Mozilla VPN exits beta, launches on Android and Windows for $5 a month - <AUTHOR> https://venturebeat.com/2020/07/15/mozilla-vpn-exits-beta-launches-on-android-and-windows-for-5-a-month/ <comment><USER2> Previous threads on this:

1 month ago [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23565192](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23565192)

10 months ago [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20927832](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20927832)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is just rebranded consumer VPN service? So Mozilla is outsourcing their brand. Seems very risky for them. I don't know why anyone would trust a consumer VPN service. CIA or another country's spy agency could easily be behind any of them. Just like Crypto AG. Being based in Sweden is no guarantee at all. Encrypted email services are another obvious thing for spy agencies to run.

The only useful purpose of a consumer VPN is torrenting and bypass geographic blocking. Privacy can be either increased or decreased with a consumer VPN service.

<comment><USER4> I don't get it. Who are they outsourcing it to?

<comment><USER5> They're using Mullvad's network. Basically reselling it. But it seems to be around 70 cents (US dollar) cheaper since Mullvad charges in Euros and Mozilla uses US dollar.

I've been using Mullvad for several years now and they've been reliable. They have independent security audits done and are known for their privacy.

<comment><USER6> So, they're just doing it for commercial reasons? Does Mozilla add anything to it than its name?

<comment><USER5> As far as I can see, the only thing they've "added" was their own client applications. The connection limits and server locations are the same as Mullvad.

One thing that Mozilla does not offer yet, but Mullvad does, are Wireguard proxies. These are socks5 proxies run internally on every Wireguard server. Using these you can connect to another server, for example EU --> US, and achieve "multihopping".

Mozilla also seems to only offer the Wireguard protocol, but this doesn't seem like a big deal to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a great project for users from a privacy-first company. I hope it's good for users, and that Mozilla gets significant support from this project.

<comment><USER6> Just wondering but what are some of the reasons that you believe Mozilla is a privacy first company?

I just don't to blindly believe into that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I thought in the past Mozilla had partnered with ProtonVPN[1]. I wonder why they are now working with Mullvad?

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18277278](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18277278)

<comment><USER9> ProtonVPN charges €6.63 to €10/month (depending on duration of plan) for 5 devices, while Mullvad only charges €5/month. Mozilla might have negotiated a better contract with Mullvad.

[https://protonvpn.com/pricing](https://protonvpn.com/pricing)

[https://mullvad.net](https://mullvad.net)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Direct link to the Mozilla VPN homepage:

[https://vpn.mozilla.org](https://vpn.mozilla.org)

This is an offering by Mullvad, and uses Wireguard.

As of this moment, the homepage says:

> We currently offer Mozilla VPN in the US, the UK, Canada, New Zealand, > Singapore and Malaysia.

</comment><comment><USER11> In the meantime, send.firefox.com has been unavailable for at least a week now (probably longer, but for sure not in the past 7 days).

Wonder if this is a resource issue or they are planning on launching it as well.

<comment><USER12> FF Send was suspended indefinitely because it was being exploited to distribute malware. I used it constantly (not for malware!) so I hope it comes back.

<comment><USER11> Crap - wasn't aware of that.

Maybe it can come back as a paid service like the VPN. I'd pay $5/month for it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's really cool but why does it have to be so expensive. I get that nowdays "whatever you want costs 5 dollars a month" but realistically things which should be way cheaper are now 5 dollars a month. I'm in my 2nd Nordvpn 3 year sub which also increased in price to 3€ per month. I mean if you want 100 things which require 100 subscriptions you end up at at least 500€ a month. And now there are 5 video streaming platforms which cost even more and you realistically want all of them. The whole sub life thing might be getting out of hand

<comment><USER14> Because Mozilla is an organization worth supporting: [https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto](https://www.mozilla.org/en- US/about/manifesto)

As one example: Without Firefox, there would effectively be a single browser renderer in the market: Chrome

<comment><USER15> This is untrue (for multiple reasons), but WebKit and Safari are a thing and arguably doing a better job at walking the walk wrt Mozilla's ideals than the Firefox team. From [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23714401](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23714401):

> it doesn't help the "toppling" effort when you lump WebKit in with [Blink]. > WebKit is an effective check against Google's power, but not if folks > continue imagining that two distinct projects that diverged years ago are > one and the same.

(This comment written in Firefox, by the way.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> They also have firefox extension, already used it for several months and its pretty solid, very quick and easy to use!

</comment><comment><USER17> Mullvad is great, but what does Mozilla add?

</comment><comment><USER18> Very excited to pay for this on Linux

</comment><comment><USER19> Mozilla consistently putting Linux last yet claims to pride itself on open source

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm a Linux user myself, but if I were building a product for commercial purposes, I'd prioritize building it for the platforms where the majority of the users are. Unfortunately, that majority isn't on Linux.

"Mac & Linux coming soon" is good enough for me for now.

<comment><USER20> I understand not prioritizing Linux for commercial purposes but Mac? General assumptions about people with Macs: 1. have disposable income 2. more likely to care about privacy.

