Virtual Nuclear Weapons Design and the Blur of Reality - <AUTHOR> https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/virtual-nuclear-weapons-design-and-the-blur-of-reality/ <comment><USER2> Nuclear weapons and MAD provide the best examples of double-think that I can appreciate, and that I even partially buy into. Reading articles like this, I want to jump to judgement and outrage over the physicists and engineers who, I imagine, spend many more hours considering incremental technical improvements than contemplating the reality of these devices. But if I could press a button to relinquish my country's entire nuclear arsenal, would I? Would I rather live in a more morally pure country in that respect, but one which no longer has the safety benefits of mutually assured destruction? If not, then am I just a hypocrite for criticising those with direct involvement?

The logic of nuclear deterrence depends on having an amoral chain of command. Nuclear retaliation against Russia, China, or the United States is suicide, and serves no beneficial purpose in the moment it is carried out. But there is no way to fool an adversary into believing that we are capable of total retaliation without actually putting the command structures and individuals in place which are somewhat likely to follow through. Every time I seriously ponder nuclear war, these questions enter my mind and I can't make headway. Much of it boils down to utilitarianism versus more idealistic thinking.

<comment><USER3> You might appreciate this panel discussion featuring Carl Sagan and Henry Kissinger:

[https://physicsworld.com/a/the-day-after-35-years-later- carl...](https://physicsworld.com/a/the-day-after-35-years-later-carl-sagan- and-henry-kissinger-on-nuclear-war/)

I've always been struck by the caliber of this broadcast and the audience engagement and questions. From a different time when public discourse on nuclear weapons was common.

Perhaps part of the rising anxiety in society over the past decades is the suppression of the knowledge that the we live with loaded guns pointed at our heads. Sounds like an almost unhinged thing to say — but then again, the policy is called MAD after all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One of my first jobs out of college was working on simulation code dealing with weapons effects, incl. nuclear weapons.

I know I personally struggled with the ethics of it, but not all colleagues did. To some it was patriotism, to others it was an interesting problem, to yet some others it was just a job.

I learned a lot listening to the effects guys that were around during the live testing. Makes the 2020's seem tame compared to what was going on during the Cold War.

</comment><comment><USER5> The best case scenario would be if no nukes worked, but everyone believed they did. Unfortunately getting there is essentially impossible. At the moment the US is responsible for most "stockpile stewardship" research, the fruits of which are ultimately disseminated to other nuclear powers. If we were to stop spending billions forging ahead in that area of research, it might make the world's nukes less viable. Since the US has the most by number, our relative advantage would still remain.

<comment><USER4> The USA tried to give flawed nuclear bomb plans to Iran in a bid to slow down their nuclear weapons program, but it backfired and Iran was informed that the plan had purposeful flaws. It is debatable whether it wound up accelerating the Iranian nuclear program.

Also, the threat of the nuclear bomb is what finally led to the ceasefire in the Korean War. Both North Korea and the USA came in thinking they were the "victors" and that the other side needed to sue for peace. Truman didn't want to threaten the use of the nuclear bomb, having been the one to drop two on Japan. When Eisenhower assumed Presidency, he threatened the use of nuclear weapons, bullying North Korea in the process. Hence, the regime became obsessed with obtaining one so that it could never be bullied again. It viewed it as the prime ticket to true independence/security.

So the USA shot itself in the foot twice when it comes to "modern nations obsessed with nuclear weapons programs that are not friendly to the USA".

<comment><USER6> > _It viewed it as the prime ticket to true independence /security._

It's true though. Nuclear weapons with delivery mechanisms are about the only thing in the modern world which will make others back off. In every other case you're relying on the good graces of others.

<comment><USER7> North Korea managed to survive up until 2006 without nukes, so obviously there are other means.

At the same time, there are plenty of military planners that _don 't_ view nukes as a definitive reason not to pick a fight considering the large amounts of effort they put into planning a nuclear war.

<comment><USER8> From what I've read, it was Gaddafi's death in 2011 (after he gave up his very limited nuclear weapons program) that made the North Korean regime realize it absolutely needed a nuclear deterrent.

<comment><USER7> The Libya adventure probably served to settle any debate within North Korea, but their program is much older and they have shown serious committent to it much earlier than 2011.

In 1994 it was discovered they had reprocessed plutonium several times in the 80's, and it was suspected they had secret reprocessing facilities, and they almost left the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons treaty to keep inspectors out of those sites.

In _2006_ they tested a nuclear device for the first time, although it likely failed.

[https://www.nti.org/learn/countries/north- korea/nuclear/](https://www.nti.org/learn/countries/north-korea/nuclear/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's kinda interesting (although probably more of a simple slippery slope) to consider the intersection of this and the classic Reflections On Trusting Trust[1].

[1]: [https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rdriley/487/papers/Thompson_1984_Ref...](https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rdriley/487/papers/Thompson_1984_ReflectionsonTrustingTrust.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER10> > With explosions taking place virtually, how much harder will it be for > weapons scientists to confront the destructive power of their work and its > ethical implications?

What exactly is her hoped response, once a physicist realizes by watching a live atomic bomb explosion, that these things actually hurt? They'll quit working there? That didn't occur with the first few generations of bomb physicists. Enough stuck around to produce bomb after bomb, both here and abroad.

If anyone needs to learn this lesson, it's the proliferators -- except they'd just be overjoyed at the fearsome might, not terrified. Tehran and Pyongyang won't be deterred by feeling the dreadful rumble of a live test. (I'd pay to watch one, though.)

There may be dark side effects of virtualization, but this article's premise is weak.

</comment><comment><USER11> I think it was Dan Carlin who suggested it might be a good idea to (every decade or so) conduct a live nuclear test above ground and publicize it widely. Not to make sure the bomb worked - but to remind everyone of the destructive power of these devices

<comment><USER12> a good idea, but would that not be significantly harmful for the environment, or is the radiation temporary?

<comment><USER13> Bombs can be "tuned" to burn nearly all or very little of their fissable material. Radiation from the blast dissipiates nearly immediately, but the bomb would need to be designed to provide little fallout(it's doable is what I'm trying to say).

<comment><USER14> Amount of fallout depends on more things, not just settings of the bomb. Mainly on where the bomb detonates. If close to ground/water, then it's bad, lots of fallout. If in stratosphere, very little fallout.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My first intuition is how much confidence do you have that a new device that no one has ever used will behave the way the computer says it will.

<comment><USER16> Nuclear weapons are deterrents.. The goal is for them _never_ to be used. If they didnt actually work at all that would be great. That would just be a layer of safety in case in some catastrophic turn of events they accidentally got used.

<comment><USER13> >> That would just be a layer of safety in case in some catastrophic turn of events they accidentally got used.

Well, not really, if one of the superpowers sees ICBMs flying their way, they will retaliate immediately, no one will wait around to see if they actually explode or not.

<comment><USER17> I think the point was that if the retaliation ICBMs fail in the same way, we as a species get a second chance to resolve the conflict without extinction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I must be missing something about this.

I mean, we have a bunch of designs that _were tested_ and then mass produced. Many thousands of them, altogether.

They do need regular maintenance, of course. Such as replacing stuff that decayed, and stuff that got damaged by the radiation, or just air oxidation and whatever.

So what's the "designing" for? I find it hard to imagine that they'd be making substantive changes without any actual testing. Because they'd have no way to really know.

And conversely, I find it hard to imagine why we need to improve them. They're already too powerful to actually use on the Earth.

So doesn't the increased uncertainty outweigh some marginal increase in efficiency or power or whatever?

<comment><USER19> You might want to improve the designs to lengthen the shelf-life, to enable the use of smaller amounts of nuclear and conventional explosives, to increase efficiency and reduce the fallout created and so on. There are many more attributes to nuclear weapons than just how big of a bang they make.

<comment><USER18> Sure, I get that.

But wouldn't folks feel pretty stupid if they'd tweaked their weapons enough that they no longer worked?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The point of article isn't so much about physical vs. virtual testing, but about blindly trusting inherited code.

Some people freak out when they are unable to examine and understand internal working of used libraries, while others don't get it at all and just trust them. For me it is a mystery.

</comment><comment><USER21> > "physical intuition is a skill you want to keep" (or build if necessary)

In whatever field of work, THIS is most critical.

Grounding in the hard reality.

Without it, you literally don't know what you are missing

With it, you can easily see things that others miss, simply because you stand at a better point of view.

