USER19> Yes, I know. I'm explaining why I think people might believe they're similar, not trying to actually say that they _are_ similar.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Axcept – Visual Regression Testing Platform - <AUTHOR> https://axcept.io <comment><USER2> Pretty cool! What is the difference between Cypress.io/Percy and Axcept?

<comment><USER3> 1\. Axcept takes care of scaling your test runners while for Cypress you will need to do it by yourself.

2\. The main focus of Axcept is Screenshot testing. We provide a powerful tool that helps you going through the UI changes after a test run. Simply press "Accept" to make a screenshot to the new reference. No need to manage your screenshots.

3\. Percy is focused on testing (React) components while Axcept can test your whole UI. You can create e2e tests or mock REST requests.

4\. Because Axcept is hosted in the cloud it's easier to collaborate on your test suite.

With Axcept you don't need to touch your codebase to get started. Just signup and generate or create your first test. You will get a powerful test editor and screenshot management directly in your browser aswell as chrome debugging tools.</comment></comment>