How to Use Competitive Intelligence to Gain an Advantage - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/magazine/20110401/how-to-use-competitive-intelligence-to-gain-an-advantage.html <comment><USER2> Good article, and great to see Qworky used as an example!

In general though I think competitive intelligence is often overrated. Certainly there are times that it matters -- Mikal's example in the article about whether or not a company could be first-to-market. In a fast-moving and cluttered market though (and these days most markets are fast-moving cluttered) it's a huge amount of effort ... and you can't get intelligence on everybody. I honestly can't even remember which competitor Mikal was worried about at the time, but they were just one of many.

So competitive intelligence is useful in the context of competitive strategy. What's interesting is that an overall strategic opportunity Mikal and I identified back in 2009 is still there: as far as I can tell, nobody is doing diversity-focused small business software.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting article, but it misses a big issue.

If found out, the competitor may engage in counter Intelligence. It might have been more prudent for the company to keep the garbage man supplying the other side with information.

<comment><USER2> Excellent point. Competitive intelligence goes both ways. The skills and attitudes I had learned in the computer security field were very useful doing competitive strategy as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good article. We've got a startup launching soon that helps with competitive intelligence. Signup at launch.tractionapp.com if you're interested.</comment>


Facebook Location History View - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/location_history/view/ <comment><USER2> For this only the notice that it's turned off comes up for me. Great. Alas it's Google that knows everywhere I've been [https://google.com/maps/timeline?pb](https://google.com/maps/timeline?pb)

<comment><USER3> Wow, they (Google) really keep everything.. They've still got my trip to Europe from 5 years ago on there, not sure how that's useful to them at this point haha.

<comment><USER4> They keep it because it's useful to you, not because it's useful to them. You're just looking at it too cynically.

<comment><USER5> I must disagree. Spending some time thinking how this info is useful to the end user as opposed to the data watcher / holder. I believe that this data is exponentially less useful for the end user as it is for the persons adversaries.

Cell phone companies for example may have legitimate reasons to keep location data for billing disputes for 60 days or so, but holding that data longer makes it available to all kinds of agencies, law enforcers and those with that kind of access who would abuse that access, marketing groups, divorce lawyers, accident attorneys, all kinds of possible things that are detrimental to the end user.

The data companies profit from sharing this data, and it costs the end user. Whatever benefits one can come up with, I think the scale is obviously tipped in the "more useful against you" than "for you" direction when it comes to long term location storage.

<comment><USER4> The phone company doesn't hold it for you on your behalf; they don't have some frontend where you can query and see it. Google does hold it on your behalf. It's used for you in Google Maps to surface places you regularly go over places you've never been. This is why "directions to the pizza place" works. Location history is also used to automatically deduce your home, work, or school location, so you can use a command like "navigate to school" with Android Auto, or get traffic alerts along your normal routes, just as examples.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> When is facebook going to release a "shadow profile view". I can't delete the data they have on me because they don't even let me access it, despite publicly admitting to having it.

<comment><USER7> No company in the world can handle such bandwidth :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> One of the many reasons I didn't like the mandatory FB app install on some Verizon android phones. You couldn't even delete it if you wanted to. Best case scenario was to never log in.

Ironically, I currently own a Pixel 2XL, have multiple google homes and chromecasts, use gmail, photos, etc., and let them run wild with my permissions.

I think for me Google has created an ecosystem that I get a lot of value out of. I can't tell you how many times my phone has automatically given me pertinent information about a trip, or when to leave for work, or how to route around an accident. There is so much value for me, that I'm willing to trade my personal info.

FB on the other hand just seems like a vampire most of the time. All I want to do is keep in touch with a few friends. It's even more egregious since I'm old enough to be in the first year cohort of FB rolling out, and have had to live with the ever increasing privacy intrusions.

</comment><comment><USER9> I asked for a full facebook data export, and this data wasn't in the bundle they gave me.

<comment><USER10> Just checked my facebook data export and the location_history folder just contains the file no-data.txt

My location history is also turned off on facebook.

Just another data point

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is pretty surprising seeing as how I have disallowed Facebook apps' permission to access my location.

</comment><comment><USER12> I switched from the native Facebook app to the web app in 2014 -- which is the last location Facebook has on me. I guess this explains why deleting the app gave me double the battery life.

<comment><USER13> My experience too. If you absolutely must use Facebook, at least use the mobile site instead of the app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I know from my past data exports on Android (pre-Cambridge Analytica) that my location history was pretty precise at all times. Same deal with Google Maps but I was aware of it so that's not really a complaint.

I tried looking for the location history feature on my iPhone and I honestly can't find it. Visiting the location history view just says my history is disabled and the web client doesn't seem to have that setting anywhere either apparently?

I don't even know why I have the thing installed in the first place. My timeline is complete garbage (people resharing bad memes) and I only use Messenger.

<comment><USER15> _> I tried looking for the location history feature on my iPhone and I honestly can't find it._

It's always fun to look at the places your iPhone thinks you frequent:

>Settings >Privacy >Location Services >System Services > Significant Locations

I stop at a particular traffic light on the way to work most days, and the phone thinks I like to hang out at the pawn shop on the corner.

As far as anyone knows, all of this information is only known to the phone, and not to Apple. But it's still creepy to see how a little box in your pocket watches you day and night.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Location History is off. Turning on Location History lets you explore what's around you, get more relevant ads, and help improve Facebook. It allows Facebook to build a history of precise locations received through your device. Your Location History is private and secure. You can manage it in your location settings at any time. "

Yeah I don't think I'll be enabling it.

</comment><comment><USER17> Deleting the FB mobile app, replacing it with Friendly+ (which scrapes the web app to provide a fairly equivalent experience, plus blocks ads and other stuff) was a great choice.

</comment><comment><USER18> How does it have my location history? I don't have their app on my phone. Maybe through FB Messenger?

</comment><comment><USER19> Its frozen for me. Just keeps spinning the first 8th of the spin animation and glitching back to the start

</comment><comment><USER20> For someone who has deleted their FB account, what is this?

<comment><USER21> Android user here. I won't make any claims about any permissions I've granted Facebook, but this link leads to a location view that shows my history with frequent updates each and every day from 2015 until this year, apparently every time I moved somewhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I am appalled at the apparent ignorance/disbelief in so many comments from people who don't find it obvious that location history data from Google/FB is useful and profitable for them to have.

<comment><USER23> I am appalled at the apparent ignorance/disbelief in so many comments from people who don't find it obvious that location history data from Google/FB can be used to improve the user experience.

<comment><USER9> Can you give some examples? Normally I find that location data makes my user experience worse, for example assuming the language I speak based on the country, or redirecting me away from the url I was trying to go to.

<comment><USER24> It's not always individualistic. Facebook can determine where users travel to and when. There are more complex cohort analysis and segmentation that's being done but a lot of the data can help drive business strategy.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Use a .dev domain? Not anymore - <AUTHOR> https://medium.engineering/use-a-dev-domain-not-anymore-95219778e6fd <comment><USER2> Heh... I remember having an internal dns server with zone files for a whole bunch of internal servers using $our-real-domain-name.local as dupes of $our- real-domain-name.com. Then an early OSX upgrade brought in Rendezvous/Bonjour in maybe '02 or '03 - and all the Macs stopped being able to find the local machines... (And the sysadmin who'd set it all up didn't believe the problem reports at first, 'cause her CentOS machine were still working just fine.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, this reminds me of the following article I just read: "Please build websites for the web, not just Google Chrome." — [https://thenextweb.com/dd/2017/11/28/please-build- websites-w...](https://thenextweb.com/dd/2017/11/28/please-build-websites-web- not-just-google-chrome/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Great explanation. But I use Safari for development so probably no need to change for the time being. :)

<comment><USER4> Hmm, I stand corrected. Just upgraded to the latest macOS High Sierra, and it appears that Safari is automatically redirecting http to https for .dev. I changed a local dev domain in my hosts file to .dew and it started working via http again.</comment></comment>


Decoding Steve Jobs, in Life and on Film - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/08/business/dealbook/decoding-steve-jobs-in-life-and-on-film.html?ref=business <comment><USER2> All of this misses the point entirely. We don't mourn people as a sort of achievement award for a life well spent. We mourn people we feel a connection with, because of the pain we feel at losing the connection.