</comment><comment><USER22> I find the idea that today we still have to worry about an en masse invasion from a random blob of the same planet and specie population quite an aberration... And more disturbing it all starts usually from single individuals....you want to start a war? Good luck! Good for you! should be the answer of the rest of the population, why it doesn't happen? Lack of education, and the perception of unlawfulness? Armed enforcement? It's beyond me...</comment>


With RogerVoice, Deaf People Can Make Their First Phone Calls - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/09/26/with-rogervoice-deaf-people-can-make-their-first-phone-calls/

<comment><USER2> While not the first app of its kind, it does raise the question: if these start-ups can do speech to text succesfully, why is Google's voicemail transcription and automatic subtitling so inaccurate? Serious question. Is it the quality of the input and an inability to adapt to changing bandwidth?</comment>


Essential Mathematics for a British University - <AUTHOR> http://www.maths.qmul.ac.uk/~fv/books/em/EssentialMaths.pdf

<comment><USER2> This is nauseating. Not to say arithmetic is a useless skill, but we should not be focusing on teaching kids things that computers can easily do.

At a certain point, "higher math" becomes about coming up with original arguments and explaining them clearly, not about performing computations. Consider a typical higher math problem, like: "Let C denote the unit circle in the complex plane. Suppose f:C->C is a map which is not homotopic to the identity. Prove that f(x)=-x for some point x of C."

I fail to see how years spent on tedious factorization and fraction manipulation would help anyone solve that type of problem.

Look up the essay "Lockhart's Lament" for a real mathematician's perspective.

<comment><AUTHOR> _Look up the essay "Lockhart's Lament" for a real mathematician's perspective._

I have read the Lockhart's Lament essay already years ago.

<http://www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf>

I like his point, "The saddest part of all this 'reform' are the attempts to 'make math interesting' and 'relevant to kids' lives.' You don't need to make math interesting--it's already more interesting than we can handle! And the glory of it is its complete irrelevance to our lives. That's why it's so fun!"

But there are various kinds of real mathematicians, and various kinds of activities that real mathematicians find fun, or at least strictly necessary for doing the fun things.

"Paul is a mathematics teacher at Saint Ann's School in Brooklyn, New York."

<http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_03_08.html>

So I regard Mr. Lockhart's opinion, but I also consider the opinion of Fields medalist William P. Thurston.

<http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/math/pdf/0503/0503081v1.pdf>

"Addition of fractions is a very boring topic to someone who already knows it, but it is an essential skill for algebra, which in turn is essential for calculus. It is not so hard, when talking with students individually, to find out what parts of the structure need shoring up and to deal with those parts individually."

And I consider the opinion of professor of homotopy theory W. Stephen Wilson

<http://www.math.jhu.edu/~wsw/guide/node19.html>

"We memorize in order to facilitate learning, so we can function with the demands of the field. Memorization is not an end in itself, and it does not constitute learning. But when you use this information, you won't forget it. Every field requires memorization, and most fields -- biology, history, physics, political science, languages -- require far more. We are only able to solve problems if we are familiar with the necessary terms and laws. To improve your memory, don't trust your recognition memory when it comes to a test. Practice writing out the definitions and theorems, and make outlines of the major points of the theory. Check back to your text for accuracy. It is easy to think we know something until we attempt to put it in writing. By practicing studying continuously in this way, rather than cramming at the last minute, you will find memorization will feel more naturally like part of the learning process."

Anyway, can't learning the content of the preliminary course mentioned in the submitted article be fun for someone who recognizes beautiful consistent patterns for the first time?

<comment><USER2> Yes I agree completely that elementary concepts and techniques of arithmetic (the concepts behind which may not even be so elementary) are essential and must be understood by any math student, but I distinguish strongly between learning said concepts/techniques and repeating them ad nauseam in frivolous repetitive exercise that demand no originality in reasoning whatsoever. I love math and would be considered by most to be a decent student, but just looking at those problems gives me a headache, and never have I encountered a circumstance in which carrying out those types of calculations by hand was remotely necessary.

I will note that the memorization quote is particularly true with more abstract topics where definitions are crucial to understanding ideas and writing proofs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> this exam tests concentration skills more than anything else. While these skills are important, I'm not sure this is what teaching math is about</comment>


Early Days: The VIC-20 Programmer's Reference Guide - <AUTHOR> https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2018/04/06/learn/ <comment><USER2> The VIC-20 was my first computer. Nothing like working hard on a program only to hit the memory limit. I read that manual from cover to cover. It was wonderful that practically everything you could want to know about your computer was in one book.

You can find it and others at archive.org: [https://archive.org/details/VIC-20ProgrammersReferenceGuide1...](https://archive.org/details/VIC-20ProgrammersReferenceGuide1stEdition6thPrinti)

<comment><USER3> > Nothing like working hard on a program only to hit the memory limit

Mine was a TI-99/4a. The "+" symbol was obtained by SHIFT =, as on most current US-layout keyboards. But if you hit the FCTN key instead of the SHIFT key, it immediately rebooted the machine. It was easy to do that because the FCTN key was immediately below the right SHIFT key. Was so frustrating to lose hours of work that way. First lesson in save early, save often. Of course saving was to cassette tape, which took several minutes, so you tended to delay doing it.

EDIT: Also, the quote (") was obtained as FCTN-P, which is very close to the = key. I think that might have been even more dangerous.

[http://mainbyte.com/ti99/keyboard/keyboard.html](http://mainbyte.com/ti99/keyboard/keyboard.html)

<comment><USER4> And ESDX arrow keys. What was up with that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I must have had this VIC-20 for nearly 36 years. Generally it works like a champ, except analog inputs from the paddles aren't handled properly and jumps around. It is very annoying. If anyone reading this comment has some brilliant suggestions on fixing it, I would love to know more.

The other problem is all of the cartridges for all of the games. However, in my search to solve this problem I found [http://www.mega- cart.com/](http://www.mega-cart.com/) It is amazing, every piece of software ever written, even demos from 2007 and all of the memory expansions on a single cartridge. I highly recommend.

Further, the joystick went missing, but Commodore used the same interface as the Atari, so I could actually by a brand new replacement off the shelf at a local retro computer store.

<comment><USER6> The potentiometers get worn and dirty, and the varying resistance from the dirt and loose contacts causes the jitter. You can try cleaning them with electronics cleaner or alcohol, but it probably won't work for long, if at all.

[http://vintagegamingandmore.com/atari-paddle- repair/](http://vintagegamingandmore.com/atari-paddle-repair/)

Commodore paddles are similar, but use 470k ohm linear pots. You can use 500k ohm ones if you can't find 470's, but you probably won't have a problem finding them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wish I still had my copies of The Commodore 64 Programmer's Reference Guide and The Commodore 64 Inner Space Anthology (published by The Transactor magazine). Such incredible resources. I taught myself assembly when I was twelve or thirteen years old, although I sort of sucked at it because I grew up in a tiny, isolated northern town and couldn't get any of my questions answered. In fact, I am pretty certain I was the only person within a 500 km radius with any command of 6510 assembly.

Getting that bare-metal knowledge of that machine served me pretty well. I'm not sure if there's an equivalent path to programmer competency today.

<comment><USER8> This reference? [https://archive.org/details/Commodore_64_Programmers_Referen...](https://archive.org/details/Commodore_64_Programmers_Reference_Guide_1983_Commodore)

<comment><USER7> Yeah, that's the one. I'm not normally one for nostalgia or memorabilia, but I spent a LOT of my youth poring over that thing. I think it eventually got tattered and my mom chucked it when I left for university.

<comment><USER8> I've been really nostalgic lately. Just want my old breadin 64. :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My first job was demo'ing VIC-20s at Macy's stores in the SF Bay Area when I was 13 (there was a group of us spread around to different malls). One of the features of the marketing package was to demonstrate CompuServe, The Source, and Dow Jones News Retrieval dialup services.

After the summer gig ended, the accounts still worked and that's how I got online for the first time, before BBSes.

</comment><comment><USER10> Thanks, Rachel. A Vic-20 was my first, too, although it and its manuals have been lost to time and cross-country moves.

I got a Commodore 64 around the same time and, for a while, had a "cool" set up with a TV, the two Commodores, an Atari 2600, and A/B switches for managing all the connections. I had a tape drive for the Commodores too, but never could figure out how to use it (I was young).

I would take trips to the library and pick up secondhand computing magazines that had code listings in the back, in BASIC, and then carefully copy them in to one of the computers.

I didn't really grasp everything about it all, but I understood flow control and loops and basic logic before about 8 or so.

I really wish there was a similar development environment now for beginners. Everything seems to either dumb things down too far -- confusing drag-and-drop UIs and so on -- or introduce highly abstract concepts way too early (Javascript...). I think a big part of the success of Arduino was this same "learn by tinkering" environment.

