Web Fundamentals - <AUTHOR> https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/ <comment><USER2> Owner of the site here:

We do need to update the landing page, we've gone through many updates over the two years that this site has been out and I think this page doesn't explain what Web Fundamentals site is.

Our goal with this section is to explain the fundamentals of web development from the platform upwards with opinionated best practice guidance.

We are constantly adding new content for new areas of the web (like push notifications) and refactoring guidance as we learn more of how this is used in production (things change, but we base the initial guidance off how we have used it).

<comment><USER3> The site is called "web fundamentals" and looks to be educational. Unfortunately, it is severely flawed due to a bias. The site is immediately and inherently skewed towards interaction and programming. This mistake (though incredibly common) is really really bad.

At the core to have the web all you need is two things: an application protocol and a document structure format. The public web standardizes on HTTP and HTML for those two qualities. This site does not address these two most primary qualities explicitly. The implicit assumption is that these qualities are not themselves important and instead necessary trivialities who technical qualities can be indirectly surmised through study of more interesting derivative works. This is a big mistake that makes learning these technologies far hard than it really needs to be. Don't assume the technologies are simple or that people will just get it right, because they won't.

If I were teaching a class on web fundamentals I would start with XML Schema. Don't laugh, I am being serious, just hear me out. Learning XML Schema is important because it forces the student to learn the importance of structure and design in the crafting of human consumable information, which is really what the web is all about. It also teaches the student about node types and node relationships that is directly reflected in the standard DOM methods. Equally important it also teaches the student about application scope.

XML Schema (and thus XML and HTML) features lexical scope for its scope model in exactly the same way that JavaScript does. I cannot express enough just how important this single quality is to understanding JavaScript. For people coming from languages like C#/C++/Java this really seems to be the most challenging experience to wrap their heads around, but it is absolutely essential to understanding that language.

After XML Schema I would teach the DOM. I would teach this even before teaching anything about JavaScript. Understanding the DOM from a high level is a conversation of relationships and abstract modeling more than programming. Many web developers never get this and they forever suck as a result. This subject is so much easier to understand when separated from writing methods in a programming language and then so much easier to apply once the student gets to the programming part.

None of these principle standard technologies are hard to learn. They just need to be taught in the right order and expressed through practice. Security standards are hard, but web standards are easy. Yet, most developers I have ever known always fail on the easy stuff. If you, as a potential educator, aren't taking these technologies seriously then neither will your prospective students.

<comment><USER4> You can't be serious. You expect beginning students of the web to start with XML Schema? Have you ever taught beginners in technology?

<comment><USER3> How would you start?

<comment><USER5> I would just start with HTML basics so they could build something "cool" right away. Part of a beginner class is getting them interested in the topic and showing them why it is important. Starting with one of the most boring topics is a bad way to do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Web fundamentals", headlined by Web Push Notifications. Good to know where Google's head is at.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, it's a little weird and out of place. I thought it was a page about PWA Fundamentals.

You'd figure they would start off with an opening statement of what "Web Fundamentals" means exactly, instead of some random feature.

<comment><USER2> We are constantly updating the site (it's been live for two years now), and that was one of the newest areas that has come through.

We manage all of this on github ([https://github.com/Google/WebFundamentals](https://github.com/Google/WebFundamentals)) and love getting feedback on what we need to improve!

<comment><USER8> "Fundamentals" does not mean "the newest thing that has come through". It means almost the opposite.

It's your site, but if I meant fundamentals, I would call it fundamentals and start with fundamentals: HTML and CSS. If I meant building on the fundamentals, I would write about the standard uses of JavaScript to bring HTML and CSS to life. If I meant "newest things", I would call it a blog and talk about the newest things: recently implemented and incompletely supported APIs, such as notifications. Some of the newest things are very interesting as what they are: new things.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see any reason to label a site "web fundamentals" and lead with something that has never been fundamental to the Web unless the agenda of "web fundamentals" is something other than teaching web fundamentals.

<comment><USER2> It's a good point. We chose to aim this at already practicing web developers and show them the best practice. There are already great HTML, CSS and JS resources over on MDN and we had no intention of competing with them.

The home page needs some work, clearly and we can sort that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Web push notifications allow users to opt-in to timely updates from sites they love and allow you to effectively re-engage them with customized, relevant content."

Christ, opting into these things has always been a mistake for me.

</comment><comment><USER10> Missing: "managing web projects".

Anybody has a good reference on this? Including managing teams from different backgrounds and details on documentation and artifacts that support web projects?

<comment><USER2> Heh, I actually wanted to include something like this in the original site. The very first version of the site we had a massive IA planning doc and guide, style-guides, mocks, prototypes, user-stories and user-profiles (the type of developers we wanted to write for). I've still got all the information.

I don't think we will end up getting this on to our site right now, but I would love to see it.

Edit: Spelling.

<comment><USER11> Any chance at all of getting that out "unofficially"? I would love to see that and I think a lot of us would get a huge amount of value from that.

<comment><USER2> Let me try somethings...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> In case someone reading this can fix it, there's a typo:

> App install banners make it easy for users to add your app to their home > screen with a single click, and is an indication to the user that the app > their adding, meets an important quality bar.

"their" should be "they're", and there shouldn't be a comma after "adding", I think.

<comment><USER13> Specifically the second "their".

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Web Push Notifications are Google Fundamentals when using Firebase. A more appropriate title.

<comment><USER2> We are not saying to use Firebase although there is a firebase JS lib. If you use Chrome on Android it connects to FCM (which is backed by firebase product but it's not the same, it was called Google Cloud Messaging), if you Mozilla it connects to their push service. That's the way the spec works, the browser controls what push service you connect to.

<comment><USER2> To be clear our guidance is to follow the spec.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I just wanted to say I enjoy the video series on that page, Totally Tooling Tips.

</comment><comment><USER16> You people complaining this isn't about fundamentals have your priorities skewed. The web today is all about selling things and web developers finding their next gig.

Those are the only fundamentals the web cares about today.

</comment><comment><USER17> Might want to debug that in safari...

<comment><USER17> Wait - looks the same in firefox, maybe just my internet sorry :)

<comment><USER17> eh, loads perfect in chrome, but this is what I'm seeing in safari / firefox: [http://imgur.com/a/reN2K](http://imgur.com/a/reN2K)

<comment><USER17> That said, thanks for the site, looks like something I probably need to read :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Revealed: How Associated Press Cooperated with the Nazis - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/30/associated-press-cooperation-nazis-revealed-germany-harriet-scharnberg <comment><USER2> this belongs on the front page</comment>


Waymo partners with Jaguar for premium vehicle - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/27/17165992/waymo-jaguar-i-pace-self-driving-ny-auto-show-2018 <comment><USER2> The press release was live-streamed, with the unveil of the car being around this time[0]. The main points is that it's an all-electric SUV, and Waymo has the ability to order up to 20,000 of these to add to their fleet.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EBcpIvPWnY&t=5m40s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EBcpIvPWnY&t=5m40s)

</comment><comment><USER3> Here's Waymo's official blog post on the subject: [https://medium.com/waymo/meet-our-newest-self-driving- vehicl...](https://medium.com/waymo/meet-our-newest-self-driving-vehicle-the- all-electric-jaguar-i-pace-375cecc70eb8)

</comment><comment><USER4> Jaguar doesn't say "premium" to me. With all their electrical issues in the past, I'll be staying far away from an electric Jaguar.

<comment><USER5> You cannot compare Jaguar back then with today. Both Jaguar and Land Rover have been owned by Tata for a while now and today both companies produce state of the art vehicles with proper electrics. They mostly carry the name and a bit of the company tradition over from the past, but little else.</comment></comment>


Hacker CS: The Khan Academy of Computer Science. - <AUTHOR> http://hackercs.com/ <comment><USER2> What is remarkable about Khan Academy is that it was done. It was a huge effort. And it was done from scratch, out of nothing. Not in order to promote some crapware like Silverlight or Flash, but with commitment to teach poor people.

Collecting videos around the net and put it in one page is useless idea. There are plenty of really great courses from MIT, Yale, Berkeley and they were already aggregated on sites like academicearch.

And of course, no one could ever beat 6.001 from MIT ^_^ It is art. Btw, if you like to improve your education in CS courses from MIT are enough. For general education visit Yale. For everything else there is Berkeley. CS69A is a masterpiece.

<comment><USER3> Don't forget Stanford: <http://see.stanford.edu/see/courses.aspx>. Their intro to programming courses are some of the best.

