The Psychology of Climate Change Denial - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/12/climate-psychology/

<comment><USER2> I don't know about others but I came to doubt AGW because of inconsistencies in their claims and the data they used. And because of their striking similarities in techniques (computer modelling of systems too complex for competent models) and prescriptions (we must suffer and gov't needs more power, MORE POWER) that they shared with other environmentalist claims that have been falsified over the decades. I already knew that they have been fudging the data, from their own reports, long before this leak from CRU.

<comment><USER3> Your response is far from unusual; in fact, it's probably a greater example of the psychology of AGW denial than any of the ones cited in the article.

There is a pattern of thinking which is common in many areas of expertise, but is especially prevalent in technical professions. It goes like this: the best solution to a complex problem is a simple one, and if the problem is so complex that I can't understand it in ten minutes, then it isn't worth my time.

So, for example, rather than taking the time to absorb the myriad complexities of climatology, and rather than reading the emails ourselves and analyzing their content and context, we instead take the "simpler" solution, the shortcut: we say, these emails are evidence of what I always believed all along, that the entire field of climatology is a hoax.

And really, that's a beautifully simplistic explanation for a very complicated field. Rather than needing to understand the field, it's much simpler to just say, this thing is a global conspiracy, and then move on to the next simple solution to a complex problem.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the inconsistencies in claims and data that people love to point to are actually things that have explanations, that can be understood -- if someone takes the time and effort to do it.

It's really rather like the Monty Hall Problem. Marliyn vos Savant ended up having mathematics professors -- among others -- writing to her for a long time after she published the correct solution to that problem. The solution they proposed instead -- while much simpler to understand -- was wrong.

Understanding the right solution took much more effort, and required abandoning certain preconceived notions.

Climatology is much the same in this respect.

<comment><USER4> I think you've answered the question for the wrong side. Climatology is an incredibly complex field and working out what the climate is requires multivariate modelling in order to try and work out what has happened and what will happen.

However, to try and simplify the theory for the man on the street, the AGW theory proponents have watered down the complexities to one villain : CO2. They are saying that, despite the complexities, despite the many variables, an increase in one of the least significant greenhouse gases will cause catastrophic (the word is everywhere - cue the screaming girl) warming.

The rational thinkers don't think the field of climate science is a hoax or conspiracy. What they think is that a small group of influential scientists is doing poor science and going to any length to keep a lid on it. A hoax implies forethought and planning. The reality is that they are caught up in the populuarity of the theory and the fame and fortune that it brings, and so are (probably) indulging in a good old 'us and them' groupthink session.

<comment><USER5> "a small group of influential scientists is doing poor science and going to any length to keep a lid on it"

That is in fact the definition of a hoax.

Tell you what. Why don't you publish your competing theory which explains global warming in a more convincing fashion.

You do have a competing, more plausible theory, right?

BTW -- the theory of evolution has poor explanations for several things in the natural kingdom. Does that mean it's a fraud, being perpetuated by a small group of scientists who are keeping a lid on more plausible explanations?

EDIT: Downrated? So, in response to an article talking about how people shut down their brains and respond emotionally, you start downrating people you disagree with rather than responding intellectually?

<comment><USER4> "a small group of influential scientists is doing poor science and going to any length to keep a lid on it"

No, a hoax is when people deliberately create a plan to deceive others, and know they are lying the whole time. It's different to when people fervently believe in something and get involved in groupthink, ignoring dissenting opinions and developing an 'us and them' mindset.

"You do have a competing, more plausible theory, right?" No, I don't. But then I'm not asking anyone to give me their money, either. The Earths climate has always been changing, and the causes have never been fully understood. Why did the medieval warming period occur? Why the little ice age after that? It's not up to sceptics of a theory to provide a competing theory that's better. The burden of proof is on the proponent of a theory to prove it is true. Something many people believe has not yet been achieved with the AGW theory.

<comment><USER5> The scientists aren't asking for anyone's money, either. They're simply giving their best forecast.

Here's the thing, (and mind you 95% of the people who've studied this for longer than 5 minutes on cable news commercial breaks agree on it), the carbon theory makes sense and there's a lot of correlation. If they're wrong, then all we'll have done is get off of fossil fuels, which we have to do anyways, and leave cleaner air for our children.

If you're wrong? I mean, do you buy homeowner's insurance or flood insurance? Why not earth insurance?

Lastly, to revisit the original point, regarding groupthink and dissenting opinions -- if you don't have an alternative model that makes more sense, you don't have a dissenting opinion. You're just getting sucked into the politics of the situation.

The earth is definitely warming, ice is definitely melting, and atmospheric CO2 definitely causes at _least_ ocean acidification which is massively disruptive itself. That's just basic chemistry. It also seems to be the most likely candidate for the cause of global warming, based on what we know.

So why are you so invested in making sure we don't act on it?

If we already had clean energy, hypothetically.. would you be willing to take on all of the risks of global warming in order to be 2% richer? Honest answer.

<comment><USER4> I don't recall ever downrating a comment or a story in HN. If someone is downrating your comments, it's not me.

"If we already had clean energy, hypothetically.. would you be willing to take on all of the risks of global warming in order to be 2% richer? Honest answer." No, of course not. None of my posts indicate a dislike for clean renewable energy. I am an enthusiast of electric cars, passionate about ocean pollution, believer in locally based sustainability. It would be my ideal to have a self sufficient home with no fossil fuels providing energy. Hopefully I'll see that in my lifetime.

However, I stop at correlation=causation, I distrust any non-testable computer models intensely (be they of the economic or climatic type) I'm also dubious about the 2% - it's also based on computer modelling and government forecasts, none of which I place the slightest faith in.

The scientists are asking for peoples money - that's the whole point. Directly through more research grants and funding. Indirectly by asking for wealth transfers from people.

"if you don't have an alternative model that makes more sense, you don't have a dissenting opinion. You're just getting sucked into the politics of the situation."

I completely reject that statement. I don't have to have an alternative view on any theory. Any theory on anything is completely rejectable without coming up with an alternative. It's perfectly logical to say "I don't have a better explanation, but you've failed to convince me".

<comment><USER5> Well, clearly several people are doing it, and I'd wager that they're also Republican voters, if we're going to play the statistics. That sort of rating seems to be abusive to me, and against the HN ethos, particularly if you can't be bothered to form a cogent response.

Regarding not being convinced -- fine. But what's your incentive to go so far out of your way to discredit them? Correlation doesn't equal causation but when we have a plausible theory, correlation, and no other theories that come even close as far as the smell test, well, you've gotta do better than crossing your arms and proclaiming yourself unconvinced to be credible.

Given that you agree that we should move to clean and renewable energy, what's your investment in tarring the scientific community? You try to bring it to grants.. what's that, a few dozen million worldwide for the whole climatology community? I'd think anyone who labels themselves intellectual would be proud to sponsor pure research.

Basically, where's your beef come from, if it's not politics? Why aren't you trying to poke holes in the theory of evolution? You don't need an alternative to be unconvinced, right? That'd be easier than the warming one, frankly.

<comment><USER4> My beef is pretty simple : they're not doing good science. I always thought of them as well-meaning but misdirected researchers. Since the emails came out, I don't think they are that well meaning anymore. My problem with the whole thing is that to me, from day one in the late 1980's, the man-made global warming hypothesis has been full of contradicting information, alarmist predictions and became a political football. I don't believe the ends justify the means. I also don't like the money and 'public thought' that has been diverted from real, immediate environmental problems like ocean and air pollution, things that can be solved for a fraction of the price and will make real difference to people straight away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> 1\. I resent that skepticism is portrayed as tin-hat denial.

2\. "If there's no action before 2012, that's too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future, said Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, when the report was released. This is the defining moment."

Really? After billions of years of spinning around the sun, or let's just say hundreds of millions of years with a climate essentially like ours, with ice ages and hot times galore, we have two years or then we're dead? Gimme a break.

3\. Related to 2 above, what makes the current climate configuration special? All the ice ages, all the hot times over millions of years, and suddenly when we get a small amount of data, we decide that the climate we find today is the standard from which we deviate at our peril?