<comment><USER21> 1) Market share for Mac is probably on a similar scale to that on Linux. In this case being low single digits. Of those users, a significant market share are likely not to be using Mozilla's products over Safari. Unlike Linux platforms where Mozilla products are the typical default.

2) Anyone on any of these platforms can likely afford 5 dollars a month. I don't even think platform plays a variable in this at all. It isn't like the unique iOS apps which bring value/features and are the only mechanism for attaining those given features.

In this case, there is plenty of competition already in play, and users can already pick a VPN provider if they want. Same can't be said for say a video editing app that is the only thing available on the iOS store.

3) Mac users care about privacy less than Linux users. A few weeks ago it was found that Catalina was sending a hash of every single program you run to Apple.

[https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/catalina- executables.htm...](https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/catalina- executables.html)

Yep, Apple likely knows everything you could potentially be doing on your Mac. Not very private I would say.

I don't really agree with any of your assumptions in this case.

<comment><USER20> My message was ambiguous, I meant more likely to care about privacy than Windows and Android users not Linux users. 1 and 2 of what you said are good points tho.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is the VPN to recommend to friends and family.

<comment><USER23> Why would you recommend they use a VPN at all? Is this for the USA or elsewhere?

<comment><USER6> So that ISP doesn't log the sites they visit under their real names?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> does it work in China?</comment>


US justice department charges Chinese with hacking  - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-27475324

<comment><AUTHOR> This is directed at members of China's military for proven hacking attempts for industry secrets. It will be really interesting to see how the USA reacts as I doubt China will hand over their army officers for prosecution in the US.</comment>


Ask HN: Does anyone find jobs on job websites? - <AUTHOR>

Do people actually get jobs for sites like Monster or Workoplis? <comment><USER2> I have "found" jobs on web sites, but all the jobs I have ever been offered were as a result of me being contacted directly, mostly because an "agent" has found my CV on a recruitment web site.

</comment><comment><USER3> yes</comment>


Show HN: Free GDPR / PCI DSS Compliance Test - <AUTHOR> https://www.immuniweb.com/websec/ <comment><USER2> What does it look for?

If it rises an alarm seeing any 3rd party domain that would be trivial and not enough.

It would than have to dig for a data processing agreement in the terms+conditions. This can only happen once domain and company name have been correlated.

What else could it check?

<comment><AUTHOR> It gives a good CMS/JS security overview (much better compared to other services I previously used), scans for cookies and HTTP/S headers, locates privacy policy and bunch of other non-intrusive checks. Subdomain discovery is awesome. Full GDPR compliance (e.g. legal + human + physical) obviously requires many days of manwork and will likely cost a bunch of money =)</comment></comment>


How To Make Clouds Indoors: Nimbus By Berndnaut Smilde (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://www.yatzer.com/nimbus-berndnaut-smilde

<comment><USER2> There is nothing about "how" to make clouds here. Just a bunch of promotional artsy mumbo-jumbo. Nothing about "how".

<comment><USER3> Well, it does say that a fog machine is used, so it looks like there aren't "real" clouds; at least not in the sense that they're overwhelmingly water vapor.

Still cool though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Indoor clouds?! This is cirrious business.</comment>


Circular Doubly Linked List - <AUTHOR> https://www.alphacodingskills.com/ds/circular-doubly-linked-list.php <comment><USER2> While a circular doubly linked list is an interesting data structure, this is a slightly strange site/resource - at least as far as algo/ds go.

Perhaps I am being too harsh, but the site is "alphacodingskills" yet appears to teach just the very basics of various languages. Additionally, all of the algorithms on the site are sorting algos (except one). For data structures it's just stack/queue/and variations of linked list

I'm not sure if I were to only know the basics of say Java, how to sort various ways, & basic ds that I will have "alpha" coding skills, or pass a rigourous FAANG-style technical interview (there is an interview question section on the site).

Edit: Overall it's a promising resource, IMO it just needs more content to be a serious one.</comment>


Bye Bye Ubuntu, a sad Christmas - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/4380430 <comment><USER5> My parents are on 12.04 and will be as long as the long term support lasts. I'm pretty sure forcing them to use Windows would mean a lot of telephone support for the next months. If anything, I would migrate them to another distribution.

I also don't really dislike the Amazon ads. I'm not so much concerned about privacy, but I find them very distracting and awfully implemented. However, it's only one ``sudo apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping``. That is not going to make me change my default distribution.

<comment><USER6> Similar here, but Xubuntu (12.04). Old laptop previously running Ubuntu 9.04 which this time just worked out of the box. Everything they need. Internet connectivity, browser, Skype (no webcam though). They are happy as it's enough for them (parents over 60). New installation doesn't brake, no viruses, very safe for them to work with it. I can't imagine giving them Windows (which will not run smoothly on this laptop) worrying they will have lots of spyware, viruses, etc. after few months.

On the other hand my personal laptop runs Arch with DWM. I don't look back at Ubuntu for professional use. I'm so much happier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's pretty stupid to expect everything to just work. Your parents should have grabbed the source code, learned how to program, deciphered the problem and then fixed it themselves. Then they could have shared the code to help everyone else's parents fix their problems.