<comment><USER4> I wish they had the new 107 on there. It's a very different course now (all C and assembly). Unfortunately the Stanford Center for Professional Development does most of the video taping now and is very resistive to putting videos online because they make something like $1k from people who pay just to watch the videos and $5k from people who are officially enrolled and get exams and assignments and such.

Luckily, there are some newer recordings at <http://openclassroom.stanford.edu/MainFolder/HomePage.php>

I hear 161 (Algorithms) is a great class. 229 (Machine Learning) is supposed to be pretty good too.

<comment><USER5> I started with MIT's [Open Courseware] Intro to Programming... got me very interested in learning more about CS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As one commenter brought up, I think you need to keep in mind who you are targeting. The real brilliance about Khan Academy, in my mind, is that they aren't just another video tutorial repository. They have a sophisticated back- end tracking system that allows teachers and parents to gauge the level of comprehension the students are working at.

The other thing to note about Khan, is that the site is precisely intended for younger students in an effort to give them a solid foundational backing for further study.

Personally, I don't think we need another resource for experienced developers. Experienced developers have a level of understanding that already allows them to be more critical of the tools and resources they choose. If you're truly interested in following the Khan model, you should be focusing on the core fundamentals that are often taken for granted in many of the other resources. That's not to say that you couldn't expand to more advanced topics, but starting at the lowest level and working up would be more beneficial in my eyes.

Anyhow, interested to see what you get up there. Cheers!

</comment><comment><USER7> Come on, you guys could've at least not done the robot voices on the intro video. A blackboard with some emotinoal statments regarding pointers or even a "reflection" joke would've been more like it. It'd be a neat idea and I'd follow up only if you promise that robotic kittens will not be involved in any of the lectures :-P

<comment><AUTHOR> Rest assured that no "robotic kittens" are involved in the production of the tutorials. That promo video was my form of working on a limited monetary, manpower and time budget. When you're still a student and the only one working on a project (and more interested in creating the videos than promoting them), you get something of this kind.

That said, the interface and video seem to have been appealing enough for people to sign up en-mass (and for you to call us "you guyS" where in reality it should have been merely "you" ;) )

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Now I feel I have to say it: I've started a YouTube Channel inspired by the Khan Academy (in spanish). It's not like Hacker CS, though. I'm targetting only guys who want to program and don't know how to start, not future CS students. In my opinion, that is closer in spirit to the Khan Academy.

I have only C++ right now but there are already 136 videos (and 227 subscribers). And I've gotten some very nice comments, and that makes me very happy.

Here it is: <http://www.youtube.com/user/paueky>

There is a companion site, which shows the dependency graph between videos: <http://minidosis.org/C++>

</comment><comment><USER5> Looking forward to seeing this tool launch!

May take a bit before it has all the resources that can currently be found in the YouTube tutorials, but I can see it getting there in a short time...

This guy has a full range (and a good rep) of CS tutorials: <http://www.thenewboston.com/>. Maybe you could contact him and collab.

Keep us posted :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Will do. His focus seems more on practical matters (software development) than theoretical aspects, but I sure have a lot to learn from him.

<comment><USER9> Okay, dumb question, which languages will you teach the concepts through? Does the list by any chance include a lisp dialect?

<comment><USER5> If the app is going to built similar to Khan, my guess is there will be videos (with progressions) for several languages and dialects. I have no inside info - and stand to be corrected - but Khan offers a wide web (not as in interwebs) of sub-categories that branch out to a sizable spectrum, so I am guessing hackercs.com will too (within the field of 'CS').

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Will it be under a Creative Commons license like the Khan Academy? That would make a lot more people want to contribute.

<comment><AUTHOR> Making those videos is just a passion I have. Not particularly looking to make money out of it, so I'm definitely going to explore that option.

<comment><USER10> Great, youtube has an option for licensing videos with CC now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> already done. <http://codeschool.org/core-units/> or <http://www.youtube.com/user/briantwill>

<comment><USER12> Another good resource: [http://www.reddit.com/r/carlhprogramming/comments/9nz5s/welc...](http://www.reddit.com/r/carlhprogramming/comments/9nz5s/welcome_everyone_some_details/)

<comment><USER13> I never realized before how well a Reddit style conversation could work as a lecture format. Very short "lecture" part, then lots of comments with people trying different things, asking questions, and getting answers both from their peers and the "lecturer". Very simple, but very effective.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Unfortunately the signup logic considers a "+" in an email address field to be an invalid email address.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's embarrassing :$ I guess that's what happens when you take ready-made templates from themeforest ;) I'll see if I can fix that... Thanks for pointing it out though.

<comment><USER15> I encountered that problem too, came all the way here, signed in, and look somebody beat me to the punch :-)

We've all been there. +1 for ThemeForest. Non-design oriented programmer's best friend :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm sorry but you are not the "Khan Academy of CS" until you actually have a product. There is nothing on the site yet. It's an idea, a concept, a theory. I don't like this trend of launching while you haven't developed anything.

</comment><comment><USER17> What's the targeted difficulty level here? My experience with other Khan Academy videos is that they may be fine for a sophomore or junior year high schooler but their advanced topics are very lacking or generalized. How much CS will actually be taught here? How will it compete with things like Google Code University? <http://code.google.com/edu/algorithms/index.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd say undergraduate university education in CS. Most students in fact are only exposed to CS in college, so it'd be the basics they get there. A good review for seniors, an excellent introduction for students from high school, and a quick refresher for programming interviewee candidates.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> That's a sample of the videos: <http://www.youtube.com/Agilowen>

<comment><USER10> Please license them as CC SA or similar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm a huge fan of Khan Academy, so I hope that your site will do the name justice. Now I can't imagine that Khan would have a problem, but you should be careful when relating your site with others like this. Some people might think that you're actually aligned with Khan Academy.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right. I've come to realize that the reason the site has garnered the attention it has thus far is mainly due to the comparison to Khan Academy. Otherwise, such services already exist (although one could argue that their execution leaves something to be desired).

The only reason I used Khan Academy in the slogan was to get the idea closer to mind (and to do it with as few words as possible). But the effect has been far more powerful than anticipated.

I'm really wondering now if I should remove any allusion to Khan Academy from the page. What do you think?

<comment><USER18> THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE

I would recommend you give Khan a shout (if you can find an email or phone number for him) and see what he thinks. It's always possible that he might (at some point, not necessarily now) be interested in adding a CS section to Khan Academy.

I'll admit that you're right, the reason I click on the link was because of the comparison to Khan Academy.

<comment><USER19> <aol>I second this.</aol> Khan Academy already has sections on finance, history, etc. why not CS? That way you could stand on the shoulders of the infrastructure and focus on you content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The typical "hacker" ethos these days (out with the old, re-invent the wheel, everything taught in college is a waste of time etc) seems to be almost the antithesis of classical computer science, so I'm not sure I get the juxtaposition of the two in the name of the site.

</comment><comment><USER21> [http://files.0xf.nl/images/Screenshot- Hacker%20CS%20is%20the...](http://files.0xf.nl/images/Screenshot- Hacker%20CS%20is%20the%20Khan%20Academy%20of%20computer%20science.%20-%20Google%20Chrome.png) I'd sort that font out. But wicked idea :)

<comment><USER22> Oh, font aliasing in chrome Linux. So much could/should be said.

<comment><USER21> For most things it's pretty damn nice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I sure hope that the videos are not based on the same computer generated speech.

</comment><comment><USER24> You can find some good lectures on the ArsDigital University Archive <http://www.aduni.org/courses/> I liked the Theory of Computation lecture.

<comment> jc-denton Same here, used that lecture when my prof failed to explain the pumping lemma properly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've put my email down.

Hopefully this is more about the fundamentals and theory of Computer Science, since there is a lot elsewhere online if you want to learn how to program.

Somebody else mentioned the format, and I would request that the videos are short and concise. It would also be nice if there were audiobook versions since I could listen to this on the way to and from work, although then you would have to make sure the visual part does not contain information that's not audible.

</comment><comment><USER26> Sounds cool! I'm excited to see how it works out.

Some notes from the video I saw on YouTube. Needs better audio quality. Bigger fonts for the computer typing would be nicer, the existing size was just legible. It would be nice to see the diagram and code on screen at the same time rather than switching back and forth. I liked the 5 minute length, that is just long enough.

<comment><AUTHOR> Poor audio quality noted. I'll be getting myself a better microphone. That particular video (with the computer typing) is in HD and can go up to 720p. But it's very easy to increase the font in notepad++, and I'll be doing that. As to switching back and forth, the diagrams, notes and code will be available for download and so users will be able to follow along on their computers (and maybe even directly from the web app). Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Starting with a quick discussion of NIH syndrome.

