Kendo UI - a framework for modern HTML UI - <AUTHOR> http://www.kendoui.com <comment><USER2> If you take away how this looks, and start digging into the project from a beginner's perspective, this project is awful. I find this with most of the supposed "UI frameworks" out there for HTML. With a few exceptions, they mostly lack:

1\. Good documentation that doesn't just _define_ the framework, but teaches you how to use it and get stuff done with it. Code already defines what it is, your docs should tell me why it's this way and how to use it. In Kendo UI they've got a list of dependencies for javascript projects they need, then a few code snippets with no explanation as to why or how they work.

2\. Good sample code, in a full complete project you can download, with documentation on getting it up and running. Your first sample code is how _everyone_ will write code using your project. If you've got bad samples, poor formatting, and weird file layouts (or none), then that's what everyone will write and that's what you'll be known for.

3\. Examples that gradually increase in complexity. Start off with a simple hello world, graduate to a chat app or something simple, and get them to a full blown large application. In this Kendo example they've got a demo picture viewer, with no explanation for how it was built, and viewing the source it looks like a huge mess.

4\. Humor. These kinds of documentation are boring as hell, especially if you're just defining everything. It doesn't have to be insanely hilarious, but at least throw a few little funny tidbits in the code. Even the great tech books of our time have tiny little jokes for the people who pay attention.

5\. Finally, these frameworks rarely have a "theme". MVC is a theme. Convention over configuration is a theme. There's only one way to do it. There's more than one way to do it. Themes work to help people keep the script for why everything works the way it does in their head.

It's too bad because this looks really good, and it could be the most awesome thing on the planet. But if I can't figure it out even if I want to, then I'm never going to try.

Finally, none of what I wrote above applies if your project is for fun and not meant to be a "product".

<comment> sasha-dv I agree with your points. Tutorial-style documentation is a way to go.

The main problem this framework has isn't its reference-style documentation (if a framework looks good enough I'm willing to do some extra work figuring out how to use it). Kendo's real problem is its licence. Apart from seeing how "awesome" it is you can't do shit with it.

Here's the licence: <http://gd.is/qDdw>

<comment><USER3> Read the FAQ, the beta version has a different license than the full release will:

Q: How is Kendo UI licensed? Is it open source?

Kendo UI is dual-licensed, Commercial and Open Source (GPLv3).

The Commercial license includes full source, professional support, access to the latest Kendo UI hotfix builds, and priority influence on the Kendo UI roadmap. _During the Beta phase, the framework is licensed under a Beta license and no commercial license is available._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Note: _You cannnot use this library on your web site_. The licensing agreement forbids you from redistributing the library, whether or not it's minified. It further states, "You are not allowed to integrate the Software into end products or use it for any commercial or productive purpose." So private deployment is out too. It's strictly for your own evaluation and amusement.

[http://www.kendoui.com/download/licenseagreement.aspx?skuId=...](http://www.kendoui.com/download/licenseagreement.aspx?skuId=436)

Have fun with that.

[Edit: Their web site has conflicting information in the FAQ. See below.]

[Edit: Updated link. Thanks pakitan.]

<comment><USER5> After poking around on their website, I noticed that this library is being developed by Telerik (<http://www.telerik.com/>), which is a pretty big vendor for .net libraries.

The trouble is I don't think they have a library for MVC3-ish apps with a front-end focus. At my place of work, we are ditching the traditional asp.net development and porting our app to MVC3. In the switch our Telerik .net controls were no longer usable, and we switched to jQuery UI.

I'm sure this will just end up being their solution to jQuery UI, to the corporate types that already use their current offerings.

<comment><USER6> It's funny because Telerik's evangelist has been pushing HTML5 hard lately (<http://www.telerikwatch.com/>) and I found it curious because Telerik's current offerings are useless to anyone who wants to write an HTML5 solution on MVC (they do have a half hearted MVC project but it pales in comparison to the free solutions available for Javascript/JQuery development)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The question I am asking myself right now is how did this project make it to the top slot of HN. It seems to be a re-hash of some standard frameworks, some bad documentation, some buggy widgets and be backed by a largish vendor. I hate to say it, but it reeks of a voting ring.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, don't shoot the messenger! I am no related whatsoever with Kendo UI, I read about it on twitter and thought to submit it here to see what you guys think of it. I'm pretty sure there's no voting rings involved.

-the OP.

<comment><USER7> It just seemed kind of strange to me to have a pretty uneventful project hit the top slot. I appreciate your reply and it probably just generated a lot of conversation it just seemed unusual for HN.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hate to jump on the negative bandwagon, but... I had a momentary hope for something truly novel, but found the usual aggregation of data-binding framework, templating language, and widget kit, where the widgets have various bugs/quirks that make them undesirable to use as is.

</comment><comment><USER9> Using Chrome13 on Ubuntu, when I try to use the Drag&Drop Demo, the draggable element jumps to the lower right corner of the mouse cursor.

In the slider demo, rapidly clicking multiple times on the left or right arrow to increase/decrease the value fires a doubleclick event, highlighting most of the text on the site.

In the window demo, the mouse cursor does not change when I hover over the title bar, although the window is draggable.

It's these little details that scare me off. When I use a framework, I want it to take care of everything. If I have to add css classes for the mouse cursor or fix element positioning, I'd just build what I need myself.

<comment><USER10> Even worse, on Chrome on Mac the entire page flashes black for a fraction of a second every time you select something from a drop-down list. Unusable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'd seriously consider using this, just because of the stagnancy of jQuery UI. It's a massive project with hundreds of long-open tickets (despite thousands of dollars spent on incentivizing developers over the summer through <http://rewardjs.com/>). 1.8 was released in March of 2010, and the last milestone release for 1.9 was back in May.

To be fair, a lot of jQuery UI's development headaches come from supporting IE6, while Kendo only touts its support for IE7+...

<comment><USER12> There seems to be some inconsistencies across the site including support for IE6. The demo page (<http://demos.kendoui.com/>) says it does while the overview page (<http://www.kendoui.com/kendo-ui.aspx>) says IE7+.

Weird.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Demo pages are completely broken for keyboard navigation (try tabbing or activating the accordion widget). Wake me up when the hard stuff is actually working (accessibility!)

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm having a hard time nailing down what the killer features are here. For example, I saw that they advertise drag-and-drop with support for touch devices, but I couldn't even find the drag and drop demo on the site.

<comment><USER15> Here is a link to their drag and drop demo <http://demos.kendoui.com/datasource/index.html>

<comment><USER14> Thanks. I'll be checking this out, although I was hoping they would also have something equivalent to jQuery's Sortable (<http://jqueryui.com/demos/sortable/>).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've learned from experience to run away from these kinds of UI kits. I always end up hacking around their shortcomings (e.g., tokenized inputs with autocomplete, etc.)

This one does seem to have a nice, compact, intelligible stylesheet, though – big improvement over jQuery UI there.

</comment><comment><USER17> I couldn't say if jQuery UI is better or this is better, honestly seems they are just different. Even if Kendo UI is faster I have never had a speed issue with jQuery UI (not speaking for everyone, just, I personally have never had a speed issue).

<comment><USER18> The UI Widgets seem quite nice and well-designed: <http://demos.kendoui.com/combobox/remotedatasource.html>

This is closer to ExtJS and Sencha than JQ UI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The problem I have with this and JQueryUI is that both are still too stylized such that they don't lend themselves well to being integrated into an existing design. And the JqueryUI themeroller doesn't help much. YUI probably does the best job of being generic enough to utilize broadly.

</comment><comment><USER20> Let's hope the code produced by the controls is better than the code Telerik's CMS generates...

</comment><comment><USER21> For some reason, in Chrome 13 on OS X, some of the UI animations cause the browser view to go black for a second and redraw. Not sure if this is just a Chrome bug but it's really obnoxious and means I won't use it until it's smoother.