Perhaps a more rational and practical view would be to recognize that climate does change significantly over time, and we should learn to adapt to that as individuals and nations. Because casually looking back over millions of years (casually is all I'm personally capable of, sorry), it seems that we're going to have to live with warming and cooling at some time (as we already have in the past), even if we turn off every light switch on Earth.

<comment><USER7> The problem is that the way we humans are living right now is NOT fit to adapt to significant changes in climate, and changing that would be even harder than curtailing our emissions. And it does not matter that there have historically been much greater differences in climate - we're living right now.

In the long run (centuries, millenia), yes, finding a way of living that can adapt to climate changes would be better. But that would require a significant smaller population density to have safety margins.

<comment><USER6> What is it about the way we live right now that's not fit to adapting? Is it population, as you mention in your last sentence? Not asking as a challenge, just clarification.

We probably just squeaked through the big ice, and I think low population was a disadvantage for species survival. I think we "adapted" through the recent little ice age pretty well, although it was probably not an align-the- governments scale challenge.

Yes, we are living right now. I think we'll make it through.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The part that is astounding about this article: it was written on December 9th, 2009, well after the CRU email/data dump; it is about climate skepticism; yet, it has NO mention of the CRU email/data dump while discussing said skepticism.

(to be fair, perhaps the interview was conducted before the CRU dump and only now is being published; but why didn't the editor catch it?)

<comment><USER9> People who believe in AGW don't see anything wrong with those e-mails. They consider it just another part of the "extremely well organized, well funded" PR Campaign. Their argument would be that a bunch of people are taking sentences out of context in order to make standard statistical analysis seem like a cover up.

I don't agree with that but I know enough people on the other side to know that's what they think.

<comment><USER10> And there are a bunch of AGW people who believe the noble lie, ie. "Since we need to be doing all this green stuff anyway, let's just do it (carbon tax, population reduction) and not argue about these particular emails and let's just have a little faith in the system"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have doubts about AGW not because I borrowed other people's opinions but instead I went to an original data source - the Global Historical Climatology Network - and plotted the raw (version 2) temperature data, both for different countries and also as a global average. The results show that there are a range of trends going on. Some, like that for Sri Lanka, are clearly related to geothermal activity. Temperatures for Countries such as the UK and Germany have neither increased nor decreased significantly over the last 150 years, and Canada, Russia (Asian sector) and China have been getting colder.

I know from examining the raw data that the global temperature graphs typically shown in the media contain significant distortions, which are due to missing temperature data within the series for particular locations. For example, Turkey only has reliable temperatures for the last 50 years or so, and when you add patchy series into the global average it appears to increase or decrease suddenly.

If I only plot temperature series which are more than 98% complete over the last 150 years the overall trend looks like a very linear increase in temperature of around 1-2 degrees. It certainly not obvious that there is a significant anthropogenic component.

<comment><USER3> Did your data include ocean temperature measurements, ice mass measurements, and atmospheric temperature measurements?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Perhaps the simplest explanation for falling belief in the AGW theory is the best - that "Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one." [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusions...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusions_and_the_Madness_of_Crowds)]

I think what we are seeing is the gradual realisation that the alarms have been ringing a bit too loud, a bit too often, and people are beginning to wonder what all the rush is.

If you want an anology it's similar to when people realised that .com companies with massive costs and tiny sales weren't actually ever going to make any money, and started to sell. Remember the quaint term 'new economy'?

</comment><comment><USER12> This is a great example of why Wired hasn't been relevant for years.

"Even as the science of global warming gets stronger", where have they been? Perhaps they're in "denial" of ClimateGate?

When you bet against the common sense of the American people you are taking a bet with long odds.

</comment><comment><USER13> "The Helioculture process utilizes highly-engineered photosynthetic organisms to catalyze the conversion of sunlight and carbon dioxide into transportation fuels and chemicals" - <http://www.ethanolproducer.com/article.jsp?article_id=5858>

How long before a future in which we're pumping back _into_ oil fields to get CO2 out of the atmosphere?

Out of all of human history, technology at the scale of helping climate change is more likely this century than any other. I haven't seen anyone suggesting we push on towards it full steam ahead, but slowing down isn't enough. We either get such technology at some point or we stop polluting _completely_ , anything else is just a delay tactic and will prolong the problem. Who is to blame doesn't really help anything.

Also:

Guess who's taking it seriously? "Copenhagen climate summit: 1,200 limos, 140 private planes". ""We haven't got enough limos in the country to fulfil the demand," she says. "We're having to drive them in hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden."

And the total number of electric cars or hybrids among that number? "Five,"" - [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate- change-c...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change- confe/6736517/Copenhagen-climate-summit-1200-limos-140-private-planes-and- caviar-wedges.html)

(People in power) can tell me to take it seriously and drive five miles less per week all they like, I'll be more likely to listen when they stop their much more polluting ways.</comment>


Linux users: watch out for last-gen Intel Atom - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/2925633

<comment><USER3> I can only say the same. Bought a mighty expensive Sony netbook only to figure out that this integrated PowerVR graphics chip is a total disaster. In Windows and much more in Linux, where it is 1. a pain to even bring to work and 2. so slow that it's barely usable.

I must say i am really disappointed by Intel, which (in my oppinion) had and have great Linux support in their products. But not in this one.

Stay away from Atoms with non-Intel Graphics.

<comment><USER4> you mean, intel, the manufacturer of wifi drivers that only works with binary blobs? or the manufacturer of GPUs that work wonders with linux because they have no feature at all?

i wouldn't count them so happily as linux supporters.

<comment><USER5> Intel was the first vendor to have open source OpenGL 3.0 drivers, and have really driven Mesa development for the last few years. That hardly feels like "no features at all."

Disclaimer: I'm starting at Intel on the open source graphics team next month.

<comment><USER6> So as a professional opinion, what do you think of intel creating unusable, proprietary software drivers for third party licensed chips?

<comment><USER5> I don't really know anything about those drivers (they're not handled by the open source team). No one on the open source team likes them either.

It has seemed to me that using these PVR chips has always been a stop gap measure for Atom until the in-house graphics were ready (where ready means sufficiently energy efficient or something). This seems to be confirmed by the fact that ValleyView graphics are going to be coming to Atom.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Fedora 17 added support to provide gnome3 support even with software rendering.

See [http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Gnome_shell_software_...](http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Gnome_shell_software_rendering)

<comment><USER8> Nice that it exists, but I wouldn't want to try that with only an Atom CPU. When you have a low-power CPU like that is exactly when you need graphics acceleration.

<comment><USER9> It is reported to be noticeably slow.

<http://blog.bodhizazen.net/linux/fedora-17-gma500-poulsbo/>

<comment><USER7> Don't know about speed. I think the mere fact that it works on vmware vm framebuffer is amazing!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Which is a shame, because at a hardware level I've always liked Imagination's tech.

Wish Imagination would solve this problem by open-sourcing some proper drivers.

Because most of the performance woes will be bad driver integration, and world will be wowed by a decent driver making the SGX punch, as it does, above its weight.

</comment><comment><USER11> There used to be a pretty decent Linux driver for PowerVR Kyro and Kyro 2 GPUs back in the day†. I wonder if it could be updated to the current breed of chips.

† I recall playing Quake 3 Arena on it on Linux, with framerate matching or exceeding Windows'.

</comment><comment><USER12> Before this, I had never thought of Gist as a legitimate blogging platform.

</comment><comment><USER13> "It hit the market during the last few weeks." is inaccurate, these chips have been around for a while (although my country just got more stock recently) and Phoronix covered this as it happened.

These chips don't even have gpu drivers for Windows 7 x64. You have to run the 32-bit version, which is strange since the boards all support >4GB ram.

Another interesting thing to note is that the D2700 _is already EOL'd_ [1] - <USER2> don't know when this happened exactly, but it can't have had more than 6 months on the market - and Intel have extended embedded production on the previous generation 5xx chips(?).

1\. <http://ark.intel.com/products/59683/>

</comment><comment><USER14> you just need to ask one question: who is the most important customer of imagination technologies? hint: it's not intel and it shows.

</comment><comment><USER15> As far as I've understood this article, the relevant source is available. So what's the problem? Why should Intel spend time and resources to integrate it with the mainstream, esp. if this is a short-lived processor family?