<comment><USER11> The goal of block based languages like Scratch is to allow beginners to be able to worry about logical errors without wasting nearly all of their time on syntax errors instead. Sinclair was able to get the same effect on his machines with his multi-mode cursor and one Basic keyword per key (of course, the horrible membrane keyboards he used made this the only reasonable option).

The main problem with block based languages is that short code fragments take up the whole screen. This keeps people from ever going beyond trivial initial examples.

<comment><USER10> I think a better approach to reducing syntactical complexity is simpler language.

In traditional basic, a for loop looks like:

        for i = 1 to 100
            print i
        next i

The syntax here is very nearly as simple as possible. There are no parentheses, no semicolons, no braces or brackets; i is not declared ahead of time; indentation isn't important.

Every new programming language is developed with its own syntactic dressings for ever-greater levels of abstraction. More experienced programmers want to see lambdas and continuations and parallelism and design patterns and so on, and these concepts are extraordinarily difficult to teach to beginners without also introducing advanced math. We forget how difficult it is to grasp these abstractions for the first time; we eat our young.

I don't like graphical languages because they aren't a good stepping stone towards "real" programming. They are too limited, too verbose, too awkward, and too slow to build programs with.

We assume that we can't make new languages that are resistant to syntax errors. But once upon a time, we did. (Despite all its many other limitations, I don't think I ever had a single syntax error in COBOL.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I remember working though this with my dad when I was little, very well put together. That same copy now sits on my shelf as a reminder of where it all started for me. Still have thar ol Vic & play around on it every now and then. We've sure come a long way

</comment><comment><USER13> I remember spending all of a Saturday typing in that game in the back of the book where you're a stationary cursor-sized block at the bottom of the screen and you have to tap the space bar at the right time to hit the big white block moving across the top. I was pretty disappointed after all that but I didn't have a tape or disk drive to save it. So I just sat there pretending it was fun until I finally bit the bullet and turned off the VIC-20.

Finally got a datasette drive a year later.

</comment><comment><USER14> If anyone knows where I can buy a copy of this book I'd appreciate it. My Email address is in bio.

That computer (and manual) literally changed the course of my life. What fond memories.

</comment><comment><USER15> I had the opposite problem.

My first machine was a TRS-80 Model III that my dad bought for me at a garage sale. It came with an aftermarket BASIC programming manual, but no programmer's manual for the machine. Without a real reference manual to explain what was going on, I wasn't able to get past the "programs as magical incantations" stage until much later.

Also, the machine came with no disk drives or any other storage to speak of. 9 year old me was really impressed at how people apparently retyped their programs into the machine every time they turned it on.

I also didn't understand what "REM" meant and the author didn't really go into what comments were and what they were for, so I dutifully typed every comment from the program listing into the machine word-for-word, being careful to use the exact same capitalization and punctuation. Then, of course, I wondered why I had to type all that cryptic stuff in below it if I was already telling the computer what to do in English!

It's a miracle I persisted long enough to figure this all out and then make a career out of it.

</comment><comment><USER16> Fond memories indeed, reading that. I cut my teeth on an old VIC-20. I think I even had that manual, and typed in that BASIC music program. My first foray into PEEKing and POKEing things into memory with that language.

I think that inspired me to go out and get the '101 BASIC Games' book and experiment with that code too! "Hammurabi, I beg to report..."

</comment><comment><USER17> Good memories sitting with dad at the VIC-20 when I was about four years old, typing in BASIC programs from magazines. Once, we typed in a drawing program and drew the planets with the joystick. We also went to local computer shows and brought back programs on data cassettes to try out. Fun times, and I was hooked!

</comment><comment><USER18> In 1979, my friend's dad got a new Apple II+ with THE APPLESOFT TUTORIAL and we started at the beginning and _tried everything_ as it came along. At the age of 13, we both learned how to program. Thank you Caryl Richardson and Jef Raskin.

<comment><USER19> Those early Apple manuals were probably the best computer manuals ever done. Friendly hand-holding at its best. When I saw the first Mac manuals ... very disappointing ...

</comment></comment><comment> cbm-vic-20 This is the most important book I have ever read.</comment>


Facebook privacy challenge attracts 25,000 users - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-28677667

<comment><USER2> _Among the allegations are that Facebook broke EU privacy laws by introducing:

Graph Search - a facility allowing users to find out about other members' activities on the social network

External website tracking - monitoring members through the Like buttons embedded into third-party webpages

Big data analysis - the ability to gain insights into Facebook members' by data-crunching the billions of interactions people have with the site every year_

Those arguments don't seem very compelling. The internet is driven by ads. Companies which don't optimize their ad pipeline tend to die. The best way to optimize your ad pipeline is to collect data and then act on it.

Where is the line between optimizing an ad pipeline and violating privacy?

<comment><USER3> > Where is the line between optimizing an ad pipeline and violating privacy?

Right at the start.

Of course, the allegation was that Facebook broke privacy _laws_ , and not just that they violated people's privacy, so your response is a total non sequitur: you're talking about how it's good business to violate privacy, which doesn't address at all whether it's good business to break the law, nor whether these laws draw a meaningful boundary.

Unless you meant that anything which is in the business' interest to do shouldn't be illegal for it...?

<comment><USER2> Comments like these make HN not very fun anymore.

 _Unless you meant that anything which is in the business ' interest to do shouldn't be illegal for it...?_

It's tempting to leave a sarcastic reply.

Just because a lawsuit has been filed doesn't mean any law has been broken. Would you cite which EU privacy law Facebook broke, and how they broke it?

The article lists the central claims of the lawsuit, which don't seem to reference any particular law. They also seem to be arguing from moral grounds rather than strictly legal grounds. That's why I said they don't seem compelling.

And then I get accused of being both a bad commenter (my response is a "non sequitur"?) and claiming that businesses should violate privacy (when in fact I asked _where is the line_ between a privacy violation and a legitimate business practice). Classy.

<comment><USER4> > Would you cite which EU privacy law Facebook broke, and how they broke it?

Simplistically: The EU Privacy Directive; and it was broken by keeping data for too long and doing stuff that they didn't have user permission for.

More complicatedly: What ever country the lawsuit is taking place in will have implemented the EU Privacy directive, and so that country's law is the actual law that's been broken.

And also more complicatedly: Just having permission via checkbox might not be enough; the EU strongly prefers "privacy by default" where the user has to specifically check a box to lose that bit of privacy.

Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data [http://eur- lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/ALL/;ELX_SESSIONID...](http://eur- lex.europa.eu/legal- content/en/ALL/;ELX_SESSIONID=PDyNTjhbnGTWSNnJ5wGmVr01nvygLty2bt7kV721yqrRdHHqzLRv!183635007?uri=CELEX:31995L0046)

Factsheet: EU Privacy Directive and Social Networks [http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data- protection/document/review2...](http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data- protection/document/review2012/factsheets/3_en.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> 25,000 * 500 = 12.5 million euros. According to this [0] article, that would take 9.28 hours for Facebook to earn back. I don't think one lawsuit this size every 10 hours is viable. There needs to be a bigger force to make people consider moving away from Facebook.

Also, the image [1] in the article is hilarious.

[0] [http://www.thewire.com/technology/2014/08/lets-calculate- how...](http://www.thewire.com/technology/2014/08/lets-calculate-how-much- money-facebook-lost-on-todays-outage/375462/)

[1] [http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/76780000/jpg/_76780123...](http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/76780000/jpg/_76780123_1d5251c2-a507-449a-a910-a79f7448e2e2.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER6> Eh I just don't see this going anywhere. The arguments don't seem strong to me - Big data analysis itself is not against EU Privacy laws and I just don't see how they can frame it in a way that would convince judges otherwise. Even so, the overall penalty to Facebook would be just a drop in the bucket. The financial and reputational penalty that Facebook would incur from a loss here just doesn't scale well at all.

</comment><comment><USER7> "Facebook privacy challenge attracts 25,000 people who want 500 euros for doing basically nothing"

<comment><USER8> Isn't that an argument you could use for all torts? (E.g. the California tech companies salaries one?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It should be at least 2 million people to teach Facebook a lesson.

<comment><USER10> People get what they sign up for - Everyone knows that facebook is a powerhouse of private data and yet they still continue to use it.

If you don't like how FB handles your data, don't use it.

<comment><USER11> I'd say everyone is a bit high, people that post on HN for sure and most technical users but I doubt that the average facebook user knows or cares about any of that.