<comment><USER22> Since we are doing the animations with CSS transitions when available, we are affected by several bugs in Chrome's 3D CSS transitions (mainly when switching into and out of composited mode): <http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=87437> <http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=77126>

It can be seen as flicker in Windows and there are some reports of black flashes in OS X. Switching the 3D acceleration off seems to fix them, but unfortunately it can be done only with a command line switch. We may forfeit the CSS transition animations in Chrome in later releases if we can't find a fix for these issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> We arent far away from being able to copy and paste beautiful front-end designs.

<comment><USER24> Technology to simply create beautiful designs using copy&paste/drag&drop is about 2 years off... just as it has been for the past 20 years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Aeroviewr button borders look ugly in Chrome and on Samsung Galaxy S also arrow on play button is of center.

Dragging on SGS shows circular dragged object as if dragged by left top corner of bounding box.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is a bit off the topic of your actual framework, but as far as branding, I love your logo. Do you mind sharing the person/company that designed it for you?

</comment><comment><USER27> It looks pretty good. Good UX and well designed, and I see that it's based on jQuery. That's useful for many reasons, e.g. you can least pull jQuery from a CDN.

<comment><USER28> by the way, all kendo scripts are also hosted on CDN

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Has anybody downloaded this yet? I see three css files and one minified js. What is the total size of all three of these?

<comment><USER30> The .js file is coming in at 233.85 kb when pulled from the CDN, but that's the whole framework. I think it's highly likely that they will create a modular packaging system so you can get just what you need.

The styles are under 70 kb combined.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm always put off when a framework doesn't get straight down to the code/usage examples. Down with meta bloat.

</comment><comment><USER32> Nice but decent upload widgets these days include support for drop-zone uploading.

<comment><USER22> There is a drop zone if supported by the browser. Try dropping a file here: <http://demos.kendoui.com/upload/async.html> in Chrome or Firefox.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I apologize in advance if this opinion offends anyone, but every HTML UI kit that I've seen simply can't hold a candle to native kits such as WinForms, WPF or even Cocoa. I would really love a write-once browser based solution, but I just can't see that type of solution ever catching up to native tech.

How long do we have to wait before the browser can catch up? Do you think it will ever happen?

The closest thing that I've ever seen is Silverlight. With it I've been able to make some very excellent front-ends, with EASE, that look and behave identically between Mac and Windows. EDIT: The only challenge with Silverlight has been wheel-scrolling, which works fine on Windows but only works in Out- Of-Browser on the Mac.

<comment><USER34> I am working on a UI lib which is written in Javascript and completely painted on HTML5 canvas. I know, crazy idea... I got rid of the incompatibilities of the browsers, I got rid of DOM: I defined my own event system, component graph, etc... This will be someting like a traditional desktop component based UI, just in javascript, in the browser. Styling will be far more advanced than CSS: you can even inject a custom paint method into a component from a stylesheet. (stylesheets will be javascript classes). Also it will have advanced dynamic layout. (min/max/preferred sizes, weights, gridpanel with colspan, rowspan, etc...)

I am doing it in my free time (at nights), because I have no funding: it is a quite huge undertaking: I am ready with 5300 lines of code, but I still need a couple of weeks just to release a very early demo. My secret aim is to make it a flash/flex killer in the long term. In the very long term:)

<comment><USER35> Why don't you just write a Canvas backend for an existing toolkit like gtk or qt? You'll never be able to implement all the details of a sufficiently wide range of controls on a one-man (or even 10) part time basis.

<comment><USER34> The biggest fun of the project was that I was completely free to design the system from the ground up (except the canvas drawing functions). Regarding the amount of work I have to be strategical. I try to concentrate on a relatively small core system: get the philosophy right, tune the performance as much as possible. The components which are 'ready' right now: Window, Button, ScrollBar, ScrollPanel, GridPanel, TextEditor, StaticDoc. (StaticDoc is a read-only RichText component, kind of the original HTML.) The other absolute necessary things needed in the near future: TabPanel, DataTable, CheckBox, ComboBox.

To go further I will certainly need outside help (either other programmers or funding or third party component creators). I cannot create a huge component lib myself. But 10 people can do lots of things I think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Seems like an obvious FAQ would be, "How does this compare to jQuery UI?".

<comment><USER11> It appears to be more oriented toward enterprises, who'd be happy to license this just for internal web apps. You've got Grid and Chart widgets (must-haves for internal sites that show business data), but no Datepicker (a must-have for consumer-facing sites).

<comment><USER22> A Datepicker is currently being worked on.

<comment><USER11> Good to know. I've gotta say, the jQuery UI Datepicker is just perfect. If I use jQuery UI on a site, it's almost certainly just for the Datepicker.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> It actually looks pretty good and would save you a ton of time rather than trying to build some of these widgets yourself.

But are people willing to buy a framework like this? Or is everyone just using JQuery UI and leaving it at that?

</comment><comment><USER38> Needs a lot more baking.

For web apps built now, I use ExtJS. The newest release has been a little too buggy, but they are working hard to make it better.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you meet strangers? - <AUTHOR> Steven Covey believes the way to win friends and influence people is to ask them questions and get them to talk about them selves. I feel that questions are prying and that conversations should develop organically. Because I don't like to be interrogated, i never ask questions but get all the information I need to make a genuine connection. what do you think? <comment><USER2> I think you may be taking the advice of asking questions to literally if you're associating the term interrogate with it. Any conversation is a series of statements to solicit responses. This can be direct questions but it can also be thought provoking statements. Generally you'll start with a question and go from there. Everything you say should evoke or invite a response. If it doesn't the conversation ends.

You don't say the purpose of meeting the strangers but in a general sense I do it by placing myself in situations of shared similar interests. Doing this means that questions feel less like an interrogation because everyone is there for a similar purpose.

</comment><comment><USER3> Visit a seniors home and just ask residents what they do for fun. Then, just ask questions or do things with them if they want you to. Visit. They get extremely lonely, and you get to learn from their life experiences. Also, you can learn to get more comfortable while you're at it

</comment><comment><USER4> I always like to ask: "so, what do you do... For fun". Talking to someone about their hobbies is, I find, disarming. Doesn't get you as much information as talking shop, but builds the connection.

<comment><USER5> I like your suggestion. It's almost like a punch-line to add the "For FUN" at the end after a two beat pause. I bet you get some chuckles too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Asking questions of strangers used to be the height of rudeness (200 years ago). I think it was Americans who pioneered the impudent query in conversation. They got castigated for it in writing of that era anyway.

I've tried leaving out the questions. Observations work about as well. "This meeting is certainly lasting a long time", "I've never met so-and-so...", "What a nice venue for a get-together!" and so on. I can certainly see how conversations could work without constantly prompting your partner for content.

</comment><comment><USER7> I get others to talk to me. I love tech, and I'm usually not social if I don't have to. So I create events where others talk. That puts people that like the same subject in the same room. That also gives someone for people to talk about. Even better, that gets others to come and talk to me without having me to go to them .

That's why I love organizing Meetups. :).

</comment><comment><USER8> Asking questions gives the opportunity to regain the organic flow of conversation. If done genuinely, with actual curiosity, it's easy to appreciate the slight awkwardness as a helpful nudge to continued connection.

</comment><comment><USER9> I stick out my hand and say "Hi I'm James."

If it's someone I've anticipated meeting, I might do the same but with more than just casual enthusiasm.

This is really just the tip of the iceberg :)

</comment><comment><USER10> Usually watching/talking [tackle] football at the local pub. It's a light hearted and can lead to bigger topics.

</comment><comment><USER11> A solid look directly in their eyes. Pauseing to build some tension..

"What's your favorite color?"

<comment><AUTHOR> male or female? do you have different strategies for different sexes?

