#FFFFFF Diversity - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/this-is-hard/ffffff-diversity-1bd2b3421e8a <comment><USER4> Am I the only one who think it's perfectly logical that the speaker ratio is the same as the ratio of the tech population? Of course we should try hard to find minority speakers just to be proactive since we do have a diversty problem. However, when you go to a conference you want to see the best speakers and then it's only logical that a minority is less represented since, you know, there are less good speakers to choose from.

Nordic.js is doing a great job with their "50% women speakers" policy but if we forcibly try to overrepresent every minority where do we end up? "50% black trans women speakers"? I wouldn't go to such a conference since the probability of bad talks would be too high.

<comment><USER5> In other words, women are overrepresented in conferences compared to their presence on the field, and it's going to be the same with ethnicities. In my business experience, women are already overrepresented in management positions compared to developer positions. Who wants to remain a developer anyway?

<comment><USER6> > Who wants to remain a developer anyway?

I do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My take is do what other women are doing. Form your own support group and organizations. Self interested groups are better equipped to understand the issues, priorities, etc. which affect a given community.

While big cos. might have programs to address women's issues, that's not stopping women from forming more effective support groups and organizations.

Let's look at an effective lobbying group, the NRA, how are they so effective? They are tenacious and they organize nd support each other --so while they do appeal to greater society and parties, that by itself isn't what's driven their success. It's the forming of community and having one focused issue.

Also as with other groups, tap names in other industries, entertainment, sports, politics, etc. those who are interested in advancing your issues. Tap companies with black founders or ones directly serving the community.

<comment><USER8> Agreed with this comment. We have the technology where creating an organization should be fairly trivial. From Facebook to LinkedIn to MeetUp to Twitter, there are endless places where one could find other similar-minded folks. Gaining exposure might not be easy, but it shouldn't be difficult enough to make it impossible. There is endless information and postmortems for similar organizations that should help figure out the best way to approach these issues.

I can't remember exactly if it was the GNOME Women Outreach program that was shut down recently, but I remember there being a lengthy author about the president of the organization's decision to step down and close the program (because no one else would step up to the chair, among other problems). The post went into some detail about where it succeeded and where it failed. Stuff like that could be very helpful if a new self-interest group decides to form.

<comment><USER9> > I can't remember exactly if it was the GNOME Women Outreach program that was > shut down recently, but I remember there being a lengthy author about the > president of the organization's decision to step down and close the program > (because no one else would step up to the chair, among other problems).

That was the Ada Initiative; see [http://blog.valerieaurora.org/2015/08/05/the-ada- initiative-...](http://blog.valerieaurora.org/2015/08/05/the-ada-initiative- is-ending-but-our-work-continues-on/) .

Outreachy is alive and well, and has grown to encompass many more projects beyond GNOME, including the Linux kernel, OpenStack, and others. The Software Freedom Conservancy runs it now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I rarely ever comment, but posts similar to this one have been popping out more and more as of late. I am a minority. I grew up in a different country, and most of my close friends are minorities, too, both female and male; half of them being in the tech industry. (If my username didn't give it away, I'm hispanic and so are most of my acquaintances.)

With that out of the way, I do not understand anything about this article. This bolded line, for example:

>Rarely, though, will you ever hear a white person lamenting about working conditions that their black/brown child/spouse/sibling might have to endure, because they rarely have those relationships, so aren't forced to develop empathy for brown/black people.

What working conditions? Care giving any examples? What are some pointers you could give to white people to help them understand your deplorable working conditions? Is it simply that there are no black speakers at conferences, or holding positions in these tech organizations?

Personal experiences, as well as experiences from my hispanic friends, point to no such implied "bad working conditions." Some of my friends are brown- skinned and have noticeable accents. Most still use Spanish as their primary language, both on and offline. Yet there has been not one single incident involving either myself or any of my hispanic friends where we suffered any sort of discrimination, or experienced unwelcoming working conditions.

Maybe the author and I have different goals when we attend such conferences. Maybe there are more hispanics than blacks or native Americans in tech. Yet I don't understand why that would matter when attending a conference.

>Yet for the 2015 conference, they could not manage to find one black woman to be a "headline" speaker. Two white men are included in the set of headline speakers at a conference celebrating women in technology, but not a single black woman.

It infuriates me to see this obsession with ethnic or racial background. This obsession with the color of the speaker's skin. In my eyes, that the keynote speakers are white males does not invalidate their opinions in any way. There is no implied message that they speak on behalf of women, or minorities. It's an invitation. It does not mean that they're not qualified on the subject - <USER2> anything, these "old white men" are the ones running these big companies and are there not just to speak, but to also listen to the other speakers and the attendants.

I opened the videos linked in the article and I'll try to skip through them and I'll report back, hopefully. It just boggles my mind that in this day and age there is still this obsession with the speaker's racial background. And there is no solution proposed, either, besides "they should find more people of color to speak at these events." Isn't that the one of the points of these conferences? And is there any progress being made, considering that last year's was the first one Google organized? Did the author gather any information about this year's? Does the author have any proposals or people she would like to see at these events?

I go to tech conferences to learn. My political and ethnic background is never, ever something that makes me biased against or for an event. It is also never a problem. My slightly noticeable accent, my hispanic facial features, my shirts with Spanish sentences, they do not have any effect on how people treat me.

It might all come down to what your goals are when attending any event.

<comment><USER10> you're speaking from your experience which is fine and YMMV, but it's useful to _listen_ to hers about how she feels. Discounting others' experiences doesn't help. She's talking about _feeling_ excluded from tech as a woman of color because tech has made a priority to include more women speakers, but has completely ignored that there are women of color who are ignored. The industry thinking that they're"solving" diversity by increasing women, but ignoring women of color are only solving part of the problem. The main point I'm making is inclusion matters, in the workforce and at conferences. And the benefit of having people of color speaking is being exposed to experiences and P.O.V.s from people of color. There are studies that show that people of color or from various backgrounds are better problem solvers because of adversity they've had.

Also, using anecdotal evidence from your circle of friends who have had positive experiences is dismissive of others who haven't.

<comment><USER11> You know, I find it strange how I can't remember a single person complaining about lack of diversity who wasn't complaining only about their specific type of diversity.

Case in point: the author is, by her own admission, a black woman and complains about the part of her identity that is not well represented: her (black) skin.

There's something almost funny in asking people to care for one's situation when the speaker isn't even speaking at large: why isn't she also complaining about asian, native american, indian and how many others not being represented?

<comment><USER12> Because in America, your opinions are only valid as far as your credentials. For example, if you have dark skin, your opinions on black Americans are valid, if you're autistic, your opinions on mentally ill Americans are valid, if you're a computer, your opinions on American computers are valid, etc. It may be a flawed system, but it's better than slavery and feudalism, and it somewhat works to keep people's minds off the real issues, so it's all good.

<comment><USER10> Not sure if sarcasm or not, but it's REALLY hard to understand wha ankther races experiences without listening and people who listen without being dismissive/judgemental are exceptionally rare.

<comment><USER13> [Same poster as ohhimark, had forgotten my password]

Maybe so, but what I mean is that I (and presumably the people she is writing this for) are not black women. They're not indians, asians and many other things too of course (which is my point).