Jobs was a gifted promoter whose public speaking style tilted casual, informal, and personable. He was effective in part because, at least on stage, he made you like him.

Lots of people are likable, and when they die we don't mourn them, because we never think about them. But Jobs forced people to think about him, because he was the public face of a blockbuster series of products that people talked about year-round. It's not that launching those products was so praiseworthy that it "earned" him a mourning. It's that the combination of his on-stage personality and the popularity of those products more or less forced us to.

That's not a bad thing, by the way. I think there's something human and basically nourishing about thinking about strangers as people, and constructing even a fabricated, artificial form of empathy for what they and their loved ones are going through. That those emotions have no practical connection to the world we live in is irrelevant.

<comment><USER3> I'm sad that he died, eapecially so young and by delaying treatment that could have improved his prognosis. But one thing I'm beginning to appreciate is that the reality distortion field is sort of fading away. Wozniak has stepped up and talked more frankly about Jobs's real role inside Apple, especially during the early days. And increasingly though he is still regarded as a Leonardo among product managers, people are recognizing that Jobs was a control freak and that technical people do not want to live in his locked down, curated universe.

So we mourn, but we also feel free to acknowledge things after his death that we stifled while he was still alive for fear of our hero losing his glamour and being less of a guiding light.

<comment><USER2> And that's totally fine, and probably (given current SFBA ethos) healthy. But "too many people were mourning for Jobs" is a weird reason to start that evaluation, and it's the reason the filmmaker gave.

My only objection is to the idea that people need to earn mourning. I'm not trying to defend Jobs beyond that. I didn't know him, or work for Apple.

<comment><USER4> I follow your point about personal mourning, it doesn't have to be earned. But this is tangled up with public recognition of the man's achievements on the level of Einstein, Gandhi and Martin Luther King. So maybe the filmmaker misstated a more reasonable point.

<comment><USER5> I think a big reason why Steve Jobs has had a couple movies made was because the Mac has been used by creative professionals for many years. Apple almost died in the middle 90s. Now Apple is the most valuable company on Earth. It's an epic story. Plus, he was weird. Black turtle neck uniform? Ideologies formed in the 60s and yet transforming the modern era? This is great stuff and perfect for story telling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _> Mr. Gibney held out John Lennon and Martin Luther King Jr. as somehow more worthy than Jobs of the wave of grief that took place after they died. _

So all it boils down to is if the particular flaws of a person pushes a critic's hotbuttons, he/she deserves less praise.

For example, if someone's hot button is "wife beater" or "pedophile", he will dismiss John Lennon and Jimmy Page. If someone else's hot button is "plagiarizer" or "adulterer", she will dismiss MLK and JFK.

As far as we can tell, Steve Jobs never raised a hand against his wife. But, he did treat subordinates very callously. What to make of all this?

Society doesn't venerate people for the wife beating or employee mistreatment. It's always the _other_ accomplishments that overshadow those flaws.

<comment><USER7> "Steve Jobs never raised a hand against his wife. But, he did treat subordinates very callously."

Part of it might be simply that people don't recognize mental pain as being as bad as physical pain. [1] The truth is mental pain can last a great deal longer and have much greater impact than physical pain but that is often not the way the world sees things.

[1] Not that getting hit by a spouse doeesn't cause mental pain of course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's impossible to get an accurate measure of the man now, there is just too much noise that comes along with the cementing of his status as a cultural icon. It's impossible to escape interpretations of certain parts of his life. Huge chunks have been forgotten, etc. Even while he was alive everyone had their take on him, but now to try to contend with the books (widely-panned authorized biography) and movies (also panned), forget it.

I would be interested to see more examination of his illness and how he handled it, though. Seems like he completely blew it.

</comment><comment><USER9> Andrew Sorkin lost me with the comparison to MLK.

<comment><USER10> You might dismiss Sorkin but Wozniak's approval is significant: [http://www.cnet.com/news/woz-aaron-sorkins-steve-jobs- movie-...](http://www.cnet.com/news/woz-aaron-sorkins-steve-jobs-movie-gets- it-right/#ftag=CAD590a51e)

Update

I guess I'm guilty of not realizing there are two different people named Sorkin working on a Steve Jobs movie.

<comment><USER11> Am I the only one confused by the fact Andrew Sorkin just released a documentary about Steve Jobs, but Aaron Sorkin is about to release a dramatic movie about Steve Jobs. Their names are very similar.

<comment><USER12> One of us is confused because I thought Andrew Sorkin was the guy who wrote the article not the guy who made the documentary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This article makes me think of pg's recent essay...

Why it's safe for founders to be nice [http://www.paulgraham.com/safe.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/safe.html)

</comment><comment><USER13> I can only think he was a piece of shit for prohibiting engineers to be emploeyed in other tech companies

</comment><comment><USER14> By the way, it's interesting how we hear about all the "evil" things that Steve did-- often overblown for political reasons- but we never hear about the far more heinous things done by others, for example, Bill Gates retarded the entire tech industry by a decade with dishonest, and criminal behavior. Yet he's seen as a "good guy" because he's got a really good personal PR agency and has been spending 20 years rehabilitating his image.

Steve's real crime- - why so many people who never met him and don't really actually know much about him, yet still hate him-- is that he didn't employ PR to polish his image.

This is also why people think Amazon-- a horrific place that abuses workers and has little technical innovation-- is a "tech company". That's what you buy with effective PR.

<comment><USER15> Too funny! Both Apple and Microsoft have huge PR teams. Apple's is relentlessly effective at creating product awe; Microsoft's not so much. Both Jobs and Gates lived the lives they wanted and talked to the media as they saw fit. The results speak for themselves.

If you look at billionaires' standing in the course of American history -- going back to John D. Rockefeller and Henry Ford -- they always end up with a tangled blend of admiration and loathing. In the end, PR has surprisingly little impact. There's always plenty of achievement to satisfy the fans; plenty of villainy to justify the critics.</comment></comment>


Pilots Are Protesting Amazon Air - <AUTHOR> https://finance.yahoo.com/news/pilots-protest-amazon-163513334.html <comment><USER2> The demonstration comes after numerous pilots claimed they were overworked and underpaid

<comment><USER3> It's a public "secret" in the airport industry.</comment></comment>


Using Apple's Combine Framework - <AUTHOR> https://heckj.github.io/swiftui-notes/ <comment><USER2> I fear that battle is already lost on this one, but I'm disappointed to see FRP making it into the officially supported workflow on mobile.

I think FRP has a place, and React has been a transformative technology for web, but in that case you generally don't even have to think about the rx primitives at all if you don't want to.

As far as RX as it's penetrated mobile development in the past few years, the result I have seen is that many projects have become unreadable tangles of reactive chains, where the stack trace is no longer useful, because of the unfounded assumption that "more reactive" means better code.

The iOS APIs are certainly showing their age, and there's a lot of warts related to their Objective-C pedigree, but I think they have always had a strength in terms of being fairly agnostic about how they are integrated into your program's structure. I really fear that sense will be lost if third party libraries adopt combine as the dominant interface paradigm.

<comment><USER3> More reactive usually means less global state, which is generally for the better. It also encourages functional purity where possible. Previously (briefly) in iOS/macOS there was an attempt to move to closure-based APIs, which led to unreadable tangles of function invocations with often surprising calling threads. Before that for a long time there was a weak delegate object pattern, probably the least convenient way of interacting with things.

<comment><USER4> Doesn't an application still have a state, even if you don't store/manage it explicitly?

Isn't a program more understandable if that state is sometimes made explicit rather than implicit?

Also if your goal is 'functional purity' then you might want to read this article from ten years ago.

[https://prog21.dadgum.com/55.html](https://prog21.dadgum.com/55.html)

<comment><USER3> The state is there, of course. The goal here is to minimize the amount of state the code has access to at any particular time.

Functional purity is not the goal, it's just one way to reduce state.