<comment><USER5> NO! Approach everybody as a fellow human! Compliments on simple things are always a good ice-breaker. Can easily lead to a question to continue any conversation.</comment></comment></comment>


Install Raspbian and configure Wi-fi without a monitor or keyboard - <AUTHOR> http://www.vascop.com/raspberrypi/quick-tips/2013/02/08/install-raspbian-and-configure-wifi-without-a-monitor-or-keyboard.html

<comment><USER2> Lol, HOWTO ssh.</comment>


When Smarter Isn't Better - <AUTHOR> http://incube.us/?p=58

<comment><USER2> Sounds like the author confused knowledgable with intelligence. Intelligent in my opinion is knowledge applied well, not knowledgable people who make common mistakes that anyone can make under a multitude of contexts</comment>


Ask HN: Why are jobs gotten via referrals but online blind dating is now normal? - <AUTHOR> Seems like companies believe the best hire is connected to their existing workforce in some way e.g. well known that most jobs are sourced through some internal referral.
And yet as a society we've increasingly moved on to blind dating via dating apps like Tinder instead of meeting people via a mutual connection.
Logically you'd think the "optimal" strategy for hiring and dating would be similar. In this case, either via a mutual connection or not.
And yet we see this divergence in strategy. Why is that? <comment><USER3> Commitment in online dating is much more incremental than in job hiring. With a dating app (as I understand it, I haven't used them), the process is like:

1\. Get matched.

2\. Chat online back and forth.

3\. Go on a date.

4\. If that works well, maybe another, etc.

At any point, either party can call it off or just ghost. There are many easy exit points, so it makes sense for the top of the funnel to be as wide as possible in the hopes that a candidate makes it all the way through. There is little harm in taking at least the first step or two with many participants.

With hiring, interviewing uses valuable employee time. Once an offer is extended and someone is hired the company is effectively fully committed to them. The employee is even more committed since they likely quit their previous job.

<comment><USER4> I wonder if jobs will also move in this direction.

Open source seems to be the closest thing. It's possible to shift one's time between projects gradually.

I suspect the main obstacle is that it's hard for a salary to be gradual. We need a more sophisticated scheme. Something like automatic per-issue bounties.

<comment><USER5> > I wonder if jobs will also move in this direction.

They already have, where there is any commitment at all; that's what formal probationary periods, earned tenure, and temp/contract-to-hire arrangements are.

Of course, much work has moved past even the idea of commitment on either side.

> I suspect the main obstacle is that it's hard for a salary to be gradual

It's not hard at all, plenty of jobs that are paid salary at the nearest approximation of a committed level can be acquired after a temp/contract-to- hire period which is paid hourly based on hours worked, without guaranteed hours and at a total rate that, even of full time hours are available, is less than post-hire salary+benefits.

<comment><USER6> Yes, but the rest of your life is a step function. I don't get to gradually pay my health insurance or mortgage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't think what you're saying is 100% true. When I was looking for a gf I asked my friends if they knew someone who I might like. I also tried online dating. Online dating ended up working eventually after a lot of trial and error but it would have but a lot easier if a friend could have given me an introduction to a validated person. Would a person a friend introduced be the optimal person for me? Maybe not, but it's someone I likely could have been with quickly who would probably have been at least pretty good. Online dating meanwhile is an awful slog even if it sometimes produces a better person at the end. The exact same thing applies with hiring, except the stakes are higher. I can date someone for a month or two, decide I don't like them, and move on. You can't do that with hiring.

</comment><comment><USER8> My friends don't know my dating criteria. Jobs can be well defined, but personal preferences are more difficult to express. Nuances matter.

The real problem is not with online dating but with fake accounts. I used to write well crafted letters that resulted in interesting dates. Now, I have no easy way of verifying I am not writing to a bot.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think most people would prefer having a "referral" for dates (I know I would at least).

The cost of bad behavior is much higher if there's a third party involved (i.e. you're not just burning with me but also the person who introduced us).

Online dating on the other hand can be a cess pool of poor manners, since there's no social penalty for ghosting your date or misbehaving.

The reason that online dating has been on the rise is because it's easy, convenient, and turns potential suitors into a commodity.

<comment><USER10> I never wanted a referral dating. You are limited by your circle if you only go by friends of friends and usually missing out on some very interesting people / good looking people.

<comment> blaser-waffle So you're saying your friends are ugly losers?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Whow whoa, hold on. Since when is Tinder a "blind date"? If anything, it's the _exact opposite_ of a blind date.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess by blind I mean you did not know the person before and you have no known mutual connection to him or her.

<comment><USER11> A blind date doesn't have anything to do with whether the connection is mutual. A blind date is where you go on a date with someone you've never met, let alone seen. In Tinder, you not only get to see what the person looks like but you chat with them before the in-person date. There's nothing "blind" about it. In fact, blind dates barely exist in the internet age. The closest thing to a blind date today actually would be through a mutual connection. (e.g. your friend Steve convinces Tyler's sister to go on a date with you because he thinks you'll both get along, even though neither of you have met or seen each other)

Either I'm delusional or a relic of a different era.

<comment><USER12> In this particular case, I'm pretty sure it's the children who are wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is messed up but I feel like I get jobs and dates based on being white and non threatening, I'm not particularly great professionally or personally in my opinion

<comment><USER14> lol you may be right. Most of the time people are looking for some modicum of inoffensiveness rather than some super high bar

<comment><USER13> Yeah, I've seen people who are better developers than me up for the same jobs turned away, like I feel like I'm all I'm good for Is completely unrelated to my job and at this point I'm just like a friendly corporate ghost, or it's all imposter syndrome on my part, it all seems pointless. I just want to watch the world not burn

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This might cause flamewar, but I think job referrals work because there is clear monetary incentive, whereas, in the case of dating there is no such thing or its equivalent in terms of relationships for the referrer.

</comment><comment><USER16> Because online dating is based on looks (initially at least) and jobs candidates are hired based on skill and personality. Looks are easy to judge in a few seconds, skills and personality are not.

<comment><USER17> Dating is roughly symmetric, but employment is not. Jobs are not just an employer picking an employee, but also an employee picking an employer. The current process saves time for one side, but wastes it for the other.

One of my dream side projects which never came to life is a job board where employers post (only) photos of what your workspace would look like. It's almost impossible to find out _what I 'm going to be looking at 8+ hours a day_, even though that's one of the most important aspects of a job to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is a biased assessment. In some cultures, mutual connection is still the goto for meeting and subsequently dating new people.

</comment><comment><USER19> Companies are slow-moving. They legally can - but structurally cannot - <USER2> one day that they're not that into you and move to a new state. If they bring in a bad employee, they have to first build up proof that they messed up, explain any mistakes to their customers, and ease other employees' concerns. If you've seen someone hired and fired from a white-collar job, the manager goes a lot of work trying to keep them on.

You might be tempted to compare this to relationships and divorce, but now you're making a totally different comparison. Going on a blind date, introducing them to your family, and marrying someone without any third-party verification are totally different things!

</comment><comment><USER20> I think it might actually be the opposite.

Anecdata:

\- <50% of the people who joined my team recently were referrals.

\- >50% of my friends in "serious" relationships met offline.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm not sure what your experience has been, but in my experience friends set each other up with dates all the time. Tinder even tells you if you have mutual friends with someone.

Maybe because people are too busy with social media to have actual friends nowadays? :3

</comment><comment><USER22> Follow the money. The other way of finding candidates — paying professional sourcers who do it for a living — costs an enormous amount of money, often 25% of the first year salary.

Paying your employees $5k or even $25k (in sfba) is a lot cheaper.

</comment><comment><USER23> It's all about looks and even more so these days!

Side rant...why on okcupid do I get 40 likes ..send messages to ten or 15 of them and no response. Online dating sucks! Many of those likes are probably fake created by OkCupid.

<comment> non-entity Idk about OkCupid, but I really beleive on Tinder that about 1/3 of the profiles I see are just people plugging their social media to go followers and / or seek instant attention validation. I doesnt personally bother me, but it might explain in part about the matches / messages rate

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Supply and demand. Good jobs get thousands of applicants, attractive people get swamped with messages. The more balanced the two sides, the better an online marketplace will be.

</comment><comment><USER25> For jobs there's a competitive selection process, so referrals from people who passed the competitive screening are likely to be in a top percentile.

With friend networks, most people don't have a competitive selection process - you're friends because you went to school together, lived in same area, etc.. The referral for dating isn't as likely to be in a top percentile, so it makes sense to go and cast a wider net.

</comment><comment><USER26> I think they're both for the reason that the less effort required the better. The faster you can hire someone that can do a job reasonably well the better off the company will be. Likewise in dating, you'll likely be much more successful if you don't have to put as much effort into finding dates/hookups.