As an opinion piece (which I suppose it is), it's something interesting to think about. Yet, doesn't it say something about everyone of us if even minorities advocating for equal rights don't see the bigger picture and advocate for more than their specific situation?

It's a self-defeating argument in a way: the author is arguing that people are caring mostly for only one type of inequality… by decrying only their specific situation while making no mention of all the other types.

I guess what I am saying is that I wish the author would have framed her case as an example tying in to the general case.

When one gets to this point in their reasoning, perhaps they'd realize that we are resource-constrained and no matter what we do, we'll be "excluding" some categories.

And yet what I just wrote is too dismissive. I don't know what the best way to go about all this is, but it sure is very upsetting to be blamed, as part of the "dominant group", for not doing enough when the very people pointing the fingers seem to have similar biases towards minority groups they are not part of.

Then again, perhaps in this case they could have just called the event "inclusion for women" since that's what it's currently focused on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wanted to preface this with a "as a minority", but no.

As a human, I feel we are driving wedges where we should be finding common ground. And the biggest culprits seem to be the ones who have the most to win if they didn't do so.

If you come from a different background, that's great. It means you may have different ideas to solve a problem, to create something, to make art, music, life.

But that should be part of who we are. Our culture.

"I am a person from this country. I grew up playing these instruments, reading these stories, eating this food" says what you have done in your life, what you know, but it doesn't dictate what you are, or put a box around you that can segregate others.

When we put labels on ourselves, or say, "you can't possibly understand where I've come from" we're saying that others aren't "privileged" enough to have had their own experiences that allow them to relate; that you're life is more interesting and important than theirs, as you feel you're at a different level, or they're too ignorant to understand. The irony is amazing.

I wish this woman didn't speak as if she is a voice for women, or black people, or "people of color" (another odd phrase, as even my white friends can be darker than me), because it seems she only speaks for herself.

Women get a celebration, she shits on it. What if Indians got a celebration? She mentions brown, but talks about being black.

Unless she was born in India, she wouldn't understand life coming from anywhere in India. How does having "black" skin make her relate to Indians? What about other brown people. Did she live her childhood in Bolivia?

To end with, I must say I hate this kind of thing. It makes "minorities" look bad. I don't want to be seen as something that needs help. I want to be seen as somebody who is exciting, who makes fun things and is intelligent. If you want to eat delicious food for my home, learn about the culture or history, then just ask. But that is part of who I am. It's not what I am. What I am is me.

<comment><USER10> You know that brown people went through this years ago as did asians? We had to fight to be apart of society. Now we have the _privelege_ of being "model minorities" while others don't.

She talks about being black because she is black and shes talking about her feelings and perspective. It's ignorant to dismiss that.

Unfortunately for many people of color. They dont have the same opportunities that a white or asian person would have so you cant understand their persoective so it's best to listen because there are thousands of examples out there. The more you listen to them the more youll learn.

And she's shitting on the industry for ignoring races while being inclusive to white women. It's obviously great that women are getting an opportunity but it's ignorant to ignore women of color.

Theyre speaking not because they have the most to win. Theyre speaking because they want to be equal, which they arent in the tech world and outside of it. they want to go from below equality to at equality, not above it.

Frankly, i'm embarassed when minorities speak from their privilege ignoring the fact that indians/asians have been through it until white america said "no no guys, these asians are cool". That hasnt happened with black people yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> tldr; Diversity and Equality are not the main starting points nor goal of Women-in-Tech. Increasing women's role in tech helps improve diversity/equality, but is not the real mission of Women-in-Tech. Diversity/Equality is a (side) effect, and not the cause, of the Women-in-Tech movement.

I think there's a tendency for Women-in-Tech PR to equate Diversity/Equality with Women-in-Tech, when in fact, Women-in-Tech is supposed to advance, well, Women in the tech sector, and not Equality/Diversity in general. The 2 are Not the same thing, although they are often claimed to be basically the same for PR reasons.

It's getting so severe that even the author is "shocked" that Women-in-Tech events are less than diverse. She shouldn't be surprised--the fact that she was surprised, indicates she's bought into the whole "Women-in-Tech's mission is for workplace Equality" idea, which is false.

To be clear, I think Women-in-Tech is a noble cause, and I am all for supporting it. But please stop claiming that Women-in-Tech "is for diversity"\--it is for advancing women's role in tech. To be clear, I think in and of itself this is great because I'd love to see more women in the tech industry. But we should stop claiming that the mission of the movement is for "diversity", because "diversity" is not what drives the women-in-tech movement, and is not it's main goal. The main goal is to increase women's role, and not "diversity/equality" in general. If the movement's main goal was purely "diversity/equality", then it wouldn't be called "Women-in- Tech"\--there are other misrepresented groups that are much more in urgent need of equal representation, that the movement would have focused on first if Diversity and Equality were the main motivators.

I also agree with the author's photo of an all-white panel as being pretty funny :) It reminds me of the cast of Friends. Saying that the cast of Friends is "Diverse" or "Equal" would be kind of ridiculous.

</comment><comment><USER16> There are more Indians in tech from me observing on face value than black people.

Any Indian heritage people here think there needs to be greater representation of indians in conferences? Thoughts?

<comment><USER17> Mostly meh on that. I haven't heard of major discrimination against Indians in hiring practices (modulo visa, of course, I'm talking about Indian origin people with citizenship or equivalent). There's always casual racism (insensitive jokes, etc), but those are small potatoes compared to systemic issues which almost every woman/PoC in tech is aware of and has had tussles with personally.

I've also seen tons of Indians giving talks at confs.

I think the word "model minority" applies here.

YMMV though. There might be lots of discrimination going on that my circle of acquaintances hasn't come across.

(Indian origin, born & spent most of my life in the States, currently living in India)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Cripes, that this has to be a thing at all. It's bad enough that my skin color and sex might have had influence on my educational opportunities, but beyond that they have nothing to do with how good or bad I might be at my job.

Take any and all measures to remove the influence of bias from your hiring process (e.g., pass résumés without photos or names to decision makers). That's something we all can do right now.

</comment><comment><USER19> Who is this author? This Erica Joy? Is she real? While the story told by the author sounds plausible and real. I can't verify if Erica Joy is the true author nor if Erica Joy is a real authentic person.

Before you dismiss me, I ask these questions because who's to say that some sexist white men realizing that women were organizing to stop sexism didn't come up with a propaganda ploy to cause division and diversion among women. How can I verify that this story and article is not controlled by someone employing a provocateur?

How did the extremely wealthy capitalists maintain more control and slow down the rise of the labor force? They pitted the workers against each other...

How can I verify Erica Joy (without spending vast amounts of time)?

EDIT: I see she has a twitter account. And her posts and info appear real. But think about it how easy it would be for some sexist white men to setup a web of fake information to infiltrate these media outlets in order to start a fake fight between white and black women in an attempt to keep women divided (and looking bad for fighting)?

</comment><comment><USER20> Let me preface with what I'm about to say with this: I am _very_ pro-equality in _all_ aspects. Also, I am not a supporter of this new-wave Feminism which is full of misandry, anti-patriachy and other similar bullshit. Men of all skin colours get discriminated every day by women, too. Yes, women are not magical all do-good creatures; they can be horrible, regardless of skin colour. With that being said...