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't get me wrong. Intel is free to do whatever it sees fit. And Linux users and enthousiasts are free to buy or not to buy Intel-based hardware. As long as they are well-informed, which is the purpose of this post.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, it's just too bad that Intel > AMD in terms of chip performance / $ right now.

<comment><USER17> Not in this market segment. AFAIK, Brazos > Atom in both CPU and GPU and AMD is usually cheaper.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Intel is becoming more evil everyday. They did not learn from Poulsbo fiasco or they really do not care about Linux users.

By the way, isn't atom all about Linux

<comment><USER17> It's not evil, it's just lazy. Atom is a low-cost chip and they can't spend zillions developing it. They needed a small GPU and it was much cheaper to license PowerVR than to design a new GPU. (I guess Intel's GPU is not that area-efficient or something.)

<comment><USER6> I'm not against them to license a simple, low power consumption chip. But The evil is creating proprietary and unusable software drivers. If it was only laziness the could just license enough driver code to be open sourced. The Linux ecosystem is capable enough to hand over development from there.

<comment><USER17> No, the Linux ecosystem is not capable. Look at the open source Radeon and Noveau drivers; they're way behind their proprietary counterparts. Also, Imagination refuses to publish PowerVR documentation and it's not clear that they'd even allow open source developers to access the docs under NDA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've learned the hard way to stay a year or two behind the curve on hardware to avoid Linux compatibility issues.

<comment><USER9> That wouldn't have helped in this case. The Poulsbo chipset launched in 2008, and (unaccelerated) GMA500 support was only merged into Linux in the 3.3 kernel in May 2012.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This just goes to show how companies only support Linux with half heart and as long as it somehow fulfills their agenda.

Intel which is supposed to be a good citizen does not think twice when it comes to betray Linux support, and the same can be said for any other company.

<comment><USER20> Which is who's fault? If everybody has trouble with the time, effort, expense of supporting linux, perhaps its linux that is the problem. I'm not a linux user, ever since my introduction to it several years ago. Bought up-to-date computers for my team. Linux fan suggested we develop on linux. Tried it - disaster. Didn't support video chip, raid controller, even all the memory. Open office tools crashed. First doc I imported displayed in upper-left corner of the screen, every character in the file in one big spiderey blob.

We expunged linux, booted Windows(!), it asked for drivers ("Have disk?" Yes!) and everything up and running in minutes.

And we were developing new Infiniband code FOR LINUX! For testing we ran a virtual machine booting linux - that worked of course.

Moral: until Linux has a "Have disk" button, I don't see it deploying successfully on production machines. In a hobbyists garage, sure. But not mainstream. For all the reasons listed in other posts here.

<comment><USER21> _until Linux has a "Have disk" button_

This would work only _if_ you could get Linux drivers on a disk. There's a better solution that both Linux and Windows have had for years: put the drivers in a repo. Vista and 7 will grab drivers from their repository and install them automatically. Linux does the same. But only _if_ the manufacturer _has_ drivers for it.

 _Bought up-to-date computers for my team. Linux fan suggested we develop on linux. Tried it - disaster. Didn't support video chip, raid controller, even all the memory. Open office tools crashed. First doc I imported displayed in upper-left corner of the screen, every character in the file in one big spiderey blob._

That's the problem, there was no driver support. That's not the fault of Linux, that's the fault of companies not making drivers for Linux. If the hardware maker supplies Linux drivers, they're installed automatically while the system is installing, seamlessly.

 _I don't see it deploying successfully on production machines_

Then you're blind, because it's on millions of production machines around the world. We're a Windows shop and even we have hundreds of Linux servers and desktops.

<comment><USER20> Sure, servers have an extremely limited ecosystem of apps/services, you can get a handle on installation and support, even hardware. But try to corral a bunch of developers or home users. The interoperability matrix explodes.

Compare your 'millions' with the what, half a billion Windows machines, and you make the point very well.

<comment><USER21> _you make the point very well._

I think you make my point just as well, you're just directing blame at the wrong people. The problem you and I both see is a lack of Linux drivers. Rather than blaming the Linux developers though, I'm blaming the people responsible for making their drivers Windows-only, as well as making them closed-source binaries so Linux developers cannot make it work on their own.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask YC:Moving Costs - <AUTHOR>

Right now my lease in MKE is up at the end of May, and I am seriously considering a move to SF.  As part of my planing, I am trying to figure out how much it will cost to move out there.
It looks like Truck Rental alone will run $1500, and then there is gas.  At 7 MPG, going from MKE-SFO, might cost an additional 310-350 gallons of gas, at $4-$5 a gallon, or another $1,500 just in gas.
I have heard of POD, but I was wondering if anyone else had some ideas?
Plan B is to sell everything.
Plan C is to put it in storage here in MKE and move with a suitcase to the valley.
Plan D is to stay in MKE, reduce costs further and travel to the Valley, at regular intervals.
Plan Pipedream, is to get funded.
What advice can the group offer? <comment><USER2> sell all of your stuff

cheaper just to rebuy what you need on craigslist and you probably don't need 95% of your stuff anyways

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> ok, i have another option, try out amazon aws/

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/seller/fba/fulfillment-by- amazon.ht...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/seller/fba/fulfillment-by-amazon.html)

for my small expensive stuff, like computers, wii's ps3s bluray, dvd, cds, speakers, tvs, books, etc....

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I wonder if there is someway to move on electric power? ;-) Gas is so expensive.

</comment><comment><USER3> do you have a place in SF yet? Rents are really high especially with the foreclosure boom happening here.</comment>


Is Armchair Quarterbacking of healthcare.gov really good for the site? - <AUTHOR>

I have seen a lot of analysis of healthcare.gov.  Some are saying it needs to be written.  Some are just looking at little snippets of JavaScript and saying that the tech leaders need to be brought in to fix it.  Others want to fix it over github or through open source.<p>The site was released this month, publicly.  Should we really analyze the site that quickly and only take the pessimistic view.  I know the site is a political football already, let's not make snap decisions before even the month is up.<p>* I am curious how analysts got a hold of the code?  Is it closed source or open source.  If auditors were allowed in to look at the code, then  why not analyze the code over the life of the project and critically analyze it early on as opposed to weeks after release.<p>* If you don't have access to the full repository of source, then how can you call the project a failure?  Who looks at snippets of JavaScript and then declare the project horrible.<p>* And why just this site?  I have heard of CGI and SAIC and QSSI.  There are many enterprise software firms out there that work with government contracts.  Why is suddenly this one abyssal failure?<p>* I feel that the customers of the site (whoever launched the contract with CGI/QSSI) should have the last input on how the site should be enhanced or fixed.   Random people on the Internet throwing out there suggestions can't be healthy.  And I even wonder if Obama suggesting that he would talk with industry leaders was nothing more than politics.  The contract was not between "industry leaders" and the government.  Apparently the contract was awarded to CGI.  Why get the entire software community involved?<p>* I remember, people were critical of Paul Graham's code and site, news.ycombinator.com.  It seems to have survived, I wonder how many of those suggestions were really taking into consideration. <comment><USER2> I'd say it depends on the level of speculation involved in the speculation. Javascript analysis I can't particularly speak to, seeing as how I haven't done that sort of thing since 1997. On the other hand, which someone tells us he observed a GET URL with variable substitution missing, or we hear of all sorts of 404s that simply should be there, we've got some meat to judge it by.

Me, I mostly stick to process and management, noting that the HHS's CMS is the integrator and integration tester, and that the overall technical management has been done by in/unexperienced non-specialists from the White House on down to CMS. This helps to explain a lot, like how per the NYT 7 major change orders were made in the last 10 months, and changes were ordered _through the week before launch_. As well as integration testing beginning no sooner than 2 weeks before launch, and CMS doing a test a week before launch simulating 200 simultaneous logins, which failed hard.

And nonetheless the system was launched _knowing_ it couldn't work. And after not listening to those raising red flags for months and months, and evidence from an insider they knew they were in trouble in March ("... I hope it's not a Third World experience.")

Since then, CMS panicked 3 days after launch, proposing to CGI Federal that QSSI's identity module (based on Oracle's known to work, if gnarly, package for this) be punting a redone from scratch. CMS eventually decided that would take more time, but we can see a lot of management bandwidth at CGI Federal and QSSI was taken by this.