<comment><USER4> So you still have state, but you can't get at it because it's been moved from the heap to the call stack?

I'm not sure that makes programs:

1\. Easily evolve-able.

2\. Easy to understand.

Well managed accessible state can be greatly simplifying.

In my view the goal should be simple understandable code, not a meta-goal like removing all accessible state.

<comment><USER5> > Well managed accessible state can be greatly simplifying.

Absolutely--and functional programming is one way to achieve that. From the perspective a given function, all "state" is captured in its inputs and outputs. You know exactly what existing state can be used by the function (inputs) and exactly what state can be generated by the function (outputs) simply from looking at the signature.

<comment><USER4> I'm talking about the difficultly of reasoning about high level application state when it isn't explicit.

To take a low level example - sorting a list efficiently is easy with imperative programming and mutable state ( Note you can still encapsulate that state within a object - it doesn't need to be global ).

On the other hand took about 20 years before somebody worked how to do it reasonably with a functional approach.

Being obsessive about a pure functional approach and/or having a holy war against heap managed state is a mistake in my view.

Functional approach is a tool in the toolbox, not a golden hammer.

<comment><USER5> Totally agreed. Being obsessive about (almost) anything in software is a recipe for pain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not long ago I got tired of some web technologies and decided to look into iOS native app building. It took me some time to un-learn many things and have that "aha moment" but when I got it, I'm no longer craving for JS - except for few things that I think are better on the JS world and that is the when UI building is done better with code. In my experience when you have a situation where you want to represent data visually, it's more intuitive to create the UI by code and I find that UIKit is not much fun when dealt with only through code and no WYSIWYG interface building tools(btw WYSIWYG on XCode is not like Dreamviewer, it actually works pretty well and helps you more than limits you).

This SwiftUI + Combine thing seems to fix that pretty well. It's unfortunate that it's iOS13+ only. One thing that I kept craving when I switched to native app development was ReduxJS like state management and visual UI for data management so I build one for myself[0]. Right now there are few friction points of keeping the UI in sync with the state but I think there's now a real opportunity with Combine to have nice state management like with ReduxJS in iOS.

[0] SwiftyState is an open source state management library inspired by ReduxJS and built with Swift 5: [https://github.com/mrtksn/SwiftyState](https://github.com/mrtksn/SwiftyState)

<comment><USER7> Apple is very good about getting iPhone users upgraded.

[https://gs.statcounter.com/ios-version-market- share/mobile-t...](https://gs.statcounter.com/ios-version-market-share/mobile- tablet/worldwide)

If you're new to iOS or don't support a large audience, within 6 months most people will be using iOS 13.

<comment><USER2> For professional projects I have worked on, the rule of thumb we have landed on is usually to support 2 versions older than the current version.

Yes it's usually a small minority of users who haven't upgraded, but that tends to be people with older phones who _can 't_ update to the latest version. It makes my life harder, but it's better than punishing users who can't afford to upgrade their phone often.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can combine in it's current state completely replace RxSwift in a project? (disregarding compatability).

<comment><USER9> That's my question as well. Should I learn both technologies for greenfield projects or just use Combine?

<comment><USER10> Combine is only iOS-13 If you wanna support any OS before that you have to use RxSwift for that</comment></comment></comment>


Crazy way to get free PR from nuts - <AUTHOR> http://www.nutsonline.com/jericho <comment><AUTHOR> Cambrian house google pizza delivery is one of my all time favorites. <http://www.cambrianhouse.com/google/></comment>


Australia faces rethink: prepares for long-term bushfires and air pollution - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/16/australia-faces-massive-rethink-to-prepare-for-long-term-bushfires-and-air-pollution <comment><USER2> A bit sensationalist. Eastern states don't do prescribed burn off for bushland. Which has made a significant difference in these ongoing fires.

<comment><USER3> Seen the same in the West. People build houses in the bush, then object to burnoff (which keeps the fuel levels low) because it's unpleasant and smoky. So fuel levels build up, and then their houses burn to the ground.

People forget that Australian bush forest _needs_ to burn. That either happens with small fires frequently, or big fires infrequently. Those are the choices. Not burning at all is effectively choosing a massive fire very infrequently.

<comment><USER4> Why not just run regular logging operations if it's simply a matter of removing potential "fuel" from that environment. Burning that off seems like it might be a bit wasteful, compared to turning that biomass into a useful resource.

<comment><USER3> The trees drop huge amounts of bark, branches, leaves, etc, that don't rot (because high heat and lack of humidity), and that have to burn. It's a very different environment from Northern Hemisphere forests, there's no thick soft layer of damp, rotting leaves. It's all just sitting there on the ground waiting to burn. Bark peels off the trees in great sheets, falling to the ground where it sits there until it burns. Leaves pile up in dry drifts, waiting to burn.

You could chop the trees down, but that would leave you with no forest. It's not just mature trees that drop fuel, even growing trees do this.

If you have a forest in Australia[0], it has to burn regularly. It's not like Europe or America, where you can cheerfully build your house in the woods and it's all very pretty. If you build your house in the bush, then you have to cope with the fires.

Good to see the Guardian article talking about adaptation for once. One possible answer is to create houses that won't burn, and that are sealed from the heat and smoke.

[0] I gather that Tasmanian forest are less reliant on fire, so the situation may be different there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> They will think long and hard and the solution will be coal and prayers.

<comment><USER6> And glorious cricket according to ScoMo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The current issue is introduced species in the past 200 years changing the undergrowth, people fighting preventive burn-offs, tree changers moving to the bush and social media making everything a crisis.

Bush fires are of course down across the world[1] and continues to decrease, Australia is probably going down but it's hard to tell relative to death tolls since data is mostly a few large incidents. It might just be hitting a local maxima.

On a bright note education about airborne pollution is up and getting the attention it deserves.

[1] [https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/did-2019-really-bring-us- un...](https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/did-2019-really-bring-us-unusual- number-wildfires)</comment>


Show HN: A web service which renders SVG plots from Prometheus data - <AUTHOR> https://sr.ht/~sircmpwn/chartsrv/ <comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing, SVGs are great!

Do keep in mind are not fully supported in many older browsers. You may want to have a PNG backup. [https://caniuse.com/svg](https://caniuse.com/svg)

<comment><AUTHOR> Should be pretty easy, I have a ticket here for this:

[https://todo.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/chartsrv/4](https://todo.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/chartsrv/4)</comment></comment>


Hello Haskell, Goodbye Lisp (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://newartisans.com/2009/03/hello-haskell-goodbye-lisp/ <comment><USER2> An interesting question[0] was asked by ntoshev[1] in the discussion that ensued when this was submitted a little over five years ago[2]:

        > Can you give an example of something you can
        > implement with a Lisp macro, but you can't
        > implement with Haskell?

Much of that discussion is worth reading. The other submissions don't have much discussion.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=516208](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=516208)

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ntoshev](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ntoshev)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=516038](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=516038)

<comment><USER3> My somewhat neglected library Clearley ([https://github.com/mthvedt/clearley](https://github.com/mthvedt/clearley)) uses a macro system, that lets you write parsers that look a little like pattern-matching functions. To do this, you need to be able to introspect, bind and lookup symbols, and data structures containing symbols, at compile time. You can't do this in Haskell. Template Haskell doesn't help, since IIRC it doesn't support looking up symbols in the same file.

With Clojure, If you understand the JVM type system and performance, you can also write high performance DSLs using Clojure macros. [https://github.com/clojure/core.logic](https://github.com/clojure/core.logic) allegedly is a project along these lines, but I haven't looked too much into it. It heavily uses Clojure protocols (which map to Java interfaces) for performance. I had been working on a code generator for Clearley, which sits neglected on my hard drive, but is able to perform just a little slower than unoptimized hand-written parsers. Since in Clojure compile/runtime separation is optional and off by default, you can use Clojure to generate Clojure code, making life a lot easier.

<comment><USER4> Template Haskell does support looking up the namespace in the same file.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's interesting to read old introductory posts like this, and then look ahead at future blog posts to see how his opinion evolved.