However, I am afraid we'll soon have this trend where a black woman[1] with lesser qualifications will be hired in favour of a white man with better qualifications, simply because she is a woman and black. Same applies for speakership (or whatever you call it).

That's not equality.

</comment><comment><USER21> The conversation between Kara Swisher and Parker Harris, quoted, is rather amazing in terms of the verbal gymnastics they resort to: "I have employees, that are, you know, other types of diversity coming to me..."

</comment><comment><USER22> "I can't support a conference that doesn't seem to understand the value and importance of intersectionality and representation."

Doesn't this just promote the idea that people of different ethnicities really are that different? Why on earth is skin colour "representation" an important factor anywhere? I mean don't discriminate but how is this an argument?

This just promotes the wrong idea that people of different ethnicities bring drastically different things to the table in one breath, and argues that race or gender do not affect technical ability with the next.

How this insane person has people listening to them or why a completely backwards article on the right site gets linked here is beyond me.

<comment><USER20> > This just promotes the wrong idea that people of different ethnicities bring > drastically different things to the table in one breath, and argues that > race or gender do not affect technical ability with the next.

> How this insane person has people listening to them or why a completely > backwards article on the right site gets linked here is beyond me.

These two are exactly what bugs me, too. This actually reminds me of how Feminism turned from an equality movement to this modern-wave bullshit where it's a woman-supremacy movement and it's got _nothing_ with equality.

It seems like 2015 is the year where people started being offended by everything, and they constantly _look for opportunities_ to be discriminated. "Black women in IT."

Fucking Hell, by the time it's 2020 we'll reach a "homosexual Black Christian women wearing polka dot clothing in tech indistry" that are being discriminated.

<comment><USER10> i mean maybe, just maybe, they're sick of being called insane, and being discounted like you and OP

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This article is a classic case of "Oppression Olympics" \-- [http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Oppression_Olympics](http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Oppression_Olympics)

<comment><USER10> no it isn't. she isn't competing with one person. she's bringing to attention that intersectionality exists and the tech industry isn't paying mind to it.

quote from that link: "Oppression Olympics also tends to ignore Intersectionality"

<comment><USER24> "Intersectionality" in this case means excluding black males right? That seems a bit wrong.

<comment><USER10> That applies too, but she's bringing attention to black women and directly speaking about how the tech industry is trying to fix the problem of women in tech and at the same time ignoring women of color. "solving" the problem of not a lot of women in tech by hiring white women, and completely ignoring black women doesn't solve the problem. Same thing applies to men - <USER3> asian men (the "model minority"), and ignoring black men doesn't solve the diversity problem.

<comment><USER24> The "diversity problem" is never going to be fixed, because the goalpost is always something more.

The population of non-hispanic black people in California is of 6.4%, if half of them are women (3.2%) it means that if a tech company has 100 employees the perfect amount of diversity would be 3 black women and 97 non-black-women, they may not even get to know about each other in a company of that size.

But I'm pretty sure in her mind the number should be a lot higher than that, otherwise white supremacy culture is to be to blame.

<comment><USER10> Well that's one of the issues, because people like yourself have a quota/percentage mentality, instead of a inclusion/diversification/look at how much we can learn from eachother mentality. And like another person said, tech companies dont only hire from california. Isn't it a bit silly that 20% of twitter's audience is black and probably the most active group, and their number of black employees is low, black executives is 0?

It's kind of ridiculous to not want to make the effort because the goalposts are always something more. And it's ignorant of the tech industry to "fix" diversity by only putting white women in roles or only asian men in roles to hit quotas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Wait a minute! Where's the Romanian History Month? Where are the menu changes for Romanians? Where's the Romanian Googlers Network? Is it because those of you privileged enough to be born outside Romania are actively oppressing us?

/s</comment>


500Startups invests in 9 additional Mexican companies - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/28/500startups-invests-in-9-additional-mexican-companies/

<comment><USER2> Congratulations guys!</comment>


Ask PG: Does YC have any plans to invest in YC companies future rounds? - <AUTHOR>

Seems like the YC 7% ownership after a series A/B/C would get diluted heavily. Often times, Angel investors do the Angel round, just for the option/opportunity to invest larger amounts in future rounds. Would have been awesome for you guys, if you put in larger amounts in Heroku, AirBnB, and Dropbox future rounds.<p>Do you ever think YC will invest in companies later rounds after the initial 40K and 7%? Though, I can see this being problematic, as you would be 'picking' favorites. <comment><USER2> No, we don't invest in later rounds. Partly because you can't do that without harming the reputations of the companies you don't invest in, and partly because we'd rather fund a new startup than put more into an existing one. I.e. we'd rather expand breadthwise than depthwise.

<comment><AUTHOR> Makes sense, do you have an average figure of the companies that have exited, what the YC percentage ownership is when the exit event occurs?

<comment><USER2> We assume that in the biggest exits (which dominate the returns) we'll be about 3x diluted.</comment></comment></comment>


The New 'Absent Operator' in Ruby's Regular Expressions - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/rubyinside/the-new-absent-operator-in-ruby-s-regular-expressions-7c3ef6cd0b99 <comment><USER2> i'm a huge regex nerd (see: regexpixie.com). But this is a classic example of people trying to be clever instead of clear. And I would always much prefer to read clear code than clever code.

Regexes are declarative and they're really good a narrow set of features - namely, finding text that matches a pattern. When I see someone using negative/positive lookaheads, or trying to match a valid date with a regex, I see someone who is furiously pounding a nail with the fat end of a screwdriver.

If you want to keep things simple with regular expressions:

* Be liberal with what your pattern matches and use a normal programming language for your complicated conditional logic to filter out crap you don't want

* Don't be afraid to break up the search with multiple regular expressions

* Ignore pattern whitespace and use it to visually break up your pattern. Nobody would agree to debug javascript that has been minimized, yet people do this all the time with regex

* For the love of all that is holy, USE NAMED GROUPS. It is a fantastic way to document your intent.

This is confusing: \d{1,2}/\d{1,2}/(\d{4}|\d{2})

This is not:

(?<day>\d{1,2})

/

(?<month>\d{1,2})

/

(?<year>\d{4}|\d{2})

<comment><AUTHOR> Have you considered doing a sort of regex best practices post? I'd be happy to promote such a thing or even help get it out. I think a lot of people want that sort of info.

<comment><USER3> If I wrote a post, it would be: "read Ch. 12 of _Perl Best Practices_ (2005)[0]".

Yow, $30+ for the ebook! I wouldn't buy if just for that chapter… fortunately, the guidelines from the book have been codified as Perl::Critic, so If you don't mind missing out on the gently guiding text which accompanies each rule, you can browse the Perl::Critic::Policy::RegularExpressions[1] submodule docs.

[0]: [http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596001735.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596001735.do) [1]: [https://metacpan.org/pod/Perl::Critic::Policy::RegularExpres...](https://metacpan.org/pod/Perl::Critic::Policy::RegularExpressions::ProhibitComplexRegexes)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It seems like the "ASCII puke" concrete syntax for regex patterns doesn't scale that well. Regular expressions have binary operators, parenthesization, named groups, lookaheads, etc.-- if you're building a sophisticated regex of more than 10 characters or so, why not have some kind of an object model for this stuff so you can have reasonable forms of composition, naming of intermediate values in construction of a larger pattern, and the ability to attach modifiers to things without needing to pack more @#$%&*!^ un-Googleable junk into string literals?