</comment><comment><USER14> I really don't think either situation is as binary as you make it. My latest company hired me through a recruiter and my current long term gf I met in lerson first. Have also had a shorter term thing over Tinder, which also went well. Either way, success is an organic thing after the first steps.

</comment><comment><USER27> Maybe they are not so different.

Triplebyte is like Tinder, but for jobs/hiring no?

You fill up a profile, you can browse companies and indicate when one is a potential match for you (It's the same for companies, I guess).

If there is a match then you can contact each other.

 _shrug_

<comment> blaser-waffle If I don't have a dating life, no SO, no BF/GF, my life still goes on. I can still eat a nice pizza, go to the movies, etc. I can do this for several weeks or months.

If I don't have a job I don't get pizza, or movies, and could possibly get evicted. Sure, there are emergency funds to weather downturns, and FIRE is an option for some, but most people MUST have some sort of job in order to, like, eat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is my take:

-It would limit your possible mates based on your circle of friends.

-Some people want to keep their dating life quiet as involving others can sometimes stress out the situation.

-If things don't work out there is less risk of gossip within your group.

</comment><comment><USER29>
      blind dating via dating apps like Tinder

Tinder is the opposite of blind dating. Blind dating means that you've never seen your date's image beforehand.

</comment><comment><USER30> The cost of a bad date is low. The cost of a bad hire is high.

</comment><comment><USER31> A few obvious differences 1\. Companies don't hire based on how hot you are 2\. Companies can't ghost you at a moments notice once they have committed

<comment><USER5> > Companies don't hire based on how hot you are

Well, not ideally, except for certain very specific jobs, but it absolutely does happen even outside of the cases where it ideally would.

> Companies can't ghost you at a moments notice once they have committed

Established, reputable companies usually have trouble doing that; for others it's actually not unheard of, though it's hard to do it selectively to one employee and not others if you have on-premises staff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> People don't value emotional cost proportional to the damage it can cause; they usually do for money

</comment><comment><USER33> I believe dating via referral is possible, it is more expensive.

It needs cultural support (parents) or more money to pay for a matchmaker.

<comment><USER5> Dating via referral is common even without matchmakers, payments, or parental involvement. Dating-related peer introductions are a pretty common thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> online blind dating is not normal, if you can see pictures of the person and interact with them before the date I don't really see what is blind about it

</comment><comment><USER35> The equivalent of online dating in hiring is contracting?

</comment><comment><USER36> People are more personally isolated and priorities for relationships have changed.

You don't necessarily want to hook up with a friend of a friend.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think for me it's more the phenomenon that the "success rate" for online dating is so high.

Clearly it's possible to meet people who you have no existing connection with and end up finding your most intimate lifelong relationship with that person.

I guess if it's possible, and potentially even preferred, then it seems strange that most companies are so allergic to finding new hires "blind" in the same way.

<comment><USER37> you are conflating a lot of things here.

0\. online dating isn't blind dating. physical attraction (important in most romantic relationships) is readily apparent generally.

1\. AFAICT (non expert) blind date "success rate" varies immensely depending on whose PoV you assume. even those who get lots of matches may want long term, but only find short term options (or vice versa)

2\. you probably don't want to start pulling people out of a hat to do dental procedures. credentialing is important to many people for certain professions. these things take years and years of training and skill building. most romantic things don't take the same sort of specialized training.</comment></comment></comment>


Blonk Acquisition Opportunity [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1407764/blonk/blonk_brochure.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> Is this standard for an acquisition opportunity?</comment>


Silkroad Seized Coins - <AUTHOR> https://blockchain.info/address/1F1tAaz5x1HUXrCNLbtMDqcw6o5GNn4xqX <comment><USER2> Some of the donations are particularly funny.</comment>


Name one thing in this photo - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/melip0ne/status/1120503955526750208/photo/1 <comment><USER3> This is what Microsoft Cognitive Services saw:

Objects [ { "rectangle": { "x": 346, "y": 321, "w": 333, "h": 417 }, "object": "mammal", "parent": { "object": "animal", "confidence": 0.719 }, "confidence": 0.716 } ]

Tags [ { "name": "wall", "confidence": 0.9889654 }, { "name": "indoor", "confidence": 0.9775573 }, { "name": "doll", "confidence": 0.9775573 }, { "name": "person", "confidence": 0.966689169 }, { "name": "toy", "confidence": 0.5887871 }, { "name": "collection", "confidence": 0.535430968 }, { "name": "bear", "confidence": 0.432904869 }, { "name": "christmas", "confidence": 0.351226926 }, { "name": "animal", "confidence": 0.350886434 }, { "name": "family", "confidence": 0.3459218 } ]

Description { "tags": [ "indoor", "table", "sitting", "food", "dog", "woman", "black", "bear", "holding", "standing", "man", "room", "people", "bed", "group", "stuffed", "red", "kitchen" ], "captions": [ { "text": "a group of stuffed animals sitting on top of a table", "confidence": 0.764803648 } ] }

<comment><USER4> better than I could do. I can't make hide nor hair of it.

<comment><USER5> Is it really "better" if the image is simulated nonsense? Better would be conceding that nothing is truly decipherable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Visual Jabberwocky? (Possibly made by a GAN?)

Here is Alice on Jabberwocky ...

"It seems very pretty," she said when she had finished it, "but it's rather hard to understand! … Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas–only I don't exactly know what they are!"

<comment><USER7> Perfect analogy. This image is a visual nonsense poem... or would be if it were more poetic.

It's fascinating to me. Both feel like they take my brain to the threshold of understanding and then it just gets stuck.

<comment><USER8> I disagree that it's a 'perfect analogy'. _Jabberwocky_ is a poem created by a human that, while it contains made-up nonsense words, still makes sense. (The hero seeks out a fearsome monster, fights it, is victorious and is lauded for his victory on his return). The poem is aesthetically pleasing and intentionally playful in containing an element of nonsense but not too much.

This picture, on the other hand, is nothing like a 'visual nonsense poem' for me. It's artificially generated and not aesthetically pleasing. It's mildly disconcerting and beyond that, uninteresting.

<comment><USER9> The way you phrase this suggests an unawareness of the fact that one comes to aesthetic judgement through interpretive frames, which are formed through personal experience and knowledge, and therefore express your aesthetic interpretations as more factual than they are.

I recommend _Talk about a Painting: A Cognitive Developmental Analysis_ by Michael Parsons, can be found online easily.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A fipple, two gonzies, a stib, borquet and tinch, and I think I also see a couple of goffels

<comment><USER11> Lots of this has been done in language, like the Rockwell Retro Encabulator ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXJKdh1KZ0w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXJKdh1KZ0w)) and Plumbus ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMJk4y9NGvE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMJk4y9NGvE))

<comment><USER12> The song "Prisencolinensinainciusol" has a similar effect: it's meant to sound exactly like American English to non-native speakers, but is actually just gibberish. Works amazingly well.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VsmF9m_Nt8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VsmF9m_Nt8)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Reminds me of this short story: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLIT_(short_story)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLIT_\(short_story\))

<comment><USER14> Peter Watts' science fiction novels _Blindsight_ and _Echopraxia_ include "vampires" that co-evolved with humans. The vampires' aversion to crosses is described as their brains "crashing" when visually processing right angles.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight_(Watts_novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight_\(Watts_novel\))

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echopraxia_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echopraxia_\(novel\))

<comment><USER15> His is an interesting take on vampire lore in sci-fi. I remember they also have drugs to mitigate this condition, and allow them to live in cities: the anti-euclidean, or auntie-e.

<comment><USER16> I still don't understand what vamps drew to crash humans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It appears to be made with GANbreeder but I haven't seen any hard evidence of that. Nevertheless highly likely.

We should try not to physically mount a meatspace DDOS ... but the creator of GANbreeder is hosting a GANparty in Berkeley May 3rd.... [https://ganbreeder.app/party](https://ganbreeder.app/party)

GANbreeder in turn uses BigGAN.