<comment><USER10> I'd argue they've been in the news enough for people to know better.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Introspected REST: An alternative to REST and GraphQL - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/vasilakisfil/Introspected-REST <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, author here.

Introspected REST is a new model for evolvable networked services. It's an alternative to Roy's REST (and GraphQL).

In youtube there is a related talk I had given about a year ago called "Sliding away from Roy's REST model". At that time I hadn't figured out ALL the details about this new model but only the general idea, just mentioning that in case you bump on it.

Please take your time and take a look at it, it's the first time that I share it to the world and any feedback is welcome, here or in Github. It's around 50 pages of text so I understand if it takes you a while..

The reason I spend so much time in explaining REST is because we first need to understand what REST brings into table and what leaves out of the table, before proposing a new model. I hope I make these clear in the text. To be honest I think not many API designers really understand what REST is, unfortunately, that's why a lot of time is spent on that. People think that adding some hypermedia through links or even actions makes your API RESTful. And I am not telling that from the point of view "your API is not REST!" but to the other side of people, the ones who yield that. In fact, a truly REST API is quite complex. After all, REST is out there 20 years not but our APIs are still not truly evolvable and self-described so maybe the problem is somewhere else..

Maybe the text can be improved a bit (maybe explain a bit more the HATEOAS decoupled from REST), but I am very tired with it, mentally. Even proof- reading it takes a couple of hours. I think it's better to take a longer break now and to work on it again later with a clearer mind and after I gather some initial feedback, plus, other people can contribute as well. The idea is to lock the text in 1-2 years from now and publish it in introspected.rest domain.

Not sure what this text is or should, a publication, an article, a manuscript, a thesis or an antithesis. I name it a "manifesto" because I want, when API designers differentiate from Roy's REST and conventional API architectures, to have for them something to stand on, to feel that there is an actual community that supports them and embrace their decisions that break existing "best practices" and move towards Introspected REST.

/Filippos</comment>


India state polls: Common Man's party wins Delhi seats - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-25292627

<comment><USER2> In India. We are calling the Aam Aadmi Party (transalated to Common Man's Party) as the startup of the decade. They were formed just 9 months ago, with a single goal - to have corruption free politics. The founder Arvind Kejriwal did some hustling that we would be proud of in the startup world. There were lot of dirty campaigns that were conducted against them. They introduced total transparency in their funding raising all their funds from common people.

The result: They secured 28/70 seats in the their very first election, while the current ruling party (Congress) secured just 8/70 seats.

That, my friends, is David beating Goliath.

<comment><USER3> * Crowd funded startup , common people donated money unlike other parties funded by Industrialists and lobbyists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Like the Arab spring, this is an Indian monsoon.

</comment><comment><USER5> Like [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabbawala](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabbawala) AAP is not scalable across India

</comment><comment><USER6> How is this a HN content?

<comment><USER7> Someone who was an anti corruption activist an year back, not only dethrones a lady who was ruling New Delhi for last 15 years but mercilessly removed her party out of any political scene in the state. Something like david and goliath.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> So is it a _Hack_ that this news featured on HN?

<comment><USER9> Very different domain, but potentially some lessons from this 'startup'.

A "social" startup. Under one year old. Challenging the oligopoly in their industry. Raised 3 million and then stopped asking for more money. Will now cater to 28/70 seats in New Delhi (population : 9 million, that's like 3 million users ;) ) Long term vision - a billion plus users (all of India)

<comment><USER10> Also - having great support and contributions from the community - like an open source project</comment></comment></comment>


Hey, Y Combinator: Stop Hating On #MiamiTech - <AUTHOR> http://tech.co/stop-hating-miamitech-2014-04

<comment><USER2> I am doing a startup in Miami Beach and I think its great. Moved here from San Francisco 6 months ago and have no regrets.

We have better weather, no income tax and lots of people genuinely willing to help out. Its actually the smaller size of this startup community which makes it great. You can get to know most everyone here within a month and there is a ton of local events.

In contrast, Its much harder to feel any sort of community like that when you are in a larger city (Boston/NYC/SF). You really have to work for it. The discouraging part is when there is a infinite supply of college grads named 'Zac' who are working on a new mobile app moving to the city every day. It just starts to feel a bit... odd.

<comment><USER3> Dan, what's your startup? ping me brian @ refreshmiami.com would love to hear more about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> But... it's not. That's not to say there isn't capable talent in Miami (there is), however it's not traditionally "listed as one of the top startups cities". I can't name a single startup that came from Florida.

Off the top of my head, I'd go with SF/SV, NYC, Boston, Austin, Boulder (TechStars), Portland, Seattle.. and the list trails off after that.

We're getting to the point where a YC CEO can't say anything without it being taken out of context and vilified.

<comment><USER5> Grooveshark is one, right?

<comment><USER3> Grooveshark is based out of gainesville, fl (north central) near university of florida. Its about 5 hours drive north of Miami.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the very fact Miami is entering the discussion shows it has come a long way. Let's not get ahead of ourselves, but this is a good thing.

</comment><comment><USER3> So a few recent successes to come out of Miami come to mind:

.co just sold for $109M 35 person company (not billions, but still very respectable)

Healthcare.com is here in Miami, just doubled their revenues

CareCloud is growing like crazy

Open English has raised close to $200M in capital.

Citrix is here, multi-Billion $ in sales enterprise software dev company.

</comment><comment><USER7> Article cites [http://wlrn.org/post/miami-s-not-top-start-city-says- silicon...](http://wlrn.org/post/miami-s-not-top-start-city-says-silicon- valley-leader) as the source of the comment.

Found no sign of hate (except towards YC).

Audio clip doesn't explain the context of the comment. Very conveniently edited.

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't think Sam meant anything derogatory by it, he's just stating his opinion. Frankly I agree Miami Beach isn't a startup capital, but that doesn't mean great companies can't come from it. It's just not popularly recognized as a startup capital.

</comment><comment><USER9> __I 'm from Miami, a junior studying Computer Science at the University of Miami- and I want to get involved with a startup! If anyone has any tips- contact me! __Info at: jacobmizraji.com __

</comment><comment><USER10> "We're in the top 15"?

</comment><comment><USER11> Kept looking for the hate with no luck.</comment>


Ask HN: What Keyboard Are Using? - <AUTHOR> Hi,
What keyboard are you using currently or used in past which you liked. Mostly for coding.
I have a Logitech 350 Keyboard[0]. I like it because the keys are soft and doesn't do the clicky sound, its quieter than the mechanical keyboards my co workers have.
The time has come to upgrade and I wanted to know what options I have and general ideas what HNers are using.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-White-Internet-350-keyboard/dp/B000RQU5VG
Thank you! <comment><USER2> I am using a [http://www.chalgyr.com/2016/11/tomoko-i-500-mechanical- gamin...](http://www.chalgyr.com/2016/11/tomoko-i-500-mechanical-gaming- keyboard.html) (So called Tenkeyless) and I quite like it (sort of an entry level MK).

There are quieter options for mechanical keyboards. Checkout the r/mk wiki:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/wiki/index](https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/wiki/index)

</comment><comment><USER3> Logitech classic keyboard 200 [0]

Not that noisy, soft, small keys, reliable. A simple choice with nothing special.

[0] [https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Classic- Keyboard-200-USB/dp/...](https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Classic- Keyboard-200-USB/dp/B000MQK6BK)

</comment><comment><USER4> Microsoft Surface Ergonomic Keyboard

[https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/surface-ergonomic- keyboard...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/surface-ergonomic- keyboard/90pnc9ljwpx9)

</comment><comment><USER5> Kinesis Advantage2: [https://kinesis- ergo.com/keyboards/advantage2-keyboard/](https://kinesis- ergo.com/keyboards/advantage2-keyboard/)

</comment><comment><USER6> This model: [http://www.northgate-keyboard- repair.com/ultra.jpg](http://www.northgate-keyboard-repair.com/ultra.jpg)</comment>


South Africa's ANC's disgustingly racist political propoganda campaign - <AUTHOR> http://puu.sh/55UCr.jpg Captured this from my news feed on Facebook. This is the party responsible for a corrupt policing system, uneducated masses and one of the highest rape and murder rates per capita in the world. I don't even know what to say. <comment><USER2> This is fake. While the ANC government is not perfect and there is a _TON_ of things they do wrong, corruption etc.

This is probably right wing extremist nonsense to drum up support since we have an election year coming up. Also to make those 'traitors' who vote for the 'blacks' feel guilty.

I covered a group that seem to have very racist views a while back for global voices:

[http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/03/02/south-africa- komman...](http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/03/02/south-africa-kommandokorp- extremist-hate-group-or-afrikaner-nationalism/)

I wouldn't be surprised if a group like this put this out. The goal is use fear, to brainwash.