<comment><USER5> Icon (and SNOBOL before that) had an alternate syntax that was more verbose but more readable.

      s := "this is a string"
        s ? {                               # Establish string scanning environment
            while not pos(0) do  {          # Test for end of string
                tab(many(' '))              # Skip past any blanks
                word := tab(upto(' ') | 0)  # the next word is up to the next blank -or- the end of the line
                write(word)                 # write the word
            }
        }

I should implement something like this in ruby some day... (I did it in java long ago, but this was before you just threw things up to github and I have long since lost it.)

<comment><USER6> For those who haven't seen the language before, I think it's also useful to know what expression evaluation in Icon works using a recursive backtracking algorithm. This means that the most natural way of writing a string scanning parser (like the one above) more or less automatically gives you a recursive backtracking parser. Like ebiester, I too have found it to be a nice way to do certain kinds of simple string parsing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> TXR has actual regex intersection and complement.

Match one or more digits, but not "3":

      $ txr
      This is the TXR Lisp interactive listener of TXR 172.
      Use the :quit command or type Ctrl-D on empty line to exit.
      1> [#/\d+&~3/ "1"]
      "1"
      2> [#/\d+&~3/ "3"]
      nil
      3> [#/\d+&~3/ "123"]
      "123"
      4> [#/\d+&~3/ ""]
      nil

This is most easily understood by equivalence between regexes and sets of strings: ~3 means all strings that are not 3. This set includes the "" string. It includes all strings of length 1 other than "3", and it includes all strings of length 2 and greater. It's simply the complement of the set _{ "3" }_. ~R means that whatever set of strings R matches is complemented (w.r.t the universe set being the set of all possible strings).

Similarly A&B is just set intersection. Regular expression A denotes some set of strings, and B denotes some set of strings. A&B denotes the intersection of those sets.

Another example: search the string for the leftmost substring which starts with _foo_ , ends with _bar_ and does not contain _abc_ , and is the longest possible such string at its given position:

      1> [#/foo.*bar&~.*abc.*/ ""]
      nil
      2> [#/foo.*bar&~.*abc.*/ "foobar"]
      "foobar"
      3> [#/foo.*bar&~.*abc.*/ "foozzzbar"]
      "foozzzbar"
      4> [#/foo.*bar&~.*abc.*/ "foozabczzbar"]
      nil
      5> [#/foo.*bar&~.*abc.*/ "fooabcbar"]
      nil
      6> [#/foo.*bar&~.*abc.*/ "foobar1234"]
      "foobar"
      7> [#/foo.*bar&~.*abc.*/ "foobarabc"]
      "foobar"
      8> [#/foo.*bar&~.*abc.*/ "3foobarabc"]
      "foobar"
      9> [#/foo.*bar&~.*abc.*/ "3fooabcbarabc"]
      nil
      10> [#/foo.*bar&~.*abc.*/ "3fooabcbarabcfoobar"]
      "foobar"

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm pretty sure you can emulate the absent operator with look-ahead expressions. Untested: (?=((?!exp).)*$)

That is: a zero-width assertion where at every character until the end exp doesn't match.

It's a nice idea to include this in the standard, and also illustrates how convoluted regular expression syntax has become over the years, mostly because it wasn't designed to be extensible.

<comment><USER9> I haven't completely ingested this post yet, but this seems to be incorrect:

> I'm pretty sure you can emulate the absent operator with look-ahead > expressions. Untested: (?=((?!exp).)*$)

From TFA: "Note that this is not the same as a negative look-behind or look- ahead — we'll see how shortly."

<comment><USER3> The article explains that (?~foo) is not the same as (?!foo), since the latter fails the match if it matches, but the former succeeds if it can match anything that's not 'foo' (including 'oo'). The first examples anchor the patterns, so that this behaviour:

      "foo" ~= /(?~foo)/ # => 1

isn't revealed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It seems this has a high potential for bugs though if people aren't aware of that detail with the `coffee and tv` example. Depending on how well versed you are with regexes it isn't immediately obvious.

<comment><USER11> Honestly, that's true of lots of unanchored constructs - which is why I tend to try and teach people to always /^...$/ or /\A...\Z/ depending on context.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The "C-style comments" examples can be made a little easier to read using the alternate-style Ruby regex literal.

      %r{/\*(?~\*/)\*/}
      %r{\A/\*(?~\*/)\*/\z}
      %r{\A/\*.*?\*/\z} # incorrect: matches /**/*/

</comment><comment><USER13> My initial impression is that this seems similar to the negation operator in parsing expression grammars. PEGs are "greedy", so the semantics of "non- consuming" matches/negations are a bit more straightforward than this feature appears.

<comment><USER14> Same here. I wonder when we stop calling these "regular expressions" and start calling them "parsing expressions"?

<comment><USER15> Perl6 already has taken steps towards that direction, they have "rules" and "grammars", although I also see that they still call regexes regex but try to avoid the term "regular expression"

> This document summarizes Apocalypse 5, which is about the new regex syntax. > We now try to call them regex rather than "regular expressions" because they > haven't been regular expressions for a long time, and we think the popular > term "regex" is in the process of becoming a technical term with a precise > meaning of: "something you do pattern matching with, kinda like a regular > expression". On the other hand, one of the purposes of the redesign is to > make portions of our patterns more amenable to analysis under traditional > regular expression and parser semantics, and that involves making careful > distinctions between which parts of our patterns and grammars are to be > treated as declarative, and which parts as procedural.

> In any case, when referring to recursive patterns within a grammar, the > terms rule and token are generally preferred over regex.

[https://design.perl6.org/S05.html](https://design.perl6.org/S05.html)

Of course it is not surprising that Perl community is pushing the envelope for regex...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Fascinating. As I recall, things like negative look-ahead (or look-behind) aren't formally regular expressions (i.e. the languages they recognize aren't generally regular languages). Is this "absent" operator like that too?

<comment><USER8> A look-ahead isn't part of regular expression (in the CS sense) syntax, but since regular expressions are closed under AND, OR and NOT, you can emulate it with AND.

For example (?=a)b is the same as (a.*)&b if we take & to mean AND.

(But note that look-aheads don't influence the scope of captures in modern regex implementations, and regular expressions don't even have the notion of captures; this makes the emulation not practical).

Since I believe you can emulate the absence operator using look-aheads (see [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13939764](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13939764)), it should be expressible by regular language too.

<comment><USER17> It isn't quite that easy to emulate lookahead using intersection (AND). For (?=a)b you're right, but that's because `a` and `b` both only ever match strings of length one. `(?=foo)f`, for example, will match the first character of the string "foobar". But `foo&f` is the empty language: no string is both "foo" and "f"; they have different lengths!

The trouble with lookahead and lookbehind is that they aren't even describable in terms of the "language" which the regular expression corresponds to; rather, they modify how the pattern matches _in the context_ of an overall string. So they don't quite use the same formalism as intersection, union, and negation of regular languages.