</comment><comment><USER18> A while ago, I had a migraine with stroke-like symptoms in the other direction: I could form thoughts in my head, but could only get a garbled mess out of my mouth. As a knowledge worker whose most important asset is his brain, this was one of the most terrifying experiences in my life.

<comment><USER19> I've (probably) had a ministroke (TIA). What surprised me is that typing was affected in the same way for me. In my mind I made a coherent sentence with words, but when I read back what I wrote, I understood that it was a garbled mess. I tried again, failed, and became frustrated.

The crazy part to me was that I realized something was wrong, but it never occurred to me to ask for help. I tried to stubbornly keep working. I was trying to set up IIS at the time. I knew what I was roughly doing, but I kept forgetting what I was specifically doing. Reading those chat logs reminds me that even my own brain can fail me.

<comment><USER18> You should really get that checked out if you haven't already. A TIA can be a precursor to a full on stroke or otherwise have lasting consequences. An MRI can confirm all is good in your brain.

<comment><USER19> That was years ago and I haven't had health insurance in a long time now. Nothing has happened, so far though. Funnily enough, life did actually go downhill after that. I never thought that it was related, but in the half a year to a year that followed it, I dropped out of school and left work. I haven't really been able to put the pieces together since. It's as though I have no motivation to do anything long term. I kind of doubt it's related though. One day I'll get it check out though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Somebody replied it with a clear picture: [https://mobile.twitter.com/reneabythe/status/112080586922516...](https://mobile.twitter.com/reneabythe/status/1120805869225168896)

</comment><comment><USER21> Most likely generated from [https://ganbreeder.app](https://ganbreeder.app).

</comment><comment><USER22> Follow up tweet by same person: "Wow this blew up check out <online pharmacy>"

Please don't support this type of virality and profiteering. It's disgusting.

<comment><USER23> Are you suggesting "dumbass idiot 𓅩" with a bio of "shut the fuck hi" is a completely serious account? It's fairly obvious that it's a tongue-in-cheek joke, the linked url doesn't even work.

<comment><USER24> It surprises me sometimes how innocently naive people are. How people miss obvious jokes, parody and sarcasm online. I figured as more people use the internet, the less naive they'd be, but it seems like the opposite is happening. And the more obvious the joke, the more people seem to take it seriously.

<comment><USER25> On the mainstream Internet, you can't ever be sure. What you consider an obvious joke can actually be intended as 100% serious by the poster. Or it could be some small agency's "brilliant" plan at social media marketing targeting unsophisticated normies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm only reading about people getting really uncomfortable looking at this (on reddit).

To me it did nothing, although I also couldn't recognise any of the items in the picture.

Does anyone else have the same experience?

<comment><USER27> I found it unsettling.

At first glance it's "oh easy I can easily spot _something_ in there, like that... Oh... Uh?"

I guess its been crafted to tickle the pattern matching part of the brain, so it looks familiar, but not? Like the uncanny valley?

<comment><USER28> There's at least a jewelry stand in that image you see at a flea market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> What scares me about the responses is that this appears to be the first GAN- output that many people have seen. This does not bode well for people being able to recognize this sort of thing, should that become important (spotting 'this person does not exist' profile pictures for bots, etc.)

<comment><USER30> Do you believe this kind of thing should be/is detectable if you're looking for it hard enough? This is pretty realistic: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSLJriaOumA&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSLJriaOumA&feature=youtu.be)

<comment><USER29> There's an arms race between we humans learning to spot the signs of GAN- generated images and the GANs getting more accurate. I'm not sure who's destined to win, but my money's on the GANs. I thought we had more time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I wonder if that's how new born babies see the world, before they're able to recognize objects and their environment.

<comment><USER32> I think it's fair to say "no". We have a trained neural net, like the thing that generated this, and this image confounds it with pathological input, so we experience a difference between this image and normal reality. A baby doesn't have very many such trained networks (we do actually come with a few, such as a network that detects faces, but not many), so this wouldn't particularly register to a young baby as strange at all.

Or, to put it another way, we normally have experience A and this picture is giving us experience B, but the baby doesn't have the neural nets set up to support either such experience, and so has experience Zero, which we can't match by having B.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I saw this used in a meme yesterday, and I was torn between it being something GAN generated and a blurry picture of a hoarders room filled with bags of rubbish

</comment><comment><USER34> This looks like a photo that was created using a Neural Network.

</comment><comment><USER35> It looks like the output of a GAN that needs some more training.

</comment><comment><USER36> When I was kid I had seizure and lost control of my body, I could see and hear people but couldn't respond or move my body. I told my wife to pull the plug if I ever loose consciousness and doctor's are iffy about my recovery. I rather terminate myself than ever go through the same experience.

</comment><comment><USER37> Wow! If I pay too much attention to the background junk in dreams sometimes it looks like this. Plausible from a distance, but utter nonsense on closer inspection.

<comment><USER38> I have the same experience if I try to pick up a book and read it in a dream. I recognize pages and text in front of my eyes, and can even derive some ideas from it, but I'm unable to decode the actual letters and words.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I think "wall" is the only clear answer here :)

<comment><USER40> Even a person with dementia knows a big, beautiful wall when they see it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Wall. Floorboards. Done.

</comment><comment><USER42> To me this just looks like garbage. It's not disturbing, or all that weird.

<comment><USER43> Yeah but have you tried singling out an item and naming it?

<comment><USER32> I've got several "plastic bags". Some of them I can even identify as the crinkly colored type often used for wrapping present-type things. I can also give you something that is clearly a display board. I can't tell you what it's displaying beyond a generic "smudge", but it's clearly a display board, like for spoons or coins.

Still, I don't argue the core point. Words are flexible and I can probably jam some word onto pretty much image, but I won't deny this image is quite resistant to that.

<comment><USER43> Cellophane is what I see for the plastic.

And there's a cheese grater on the left

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> It's funny reading the comments in here; when this first got retweeted onto my twitter timeline I thought it was just a picture of someone's dressing table and the tweet was a joke about (lots of) men not being able to recognise makeup products ...

</comment><comment><USER45> Möbius ferret

</comment><comment><USER46> Does anyone know how this image was produced? Is it a filter of some kind applied over a real world image? Maybe could be done on a video?

This would be great for a Lovecraftian horror movie like Birdbox, when you want to give a glimpse of what indecipherable monster the characters are looking at just before they go crazy and kill themselves.

<comment><USER47> I suspect it's been generated from the generator part of a GAN (Generative Adversarial Network); you get two ML algorithms - one to pick real from fake pictures (a classifier) and one to generate fake pictures (the generator) - and then pit them against each other. I wonder if this image is possibly a high quality generative example that the classifier failed to identify as 'fake'.

Also - the generator probably uses an autoencoder to generate the images, which might explain the 'how' [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoencoder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoencoder).

I hope that explanation wasn't too dull!

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Is this one of those deep learning images? I saw some musical notes in there. So framed music?

</comment><comment><USER49> How was this made?

<comment><USER50> I would guess something similar to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeepDream](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeepDream) or any other system that tries to invert a convolutional neural network by 'maximizing' the match.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> This visualizes how too much¹ ketamine feels².

\</comment><comment>----

¹ Any is too much

² [https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=k%20hole](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=k%20hole)

</comment><comment><USER52> I guess it depends what you mean by "thing",. I see a roundish thing, a squareish thing, a gridish thing, a softish thing. But they are all "ish" because not real things.

</comment><comment><USER53> Showed this photo for my 4.5 year old son. I thought he might identify some objects since kids can be creative. However he looked at it for 1 second and just said that he sees nothing.

</comment><comment><USER54> is this the same as me randomizing a sentence, such as "satboma.ereegeiafudsuuedlVoiieelelglaesldnu nuorascrluc eip ttelalf rpoima s smudb.loo .r.c ue eu. mtgde mmea i leno undcisuattlicuoM ete Dimr isaaci nriirslraeunbpo abf mavuoD elneaact psg eunn mrlA m taiinccltnd oisnnnniltnt" and then asking you to find the words?

</comment><comment><USER55> Deep Dream

</comment><comment><USER56> Easy, it's Cousin It's beauty salon. Cousin It is balding a bit.