Then we hear that since launch, the White House and CMS have been intensely working on a remediation plan, hopefully to be finished today. Oh, yeah, part of this is said to be a " _tech 'surge'_", ignoring what us specialists learned in reading _The Mythical Man Month_ plus experience.

As a student of project management and project success and failure, this all fits together and sufficiently explains what happens, and e.g. why we shouldn't blame CGI Federal, there's no possible way they could have succeeded.

Looking forward, people like me can see that absent a wholesale replacement of those in charge, or their learning on the job enough of this stuff (we all learned a large fraction of this sort of thing in real projects, after all), we can predict the site's problems aren't going to fixed in the foreseeable future, let along "soon".

The latter is critical, because there's one absolutely hard deadline facing a lot of people who have major medical plans, which are now outlawed, although according to an account I just read 3 out of the 19 million outstanding will be grandfathered. That is, they are perforce having them canceled in the 100,000s of thousands per news reports, they will be without insurance Jan 1 absent getting an official Obamacare one.

Unfortunately there's now just one basic gold-plated plan, with 10 "essential" things added like coverage of your children through age 26. A lot of people will simply not be able to afford these new plans without subsidies, and you can't get those without people using Healthcare.gov. That includes state exchanges, they have to use the federal one for subsidy calculations, or "manual" (paper/phone mediated) ones, which also have to use components of the Federal system. (Don't ask how if you don't have a credit record, your lack of a FICO score appears to be a total nightmare, there's supposed to be a process to deal with this, but how to get it started is (generally?) not known/knowable).

These people need good guidance, which they're not getting from the powers that be, on how to deal with this critical problem before the effective deadline in less than 2 months (you've got to be signed up by Dec 15th? to be sure of getting coverage Jan 1). Predictions that by the end of the year more people will have lost their medical insurance than gain it because of Obamacare are credible.

Looking further, failure to fix the system so that the 7 million minimum needed for financial viability _can_ enroll will tell is if a adverse selection deadly cycle is happening. It's one thing to imagine that 3 million young and healthy will out of the goodness of their hearts by expensive insurance they don't need to subsidize those 50-64 (the fine/penalty is too small to force them), it's another to hope they can when the site they need to do this doesn't really work unless they put in a totally unreasonable amount of effort.

To finish by addressing your bulleted points, the 1st was covered above, the 2nd is ludicrous given the outside the system observables that it's failing hard, underlined by the Administration's total refusal to tell us how many have completed the process, the 3rd is covered above, and the 4th is not to the point. Outside of occasional and easily recoverable problems, news.ycombinator.com _works_. The "glitches" are truly glitches, not total failures of function. We get "can't complete you simple transaction" ones, not the sort being reliably reported for Healthcare.gov. I don't need to look at the code to know however it can be criticized, it gets the job done, which Healthcare.gov manifestly doesn't.

Or let me ask you this: you're not a newbie, you've been on this site for a couple of months longer than I, but how long have you been a programmer studying and doing "software engineering"? I have since 1977, and have been getting paid for it since 1980.

</comment><comment><USER3> _If you don 't have access to the full repository of source, then how can you call the project a failure?_

Because the people who wanted to use it, can't. Because it gives out the wrong quotes. Because whenever someone is able to get through and create an account, often their account details are wrong (their daughter is now their wife, etc). The whole idea that you've asked this question is mind boggling to me.

 _Random people on the Internet throwing out there suggestions can 't be healthy._

This is really just a rant, isn't it? Fine - rant on. But come on - to act as though people won't talk around the water cooler on Monday morning is just head-in-the-sand...

</comment><comment><USER4> if 90-97% people are unable to complete a signup process completely what do we call it?

it has been over 40 years since US reached moon, without modern computers and simulations

what you see is sheer incompetence and arrogance,

I dare the administration to release the numbers, they won't, but the president can talk about software glitches what apple iPhone had</comment>


Computer-based personality judgments are more accurate than those made by humans - <AUTHOR> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25583507 <comment><USER2> >This study compares the accuracy of human and computer-based personality judgments, using a sample of 86,220 volunteers who completed a 100-item personality questionnaire. We show that (i) computer predictions based on a generic digital footprint (Facebook Likes) are more accurate (r = 0.56) than those made by the participants' Facebook friends using a personality questionnaire (r = 0.49); (ii) computer models show higher interjudge agreement; and (iii) computer personality judgments have higher external validity when predicting life outcomes such as substance use, political attitudes, and physical health; for some outcomes, they even outperform the self-rated personality scores.

I have never heard of a personality judgement test for hiring, but I guess subconsciously we currently do so? Who knew?

Full text link : [http://www.pnas.org/content/112/4/1036.long](http://www.pnas.org/content/112/4/1036.long)</comment>


The timeless: 64K demo [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwFVlNytq0Q

<comment><USER2> This _intro_ is great, and the lighting is really, really nice.

But TBH I do not like accelerated intros/demos, because the most difficult part of the code, i.e. 3D graphics pipeline is implemented outside the demo, in a GPU driver. Many years ago, in a DOS, coders have to implement rasterization, clipping & lighting and fit everything in a 64kB. Watch for example Stash by TBL ([http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=3](http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=3)), Jizz by TBL ([http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=2](http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=2)), Photon by Purple ([http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=502](http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=502)).</comment>


Show HN: I built an extension to let my wife track discounts easily - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/wiringbits/cazadescuentos <comment><AUTHOR> Last year, my wife was complaining about missing discounts on items she she really liked, and planned to purchase when they were cheaper, just because she didn't checked the prices on the day the item prices dropped.

I liked the idea, and, with the help of a friend, we ended up building a browser extension. Turns out it's been more useful to me than to her.

I'm open sourcing the browser extension side, as I still don't know how the project will evolve, but in any case, browser extensions are too powerful to keep them closed source.

While this mostly works for Mexican stores, there are some US/worldwide ones, hopefully, it can be helpful to the community.

Thanks</comment>


A record 7M Americans are 3 months behind on their car payments - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/02/12/record-million-americans-are-months-behind-their-car-payments-red-flag-economy/ <comment><USER2> "Some cars are installed with devices that prevent the car from turning on if someone misses a payment and it has become easier to geo-locate a car to tow it away."

Well that's terrifying. Even more of a reason to buy used, older cars with less mileage.

<comment><USER3> You've never heard of the repo man? If you hold property that is collateral for a loan, you don't really own the property; the lienholder has extensive legal rights in the case of default.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just speculating... How many of these are ride-share drivers who purchased a new car for that purpose and can no longer meet payments once the driver market became saturated and fares dropped?

<comment><USER5> > How many of these are ride-share drivers who purchased a new car for that > purpos

Don't think it's that much. Ride-share companies ( Uber and Lyft) allow drivers to lease vehicles from them for as low as $170 / week, so unlikely that there are that many drivers have bought cars on loan for this purpose.

Source: My friend here in SF who leases from Lyft.

<comment><USER6> You do realize $170/week is $680/month, and for leasing that is extremely high.

I shudder to think what the high end is if you say "as low as"

<comment><USER7> It's high compared to a typical lease, but a typical lease also generally includes significant penalties if you go over 10,000 - 12,000 miles per year.

$680 isn't unreasonable considering the accelerated rate of depreciation and wear & tear that would come with the amount of miles a full time rideshare driver is going to accumulate. And will be mostly all tax deductible, due to the bulk of mileage being business travel.

<comment><USER6> I have never driven for lyft, so my follow on question would be assuming 20 hr/week and 40 hr/week, what is the average and std dev of the wages of a typical lyft driver?

I ask because though that is a good point, that is dangerously close to indebting a lyft driver to the company. Make them pay a huge cost for a car, and they have to drive more to make up for it.

To put it in a different context, my loan for a $20k car over years was $450/month.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm curious, how many of you out there Pay off your car loan and keep the car for many years, without buying a new one or upgrading?

<comment><USER9> Just go rid of my first car that lasted 20 years. Currently we have two cars which are 7 years old. Hope to keep them till they are 20 years old.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> From what I know about history, the middle class in America has been having problems with debt since at least the early 1800s.

</comment><comment><USER11> A related trend, is that the length of the car loans is also increasing. 84 month loans are not uncommon now.