</comment><comment><USER28> Hopefully this will answer my Quora question: [http://www.quora.com/Is-there- anything-like-Khan-Academy-but...](http://www.quora.com/Is-there-anything- like-Khan-Academy-but-for-programming)

</comment><comment><USER29> This is extremely exciting to me! I've worked in a couple programming classes but am mainly self taught (and no where near as good as I want to be) so I'm really excited to go through these! Thank you!

</comment><comment><USER30> Anybody else find the video creepy? Watching this seems reassuring that the uncanny valley is very very very far away. :)

</comment><comment><USER31> A great idea. Will you be making your own lectures or linking to the lectures from MIT OCW, Stanford etc.

</comment><comment><USER32> I quickly skipped through the video & it looks nice:) although I don't like the sound of the voice

<comment><USER33> The voice seems fine, but the audio is awful. I am slightly hard of hearing, and trying to listen to what is actually being said would take away from the point of the lectures.

Maybe they can be salvaged with some post-processing where the voice is bumped up.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll keep that in mind. Given the interest, I'll make sure to get myself a professional grade microphone for future videos :)

<comment><USER33> Are you using a regular microphone? I would imagine that a decent one would do the job, but your current one makes it sound that you are shouting from the bathroom or something. :)

I think a cheap headset would do just fine. Sal Khan doesn't use anything expensive.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't hold the microphone to my mouth, but simply put it on my desk. That's to prevent it from picking up my "pops". I need to start using a pop filter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm in school for CS right now, so I'll be sure to complement with these videos as well.

Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> You don't have an email listed on your profile. Please get in touch (or let us know of your email). Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Its a great idea. Ready for the movement from idea to implementation.

</comment><comment><USER36> Great idea! I'm looking forward to your launch.

</comment><comment><USER37> nit-picky but "sign up to be notified" text, looks like a text-input field. changing the box-shadow to outside will help.

</comment><comment><USER38> This sounds awesome. Can't wait.

</comment><comment><USER39> Awesome ... no more school!

</comment><comment><USER40> _choke_ SICP.

And it works in bright sunlight and doesn't require batteries.

On a more serious note, Khan Academy is great but the format allows too many distractions. I'd like to see a paper version of it.

<comment><USER33> If you log into the main page, you will only get achievement points, if you keep the lecture tab open. Pretty smart way to amend it with incentives. :)

<comment><USER41> You get achievement points there now? Crazy world oO

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Xtranormal. Really? Can't take this seriously, I laugh so hard at TTS</comment>


Bringing Perl5 to GitHub - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.perl.org/users/jeff_thalhammer1/2013/02/bringing-perl5-to-github.html

<comment><USER2> Non code parts of Perl including the perlfaq and some of the Perl community infrastructure are available on github here for people wanting to do drive by fixes:

<https://github.com/perl-doc-cats>

Probably this should be more widely known. Unfortunately I _think_ some of these repos are old forked copies? For example the PAUSE and YAPC repos. I'm not sure why that is. Its not clearly documented how it all works exactly.

<comment><USER3> Github ought to support POD.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_Old_Documentation>

<comment><USER4> They do: [https://github.com/kraih/mojo/blob/master/lib/Mojolicious/Gu...](https://github.com/kraih/mojo/blob/master/lib/Mojolicious/Guides/Rendering.pod)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Perl people moving the ticketing system for Perl itself from a perl app to a Ruby app?

I'm surprised, but I can't say it's a downgrade: RT is a beast and is overkill for 90% of projects. GitHub's issue tracker is just right.

<comment><USER6> 90% of projects are certainly not Perl.

<comment><USER7> I think you misread him. He meant that RT (a ticket/issue system in Perl) is overkill for 90% of projects that use it.

There's no reason to downvote him. His statement was fine.

<comment><USER6> He's talking about migration of Perl's ticket system (RT) to GitHub Issues.

Fortunately, he did _not_ say RT is overkill for 90% _of projects using it_ ; that would not be correct. Projects using RT tend to be using it because it's _not_ overkill for them, they need it.

In fact, I agree with his opinion that RT is likely overkill for 90% of projects.

My point is that Perl is not among the 90% that RT would be overkill for.

His overall comment's conclusion is mistaken, because for Perl, moving from RT to GitHub issues _would_ be "a downgrade". GitHub Issues are not "just right" for a complex project like Perl that actively uses the metadata capabilities of a ticket tracking system like RT.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google Search A/B Tests Removal of URL Schemes (e.g. HTTP://) - <AUTHOR> https://blog.tomklein.me/google-search-ab-tests-removal-of-url-schemes-eg-http-ck6jbhogq00r5dfs1xl8t2f26 <comment><USER2> I strongly dislike this move for a number of reasons. I don't use Google search (and this certainly doesn't make using it any more appealing), but wanted to chime in anyway out of fear that other search engines may feel an urge to copy this "feature".</comment>


What Makes an Exoplanet Habitable? - <AUTHOR> https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/13526 <comment><USER2> Nice infographic. Don't see much of those, lately.

Some time ago I made this flappy bird-like web game teaching kids a thing or 2 about exoplanets: [https://rbplanetsgame.web.app/](https://rbplanetsgame.web.app/)</comment>


Safari 11.0 - <AUTHOR> https://developer.apple.com/library/content/releasenotes/General/WhatsNewInSafari/Safari_11_0/Safari_11_0.html <comment><USER2> Love seeing WebRTC and WebAssembly in the new version!

But truth be told, the only thing I really want from Safari is favicons on tabs along with page title. Kills usability for me otherwise.

<comment><USER3> Woah, WebRTC at last? They kept that one quiet.

<comment><USER4> Hadn't some of the developers said publicly that they were in the middle of working on it sometime in the last year?

It seems like I start being brought up as "under development" every time someone complained about it here on HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, they publicly advertised for a WebRTC developer last year, so it was pretty clear they were working on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Web applications saved to the home screen now support all features of modern WebKit, such as Fast-Tap, scroll snapping and the new visual viewports behavior"

Holy shit, the support was that bad? Not just "no Service Workers and no Web App Manifest", but literally "not all WebKit features"?!

<comment><USER6> Home screen apps have gotten worse and worse over the last few releases of iOS. Glad to hear someone is paying attention, though it brings us no closer to service workers...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Do you think that with WebRTC, we will see – at last! – some Opus support? I thought it was a requirement for WebRTC, but knowing Apple stance on newish- and-patent-free codecs, it would really surprise me (in a good way).

<comment><USER8> Opus seems to be in: _" Safari supports modern audio codecs such as Opus"_

[https://webkit.org/blog/7726/announcing-webrtc-and-media- cap...](https://webkit.org/blog/7726/announcing-webrtc-and-media-capture/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Still no Service Workers :(

</comment><comment><USER10> I was hoping for a redesign with better tab management and dev tools. I am using safari as my main browser because it's just that Ressource friendly on Mac, but find myself often being jealous about chrome

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> WebRTC is finally arriving!

</comment><comment><USER11> Missing: Service Workers and web.bluetooth!

<comment><USER9> A Web MIDI implementation would be great as well (and in keeping with Apple's usual level of attention to MIDI and other audio production niceties) but it's admittedly a pretty niche feature with very few people active in the spec outside of Chromium.

<comment><USER12> When I was at Mozilla, there were a ton of folks interested in WebMIDI, but nobody had the time to work on it. A lot of folks were hoping that someone would build a polyfill but it never really came.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Still no favicons in tabs ? Damn it Apple.. it's 2017.

</comment><comment><USER14> Still no Service Workers?

Safari is literally the new Internet Explorer.

</comment><comment><USER15> Great to see WebAssembly getting traction, but can't help feel it's still early days. Debugging is still a hot mess.

</comment><comment><USER16> Now this is an exciting release! Congrats Safari team, this is hot!

</comment><comment><USER17> Any news on Web Workers?

<comment><USER18> Is it not already supported ? [http://caniuse.com/webworkers/embed/agents=ie,firefox,chrome...](http://caniuse.com/webworkers/embed/agents=ie,firefox,chrome,safari,ios_saf,android)

<comment><USER19> Parent probably meant Service Workers [http://caniuse.com/](http://caniuse.com/)

<comment><USER17> Oh my, yes that's what I meant!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bigfoot foot found? - <AUTHOR> http://www.isciencetimes.com/articles/4979/20130422/bigfoot-foot-found-mysterious-limb-baffles-massachusetts.htm

<comment><USER2> It's "International Science Times" in name only. It's a tabloid masquerading as a science site.</comment>


How Dropbox Knows When You're Sharing Copyrighted Stuff - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/30/how-dropbox-knows-when-youre-sharing-copyrighted-stuff-without-actually-looking-at-your-stuff/ <comment><USER2> Yet another reason not to use cloud services. For start dropbox is infrastructure provider and they have no right to snoop inside your files. If they start blocking stuff at their own will they are judge and executor.