The real sad part, is in a country of 50m, we only have about 8m tax payers, people are uneducated. Rather than focusing on 'the other people' and drumming up fear! we should be trying to fix this country, looking to government to fix it wont work. We all need to do it.

Also, if you have never experienced apartheid, let me tell you this it was the most demeaning and horrible system. I grew up during the tail end of it. One of very few memories that i _STILL_ have to this day before the age of 10, was cops threatening to throw us into jail, swearing us in a language, then proceeding to escort us off the beach, merely because we were on the wrong side of the beach, and because of the colour of our skin. My sisters were younger than me we all still remember this incident.

Think about that for a second...

<comment><AUTHOR> I am in no way a proponent of racist culture, no matter who propagated this ad, it is still wrong and it is still gaining traction among the uneducated. Fake or not, it is becoming a factor in the decision process.

This country needs to change. Here we are, almost twenty years down the line from stopping our racist ways, and yet we've arrived at this.

The current government needs to get it's head out of it's ass and stop spending what little tax money we have on their big fat mansions.

I was born in 1993, so I am by no means an expert on Apartheid, nor do I have any experience with it - but after _twenty years_ , surely you'd think things would have changed?

I visited Cape Town before and after the DA. After the DA got hold of it, it feels like an entirely separate country. No potholes from Kimberly to Cape Town. There are street cleaning machines. Free wifi in so many places. Accommodation is cheap now (a 10 bedroom 7 bathroom apartment prefurbished with water + electricty for R3500 a month. _in Camps Bay_ was on sale). In my entire stay there I encountered 0 homeless people. And young people, especially white people, are opening businesses there, and creating jobs - despite Black Economic Empowerment.

And then we have the ANC...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Probably a fake, haven't been able to find another source for it. Much milder posters (like "don't vote against black") have already caused an outrage there, so something of this kind?

<comment><AUTHOR> Fake or not, it is gaining traction and I've seen over a thousand comments agreeing with it, all from the lower class uneducated ethnic population. The ANC is currently under threat because the DA has taken the whole Western Cape and are very close to taking the Gauteng province as well. If this happens, the ANC will have lost it's two biggest economic powerhouses - so convenient that this pops up right before voting time.</comment></comment>


Syte: Simple but powerful packaged personal site  - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rigoneri/syte

<comment><USER2> But isn't it a big problem that all the blog posts are loaded using Javascript? It means your blog will be fully invisible to Googlebot and anyone coming from search engines. The purpose of a blog is, at least partially, to have readers but loading content via Javascript makes that harder to get.

<comment><USER3> Googlebot executes javascript: <http://www.seroundtable.com/google-ajax- execute-15169.html>

<comment><USER4> This isn't something to count on yet when it comes to ranking well. That article says "don't expect to hide something behind JS".

The good news is that individual post pages using the OP's blog engine have content in the HTML and appear to rank just fine. The value of a well-ranking homepage on a personal blog is probably overrated as individual posts tend to attract links instead.

<comment><USER5> FWIW Googles blog sites load the content in JS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Repost of <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4098430>

Here's where he discussed the metrics around last time it hit #1 here: <http://rigoneri.com/post/25804668500>

<comment><AUTHOR> Apologies, I wasn't a HN reader when this was posted.

<comment><USER7> No need to apologize. If everyone had seen it last time, it wouldn't be #1 right now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you ever build this into an easy setup UI, I think this would just be humongous. This combines what I like about about.me and what I find useful about tumblr. I've been trying to customize my tumblr for a while now to look almost exactly like this, but you did it FOR ME!

You're the man/woman

<comment><USER9> I started working on something that's basically Syte but as a service a while back. I like the idea of being able to "own" your content from other services in a way and to be able to use sites/services like Evernote, Dropbox, Twitter, etc. as a kind of personal blog/scrapbook/private journal. Now it's morphed into something slightly different but a lot of it is still there. I won't shamelessly promote here but you can see the link in my profile if you want. It's getting real close to being finished but I must be honest with myself and admit that things keep popping up that keep me from launching when I say I will so I'm done giving dates. But it will open. I just pushed a pretty important update to the staging server this morning actually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Its a smart app design which is nothing but a content aggregator from your - Twitter account, GitHub, Dribbble, Instagram, Foursquare, your Tumblr blog, Last.fm, SoundCloud and Bitbucket. It requests for all these services via Javascript on the fly. Cool!

So it keeps no Database locally but only requires some computing + lots of Bandwidth in the host server.

Its super smart design as it fits super fine for the Heroku Free Tier. :)

</comment><comment><USER11> This is Svbtle done right - Not closed and proprietary (apple) but open and free for extension (open source).

</comment><comment><USER12> > There is only one rule. You can use, reproduce and do whatever you want with > Syte but I would like you to choose a different adjacent color as the ones > used by the people below.

So... Does it qualify as free software?

Technically it's a limitation of what can be done with it, and it limits the total number of users.

<comment><USER13> The way it's worded makes it seem like a request rather than a condition of use.

 _You may do whatever but I would like..._

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's cool :) and I just want to say that the readme is awesome. I love developers who communicate :P

</comment><comment><USER15> I really liked the design, but didn't want to do all the integrations etc. I created a similar HTML design for the ones who may want to use it immediately. In addition, I created an tumblr theme and submitted it to tumblr. For details, <https://github.com/mertemin/purus>

</comment><comment><USER16> " I would like you to choose a different adjacent color as the ones used by the people below"

Any clue about why this?

<comment><USER17> He's going for a similar style as Svbtle(.com) where each person that blogs has their own identity that corresponds to a color/image so they can easily be cataloged and seen.

<comment><USER18> Either that, or a rainbow of users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The aesthetics are nice but from a usability standpoint having the navigation as a mix of external links and syte navigation seems like a poor choice.

*edit. I see now that it's just twitter and the contact that leave. Not bad.

<comment><USER20> Twitter and the other services are only external links if they are wrongly configured, API calls fails, or JavaScript has not finished loading/is not available. Contacts is just 'mailto:'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Good job, and OK, it looks good, but:

a. it's on tumblr so SEO will be crap or non existent, b. it loads using JS (as bjourne pointed out), so posts will be invisible to Search Engines.

You should try, somehow, to integrate it with wordpress.

<comment><USER22> What's wrong with tumblr's SEO?

<comment><USER21> Tumblr SEO is catastrophic. I had two tumblr blogs for a few weeks, they never got into Google before 3rd page. I created a wordpress blog in two days I was number One...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Nice job!

I had a similar idea with <https://github.com/JamesChevalier/Launch-Soon> but Syte is a _much_ better execution.

Thanks for this.

</comment><comment><USER24> Ok so this is like a lifestream? I remember lifestreams being huge a few years back when twitter just started to really kick off. When I say huge, I do mean in my little circles.

</comment><comment><USER25> Looks very compelling. I'm tempted to try this out... only thing is that I don't want my site to look too cookie-cutter if Syte catches on. :-)

</comment><comment><USER26> I remember this popping up here a few months ago. Definitely looking forward to WordPress integration, but this looks amazing so far.

</comment><comment><USER27> very awesome! make this easy to use for the mainstream and you have a winner!

</comment><comment><USER28> this should be saas

<comment><USER29> I have something in the works. Will try to post on HN in a few days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> "My" personal site? Or facebooks,twitters,foursquare extended profile of me?

Who would want their _personal_ site to be connected to so many other sites, all whom are more powerful and make more money on your site than you?

<comment><USER31> I post my stuff all over the web, I don't want to repost all that to my own personal site. Posting to all the other big players is great for discovery, grabbing all that content to post to my own site is great for email footers, business cards etc I built <http://qiip.me> exactly for this, see mine at <http://qiip.me/edlea>

<comment><USER32> Personally I would prefer a reverse set-up, post everything to my own site, automatically re-post to big players of my choosing.

<comment><USER31> That's not a pattern I've noticed generally. A lot of the sites I deal with are very specialised with content.

For example, posting a listing to Etsy.com requires some very specific details which are not relevant to other sites. To post an Etsy listing, share the same photos on Flickr, share that content to a blog post would require a lot of data at the central point to spread to all those services.

I think it's easier in the cases I've seen to post to the end services and pull that data back in.

Shared fields are not often more than Title, Images, some Body Text. Then there are hundreds of smaller options from price to tags to materials to photosets to choose from.