</comment><comment><USER12> Couldn't get past the paywall even by clicking on web so I read the story here

[https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ny-news-auto- loans...](https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ny-news-auto-loans-behind- red-flag-20190212-story.html)

it says

>There was a marked difference in delinquency rates between bank vehicle loans and dealer-financed loans as well, the feds noted, with 6.5% of the dealer- originated loans being 90 or more days past due, compared with just 0.7% of such loans granted by credit unions, the Federal Reserve noted.

I'm not American so I'm not familiar with how you guys do things down there; but is it possible that this whole thing came about as a result of dealers handing out easy loans as a way to move inventory?

I mean the risk is relatively low for them right, they can always repossess the car and resell it themselves so it seems worthwhile for them to finance everyone even if they have no hope of keeping up with their payments. Heck even here in Canada one of the local dealers has a radio jingle that goes "no credit checks, no credit checks, we finance everyone." It seems foreseeable that practices like that, when done at scale could result in a large quantity of loans sitting in arrears

</comment><comment><USER13> Employment rate is such a perverse metric.

Our metric must take into account the quality of employment as well.

</comment><comment><USER14> If people just learned the basics of maintaining and repairing vehicles they'd save themselves thousands of dollars by buying auctioned off used cars and repairing it. Same thing for taking it for a shop for maintenance...

<comment><USER15> Some states require dealers licenses to participate in auctions. But if you know a guy with a license, you can score amazing deals (which are only amazing because of the limited pool of bidders).

I think _knowing_ how to fix cars is valuable, but I don't think doing maintenance yourself generally pays off. I'm pretty handy with a car, but the only maintenance I do myself are brakes and batteries. Tires require special tools, so those are out for the shade-tree, same with suspension (which requires alignments after installation). I've found that oil changes, air filters, wiper blades can be done at the dealer for about the cost of parts (at least for my Ford and Toyota).

Now, as far as fixing repairs. Most mechanics, especially at dealerships, will toss parts at the problem. So knowing how to research the problem can help save you a boat load of money, even if you do none of the physical work yourself, since you can come in and ask for them to perform some specific fix. Additionally, lots of sensors are easy fixes if you can follow direction on YouTube/forums.

<comment><USER16> Suspension maintenance is not out of the question for the home mechanic. You can align the suspension to an accuracy that's safe to drive for short distances at low (not highway) speed. All you need is a level, a tap measure, and a little bit of high school math. I have saved quite a bit of money doing this.

Edit: Of course, you'll want to drive it to an alignment shop right away.

<comment><USER17> I routinely win bets with alignment guys doing string and plumbob alignments on level concrete. Its not hard, as much as it is laborous.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Sensation of playing at 60 FPS, despite in reality running at 30 frames - <AUTHOR> http://www.polygon.com/2012/11/5/3602598/dmc-devil-may-cry-uses-techniques-learned-from-dragons-dogma-to <comment><USER2> Kind of a pointless article. They came up with a technique to create the sensation of playing at 60 FPS, despite in reality running at 30 frames. They then explain absolutely nothing about how they achieved that. I got as much from the article as I did the headline on HN.

<comment><USER3> Yeah it's a real puff-piece, more a thinly-disguised advertisement than it is an article...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is very clever brain hack, and very interesting to hear.</comment>


Monit's DMCA takedown notice for Inspeqtor - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2014-10-05-tildeslash.md

<comment><USER2> There are some very dubious claims in their DMCA takedown notice:

> The work, Inspeqtor which is hosted at GitHub, is far from a "clean-room" > implementation. This is basically a rewrite of Monit in Go, even using the > same configuration language that is used in Monit, verbatim.

There is no concept of "clean room" in copyright law, the only issue is whether or not substantial copying has occurred. While it may be easier for the author to avoid accidental copying if he has never looked at the Monit source code, having seen it, being inspired by its design, or deliberately building a compatible system do not constitute copying. The notion that it must be copying simply because it uses the same configuration language is without merit, due to the fact that the configuration language itself is not a creative work and is not eligible for copyright protection, in the same way that an API or a programming language is not eligible for such protection: it is a medium for expression, not an expression in itself - otherwise all programs written in a given programming language would be a derivative work!

I suspect that it is this misunderstanding that has led the authors of Monit to file this DMCA takedown, and that they have acted in good faith, but with an insufficient understanding of the limits of what copyright protects.

> a. [private] himself admits that Inspeqtor is "heavily influenced" by Monit

Being heavily influenced is not the same as copying. OpenOffice Writer is heavily influenced by Microsoft Word, and can even open the same file format, but it does not copy any of Microsoft's source code.

> b. This tweet by [private] demonstrate intent. "OSS nerds: redesign and > build monit in Go. Sell it commercially. Make $$$$. I will be your first > customer."

The quote was "redesign and build Monit in Go" which does not show intent to engage in substantial copying of Monit's source code. If anything, it suggests an intent to write a new, redesigned system with its own source code but compatibility with monit.

Without looking at the source code, it's hard to say more, if the author simply ported the source code of Monit to Go then it would certainly be a derived work, but the DMCA claim doesn't mention any such copying. It's important to remember that _compatibility is not copying_ and that only the source code to a computer program is covered by copyright - its architecture, design, and even APIs (see Oracle vs Google) are not protected by copyright, because otherwise the copyright claim would effectively behave like a patent, preventing anybody else from creating something conceptually similar.

<comment><USER3> _There is no concept of "clean room" in copyright law_

Sure there is. "Clean room" just means you have good legal evidence that you created an original work not a derivative one. It is a bit like having an alibi during a murder trial. There is no law that says you must have an alibi to not be convicted of murder, just like there is no law requiring clean room to dodge the copyright bullet, but having one is strong evidence that you are not guilty.

 _even APIs (see Oracle vs Google) are not protected by copyright_

You need to check the news more. The Federal Circuit Court ruled APIs are copyright able, and handed it back to the lower court to rule on fair use. [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/05/dangerous-ruling- oracl...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/05/dangerous-ruling-oracle-v- google-federal-circuit-reverses-sensible-lower-court)

<comment><USER2> What I mean is that there is no written law containing the words "clean room", and no requirement that an author has not seen similar works. While "clean room" might be a good defence, there aren't automatically grounds for making an infringement claim just because somebody hasn't followed such a hyper- cautious practice.

Oracle vs Google is complex and I reluctantly chose to gloss over the details. The case still has some appeals to go yet, posssiby to the supreme court. While the difference between APIs being copyrightable vs fair use is important, the practical impact should be negligible: if an API as large as the JDK can be copied without permission, then any API can.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It looks like Mike Perham wants to bring the repo back up, but due to the DMCA request. It'll be at least 10 days [0]. He also says that he never looked at the code for Monit [1].

He has also filed a counterclaim with GitHub [2]

[0] [https://twitter.com/mperham/status/519164948887257090](https://twitter.com/mperham/status/519164948887257090)

[1] [https://twitter.com/mperham/status/519165523473358848](https://twitter.com/mperham/status/519165523473358848)

[2] [https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2014-10-06-tildes...](https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2014-10-06-tildeslash- counternotice.md)

</comment><comment><USER5> Monit is wining this discussion because their DMCA notice has caused the code not be visible, since anyone with both codebases could easily look at them and see that Inspeqtor is not a translation of the Monit code in any shape or form.

Because of this, I have put the code back up, please consult [https://github.com/evanphx/inspeqtor](https://github.com/evanphx/inspeqtor) vs [http://mmonit.com/monit/dist/monit-5.9.tar.gz](http://mmonit.com/monit/dist/monit-5.9.tar.gz)

<comment><USER6> The title on your repro currently says "DCMA comparison".

<comment><USER5> Thanks, fixed!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I may be wrong since IMNAL, but something is strange about this:

1) inspeqtor is written in Go and shares no code with Monit anyway.

2) The takedown claims violation of license. Licenses only apply to code, so patents and similar are out of this game.

1+2 don't stay together. How is a code license violated if the code is totally different between the two projects? I believe this is something that can be easily fixed with a good lawyer.

<comment><USER8> If you rewrite Harry Potter in a different script, language, or some plot twists, it's still "derived work".

<comment><USER9> Just a note for others: antires is talking about 'License', and tomp is talking about 'Copyright'.

