Google and Apple in $415M 'non-poaching' settlement offer - pierre-renaux http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30843644 <comment><AUTHOR> It is a mistake to view the settlement through the lens of "$X paid per person."

These companies colluded to depress the wages of an entire industry. "50,000" people were not effected. "64,000" people were not effected. Those numbers are just the work forces of the companies involved in the lawsuit.

The entire greater Bay area technology job sector, one of the highest paid jobs in America, in the region of its highest concentration, was artificially depressed. These companies put a ceiling on what a given job was worth. If you work in Silicon valley in technology, you were effected. The ability to moved to another company and get paid what you are worth was effected.

The shear scope and damage these companies did is almost beyond belief. We are not talking hundreds of millions of dollars. We are talking Billions and Billions.

The ripple effects are even crazier. How many new technology companies did not get created because people's depressed salaries reduced how much they could save to bootstrap something new? How much did technology workers not spend into the service industry or the larger economy, because they were underpaid?

This is a staggeringly insidious act with wide reaching repercussions beyond Adobe poaching some PhDs from Google, or vice versa.

<comment><USER2> I agree that there were larger, diffuse consequences for a great many people, but the mass tort system isn't really designed to remedy that kind of thing.

The most appropriate mechanism for that is government action. There was such an investigation, and it did find wrongdoing, but the ultimate response was so feeble as to be meaningless. The DOJ sued the tech companies under the Sherman Antitrust act which reads in part:

 _Every person who shall make any contract or engage in any combination or conspiracy hereby declared to be illegal shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $100,000,000 if a corporation, or, if any other person, $1,000,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding 10 years, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court._

After filing suit, the government settled the case in exchange for a promise not to violate the law for five years. Given that they were already obligated to follow the law, and not just for five years, one wonders what the point was.

<comment><USER3> > but the mass tort system isn't really designed to remedy that kind of thing.

I'd say prison could be a great remedy for that sort of thing.

<comment><USER4> I was very disappointed not to see prison sentences for executives and other fiduciaries in the 2008 financial scandals. Weren't those used in the 80s S&L crisis? I understand that large corporate penalties can hurt society or innocent employees, but we can still deter bad behavior if we hold individuals accountable. Of course the rich will always be more likely to evade justice, but I feel like 2008 was more blatant than usual and sent a strong message that if you're rich you can act with impunity.

<comment><USER5> So am I, but look at the vitriolic 'class warfare' narrative that opponents of the administration have been carrying on for the last 6 years. Every time the government makes a bank pay out money to settle accusations of financial asset misrepresentation (eg some of the shenanigans around mortgage-backed securities), the Wall Street Journal and its ilk wax wroth about 'government shakedowns' and so forth. So imagine the response if the DoJ launched criminal prosecutions of big bank CEOs in addition to fraudsters like Bernie Madoff - there would be cries about a communist takeover and what-all else.

It's also true that the regulatory environment was sufficiently lax, and the chain of responsibility sufficiently convoluted, that it would have been hard to make any such prosecutions stick. Financial crime is generally slow to come to trial anyway because it's so hard to prove intent beyond a reasonable doubt, and so hard to pin it on any individual in a sufficiently large organization. As well as (possibly) leading to political upheaval and (definitely) causing a major chilling effect on business activity in the middle of the worst financial crisis in almost everyone's living memory, it would have been ethically, legally, and strategically problematic to bring charges that would not be easily provable at trial. If the CEO of (imaginary) MegaBank had been put on trial and the case collapsed, it would have poised every other prosecution for 20 years. That's not rational, but at the national level prosecutions have a big political dimension, there's just no getting away from it.

My read is that the administration opted to go the route of administrative penalties with the twin goals of maintaining relative stability in the financial industry and getting Dodd-Frank passed on congress to provide much stronger regulatory options for the longer term. It's not an emotionally satisfying strategy, but a pragmatic one taken in the interests of continuity. I would have preferred a top-to-bottom shakeout of the financial industry, and maybe a change in the economic and social order that would result, but the problem with revolutionary changes is that once begun it's hard to stop them turning. Look at the French revolution; half the instigators ended up on the guillotine themselves and 10 years after France had got rid of a king they ended up with an emperor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cost of a chat service company with 55 employees:.......................... $19,000,000,000

Cost of systematically colluding to depress the wages of employees:....... $415,000,000

</comment><comment><USER7> Yeah, this seems silly to me. Judges very rarely reject settlement offers, so if 324.5 million was deemed so low as to reject the settlement, bumping it up a bit to 415 doesn't make much of a difference.

<comment><USER8> What planet do you live on where $100m is chump change?

<comment><USER9> Well, if the size of the class is 50000 workers, that amounts to about 2000 per worker... about a weeks wage?

<comment><USER10> Who's eligible for the class? Only employees of those corporations? Or the tech/engineering marketplace at large?

<comment><USER11> My understanding is that it's only people who were employees of these companies at the time, though it's easy to argue that anybody in the tech industry was indirectly affected.

I.e. the salary paid to these employees influences the salary expected to be paid to people doing the same at a different company. Especially considering the size and importance of the companies involved. Strangely, I haven't seen this discussed much in articles about this scandal. (of course I say that as someone who did _not_ work at any of the involved companies)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> $415 million is still pitifully low. At what point will the judge just force a trial?

<comment><USER13> Seriously, it needs to be 10x this to makeup for all the money they saved, and 100x this to make sure they never do it again.

<comment><USER14> $41.5 billion? Yup, that'd probably stop any companies from trying this again.

<comment><USER15> $4.15 billion.

<comment><USER16> $4.15 billion would be 10x, and $41.5 billion would be 100x

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Remember that it's a settlement to avoid a trial. The settlement amount is going to be somewhere in between $0 and the real damages, modified by the odds of winning the trial. Additionally, the lawyers in a class action have a real aversion to going to trial, since they are working on contingency and get nothing if it goes to trial and they lose. That should drive the settlement offer down too.

<comment><USER18> It would seem then that that is an excellent reason to litigate this on your own rather than through a class action.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The evidence is the email. A crime was committed. forget the settlement, the CEOs need to go to jail

<comment><USER20> just ban them from being director for 10 years - you have sacked yourself and all those options that haven't vested back to the company they go.

Or start enforcing the fit and proper persons test for senior managers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I really hope Apple/Google will do admission of wrongdoing with an apology letter, as I suggested before.

</comment><comment><USER22> There aren't many things you can do to make people worse off at that scale. It's 50-60k employees and hundred thousands more affected by this to some extent. I mean, if you rob a supermarket or a bank it's like a drop in the ocean damage comparing to what executives at Google and Apple did. Why aren't people involved prosecuted, jailed or at least permanently removed form any positions of power and/or influence ?

Every time I read this emails it's my "I don't want to live in this world any longer moment". I mean some of those "I don't want to leave paper trail we can be sued over" people are still in prominent positions today.

</comment><comment><USER23> I want to see executives in jail over this.

</comment><comment><USER24> "Poaching"?

Do they see their employees as property or something?

<comment><USER25> resources to be utilized as "efficiently" as will be tolerated

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is horrible timing with Immigration Reform. The incorrect argument that tech companies want reform to keep wages low is going to get a lot of fuel if they don't agree to a reasonable settlement soon. The long term effects of letting highly skilled immigrants in to join and start companies on the tech industry is an order of magnitude higher than paying a couple $b to right the wrong for Google and Apple.

</comment><comment><USER27> Is this not Capitalism? Lowering costs. If your worth more then what you are getting paid, quit? Ask for a raise? Seems bad to expect companies to just drop fantastic paying jobs into your laps.

Government regulation to increase wage prices, seems like communism.

<comment><USER28> No, capitalism is supposed to involve companies competing with one another (including competing for employee talent), not colluding with their nominal competitors. That's an oligopoly or cartel and it's a market failure similar to a monopoly.

<comment><USER29> I agree with the spirit of what you're saying, but I think it's more accurate to call what you're describing a "free market" than "capitalism"; the latter does not in fact preclude market failures such as oligopolies/cartels.</comment></comment></comment>


How software is eating venture capital - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/mahendraramsinghani/2013/10/02/how-software-is-eating-venture-capital/

<comment><AUTHOR> When I was out fund raising in 2000 the only person at any government agency who both understood me and provided any real help was Mahendra Ramsinghani who was then at the Michigan Economic Development Corporation.</comment>


New York City Battles on Against Dutch Elm Disease - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/new-york-city-battles-on-against-dutch-elm-disease <comment><USER2> This was news to me that there was any battle to be had here.

I grew up in a part of suburban Chicago where all the residential streets were lined with elms -- it looked very much like the photo of Central Park in the article. I can remember the little papery elm seeds littered everywhere. Over the course of my childhood in the 1980s they all got Dutch elm disease and every last one was removed. The village arborist would come by and spray paint a big green dot on the trunk -- a mark of death -- and a week later it'd be gone.

By the time I was in high school, it looked very bare. Most of the elms were replaced with maples, which are only now starting to look reasonably substantial.

<comment><USER3> Many cities replaced those dead elms with ash trees lining the streets, and now they're facing a similar plight with the emerald ash borer.

<comment><USER4> What were their reasons for planting another monoculture, after the last one ended so badly? It seems obvious to me that an urban mixed forest would be more resilient against disease -- so I'm guessing that urban planners had some reason I'm not thinking of...

<comment><USER5> Dutch elm disease (and emerald ash borer) wiped out natural tree populations in forests just as thoroughly as those planted in the city. While monocultures are not helping, that is a footnote to the real problem here: these diseases are invasive and native tree species have no resistance to them.