He still loves Haskell: [http://newartisans.com/category/haskell/](http://newartisans.com/category/haskell/)

<comment><USER6> That's John Wiegley. Worked with him at FP Complete for over a year. He loves Haskell more and more every day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I use Clojure for almost everything now, but I must say Haskell looks interesting. My issue is that Clojure is _thriving_ right now, and Haskell has been around longer than I've been and the world sees it as some arcane science. Is it really worth investing my time to learn it if it's really not being used that much?

<comment><USER8> Relative to Haskell, Clojure is certainly thriving. Consider:

[http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=clojure%2C+haskell%2C+scal...](http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=clojure%2C+haskell%2C+scala&l=)

But they both lag Scala.

<comment><USER9> A sense of perspective?

[http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=clojure%2C+haskell%2C+scal...](http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=clojure%2C+haskell%2C+scala%2C+c%23%2C+java&l=)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As a long-time Lisper in AI, Haskell does look intriguing, but I'm more worried about what I would lose. In particular, I'm curious about how DSLs fare in Haskell. I can write first-order logic sentences in Lisp, and they look and behave _just like any other Lisp code_. I can use evolutionary programming to generate new code on the fly, and send it to the compiler. And I can get really down to the metal if I ever need C-level performance.

How do these look in Haskell?

<comment><USER11> I've never learned Lisp, but my motivation for learning Haskell (after briefly toying around with it) was to create a DSL. Specifically, I was designing a DSL with the intention of implementing it in python, when I realized that my DSL seemed a lot like a monad in do notation. Implementing it didn't fail to dissapoint in just how easy it was. Having said that, a DSL implemented as a monad does not behave like any other haskell code, in that it is a monad, and only looks like a DSL when used in do notation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Except macros are great for _more_ than just lazy evaluation. For instance, completely altering syntax to make your app make a lot more sense and remove any amount of boilerplate.

As far as parallelism, sure Haskell can give that for free. The cost is you have to be pure about everything, which just seems obnoxious to me...especially when you don't necessarily care about parallelism or performance.

With lisp, I can use macros to make parallelism just as natural as programming regular lisp. Yes, I have to be explicit about when I'm being parallel and when I'm not. But that doesn't seem like such a big deal to me, and sometimes you want explicit control over your threads.

As far as community, I have no doubts the Haskell community is great. But so is the lisp community. There are a lot of bright people who jump at any chance to help out others, and in the past 5 years the CL implementations and community-built libraries have been making leaps and bounds.

This isn't to say Haskell isn't a great choice for many, many applications and requirements. But it's not a replacement for lisp, just as lisp isn't a replacement for Haskell. They are two different beasts that are great at different things.

<comment><USER13> >Except macros are great for more than just lazy evaluation.

Haskellers agree, that's why we have Template Haskell. We use it for all sorts of things, like automatically implementing typeclasses (interface'ish) at compile-time.

> parallelism, sure Haskell can give that for free

Not really.

>The cost is you have to be pure about everything

Nonsense.

Boom, mutable variables:

[http://bitemyapp.com/posts/2014-03-25-when-nested-io- actions...](http://bitemyapp.com/posts/2014-03-25-when-nested-io-actions-are- wanted.html)

>sometimes you want explicit control over your threads.

You can have that in Haskell. You can use green threads or OS threads and optionally pin OS threads to a particular CPU to avoid context-switching.

So you can know what you're talking about next time, my recommended guide for Haskell:

[https://gist.github.com/bitemyapp/8739525](https://gist.github.com/bitemyapp/8739525)

The concurrency primitives in Haskell are broad and deep, check this book out: [http://chimera.labs.oreilly.com/books/1230000000929](http://chimera.labs.oreilly.com/books/1230000000929)

\--- an ex-Lisper

<comment><USER14> > So you can know what you're talking about next time, my recommended guide > for Haskell:

I like your guide, but is this really necessary? This isn't the first time you've been aggressively hostile to people expressing a preference for Lisp over Haskell, either.

<comment><USER13> There were untrue statements, I corrected them.

Also you can't express a preference (up or down) for something you've never used.

I'll elide the snark next time, but I'm not going to stop correcting false statements or sharing learning resources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> _Why Calculating is Better than Scheming. (1987)_

[http://cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/dat/miranda/wadler87.pdf](http://cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/dat/miranda/wadler87.pdf)

A paper by Phil Wadler about why ML languages are better than Lisp ones for teaching.

</comment><comment><USER16> The comments of this article include a lengthy and interesting reply by Daniel Weinreb (of MIT Lisp Machine and Symbolics fame):

[http://newartisans.com/2009/03/hello-haskell-goodbye- lisp/#c...](http://newartisans.com/2009/03/hello-haskell-goodbye- lisp/#comment-766)

The author's reply to Weinreb can be found here:

[http://newartisans.com/2009/03/the-jvm-and-costs-vs- benefits](http://newartisans.com/2009/03/the-jvm-and-costs-vs-benefits)

</comment><comment><USER17> I keep hearing over and over about how great Haskell is, and yet nobody can ever show me anything written in it other than yet another compiler.

Haskell is never going to go mainstream. Stop pushing it, because it's getting really tedious.

<comment><USER18> > and yet nobody can ever show me anything written in it other than yet > another compiler.

[http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/](http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/)

[http://git-annex.branchable.com/](http://git-annex.branchable.com/)

[http://jaspervdj.be/hakyll/](http://jaspervdj.be/hakyll/)

You are welcome :)

<comment><USER17> Best of luck. Let me know if any of your projects gain any traction.

<comment><USER19> It's a shame to see that comment getting modded down. It's absolutely valid and correct. The three examples given in that other comment are pretty much unknown. xmonad might be a slightly better example, but it's still pretty much unknown, too.

While Haskell has seen some usage, of course, we really haven't seen any major and widely-used non-compiler software developed using it. It's perfectly legitimate to point this out, and using very obscure counterexamples doesn't change this reality.

<comment><USER20> I don't use or know about any of the other tools mentioned, but Pandoc isn't exactly someone's pet project.

It may be _niche_ , but it's not unknown. If you need to convert markdown/rest/latex/etc to pdf/html/epub/etc, Pandoc's gonna come up.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mozilla founder unveils Bitcoin-based micropayments system for users, publishers - <AUTHOR> https://brave.com/blogpost_3.html <comment><USER2> I think advertisers should pay me directly to show me some ads. That would incentivise them to show me just ads that have non-zero probability of succeeding.

Every user could decide, how much information about himself he shares with advertiser (even up to eyetracking with webcam if user wants) and how high he prices adspace before his eyes. Advertisers could filter out whom they would like to serve their ads based on the price and information user was willing to disclose and past success of the ads that were presented to him.

If we agree that ads are good then most targeted ads that us as much information each user is willing to share are the best ones. If we agree that ads are bad, why not just ban them altogether and replace them with one single directory of stuff and stuff providers where customer would go to when he needs some stuff.

<comment><USER3> Great work. Next up, you can resolve how to save the news media industry in the absence of ad revenue for the publishers.

<comment><USER4> I think we need to seriously rethink how news is done. So I'm not too invested in the news media industry staying alive.

<comment><USER3> Are you invested in democracy though? Without media, you don't have democracy.

<comment><USER5> Enough of the motte-and-bailey tactics. Saying 'No Media' therefore 'No Democracy' is incredibly disingenuous.

<comment><USER6> Doesn't make it false though.

To have democracy you need to have information that comes with some degree of ethics and accountability.

Blogs and random outlets ain't that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I would switch to Brave immediately except for extensions like Lastpass and Vimium are simply too integral to abandon, however that may change [0].

Ultimately, advertising is a form of inefficiency both for the end-users and producers. Perfect world, user's are aware of products and services they do/could/would want without annoying grabs for their attention while producer's can either reduce prices or focus capital elsewhere. Finding models that successfully reduce advertising inefficiencies is better for everyone. Consider how much better the internet is than television and print newspapers/magazines where you actually pay to consume what contains a substantial amount of advertisement (over 1/4 for television).