</comment><comment><USER57> Looks like an assemblage of raffle prizes on a table, first prize is the weird wig in the foreground.

<comment><USER58> Coincidentally that's what I saw as well except the wig was a children's stuffed gorilla.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Trash

</comment><comment><USER60> "That doesn't look like anything to me."

</comment><comment><USER61> I'm seeing two dogs sitting at a bed.

</comment><comment><USER62> Toy Monkey, Plastic bag, wire grill thing

</comment><comment><USER63> I name the thing with the nose Bruno.

</comment><comment><USER64> Looks like there is an ear in there

<comment><USER65> Near the teeth right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Table

</comment><comment><USER67> A sloth?

<comment><USER68> yes on the bottom right

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> Pixels.

</comment><comment><USER70> I'll name the rabbit - <USER2>

</comment><comment><USER71> Guess I'm a robot then.

</comment><comment><USER72> chaos

</comment><comment><USER73> Wall

</comment><comment><USER74> Posted on Twitter from a thread on Reddit:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/bghyv5/t...](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/bghyv5/this_picture_is_designed_to_give_the_viewer_the/)

From the thread's title:

> _This picture is designed to give the viewer the simulated experience of > having a stroke (particularly in the occipital lobe of the cerebral cortex, > where visual perception occurs.) Everything looks hauntingly familiar but > you just can 't quite recognize anything_

<comment><USER75> Well, now I know what's going on if the real world starts looking like that. And I bet it will sound like this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VsmF9m_Nt8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VsmF9m_Nt8)

<comment><USER76> After a little therapy, it will sound like this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLrnkK2YEcE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLrnkK2YEcE)

<comment> matt-attack That song is brilliant. I think the video detracts a bit. I recommend just listening to it.

My understanding is that it's _entirely_ comprised of sampled clips. A triumph of sound engineering.

<comment><USER77> I mean, Coldcut, DJ Shadow and the like were making sample-fests in the early 90s. The word is, Shadow's sampler of choise MPC60 can hold only something like 12 or 16 samples at a time, so the magic was him making 'Endtroducing' out of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> baseboard

</comment><comment><USER79> The thing at the top left looks like one of those mounted white pads that are used to display jewellery. [https://www.jewelrysupply.com/assets/images/white- jewelry-ri...](https://www.jewelrysupply.com/assets/images/white-jewelry-ring- display-tray-rd2460.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER80> hair slug

</comment><comment><USER81> A plastic bag</comment>


Thoughts on CAPTCHAs and Privacy - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@davywtf/thoughts-on-captchas-and-privacy-421157bd7590 <comment><USER2> most users using regular browsers aren't anonymous anyway.. they can be easily identified using fingerprinting.

you can check this yourself using [https://panopticlick.eff.org/](https://panopticlick.eff.org/)</comment>


The unspoken truth about managing geeks - <AUTHOR> https://www.computerworld.com/article/2527153/it-management/opinion--the-unspoken-truth-about-managing-geeks.html <comment><USER2> This is a really good article and sounds very true to me personally, as well as jives with my experiences.

Another thing to consider is that once at a certain pay level, more money does not buy more respect or interest in the job. While some good IT pros like to maximize for income, more often than not, they are also very interested in being respected and autonomous, and will choose a lower paying job with these aspects over a higher paying job with more bureaucracy and/or non-technical management.</comment>


Luxembourg to be first European country to legalise cannabis - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/07/luxembourg-to-be-first-european-country-to-legalise-cannabis <comment><USER2> Bravo, and here's hoping that other countries follow.

I was recently shocked to discover that my backwards eastern european country is one of the few in the EU that has even decriminalized drugs; I genuinely thought that this was standard in the EU but apparently not, see this map [https://i.imgur.com/A0JICkk.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/A0JICkk.jpg)

<comment><USER3> It's funny how these things turn our expectations upside-down. I'm from the UK originally and they semi-recently (~10 years ago) _upgraded_ the severity with which they treat cannabis so that it's now "Class B". This means that mere possession can result in "Up to 5 years in prison, an unlimited fine or both" (more @ [https://www.gov.uk/penalties-drug-possession- dealing](https://www.gov.uk/penalties-drug-possession-dealing)).

So yeah, your country might not be so backwards after all, and in this respect at least is pretty enlightened in the grand scheme of things :-)

<comment><USER4> At least USA has racism as an excuse for banning jazz cigarettes, but why does UK want to put people in jail for smoking weed?

<comment><USER5> While it's true it was upgraded to class B somewhat absurdly and has theoretical significant penalties for use, the reality is police simply don't really pay attention to individual use and the law is not really enforced to that extent against individual users. You'd have to be staggeringly unlucky to see jail time for simply smoking a joint in the UK, something reflected in the large drop in convictions etc even after the status change.

> [https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/police-going-soft-on- > cann...](https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/police-going-soft-on-cannabis- > users-pzb3m5q7h)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Schneider said the legislation was likely to include a ban on non-residents > buying cannabis in order to dissuade drug-tourism.

Given the fact they're sharing a border with France: probably a good idea.

<comment><USER7> A genuine question, Aren't all EU citizens supposed to be treated equally across the EU?

How would such a ban work?

<comment><USER8> They are being treated equally. A citizen of France who is resident in Luxembourg would be able to purchase. A citizen of Luxembourg who is resident in France, wouldn't.

You can have rules that apply only to residents, but they have to be applied to _any_ resident.

<comment><USER9> It is my understanding that this ability to discriminate only applies to acts by the state but not to commerce.

<comment> Engineering-MD Perhaps this could be workable by issuing all residents a license to buy? Restriction in buying items certainly exist: guns, alcohol, etc

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Luxembourg should be implementing more laws that are 'firsts' or may be deemed risky (looking also at renewable energy sources, electric vehicle infrastructure, the future of cryptocurrency,...). As a small (and wealthy) nation, they are a perfect testing ground for new laws & regulations.

</comment><comment><USER11> What about Portugal, or is that decriminalisation?

<comment><USER12> Decriminalization. If you have too much on you, you still end up with a record. Source: ex of my partner got busted with too much cannabis in Portugal (whilst living there, and being a regular smoker).

In The Netherlands, its 5 gram per person max, and IIRC also 4 or 5 XTC pills (I can't quite remember). Though that information is from '00s. It might've changed, I don't know.

<comment><USER13> Dutch person here.

For weed, the law states a maximum of 5 grams (or 5 plants, if you grow them).

For any 'hard' drugs, such as XTC the legal limit is 0. But if you get caught carrying an amount that is small enough to be considered for personal use, the police usually won't act on it.

If you carry larger quantities than what is considered personal use, it is usually confiscated and you risk a fine (but only if the police has indication that you are selling the drugs).

The weird thing is that the 5 gram rule also counts for the weed dispensary (which are known as 'coffee shops' in NL). So even though it is legal for them to sell the cannabis from their shop, they can't legally buy it from the grower. They aren't even supposed to have more than 5 grams in stock. The growers that supply the shops must also do this illegally, and they are constantly playing cat-and-mouse with the police.

Clearly, the law is ambiguous and both police, growers and dispensary owners are encouraging the government to fully legalize cannabis.

<comment><USER12> I worked in a coffeeshop. The maximum we were allowed to have was higher than 5 grams. I'm not sure how high it exactly was. The maximum we were allowed to sell a person was 5 gram.

We had odd ways to go around the police. Once in a year they'd show up, in numbers. Some kind of yearly ritual. Our main trick was to accidentally throw down a trash bin in such a case so that the "refiller" (trusted middle man with social skills who sat between the growers and me) would know that he shouldn't show up. All the stash was stored just 2 floors above the shop in a civilian apartment floor. He'd hear the noise through the heating pipe.

I'm glad I quit because, quite frankly, I didn't have the social skills for this job (autism, lack of balls for the semi criminal cirtcuit, street slang, etc). I felt my co-employees and boss were more focused on sales than on proper guidance of tourists. I've refused to sell people (especially spacecake) based on maturity/knowledge signals I picked up. Though that wasn't the main reason why I quit I'm glad I don't have to feel guilty for that anymore (because there's always a losing party to such decision).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> d--b The article says it's not technically legal in the Netherlands but tolerated. But the technicality doesn't matter. As an experiment, cannabis legalization happened in a much bigger European country than Luxembourg 20 years ago...