<comment><USER6> There is still elm growing wild. They are spaced out enough that transmission doesn't happen fast.

The geographic spread of the ash borer is less complete than Dutch elm disease, so it's less clear what will happen over the long term. Maybe pockets of saplings will outlast the insects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I built the Open Elm Project [1] back in 2011 to help mitigate the risk caused by lack of funding for professional surveys where I live.

Consists of a Django service with CouchDB as the data store and a couple of web-based iOS and Android apps.

Woefully neglected now since it was not really used. Uptake of mobile apps for this type of thing is difficult – especially in a population of 80k back in 2011/2012.

It looks like iriscouch.com is no longer live, as the data isn't loading on the map. Good thing I had it replicating to another server. :)

Source: [https://github.com/andrewgleave/OpenElm](https://github.com/andrewgleave/OpenElm)

[1] [http://www.openelm.org.im](http://www.openelm.org.im)

<comment><USER6> It'd only be vaguely silly to use OpenStreetMap as your data store.

[http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:natural%3Dtree](http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:natural%3Dtree)

<comment><USER7> Interesting idea. If I reinvigorated the project I would probably have it augment some existing data set rather than create another independent one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Pedantry: The Nautilus article claims that the disease entered the US via a shipment of furniture. This is incorrect. Dutch elm disease came to the US in unprocessed logs. You only need to read the NYT article that is cited:

 _" The fungus that causes the disease -- Ophiostoma ulmi -- accidentally entered the United States in 1931 on elm logs shipped from France and headed for Cleveland."_

These unprocessed logs were destined to be turned into veneer for furniture and cabinetry.

</comment><comment><USER9> In speaking with a Dendrologist, today I learned that the primary factor here is the close proximity of "planted" elm trees.

Elm bark beetles don't travel far on their own, so in a typical forest environment, elm groves are protected, or buffered, by a variety of surrounding tree types, the distance between groves, and the natural order of things.

Whereas, in (sub)urban areas, elm trees are planted up and down residential streets, in close proximity, with no buffers in between.

There's no winning this one.

<comment><USER10> Every 100 feet replace a 50 foot buffer of something else to provide disease firebreaks?

Do you know why were so many elms were planted? Elms look nice, but so do other trees. Diversity is nice...

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Related: the American Chestnut has also had a very hard battle. It's almost completely gone, but scientists struggle on. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chestnut_blight](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chestnut_blight)

</comment><comment><USER12> Mature American Elms are beautiful trees, especially over walkways like in Central Park. Hope they can sort this out.

</comment><comment><USER13> Stupid question: could eradicating a disease like this one cause unpredicted side effects? Like driving some beetles to extinction causing other side effect? Or is it known that these diseases are purely nefast?

ps: anyone is subscribed to Nautilus? Their free articles are great. I wonder if the magazine as a whole is worth it.

<comment><USER6> The beetles are not native to the US, so any side effect of eradication here would be back towards the way things would be without ocean shipping.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's sad to see the demise of grand old elm trees due to Dutch Elm disease as those trees take decades to reach maturity, can't be easily replaced, and their replacements are generally also susceptible to the disease. Oak wilt disease is having a similar effect on oak trees across the southeast US.</comment>


Show HN: Shadow Cities - Location Based MMO for iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://www.shadowcities.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi guys. We have been working with the game almost about year now and just opened up the game on the US App Store.

<comment><USER2> Hi enra, I just played this for about 30 minutes. I was intrigued because it was billed as location-based MMO. The site didn't really give me any expectations of what the gameplay was going to be like.

The intro made me smile when the fingerprint showed up. Didn't know which team to pick because I couldn't tell if there was any particular strength in each side. I went with Architects. I was imagining possibly have some powers from the surrounding buildings?

Game started and it put me on my home address, not current location. Awesome! how'd it do that? I liked the tutorial to the gameplay. It was clear. It looked like you were using openstreetmap. I spent some time noticing the fog- of-war effect and the lighting.

The game started and I repeated the tutorial steps to advance. At first, I didn't see that I had to click "collect my reward" on the missions screen. Why not give the reward on completion? The Missions screen is difficult to read. Even though there isn't much text here, I didn't read most of it. Everything is kind of center-aligned and difficult to understand at a glance. The cloud- view was a cool effect, but the map was blurry here. Somethings I am looking forward to see: Other players in the game, and figuring out what to do to capture a gateway. I will definitely keep playing the game.

good luck

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot for the detailed feedback. Missions are something we trying to improve pretty soon.

For the wrong location part, I could guess that your device's location services were not on or working for some reason.

Yeah and please try play the game for a while. Most of the fun comes from the weekly campaigns and when you get to more urban areas, or have friends build teleports(beacons) for you to jump to.

Also see the <http://www.shadowcities.com/help/> or ask help in the in-game chat or on the forums <http://www.shadowcities.com/forum/> :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Too bad that there aren't any holes in the seal in North America, let alone other parts of the world other than Europe.

I guess that makes me safe from magical creatures, but it means I'm away from the fun and action of it all. ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> We're are you based at? We are in process of improving the maps for Northern America but there should be Gateways here and there and at least in cities.</comment></comment>


Is Uber Making Taxi Service Better? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/uber-taxi-drivers-complaints-chicago-newyork/397931/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> I took an Uber during the tube strikes of London quite recently. They had a surge pricing that almost tripled fares. That's understandable.

I was speaking to the driver, asking about his opinions on Uber. I started the conversation assuming Uber gave him an opportunity to work. It was not exactly like that.

He used to work at a taxi company for around 30 years. Then Uber came. They lost a lot of business to Uber, because of the lower prices. Also it didn't help that the boss was the only person taking the calls and sometimes he forgot to tell the drivers that a job was available, or he just slept through calls. So the company shut down.

His son started working for Uber, and was very happy with it. So he started working for Uber too, but he said he was earning much less, and working more.

Also he complained that the customers would sometimes have a lot of luggage bags, and his previous employer allowed him to charge extra for luggage bags, extra people, or other "inconveniences". Uber doesn't. So he wasn't happy, but he doesn't have many options.

Uber seems to be making it better for the customers, and worse for the "old school" drivers.

Edit: He did mention that when driving for Uber, if he sees someone with lots of luggage bags or lots of people, he just doesn't pick them up. I guess Uber may eventually come up with penalties against that, if they haven't already.

<comment><USER3> Had this exact thing the other day.

I had boxes and I ordered an uber, done it before, used them a good 50+ times.

The driver turned up and said an "UberX" is just the person, nothing else, that's what the next one is for.

I've never seen any info telling me this, so this is Uber's fault I feel and I've chatted to the same type of people, they work more, but also they said, sometimes the controllers in London, send drivers around everywhere for a fair, whereas Uber it is perfect for people to pick in the same area.

So to excuse the phrase, it's all swings and roundabouts. I'd love to be able to pick up a black cab and maybe pay a little bit more as their knowledge far outweighs any gps alternative.

<comment><USER4> Maybe he meant 'uber XL' (which is the next step up on the slider), which are people carriers for more people/bigger items?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Data from more than a billion cab rides reveal that customer complaints in > New York and Chicago steadily declined after Uber came to town.

Probably because most of the people who typically file complaints switched to Uber, leaving just the complacent taking taxis.

</comment><comment><USER6> I finally, after many years, found Taxi service in NYC to be very, very good.

Then Uber popped up and the city is absolutely filled with car services. There's a million black cars on the road and yellow cab companies from New Jersey here. As dangerous as taxi drivers were, I've found these (as a pedestrian) to be much worse.

Then my experiences using Uber have been pretty bad -- from new drivers not knowing how the app works to people not knowing their way around Manhattan/Brooklyn and either _not following_ their GPS or blindly following their GPS. On one ride the driver tried to drive in a circle 3 times and then chose to take the battery tunnel (and pass along the toll) when we were next to the Williamsburg Bridge. I had one experience last week where I hailed an Uber and a drunk woman waiting for a cab jumped in and tried to get him to take her home. I explained to the driver that I was his fare and then he acted totally disinterested in the fact that she was in the car and had me deal with telling her to get out.

And now when I get in a normal taxi, my experience is much worse.

Uber is really great for two things: cost effective rides from NYC into New Jersey and the ability to summon a ride to your location. Probably the outer boroughs and Long Island are good too but I don't have experience with that. Other services are summonable and there's no reason that normal taxis couldn't be as well.

Honestly, as a midtown resident, I hate Uber in New York City. They drive dangerously on the road here and now it seems like everyone else is too (especially the tour bus companies and private sanitation services). It's lawless here in part because of them.

<comment><USER6> Seeing as my post is already unpopular, I'll get right to the point.

Over 2000 for-hire car services are being added to the streets every month in NYC. This is causing an unbelievable amount of congestion in an already crowded city. Within two years, the number of these will be double the number of yellow cabs we already have on the road.

The average speed of traffic this year was the slowest recorded - 8.5 miles per hour - and will slow further as we add more of these cars.

<comment> UK-AL Surely if taxis are not available, people drive? Increasing congestion.

<comment><USER7> Actually taxis and personal automobiles do not create an equivalent amount of congestion. Personal automobiles tend to go point to point during several peak periods, after which they park and are off the roads. Commercial vehicles like taxis, on the other hand, are in service all day. Taxicabs, in particular, produce a lot of congestion since they're always stopping to pick up/drop off fares.