Because advertisement is a necessary efficiency I don't think just blocking advertisements is really a solution. For now, some model of efficient advertisement is better than the growing number of bloated and data gathering websites out there. I don't see any of the other browser vendors making efforts to move this forward.

Yes, a new browser is annoying and then again perhaps we wouldn't need one if Mozilla hadn't fired Eich for his political contributions?

[0] [https://github.com/brave/browser- laptop/issues/253](https://github.com/brave/browser-laptop/issues/253)

<comment><USER8> He wasn't fired. He quit after industry pressure (boycott from OkCupid and others) showed Mozilla would suffer greatly if he didn't. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich#Mozilla](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich#Mozilla)

<comment><USER9> > He wasn't fired.

About that: have you ever noticed that C-level executives never get fired? They get to "resign to spend more time with their families". Being forced to quit is the same as being fired, it just sounds better for PR reasons

<comment><USER8> First of all, that is not true. For example, this executive was fired: [http://recode.net/2016/03/12/longtime-sequoia-capital-vc- mic...](http://recode.net/2016/03/12/longtime-sequoia-capital-vc-michael- goguen-is-out-in-wake-of-sexual-abuse-lawsuit/)

Second, while in some cases "spend more time with my family" is clearly an excuse, in the Eich case there is a much simpler explanation. He founded Mozilla and cared deeply about it. Boycotts were going to destroy it. Of course he would step down, it's his only option from his perspective. If he hadn't, it's very likely Mozilla would not exist today.

<comment><USER9> The 'simpler' explanation is not necessarily true: there is simply not enough information for outsiders to know whether Eich jumped or was pushed. I'd say the Brave venture shows Mr. Rich is not done with improving the internet yet.

> Boycotts were going to destroy it...it's very likely Mozilla would not exist > today.

I doubt highly doubt it: around the same time, some folk were threatening to boycott Dropbox over Condoleeza Rice's role and the board did not equivocate in their support for her. Dropbox is still around, who knows what would have happened if Mozilla's board had chosen to support Eich.

<comment><USER8> The Mozilla boycotts were actually effective, though, unlike DropBox. All Firefox users visiting OkCupid were blocked, and very loudly. Boycotts like that can tank a browser's market share.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I find it hard that people are going to change their primary browser (a big ask) and post for content, when they can simply continue use their existing browser, and install an extension ublock origin). Maybe brave plans in having extensions as well?

<comment><USER11> Users will be paid for watching ads. It's an innovative approach.

<comment><USER12> I wouldn't say it's innovative, given the existence of companies like AllAdvantage [1] or ePIPO [2] well over a decade ago.

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

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zango_%28company%29#1999.E2.80...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zango_%28company%29#1999.E2.80.932001:_Pay- to-surf_model)

<comment><USER13> I used AllAdvantage back in the day, mouse moving script and all. Ran it 14-16 hours a day on a second computer and made $40-$60 a month. Can't complain.

The down-side was the overhead, it was a noticeable strain on my computer, which is what prompted me to set it up on a dedicated machine. Pretty sure I was on dial-up then too, which just made things worse.

There was a large group of us on IRC all doing the same thing. Little jerks like us ruined it for everyone.

<comment><USER14> I would do the same thing today. Seriously, who wants to spend their mortal life actually watching ads? Do they actually _enrich_ anyone's life?

<comment><USER15> I have gotten a couple ads recently that I appreciated, in that they reminded me of something I meant to buy but forgot about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A browser that accepts payments that only a tiny fraction of users know how to use or trust (bitcoin)...for a very technical subset of the market (demographic), for which this problem doesn't really exist. Outlook not great.

<comment><USER17> Maybe, but consider it as one of many possible solutions we could have for the 'ad-blocking problem'. It's not really clear which solutions will take hold, but this is ideal for those that block ads for privacy and intrusiveness reasons.

Its an experiment. This may fail, but bits and pieces of it will be built into future solutions.

Until they make a serious attempt at it, how will they know what holds back adoption or what problems they will encounter?

<comment><USER16> Well to be frank, they will know why they failed but it's not very relevant to anything else.

If you miss a target it doesn't mean you learn how to make the target better.

<comment><USER17> Maybe. Everyone else here seems to think they could do better (or that it could be done better). I'm sure that's not at all inspired by this attempt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> To me this concept seems like [https://flattr.com/](https://flattr.com/) with bitcoin.

Flattr is stagnant at best, maybe Brave will do better though.

<comment><USER19> The problem with micropayments in this context is that flattr lacks the impulse nature that bitcoin can possibly provide. You have to load the money in an account beforehand, but with bitcoin you could potentially just donate directly from a hot wallet on your computer. Pre-loading accounts that are designed specifically for donations feels unnatural, I think.

<comment><USER20> > impulse nature

How about reverse-order micropayment for donations? The site lets you start tipping right away, but doesn't actually pay until you load money. So you can start using the service right away, and eventually you'll guilt yourself into actually donating in bulk.

<comment><USER21> this is a great idea. maybe even casually prompt you at dollar mark milestones. e.g.

you viewed 59 applications.

supported by teams totalling 489 people.

running 78 servers.

you didn't see 4900 adverts.

your charity account has reached $5, if you have the time, those teams would appreciate your support.

<comment><USER22> Or at the end of the month rather than pre-paying at the beginning. I might be more willing to chuck in $10 once I know what I've received than I am $5 beforehand. Removes a hurdle when first signing up (just like a free trial does). There's nothing stopping you asking people to setup something regular either, just support people putting money in afterwards.

This would add complexity to the backend, but I'd be surprised if it had an inherently high cost overall. A user that actively uses flattr but doesn't put any money in each month probably only represents a small overhead in resources. I guess there's a risk that someone who otherwise would have setup a regular payment now doesn't (or contributes less).

This feels like one of those ideas that is incredibly obvious in retrospect but until I'd heard someone suggest it I hadn't thought about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> For non-rival goods (which are increasingly common, since copying bits is cheap), Brave seems like the right kind of model -- users pay an overall tax, and it gets parceled out to creators proportionally [1] to usage.

[1] or some other function-- e.g. proportionally to sqrt(usage), in order to flatten out power-law returns, and reward creators who make it but aren't in the top 10.

</comment><comment><USER24> Side note: I thought it was a side project of the ING bank because of the orange lion: [http://www.ing.com/Over-ons/Onze-berichten/Geschiedenis- van-...](http://www.ing.com/Over-ons/Onze-berichten/Geschiedenis-van- ING/Geschiedenis-ING-leeuw.htm)

I hope this wont cause any trouble for Brave.

</comment><comment><USER25> This is a really interesting model and I hope it catches on with many more similar initiatives.

Both ads and search engines benefit greatly from greater user profiling. The path I see for a privacy-sane future is a system where users get to have a personal program (like the Brave Browser) that manages their information and acts like a privacy firewall for third party applications.

I look forward to the day when I can search for something without Google and the likes trying to profile me to give me better results but simply ask in a anonymized and privacy conscious way a contextualized search query from my personal private information broker program.

The Brave ad system looks like a first step in the right direction where users get to control their information.

</comment><comment><USER21> ill say this again. Brave is the best concept executed in the worst way. i tweeted until eich actually responded just hoping they would take a dif tact.

a browser is almost 100% a commodity wrapped around a search engine. they cant be decoupled. forking chrome and installing some security makes 0 difference to isers.

you have to build top notch security but dont expect users to care. fork apache products & elastic and build a personalizef search engine and browser. let people use your platform to transact and sell optimization and information, then the alt currency piece will make sense.

still like brave though. opera of 2016

<comment><USER26> I don't think brave is about security? It's about removing ads (and the consequences of that).

Ads do matter to users, as if you remove them then the user sees they are no longer distracting and that things are faster.

<comment><USER21> it has a heavy security component which is great one of the women who was a key hire built one or 2 encrypted communication companies. maybe they scaled back on marketing, but it is inherently security, privacy focused with the third value prop being, as you indicated, content control including ad filtering

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What I don't fully understand: are they going to replace google ads with their own ads? Is it even legal? There are battles whether blocking ads is legal, but replacing someone's ads with your own ads looks like potential trouble. Imagine if Google Chrome will adopt that approach.