<comment><USER18> Apart from the length of the match, (?=foo)f is equivalent to foo.* & f.* (the extra .* ensures that both of them match foo).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The missing link: Microsoft Surface - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/131338-the-missing-link-microsoft-surface <comment><USER2> The takeaway ...

"From the get-go, and despite Redmond's very noisy protestations to the contrary, Windows 8 is obviously a touch-first operating system. This kind of made sense; with tablets and smartphones very quickly taking over the world, Microsoft was compelled to quickly bolster its mobile presence. In the process, though, Microsoft was effectively screwing over its installed base of 1 billion non-touch Windows PCs. Surface is the missing link. The strategy is now perfectly clear: If you want to experience Windows 8 properly, you have to buy a Microsoft tablet."

</comment><comment><USER3> There sure are a lot of articles being written about something which has some fundamental questions about it which have so far remain unanswered, specifically, price and when it is scheduled to go on sale.

In some aspects, this announcement was strikingly similar to RIM's Playbook announcement: reviewers were unable to play with it, price was an open question, and it was still months away from market.

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't compare this with the PlayBook, but it was clear that the device is NOT ready.

Our Deputy Editor was at the event and he described it as the most "controlled demo experience"[1] he's ever had -- and Chris has been at this since the late 1990s. That didn't surprise me at all because any time you spend most of your presentation talking about the engineering of the Touch Cover (which does look incredible) and not the apps, the battery life or the timeline, it's not ready.

I think this has potential -- especially at the Surface running Windows Pro level -- but it was curious to see them announce it SO early, when it's clear the device isn't ready in any way.

My gut tells me that the RT version will start at $500 and the Pro version will start at $1000. Knowing Microsoft, I've got to think they are aggressively aiming for a November release date for the first version and a February or March for the Pro. I don't think it's likely it will appear before then.

My bigger question is what specific APIs are they going to unveil to Windows 8 developers that take advantage of the Surface devices -- and will there be Surface-specific apps that won't work with the other Windows 8 tablets. As I wrote late last night, I expect that within a year of this thing's release, we won't see any other consumer-facing Windows 8 tablets on the market.

That to me is actually the most interesting part of this whole thing. Microsoft has taken Apple's approach to fully integrating the hardware (I don't think this is their version of the Nexus line of devices...I think they've created what they want to be THE Windows 8 tablet experience, not simply a flagship example).

[1]: [http://mashable.com/2012/06/18/hands-on-with-microsofts- tabl...](http://mashable.com/2012/06/18/hands-on-with-microsofts-tablet- plenty-of-surface-not-much-depth/)

<comment><USER5> Why would there be Surface-only apps? It just runs Windows RT/8. And why would there not be any other Windows 8 tablets?

<comment><USER4> Well, if you're Lenovo and you're already struggling to keep margins in check with Windows RT (and you have to pay an $85 licensing fee for the software) and you're unsure of the consumer demand for a Windows 8 tablet, do you still go gangbusters after an unproven product segment when you have a huge competitor that is showing off a flagship version of the Windows 8 tablet experience?

I don't have the answer to that.

As for APIs, it doesn't seem impossible to think that there might be apps that take advantage of the Pen technology in the Intel version of Surface or the Touch Cover and Type Covers and that those APIs might only apply to the Surface devices. I really don't know. That's my point.

<comment><USER5> Lenovo sells 4 or 5 tablets today, why in the world would they not include Windows 8 in their lineup next year. Lenovo is a computer company, they have to sell computers or they don't have a business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Microsoft naming things again... They needed to call them Surface and Surface Pro.

<comment><USER7> How else would you distinguish the ARM model (Metro-only) and the Intel model (contains a full desktop) ?

I seem to recall MacBook and MacBook Pro co-existing for years without a hint of ridicule...

<comment><USER8> That's the problem, they're not called "Surface" and "Surface Pro", they're called "Surface for Windows RT" and "Surface for Windows 8 Pro".

<comment><USER7> Ah you're right - I misunderstood the parent's comment

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is anyone thinking this will turn into a Zune 2.0? I'm not sure why everyone is so optimistic since when MS tried to copy the iPod we got a brown Zune.

<comment><USER10> And the Zune was a great hardware/software combo, with unfortunate timing. The iPhone went onto the market soon after launch and no one wanted a PMP anymore. On the flip side, when Microsoft tried to copy the Playstation, we got the Xbox. Seems to be doing pretty well.

Are you really arguing color, though? It's a black tablet with a handful of color choices for the cover/keyboard. Brown Zune has no bearing on this.

<comment><USER11> Zune was released in November 2006. Claiming the iPhone caused its failure (because no one wanted a PMP anymore) is rewriting history. The best year for iPod sales was 2008. Well after the June 2007 availability of the iPhone.

Zune failed because it was late to market and was saddled with a corporate owner that lacked credibility in that particular marketplace.

Sources for the above dates and stats are Wikipedia

<comment><USER10> Of those sales, how many were the iPod Touch and how many were the iPod Shuffle (two markets where Zune never competed)?

I stand by my argument that Zune entered into the market just as that market died. Your point about the credibility is another part of the whole package.

<comment><USER11> _I stand by my argument that Zune entered into the market just as that market died._

Well I wish I had a small piece of the billions Apple made from that dead market.

 _Your point about the credibility is another part of the whole package._

What package?

<comment><USER10> _What package?_

The whole package of niggles that kept the Zune from mass market success. One was the fast-shrinking market for PMPs. Another was the fact that it was Microsoft, an inherently uncool corporation. I'm agreeing with you on this point.

Apple making money from the "dead" market, I believe, is a huge factor in the death of the market. It's a small market to begin with, people who want an MP3 player with a music store and mandatory music management software but don't want a smartphone. In that small of a market you'd be a fool to consider Product X over an iPod in that market no matter how much better Product X is. There's only room for one major player there, and Microsoft doesn't do well when they're relegated to second place.

I'm agreeing with you, but also standing by my assertion that Microsoft had no chance in the market no matter how awesome their product was/could have possibly been.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am going to be watching this product very closely and might even climb on the x86 model pre-order bandwagon when I can. I am a software developer who travels a lot and I currently use a Vaio Z and an Asus Slider on the road. I was very close to picking up the new Transformer but who's kidding who, having to work in a Microsoft world on Android is still a tricky process. I love my ASUS tablets but if this product is as good as it looks, it's a no brainer. To be able to run native x86 apps, have a decent sized keyboard, 1080p, with the portability of a tablet... win win. I don't often get too excited about a product but Microsoft really has caught my eye on this one.

</comment><comment><USER13> At 13:36 in the keynote video, he opens up Internet Explorer and surface freezes. By 14:22 he has to run back and get a new surface.

<comment><USER14> It's a Microsoft tradition: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjZQGRATlwA>

<comment><USER15> I'll just leave this here : <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsKKQNZG3rE>

I know this thread is not about apple but I don't know of any tech demo that is guaranteed to have a 100% success rate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The success of Xbox should not be used as a point of reference without mentioning the red ring of death that almost killed it. That type of problem would be fatal in the tablet market.

</comment><comment><USER16> One of the thoughts I've had about this device is whether we'll be able to use a Surface tablet as the touch input device on a normal PC running Windows 8.