The money shot on this is that a single taxi produces congestion equivalent to about 40 personal vehicles, and a 15% increase in taxicabs reduces all traffic speeds by about 12% [1]. A certain level of taxis is a good thing, but they don't solve the need for an effective mass transit system.

[1] [http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2012/01/20/more- taxis-...](http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2012/01/20/more-taxis-mean- more-traffic/)

<comment><USER8> A single taxi replaces several cars, so its unremarkable that a taxi "causes congestion equivalent to" many cars. You said a 15% increase in taxi cabs reduces traffic speeds by 12% but you didnt compare it with a similar increase in private cars.

<comment><USER7> The article did address that - the simulated "15% increase in traffic volume" results from adding either an additional 2,000 taxis OR the equivalent 80,000 private cars.

You may think that it's more socially optimal to have the taxi instead of the equivalent 40 private vehicles, of course. This is just speaking strictly in terms of congestion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I had to take a taxi from San Francisco Airport recently. It was the first time I've been in a taxi in close to 4 years, and it was amazing. On the outside, it's the same looking taxi with the same Yellow Cab company.

On the inside, I've never seen anything like it. Interior was spotless and smelled nice. The driver was exceedingly polite, like a black car driver. They happily took credit cards using a NFC reader. Before that ride I was actively avoiding taxis, and now I'd take one in a heartbeat.

If you haven't taken a taxi in a few years, I think you'll find it really different from what you've remembered, at least in the Bay Area.

<comment><USER10> You realize the only reason they've cleaned up their act is because Uber et al. are eating their lunch, right?

<comment><USER11> Well so ? That how competition works. If the taxi are getting better than Uber, not using because they used to be crap is the same position than people not using Uber because they are not the good old taxi.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As someone who doesn't often use taxis but often finds them the most pushy/unsafe drivers on the road I'll be interested to see if these other services improve that side of things.

Its particularly important for me when I'm a pedestrian because taxis/cyclists/delivery vans running red lights or taking corners too quickly are a relatively regular hazard that I'd be glad to be rid of.

<comment><USER13> When Uber purchases self-driving cars you'll see that side of things improve.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Uber & Lyft may have safety problems, but at least the drivers aren't using Crown Victorias with poor seatbelts. Imagine if John Nash hadn't taken a taxi that day.

<comment><USER15> I don't think this remark is appropriate, especially given that an UberX driver killed a 6-year-old about 2 and a half years ago, but mostly because Uber and Lyft have been around for only around 5 years at this point.

<comment><USER16> 5 years with that number of drivers is a ton of data.

<comment><USER15> That's true, but it's dwarfed by the amount of data representing traditional cabs. If we're not _just_ selecting for cases involving deaths, a string of cases implicating Uber drivers in violence against passengers[0,1,2] suggests - if nothing else - that the notion that Uber/Lyft drivers are qualitatively safer than taxis is false. And in the last case, it's clear that shortcomings in a system (namely, the thoroughness of background checks Uber runs) might have prevented such a turn of events.

0: [http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/UberX-Driver-Accused- of...](http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/UberX-Driver-Accused-of-Hitting- Passenger-with-Hammer-in-San-Francisco-277280041.html)

1: [http://laist.com/2015/04/10/uber_driver_attack_van_nuys.php](http://laist.com/2015/04/10/uber_driver_attack_van_nuys.php)

2: [http://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenhuet/2014/06/03/uber- driver...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenhuet/2014/06/03/uber-driver-with- felony-conviction-charged-with-battery-for-allegedly-hitting-passenger/)

<comment><USER17> 3 cases of "uber"-violence does nothing to suggest "that the notion that Uber/Lyft drivers are qualitatively safer than taxis is false" without data from the dangers of riding normal cabs to compare it to.

<comment><USER15> That's true. I think I just got annoyed at the emotional appeal of the Nash death and overreached. Sorry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's really not a "taxi" based on experience growing up in Boston.

To me, a taxi was always a super unreliable, and usually outrageously expensive (and unpleasant) service that you might take once in a blue moon. I never based a plan around the idea of getting a cab, there had to be other options.

With Uber, I can now reliably plan on them actually showing up, on time, and to even outside central locations. So it doesn't just win against the competition, but actually expands my demand for the product because I'll factor it into my plans.

</comment><comment><USER19> In Paris, taxi are making it worse in term of customer perception. For example, the last protest from taxi drivers that suspended the service UberPop [0].

0 : [http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/03/uber- suspe...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/03/uber-suspends- french-ride-sharing-service-uberpop)

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm using Uber quite often, but mostly to get home from central London. I live in zone 5, and I rarely find one around there.

Unfortunately, a lot of the drivers are very unskilled. I once almost crashed into a fence that the driver somehow didn't see. Another time, the GPS took the driver to a dead-end road, so I had to tell him to drive back and follow the road. When I mentioned that he has to turn right, he turned right straight away, on the wrong side of the road. I almost collided head-on with another car.

Maybe I've been unlucky, but these drivers need to be evaluated somehow. I was reading Shortlist the other day, and apparently it takes more than two years and around 20,000 miles on a scooter around London to pass the black cab driver test.

<comment> k-mcgrady I've used Uber from Zone 1-3 for the last few weeks. Some good experiences but I've had drivers with broken GPS asking me for directions, drivers who ignored Ubers GPS and used their own - which took poorer routes, and a driver who failed to understand a clear diversion and drove the wrong way down a 1 way road. On the other hand I had issues with fares twice (driver took an awful 'shortcut' and another driver cancelled after 10 mins and then surge pricing was in effect) and both times Uber quickly provided a refund (within hours).

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Maybe Uber doesn't make the Taxi service better yet but it will. Having new competitors will force taxis to improve their quality. This is true for any industry: as soon as new competitors enter, quality increases and/or prices are getting lower.

<comment><USER22> Except for where they are oligopolies, like the UK energy, water, telecoms markets etc.

In fact all UK privatised assets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> What I like the most about Uber is that I click, wait (and in the meantime can track where is the car) plus I can use this application worldwide. If there was a similar, international app for regular taxis (including price estimate), then I would use it.

(Taxi claim that regulations are to keep quality. But my brother's experience with Uber is much better than with regular taxis.)

So, in short, while Uber is making it harder for regular taxi drivers (especially bad regular taxi companies), it makes it better for the users. If taxi companies catch (instead of: complain), it will be win-win (for drivers and users, not necessary - Uber).

</comment><comment><USER24> Uber has made Taxi operators better for Indian cab drivers.

Pre-Uber (and Ola), operators used to pay drivers 60-90 days post. They would make arbitrary deductions, which the drivers could not protest.

Post-Uber, most drivers choose to go to Uber/Ola. Drivers say that the operators have cleaned up their act now. They pay 15-30 days post. They pay the right amounts, no deductions. In fact some drivers prefer to work with the operators..

</comment><comment><USER25> Outlawing competition worsens any service.

</comment><comment><USER26> The answer is No, per Betteridge's law of headlines.

The first thing article mentioned is lesser number of complaints in cab services. They present it as if Uber makes taxi better, but it can be that those who complained just switched to the Uber.

And complained there - who knows?</comment>


How to get better at designing products? - <AUTHOR>

Other than the actual practice (Building Products) : what other activities can make you a better product designer ? <comment><USER2> Another building products designer/manufacturer here. I'm not sure there is a substitute for practice. I always have a large sketch pad on hand for working out ideas. I think you would benefit from giving yourself design challenges. For me design is about constraints.

1\. Cut out a random convex pattern from paper and figure how many of that shape you can get from a piece of paper. Then figure out how you would have to alter it or separate it so as to maximize the number of pieces you could get from a single sheet of paper. How many more did you get from the sheet?

2\. Sketch repeating patterns or scribbles on paper and look for meta patterns or get inspiration from one aspect of the pattern that makes you see something else.

3\. Estimate how long of a strip of paper you would need to wrap around a cup or a block of legos. Then cut that length out and compare to the actual size to see how well you did. Compare that length to the width or height of the paper you cut it from. Will it divide evenly? Calculate the diameter from the length of the cup wrap or area of the legos.

4\. Learn to layout true length triangles

5\. Sketch products interesting to you on paper and consider their size and what shape that material would take if you flattened it out. Can you make it all in one piece? See if you can make small alterations to the dimensions to get more out of the material.

6\. Take those sketches and try to fit them in a 'golden' ratio, see how close you came.

IMO, learning to find THE meaningful constraints is a key to getting good at design.</comment>


Certification?  Bring it on! - <AUTHOR> http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/07/certification-bring-it-on.html <comment><USER2> I'm almost 100% opposed to a certification process that denies people the right to code if they don't hold certification X.

But this post did get me thinking about a different kind of certification - one based on safety rather than talent.

Society does have a reasonable interest in ensuring that applications that process sensitive personal data - like Social Security Numbers, Medical Information, Financial Information (bank account numbers) - meet a certain standard. And most people have no ability to evaluate the dangers of coding errors.

Society doesn't have the right to demand protection from untalented programmers. If you try to pay as little $$$ as possible, your app may suck, it may never get built, the wrong app may get built, etc... If you pay top dollar, the same thing may happen. If you can't evaluate code, you can't evaluate programmers, so you're hosed - and maybe you shouldn't be in this game. If you decide to play it, buyer beware seems to work fine.

But the general public, whose medical information or ssn is in a database somewhere, didn't decide to play this game - the game was played on them. So we'd say - you don't need any certification to code. But you do need certification to handle certain types of personal data.