And if they won't replace other ads but only interact with their partners, I don't see how that'll work. There are billions of websites, unless they got some really big contracts, they won't make it.

Interesting project, anyway.

<comment><USER27> Well, why not? If taking ads out is legal, then why not putting ads in?

What country are you talking about? (Legality of course depends on country.) What law could they be breaking? And bonus points if there's somebody else who's ever been prosecuted for something remotely similar.

<comment><USER28> CleanFlicks was a Utah company that bowdlerized films. The Directors Guild successfully sued them for copyright infringement.

<comment><USER29> Since there's no copying or redistribution going on, copyright doesn't seem relevant.

<comment><USER28> I wouldn't be so sure of this.

ClearPlay, for example, works by marking video frames where unwanted content appears and then skipping over them during playback. The Family Home Movie Act 2005 carved out an exception for this in 17 USC 10(11): [https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/110](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/110)

There's an analogy between deleting objectionable portions of a film and parts of a website. I'll ask my copyright attorney friends, I'd bet this is an unresolved question.

<comment><USER29> Ok. And remember that the copyright holder for the page doesn't own the copyright in the ads you're blocking, so each copyrighted work might be loaded in its entirety or not at all.

Other transformations have been done on webpages forever. In fact blocking all images was a built-in feature of most browsers until a few years ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I think this is a brillaint idea. It's not that I don't like paying for content. It's that ads on the web have become so intrusive, overbearing, comumbersome, and, well, BAD, that it has destroyed the browsing experience. There are no controls. I don't need to be paid, as some have suggested, to be given ads. However I do want more control over the ads displayed, how they're displayed, and who benefits. I love this model and I can't wait to direct some money to better causes.

</comment><comment><USER31> I think if people want to donate money to the creators of content they should install the Autotip browser extension. It works the same way as Brave, except it sends the tip on-chain. If you read Brave's documentation, the architecture of their tipping system has the Brave organization as the midleman who takes a cut of all donations. Because autotip is completely on-chain, your tip arrives to the tipee without anyone taking a cut.

</comment><comment><USER32> I can't really see this being good for any publisher or advertiser, you're cutting in two new parties (Brave & the user) and the CPM will tank due to poor targeting. They'd be better off blocking it and hoping it dies off before adoption.

Maybe users will flock to it to earn a few pennies in ad replacement mode? Certainly not for the oppty to pay for ad-free mode.

<comment><USER33> You're cutting out a lot of the people in the middle and can show better ads. These ads should pay more, and both the publisher and user should make more than what they make today. (It's not hard to beat current payments to publishers, and users get no part of the pie right now).

Targeting can be much better if Brave gives the user the option to anonymously share information with them.

<comment><USER34> > Targeting can be much better if Brave gives the user the option to > anonymously share information with them.

At this point, it's no different from Google.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> It's not clear to me if they [include]([https://github.com/brave/browser- ios/blob/6f4a0c7175990f18bf...](https://github.com/brave/browser- ios/blob/6f4a0c7175990f18bf162333f76da41e799b939b/brave/src/BraveApp.swift#L6)) Fabric analytics module into their deployments on the iTunes store. If they do, I think it's really ironic for a browser touting anonymity and non- tracking to include a tracking module from Twitter, even if "only for crash monitoring".

In that context, it's hard to take any of their efforts without a pinch of salt.

</comment><comment><USER36> Wow, they are up to a hard problem. Freedom won and people can block anything they want, how to persuade them buying into our ad network. Seriously? Pay us not to show ads, is this some new kind of ransomware? >We love browsers What does this even mean? Then continuing with how ads work in Brave. Selling how they care about users and being pro ads don't match, sorry. It is sneaky and disingenuous and defaults you to being a bad actor. Even when you can opt out ads, all these pro ads nonsense shoveled in your face, makes me want to help kill ads more quickly, not just seeing them agonizing.

<comment><USER29> Brave is an anti-tracking browser, not an anti-advertising browser.

<comment><USER36> That is a solved problem already as much as it could be at this point. Ads people played hardball, now they have to face the consequences. I would rather call it some kind of adscheme, than a browser, really. And what is the incentive to buy into someone else adscheme? A pittance? Arrogant and dishonest. I will not believe they are more concerned about tracking than ad money for a minute. You can have an anti tracking browser without any kind of ads, full stop.

<comment><USER29> The problem is that if sites don't get money, they can't afford to produce content. If you want content, you have to pay for it. This is a way to deliver ads without tracking.

<comment><USER36> >This is a way to deliver ads without tracking.

Now we are talking, let's cut the we love browsers PR talk. So we are back to the financing content discussion again, and they offer disrupting ads with well, more ads. Because it will be so much better this time if it is them who make a cut. Users are not that gullible, sorry. There are many more bad properties of ads, and the pro people try to argue is that they support content. It is pure fud. Why should I care if some content disappears I would not pay for anyway? And that is a big if, I would argue declining margins at most. Yet there are still many other ways to sponsor content (no pun), often discussed on HN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I didn't see estimates of costs for ad-free page views. There's discussion about letting users prioritize sites for support. But nothing about how much sites will want to display ad-free content.

</comment><comment><USER38> I still don't really get it. Why would i as publisher care? If it gives me some extra BTC without me having anything to do, ok. Sure why not. But it sounds like i need some obscure verification process and then earn a laughtable small sum. I rather use non blockable ads with affiliate links.

</comment><comment><USER39> Offtiopic, but I think it is a real shame that the Gecko API is so unstable that even a Mozilla founder won't use Gecko for a browser!

<comment><USER29> The Gecko API is so crufty that Firefox has deprecated it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Nah...I think I will just stick with my free Ad blocker plus because the minimum ads that I do get are really not a problem.

</comment><comment><USER41> Nice idea but Bitcoin is no good except as a proof of concept. I have to be able to use Paypal to make this practical.

</comment><comment><USER42> Damn it this is silly. Just give me a way to send Matt Taibbi a quarter.

</comment><comment><USER43> Some feedback:

1\. You really need to remove that picture of Eich. It's just bad. We get it, he's a visionary who wears suits. Please don't downvote me, it's legitimate criticism. It's vain and out of touch. A picture of him is fine but one that is less market-y, more down to earth, isn't trying as hard.

2\. The ad-experience-oriented value-add over existing browsers is too low. The vast majority of people just want a fast/stable/free browser to search google and browse Facebook. For the most part they aren't conscious of what browser they are using. When it comes to web-based tracking/advertising they either don't care or don't know to care. It's sad but inescapably true.

Additionally, for those who do care about privacy and/or are aware that their browser is a program they can change, they definitely don't want to pay for an ad-free experience. Why would someone pay for ad-free Brave when they can use ad-free Firefox/Chrome for free? If you're going to argue that they can make money with Brave, how much money are we talking? I'd guess dollars if not cents, is that worth it?

I really hope the Brave team can realize their project is a mistake before learning the hard way. There is definitely a more successful thing out there that they could work on.

<comment><USER44> Since this really comes down to a question of "who are we appealing to?", I'll throw my two cents in.

I like that picture. I'm glad for once, that someone in the tech sector is wearing a suit. I don't view suits as a reflection of personal quality, but I do like them as a fashion statement.

To be honest, I've never really understood the US motif where wearing a tie and/or suit is equivalent to being dressed up or out of touch with the common man.

School children here (and also in the UK), wear ties and blazers so wearing a tie doesn't feel 'corporate' or stuffy at all to me.

<comment><USER43> Lots of figureheads in tech wear suits in marketing materials.

Even still, my criticism isn't specifically or especially the suit. That's just a superficial component of the deeper flaw. It's just looks like it's trying too hard, doesn't look natural, feels cringy. I mean, who sits on a bench in a suit by themselves looking ambiguously into the distance while clasping their hands together? It's weird.</comment></comment></comment>


The Best Problems - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jsinge/thebestproblems-10a4aa540618 <comment><USER2> If we all thought like this, Slack would never have happened. Or the iPod, or the iPhone, for that matter. Small improvements can turn product categories around in a huge way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Did you read the section about Slack?</comment></comment>


TidalCycles – A language for the Live Coding pattern - <AUTHOR> https://tidalcycles.org <comment><USER2> Tidal (they added cycles when the Tidal music service came afterwards) is great fun. I was hoping to get Hylogen working with it.