Secondly there is lot of potential for abuse. Hacker could sneak hash collision into their database and essentially censor-ship any document he wants.

And finally I do not understand why there has to be protection from working with copyrighted stuff. Most of work I created is copyrighted, nearly every open-source product have copyright.

Even if there would be a movie there, it does not strictly mean it is illegal. Most people have right to create backups of their DVDs. Many jurisdictions allow to create copy for personal use and so on.

<comment><USER3> "For start dropbox is infrastructure provider and they have no right to snoop inside your files."

Uh sure they do. Both legally and morally. It's their servers! Their right to snoop files stored on their servers is quite strong. Your right to store files on someone else's servers is zero. If you would like to pay someone to store your stuff on their servers that is a business deal which can be arranged and the fine print can be negotiated between the two private parties.

<comment><USER4> What if I transmit data over someone else's wires? Do they have the legal and moral right to snoop at it?

What if it's stored within a government's territorial jurisdiction? Do they have the legal and moral right to snoop?

Why not?

<comment><USER5> Yes to both, save for the limitations these parties themselves agree to. That is, after all, what the 4th amendment is: a limitation on the United States' sovereign rights.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This whole story brings increasing clarity on the difference between "we don't look at your files" and "we can't look at your files", as outlined by Colin Percival:

[http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2012-01-19-playing- chicken-w...](http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2012-01-19-playing-chicken-with- cat-jpg.html)

Obviously, the sharing and interoperability of Dropbox are key features, but for lots of use cases I'd much prefer technical barriers to policy barriers.

The article claims that technical barriers exist at Dropbox as well, but considering they hold all the encryption keys, and I have to trust they're even encrypting in the first place, any "technical barriers" they erect are really no more assurance than policy.

</comment><comment><USER7> Dropbox certainly has a very dedicated advocate in Techcrunch. I wonder why.

<comment><USER8> Exactly. Quoting Dropbox's terms of service:

> We need your permission to do things like hosting Your Stuff, backing it up, > and sharing it when you ask us to. Our Services also provide you with > features like photo thumbnails, document previews, email organization, easy > sorting, editing, sharing and searching. These and other features may > require our systems to access, store and scan Your Stuff. You give us > permission to do those things, and this permission extends to trusted third > parties we work with.

However congenial this sounds, they reserve the right to look at your stuff —— worth noting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've seen a lot of outrage about this on Twitter, what annoys me most is that these people who are outraged for the most part consider piracy to be acceptable. Then when a company tries to enforce copyright law and protect the rights of the content owners they go on a tirade that their personal privacy is being breached.

I know that the rights holders haven't been blameless in their history but piracy is still wrong and getting upset about people trying to stop it is wrong.

EDIT: I also think that Dropbox's method of detecting copyrighted files is a perfectly reasonable way of doing it. By now we all (should) know the rights we give up for the convenience we get when using consumer cloud services. I think Dropbox are well within their legal and moral rights to do this.

<comment><USER10> Although I'm not one of the outraged, I think this sentence from the article talks about two very different situations:

> Only when a file is shared from user-to-user (or with the Internet at large) > does the DMCA check system come into play.

Doing a DMCA takedown on a broadcast share with the whole internet? OK. Fine.

Doing it on a share with a specific other user? Not OK. Bad.

IANAL, but: There are limited exceptions such as fair use. For example if a teacher were sharing copyrighted work with a student or another teacher, that could be appropriate. I think it is inappropriate for Dropbox to prevent an appropriate share like this. Their ToS may allow them to do so, but I'm saying they ought not to do so. I think that's taking it too far.

<comment><USER9> I think your fair use argument is reasonable. Interestingly fair use for sheet music (as one example) in an educational context is far more limited than you might think [1]. There are a number of limited exceptions for sharing copyrighted materials with a student but all of them would involve transforming the sheet music by only sharing part of it. In this scenario this would change the hash of the file and the file blacklist wouldn't pick it up.

[1] [http://copyright.lib.utexas.edu/musguid.html](http://copyright.lib.utexas.edu/musguid.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As long as the files aren't being removed and marked inaccessible by the owner, I see no malicious intent by Dropbox here. I'm sure they were pressured by the MPAA and other similar organizations to actively remove/refuse to host these files, and Dropbox implemented this instead.

</comment><comment><USER12> Yes, it is sketchy. The architecture of Dropbox is sketchy. The only acceptable solution is end-to-end encryption with an open protocol. I've moved from Dropbox to btsync and started contributing to the ClearSkies project.

</comment><comment><USER13> I was under the impression they knew, but didn't care. In the past I had uploaded GB-sized HDTV stuff and had it instantly uploaded and available to a friend. I figured they just hashed it, realized someone else already put it up, and added that file to my account or otherwise linked it into my account.

</comment><comment><USER14> Almost all the recent news and tweets sidestep around the main question, which should be answered in a FAQ somewhere:

 _If I have copyrighted data on my Dropbox folder, and the system detects it, what happens? If I sync the copyrighted data with several of my computers, does that count as sharing?_

Yes, I know what hashing is and yes, it seems the original reporter of the DMCA may have shared the file link through email or a website. Still, I need assurance that my data (including the copyrighted ones) will be backed up at Dropbox and available for my use at my leisure, indefinitely -- provided I don't "share" them in any public way.

Side note: all of my data on Dropbox is encrypted by a separate system, so it's unlikely that I'll be affected, but I still am interested in the issue.

</comment><comment><USER15> > Dropbox checks the hash of a shared file against a banned list, and blocks > the share if there's a match.

Encoding an mp3 is not a deterministic process. So if multiple people start with the same .wav file ripped from a CD (which itself may introduce errors) and then downcode it, they will end up with files which sound the same but are slightly different (and therefore hash differently).

So, it should be straightforward to test whether Dropbox does anything more sophisticated than what's described in the article.

<comment><USER16> That brings up an interesting question. At what point does a modified file no longer fall under copyright?

If I had a copyrighted ebook and changed a single "o" to "0" I bet I could still be busted for distributing it (although it appears Dropbox would no longer automatically catch me). But what if I changed every single "o" to a "0"? Re-arranged words? Chapters? Upcased every lowercase letter?

My guess is that's it's based around "intent" which is hard to quantify, but it's still interesting to ponder.

<comment><USER17> It would fall under the same rules as fair use. If the modified file is close enough to the original that it could deprive the creator of a sale, then it is certainly infringement. If you made it so different that it would not deprive the creator of a sale (for example, if you re-arranged every single word so that the words in the book were in an entirely random order), that would most likely be fair use.

<comment><USER18> It's not quite that simple, something can be a derivative work even if none of the original content remains and it's purpose changes dramatically. Generally speaking fan-fiction infringes copy-write when someone trys to make money off of it. However, the same work may be free and clear if you don't try and make money from it.

Teachers can generally copy something to use in class as an example. However, they may not copy the same content every year after that. Same action, but slightly different context.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> They use the same logic to save time when uploading a file that has already been uploaded by another user. Check hash of large file, see if it is already on the server and then just link it to your account.

<comment><USER20> I believe they stopped doing multi-user deduplication a while ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I can't help of thinking that Google's and Microsoft's cloud offerings have a more honest EULA.

</comment><comment><USER22> Here's my rebuttal: [http://turtlapp.tumblr.com/post/81222024691/how-turtl- has-no...](http://turtlapp.tumblr.com/post/81222024691/how-turtl-has-no-idea- when-youre-sharing-copyrighted)

<comment><USER23> Just curious, are you storing the keys? Or at the very least the login info from which you could regenerate the keys? If so, there's no reason a government couldn't ask for you to hand the info over, so even though this is a step more complex that Dropbox, it doesn't add too much security.

Now, if users provide their own key and it's never transmitted, that would be secure, but obviously the data would be un-decryptable if the key is lost.

<comment><USER22> You're right, storing keys would completely defeat the purpose. We don't do it. Master keys are generated from a user's login information, which we have no knowledge of.

Right now if you forget your login/password your account is lost unrecoverably. We have a feature slated that would let you download a file version of your account key, meaning if you lost your username or password, you could log in with the special key file and reset your info. Obviously, you'd have to keep the file encrypted/safe, but that's the user's responsibility ultimately.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> They are _scanning_ your content!! Mobilize the "scropboxed!" campaign!