And if there's a major hack of an application, we (the public) get to know exactly whose "certified" signature was on that piece of paper.

</comment><comment><USER3> The argument about what hiring or training focus is "the best" is a little silly, it seems to me, because different companies so obviously have different requirements.

Take Google, as a prototypical high-tech firm, and Getronics, as a prototypical business automation consultancy of the kind that tends to put hackers to sleep but that is quite profitable nonetheless.

Google tries to do things that are sufficiently technologically ahead that it will take competitors years to catch up. They'll work on problems before anybody realized they had them, and do things that might seem ridiculously speculative from the perspective of a Getronics executive, like statistical machine translation. Their hiring and and training seems to focus largely on finding, retaining, and developing intelligent generalists, and specialists in esoteric fields where there is no such thing as certification programs.

Getronics, on the other hand, deals with big business clients who are often satisfied with rather run-off-the-mill technology, as long as it's delivered predictably and uniformly. (Of course, that's harder than it sounds.) A typical big job for Getronics might be to help some organization upgrade from a mainframe with terminals to a SQL server with PCs, without interrupting operations. There's nothing particularly innovative about it (it's been done thousands of times before), and it will likely be tolerated if the resulting solution is a little clumsy, _but it had better not go wrong._

Getronics has a long and detailed internal training program, and they like people with very specific experience. They have people who are specialists in, say, office printing systems, and who know all the little quirks you'll run into when you move from Novell print servers to Microsoft print servers. If you work there for a number of years, you progress through a system of internal certifications and ranks that begins to approach those of a military organization.

For Google to behave like Getronics _or vice versa_ would probably be silly. If I held shares in these companies, I'd probably want them both to continue hiring and training much the way they do now, even though they're worlds apart in the ways they do it.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think it is natural for engineers (hackers, especially) to deal with situations on an as-needed basis. We just solve problems. We make at least SOME effort to solve them in such a way where they won't continually come back and bite us in the ass but security catastrophes are like earthquakes. They're low frequency events and therefore inherently difficult to learn from and plan for. It's possible but time consuming, so the average lone hacker will not bother until he absolutely must. We know it's important. It's in the back of our mind at all times. But shipping product and getting users NOW will always take precedence over architecting for the future, methinks.

And that is just the unfortunate reality for now until (heaven forbid) there are some actual laws preventing it.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Good article. I like this focus on the end result--can the guy create software which works, is testable, is reliable?

I'd heard of a good way of interviewing an IT guy, like a network admin:

You give them a machine with no OS, tell them to load it with whatever OS you usually use, join the network, and then do something pertinent to the job. If you're hiring an infrastructure guy for a startup you might ask him to create a machine with Ubuntu, Apache, Python, Ruby, Rails, Subversion, PostgreSQL, etc. If the dude can do all/most of it, and if you watch what he does (good use of the Internet? sensical file system setup? good eye for security?), then you might have a winner.

<comment><USER5> Yes, that IT test you cite is a good one, it actually test whether the guy can get real work done. The test that raganwald proposes doesn't actually test whether "the guy [can] create software which works, is testable, is reliable" -- it's testing whether they pass the test. Knowing your shit is one way to pass the test, but a _lot_ more people pass the test by just memorizing test materials and learning the _test_ instead of learning the _subject_.

The situation might be improved if the whole Test Prep industry were made illegal. The part that saddens me the most is that the people who make the tests are also the ones selling the Test Prep materials to teach you how to circumvent the test! argh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Exactly. After 10,000 tests in 20+ years of formal schooling, one more should do it.

<comment><USER7> I laughed so hard I almost fell out of my chair. Nice one!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The best software is reliable, intuitive, and has genuinely useful functionality. Like most ideas that violate the concept of the golden mean, this idea is appealing but fundamentally broken.

He refutes his own point about the free market when he says it is currently broken (businesses hire students with Comp. Sci degrees even though they can't necessarily program well), but that the same broken free market will be sufficient to determine if programmers can program well.

Identifying one arbitrary facet of software development and demanding that coders be experts at it, even if they can't do anything else, is shortsighted. This would make sense if testing was truely the hardest aspect of programming: if testing was the great ravine that thwarted aspiring programmers.

That, however, has not been my experience. Testing is not trivial, but making good design choices and understanding the concepts of programming that he disparages will take longer to learn than testing, and the free market has proven it evaluates these qualifications coarsely at best.

To be an expert is to have absorbed the symbols of your domain to the extent that they can be used effortlessly. Testing is only one of those symbols, and focusing on is flawed. So is ignoring it completely.

<comment><USER7> "He refutes his own point about the free market when he says it is currently broken (businesses hire students with Comp. Sci degrees even though they can't necessarily program well), but that the same broken free market will be sufficient to determine if programmers can program well."

You are assuming that the goal of the free market is to hire good programmers. It isn't. Do you think managers are holding their heads in their hands, moaning that they can't find good programmers? Outside of start ups, they don't care.

That is why I say the free market works. Yes, business hires Comp. Sci. people from "JavaSchools," but that's what they want!

I am not suggesting that someone with this hypothetical certification is an expert, or even good. I think I said that five or even six times in the post. Don't confuse the rant with a hypothetical measure of a "good programmer." It isn't!!! It is a description of qualities I personally think are necessary but not sufficient.

Please do not put words in my mouth about what I value and what I disparage. I said I do not care about certain things for the purpose of having this hypothetical certification. Take a few minutes googling me or reading my blog before deciding what I value or disparage.

So back to the free market: the "problem" with the free market for programmers is similar to the "problem" with the free market for pollution, worker safety, and a bunch of other things we regulate.

We have discovered that left to their own devices, businesses will make choices that expose their workers, their customers, and the public to danger.

I don't care if a business making software for dive computers hires someone who takes four times as long to write code for half the hourly wage. The business can make the call about whether this makes sense.

But I do care that the calculations are not broken, exposing me to death through Oxygen Toxicity, Nitrogen Narcosis, or the Bends. I'm not going on a crusade, it's just a post, but it's obvious to me that if businesses are left to make choices for themselves, they will put their customers in harm's way.

And that's all I want to prevent.

Summary: certification of the type I described is meant to be necessary but not sufficient. It doesn't say a Chef can cook well, it says a chef will not accidentally poison the soup.

<comment><USER8> As per inserting words into your mouth, I addressed your argument, not you. Regarding my post as if it were a personal attack is a disservice.

I don't follow your point about it being obvious that businesses will, left to themselves, put their customers in harm's way. Left to themselves businesses will do what maximizes profits. The behaviors that maximize profit are determined by the demand established by consumers. When consumers are unwilling to pay a premium for safety, then businesses will not provide safe products. Thus it is consumers, in their uninformed quest to maximize utility, that are hurting themselves.

Consumers need better information so they can make better decisions, as it stands they are making a flawed choice (assuming that safety is indeed worth more than we currently pay for it). On the other hand, businesses are making the only rational decision available by continuing to produce unsafe products for customers who won't adequately compensate companies for safer products.

Your certification mandates an additional cost on business, one that customers are currently unwilling to pay for, and thus fulfills the role of taxation, which--if we are going to buy into the free economy myth--will result in lower overall utility: for both customers and businesses.

<comment><USER7> By your argument, we should abolish laws regulating workplace safety, product safety, and pollution control.

All of these things could be enforced by consumer demand, but they are not. All of these things impose a cost on business, driving up prices.

There is room for believing that the free market should be unfettered to the point that businesses can be left to choose what level of safety to provide for workers, left to choose whether to make safe products, and left to choose whether to pollute our environment.

If you believe that, I think we differ at some axiomatic level, not a logical level.

I know that businesses are making "rational" decisions. But just because it "maximizes their utility" doesn't mean I want them to do it. Enron was rational. Why do we pass laws against its behaviour? Why can't we leave it to the marketplace to choose where to invest?

Again, this is a deep, axiomatic issue. If you are fundamentally against a regulated environment, I understand your view without agreement.

<comment><USER8> Consumers will buy the products that grant them the most utility. Workers have resources to create the environment such that safe workplaces create products with higher utility (by striking in unsafe environments, demanding higher pay in unsafe environments). Thus workplace safety can be, _and is_ , enforced by consumer demand.

Product safety is indeed regulated by consumer demand. People who value safety purchase safer cars, and safer cars exist to be purchased. When contact solution of a certain brand was found to be contaminated earlier this year, people stopped using it, even before the findings were certain. This is because the expected utility of using the product had fallen compared to that of other brands, and thus it was no longer worth its price.

Pollution control is similar to safety. People are willing to pay a premium for less polluting alternatives. Look at Google scrambling to declare itself a green entity. Look at the resurgence of locally grown food (which consumes less fuel in transport), but often costs more. There are real market forces exerting pressure upon businesses to provide less polluting services. It isn't clear that regulatory forces are being very successful (among other examples, Kyoto Protocol has failed miserably to achieve a meaningful shift).

Enron wasn't rational, as evidenced by committing wide-scale fraud. They were in a euphoric panic, simultaneously high off of their success and panicked that they could not maintain it. Their cavalier disregard to legality and honesty destroyed their company, and even without a governmental body to enforce regulations it seems inevitable that the gathering weight of their deception would have swallowed them whole. They pretended to have resources that didn't exist, and eventually consumers would have been awakened to this truth via a catastrophic failure of one sort or another: the existing government regulation certainly did nothing to curtail the financial pandemic that Enron's bloated corpse transmitted to America's economy.