<comment><USER3> I am not sure I get your meaning. A license is how you access a copyrighted work. Therefore they are speaking about the same set of laws.

Antirez is taking a very narrow copying must include a figurative Ctrl-c Ctrl-v. Where as tomp is taking the wider and I think more legally supported(at least as far as art goes) stance that a work can be 100% your own effort but still be a derivative work if it was inspired by an existing work.(i.e. taking a photo of a sculpture is a derivative work )

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Well, I certainly will not be using Monit ever again should this be accurate. There is no illegal activity from what I can tell, so it's entirely baseless. Are they unclear about what copyright means? Did they hire a lawyer? Does not inspire a lot of confidence.

edit: I've reached out to Monit for an explanation, and will amend if they reply.

<comment><USER11> _Are they unclear about what copyright means?_

Something I've learned over the years is that, when it comes to legal issues, things are rarely black and white. In this case, whether or not Inspeqtr should be required to adhere to the AGPL probably comes down to whether or not it is legally a "derived work". And I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that there isn't a large body of case law covering the situation where a product is completely re-implemented in a different language. But it certainly seems within reason to say that a court could find that this is a derived work, and therefore in violation unless the AGPL license is used.

Now, whether or not this sort of thing is covered by the spirit of the GPL/AGPL is another question. But it probably is, if you consider the stance of Stallman and the FSF vis-a-vis Free Software. Remember, they basically consider all proprietary software to be a sort of immoral, unethical affront to humanity.

<comment><USER10> Fair enough point, though I don't feel this is a gray area. The chilling effect alone, being that I could be sued for simply looking at open source code is disturbing. Because that's what it boils down to. Most of our software today is a derivative work of something. I looked at rails code, so does that mean I can never write a web framework lest I be sued?

<comment><USER12> > " _I looked at rails code, so does that mean I can never write a web > framework lest I be sued?_ "

No. At most it means you _might_ have to adhere to the license Rails uses, if your work is sufficiently related to be a derived work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm a developer who does just enough server management to keep my systems running, and Monit is an invaluable part of the toolkit.

However, the one thing I don't like about Monit is the pseudo natural language syntax that inspeqtor surprisingly borrowed, based on which Monit raises the DMCA claim. I wonder what the general feeling about this is in the sysadmin community, and whether people would prefer a different syntax instead.

<comment><USER14> Skill-wise I'm similar to you and feel the same way. I too would be interested to hear from full-time sysadmins.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This will be sorted out quickly I guess: Monit's DMCA notice claims this is a rewrite of Monit. This tweet[0] claims the opposite. (I take "rewrite" as a manual translation to Go as they also say it's not a clean-room implementation).

It remains to see if the part where they note the similarity with the configuration syntax can actually be covered with the AGPL.

[0] [https://twitter.com/mperham/status/519165523473358848](https://twitter.com/mperham/status/519165523473358848)

</comment><comment><USER16> The timing of this seems odd to me. Why now, of all times? Is Inspeqtor getting too big or stealing too many Monit customers?

It's also a little strange that the tweet Monit references as being demonstrative of intent happened six months ago [0]. If that was really the issue, shouldn't they have issued the DMCA takedown then, instead of waiting so long?

I think we have about 24 hours before the DMCA's version of the Streisand effect kicks in.

[0]: [https://twitter.com/mperham/status/452160352940064768](https://twitter.com/mperham/status/452160352940064768)

<comment><USER17> They saw it on HackerNews about a week ago, and it took this long for their lawyers to research, make a case, and do the paperwork.

Even if you become aware of something today, you can always use historical tweets as evidence.

<comment><USER16> Ah, I didn't realize it'd recently surfaced on HN. That makes sense, then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Inspeqtor which is hosted at GitHub, is far from a "clean-room" implementation. This is basically a rewrite of Monit in Go"

I don't understand this. How is a re-write a license violation?

<comment><USER19> Regardless of what current licenses dictate, _should_ someone be able to port someone else's code to make a profit? Seems pretty shady to rewrite someone's code just to get around a license. Maybe this is where patents come into play.

<comment><USER20> > Maybe this is where patents come into play.

No, it's a copyright issue. Patents have nothing to do with it.

<comment><USER17> Unless any method or procedure (parsing of natural language configuration files or something) is patented.

<comment><USER12> Even if that were the case, it's still beyond the scope of the allegations that can be made in a DMCA takedown notice. If they were asserting any patent rights, that would have to be through a regular cease & desist letter. It is possible though unlikely that patents could come into play here, but they clearly haven't yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> At first glance, the tweet [0] was sent a while ago, expressing _desire_ for a port, with the idea of $$$$ as an incentive/joke. It appears that the author later decided to implement it themself. I hardly think that makes his intent to commercialize it clear.

[0] [https://twitter.com/mperham/status/452160352940064768](https://twitter.com/mperham/status/452160352940064768)

<comment><USER17> He was already trying to sell it, starting at $25/mo.

[http://contribsys.com/inspeqtor/](http://contribsys.com/inspeqtor/)

<comment><USER22> Didn't the tweet predate the selling by a good few months?

<comment><USER23> I'm pretty sure Inspeqtor was only released last week. Mike basically saw a pain point he was having 6 months ago, then quit his job to solve that pain point. Monit's position makes no sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It seems Monit has issued a retraction [1]

[1]: [https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2014-10-06-tildes...](https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2014-10-06-tildeslash- retraction.md)

</comment><comment><USER25> ChillingEffects.org revamped their website a few days ago.

Submit your DMCA takedown notice!

</comment><comment><USER26> There are too many similarities between the code that suggest the source for Monit was indeed looked at, contrary to what Mike has stated on Twitter.

For instance some of the file names are the same, ie, Inspector's events.go and Monit's Event.c

Further, the code is very similar in places. Mind you it's not a direct copy, but this can't be coincidence.

Monit: [https://bitbucket.org/tildeslash/monit/src/1686ffd4baa16b16d...](https://bitbucket.org/tildeslash/monit/src/1686ffd4baa16b16d1eeae137e436d68e97e06e9/src/event.c?at=master#cl-88)

Inspeqtor: [https://github.com/evanphx/inspeqtor/blob/master/events.go#L...](https://github.com/evanphx/inspeqtor/blob/master/events.go#L19)

<comment><USER27> This is silly.

        {Event_Nonexist,   "Does not exist",          "Exists",                     "Existence changed",        "Existence not changed"},

        ProcessDoesNotExist EventType = "ProcessDoesNotExist"

These are not particularly similar, except that they express some of the same concepts, which are _the concepts of the domain_. A user of monit would be aware of these concepts.</comment></comment>


Announcing Rust 1.15 - <AUTHOR> https://blog.rust-lang.org/2017/02/02/Rust-1.15.html <comment><USER2> WHOA!

MSP430 support is HUGE. In case you don't know, that's a well-known _very_ low-power microcontroller.

edit: this might be the only current platform that's <32 bits. I know there was some work on supporting the 8-bit AVR architecture, but MSP430 gets rust a lot closer to super-low-power applications.

<comment><USER3> There is work underway to create an LLVM backend for the Tensilica Xtensa, so Rust on the ESP32 / ESP8266 might soon be a reality!

<comment><USER4> Probably not "soon", AVR took a really long time to get merged into LLVM, and that's a pre-requisite for Rust support.

<comment><AUTHOR> I can't comment on timelines but I know someone has been working on AVR support for Rust.

<comment><USER4> Oh yeah the micro folks are definitely working on it, I meant that if work is just starting on the LLVM Xtensa backend, the Rust merge is nowhere near, and as example submitted that the AVR backend had taken a long time to be merged into LLVM and still needs to be finished & merged for Rust.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is pretty major. In anticipation of this release, I was able to remove all nightly feature flags from a smallish web backend which makes heavy use of type-driven codegen (serde and diesel). Really, truly, utterly fantastic to have stability promises for custom_derive. So excited!

!!!!!!

So excited!