The other issue here is that where cross posting is easy, usually the main service already provides it, i.e. posting from Instagram to Flickr. If you include services like <http://IFTTT.com> then you're pretty covered for this case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I don't really understand the implementation here, is this a "baked" system or does it require python hosting/node.js and the like on your web server?

Also why do we need to sign up for developer keys at all these services? Kinda crazy

</comment><comment><USER34> <http://bit.ly/scicombinator></comment>


Why Men Don't Believe the Data on Gender Bias in Science - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/why-men-dont-believe-the-data-on-gender-bias-in-science <comment><USER2> Because the data shows something else entirely and is always misrepresented.

For example, the lab manager study that's quoted was for a lab manager in _psychology_. Which actually has greater female than male representation. Minor detail. Oh, and the effect could only be reproduced if the fake applicants were both (a) mediocre and (b) exactly equally qualified.

Whereas Ceci and Williams found a 2:1 hiring advantage _for_ women in STEM, with a much larger and to the best of my knowledge also much more careful study.

Facts. Matter.

<comment><USER3> > For example, the lab manager study that's quoted was for a lab manager in > psychology.

Actually it wasn't. Quote, "A broad, nationwide sample of biology, chemistry, and physics professors (n = 127) evaluated the application materials of an undergraduate science student who had ostensibly applied for a science laboratory manager position."

> Which actually has greater female than male representation. Minor detail.

It is a minor detail, even if the study really were about psychology lab assistants, which it isn't, because the hypothesis isn't about total participation but about bias. Participation numbers alone don't tell you about bias. That's like Tucker Carlson, who recently asked how NFL owners can be racist if 70% of their players are black.

> Facts. Matter.

But George Washington was the first president of the United States! Facts. Matter. Only, it's kind of hard to see _how_ they matter unless you understand the issue you're commenting on and the hypothesis those facts ostensibly support. You seem to be under the impression that the problem is simply the number of women in various arbitrary professions. I understand how someone would come to that conclusion if they only read headlines. It isn't the issue, however, it isn't the hypothesis, and therefore you'll keep bringing up facts that don't really matter for the subject that's _actually_ discussed, rather than the one you _think_ is being discussed. This is because you don't really care about what the issue is; you just decided it was wrong based on some gut feeling you may have.

<comment><USER2> > Participation numbers alone don't tell you about bias

Well, if "bias is the answer, what was the question?" is your "scientific" approach, then they obviously don't matter. However, it turns out that neither chemistry nor physics are "tech" and the gender ratios in the physical sciences are fairly even (even for chemistry, slight male skew for physics last I checked).

Add in psychology, and using this study as a proxy for engineering or tech is just malpractice. Which means par for the course for gender "studies".

Anyway, it looks like people have a bias for the underrepresented gender in a particular field, as the following study shows:

"The team found a bias in favor of women in math, physics, and philosophy, which increased with the degree of male domination in the field"

"They found about a 10 percent bias in favor of female test takers in the non- gender–blind oral tests in math, physics, and philosophy. The opposite was true for fields where men are traditionally underrepresented: The team found a 3 percent to 5 percent bias in favor of male oral test takers in literature and foreign languages"

[http://www.the- scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/46681/...](http://www.the- scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/46681/title/Slight-Female-Bias-in- French-Science-Teacher-Exams/)

Which is kind of what you would expect humans to do (slightly favor the group that is underrepresented), and surprise, that is in fact what humans do.

And when the underrepresentation is stronger, the bias _for_ the underrepresented population increases, see the 2:1 hiring advantage for _for_ women for tenure track positions in STEM found by Ceci/Wiliams. Stronger effect, much larger sample, more careful study, much less quoted than the "lab manager" one, which to remind everyone only saw an effect for _mediocre_ candidates (so people you didn't want to hire in the first place) that were calibrated to be exactly equally qualified.

<comment><USER3> > However, it turns out that neither chemistry nor physics are "tech" and the > gender ratios in the physical sciences are fairly even (even for chemistry, > slight male skew for physics last I checked).

I don't understand what it is that you're arguing.

> And when the underrepresentation is stronger

Again, I don't think you understand what the topic is, so I don't see the relevance of your citations. What kind of bias do you think we're talking about?

Even though I hate doing this (b/c if you haven't bothered clicking through the links I posted, then you're not interested in the subject), but just to break the monotony of repeatedly pointing out the absurdity of debating a subject you know little about and wish to learn of even less, let me give the elevator-pitch summary:

 _It is not about participation in arbitrary professions; it is not about bias in tests; it is not about biological differences; it is about the easily verified fact that women have been marginalized from positions of power[1] at least for centuries. Test scores have little to do with power; Participation in being psychology lab assistants has little to do with power; bias in promotion in certain power-conferring occupation has a lot to do with power._

Studies in the field may, therefore, focus on two things: either on the status or process of said power imbalance, or on the mechanism of its creation. The paper which is the focus of this article (the last one), is of the second kind.

Next you're going to show me research showing bias in favor of women when it comes to smiling. That may be nice, but is not relevant to the discussion.

If you show me research showing how socitey confers more power on women than men, then that would be something to consider.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_(social_and_political)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_\(social_and_political\))

<comment><USER4> It is very convenient and easy to define the problem as historical as you don't need to prove anything. Linking to an Wikipedia article that do not says the statement you want to quote is also a nice touch for an article about science.

There is a correlation between hight and power, where people of less hight has been marginalized from positions of power[1] at least for as the written history.

So in a satirical statement, I will now make a scientific claim that bias in promotion of people with less hight is the problem and thus people should be given special shoes during the hiring process in order to solve the problem. No need to bring data other than the historical proof. Science is done here.

If you show me research showing how socitey confers more power to people of smaller hight, then that would be something to consider. Only that data is worthy of consideration, and as you can't do that, we can just conclude that I am right and you are wrong.

[1]: [http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and- families/...](http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and- families/health-news/tall-people-more-likely-to-be-successful-in-life-study- find-a6919431.html)

<comment><USER3> > Linking to an Wikipedia article that do not says the statement you want to > quote is also a nice touch for an article about science.

Oh, I linked to other articles, too, in my discussion with mpweiher on another thread.

> where people of less hight has been marginalized from positions of power[1] > at least for as the written history.

That may well be, and perhaps that problem needs addressing, but there is a question of extent. Women have been marginalized to a far greater extent than short people. You find many more short men in positions of power than you find women.

> If you show me research showing how socitey confers more power to people of > smaller hight, then that would be something to consider. Only that data is > worthy of consideration, and as you can't do that, we can just conclude that > I am right and you are wrong.

There are literally mountains of evidence for the marginalization of women. A 1-minute Google-scholar search will confirm that. Just a few highlights: until recently, women weren't allowed to vote; they weren't allowed to join many professions; they weren't allowed to study or encouraged not to; they couldn't even control property unless in special circumstances. That has been going on for _centuries_. Like with blacks after slavery, the removal of _legal_ barriers did not change the power imbalance over night. It took decades of political action to get a higher representation of women in politics, management and academia, and the struggle has been largely successful. For example, you can find research from 20-30 years ago showing that boys do better at math than girls (hinting at a biological difference), yet that difference has now largely disappeared. Let me just link a few introductory Wikipedia articles:

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

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

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

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

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

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

<comment><USER4> Unless you missed the sarcasm tag completely, you can't use history to define what causes segregation. It don't stand up to the scientific method, it create circular logic, and its frankly lazy.

First establish a theory. Then use theory to predict the world. Show data that support that given a starting point and a influence you end up with data similar to current, and then address potential problems. Finally compare the theory to other theories that also can correctly predict and see which one is better. Only if all fails should you get into camps and start the ideological battle like the one you are doing, in which reason can be thrown out and people can just shout at each other until a unified theory can be created and the battle lines can be silently be forgotten.

<comment><USER2> You're forgetting that this is feminist/gender theory. So logic/reason/facts/data do not apply, they are just tools of the oppressor.

<comment><USER3> Is that assessment based on your actual study of mainstream feminist theory (do you even know what it is?) or just something you've read on some blog written by someone who also hasn't actually studied the subject? Seriously, how can you make such bold assertions on a topic you know nothing about? Does it make any sense to you to form your opinion of a subject based on false information given by others who do not know the subject? Where's the logic/reason/facts/data in that?

So far, you're the one who tried to contradict the validity of the examples I've provided with claims that are factually incorrect (re how women got the vote) or with hypotheses that are easily dismissed (that women marginalization is no more than a manifestation of the marginalization of short people), as I clearly demonstrated. So what exactly (other than common myths about mainstream feminism) makes you think that I'm less rigorous?