You have a solid point, that we often don't like which actions are rewarded in life, and that it often seems like government regulation can improve on the allotments of resources: that an organization can compensate for the flawed actions of humans.

This is why we now have organizations (UN) that supervise organizations (countries) that supervise organizations (pronvinces) that supervise organizations (municipal districts), that supervise people. I always thought the idea was to build layers of abstraction on top of _working_ components. Somehow stacking layers of flawed implementations has always seemed to magnify and obfuscate flaws rather than compensate for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> At last one hiring "test" where I would utterly fail. It doesn't sound like much fun, either, so it would probably be for the better.

<comment><USER7> No, it really isn't much fun. Nor is it fun for Chefs to sit in class learning about hand washing protocols (there is a right and a wrong way to wash your hands).

Keep that in mind the next time you eat at a restaurant where they pay the food prep people minimum wage!

<comment><USER9> Point taken, and I am always subconsciously aware of the fact that eating out is icky.

However, I think there is a fundamental problem: if the protocol is too tedious, people will just ignore it. Then the situation is worse than before, because the protocol gives you a false sense of security.

Rather than complain about the people, I think it would make more sense to complain about the protocol and change it in such a way that it is impossible to get around it (without it being so tedious).

Example: in the bakery, the bread slicing machine only works with the protection down, so theoretically the worker can't possibly cut off his hands.

Also, a worker should be aware of the fundamental issues, rather than just follow a protocol like a robot. Especially with security, isn't it the most common reason for security to fail that people construct doors with foolproof security, only to leave a gaping whole open right next to it?

<comment><USER7> I think it would make more sense to complain about the protocol and change it in such a way that it is impossible to get around it (without it being so tedious).

Isn't this the basis for things like binary milestones, iterative development, continuous integration, and so forth? An attempt to set up the system such that the easiest thing to do is also the highest value thing to do, without being too draconian?

In the end, carrots work better than sticks, I quite agree.

<comment><USER9> If I was exactly sure what all these names stand for, I could answer that ;-)

I am sorry that my comment sounded so negative. Actually, I was really impressed about the certification I would fail. All the other "how to hire" articles so far were like "check that the candidate can add 2+2". And I wish I knew more about the methods you propose.

Isn't there always a lurking feeling of "there has to be a better way" in programming?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There is some correlation between presence/specific college/type of degree and certain relevant properties of a worker. That's why employers want to know. That's why everybody puts this info on the resume.

Do read this <http://paulgraham.com/judgement.html>

<comment><USER7> Nice. Did you know that Port goes well with Fruit and Cheese?

You may find this goes well with that:

[http://weblog.raganwald.com/2005/07/why-you-need-degree- to-w...](http://weblog.raganwald.com/2005/07/why-you-need-degree-to-work-for- bigco.html)

;-)

<comment><USER10> Do read that PG article. A simple non-emotional and non-defensive answer to the hiring manager telling him you didn't go to college, but rather did whatever else you did would be best, IMO.

How did you spend your your time in the mid-eighties, btw? You've got me intrigued now.

<comment><USER7> I read that article when PG published it, and again when you mentioned it. What makes you think I gave a defensive or emotional answer to the intermediary who asked the question?

I'm perfectly aware of the fact that the person asking the question either considers this piece of data of paramount importance OR they have twenty resumes on their desk that all look the same, and they're looking for an easy way to winnow the pile down to three, so even if it isn't that important, it's a way to shorten the pile.

I personally doubt that they were looking at twenty nearly-identical resumes. My experience is that either of two situations hold: first, they might really believe this is the most important thing they need to know, or second, they might not be particularly skilled at identifying good candidates.

Note that I am not claiming I'm a good candidate: but if I'm not worth an interview, they should be able to tell without that question, the facts are in plain view.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Coronavirus Vaccine Roundup, Early September - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/09/03/coronavirus-vaccine-roundup-early-september <comment><USER2> A note of optimism at the end:

 _An excellent side effect is that vaccine technology will never be the same after this – it's going to be like aircraft design before and after World War II, and for many of the same reasons. This whole pandemic has been awful, in many different ways, but we're going to come out of it stronger and more capable than when we went in._</comment>


Amazon "Punches Apple Hard" With Kindle Fire's $199 Price - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/02/amazon-punches-apple-hard-with-kindle-fires-199-price/ <comment><USER2> I don't agree with that posting. Amazon is going after a totally different market. The Kindle Fire will be no where near as elegant and trendy as an Apple iPad. They are for totally different purposes.

</comment><comment><USER3> The number of people who will buy a Kindle Fire _instead_ of an iPad is a lot smaller than the number who will buy one instead of a Kindle, or instead of nothing.</comment>


Why Perl isn't Going Away Soon (Or Ever) - <AUTHOR> http://ostatic.com/blog/guest-post-why-perl-isnt-going-away-soon-or-ever <comment><USER2> Article's conclusion: _After a short lapse, Perl development is picking up and enthusiasm for Perl 5 is as strong as ever._

I would agree. A little over a decade ago, Perl suffered from the same problems which plagued JavaScript in its early days: ease of writing shitty code, mountains of shitty sample code, and a community which did not vehemently encourage the writing of unshitty code.

This caused a backlash which lasted several years, during which the programming public panned the languages almost universally.

But a funny thing happened; rather than shriveling up and going away, the languages and their practitioners matured. Community focus became less centered on glue code and scrolling effects, and attention was shifted to writing clean, maintainable code which uses the language's best features (metaprogramming, easy hash/object manipulation, etc) in manageable, modular ways.

Now both ecosystems are flourishing, and though Perl doesn't have quite the install base of JavaScript, it's still a viable contender to Ruby and Python in their areas of expertise, and it can be called the best tool for some of those jobs.

<comment><USER3> "Perl development is picking up and enthusiasm for Perl 5 is as strong as ever."

I will take your word for it, but I do have to say (speaking as someone with a lot of grey in his hair) that I haven't seen a young developer choose to work primarily in perl (over ruby or Python or Java or C#) in ages. Most new projects/startups don't seem to choose perl as their primary language.

I readily concede that this is probably an artifact of my limited experience with perl. Just noting what I see, not looking for a flame war.

How many of YC companies use perl do you think?

<comment><USER4> Older people use it is because they don't want to change or learn something new. Especially in a company already entrenched in Perl development, their is little benefit to switching to a better language compared to the cost of forcing people to learn a whole new technology stack when they are more than content with Perl. However, new companies are much more free to build on whatever technology stack is most appropriate.

I've also noticed over time that lots of non-CS majors can and do program in scripting languages because they are relatively easy to pick up and get things done with. These people are usually more aligned with an IT career in that scripting constitutes only a fraction of their job. If they happen to learn Perl and PHP first, then that is what they stick with.

These people may like to program, but it is not the favorite part of their job and they have other work activities they enjoy more. More importantly, they know little to nothing about software design principles and are not interested in improving their software development skills. They would rather spend their time learning about something else that interests them more. Therefore, they don't even know how to appreciate the advantages more modern scripting languages offer. To these people, languages like Perl are more than sufficient to get their job done, and they are probably right.

However, as people who know better, I believe we should be encouraging better languages in a friendly way whenever possible. When my IT friends ask me about any questions related to programming, I usually try to point them to Python or Ruby for a solution. If they are asking questions they are probably interested in learning something new!

edit: changed wording based on reply from gamache.

<comment><USER2> I disagree with your implication that Perl is suitable for newbs but should be discarded for "better languages" by people who are interested in learning.

In fact I would invert your statement: I think Perl is not a good choice for people without good programming habits, but for those who know how to use it, it offers more power of expression than most of its peers.

(Also, datum: count me in as an "older person" preferring Perl for most tasks despite knowing Ruby, Python, JS and half a dozen other languages.)

<comment><USER4> I never meant to imply that Perl is suitable for newbs, but rather most scripting languages are. I would much rather newbs learn another language, in fact. I changed my wording in my original post to reflect that.

Also, for my background, I learned Perl as my first scripting language and after writing a ~1k line code project in it, decided that for anything over 200 lines I would rather use Java. Later when I learned Python I was vindicated in that almost everything I instinctively disliked about Perl was absent in Python. Since then I have learned many other languages as well, and I also know Perl the language better than most of my co-workers

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Bet you didn't know there was a [relatively] new COBOL-2002, either.

(If I were snarky, I would note that the next COBOL spec after that -- yes, there is one -- might well be released before perl 6.)

</comment><comment><USER6> No technology ever goes away. Nobody is saying Perl won't be developed, just that people are less likely to use other languages for new projects in favor of newer technologies.

<comment><USER7> The article still makes an excellent point, which is that the difference between most of the 'newer technologies' and Perl is basically marketing, not any actual superiority of language design. You can write line noise in Perl, but you can also write Python in Perl. It may not be quite as pretty as Python, but as far as use in a production environment it will be equally useful.

<comment><USER8> Why not just write Python in Python instead ;)?

<comment><USER7> I like my braces ;}.

Also, Perl 5 is feature-stable, and probably always will be. Python is in this 2.x-3.x limbo right now where it's difficult to find libraries that are going to work as-is for much longer. If you write a Perl application well, maintenance will as easy as reasonably possible, which I think is the only real measure of a good language. Most of the 'ease of use' problems disappear once you know what you're doing, and the language learning curve is a relatively small part of a programmer's life-cycle.

<comment><USER8> That's a rather twisted reasoning, with Perl 6 on the doorstep ;)

<comment><USER2> Perl 6 is not meant to interoperate directly with Perl 5. It's not an incremental update in any way. IMO, it would be a lot clearer if Perl 6 weren't called Perl.