My imagination pictures me connecting the Surface to my PC via USB and being able to use it as a touch control while viewing on a normal monitor.

Am I dreaming, or do you think someone at MS has had the same idea?

</comment><comment><USER17> MIcrosoft succeeded in giving PC users another high quality tablet path.

Enterprise users can use Windows apps the rely on for work and still enjoy a tablet experience.

If they nail the keyboard/touchpad feel then this solves the need to buy a laptop and a tablet.

<comment><USER18> So you think all enterprise users will be content to having 10" "laptops"? Most of them will still need large screen laptops, so they could get cheaper non-ultrabook laptop instead (and probably more powerful, too - ultrabooks are pretty weak) and then buy an iPad or an Android tablet for a $1000-$1200 total price, which is probably what the Surface Pro 10" tablet will cost.

<comment><USER17> Not all but certainly any Windows user who is considering a tablet.

Many laptop users dock them at work for use with a monitor, keyboard and mouse.

People who travel a lot may find good use also. Work and play in one package.

<comment><USER19> if ubuntu/unity works flawlessly on this thing I'm in. I already have a MacBook Air and an Android tablet - this device with Unity on it seems like a merging of the two to me.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Super Tiny Website Logos in SVG - <AUTHOR> https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2017/11/super-tiny-website-logos-in-svg/ <comment><USER2> I have been using [https://simpleicons.org](https://simpleicons.org) for a while now. It is super light and looks great. License is CC0. Although I prefer inlining the icons over using  tags.

<comment><USER3> Is there an easy way to generate SVG icons from image files (.png, .jpg, etc.)? Or are each of these SVG icons created by hand?

<comment><USER4> ImageTracer is a simple raster image tracer and vectorizer that outputs SVG, 100% free, Public Domain.

Available in JavaScript (works both in the browser and with Node.js), "desktop" Java and "Android" Java:

[https://github.com/jankovicsandras/imagetracerjs](https://github.com/jankovicsandras/imagetracerjs)

[https://github.com/jankovicsandras/imagetracerjava](https://github.com/jankovicsandras/imagetracerjava)

[https://github.com/jankovicsandras/imagetracerandroid](https://github.com/jankovicsandras/imagetracerandroid)

You can use svgo to optimize the SVG afterwards: [https://github.com/svg/svgo](https://github.com/svg/svgo)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In case anyone else was suspicious of the 20k file size for a 512x512 PNG with essentially two colors - it's way off. I dropped it into Photoshop and exported as PNG and it spit out an identical file that weighs in at 6k.

<comment><USER6> And if you run it through [https://tinypng.com](https://tinypng.com) it should get down even smaller. PNG compresses surprisingly well when it's basically two colors + alpha.

<comment><USER7>
      Photoshop: 6 705 bytes, 128 colors, 1-bit alpha only
      TinyPNG: 6 179 bytes, 92 colors
      Optimage: 5 761 bytes, 154 colors
      TinyPNG + Optimage (lossless): 5 226 bytes, 92 colors

[https://imgur.com/a/X9DnJ](https://imgur.com/a/X9DnJ)

TinyPNG tends to use fewer colors. But its compressor is pretty suboptimal. I could reduce the image further by 15.4% with the tool I'm making ([http://getoptimage.com](http://getoptimage.com)).

<comment><USER8> 3545 bytes: [https://i.imgur.com/dHIaRh1.png](https://i.imgur.com/dHIaRh1.png) Used Gimp to convert to 4-bit paletted colormap, and processed through optipng.

The original PNG icon was very clearly suboptimal at 20 225 bytes...

<comment><USER9> Imgur converts everything both of you posted to JPEG...

<comment><USER10> What do you mean? It's serving me a PNG image.

<comment><USER11> Are you sure? Zooming in here I see JPEG artifacts. Imgur also often lies about the image format in the URL.

<comment><USER12> ImageMagick's `identify` claims it's a PNG:

        $ curl -OL https://i.imgur.com/dHIaRh1.png
        $ identify dHIaRh1.png
        dHIaRh1.png PNG 512x512 512x512+0+0 8-bit sRGB 3545B 0.000u 0:00.000

<comment><USER11> Yes, I can reproduce that. I get served different versions depending on device/browser, and on my phone I got a 7883 byte JPEG!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A lot of these are logos that I had assumed to be registered trademarks. As such, they would only be usable under the terms of a licensing agreement with the owning company, terms which I had assumed would be pretty anal-retentive regarding the exact details of the representation. IIRC, Facebook has a specific art package with specific image files that one is suppose to use, and no other.

On the one hand, this is pretty common knowledge. On the other hand, none of the responses so far have brought it up, and the logo website itself seems to think that the cited sources can license the use of the artwork in question. I do not quite know what to make of this.

<comment><USER14> What you have said is simultaneously completely true and totally pointless.

Yeah, we all know that brands have tediously anal rules about usage of their logos in particular. In practice, so long as you aren't obviously abusing it, nobody is going to care. Have you seen some of the stuff what people do with social media logos??

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Just to pick on the one I know best, the Y Combinator logo is way off. The corners shouldn't be rounded, and the Y is too big and its top branches are too thick.

Correct version: [http://www.ycombinator.com/images/ycombinator-logo- fb889e2e....](http://www.ycombinator.com/images/ycombinator-logo-fb889e2e.png) this project: [https://camo.githubusercontent.com/08ae881e8ce6d8f2278fa20d7...](https://camo.githubusercontent.com/08ae881e8ce6d8f2278fa20d7ef2c3ef61c64361/68747470733a2f2f6564656e742e6769746875622e696f2f537570657254696e7949636f6e732f74696e792f6861636b65726e6577732e737667)

</comment><comment><USER16> Amazing! With SVG being supported on all browsers you should care about today, it obsoletes icon fonts, which require the entire icon set to be downloaded.

Anyone know of a FontAwesome-like project, ideally with a CDN, that serves SVG icons like Font Awesome has so including them in a website is easy and compact?

<comment><USER17> No CDN, but there's multiple repos of people taking the FontAwesome icons and converting them over to SVG.

Here's the one I used: [https://github.com/encharm/Font-Awesome-SVG- PNG](https://github.com/encharm/Font-Awesome-SVG-PNG)

Also, the new "Font Awesome Pro" comes with all icons as SVG out of the box - [https://fontawesome.com/](https://fontawesome.com/)

Last, one annoyance (in the midst of many benefits) of using SVG instead of fonts as icons is that you can't change their color via CSS if you're including them via img src='file.svg'

So I use BoxySVG. Boxy is to Illustrator as Acorn or Pixelmator are to Photoshop. A tightly focused editor that lets you do simple things (like edit colors) very rapidly and doesn't bog you down with a ton of extraneous features.

[https://boxy-svg.com/](https://boxy-svg.com/)

<comment><USER18> I am pretty sure you can change a lot of SVG properties trough CSS (use "currentColor" to change the color, for example).

There was a discussion about [http://slides.com/sdrasner/svg-can-do- that/](http://slides.com/sdrasner/svg-can-do-that/) some time ago, which gives some nice SVG styling examples.

<comment><USER17> So the distinction is inlining SVGs vs referring to them like you would a png with an img src=filepath.svg|png in your HTML.