Hylogen is an EDSL for livecoding shaders in Haskell [1]

My weapon of choice is Extempore by Andrew Sorensen [1]. Dual languages in one system available for blistering speed in livecoded graphics and sound/music.

      [1] https://github.com/sleexyz/hylogen

      [2] http://extempore.moso.com.au/

<comment><USER3> Andrew Sorensen's demo makes me wonder if classical music could be "decompiled" as a series of recursive functions, giving us a clear conceptual explanation of what is happening. Then, we could reverse the process to generate similar music, or explore variations.

<comment><USER4> There are very few classical pieces written devoid of a narrative.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I produced this album with TidalCycles: [http://shop.conditional.club/album/risc- chip](http://shop.conditional.club/album/risc-chip). Controlled samples and hardware synths (via tidal-midi) from code.

</comment><comment><USER6> I have been using Tidal for my live show (and more recently composition) for a few years and have played at some pretty big clubs in LDN, LA, etc. It's been a revelation and I will not be going back to DJing or 'controllers' any time soon.

If anyone is in London I will be giving a talk about using Tidal soon at this free event: [http://www.musichackspace.org/events/music-hackspace- present...](http://www.musichackspace.org/events/music-hackspace-presents- first-london-tidalcycles-meetup/)

<comment><USER7> I'm interested in how you're using it for composition. There are some things I feel I'm missing. I'm not so much interested in creating noise with it; that's never been my thing. But I'd love to see some examples of how you're using it for composing, if you could share.

<comment><USER6> Feel free to email me jarm at jarm dot is

I will hopefully find time to write something public at some point!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you get to see someone perform live coded music as I did at EMF 2014 (Yaxu (Alex McLean) it's a blast, watch in real time as the code is edited, glitches out then drops back in, if the coding is projected you can predict where the music is going :) I could not find the EMF show I saw, but this gives a feel [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HXcb5_RuNg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HXcb5_RuNg)

</comment><comment><USER9> Check this out if you are if you are interested in live coding, its a great abstraction for live coding for overtone : [https://github.com/ctford/leipzig](https://github.com/ctford/leipzig) [http://ctford.github.io/klangmeister/composition](http://ctford.github.io/klangmeister/composition)

</comment><comment><USER10> Did the title get modded to remove the reference to music? It's a terribly unclear title as it stands.

<comment><USER5> No, I think it has always been "a language for live-coding pattern". I might agree that it is a bit unclear. Music is the the most common use case, but it can do a lot more: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMrv_wEFdqE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMrv_wEFdqE)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Tidal has a MIDI add on which makes playing with MIDI instruments quite fun! I get patterns of notes playing and then fiddle on the knobs of the synths. So much fun :-)

</comment><comment><USER12> I'll just leave this here... :p

Sonic Pi: [http://sonic-pi.net/](http://sonic-pi.net/) On GH: [https://github.com/samaaron/sonic-pi](https://github.com/samaaron/sonic-pi) Aerodaynamic: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cydH_JAgSfg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cydH_JAgSfg)

<comment><USER13> For beginners(assuming some programming knwoldge), what is the easiest way to improvise electronic music: live-coding ? or or a keyboard based software studio application, like fruity loops ? or are there any others ?

<comment><USER5> I don't think there's a right answer, but I think it might come down to budget. If you want to pay $1000 for an off-the-shelf drum machine, sequencer, or synth, modern musical hardware is pretty easy to use and you can go far. However, live-coding software is free software and open source. As for ease- of-use, I think it really depends on the person. If you have some programming experience, then a live-coding musical environment might be fairly easy. It's a different set of challenges.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> this reminds me of Bret Victor's talk, "stop drawing dead fish", which takes a similar concept of live-performance programming and applies it to the world of animated storytelling:

[https://vimeo.com/64895205](https://vimeo.com/64895205)

</comment><comment><USER15> This seems interesting. I'd like to know if people have used Overtone [0] in Clojure for this and how it worked out.

[http://overtone.github.io/](http://overtone.github.io/)

</comment><comment><USER16> My favorite use of TidalCycles is in the Canute performances: [http://canute.lurk.org/](http://canute.lurk.org/)

</comment><comment><USER17> You can find out more about live coding in the performing arts here [http://toplap.org](http://toplap.org)

</comment><comment><USER18> Related question: Are there any nice videos demoing this kind of music artistry in a different genre? I'm thinking of stuff like [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY1FSsUV-8c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY1FSsUV-8c) or maybe something with vocal sampling?

</comment><comment><USER19> I know this sort of goes against the live coding thing, it is it possible to do a hybrid sort of thing where you use frp to manage inputs from sequencers?

</comment><comment><USER20> Making anything related to music and naming it Tidal (a multi-million dollar music company) is a recipe for a bad time.

<comment><USER5> It was named long before the music service came out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is beautiful and I think haveing tool like that can improve generated music for lounges and also games.

</comment><comment><USER22> You need a visual interface with knobs. Not text. This guy needs to see more Bret Victor!

[https://vimeo.com/36579366](https://vimeo.com/36579366)

<comment><USER17> Text is a visual interface, if you look really closely you can see each letter is actually a little picture.

<comment><USER22> Umm

Can you use text to move a slider?

<comment><USER17> (FWIW I have watched and enjoyed all Bret Victor's videos, and am looking forward to his big reveal. I've also experimented with visual front-ends to tidalcycles, so agree with you to some extent.. But text is really good for describing pattern.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Slightly unfortunate naming choice maybe, considering the Tidal music streaming service?

<comment><USER24> This Tidal was around first. The more well known Tidal is what got the 'Cycles' part added to the name I think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Another one? So how is this one different than all the languages that do this (like Chuck or Overtone) AND the libs for C++/all other languages that generate audio as well? The original THX sound was generated in C.

I would be inclined to use a language that had more signal processing built in, ie Mathematica:

[https://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/SoundAndSonific...](https://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/SoundAndSonification.html)

[https://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/SignalProcessin...](https://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/SignalProcessing.html)

<comment><USER26> If i understand what they are doing then it's not really equivalent as this seems to be a DSL for transforming textual patterns into music, rather than a general purpose music language. While you can dive under the covers it's not required. Getting to this point in Overtone would be some work, so here you can just get started playing with it. Chuck i have less experience with enough to think the same thing applies.

The pedant in me already observes that any programming language is "a DSL for transforming textual patterns into..." but i hope my sense in representing the difference is clear enough.

<comment><USER17> Yes it's for exploring patterns. It's not unique in this (cf supercollider patterns, foxdot, isobar, gibber patterns, ixilang etc) but is fairly unique in its purist focus on pattern.

<comment><USER27> This gibber? [http://gibber.mat.ucsb.edu](http://gibber.mat.ucsb.edu)

(I have yet to run into anyone else that's heard of the thing I linked, and I think it's really awesome.)

<comment><USER17> Yes! Gibber is indeed ace.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Coinflash: Invest your pocketchange in cryptocoins - <AUTHOR> https://coinflashapp.com <comment><USER2> This is what I do.</comment>


Microsoft to Kill Off Patch Tuesday - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/05/04/microsoft_windows_10_updates/

<comment><USER2> I find it a little hilarious that the article says that by ending Patch Tuesday it would "shame Google". My first thought was how all the wailing around Project Zero releasing exploits strictly at 90 days instead of waiting for Patch Tuesday would now ring hollow. Sadly the article doesn't discuss that controversy.

Disclaimer: I work at Google, but I'm not involved with security or Project Zero.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is going to be a pain in the but for enterprise shops that have setup a definitive procedure around Patch Tuesdays. I'm hoping it works out, but enterprises don't like random or unpredictable.</comment>


Some hope for immigrant startuppers - <AUTHOR>

Just wanted to let any other hopeful Green Card applicants here know that after four years, and despite several snafus, political in-fighting and feet-dragging by various parties, I got my Green Card last week.
Note in particular that this means uscis is still processing applications despite the recent indications that they were not.
Good luck to everyone else! <comment><USER2> congratulations! waiting for mine, it is an insane journey!!