<comment><USER14> Technicality very much matters. The legality is a reason for them to put you in jail, if they wanted to do so.

<comment><USER15> Indeed. And while it may have been sort of decriminalized, it is very much actively prohibited in many border towns to reduce drug tourism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> saiya-jin Finally some sanity coming to good old Europe. Instead of making (rather big) part of the population automatically criminals, state 1) gets revenue (directly taxing plus new jobs); 2) can monitor usage, set maximum potency, strains, etc (good enough for most users); 3) takes significant revenue from proper criminals, local and worldwide; 4) makes various medical products more available.

Everybody, apart from organized and local crime, wins.

<comment><USER16> The alcohol industry might also lose.

<comment><USER17> In Canada the alcohol industry has bought into the cannabis industry big-time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Finally some rational policy.. Hopefully only a matter of time until further countries follow suit.

</comment><comment><USER19> Man, I am so close!

</comment><comment><USER20> I thought all drugs were legal in Amsterdam and Portugal?

<comment><USER21> Consumption is legal, sale is not. That's what "decriminalization" usually describes, as opposed to "legalization"

Edit: but sale of cannabis is legal in the NL, under some conditions.

<comment><USER22> No it's not. It's illegal by law [1, 2] (Dutch sources). The supply chain is definitely still illegal.

In short you have (making these terms up):

1\. Growers who produce and distribute the weed,

2\. Runners who pick it up and bring it to the coffeeshop,

3\. Coffeeshops

It's only legal for the coffeeshops to sell.

This sometimes devolves to a game like tag. The runners need to go as fast to the coffeeshop as possible in the most stealthy way. If the police catch them, then they are in trouble. However, if they bring it into the coffeeshop, they are safe.

Disclaimer: I am very biased here, I think this whole system is idiotic. The Netherlands should legalize weed. They have two economic incentives (1) weed tax and (2) sustained tourism.

[1] [https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/drugs/gedoogbeleid-...](https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/drugs/gedoogbeleid- softdrugs-en-coffeeshops) \- official source

[2] [https://www.jellinek.nl/informatie-over-alcohol- drugs/cannab...](https://www.jellinek.nl/informatie-over-alcohol- drugs/cannabis/cannabis-basisinfo/cannabis-en-de-wet/) \- some talkshow source but explains it quite well

<comment><USER23> _" The runners need to go as fast to the coffeeshop as possible in the most stealthy way. If the police catch them, then they are in trouble. However, if they bring it into the coffeeshop, they are safe."_

Is that really true? If the police wanted to, all they'd have to do is search any courier who comes in to the shop, or use video surveillance inside or outside the shop. There are infinite ways to try to crack down on sale and distribution, if they wanted to. But they don't seem to want to, and focus their resources on fighting "hard drugs" rather than cannabis.

On the other hand, some years back there was news that the conservative government was forcing the closure of a lot of coffeshops, and that there's been a backlash from the locals against drug tourists from other countries flooding their country, making a mess, getting in to fights, vomiting in their flowerpots, and just generally being annoying. They of course bring in lots of tourist revenue, but I guess the Dutch don't value that as much as they used to.

<comment><USER22> Well, I'm playing the game of telephone here (aka too far removed from it), so take it with a grain of salt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Living there cost so much... they maybe need that.

</comment><comment><USER25> Wait, what about Portugal? Didn't they also legalise it?

<comment><USER26> Portugal decriminalized it, you can't buy it legally anyway.

> If someone is found in the possession of less than a 10-day supply of > anything from marijuana to heroin, he or she is sent to a three-person > Commission for the Dissuasion of Drug Addiction, typically made up of a > lawyer, a doctor and a social worker. The commission recommends treatment or > a minor fine; otherwise, the person is sent off without any penalty. A vast > majority of the time, there is no penalty.

Quote from: [https://www.mic.com/articles/110344/14-years-after- portugal-...](https://www.mic.com/articles/110344/14-years-after-portugal- decriminalized-all-drugs-here-s-what-s-happening)

<comment><USER25> That is indeed not quite the same thing. My impression of the Portugal situation was different, but apparently incorrect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Europe (as a patchwork of easily accessible jurisdictions) is almost perfect for me, but the lack of recreational weed is such a stark in-congruency.

This Luxembourg plan is a good start but:

\- legalization in 5 years

\- non-residents cant buy

This is still so odd and ridiculous

Even Portugal doesnt regulate the cultivation and sale of weed. So there is no lit market anywhere and the quality all sucks.

Its like come on Germany or someone central, legalize it.

You got girls running around regulated decadent brothels hiding weed and party favors from the cops like its high school. Combinations that are like really? Thats what we're worried about here?

So like I said, almost perfect.

</comment><comment><USER17> The dominoes fall, one by one.

The upside is that the wealth from legal cannabis sales will now flow through to the rich white men where it belongs rather than to the minority folk who dominate the black market.

<comment><USER16> The poor minority folks leading organized crime.

<comment><USER17> I walk into a cannabis store near me and see young white people behind the counter, and I know the license holder is a wealthy white person (because it's public record). I know the company running the government website where I can buy online is owned and run by a bunch of rich white men (because it's a public company) and most its employees are well-educated, well-to-do white men because I know many of them personally. I know the government that owns the distribution and licensing channels and collects the excise taxes is mostly rich white men because I voted. I know the corporations that produce wholesale cannabis are owned and run by wealthy white men because I own stock and get the annual reports.

I see dealers in the local park. They don't tend to be wealthy white men, and they don't tend to be the people running the organized crime either. The organized crime will just move into more profitable areas like phishing scams and bond ratings agencies. It's the dealers on the street who suffer the most from the legalization of the recreational cannabis trade.

I definitely see legalization as best for society as a whole. I'm just uncomfortable with yet another way the cream floats to the top.

<comment><USER28> > It's the dealers on the street who suffer the most from the legalization of > the recreational cannabis trade.

Good.

Nothing is stopping non white people from opening legal dispensaries. Don't be so racist, maybe smoke some weed and chill out?

<comment><USER4> Well, the fact that they're in jail for being such innovative, ahead of the curve entrepreneurs stops them from opening legal dispensaries.

<comment><USER17> Definitely that, and the ability to pull a $60,000 line of credit out of a hat just to submit a license application. If most dealers could go to the bank and get that kind of credit, they would probably have chosen a different line of work.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why can't I see downvote or upvote arrows anywhere? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> New CSS?

      @media only screen and (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 2), only screen and (min-device-pixel-ratio: 2) {
        .votearrow { background-size: 10px; background-image: url("grayarrow2x.gif"); }
      }

      .rotate180 {
        -webkit-transform: rotate(180deg);  /* Chrome and other webkit browsers */
      …

It wasn't like that before, there were only gray{arrow,down}.gif

Forced refresh should help.

<comment><USER3> Why can't pg use css triangles? They are vector look pretty when zoomed in or on scaled displays.

<comment><USER4> This makes upvote a CSS triangle. Could be extended for downvotes as well.

        /* 13.328px = 1em */
        .votearrow[title=upvote] {
            background: none !important;
        }
            .votearrow[title=upvote]:after {
                content: '';
                display: block;
                position: relative;
                top: -1px;
                width: 0;
                height: 0;
                border: .3em solid transparent;
                border-bottom: .6em solid #999;
            }

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Reload the CSS file: [https://news.ycombinator.com/news.css](https://news.ycombinator.com/news.css)

Was having that problem, changed that, and it worked.

<comment><USER6> Putting something into this URL could help.

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="news.css?1382794165">

<comment><USER7> I don't recall off the top of my head -- does a ?1 on the end of a URL force re-fetching always, or would the browser re-fetch news.css?1 once and then subsequently use the cached version?

If it always forces re-fetch, then an alternative is to bake the timestamp or hash into the filename (so news-1382794165.css), and update the html generation to point to the new timestamp/hashed file name. Then the browser will fetch newly generated css (etc) exactly once (modulo cache eviction/clearing), and without a force-refresh.