<comment><USER9> I agree totally. Perl6 is to Perl5 what VB.NET was to VB6. They aren't the same.

<comment><USER6> So all the Perl programmers are going to find other jobs like the VB guys did?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> CPAN is the killer app for Perl. Every time I flip across to another language I usually love the syntax and structures but the lack of a CPAN equivalent is always grating and I usually end up right back at Perl to get stuff done fast.

<comment><USER11> I used to think this way. After living without CPAN for 3 years using different languages, I appreciate the lack of dependency additions my projects get.

The problem with CPAN is the same things as RPM hell or DLL hell, only worse and more fragile. On a large project, you really don't want to randomly upgrade your DBI module, or some other small perl package that may bring your whole project down. But then one day you need to use Net::SSH and it wants to upgrade DBI::Search for some bizarre reason, which requires you to compile a beta version of the GZIP library because it's using some new interface that's not included with your CentOS 5 install. Then you find out DBI::Search requires DBI 1.41 and you're only using 1.40. There's a backwards incompatible behavior that affects your code in 1.41, which is why you haven't upgraded yet. You go through all 100k lines of your project and make sure all the DBI code handles this new case.

Then you have to try and install the changes on all 75 of your servers. You may have some sort of capistrano script to make this simpler, or you may have used RPM versions of your CPAN packages. Neither solution is less painful than the other. CPAN wasn't really designed to work with your sysadmin's workflow, so neither solution is particularly useful.

At the end of the day, you would have spent less time just writing the damn code yourself to call out to the ssh binary.

<comment><USER12> I blame your sysadmin for not making it easy. Even so, you probably don't rely on CPAN all that much if you lose more time to dependency problems than you save by re-using other people's code. That's not my experience at all. I save days and sometimes weeks at a time.

If you're running through 100K lines of code to test a DBI upgrade you're clearly not testing properly. Not that most CPAN modules break compatibility. It's very rare that something like a DBI upgrade will break anything. All the good module authors are very careful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hah, what's funny is that Jeff Hobbs, the author of the article, is one of the main Tcl developers.

<comment><USER14> Except, that Jeff (who used to work for me at Scriptics) is a pragmatic kind of guy and is likely to not allow his allegiance to Tcl prevent him from seeing what else is going on out there.

<comment><USER13> I meant it in a "huh, that's funny" way, not that he's not perfectly capable of expressing intelligent opinions about Perl, Python or whatever else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> ...because it's holding the entire internet together?

<comment><USER3> "because it's holding the entire internet together?"

Could someone explain what this means in some detail? I hear this all the time but I could never make any sense out of it. Sure _once upon a time_ perl was the best way to get cgi scripts running and do some web programming. Other than this piece of history, any specific examples of the "holding the internet together" property perl is supposed to have? What part of critical internet infrastructure depends on perl?

I am no networking expert but it seems to me that a lot of the infrastructure (apache, tcp/ip stacks etc) is written in C. How (specifically) does perl hold the internet together any more than any other scripting language? Or is this jusr something perl aficionados tell each other ?

<comment><USER7> I think you just answered your own question. I'd say just about every Unix box on the planet has Perl holding it together somewhere in there. What you've asked is essentially like asking "How does mortar hold buildings together any more than bricks, steel I-beams, or roofing?"

These things are equally important, and yes you could probably find a substitute, but why?

<comment><USER3> "What you've asked is essentially like asking "How does mortar hold buildings together any more than bricks, steel I-beams, or roofing?"

Argument by metaphor is a lazy device. I don't see any specific "mortar like" virtues that perl has but other common scripting languages don't. In this metaphor I guess C Code would be the "bricks and steel beams".

Why can't I put a unix box together without perl on it? Is there any _specific_ piece of perl code that _has_ to be on a unix box to enable it to work as an internet server or router? Is there a piece of code that has to be present on a Unix box for me to deploy say Apache or for dns to work? Honest question. Looking for _concrete_ answers.

What _specifically_ does perl do to "hold the internet together" _today_?

As an aside, I remember some COBOL programmers saying COBOL (running on mainframes) underlies all business on the internet and so COBOL was the real "internet commerce " language. Sure, you can say it and it can be justified by a lot of convolutions and narrowing of vision, but the truth seems to be that if it ever was so critical it is (a) an accident of history and (b) getting less true with every passing day.

I _suspect_ (but am willing to be corrected) that perl is not indispensable to the internet any more (if it ever was).

<comment><USER16> The phrase "Perl holds the internet together" was coined by analogy with Perl's widespread use as a glue language. You've interpreted it too literally. It doesn't mean that you can't set up a router or another piece of Internet infrastructure without using Perl.

It means that Perl is used in a lot of unexpected places, and that a lot of critical things are "held together" by Perl. Even if you think your website is running on Java, some systems administrator probably has a cronjob written in Perl critical to its operation.

<comment><USER3> "It means that Perl is used in a lot of unexpected places, and that a lot of critical things are "held together" by Perl. Even if you think your website is running on Java, some systems administrator probably has a cronjob written in Perl critical to its operation."

In the above sentence replace Perl with C/C++/awk/lua/Python/Ruby/almost-any- language and it makes as much sense. Which is probably another indicator that there is nothing particularly perl specific about "holding together the internet". If anything "holds together the internet" it is the (language independent) protocols that do it.

<comment><USER16> This whole thread is a joke that's gone over your head. "Perl is the glue that binds the web together" (or variants thereof) is an old pun on how Perl often gets used. Not so much to write large systems (as is the case with C/C++/..) but as a glue layer to stitch them together.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> ...because it is my duct tape

<comment><USER18> +1

...and it is my glue. So many things in my environment wouldn't happen to be able to talk to each other if it weren't for Perl.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Does any body remember when Larry Wall and others were rewriting all the Unix commands in Perl? I thought that was cool but I never heard of it again, and haven't been able to find references to it.

<comment><USER20> It was Tom Christiansen, originally. Looks like no updates since 2004: <http://search.cpan.org/dist/ppt/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The whole article fails to mention any advantage of Perl over the languages it's compared to (wonder why). The sooner Perl falls into obscurity, the better.

<comment><USER7> I currently code for my day job in a proprietary extension to a proprietary dialect of BASIC from the mid-80's. This language is legitimately broken, and has significant disadvantages at every turn. It has no real functions, no block-level scoping, lists are stored as delimited strings, there are no hashes, and nothing even resembling objects.

Perl has all of these things. If you're coding in Perl and you write bad code, it's your fault. If Perl has a fault, it's that it's easy to write code that you think is done, when you have more work to do if you want to develop a full-scale application. However, you can write incomplete but good-enough code in any language. (And I will always use Perl to write once-off scripts. It's perfect for that task.)

<comment><USER8> It's all fine until you have to work with bad legacy code ;)

My last project at work was rewriting a 4k line monstrosity in Perl into 500 lines of Python which do exactly the same. I can't even blame the original authors (it was likely their first larger program), it's just that Perl makes it so easy to write _horrible_ code.

<comment><USER21> Why can't you blame the original author since you know it was likely his first larger program?

I know that Perl's defaults (mainly lack of strict and warnings) can make it easy to write code that _easily breaks_ or _has bugs_ or is _harder to maintain_ , but it is the first time I hear the argument that it make it any easier or encourage someone to write 4k lines when he could have written 500 lines.

I would guess that guy would have created a 4k monstrosity in Python if that's what he had to use without having enough experience.

Or maybe I am not being imaginative enough? Can you give examples from the program you rewrote where Perl encourage beginners to write "huge monstrosities" while Python would have encouraged them to write succinct code ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Did you perhaps mean perl 5.8?

<comment><USER23> No. It said Perl 5.12 because Perl 5.12 was released April 12 this year.

However that said, Perl cuts releases of old branches from time to time. So 5.8.9 was released a year after 5.10. See <http://search.cpan.org/~jesse/perl-5.12.0/pod/perlhist.pod> for a full release history.

<comment><USER22> Thanks for the update. I stopped using perl around the same time 5.8 was slated to be the last version of perl 5, since perl 6 was coming Real Soon Now.

I learned perl in 1996 in order to cobble together a system that collected reports from all sorts of weird text files and formats (anyone remember Framemaker?) and merge them into one nice big postscript file with custom watermarks and page numbers. This program ran for at least 8 years after that. I had to learn perl in the dead of night because I had been instructed to find a "technology solution" and perl was "unsupportable".

Another totally different program was developed to prototype a large orchestration of securities valuation and hedging. It even had numerical optimization in it. It was taken wholesale into production.

Many other programs, some fairly long, were written in order to run successfully only once, and then they were retired.

I loved perl.

Then I learned python and could read the code that I wrote a few months ago and more importantly, read other peoples' code more easily. Consistent white space helps a lot. It had many of the same advantages of perl, with slightly clunkier regexes, plus a nice system for introspection. It could almost replace matlab--almost.

I built a complicated optimization system that orchestrated multiple processors and called C++ library code so I didn't have to learn C++.

I forgot about perl. I loved python now.

Then I learned haskell and forgot about python but that's enough for today.

<comment><USER9> Did somebody really say "Perl 6 is coming real soon now?" I have only ever seen "by christmas" and they don't mention what year.

<comment><USER23> According to <http://use.perl.org/~pmichaud/journal/39411> (written last summer) this Spring (likely April) is targeted for a production release of a usable subset of Perl 6. The same information is posted to <http://www.perlfoundation.org/perl6/index.cgi?Rakudo_Star>.