It's handy to just treat them as you would images, but you lose some flexibility wrt being able to manipulate them via CSS b/c the browser now "thinks" of them like an image.

This SO post has a clever workaround (with I'm sure more caveats wrt performance, etc) that will auto-inline your svgs that you need to manipulate so you can get a best of both worlds type situation going.

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24933430/img-src-svg- cha...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24933430/img-src-svg-changing-the- fill-color)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> GitHub posted a write-up [0] on how they switched from icon fonts to SVG icons. It's worth a read.

[0] [https://github.com/blog/2112-delivering-octicons-with- svg](https://github.com/blog/2112-delivering-octicons-with-svg)

</comment><comment><USER20> Remember to always (every time) set width/height for the  tag, otherwise it will fill the entire screen/container.

<comment><USER21> Yes! Loading many sites without width/height set on mobile connections display a horrible jitter with logos and social icons polluting the entire screen initially.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> At what point does using a vector SVG is worse than raster image? Level of image complexit, requiring a ton of path elements?

the Twitter logo can be create in basically 2 path elements.

What if my logo is much more complex? Is there a threshold at the complexity of my image results in an SVG payload > than a properly compressed raster image?

<comment><USER23> That's my issue with the svg reflex, re-rendering complex geometry is more demanding than byte copy. That said [https://edent.github.io/SuperTinyIcons/tiny/twitter.svg](https://edent.github.io/SuperTinyIcons/tiny/twitter.svg) is really really really simple. I had no idea svg.fill could encode such things, and expected a bad mix of overlapping ovals to create the illustration.

Not bad

<comment><AUTHOR> I have made a "circles only" version of the Twitter logo - it's at [https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2017/05/the-twitter-logo-as-svg- cir...](https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2017/05/the-twitter-logo-as-svg-circles/)

It's a bit of a silly way to do it - and is probably more complex to render.

<comment><USER23> but easier to understand :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Slight tangent, but for anyone coming late to the party, here's a sampling of why SVG matters:

[http://slides.com/sdrasner/svg-can-do-that#/](http://slides.com/sdrasner/svg- can-do-that#/)

<comment><USER25> I'd say that's a sampling of how SVG went wrong.

What we wanted was a vector image format; what we got was PowerPoint.

<comment><USER26> I don't understand this argument. The ability to do more complex stuff doesn't alter the fact that SVG is a perfectly reasonable vector image format.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> They aren't _all_ under 1KB, but there a few repos on GitHub hosting all of the Font Awesome icons as SVG.

Also, if you can avoid it, don't use <img src… to display SVG images, as the article suggests. By using <svg… directly, you avoid extra requests, you gain the ability to manipulate them directly in the DOM, and to restyle them.

[https://github.com/ivanvotti/font-awesome- svg/tree/master/SV...](https://github.com/ivanvotti/font-awesome- svg/tree/master/SVG)

<comment><USER28> Unfortunately you cannot reuse the icons that way, which does end up being wasteful unless you use compression.

<comment><USER29> You can reuse inline icons with JS - for example if you made a react component of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Very cool! I would advise to try minifying with svgomg, some icons seem to benefit. Eg bitbucket.svg can be reduced by 20% without any visual change.

<comment><AUTHOR> Most of them were already minimised with SVGO and svgcleaner. If you can make them smaller - I'd love a pull request :-)

<comment><USER31> Do you care about readability? Does ungzipped size counts or you assume that users will be using gzip?

Here is DO logo that you can gzip down to 221b

<svg role="img" aria-label="DigitalOcean" viewBox="0 0 512 512" xmlns="[http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"](http://www.w3.org/2000/svg") fill="#0080ff"> <rect height="512" rx="15%" width="512" fill="#fff"/> <path d="M256,391v85a220,220 0 1 0 -220,-220h85a135,135 0 1 1 135,135 H51v-55h55v120h65V306h85z"/> </svg>

Do you think it is ok to pull out newlines?

<comment><AUTHOR> In the readme, I've said that I want to keep newlines for readability. That helps with people learning about SVG.

I'm not fussed about compressed size - but I'd certainly welcome a Pull Request if you've managed to shrink that icon.

<comment><USER32> How about keeping readable versions in the repository, along with a script that compresses them? The compressed ones could be automatically served on a separate site.

<comment><AUTHOR> Could be fun! Please send a pull request.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> > You could fit over 3,000 of these images on a floppy disk.

So small it will take you 20 seconds to count on an Abacus.

<comment><USER34> If you find a floppy disk or drive at all nearby :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'm still a bit sad that Raphaël.js never _quite_ caught on[0]. Same for its successor Snap[1]. I guess the main reason is that SVGs themselves weren't quite popular (and I assume there were also a few bugs) and take a proper illustrator to draw, compared to the ease of fetching JPG assets off the internet.

[0] [http://dmitrybaranovskiy.github.io/raphael/](http://dmitrybaranovskiy.github.io/raphael/)

[1] [http://snapsvg.io/](http://snapsvg.io/)

</comment><comment><USER36> Really cool. I've always wondered why nobody was doing this. Just about every website in the world could benefit from it. Nice work!

</comment><comment><USER37> I bet many of these would be even smaller in SWF, since that's a very efficient (bit-packed, and then compressed) binary format specifically designed for small filesize, as opposed to the textual XML of SVG (although SVG is not really "XML-ish" in the sense that path data is still a list of points, and not one-element-per-point.)

<comment><USER38> I'd rather trade a little bandwidth for the increased security of not running Flash in my browser.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Where do we find a good SVG editor? That might be the reason the mass hasn't switched to svg.

<comment><USER40> Perhaps Inkscape?

<comment><USER41> Inkscape is ok. It has serious issues though - pretty terrible performance, confusing UI, still requires X11 on Mac, etc. Probably still the best free SVG editor but I'm not sure I'd go so far as to call it good.

<comment><USER32> > confusing UI

Anything particular you have in mind?

<comment><USER26> Most of the time, when I run InkScape to edit an existing .SVG, it's because I want to just select and drag a few vector endpoints a bit to one side or the other to make minor tweaks. I'd venture that's true for most users. However, it doesn't seem to be the default behavior. I always have to remember how to get into the right selection mode, because the authors seem to think I most likely want to drag the entire image around. Why I would want to do that, I can't imagine, but that's how it works.

That's a problem for many common actions -- for instance, I normally want to resize the view box to enclose the content tightly before saving an edited file, so why is that common action buried multiple layers deep in the UI? _File- >Document Properties->Page->Custom size->Resize page to content->Resize page to drawing or selection->Seriously?_ It's almost easier to do this in a text editor.

Finally, people who write apps that don't remember their previous desktop window size and position, but that instead auto-size themselves to cover the entire screen every time they're launched, should die in a grease fire. Unnecessarily-aggressive hyperbole aside, this kind of obvious forehead- slapping behavior is never good news because it means that the maintainers don't use their own app.

All that aside, InkScape is really a very powerful application that could be a lot harder to use. A great deal of hard work has clearly gone into it, and at the end of the day it _is_ free software, so it's hard to complain without seeming ungracious. If it weren't such a great app, it wouldn't be worth criticizing at all.