</comment><comment><USER25> Maybe I'm being daft here, but why don't would-be file-sharers just encrypt files and send their friends passwords along with the links? Neither the provider nor the copyright holders would be able to tell who was sharing what, unless they monitored IM, email etc..

Of course it does seem that anyone can abuse the DMCA with impunity, so strictly speaking this wouldn't stop the "notice and takedown" actions. It would however prevent the automated detection and might increase cost and difficulty for copyright complainers.

<comment><USER26> Yeah, anyone can easily modify a file so it doesn't match the blacklisted hash and share it with their friends. Once you start sharing it with millions of people across the internet though, the copyright holder is likely to find out about and issue another DMCA takedown. So this is a system that doesn't prevent small scale sharing, but might be somewhat successful at preventing large scale infringement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> If you don't control them, they're not yours.

<comment><USER28> So if you don't control, say, your family they are not your family?

<comment><USER29> I believe he was talking about possessions. You don't own humans.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Workaround: Just edit the file's time edited by "saving as" and it will change the hash.

</comment><comment><USER31> Imagine to rely on a storage service that decides wether you may have a certain file. Not even once.

</comment><comment><USER32> Enter service to add random metadata to your files to trivially thwart protection scheme.</comment>


Show HN: Muil – Fast and simple email templates development using React - <AUTHOR> https://www.muil.io <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN! In the last few months, I'm working on a new side project Muil

Muil is a powerful service to build email, PDF and image templates using React, then generate via a simple REST API

I'm sure Hacker News readers know how challenging building transactional email templates can be, you have to write a tangle of archaic HTML and inline styles and there is no easy way to share code and style.

With Muil you can build templates with React and all other libraries you already working with. You can also use shared components and styles from your web client.

Muil eliminates the complexity of building scalable templates engine service it is a fully managed solution to build email templates and generate them with rest API

I'd love your feedback, experience, and thoughts!

Getting started guide - [https://docs.muil.io/blog/2020/04/21/start- guide/](https://docs.muil.io/blog/2020/04/21/start-guide/)

</comment><comment><USER2> Nice work, email HTML is a mess and Muil looks cool! Definitely going to check it out!</comment>


K as a Prototyping Language - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.nyu.edu/courses/fall02/G22.3033-007/kintro.html <comment><USER2> Last year someone benchmarked a simplified raytracer in a few different languages--primarily to show off OCaml. Later, someone wrote the raytracer in 7 lines of K. <http://www.nsl.com/k/ray/ray.k>. The original comparison: <http://www.ffconsultancy.com/languages/ray_tracer/index.html>

<comment><USER3> Nifty reference, thanks. You absolutely have to read the description in the original page though. The K looks pretty much line line noise; I've seen raw sendmail scripts that look cleaner. As terse as the language might be, a little whitespace and naming conventions might still be a good idea for us newbies...

<comment><USER4> _a little whitespace and naming conventions might still be a good idea for us newbies_

The culture around K is fanatical about concision. This goes back to APL, though the K people (following the lead of Arthur Whitney, the designer of K and Q) take it further than anybody else. To the unfamiliar, K looks like a bad joke (check out the 40 lines of code at <http://www.nsl.com/k/s/s.k>, which implement the spreadsheet at <http://www.nsl.com/papers/spreadsheet.htm>), but these people know what they're doing. Whitney's product includes the language interpreter, a massively scalable RDBMS, a web server, and God knows what else, and the last time I downloaded it, the total size was 380 KB. My experience with that stuff was that the more I looked at it, the more in awe I became. It's a shame it's not more widely available.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> / Right to left precedence:

3*2+5 / yields 21

Why should I learn this language that I've never heard of if it can't even do math in any sensible way? Not left-to-right, not order of operations, not lisp-like prefix. Who thought that was a good idea?

<comment><USER6> My own personal opinion is that whatever language you're using (or, indeed, in mathematics) using redundant brackets is generally the best idea anyway.

Removes any ambiguity, easier to read, doesn't need you to remember precedence rules and there's negligible difference in execution speed.

<comment><USER3> Isn't python (no brackets at all) an existence proof that you're wrong, though? The eye learns rapidly to ignore brackets. What it reads is indentation. And most editors will try to enforce indentation levels even without brackets present.

Or maybe you're just talking about parentheses in precedence grammars? I guess I have no objections there, but still: the fact that "multiplication has higher precedence than addition" is taught in grade schools and is used everywhere, in every language I know that supports precedence at all. What _conceivable_ purpose could one have to buck this trend? All you gain is maybe a few lines of complexity in the parser (I mean, it's not like these things are hard to write) at the cost of a lifetime of newbie syntax errors.

<comment><USER7> If the newbie programmers are professionals worthy of the name, those errors won't make it into production. A less complex parser will have tremendous leverage by making it easier to craft syntax-aware programming tools. Smalltalk has a history of amazing ground-breaking programmer tools written by single individuals years ahead of their appearance in other languages. Contrast this with Ruby. I like Ruby a lot. It's a great language. The syntax is a bit hairy, however. Teams of people worked for a couple of years to produce an ANTLR parser which is independent of the Ruby VM's parser and could be used for programming tools.

A good programmer can just crank out a top-down Smalltalk parser in one day. If you make your language easy to work with, you get a more powerful toolset sooner. On top of that, the lowered barrier to entry gets you more real innovation in that toolset.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If anyone is interested in some examples, take a look at projecteuler.net - it's a series of mathematical/programming puzzles.

After you solve a particular problem you gain access to a forum where people detail their solution. A good amount of the solutions tend to be written in these APL languages (J, K) and may serve as a nice way to learn.

</comment><comment><USER9> Very interesting, thanks for posting the link.

I'm also interested in what industries this language perfoms well.

<comment><AUTHOR> From what I gather, it's used mainly by quantitative analysts in finance (so called "quants"), but I'm sure it could be applied to a wide variety of other fields.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is it "K" or "Q" language?

<comment><USER11> It's K, a successor to the J programming language.

<comment><USER4> Not so much a successor as a sibling rival. I've always assumed the name was a bit of (typically cryptic) humor.</comment></comment></comment>


US Navy awards funds for Polywell Fusion reactor experiment  - <AUTHOR> http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/2009/10/wb8_contract_pr.html

<comment><USER2> For those not familiar with the Polywell design, it's a refinement of the slightly more well-known Farnsworth Fusor. The fusor design is surprisingly simple; small versions can be (and have been) constructed by hobbyists that will successfully fuse hydrogen.

Unfortunately, the fusor has serious drawbacks--probably unsurmountable--that make it impossible to get net energy output from the device, though it does function competently as a portable neutron source.

The fusor design (as well as the polywell, in a modified fashion) differs from conventional approaches to fusion, in that it uses concentric, spherical mesh electrodes in a vacuum chamber with an enormous voltage between them. Positively-charged ions are accelerated toward the center of the device by the interior, negative electrode; any that pass through are repelled by the outer electrode, so ions oscillate through the center of the device at very high speeds until either striking and fusing with another ion or impacting an electrode.

The more sophisticated polywell design uses a form of magnetic confinement to trap electrons in the center of the device, creating a "virtual electrode" and reducing losses from ions impacting electrodes. Unlike the fusor, there don't seem to thus far be any significant theoretical barriers to net energy gain from the polywell design. The main issue limiting further development of the polywell concept has generally been a lack of attention and funding needed to develop and engineer larger and more refined versions.

In short, this is excellent news.

<comment><USER3> The other thing to note is that it's _small_. I believe WB6 was roughly the size of your average CRT monitor.

The estimated cost for a full scale polywell is ~$100 million, less than 1/100th of ITER's estimated costs. It has the potential for commercial fusion energy by 2020, not by 2050 like ITER. This, of course, is assuming the larger scale Polywell designs will break even with WB8.

<comment><USER2> Thank you, I forgot to mention that. Assuming the polywell design works as hoped, it is likely to be much smaller and cheaper for the same output than other fusion reactor designs.

I've been interested for a while in the potential of IEC-type reactors, so I'm really looking forward to the results of this new work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I first read about this in an article in Analog Science Fiction magazine. The technology sounded cool but the venue of publication seemed inauspicious. . . I really hope this produces something.

<comment><USER5> Robert Bussard has more detail in his Google Tech Talk: [http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1996321846673788606&...](http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1996321846673788606&ei=dS3JSuLbAsSXlAfQnsHcBg)

<comment><USER6> Unfortunately, $10M is 1/20th what Robert Bussard wanted to try and build a break-even demo reactor.