They obviously didn't make that. I don't know what the current state is or what the exact thinking is now.

<comment><USER24> <http://www.perlfoundation.org/perl6/index.cgi?rakudo_star>

[..] original release plan was for late April 2010 [family crisis for lead developer]. The release date [..] sometime in the second quarter of 2010.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A New Blend of Rock and Plastic Is Forming on a Portuguese Island - <AUTHOR> https://earther.gizmodo.com/a-strange-new-blend-of-rock-and-plastic-is-forming-on-a-1835742900 <comment><AUTHOR> Original study: [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004896971...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969719326919)

Abstract:

> Plastic debris is one of the most extensive pollution problems our planet is > facing today and a particular concern for marine environment conservation. > The dimension of the problem is so large that it is possible our current era > will generate an anthropogenic marker horizon of plastic in earth's > sedimentary record. Here we present a new type of plastic pollution, the > 'plasticrusts', plastic debris encrusting the rocky surface, recently > discovered in the intertidal rocky shores of a volcanic Atlantic island. The > potential impact that these new 'plasticrusts' may have needs to be further > explored, as e.g. potential ingestion by intertidal organisms could suppose > a new pathway for entrance of plastics into marine food webs. Consequently, > its inclusion as a potential new marine debris category in management and > monitoring actions should be pondered.

<comment><USER2> The abstract mentions "a volcanic Atlantic island", so it's the Azores; some of the authors are from there. Not sure why this was elided.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> _The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we're gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, 'cause that's what it does. It's a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed. And if it's true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn't share our prejudice toward plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn't know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, "Why are we here?"_

 _"Plastic… asshole."_ \-- George Carlin

</comment><comment><USER4> I wonder if at any point, given the quantity of plastic available, organisms will evolve to consume it as food since it would be an advantage.

<comment><USER5> I think this will definitely occur. In the same way that organisms could not work with wood fiber's lignin during the carboniferous period, we're seeing it play out in a plastic period of our own construction. The Earth will win, but whether we will see that happen depends on all of us.

<comment><USER6> We just need to wait 300 million years and nature will adapt!

It would be cool seeing plastics things rot, though. We're used to them being impervious.

<comment> core-questions I think the coolness would wear off mighty quickly when your laptop starts to rot

<comment><USER7> I've been wondering if wood or some kind of injection molded cellulose product might make a comeback. Decomposing plastics would probably help spur that along.

<comment><USER8> If we really hit the end of Moore's law, I see manufacturers embracing this. "No, that isn't planned obsolescence; we try to be as green as possible"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So I wonder how much of a backlash against plastic will bring about other issues like bacteria.

Plastic has had a big advantage in ensure consumables and devices are clean but granted the cost has been high in the sense of pollution.

Would there maybe be a middle ground like what happens with plastic bottles in Germany and Norway where they give money back to the person who recycles the bottle,can,glass bottle etc.

<comment> core-questions We may see some grocery store chains lead the way with a uniform set of washable recyclables that people can bring back for deposit money. This also works well for city cleanliness, i.e. you seldom see a beer can sitting around for long in any area with foot traffic, because there's always someone who occupies the niche of bottle gatherer for deposit money.

<comment><USER9> I have seen this in Germany, people usually scavenge the rubbish at airports and stations for plastic bottles.

<comment> semi-extrinsic I've also seen rubbish bins that have a special place where you put bottles, so scavengers don't have to dig through all the other trash. It feels like a very nice gesture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder how long the plastic would last on geologic time scales. I supposed after enough pressure and heat it would turn back into oil?

<comment><USER11> "To the left you will see a rock formation made of organic polymers. Recent research shows that it might be a sedimentary layer left by a species of sapient mammals..."

<comment><USER12> Wait what? Thinking meat? That's crazy talk!

<comment><USER11> Please show some respect... do you know what that oxygen level would do to your servos?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I find it interesting that the interpretation is that this is a tragedy, rather than it being fortunate that a geological process is capturing plastic into the lithosphere, where it will be removed from the biosphere.

<comment><USER14> The point was that it isn't removing it from the biosphere - molluscs that feed on algae-covered rock are now setting up on this plasticrust stuff and consuming it along with the algae.

<comment><USER15> Why is that bad? Actual question - I'm a programmer, not a doctor (biologist :-))

<comment><USER16> The Gizmondo article provides two links to the observed effects of plastic in the ecosystem in the paragraph where it's mentioned that the animal life feeding near the Plasticrust maybe be consuming said plastic.

[https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/06/plastic-...](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/06/plastic- planet-health-pollution-waste-microplastics/)

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/from-fish-to- huma...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/from-fish-to-humans-a- microplastic-invasion-may-be-taking-a-toll/)

<comment><USER15> Hmm now I'm confused. The articles you sent are about microplastics in fishes, I thought the comment I replied to was about microbes which should (I really don't know though) break the plastic down...?

Edit: Now I see that I have misread the comment and confused molluscs for microbes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's a bit misleading/sensational to call this a "blend." Not that it's a good thing, but plastic is merely sticking onto the surface of rocks.

</comment><comment><USER18> this is not new, i think it is just that these researchers are naming it

<comment><USER19> Maybe it's a new formal scientific observation as an entry for plastic in to the food chain; or you have an early citation for it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Meta: is it just me or is there an unusually high amount of pollution/plastic related articles on HN recently?

<comment><USER21> There have been a number of major reports published in the last few months that detail just how much environmental damage we have caused since industrialization. I believe the uptick in articles is a result of people becoming aware of the extent of the problem.

<comment><USER22> >>I believe the uptick in articles is a result of people becoming aware of the extent of the problem.

Totally agreed, That encourage me to stop buying/using plastic bottles. Quite challenging in Dublin where Everywhere you go water comes with plastic bottles/glasses, Ireland #1 plastic generator in Europe per person 61kg/yr [1].

[1]: [https://www.thejournal.ie/ireland-plastic- waste-3786393-Jan2...](https://www.thejournal.ie/ireland-plastic- waste-3786393-Jan2018/)

<comment> 52-6F-62 I've been enjoying seeing the gradual proliferation of water-bottle refill stations being installed by the city here in Toronto. They should be bloody everywhere.

<comment><USER23> I used to refill my stainless-steel canteen from faucets and drinking fountains. The container was round, and the hole was on an edge of the circular side, rather than poking out of the cylinder wall, so it could fit almost anywhere that water was available, including a stream 15cm (6") across and 5cm (2") deep (filtered with bandana, made potable by iodine). It even had a canvas case, so that you could wet the outside with non-potable water to swamp-cool the drinkable water inside.

Unfortunately, everything you can find close to the same form factor today is shoddily constructed and near-worthless.

We wouldn't need water-bottle refill stations everywhere, if the water containers themselves were more easily refilled. All the bottles are tall cylinders. Where did all the short, wide cylinders go?

<comment> 52-6F-62 There are a wide variety of taller bottle designs used. Nalgene-style plastic bottles, blender bottles, and other flip-lid bottles are very popular here. The new refill stations accommodate all of those.

I'm not sure I've ever seen the design you're referring to. And "canteen" style bottles are impractically shaped for existing infrastructure like cup- holders, etc. Maybe not crucial things, but definitely finicky.

The idea being keeping the barrier of entry as low as possible for people who are otherwise probably more resistant to the conditions you outlined.

<comment><USER23> It was probably constructed in the 1960s, as it originally belonged to my father. Not a canteen-style bottle, but a bona-fide canteen. Imagine two pie pans, one inverted over the other, and welded together at their rims, with the cap hole drilled through the bottom of one pan. That's the basic shape. Smooth out the edges to be more like spherical sections, and put the result in a snap-shut canvas holder, with a shoulder strap.

You have likely never seen the shape I am referring to.

At some point, someone decided to move the caps to the cylindrical sides, rather than keep them on one of the round faces, and then you couldn't fit the thing under a bathroom sink faucet any more, and a drinking fountain needed a bit more arc to fill it. Difficult fill locations might only fill those up halfway. This was likely done to accommodate blow-molded plastic canteens, and to manufacture from flat and rolled sheet metal, rather than pressed.

So now, even if you buy a "real" canteen, the cap is pointing in the wrong direction, and you might as well just have a large, awkward bottle.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


There's no such thing as a web page: The problem with software metaphors - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-mission/theres-no-such-thing-as-a-web-page-why-software-metaphors-are-a-danger-to-our-brains-9da566b5155a <comment><USER2> Even if we start describing things in the way the Author states, it won't really make a difference.

Real or not, the effects are what matter. The literal description of the thing won't change how we interact with the thing.

The only way to prevent information overload is through self discipline. That's a conscious choice to make, and it won't be made by simply re-naming "news feed" to "bullshit" or something similar.</comment>


Twitter desktop notification ruby script - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/0xAX/tw

<comment><USER2> Is that a typo on the README, _twiter_, or is that the name of the gem? I never want to open issues or submit pull requests for things like that in case the author is a dick about it.

<comment><AUTHOR> _twitter_ it's dependence gem, thank you, fixed.