<comment><USER8> the latter (fetched once) , but different behaviours in browser/proxies made foo-xx.css a more reliable trick

<comment><USER9> Or the one I prefer, /Static/<vXX>/Css/Style.css.

You rewrite all /Static/<vXX>/* URLs on the serverside to /Static/*. You could create a helper function which inserts the version number in URLs for static files, and use relative paths for images in the CSS file.

<comment><USER7> I like that too, seems cleaner

I don't like "Css" though. If it's an acronym it should either be all capitalized or all non-capitalized.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Maybe an update across css js htlm not synced up due to caching issues? Evidence: enforcing a full reload (ctrl-r in chrome) reloads the page and the arrows reappear. Also in the last few days the word "upvote" used to flash on the page before being replaced by the arrow indicating some css/js sorcery at work ;)

<comment><USER11> This worked for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I thought my account had been restricted, and came to post this exact question too

<comment><USER12> Aaaand they're back.

 _slinks off into the shadows_

<comment><USER13> If anyone is still not seeing them, do a hard refresh (Ctrl+F5).

<comment><USER14> Ctrl+F5 is amazing, how have I been developing websites without knowing this?

<comment><USER15> In Chrome at least, having the devtools panel open[0] disables {all,most,some,infuriatingly inconsistent} parts of the cache system, so every refresh is a 'hard refresh'[1].

[0] Might be an option in the dev-tools settings, but I think it's enabled by default.

[1] Except when it's not, of course.

<comment><USER14> This is true, and I always have that option checked.

But if I am on a site that seems to be loading the old cached stuff during my regular browsing of the internet (not building stuff) I always open dev tools and refresh to do a "hard" refresh.

But learning that CTRL-F5 does the same thing is really neat, and I feel very silly at the same time!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> We need to reload the New-CSS-file, because that older-version i.e stale-CSS file is causing this issue!

 __How to fix it?

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="news.css?1382794165">

Copy-Paste the above into your address bar & Reload HN. The new CSS file will be Rendered and issue fixed.

Hope that helps. :)

<comment><USER17> Ctrl + F5 should work.

I normally append "?v=1.5" to my css and javascript files to allow for easy cache updating. Then just manually increase the version when you've made changes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I have never seen a downvote button on my account and always assumed it was a privilege attached to a certain level of Karma.

 __Someone enlighten me please

<comment><USER19> You are correct. However even users who _should_ see downvote arrows did not see up or down arrows this morning. But a force-refresh fixed this.

<comment><USER20> Who are the users who should see downvote arrows?

<comment><USER19> I don't know the exact rules, but it looks like it's a certain quantity of karma points. If so, it's more than 200, and less than 1200.

<comment><USER21> I got my downvote arrows at 500 karma

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I couldn't see them for comments too. Did a hard refresh (ctrl+f5), and they came back. Probably some CSS change.

<comment><USER23> I think they made it high res now

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> For Safari users, hold down shift and click the reload button. (Might work on other platforms as well).

<comment><USER25> Another age old, useful feature that is absent from the "modern" mobile ecosystem. Copy-Paste loves company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> How about changing those arrows from images to symbols? As far as I remember there has been posts about this same topic earlier.

<comment><USER27> Doesn't work in a surprising number of places. You simply can't count on people/devices having decent fonts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Is it just me, or is there more padding between posts too?

</comment><comment><USER29> Command + R (If you're on a Mac)

or whatever you do to refresh.

<comment><USER30> Nothing is working. Chrome on Mac

<comment><USER29> You might need to clear your browser cache.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Related issue regarding the new CSS [https://github.com/HackerNews/HN/issues/5](https://github.com/HackerNews/HN/issues/5)

</comment><comment><USER32> This is extremely relevant: [https://github.com/HackerNews/HN/issues/5](https://github.com/HackerNews/HN/issues/5)

</comment><comment><USER33> Does this affect browser extensions or mobile/web applications which were developed for Hn?

</comment><comment><USER34> Your lucky enough to post. My account has actually been banned from posting anything new. All I can do is comment and vote. I can't submit.

</comment><comment><USER35> same here</comment>


Would you share your contacts anonymously? - <AUTHOR> https://www.producthunt.com/posts/bff <comment><USER2> I would not. I would only share my contacts if I have their concent _beforehand_.

BFF doesn't sound right for the site, may be MOF - Monitization Of Friendship - since you get tokens in return of sharing?</comment>


Iran set to launch its own Internet - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/me/2011/07/05/iran-set-to-launch-its-own-internet/

<comment><USER2> The article seems confused.

If it connects to the rest of the Internet, it's still the same Internet.

If it doesn't connect to the rest of the Internet, it's a new internet, but the whole 'Facebook is blocked' thing is a moot point.

I disagree with the term 'intranet' because that is generally used inside companies, not nations. It's connecting networks of computers together, not just individual machines.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't picture people with technical skills being deterred by this. I don't think that the people who want to get access to free information will use this.

I do think this is a response to the regime of the Arab Spring, and I think that it will most mostly ineffective.

It might be worth noting the reason this sounds pointless because the breathe of information that has to be controlled is beyond the resources of the regime. It may seem to be full of idealistic rhetoric because it is put together by the a idealistic regime.

It will be interesting to see if they can pull of a 'Chinese' like wall or if this will be a very weak barrier like most regimes put up. Only time will tell.

I wouldn't take the threat lightly. If one government can do it, so can another.

</comment><comment><USER4> A Search engine called 'Calling God'? Seriously? At least name it something that makes some kind of sense (aside from the 'I'm going to call God to find some recipes".)

Title should read "Iran set to launch it's own Intranet* "

</comment><comment><USER5> Doesn't north korea have a "private internet" and it's rubbish: if you're centrally managing content it's not an internet.

</comment><comment><USER6> For those of us on this side of the border it's just a joke, for those inside it's their life which is like a nightmare for some and a numb dream for others.

</comment><comment><USER7> What i learned from this article : Even monkeys can push some random keys on keyboard and write articles... Well, i think we call this article useful..

</comment><comment><USER8> not sure who to blame more.. TNW for publishing this article or HN for voting it up, (or my brain for actually believing that headline).. but someone should answer for this!

</comment><comment><USER9> Surely "internet"?

<comment><USER4> Intranet * haha

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> so… they're just launching a LAN

</comment><comment><USER11> I am curious among those of our HN audience that are in that part of the world how are the internet conditions affecting your start-up ambitions?

My Biases: While at Purdue I did have the chance to interact with Iranians that had immigrated to the USA but that was more than a decade ago and a lot has changed since than..and even than they had fled after the Iraq-Iran war...</comment>


Why on earth are we developing a Node.js-like API in C++? - juliane-sander https://pagghiu.github.io/dev/A-Node-Like-Api-for-C++-en/ <comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.webtoolkit.eu/wt](https://www.webtoolkit.eu/wt) is a c++ based ajax/js web api library with lots of interesting functionality. And uses boost for some underlying functionality.

Is there much difference between what they have already accomplished vs what this project is proposing?

<comment><USER2> I have never used wt so I may be wrong in the following considerations after reading a few of their features and examples.

By giving a quick read, I see that they also have asynchronous IO capability, and this makes it somewhat similar. Not sure about their build times, but knowing Boost I would not expect to be in the 5 seconds range. From what I understand they are tied to be used inside a browser, while we can generate regular desktop UI that also work in browser. I think that UI latency of our method is better than their system, but our approach requires far more computational resources and bandwidth. Their method probably scales better with many users connected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Author here, feel free to ask questions</comment>


Ask HN: Where can I report a Google+ bug? - <AUTHOR>

I found a possible security flaw in Google+ and reported it through Google Feedback. It's been over two weeks, I never got any reply and it's still working, so I was wondering if there is a faster way to report this kind of things. <comment><USER2> <http://goo.gl/vulnz> if you'd like a web form to submit it to. Otherwise, firstname.lastname@example.com works just fine.

</comment><comment><USER3> email: firstname.lastname@example.com

They usually reply within 24hrs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, it didn't show up in my search for bug reporting.</comment></comment>