<comment><USER6> Just a small question, how did you find coding in rust for your web backend, did you encounter any major issues?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been doing a lot of web development in Rust over the past few weeks. Same as the parent poster; I was using beta so that I could have serde/diesel :)

I chose to go with straight-up tokio/hyper, rather than use existing frameworks. All of the current frameworks haven't integrated it yet, because it's only available on hyper master. (They're working on getting docs and such going before releasing the next version.) Here's my Cargo.toml: [https://github.com/rust-lang- nursery/thanks/blob/master/Carg...](https://github.com/rust-lang- nursery/thanks/blob/master/Cargo.toml)

Overall, I feel that it's pretty great. It is still extremely new, though, so you have to be a bit comfortable with working on the bleeding edge. Also, because there's no big framework yet, it has a more... node-ish feel, in that you're doing a lot yourself and hooking up libraries, rather than using the conveniences of something like Rails. But that's not too bad; I wrote a little routing framework that also serves static content, it's about 150 lines. Another 12 or so to wrap up handlebars into something a bit nicer to use. And it uses so, so much less memory than my Rails apps do, and a six megabyte statically linked binary is a dream for deployment.

I was originally quite skeptical of all of this, but as the docs and libraries mature, I think it'll be pretty great. It won't be as easy as something like Rails, but it's much nicer than I originally assumed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Congratulations! This seems an extremely important release, maybe even the most important since 1.0. Why? The lack of the trait deriving functionality on the stable release has kept libraries that are actually quite central to the ecosystem, such as Serde and Diesel, using the nightly compiler – until now.

The stabilisation of the trait deriving functionality is a small step for the compiler but a giant leap for the Rust ecosystem!

</comment><comment><USER8> This is probably the most exciting release yet. Congratulations to the Rust team! I'm continually impressed by the inertia this project has.

I can not wait to see what everyone will build with custom derive now.

<comment><USER9> Pretty sure you meant momentum, instead of inertia. Inertia is tied to mass and not remaining static, not speed ;)

<comment><USER10> Former physics person here. Inertia as a technical term is literally the mass or momentum. As a colloquial term I've also heard it used for both and in general to mean "inability to be slowed down", but it gets used more often to mean "inability to speed up". So it's ambiguous, but correct.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, but colloquially inertia "a tendency to do nothing or to remain unchanged."

<comment><USER11> This is true, but, in a physics context, an object that has velocity keeps that velocity when it remains unchanged (ie, like the GP said, it's literally momentum).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've been hapilly awaiting this release. I have been heavily updating my rust first Rust library so it makes use of the new derive API, so that it could be used by stable Rust.

It adds derives for common traits such as Add and From: [https://github.com/JelteF/derive_more](https://github.com/JelteF/derive_more). Any remarks/tips are very much appreciated.

<comment><USER13> You've got a very obvious typo in your example code, plus a couple of missing semicolons.

<comment><USER12> Fixed, that's what happens when you just want to be done with writing docs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Woo, std::char::encode_utf8 is now stable, I can finally get rid of the nightly requirement for [https://github.com/kballard/rust- lua](https://github.com/kballard/rust-lua)!

</comment><comment><USER14> Great to see the progress here. The one I'm really looking forward to is 'impl trait'.[0]

My understanding is this will allow returning trait implementations (such as Iterator) without resorting either to dynamic dispatch or leaking the concrete type.

[0] [https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/34511](https://github.com/rust- lang/rust/issues/34511)

<comment><USER15> I thought this was already supported for free standing functions? Or is that only in nightly

<comment><AUTHOR> Only in nightly.

Can't say when it will hit stable, but "sooner rather than later" is a phrase I've heard.

<comment><USER15> thanks steve!

<comment><USER16> Rather keen on getting impl Trait myself. I won't have to return so many Vecs!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> On [https://thanks.rust-lang.org/rust/all-time](https://thanks.rust- lang.org/rust/all-time)

        Rank  Name  Commits
        1     bors  10401

That bors guy is such a monster! ;)

<comment><USER18> If you want details: [http://ruststat.youknowone.org/](http://ruststat.youknowone.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> > Rust 1.15 sees an extremely eagerly-awaited feature land on stable

Hoped to read incremental recompilation there, what a tease ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Soon! Remember, you can already try it out on the nightly compiler. Filing any bugs that come up can help us ensure that it works well enough to stabilize.

<comment><USER20> Binary crates support across projects would also be nice. :)

Anyway congratulations on the work!

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you mean by "across projects"?

(and thanks!)

<comment><USER21> I think they mean a nix-like binary cache for packages that get build multiple times (for different projects).

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah; if that's true, it's being worked on.

<comment><USER20> Yep that is it.

Currently I tried to make use of the shared target directory configuration to see if it would help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Awesome! I have been stuck on nightly for so many different things because of my dependency on serde. It's very nice to have this on stable now.

</comment><comment><USER22> Stabilizing custom derive is a massive usability improvement given the large number of ever growing libraries taking advantage of it. This is probably the most exciting release to me besides the 1.0 and MIR integration releases.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is amazing. Is Rust the best developer team out there? They move quickly and release features with a cadence I have not seen in other languages. I would love to hear more about other languages release this way.

<comment><USER24> Go has releases every 6 months.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Not a Rust expert by any means, this one piece of code from the example stuck out to me: `String::from("Ferris")`. What is the difference between that and `"Ferris"` on its own?

<comment><USER26> It's like in C. "Ferris" is a pointer (and length, in Rust) into the binary's static storage segment.

String::from("Ferris") creates a pointer to a string on the heap with the contents "Ferris".

The difference is that in C this distinction is implicit, so you can accidentally try to modify the string in static storage, which is undefined behaviour, whereas Rust treats these distinct things as distinct types.

<comment><USER27> This makes C's approach sound worse than it really is: in practice you'll either get a compiler warning or a segfault, not the potential nose-demons typically associated with undefined behavior. C also gives you a type-level way to track static strings (the const qualifier) though it isn't as strictly enforced.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is the real Rust 1.0 for me. So excited!! For anyone that has been hesitating to try Rust, I wholeheartedly recommend that you dive in now.

</comment><comment><USER29> Looking forward to trying this out on my Rust learning project[1]. It should be nicer to use serde without the extra code generation step.

1\. [https://github.com/rjosephwright/saytshen](https://github.com/rjosephwright/saytshen)

</comment><comment><USER30> Installing out of distro Rust on Linux in custom location became rather difficult, and it's not a well documented process. Previous installer was much neater, since it was installing Rust globally.

</comment><comment><USER31> So these procedural macros, would it be fair to characterise them as compile time reflection? It seems like these get used in the same way reflection does in other languages.

<comment><AUTHOR> In some sense, yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Yay, custom derive is stable.

</comment><comment><USER33> Nice, I like the look of custom derive.

I've been using x.py/rustbuild since just after it was committed and it's been a pretty good experience so far.

</comment><comment><USER34> Great to see custom derive landing in stable. Big thanks to Mozilla and everyone else working on improving Rust!

</comment><comment><USER35> So it seems cross-compiling is supported now?

<comment><AUTHOR> It has been for a very long time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> :

<comment><AUTHOR> Have you filed a bug?</comment></comment>


An interview with Ed Fraenkel, mathematician and math popularizer - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMwLCSgvxtw <comment><AUTHOR> This is one of the best interviews I have ever seen. The interviewer is really good and some of the stories are amazing.</comment>


And which blockchain experts do you follow? - <AUTHOR> https://howtotoken.com/blockchain-experts/ <comment><USER2> I follow these people - though I suspect many wouldn't claim to be Blockchain experts. Such a tall order that word.

The one I have been following longest is Juan Llanos.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Juan Llanos in a list :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Andreas M. Antonopoulos @aantonop</comment>


Alexis Ohanian on Colbert Report [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/430524/november-14-2013/alexis-ohanian <comment><USER2> Canadian mirror: [http://www.thecomedynetwork.ca/Shows/TheColbertReport?videoP...](http://www.thecomedynetwork.ca/Shows/TheColbertReport?videoPackage=141176) \- forward to part 3

<comment><USER3> Thanks! Glad one even exists lol. Last I checked, Comedy Network hadn't even uploaded any South Park.

Man... geo restrictions... man oh man :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's something weirdly effective about reducto ad absurdum arguments meant to prove the opposite.

In the beginning, Colbert was saying "but don't we need gatekeepers to tell us what's right?", which is obviously a bad argument. Him making the bad argument did a better job of illustrating the good arguments point, than the good argument itself.