<comment><USER2> No worries, happy to help. There are quite a few more noticeable ones throughout the file, if you rock Sublime Text, you can enable spelling checking through View -> Spell Check. On OS X at least F6 is the sort cut to toggle it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> if you were to add support for windows, what graphic toolkit would you use?</comment>


React with Next.js vs. Ruby on Rails - <AUTHOR> https://suddenschools.org/blog/react-nextjs-vs-ruby-on-rails <comment><USER2> You can easily use React in any Rails project

There's even a flag for new projects:

\--webpack=react

<comment><AUTHOR> You could, but it's no where near as integrated or smooth. I am not advocating that Rails go away and be replaced by Next, but I think there are certain applications where it makes a lot of sense to use Next instead of rails.</comment></comment>


Nine Javascript Gotchas - <AUTHOR> http://www.fitzblog.com/bid/2127/Nine-Javascript-Gotchas <comment><USER2> Those are good, some of which are caught by using jslint, and indispensable tool for anyone not already using it.

</comment><comment><USER3> _Never name a variable the same as an HTML ID [...] This will work fine in Firefox but cause and [sic] object undefined error in InternetExplorer_

No it won't. I do this all the time; it works fine in IE 6 and 7.

<comment><USER4> I've run into this behavior/bug many times, so it is definitely a valid point. As far as I recall, it always happens, but if you're saying you don't run into the error then it may only be with objects. For example, create an object named bob, and an HTML element with an Id of bob. Then try to access the objects properties. IE6 will reference one or the other.

Untested, but it may also have to do with globally defined variables.

<comment><USER3> We must be talking about slightly different things. Here's what I do, which works fine in IE6 and 7:

...

Seems almost identical to the code in the post (mine says "var" and his doesn't, mine uses $ to get element by id, his uses a 'get' function that presumably does the same thing). It does not produce an 'object undefined' error (or any error that I've seen).

By "it works fine" I mean that the variable bob references the appropriate DOM element and behaves as expected.

What should I change in the above to reproduce this error?

<comment><USER5> the problem arises when you try to directly access the element with id="bob" e.g. bob.innerHTML this will work on explorer

and is called global namespace polluting. and it could get things mixed up. So, a good practise is not to name DOM elements with javascript variables.

The reason you never ran into the problem is because that locally you create a variable with a reference to the DOM element, so you are practising a "workaround"

<comment><USER6> Actually, I'd argue that relying on magical global variables mapping to page elements is bad practice in the first place.

If you want an element by ID, that's what document.getElementByID is for (or $ if you're using a JS framework). If you want a form element by its name (why not it's id?), you should go out to get that specifically.

<comment><USER3> My JS is compiled from higher-level source; at the source level there is no duplication and it's simpler to use a variable. Moroever, using getElementById is 60% slower than a global variable in FF and more than 10x slower in IE. For the app I'm building, this matters a lot.

<comment><USER6> Of course it's faster to use a precomputed reference than to find an element in the DOM. I can't see the "overhead" of manually storing a reference to a DOM element in a variable ever mattering in any application. Grab it once and you're done.

<comment><USER5> the only sure thing is that the whole javascript perfomance/memory footprint/cross-browser/degrade challenge can drive someone crazy!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The error with the array just seems like poor practice. If you only want to deal with the contents of an array then you should use the [] with an integer index.

<comment><USER8> I agree. You should _NOT_ use 'for in' on an array. Secondly, if you use 'for in' on an object, the first line inside your loop will most usually be:

if (e.hasOwnProperty(key))

This gets rid of anything defined on the prototype etc and would have solved the issue in the article. However, using for...in on an Array isn't good practice anyway.

<comment><USER9> You should NOT use any library that messes with Object.prototype or Array.prototype, then this won't be a problem and the for loops will work just fine.

<comment><USER8> Not particularly, if you're extending your own objects, you could still get properties in a for...in that you weren't expecting, so hasOwnProperty is always a good idea.

Regardless though, using for...in on an Array is bad practice and not a good idea. Just like having sparse Arrays in js is a bad idea.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


My disillusionment with Clojure and Lisps - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@boxed/my-disillusionment-with-clojure-and-lisps-9eca38ab7f0c <comment><USER2> I would say play with LightTable and fall in love with the REPL which is what programming is at its core. These are not new notions (lisp and all that) but they are wholly undervalued tools by a generation that grew up making computers from the perspective of assembly, registers, and chips, instead of from the purely "human interacting with software" perspective.

There is absolutely no program that cannot be made possible through lisp, and yes, one may think that certain programs are easier to code in "alternative" languages that are dominant today, such as Java and whatnot, but in reality there is a lot of "hidden complexity" using todays dominant tools because they take not into account the basic breakthroughs of such early and wonderful structures as Lisp. (a la McCarthy)

How many times is a student asked to show to to implement a linked list? You'd think this is a datatype that has proven incredibly useful over the years, and yet here we are doing the same exercise and pouring countless human-hours into something that should come as the default.

I think it's just a bias that will erode over time, Clojure is beautiful (it is a frankenstein of ideas) but the beauty is not in the fact that its _possible_ ... the beauty lies in the fact that it will outlive and outlast the rest, because it lives beyond architecture.

/le rant

</comment><comment><USER3> I disagree with the author's commentary (in his follow-up article) that Clojure is the best place to dive into functional programming. I think Elm and Elixir are both better options, since they both have cleaner and easier to understand syntax. I also think hot deployments in Elixir, using Exrm, are much nicer than anything in the JVM world. Finally, I like that memory is private in BEAM, unlike the JVM, where it is shared.

<comment><USER4> Elm is still somewhat "experimental" and the popular opinion is that Elm is nothing but a paved road to Purescript - which in turn has it's own steep learning curve. Also FFI to Javascript in Elm, Purescript, Fay or GHCJS isn't as smooth as it's with Clojurescript. Sharing code between back-end written in Clojure and front-end written in Clojurscript is a real thing and not some kind of myth. "Cleaner and easier to understand syntax" is very debatable, seasoned Lispers won't trade the power of symbolic expressions for anything else, because nothing is more cleaner, concise and readable than the code expressed in its pure, unambiguous form.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> on second thought: [https://medium.com/@boxed/followup-to-my-disillusionment- wit...](https://medium.com/@boxed/followup-to-my-disillusionment-with-clojure- and-lisps-49d8b0ec94c1#.6y4cpuccs)

<comment><USER6> > I am more positive towards Clojure now than before publishing the article. > I'll definitely try to reduce my exposure to reddit comments a bit :P

It's fantastic to see someone complain, and then see that what they wanted does exist.

Hopefully the Clojure community isn't all stuck with Reddit, that more and more seems to only just be slightly less toxic than 4chan, though exceptions exist on both platforms.

Because Clojure, though what I think of as a franken-LISP, is beautiful, powerful, and damn good at what it sets out to do.

<comment><AUTHOR> I personally found the Clojure community very welcoming at conferences, meetups as well as on the mailing list, slack, stackoverflow and on reddit.</comment></comment></comment>


Why Speculate? (2005) - <AUTHOR> http://larvatus.com/michael-crichton-why-speculate/ <comment><USER2> This is an interesting read, if you have time for a long-ish ome.

" _over the years the punditic thrust has shifted away from discussing what has happened, to discussing what may happen. And here the pundits have no benefit of expertise at all. Worse, they may, like the Sunday politicians, attempt to advance one or another agenda by predicting its imminent arrival or demise. This is politicking, not predicting._ "

I think the last point (politics) is most poignant.

I think a lot of what punditry is, is telling us what stuff _means_ , often symbolically. Is this hurricane the first climate change disaster. Is this shooting a sign the the war on crime is failing. Is this document government document evidence that of middle class decline, working class political awakening. Did Trump win the mid terms.

What politics is, largely, is competing narratives. Punditry (as well as speculation) acts directly on the narrative. In times when political emotions run high, more types of punditry become political punditry.</comment>


Ask HN:  Are you concerned about the Conficker worm? - <AUTHOR> http://news.aol.com/article/conficker-worm-virus-april-1/402022?icid=webmail|wbml-aol|dl1|link3|http%3A%2F%2Fnews.aol.com%2Farticle%2Fconficker-worm-virus-april-1%2F402022

<comment><USER2> No.

I use Linux.

<comment><USER3> There are other concerns, though, like what the botnet is going to do. You may be using Linux, but you're on the internet, and you use internet services.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Iphone Games, who's made em?  - <AUTHOR>

So I've had several Iphone games/app Ideas in my head for a while now. I've done a little research and have looked into what it will take to develop them.
I'm not looking to become a millionaire off of these, but would like to generate some monthly passive income.
So who here has developed their own apps? how have they done? I remember seeing a post where some people showed off their work, but couldnt find it again.
I'm not a developer so I will be outsourcing this, what should I expect to pay to develop a simple game/app? I've been looking around on Odesk, Elance, and Guru.  I'd like to start with a simple game to learn how to market and then develop more if it does well.
HN has become an awesome resource, even for a non technical person like myself. <comment><USER2> Asking how much you should pay to develop a game is pretty much like asking how much does a car cost.

I think the old adage that it takes money to make money is mostly true and applies here as well. Trying to put an app, especially a game, together on the cheap typically results in product that the customer doesn't have an interest in. Getting the right technical and creative resources together is critical.

Sometimes you can strike gold but if you follow this plan you might need to be ready for several failures before experiencing any success.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> So do you think partnering with a programmer to bring the ideas to life would be a better avenue?

I understand what you pay for is what you get as I have outsourced Webapps before.

The idea is to get something out there, learn the process, how to market it, ect. Take what I've learned and apply it to another one, reinvesting profits as I go a long.

</comment><comment><USER3> I guess you could do it for the learning experience, but you will probably not make enough to cover the costs of development.

I would not suggest doing it if you are not developing it yourself.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> PS. Thanks for the help!</comment>