<comment><USER2> > actual study of mainstream feminist theory

Yes, and interactions with proponents of said theory. And I understand the difference between a religion and science. You obviously do not.

<comment><USER3> > Yes

What feminist theory have you studied?

> with proponents of said theory

That you call those scholars "proponents" makes me pretty certain you don't know what that theory _is_ [1], but were those interactions full of personal insults and arguments based on ignorance?

> You obviously do not.

What makes you say that? Being so rigorous, can you point to where I confuse the two?

What truly boggles the mind is how someone who professes to respect rigor can debate a subject they know absolutely nothing about. Forget familiarity with methodology or finidings -- you are clearly unfamiliar even with the research _questions_ [2].

I get the sense that you're instinctively objecting not any actual arguments made, but arguments that you believe are made due to a false portrayal of feminism you may have been exposed to.

And, BTW, what _is_ your hypothesis? That there is no social marginalization of women? If that's your (quite extraordinary) claim, the burden of proof at this point in time (i.e., given the extensive research of the past few decades) should be on you. If you wish to dismiss this extensive research, you'll have to do better than repeat the same tired hundred-years-old (at least!) quips about feminists being "illogical" and the like.

[1]: Answer: Feminist theory is the name given to the cross-disciplinary study -- in history, sociology, anthropology, literature and others -- of gender inequality. Therefore, I am not sure what you mean by "proponents" in this case. People interested in studying this issue as opposed to, say, you? If you are not interested, how can you debate this at all?

[2]: The question of nature vs. nurture when it comes to gender differences is _not_ one of the research questions, and is largely orthogonal, though intersects at times. In other words, the claim that cognitive biological differences between the sexes are nonexistent or even necessarily small is _not_ a claim made by me, or, to the best of my knowledge, by mainstream feminist scholarship

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > These lawsuits highlight the real reason for the lack of women in science

In an article about science, a claim like that without strong support is in very bad taste. If you want to prove causation, you should at least first prove correlation. If we measure how much an industry believes that a specific gender is suitable for the job, do we get a correlated number for gender segregation? For an assertive statement that we have now found a scientific proof for the real underlying reason for gender segregation, such question should be easily answered.

</comment><comment><USER5> "One paper found ....instead the male faculty favored fake research".

Who cares what one paper found?

That's not proof. There are 10,000 papers on both sides.</comment>


Ask HN: Sales compensation for SaaS products - <AUTHOR>

For those of you that have a SaaS business and have sales staff (1 or more), what is the compensation method you are using for them?  If you are using commission, how are you basing the commission, on 12 month revenue per signup or ??? <comment><USER2> There was a recent submission about SaaS and sales compensation. It might be a too complex and talks about whole teams of sales people but it's well researched. [https://bvp.app.box.com/30-QA-for-SaaS-Revenue- Leaders](https://bvp.app.box.com/30-QA-for-SaaS-Revenue-Leaders)

<comment><AUTHOR> Really, thank you again for this link. I am still going over it more, but it is very detailed and appears well researched, which I would expect given the group behind it.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> As shaynbaron pointed out and it is a good point, generally we are SMB focused and not looking at the Enterprise sales cycle. Enterprise sales in general drastically increases the sales cycle and complexity which I am not actively focused on right now.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great question! Can I suggest an edit? You could ask if they help SmB or enterprise.

<comment><AUTHOR> Always open to suggestions, thanks.</comment></comment>


The Graphing Calculator Story (2004) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nucalc.com/Story/ <comment><USER2> If you liked this story, [https://www.folklore.org/](https://www.folklore.org/) is a treasure trove of more Apple folklore.

</comment><comment><USER3> Posted many times but no discussion in the last few years, so this is ok. Previous discussions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7680696](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7680696)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3176595](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3176595)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1584501](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1584501)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1741](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1741)

That last id is awfully small. I wonder what other perennials have first ids less than that. Story of Mel perhaps? (Edit: nope.)

</comment><comment><USER4> I think we have all learned the era of cheeky hijinks like these is over. Trespass in a building like they did and you might just be reading about yourself on the internet in a whole different context, with an unflattering mugshot to boot.

<comment><USER5> It's interesting. Historically there have always been these sort of back channel, side channel, unofficial ways of doing all sorts of things, some of them basically critical to the operation of a functional society. Yet as society has become more developed we tend to formalize the "official" ways of doing things while pretending that everything else was irrelevant (or, worse, harmful). And then life becomes more restricted with less room for imagination and exploration, with obvious negative consequences for innovation, among many other things. It may not be possible to maintain all of the unofficial side channels and so forth as things advance but it's critical that people think about them and be thoughtful about how to replace them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Unfortunately, the computer we were building never saw the light of day... > In August 1993, the project was canceled.

I can't think what the secret project might have been. It's not Pink, was it? I thought that happened a few years later. Anyone have an idea?

<comment><USER7> We were trying to build an iPad with 1992 technology. [http://arno.org/arnotify/2010/01/penmac/](http://arno.org/arnotify/2010/01/penmac/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's the picture of the two authors in the New York Times: [https://www.nytimes.com/1994/03/11/business/chip-makers- comp...](https://www.nytimes.com/1994/03/11/business/chip-makers-competing- creeds.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> The Graphing Calculator was the most impressive bundled software I had seen by then. And it really did showcase the PowerPC's speed vs the previous 68k CPUs. I was surprised to learn that it had to be snuck in that way. I think the project would have merited full support.

<comment><USER10> If it was an official decision to ship a calculator app, would it have been made as impressive as this one?

I wonder, because the passion required to ship this impressive app is only there perhaps, due to the nature of the people doing it, and not due to any management oversight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is this a vision from a world without open source?

<comment><USER12> Open source existed, but wasn't as easy to distribute as it is now. I'm also not sure that the education-model Macs would've had a development environment installed to _assemble_ the source (if the Macs I used in the mid-90s at school had software development tools, I was never aware of them, anyhow). And I'm not sure what the options would've looked like for acquiring an open- source set of dev tools for the Mac anyhow (especially considering that Power was a new, still rare hardware architecture at the time).

<comment><USER13> This [https://archive.org/details/TSLSummer1993](https://archive.org/details/TSLSummer1993) is how you got Open Source software before the Internet (back then called Shareware - although technically they are not the same thing).

BBS's existed but were too slow, and expensive.

<comment><USER12> Shareware isn't remotely the same as Open Source, though. It was a more-than- demo, more-than-full-version copy of a piece of commercial software, generally designed to be useful on its own, but not useful enough. It was a method of marketing the full version of the software.

I've got a few CDs of later collections of the stuff. I remember buying clamshell-packaged games for $5 from Software, Etc (that turned out to be the first 1/3 of the game, for example). I remember seeing the magazines to order it from. I'm aware of shareware, and it's not related to what I was talking about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> And it is probably the nicest graphing calculator on iOS.

<comment><USER7> Thank you!</comment></comment>


What I wish I knew as a junior developer - <AUTHOR> http://blog.baugues.com/what-i-wish-i-knew

<comment><USER2> Grok the inner loop and don't work with timezones. Brilliant!</comment>


Caleb Wilde is a sixth-generation funeral director - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/matter/confessions-of-a-mortician-7a8c061bbda3

<comment><USER2> This article makes reference to Terror Management Theory ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terror_management_theory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terror_management_theory)) and Ernest Becker's book The Denial of Death ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Denial_of_Death](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Denial_of_Death)).</comment>


1/3rd of U.S. startups that raised a 2015 Series A went through an accelerator - <AUTHOR> http://pitchbook.com/news/articles/one-third-of-us-startups-that-raised-a-series-a-in-2015-went-through-an-accelerator <comment><USER2> wonder how many of each were first time founders?</comment>


Apple bans Facebook's Research app that paid users for data - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/30/apple-bans-facebook-vpn/ <comment><USER2> Headline is accurate but misses the "revoked their Enterprise Certificate" which almost certainly affects other internal Facebook apps and testing.</comment>


Multi-tenant cloud Setup - <AUTHOR> Are there any open source frameworks available to manage tenant provisioning, management, authentication and setup a SaaS product on AWS or gcloud? <comment><USER2> As far as I know multi-tenancy normally handled at application level either using single database or multiple databases.

But From your explanation what I am getting feel is you want to provisioning of single application on multiple servers for multiple clients each having a separate application and database instances.

I am not sure of any open source framework available but I am sure this is possible on AWS with automation scripts in shell.

If you found any such framework then please let me know

Thanks

</comment><comment><USER3> Microsoft has an excellent writeup on how one could approach multi-tenant architecture.

Helped me a lot when I did a project with multiple tenants.