<comment><USER5> As a guest I can tell you it's a giant mindjob to be interviewed like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I watched the latest episode of Small Empires yesterday about Kitchensurfing and was very impressed. I definitely recommend the show if you are interested in startups and Alexis Ohanian [http://www.theverge.com/video/small- empires](http://www.theverge.com/video/small-empires)

<comment><USER5> Thank you! Very proud of that series. You know, I foolishly tried pitching it for a couple years to traditional publishers, getting told "we love you, this idea, but we just need to change a few things..."

Inevitably I'd pass and then finally came to my senses and approached The Verge after appearing on [On The Verge.]([http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/25/3114567/on-the- verge-007-l...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/25/3114567/on-the- verge-007-levar-burton-alexis-ohanian-tim-wu)) Their setup was so impressive that I realized I needed to work with them.

The rest is history! We're already figuring out Season 2 and some other fun things... as I've traveled across the country on the Without Their Permission book tour, loads of people have asked for Small Empires: Their City (we're NYC for season 1). I've got a plan for scaling the project. Stay tuned and thank you so much for all the support.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What's the point of an interview like this honestly? It was just filler.

<comment><USER8> Honestly I thought that was a better-than-average Colbert interview. Sometimes his gags and non sequiturs completely derail the topic but this one stayed pretty focused and Alexis did a good job of getting his message across.

<comment><USER5> 'twas straight nerve-wracking!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This was way less interesting than I had hoped for. Although I do love the giant up vote cut out.

<comment><USER5> You should've seen what we did off-camera with those upvotes and John Lithgow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I saw Alexis talk at a Google authors talk recently. He is a great speaker and his book is a good read.

<comment><USER5> Why thank you! That was a fun Q&A. Here's that video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsdYblcTHCk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsdYblcTHCk)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I met him pretty recently at Compute Midwest, super nice guy. He gave a passionate talk about the same things. The book is a quick and very interesting read, as a budding entrepreneur (haha ;)) I found it pretty inspiring.

<comment><USER5> Thanks, wf! I didn't want to waste anyone's time with the book and I write like I speak -- that is, conversationally -- so you can get the info you need and get back to changing the world!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> For viewers outside the US using Chrome, Media Hint ([https://mediahint.com/install_chrome.html](https://mediahint.com/install_chrome.html)).

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm curious regarding his advice to potential founders that was mentioned in the interview. Is this available online in a concise format?

<comment><USER5> I'm sure someone has written a TL;DR for the book...

I also believe quite a few of the college stops have been recorded, but here's the entire tour schedule (the events are nearly all open to the public) [http://withouttheirpermission.com/tour- dates](http://withouttheirpermission.com/tour-dates)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> been waiting to read his book, but unfortunately its not available in australia yet (kindle format)

<comment><USER5> Yeah, that's annoying. Sorry, I'm sure you can find it somewhere....

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wait, who? [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001864/](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001864/)

<comment><USER16> Alexis ([http://about.me/alexis](http://about.me/alexis)) is more Josh Radnor ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Radnor](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Radnor)) if anything.

<comment><USER5> Yeah. I even had an exchange on twitter w Radnor and he confirmed it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The Kim Kardashian of Silicon Valley.

People whose job is to be seen more than to, you know, build something.

<comment><USER18> Reddit just seems like one of those projects that got really lucky. Digg was making its users upset, slashdot was too nerdy, and metafilter too hard to get into due to $5 cost. Early reddit was kind of a mess too. Congrats on his success, but its always odd to hear people give advice or talk about their projects when there's a large element of luck involved.

To be fair, this may be true of all successful projects.

<comment><USER9> I don't think reddit got lucky because even after becoming mega successful, it's still almost impossible to spam the site. And their "hot" algorithm is an amazing way to always provide fresh content (unless you spend hours on the site). Their luck did come though, from Digg's failure. I forget the number, but they almost doubled their page views the week after Digg's infamous update.

<comment><USER19> Reddit was popular but still very niche pre-Digg 4. Not unlike Slashdot. Digg's collapse rapidly transformed Reddit into something completely different, exemplified now by the celebrity AMAs and godawful crap on the front page.

Reddit did get a number of things right, but it still won't last. They may look back at killing /r/reddit.com as a huge mistake; once upon a time, people did really talk about Reddit as one big community, and there was some sense of that. That's not the case anymore.

<comment><USER5> The reason digg died and we've thrived is because a month in, we realized being a platform for people to create their own subreddits (and thus many community forums) was the only way we'd scale. At some point if there were only one front page, we'd hit a ceiling, whereas as a platform, we can scale forever.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Would you trust a doctor in a T-shirt? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23376869

<comment><USER2> Lawyers, bankers, and politicians wear suits. They're certainly trustworthy people.

<comment><USER3> How is a lawyer not trust worthy? I have never seen a case where a lawyer screws over a client. Never understood this business of saying lawyers cannot be trusted.

If one means that a lawyer acting against one on behalf of another party cannot be trusted, well, of course. Such a lawyer is not acting for one. In that instance, one would instruct one's own lawyer, and that lawyer would be 100% trust-able.

<comment><USER4> In my limited dealings with lawyers I have seen several instances where the lawyer appeared to be recommending a course of action that seemed geared towards extending their billings rather than serving their client's interests with a speedy resolution. This seems to be a common practice with a small but significant minority of lawyers.

<comment><USER3> No builders, doctors, dentists, or car mechanics then? Your point is a criticism that can apply to any profession. No reason to target lawyers.

<comment><USER4> I don't think anyone was suggesting that there are no crooks in other professions. I was responding to YOUR comment that you couldn't imagine a crooked lawyer. As to why lawyers are singled out it may be partly due to their unique position in society that allows them to harass and bully. For example [http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/crime/lawyer- threaten...](http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/crime/lawyer-threatens- suit-over-coat) or the recent case of Oatmeal vs dickhead lawyer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In some hospitals, not wearing a coat is a status symbol indicating seniority. In these places, you SHOULD trust the doctor in the T-shirt (or the button down, or the dress) more than you trust those with the coat

<comment><USER6> In a similar vein, here in the UK, surgeons return to being called mister once they're fully qualified.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd rather have my doctor wear a tshirt than wear a tie: ties are known to spread infection. [http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=99526&page=1](http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=99526&page=1)

I suspect the same could be true with long sleeves.

<comment><USER8> Noses and hands also spread infections, I don't want my doctor to have them either.

<comment><USER7> Poor hand hygiene is a huge cause of preventable, hospital-acquired infection. See [http://www.who.int/gpsc/5may/tools/who_guidelines- handhygien...](http://www.who.int/gpsc/5may/tools/who_guidelines- handhygiene_summary.pdf) (pdf).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In a similar vein: would you trust a programmer in a suit?

<comment><USER10> Why not, sometimes even programmers want to dress in style.

<comment><USER11> Suit != style.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This seems to be a case of "how you dress defines your competencies in your profession", which for some professions it surely would have some bearing[1], but in general, how you are dressed should not really make any difference to the job you perform.

This is, as others here have pointed out, more generally a question of conformity (with some arbitrarily expected "norm").

[1] An example off the top of my head: I'd question the competence of a fire- fighter turning up to fight a fire in jeans and a t-shirt instead of proper protective attire.

<comment><USER13> >I'd question the competence of a fire-fighter turning up to fight a fire in jeans and a t-shirt instead of proper protective attire.

As you should, a fire-fighter's protective bunker gear is _necessary_ to perform their job function.

A coat or tie OTOH does nothing to improve the doctor's ability to perform his/her job function. Deference to such traditional costumes might even lend credibility where none is deserved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> My doctor wears T-shirt and a coat, does that count? I don't think it's important what they wear as long as it's clean and the person looks confident and capable.

</comment><comment><USER8> Sorry, I might not be old, but I do like my professionals to be professionally dressed, I consider professional to involve being smart and smart generally involves wearing a shirt. You might think I am wrong, but in equal measure I too think you are wrong.

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't care what they wear, so long as I can afford to see one. :(

/American citizen

</comment><comment><USER16> Would you marry someone in a T-shirt? Would you go to a funeral wearing a T-shirt? I don't have a good answer to any of these questions :)

</comment><comment><USER17> Absolutely!</comment>