<comment><USER7> According to Nebel, the research leader, the present funding is enough to know if it will work. Check this, from May.

[http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/05/dr-richard-nebel-we-will- kn...](http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/05/dr-richard-nebel-we-will-know-if- iec.html)

Edit: Which was linked from the article. :-) Sigh, I read the recent news last night somewhere else and didn't check this.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Weed will soon clobber beer sales, Wall Street says - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/20/beer-sales-are-going-to-fall-because-marijuana-is-getting-so-popular-wall-street-says.html <comment><USER2> The chart showing the inverse correlations is one of the most misleading charts I've ever seen. They put two separate scales on top of each other to make it look like pot is more popular than alcohol.

<comment><USER3> That's the great thing about statistics! You can manipulate them to support any point.

<comment><USER4> That's the great thing about misrepresentation! You can manipulate any representation to prove any point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Weed will soon clobber beer sales

So why again what is scheduled as an illegal "flower" in the first place? If is we do not know the answer then lets look at this question: who benefited all these years from tax money spend on cracking down on growing/trading/having/using this plant?

Allow me to answer the last one: I think weed will be more popular the alcohol, and it will be heavily used as replacement for all kinds for "medicines".

<comment><USER6> > replacement for .. "medicines"

Completely? I'm afraid not. As a compliment to a complete regimen, then of course. I'm a card holder, but there are times where MJ and derivatives don't have the same benefits, long-bone pain being one.

A sidenote: I'm laughing at the irony that one could grow a crop of opium poppies less conspicuously than a crop of MJ.

<comment><USER7> Also a card holder and I'm very much looking forward to the movement into the mainstream so we can get rid of a lot of the hippish pseudoscience and actually have medical studies on the stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This jibes with my experience. Having a tasty drink and getting a light buzz (a beer or two) is still enjoyable/appealing when I'm high, but getting smashed isn't, least of all getting smashed on the beers mentioned in the article. And when fewer of your friends are ever looking to drink heavily, the old norm of "let's all get together and have 3 - 5 drinks" starts to go away. Add the fact that bars have become completely besides the point for meeting attractive people (Tinder) and new forms of highly immersive entertainment, and I'm surprised the trend isn't more dramatic.

<comment><USER9> Do you think Mr. Sessions has been lobbied by the alcohol industry?

<comment><USER10> Obviously they all have been, aggressively.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> From a practical perspective I doubt it. While weed will have higher pricing you won't see the same quantity of people binging on weed like they do on liquor. You'll have many places of employment discriminate against it (it can stay in the blood stream for a month). Many people don't enjoy the sensation versus alcohol. It doesn't cause the same chemical dependencies, don't underestimate how much money bars and stores make from "regulars" known to the rest of us as alcoholics.

Finally and perhaps most important their is a huge logistical cost to being in the THC industry. Regulations at the local and state levels can take a healthy business and make it shut its doors in less then a week. Payment portals get frozen. Limits to growers, shippers, etc. keep pricing very high. I've yet to meet an un-affluent heavy user who doesn't still buy from a dealer because of pricing.

P.S. don't forget the religious and cultural push-back against weed. We accept beer advertising as normal, that won't happen with weed in most places. No superbowl commercials for Gorilla Glue.

<comment><USER12> Data shows legal marijuana has hurt beer sales:

[http://time.com/money/4592317/legal-marijuana-beer- sales/](http://time.com/money/4592317/legal-marijuana-beer-sales/)

<comment><USER11> From the very first paragraph of the article you linked:

"Research firm Cowen & Company analyzed the state of the beer industry in Colorado, Oregon and Washington—states where both recreational weed is legal and craft beer has become popular".

And:

"MilllerCoors have seen the largest drops. Sales volume of premium brews like Coors Light and Bud Light dipped by 4.4%, while economy brews—the regular forms of mainstream beers like Budweiser or Coors—dipped by 2.4%."

Sales of craft beers go up, sales of draft beers go down. I'm not putting all of that on weed.

I really don't like how all the sources of articles on the impact and results of weed legalization link to... other weed legalization articles.

P.S. A large amount of this "information" is just normal if well disguised click-bait. Please, please, please, link me to _hard_ data if you want to change my mind. I will read every sentence of it!

P.S.S. Also craft beer has EXPLODED in places like Portland and it seems like a natural outcome that, because craft beer is much more expensive, that people buy less of it and enjoy it as more of a social delicacy then a weekend event.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Honest question - as a non-user who has dabbled in pain-dampening aids, how effective is it? In particular, there is this great scene in American Beauty ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVpsmoAe9pM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVpsmoAe9pM) ) where Lester smokes pot while bench-pressing. Is it much better than taking aspirin ( the A in the ECA stack ) ? My trainer in India used to come drunk to sessions - he said whiskey dampened all the pain. So he had great arms but a big belly too! But these days ganja is freely available & you can see the results everywhere - Instagram is filled with 6-pack models vying for their chance in Bollywood, & most of them do weed from what I hear.

<comment><USER14> I find that I feel the pain but don't feel encumbered by it; which works out well when safety is a concern, like when lifting.

<comment><USER13> I'll go out on a limb & say there's different kinds of pain. If you are doing "cardio with weights" \- ie. you can comfortably bench 100 lb, but you are doing 200 reps of 30 pound - that's pain A. If you can comfortably bench 100 lb but you try to do 1 rep of 300 lb, that's pain B. You want to feel pain B, so you won't blow your bicep. But you don't necessarily want to feel pain A, because that won't do you damage - its just getting in the way of finishing your workout, so you want to be zoned out. Most people trying to cut & get defined abs etc. are in the pain A basket, trying to repeatedly do insane amount of reps with very low weight. For them, cannabis might be a solution.

<comment><USER15> I call that that "sore" vs "pain". Being sore (type A) is ok, pain (type B) never is. From what I've heard about steroids is the help you push through being sore, which lets you train more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm surprised they didn't also recommend a strong 'buy' on Pizza stocks like Yum! brands (owner of Pizza Hut) :-)

<comment><USER17> I think Dominoes is better equipped to serve this demographic.

<comment><USER18> Agree $DPZ is crushing it. They are also quite a bit ahead of the curve in terms of making the technology shift.

<comment><USER19> indeed [https://www.optivo.com/data/domino/animated_gif.gif](https://www.optivo.com/data/domino/animated_gif.gif)

<comment><USER18> lol, the animated progress status is absurd...

<comment><USER20> The animation and silliness is absurd, but I've definitely seen people choose Dominoes over similar cheap-tier national delivery chains based solely on the tracker.

When you order PJ or PH, you get a "maybe in 30-45 minutes" email, but D gets you the "out for delivery" notification.

The only thing better is Postmates/UberEats style tracking of delivery drivers so you can track progress in real time.

<comment><USER21> Dominoes has ended up being me and my wife's go to default for ordering out because its consistent, cheap, and the order tracking makes it easy to tell when its coming. On some days it ends up being cheaper than cooking once you factor in time to cook and clean.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is a good thing. Vaporizing/eating cannabis appears to provide little to no long-term harm to users, whereas alcoholism and alcohol related accidents cause terrible harm.

And I know it's just an anecdote, but I'm a successful scientist with a PhD who vaporizes daily. I prefer it to an alcohol buzz. No hangover, no blackouts, no stupidity.

I will be sure to shed a tiny tear for the macrobrew industry, those poor, poor shareholders.

<comment><USER23> I'm not anti-pot whatsoever and would absolutely switch from booze to weed if given a chance but isn't it flat out wrong to say "little to no long term harm"?

I'm not arguing that it's better than alcohol or xyz but it does have side effects.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long- term_effects_of_cannabis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long- term_effects_of_cannabis)

<comment><USER24> That wikipedia page lists more than a dozen potential side effects; many of them are quite devastating. I will never understand why a majority of the younger generation views this kind of Russian roulette as something to be celebrated. Perhaps someone in this forum, who is so inclined, can explain their reasoning on this? Why do something that can so easily ruin your health?

<comment><USER25> There are two parts to answering your question:

1\. The message that it's _less_ harmful than some regularly consumed things (eg, alcohol, cocaine, heroin) got smeared in to not being harmful.

2\. A lot of those studies have serious faults -- either in not controlling the population that they're studying and confounding effects (eg, there might be a correlation between mental disorders and drugs because people prone to disorders are prone to seeking out drugs, not because drugs cause disorders; people who smoke both marijuana and cigarettes in lung cancer studies without adjusting for whether people also smoke tobacco) or they test at levels of consumption which most people don't partake in (ie, alcohol is _really_ bad if you're a heavy alcoholic, but most people don't have to worry about that).