Link: [https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/aa479086.aspx](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/aa479086.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER4> Terraform from HashiCorp combined with Puppet, Chef, Ansible whatever you prefer</comment>


A Philosophical View Of What Boards Should And Should Not Do - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/26/venture-assistance-a-philosophical-view-of-what-boards-should-and-should-not-do/

<comment><USER2> The original purpose of a board of directors was to manage the company at a strategic level. To do the job properly takes time and effort. Unfortunately, there is no limit to how many boards on which one can sit, and the quality of corporate governance at the board level has degraded accordingly. Allowing people to sit on multiple boards also breeds group think, conflicts of interest and back-channels for insider information. Interlocking boards are another way our economic system is gamed to favor the wealthy. We should restrict membership to a single board, leading to a greater diversity of qualified people in the boardroom.

<comment><USER3> I don't disagree with your assertion, but how do you deal with the fact that there is a finite number of qualified people who can sit on boards?

Its not like there are 10,000 past CEOs willing to sit on the boards of these companies.

I think it is a really tough challenge, and one that is not easily solved.

<comment><USER2> I believe there are many more people with sufficient qualifications than there are board seats for them to sit on. They don't all need to be past CEOs, just ethical people with business experience and good sense. And frankly, it wouldn't hurt to trim the size of the average board, if it really becomes a problem.

<comment><USER4> Definitely agree with this. One of the key innovations to free up more capital in the fly over cities has been de-coupling the board membership from the capital at the Angel or Seed level. We found that early stage investors would put up the money but didn't have the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This isn't about Boards of Directors so much as about how VCs should act when they act as advisers. And the article doesn't make the VC sound like an adviser as much as a business partner. The problem here is the adviser isn't a founding member of the company, even though the VC wants to be one. And when you want to go a different direction, your adviser can all too easily become a back-seat driver.

A VC is a person with time and money but no ideas. If they had ideas, why wouldn't they make those ideas into real products?

<comment><USER6> But the VC has an idea. Which is use the money to make more money by allowing others to build businesses. That's a business model itself. It requires the same amount of planning, marketing, PR, etc. They also have to turn a profit or face a bigger doom of losing lots of money on a bunch of bad businesses.</comment></comment>


MDNS misconfiguration (my first public disclosure) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/chadillac/mdns_recon

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry I can't release the tool yet, the suits at my 9-5 are making a stink about my independent research going through their approval process because they contractually own my soul something.</comment>


Ask HN: Can we redefine what "Hard work" is and what it isn't? - <AUTHOR> I see people that are so busy doing things, sleeping less, working more, and showing others how busy they are, Is it an illusion ? are they fooling themselves to feel important  ? or everyone should be like that ? is it worthy working hard without getting anyone's attention ? just wondering ... ! <comment><USER2> 'hard work' is very subjective. The vast majority of full time workers (here in Australia) work around the 38 to 40 hours per week mark. So by definition this would constitute average work and yet the majority of them would claim that they work hard. Just like almost everyone claims to be a better than average driver, so almost everyone feels they work hard. I would personally define hard work as working more than average hours or doing normal hours in a particularly unpleasant job, such as working 2km underground as a coal miner in dirty and hard conditions.

</comment><comment><USER3> Reminds me something Ze Frank said whilst talking about this exact question:

> Our definition of work is quite different than our experience of work... > Without the discomfort, why would it be hard [work]?

He goes on the describe a "provisional life," and reaching our limits and if that's even worth our consideration. Its a good video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2cMjeSvZSs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2cMjeSvZSs)</comment>


Sentiment and emotion for your blogs - <AUTHOR> http://188.8.131.52:8080/sentimetrics/#/home <comment><USER2> Why post a web which doesn't even have a domain name, just the IP, and has sections full of Lorem Ipsums?</comment>


Stratfor emails reveal secret, widespread TrapWire surveillance system - <AUTHOR> http://rt.com/usa/news/stratfor-trapwire-abraxas-wikileaks-313/

<comment><USER2> I was a defense contractor in this domain. I think the capabilities of Abraxis are trumped up a bit. I wouldn't worry too much.

</comment><comment><USER3> Flagged for being an RT article, this doesn't need to be on Hacker News.

<comment><USER4> Seconded. They are one step above supermarket tabloids when it comes to journalism. What's next? Posts here about the Bat Boy?

If there is something to this story, then it will be available at a reputable site. That's what should be submitted here.</comment></comment>


All about GNU Screen - <AUTHOR> http://lugatgt.org/content/gnu_screen/downloads/presentation.pdf <comment><USER2> I love screen.

I use it on a daily basis for ~10 years.

What still bothers me mightily is that, up to this day, nobody has bothered to get the history scrolling right (neither in tmux, btw). You still have to press an awkward key combination to switch to "copy mode", the normal mechanisms (PGUP, mousewheel, scrollbar) only result in garbage.

I've tried various partial fixes ("altscreen off") but none works properly across sessions or with multiple windows. Years back I even tried to patch screen myself but had to surrender over the (for me) crufty code-base.

And that despite the solution being fairly obvious: Just redraw the entire window while scrolling, just like irssi and plenty other console apps do it. And just like screen itself does it in copy-mode.

I wish someone would finally take on this issue...

<comment><USER3> You can scroll through the history of your terminal, but not of individual screens by adding this to your .screenrc file.

termcapinfo xterm|xterm-color ti@:te@

Not 100% there, but does well for me.

<comment><USER2> Yes I have that, it's the partial solution I mentioned.

It unfortunately doesn't preserve the history during detach/reattach. And the history gets scrambled when you switch between windows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> tmux is a great BSD-licensed alternative:

<http://tmux.sourceforge.net/>

I've tried both, and the licensing issue aside, I've found I prefer tmux.

Anyway, not wanting to turn this into a gnu vs. bsd, tmux vs. screen argument, but I didn't eve know tmux existed until someone pointed me to it, so I'm just passing on the knowledge.

<comment><USER5> Can you elaborate on why you prefer tmux? Myself, I use byobu, a set of user- friendly wrapper scripts around screen.

<comment><USER6> off hand from just playing with tmux for the past 20 minutes, it looks like tmux better abstracts its commands from how it internally tracks the windows and sessions than does screen.

In particular, when i've played with screen, i found that i was frequently stymied by the broken abstraction of the way screen stored its state vs what I wanted to do.

byobu sadly doesn't work on macbooks, but it looks cool!

<comment><USER6> to further clarify: when choosing a session (and thus a collection of windows), in screen the process id info etc is exposed at the user level, which perhaps is useful to someone, but not for how use terminal and such. Thus because these things are not as directly exposed via the interaction model that tmux does, doing stuff becomes simpler and semantically clearer

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A nice function (not mentioned in this presentation) is the ability to send commands (-X) to a specific window in a screen session. This allows you to completely control GNU Screen the shell or another programming environment while benefiting from the persistent or logging of a session.

        screen -d -m -S mysession
        screen -S mysession -X screen -a -tjob1 'top'

Using -X you can call the commands available within GNU Screen to control the session or the windows.

<comment><USER8> The Gnu Screen command 'stuff' writes directly to the STDIN on the window. This is how the REPL integration setups with screen/vim that appear on HN from time to time work. e.g.

      screen -a window1 -X stuff 'import sys'

would send 'import sys' to whatever app was reading STDIN on window1.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you haven't heard of it, Xpra is sort of like screen for X, in that it lets you run persistent X sessions (rootlessly, unlike VNC). Shifter (<http://shifter.devloop.org.uk/>) packages screen and Xpra together with a nice user-friendly interface for Windows, OpenSolaris, BSD, Mac OS, Linux, etc., and it includes a patch for Xpra so that it works for Windows!

</comment><comment><USER10> I strongly recommend having a look at the Gnu Screen customization in Ubuntu Server.

[http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2008/12/ubuntu-server- include...](http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2008/12/ubuntu-server-includes- window-manager.html)

<comment><USER5> That project has matured a lot, it's now called byobu. It's friggin' awesome. <https://launchpad.net/byobu>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I was just thinking today how wonderful it would be if my web browser let me navigate tabs with the same key bindings as screen.

If I had a nickel for every time I've done "select all" when I wanted to quickly switch back to the last active tab.

</comment><comment><USER12> My biggest impediment to using screen is emacs key binding conflicts. I never took the time to determine an acceptable solution. Can an emacs guru share their solution...?

<comment><USER13> I use backtick as the screen command, which is fine unless you write a lot of bash scripts.

$ screen -e '``'

<comment><USER14> I'll give that a try ... I had to do screen -e '\\`\\`'</comment></comment></comment>