<comment><USER32> Thanks for sharing your comments. That's interesting.

> the authors seem to think I most likely want to drag the entire image > around.

I don't think that is the default, unless the whole image happens to have been grouped into a single element, which might of course be the case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> When most webpages have a megabyte or more of javascript libraries, having a 20kb twitter icon which is probably cached doesn't sound bad really.

</comment><comment><USER43> I wish I could submit my SVG, its not a hugely popular service but it seems like this idea could be expanded.

</comment><comment><USER44> But _why_ , when I zoom in with my browser (using Ctrl-+) on that page, the icons don't look sharp?

EDIT: I mean the table.

<comment><USER45> The second Twitter icon (which is an SVG) looks very sharp when zoomed in. The table of other icons is a screenshot, not in SVG, so those won't look sharp when zooming in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I love that people are rediscovering SVG

I hope this gathers stream and forces Google (and others, but especially Google) to fix the bugs they have in the format

<comment><USER47> Could you elaborate on the bugs in SVG? Are there any usability issues beyond the bugs? I tried some cursory googling 'why not to use svg', 'svg bugs', etc and didn't really find any common/recurring.

<comment><USER48> Historically, the SVG-related systems in most browsers haven't seen a lot of love, so it's lagged behind other web technologies. This seems to be getting better — I know Safari just landed a nice 3x performance improvement to one of the SVG filters.

Here's a handful of issues that I still encounter, due to cross-browser differences.

      * You can't use the full range of CSS3 colors.
      * You can't set certain style properties via CSS (requiring the use of attributes).
      * You can't use self-closing tags for certain elements.
      * Differing behaviour when you set an attribute to "null" (which is fine, it's just a gotcha)

SVG performance also varies wildly, more so than JS perf, HTML DOM perf, or CSS perf. This seems to correlate with the visual quality of the rendered result — Chrome is the fastest but has excessive smoothing, poor sampling of scaled images, etc; Safari is the slowest but produces the cleanest result.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Make sure you inline these in your HTML directly so you don't add an additional 1-2KB (or more) in headers for each access.

</comment><comment><USER50> Someone should build a web service for delivering these social icons. They could place a random selection of 3 or 4 popular social icons on the page, and then, like AdSense the social sites could pay to get an increased number of placements, with a percentage paid back to the site owner.</comment>


Public Opinion Shifts on Security-Liberty Balance - <AUTHOR> http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/10/public-opinion-shifts-on-security-liberty-balance/

<comment><USER2> Good news, of course, but I have a comment on the graphic illustrating the Fox News poll. This thing could not possibly have been constructed in a more confusing fashion. Horizontal bars are already difficult to understand, but then they reverse the direction of meaning from the columns of numbers to the bars, so that if the right column gets bigger then the bar grows toward the left! Also, they're using blue and red, which (along with the horizontal "left" and "right") seem to indicate party affiliation, which is not the statistic measured by the poll question. Try again Mr. Poll Expert.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's still pathetic. The balance is still nearly 50/50; something promising would be along the lines of 70/30 or even 65/35.</comment>


MathJax: Math just works on the web now - <AUTHOR> http://dreev.es/mathjax

<comment><USER2> It's very nice and all, but it doesn't just work for all of us, because it requires JavaScript.

That means there are people who will have to figure out which domain(s) to whitelist in NoScript, among other things. And the LaTeX logo still doesn't work even after that, unless it wasn't intended to look like the real one: [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/File:LaTeX_lo...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/File:LaTeX_logo.svg)

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe just whitelist any site using MathJax? Probably a reasonable policy.

I can't really tell the difference in the LaTeX logo, but I think it's silly to actually typeset the logo that way when talking about LaTeX. I'd refuse to do the silly camelCase thing as well except to make it clear I'm not talking about latex as in rubber.

Anyway, who cares about the logo, the important thing is that the math looks freakin awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hacker News discussion over a year ago when MathJax was relatively new: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=997096>

And more recently: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1974646>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I had known about MathJax but didn't realize that it was that easy. Just include a couple lines at the top of your html document and then just type math exactly like a LaTeX document. I want to find someone who helped make this possible and hug them!</comment>


NASA Seeks Research Proposals for Space Technologies to Flight Test - <AUTHOR> https://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstrong/features/nasa_seeks_research_proposals.html <comment><USER2> How about the EM drive?

<comment><USER3> Testing, sure. But flight testing is for [TRL]([https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/heo/scan/engineering/techn...](https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/heo/scan/engineering/technology/txt_accordion1.html)) 6 or 7, after the tech is demonstrated, spec'd, built, and entering late stage R&D before being pitched for technology demonstration on real missions.

EM drive is TRL 1 or 2.</comment></comment>


Forget passwords take a pill let your body log you in. - <AUTHOR> http://tatoott1009.com/2013/06/01/forget-passwords-take-a-pill-let-your-body-log-you-in/

<comment><AUTHOR> This could be very good future authentication mechanism which can be used to authenticate and authorize anywhere. If they can combine it with the biometrics then it will be impossible to crack it.</comment>


Duke Professor Uses 'Crowdsourcing' to Grade  - <AUTHOR> http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Duke-Professor-Uses/7538/?utm_source=wc <comment><USER2> Everyone knows that's what grad students are for... But in all seriousness, this seems like a neat idea with a lot of potential (both for overburdened professors and under-motivated students) that could have an impact on the current state of our education systems. It may not be a new idea, but it's application to higher education is interesting, to say the least.</comment>


You can now annotate images, Word documents online with Kivo - <AUTHOR> http://blog.kivo.com/kivo-adds-support-for-images-word-documents/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys, we're around to answer and questions about the product, so just ping us here or email@example.com. Cheers!</comment>


Ten years later, a risk that Satoshi failed to foresee - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@CryptoFundament/10-years-later-the-risk-that-satoshi-failed-to-foresee-212435cd8ceb <comment><USER2> >I personally don't believe miners would actually attack smaller currencies.

The dude who put prayers in the blockchain will make you believe: [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=56675.msg678006#msg6...](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=56675.msg678006#msg678006)

</comment><comment><USER3> IDK, maybe Satoshi did see the risk and viewed it as acceptable that forks aren't as secure as the main chain because they didn't care about everyone+dog else's _cost free_ forking off the main project.

<comment><USER4> Particularly when there's a straightforward way for forks to defend against this:

Change the algorithm when you fork.

<comment><USER5> Changing the proof of work algorithm (usually) means relying on GPUs and thereby subjecting yourself to attacks from _all_ GPU miners, whether they're currently mining Eth, or Monero, or Zcash, or any of hundreds of other coins.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This piece raises a couple of interesting questions: 1) Would it be illegal for a mining pool to attack another crypto-currency in this manner? and 2) Could this really be accomplished without severely impacting the value of _all_ crypto-currencies?

</comment><comment><USER7> But crypto and its tech is evolving.

There are some interesting coins that do not use mining as a PoW.</comment>


Medium: How secure will our data be in the post-quantum era? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@amarchenkova/how-secure-will-our-data-be-in-the-post-quantum-era-6a7f444ce7d5

<comment><USER2> This is utterly fascinating, and terrifying. This article is really approachable, which is good cause I never did very well in physics</comment>