I don't think that marijuana smoking is harmless, but I think the degree of harm is obscured because of a lack of study, particularly long-term studies. (And, well, let's be honest: some of the research put out about marijuana came out of what are effectively government propaganda labs -- there was _very_ little chance that they wouldn't find it was 'dangerous', in order to justify the scheduling.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Calories in a six-pack of beer: 960

Calories in one joint: 0

<comment><USER27> Calories in the ungodly amounts of food eaten after smoking said joint: roughly 960

<comment><USER28> Don't know about you, but if I go out for beers I almost always end up getting 1000+ calories worth of pizza/kebab/chips

<comment><USER29> Mmm, beer and kebab.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> A sidenote from a former bartender in a rough area: I'd be happy if this trend continues. I've had loads over loads of alcohol-related fights, but never a single problem with stoners. The stuff chills people down, in contrast to alcohol which for some people is enough to get them out of control for insulting their favorite politician...

</comment><comment><USER31> I've often thought about it as an alternative to alcohol for people with liver damage but apparently it can damage the liver also. Even so this buzzfeed article is a very interesting account by an alcoholic who reckons it helped her quit the booze

[https://www.buzzfeed.com/katieherzog/how-i-smoked-my-way- sob...](https://www.buzzfeed.com/katieherzog/how-i-smoked-my-way- sober?utm_term=.rtA8gDzeb#.yv7R69mJD)

<comment><USER32> I'm no biochemist, but I'm fairly confident that the liver toxicity of cannabis is orders of magnitude lower than alcohol.

The idea that cannabis can cause liver damage seems to have started from a study[1] on the effects of chronic marijuana use in patients with Hepatits C, a disease which primarily affects the liver. There was a correlation between heavier cannabis use and worse liver fibrosis, but I think it's pretty misleading to say "cannabis can damage the liver" \- so can acetaminophen, vitamins, and a million other chemicals, if taken in vast excess or with an already compromised liver.

[1][http://www.cghjournal.org/article/S1542-3565(07)01050-6/abst...](http://www.cghjournal.org/article/S1542-3565\(07\)01050-6/abstract)

<comment><USER31> >>I'm no biochemist, but I'm fairly confident that the liver toxicity of cannabis is orders of magnitude lower than alcohol.

I'm not sure how you can say that with any degree of confidence though. The study you reference refers to cannabis use in people infected with hepatitis C. Have you seen any results comparing the effects of alcohol on the liver in a similar cohort of patients?

<comment><USER32> My confidence in that belief isn't related to the study; I only referenced the study to point out that it had been misrepresented. The study has nothing to say about the effects of cannabis on a healthy liver.

The reason I believe it is admittedly anecdotal, but I still find it compelling: I've simply never heard of someone experiencing liver failure from chronic heavy cannabis use alone, whereas chronic heavy alcohol use alone is known to practically guarantee liver failure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> harborside, the bay area's largest purveyor of weed, recently opened a thousand plus-acre facility in the central valley, it's like any other crop dominated by big agriculture nowadays. it's the same people (mostly immigrants) working in every other type of ag in the valley. I have to so I'm surprised by how quickly it has normalized in the past few years. once federal law is sorted I hope it'll be great for the california economy.

the cost will drop quickly as a result, and I wonder what that will do to startups in the space. wholesale costs are plummeting but retail seems price- fixed, which is unsustainable when you have enough competition. once retail starts to plummet too -- say we reach a point where 3.5g costs the same as what currently buys 1g -- the value proposition of things like leaf (the IoT grow box) dies, and eaze, meadow, and all the other uber-for-weed startups become too cost inefficient... it seems like a lot of startups in the general weed space are (literally) banking on the fact that prices haven't dropped yet, but I don't think that will last at all.

<comment><USER34> I'm in the process of becoming a farmer. Weed is one of the crops I've researched. It could take a ~90% drop in price and still provide a sustainable profit.

That's from a cultivators perspective.

<comment><USER35> This will depend on local regulations if you want to do it totally legit. WA state, for example, still does not allow farms to grow outdoors. It has to be indoors in a controlled-access facility and uses a huge amount of electricity.

<comment><USER34> Oh yeah, that's definitely using my more optimistic numbers. But if those costs are >10% of your costs (post first year) then you should definitely rethink some things.

If I shoot for high yield (10 oz), 400w @ 0.17 per kWh * (18 hrs * (7 days * 4 weeks)) + (12 hrs * (7 days * 8 weeks)) = 400w @ $0.17 per kWh * (504 hrs + 672 hrs = 1176 hrs) = 471 kWh * 0.12 = $80.02. That's with Northern Lights which would probably go for $1500 per pound, or ~$900 per plant per season. Electricity (well just light, which should be >85% of your electrical costs) would only account for 8% of the production costs.

Infrastructure costs would be amortized and recovered within the first year of full scale operation but just for arguments sake you can source a secure grow inside a $5000 insulated 40' shipping container. Conduit, outlets, panels, grounding, etc. would be $3000 if hired out through Angieslist but if you DIY it, $1000 is feasible. Including a sufficient ~4hr battery UPS. HVAC can then similarly take $1000-$4000 depending on needs and necessities. Totalling out to maybe $15,000?

A 40' container would comfortably do 3 seasons of 40 plants in 1 year, effectively taxing each plant $125 for the first year. The yield would be about 75 lbs @ $1500/lbs = $112,500 in year one. As such, each secure building would only cut 13% of your first years profits... or put another way, 14% of your first years plants' expense.

Granted, these are just Internet numbers. I can speak more candidly and openly offline, but I reiterate -- all of your expenses should be < 10% for an indoor grow op.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I perform very highly at work (pun intended) and have not seen continuous daily usage over the past ten years hamper my career or health in the same way drinking for the same amount of time would have caused (I drink maybe once every few months, and only in social situations, never alone). A lot of people where I work get high as well, roughly 3 out of every 4 engineers or so. This is probably not an industry average or even close to it but it is "Stoners At Work" for sure because this is the California culture, and as far as I can tell, California still produces some of the best tech products and tech teams on Earth and will continue to do so in spite of legalization. I think it might even be helping people with mental health issues, especially those dealing with severe stress and the quiet depression that is so pervasive in the tech industry.

The zone I get into when I code high is amazing. It feels like I'm Da Vinci re-incarnate, deeply thinking about my work. I seem to be able to piece things from long term memory better (although I will admit that short-term memory and situational awareness is severely hampered). It also takes away the clarity of sobriety but the level of concentration and depth of thought it grants your imagination is well worth it, and of course, is only temporary. It does amplify even the smallest instinct of hunger so I tend to do it after I eat, not before.

I also prefer to use it post-workout as it relaxes my muscles much better than anything else outside of a warm jacuzzi. I'm guessing the inflammatory response from the body also helps with recovery soon after a high-intensity workout. I haven't looked at that aspect too deeply yet, I just know what my body tells me. The high itself is also amplified post-workout so you actually need to consume less to get the same effect as at rest.

These are my experiences, not science, but I'm guessing many others might share similar experiences. Note that I do not smoke marijuana, only vaporize it. Smoking in general is just bad internally and externally so I believe vaporizing or ingestion are the best methods.

<comment><USER37> Just to provide a countering anecdote: My cognitive abilities, including those I use during programming, are adversely affected. The extent can vary, but it's definitely noticeable for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I believe that one of the main verified aspects of cannabis consumption is something called the munchies. Users want to eat. And when humans eat, they want to drink as well. And if the cannabis use is in a social context, the food that they eat will be social food. Since people are programmed to drink beer with social food, I can only see the use of cannabis being a driver for beer consumption.

However, there will likely be a big impact on beer sales for Wall street. They see the beer sales of big publicly traded companies, brands like Budweiser, etc. But in the world of cannabis consumption people are more likely to be consuming beer from small local breweries, which fly under Wall Street's radar because they are more like trendy restaurants than like McDonalds.

I do expect legal weed to change things, but I don't expect beer sales to go down. However the big breweries will lose market share because consumption patterns will change. If your business model requires vast numbers of people to buy your product, then a future in which people are more diverse, is not a good one for you.

And if you look at how many people are explicitly rejecting mass conformity such as political correctness, you can see problems for Wall Street while at the same time business is booming and local scale businesses thrive.

</comment><comment><USER39> Should have been rescheduled already. What's the hold up

<comment><USER14> Weed ensures there's a steady supply of safe arrests and easy convictions. It keeps police looking busy and jails full. Politicians love it because it pushes up convictions, and so makes them look tough on crime.