I dont understand the green card system, if you run a company, you want the best to stay, and not make their life hard. the existing process makes it harder for those better performers for the USA company.

</comment><comment><USER3> They reopened the 2007 numbers - they had closed it for a few weeks, but I think a lawsuit got them to reopen. I'm hoping to get mine in the next month or two.

</comment><comment><USER4> Here is an important question. Did you apply for the green card lottery or did you get on some other premises, and what were those?

<comment><AUTHOR> I was ineligible for the Green Card lottery since I'm British.

It was an employment-based application. The startup I worked for in London got acquired in 2003 and we all got the chance to move to the Bay Area.

<comment><USER5> most immigrants come here because their home country had a much lower standard of living - aside from the opportunity. So I am surprised that you took so much trouble; surely Britain has an equivalent standard of living?

<comment><USER6> I can't figure out whether the people who run immigration in most countries are complete morons on their own, or if their political masters have significant influence in the stupidity of the system. My own personal example (well, one): when I got married in Italy, I had to swear, in front of a (busy) judge, with two witnesses, that no, I was not actually married elsewhere.

I don't think there would be any huge effects if things were basically opened up between wealthy countries... a few would go here from there, and vice versa, and things would balance out. But it is increasingly difficult. Bleagh!

<comment><USER5> "if things were basically opened up between wealthy countries"

so, only between wealthy countries?

<comment><USER6> For starters. You couldn't realistically completely open, Holland, say, to immigration from India and China without some adverse consequences. Between rich countries, people would likely flow back and forth enough to balance things out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Congratulations!</comment>


Selling my first business, a 6 year old automated website - <AUTHOR> https://flippa.com/2782057-absurdlycool-freebie-finder-6-years-old-profitable-automated

<comment><AUTHOR> I decided that it's finally time to sell my first profitable website. Mixed emotions! I'll write up a retrospective soon. I learned so much about business and niche marketing with this 6 year project.

<comment><USER2> Very cool - bookmarking your blog and looking forward to the retrospective. While I'm focused on building some real web / desktop apps, I want some tiny short-term income to cover bills, and recently got nexuscasefinder & galaxycasefinder (after reading about the ipadcasefinder dude) for a referral site.

EDIT: spoke too soon, realized you don't have a blog. oh wait, you do, it's just super sublty linked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> How did this made to front page?

<comment><USER4> Greed and avarice. Everybody wants to find out how to make a buck, especially form somebody who made one already.</comment></comment>


Interview with a Pornhub Web Developer - <AUTHOR> https://davidwalsh.name/pornhub-interview <comment><USER2> > The adult industry is very competitive so there were a few questions they > could not answer. I respect their need to keep their tricks close to the > vest.

Interesting how much new technologies they mention like webXR, webRTC, webVR. But at their core they're just using nginx, php, MySQL, redis. I'd bet there is some room for disruption if someone can really bring newer technologies into play.

<comment><USER3> First off, your backend language does not dictate what technologies you can use on the front end.

Second, switching languages/stacks doesn't magically translate to an improvement in business. If the stack was holding them back then I'd understand, but I'm not sure that's the case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm curious how often the developers have to implement dark patterns, and other ethically questionable things. An interview from one of their backend devs might be somewhat enlightening, but I imagine all the most interesting bits wouldn't be talked about in an interview. How often do these developers find themselves at odds with business concerns?

<comment><USER3> Probably no different than similar dark patterns on airline or gambling websites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > We actually don't use placeholders ... what matters is the code ... we all > got used to it pretty quickly

This is what my gynecologist says too.

> I'd say given the size of the product the team size is lean to average.

Given the size of the product, most teams would look diminutive.</comment>


A few reasons to close your PayPal Account - <AUTHOR> http://twitpic.com/3dsjek

<comment><USER2> Reason given: _Your service is usable for KKK, porn even anti-abortion idiots, but not for Wikileaks? Bye!_</comment>


What to do when twitter's lack of OAuth support is a real showstopper? - <AUTHOR>

Should I launch a twitter service without passwords initially and then reset the database when OAuth support is available?
There's very little data that users need to submit in this service I plan to build, so they probably wouldn't mind doing it again.
I don't want to ask people to give me their twitter passwords. <comment><USER2> Users don't care (just give them a virtual piece of chocolate) and obviously Twitter doesn't care, so why should you?

<comment><AUTHOR> How do you know they don't?

<comment><USER2> There have been studies showing that users don't care about keeping their passwords secret, e.g. <http://www.google.com/search?q=password%20chocolate>

And if Twitter can't be bothered to implement OAuth, then obviously they don't care either. :-)</comment></comment></comment>


Huge victory in New York for Nigel Warren and our host community - <AUTHOR> http://publicpolicy.airbnb.com/huge-victory-new-york-nigel-warren-host-community/ <comment><USER2> I love AirBnb. I use it all the time.

But, I understand the laws in big cities. Let's say you rent an apartment in a building, which virtually anyone in NYC is doing. Would you want random people having access to your building? Random people getting a copy of the keys? It's your home, and your neighbor is treating the space like a hotel. You'll have random people all over who don't necessarily respect your space.

Additionally, it raises rates for apartments. $150/night is nothing for a nice AirBnb place, but it makes for some pretty expensive rent.

<comment><USER3> > Additionally, it raises rates for apartments. $150/night is nothing for a > nice AirBnb place, but it makes for some pretty expensive rent.

Yes, this is my issue. People who rent out apartments with the intention of running them like a hotel, will inflate rent for everyone else bc anyone who doesn't have the intention of running their apartment like a hotel won't be able to afford the market price. There are more of them than you might think, I know of atleast two.

<comment><USER4> Assuming the people who rent out apartments comply with the existing law, they will have to rent out at least 2BR apartments, the supply of which is already very low, and live in the 2nd bedroom while their guests are there. Do you really think that will have a large impact on rent?

On a side note, corporations already effectively do this. I lived in a building in Midtown that was at least 50% corporate housing and there were constantly people there for short stays and the rent increases were massive since the companies weren't price sensitive. However, afaik, that is legal.

<comment><USER3> > they will have to rent out at least 2BR apartments Or they stay with a > friend, a significant other, a cheaper apartment outside the city, their > parent's house, etc.

<comment><USER4> At that point they are violating the existing law. Seems like it would be pretty trivial for a pissed off neighbor to report them then.

<comment> o0-0o As long as the owner of the apartment is there fine. My upstairs neighbor used to rent out her apt on AirBNB while she was out of town. On two occasions, the occupant flooded my apartment below because they didn't understand how to user a washer and air conditioner properly. I reported the apartment owner to the city by calling 311.

Unless the apartment owner is responsible and insured, this is why it is illegal in New York.

What wasn't trivial was the damage. Thousands of dollars to electronics, desks, furnishings, etc.

AirBNB should be ashamed of themselves for pursuing profits at any costs.

It's one thing to rent your house out in the middle of nowhere. It's another to rent it to eurotrash and let them destroy your building.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is great for airbnb but based on my (admittedly limited) understanding of this specific case from their blogs on it, this case wasn't particularly representative of the normal use case or the normal problems that can come up when subletting through airbnb.

From the blog posts it seems as if the guy's landlord was on-board with him subletting, which is a different situation than many I hear about where the landlord has no idea (and may in fact be the one going after the renter if he or she finds out). Also it seems the guy was present and only renting out a room during the guest's stay which allowed him to get off on a technicality in this case while many Airbnb renters will rent the entire space during vacation times, etc.

<comment><USER6> > From the blog posts it seems as if the guy's landlord was on-board with him > subletting

This has never been clear to me. His landlord was the one cited for (supposedly) violating the law, so he naturally was interested in a defense to avoid the fine and having a citation on record. I'm not sure he actually approved of his tenant renting a room of his apartment on airbnb.</comment></comment>