Police unions, private prison corporations and politicians all have strong incentive to oppose legalization.

<comment><USER40> In my country (Uruguay), marijuana is legal, but police still hate it.

Headlines today here were about a 19 year old rural young person who was in the legal register (yes, you have to register to grow or purchase marijuana, not something the U.S. will like), but police still locked him up saying he was over the legal limit, by weighing untreated marijuana and saying each branch was a different plant (maximum allowed by law is 6).

Spanish language link:

[http://www.montevideo.com.uy/contenido/Procesaron-con- prisio...](http://www.montevideo.com.uy/contenido/Procesaron-con-prision-por- cultivo-de-marihuana-a-joven-que-estaba-registrado-342134)

Google translate: [https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=es&tl=en&js=y&prev...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=es&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.montevideo.com.uy%2Fcontenido%2FProcesaron- con-prision-por-cultivo-de-marihuana-a-joven-que-estaba- registrado-342134&edit-text=&act=url)

<comment><USER14> The "each branch is a new plant" was once a common tactic here, as well. I suppose that police everywhere dislike the loss of authority.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady In the US. I'm not sure about many other countries but, in the UK at least, there isn't even a discussion around legalizing marijuana for any use case (not even medical really). It was big news this week when the first prescription marijuana was given however it was non-THC oil and given to a severely ill child. That's how far behind things are here.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm somewhat surprised as alcohol expenses in a given month on average tend to be a lot more expensive than marijuana. You can buy 1/4 for around $100 which should last a full month even with a <strike>heavy</strike> moderate smoker.

<comment><USER41> Wishful thinking. :) I'd say 1/8 oz a day (about 1 oz a week / 4 oz a month) would not be unusual for a single, heavy smoker/vaper with bigger amounts most certainly possible (depending on tolerance, way of consumption (efficiency), and quality of the flower). This is just for one person. Ounces range from around ~ $120 - $500 or more across the country (if bought in bulk). You really cannot underestimate tolerance. As far as I have been able to discern, there is no upper limit on it. At some point, you can consume all the cannabis you want and simply not get much higher. I have no doubt there are many people consuming (and possibly spending) way more than these numbers indicate too.

<comment><USER20> 4 oz of weed per month is one of the most outrageously heavy uses I've ever heard of.

It would be grossly unusual for a single user. Grossly, extravagantly, extremely unusual.

I'd wager that less than 0.1% of all cannabis users approach 4g/day. They may binge up to 4g on their heaviest day of all time, but average far lower.

I would argue it's very unusual if only because the set of all people who can access 4oz/weed per month, and can afford the $1000-$2000/mo ($24,000/yr!) hobby is very small. Add up all of the trust fund kids with enough money, time and access and you have a tiny, tiny number of people.

An average heavy user can only afford that much weed if they're dealing and skimming, and supply and demand insists that not everyone can be a supplier. Even so, I'd wager the average heavy user chooses to use far, far, far less than 1oz every other week.

<comment><USER42> Please, these are posters on Hacker News. We work at tech companies and make large salaries. If you purchasing that much you are probably only spending $800 per month (prices get lower the more you use). While this is still around 10k a year it is definitely very manageable on a 6 figure salary

<comment><USER43> Be that as it may, GP said 4g/day is "not unusual", and I would argue that while not impossible, that much is certainly unusual (as in, not common).

<comment><USER44> Lots of thing can be not unusual while being uncommon. Hearing someone is a software engineer isn't unusual but we are only 2.54% of the working population in the USA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Tip of the iceberg. I'm far more interested in how industries are affected by hemp (paper, textiles, chemicals). Where are all the YC-back hemp-focused startups?

<comment><USER40> Hemp has been legal forever, AFAIK, what would the difference be now? More supply?

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> The misleading title made me think weed would outsell beer, which dumbfounded me.

Jeez. Have some integrity.

<comment><USER47> From a Wall Street point of view, a 2% drop in beer sales is a big deal. I agree that the average person would probably misinterpret this headline.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Will it? I've visited colorado and saw bars and alcohol doing well. Im not convinced the demographics are the same.

<comment><USER49> Parties I attend tend to have both plenty of marijuana and beer handy. People want to drink for a variety of reasons.

Sure, some people (myself included) prefer a bit of weed or a brownie over a few beers, but that's a personal preference thing.

hell, my grandmother smokes marijuana and still has a beer or two before bed.

/anecdotal evidence

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I find it hard to believe that Americans like their weed this much. Smoking tobacco - gateway drug to smoking weed - is not the thing people do these days, unlike in past times when 'everyone' smoked. If smoking is not recreational/sociable, how do people start with weed in the USA? Is it just for kids?

Then there are all those meth epidemics and cocaine users and prescription opiates making the USA 'fun'. For kids that have gone straight to heroin from prescription drugs, what is the attraction of weed? It would be like an alcoholic going for a lemonade shandy rather than another bottle of wine/spirits/cider/super-strength beer.

I thought weed was going the way of interesting trippy drugs - LSD, mushrooms - that exist but people don't go crazy for. Nowadays the disease of addiction has better outlets in U.S.A. and the social aspect of smoking is gone, so who smokes pot in the USA these days apart from those with medical reasons to do so?

<comment><USER51> I am curious if you have never visited the United States, you're atypically nonsocial, or live in an isolated region.

I'm really interested as to how you got your perspective, as I find all of your premises bizarre.

<comment><USER50> I am one of those people that used to visit the U.S.A. but stopped going some years ago. Why might that be?!?

Allegedly there was an election recently and some people voted for the crazy guy with small hands because he promised to build a wall to keep the drugs out. I don't think it was a bit of weed that concerned people, it was the epidemic in the truly destructive opiate/cocaine/crystal meth drugs that motivated them to vote.

From what I hear all of this sad addiction epidemic goes on in isolated regions, rural America with 30 million Americans - mostly vulnerable people - getting hooked on the crazy drugs due to being prescribed opiates and then having to score on the street because it is cheaper. There is nothing recreational about this type of sad drug use, it is death spiral addiction where nobody does well as a recovering addict.

These drugs get TV advertised, 'ask your doctor' is a unique U.S.A. thing, as is watching hours of TV laced with advertising. The rest of the world is not racing along with consumerism at the same level being bombarded with adverts for dangerous medications. But articles make it onto the web describing the horrors of the situation:

[https://www.vox.com/science-and- health/2017/3/23/14987892/op...](https://www.vox.com/science-and- health/2017/3/23/14987892/opioid-heroin-epidemic-charts)

Sounds to me like the U.S.A. has turned into a land of zombies with people in California still safe, but, good luck if you live in New Mexico or Ohio, you are not going to be far from one of these otherwise dull and unremarkable Americans turned criminal crazy by prescription drugs.

So is that a tenth of the population doing shameful drugs that are totally not 'recreational' or social? These people are not spending their money on weed as they have the percocet or whatever to score or their crystal meth to 'shake and bake'.

I don't see how a population engaged in such activities can also support a 'healthy' dope smoking scene particularly when normal smoking of tobacco has been made a taboo thing to do.

<comment><USER51> Thanks for sharing your perspective. If I may, I think that you have taken U.S. sensational news stories and popular movies as your entire context of the U.S. Since nobody else is respecting your point of view, I'll share.

1\. Smoking tobacco is seen as a mild taboo, but many people still do it. As long as the smoking is done outside and away from a main entrance, it's unlikely anyone will comment.

2\. A large amount of people are addicted to prescription opiates, but if you go to New Mexico or Ohio, it's not going to look like a scene out of _The Walking Dead_. The total amount of addicted people is estimated to be 2 million [1]. Out of 300 million people, it means that this tragedy is hidden unless you personally know an affected person. By the way, many in California _are_ affected by this issue.

3\. Tobacco isn't considered a "gateway" to cannabis use by experts or credible laypeople. Tobacco users and Cannabis users have little relation or overlap.

4\. Cannabis is usually introduced in the same manner as alcohol (at parties or small gatherings of friends), though alcohol is far more socially acceptable. Cannabis has never been primarily considered a "trippy" drug in the U.S. ---though there are many people who do use it that way--- it's more of a recreational substance. Cannabis use has declined among the under 18-year-olds over the past decade, but has increased among adults.

4\. There are many methamphetamine and heroin addicts in absolute numbers, but again, they do not dominate any metropolitan area. Sure, it is easy to find addicts among homeless populations, but it isn't like _Crash_ , _Breaking Bad_ , or _The Wire_ in terms of pervasiveness and intensity.

1\. [https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/data/overdose.html](https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/data/overdose.html)</comment></comment></comment></comment>