Or just get them iPads.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm so glad that someone is writing about this issue. It is important to understand that 12.04 and 12.10 both SUCK.

Here's why: Previously I was on 10.04, the best thing that happened to me ever. Boot speed was amazing and shutdown speed was the fastest among the three OS'es I had then (Windows Vista, OSX, Ubuntu 10.04).

Then something happened. I purchased the Windows 8 Upgrade edition and I had to partition my drives (because I wanted to) and I thought "you know what? Let me upgrade my Ubuntu, it's been sometime since I upgraded it." I upgraded it to 12.10 and I used it as my only OS before installing Windows 8 (because the setup was corrupted and I had to re-download it).

It was a nightmare. Unity is a nightmare. Before using 12.10, I was on 11.x and 12.04. I don't see why they have to thrust Unity onto your face. Everything was really fine before Unity came.

Unity is one of the poorest experience one could ever experience on any operating system. I'm not sure if it was inspired from some other OS, but whatever it is, it's a poor implementation and clearly no proper research has gone into designing Unity. For example, switching between open program windows is a nightmare, if you have auto-hide enabled, it just gets worse. If you are a developer, nothing could get even worse than trying to switch between a text editor and a web browser, for instance.

Now to the core, the OS itself is painfully slow. Post installation of Windows 8, I compared the boot and shut down times of both the OS'es. I'm not exaggerating here, but Windows 8 shuts down much much quicker than 12.10. The only reason I loved Ubuntu was for its speed, let alone security. Now what Canoncial has done is taken the only reason for me to use Ubuntu and bastardized it as much as they could. Video drivers are another issue. Back on 10.04, I had to manually install Nvidia drivers myself, but it would work well once installed. 12.10 just fucked it up big time. It would automatically try to install something and you will have to spend sleepless nights trying to remove it and install the correct driver only to realize that it wouldn't work either!

I know you can bring back Gnome using some terminal commands, but the speed of the OS itself is still slow. Try switching between tabs on Chrome, you'll realize what I mean.

Ubuntu's target audience has always been developers and power users first, and everyone else next. With Unity, they're _trying_ to push Ubuntu towards general users, which will be a difficult task. Moving away from your target audience to attract a newer audience is the worst strategy I could ever think of.

Hence, here's another Bye-bye from me to Ubuntu. Hello Windows 8! (single boot!).

<comment><USER9> It saddens me that people who liked earlier Ubuntu releases jump straight to Windows or OS X, without trying Debian or Linux Mint first.

They both offer the good parts of Ubuntu, without the junk and without the poor experience.

<comment><USER8> <http://linuxmint.com/>

If this is the official website of the distribution you're talking about, then the site doesn't inspire confidence as much as the original Ubuntu site does. Anyway, I'll give it a shot, thanks :)

<comment><USER10> It's not the best website, certainly, and it's not the "perfect OS".

But Linux Mint, to me, has always been my favorite derivative of Ubuntu (as someone who is not particularly keen on Ubuntu natively, and definitely dislikes Unity).

<comment><USER11> Linux Mint has moved away from Ubuntu, incidentally. It's now solely based on Debian.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm on Xubuntu 12.04 and don't seem to have any of these problems. Unlike Windows, where you are stuck with the corporate decisions, Ubuntu still provides many options if you don't like the flagship distro.

</comment><comment><USER13> That is what I thought for a while. I was really a Ubuntu fan since early releases. I always encourage people to use Ubuntu. I am really disappointed after last release because of this Amazon stuff.

I can understand, how hard to maintain this kind of software without any revenue but in Linux world there were always good business models. Also Ubuntu for Android is very good idea and I believe in near future we will be hearing it so much.

While trying to expand market share, let's say trying to access more users, making a move against user's liberty really hurts previously gained traction. It was going good but now I am not sure how can I trust a Linux distro that send my search terms to Amazon by default.

I don't want to be part of this anymore.

</comment><comment><USER14> Recently I decided to play some game and had to boot windows partition which I did not use from the date of laptop purchase. So I went through Windows clean installation process and then it all started - scrolling on touchpad not working, directx not working with pre-packaged drivers (had to download over 600 megs of video drivers - have no clue what take so much space.) While downloading it, I browsed some news and got my Internet Explorer crashed - <USER4> would not be surprised if this was some trojan stuff delivered through null- sized iframe.

Since I do not have DVDROM, I had to find some ISO mounter. Again, downloading megs of software from some website and hoping it is not packaged with some trojan.

After installing this iso mounter, it asks me to install .NET framework. After googling it - it says ~1 meg to download. Fine, downloading and running it from microsoft website. After it run it starts downloading something else form somewhere.... Done.

Video drivers downloaded - installing. Asks to reboot. Rebooting - blue screen every time I restart machine.... In the end - whole evening was spent to play single game and I end up with BSOD. Saying "FU" and return back to my Ubuntu to continue coding.

After couple hours of coding my machine randomly freezes... this started to happen after installing AMD proprietary drivers...

So two things I learned that evening: \- We are all screwed no matter what OS we use! :) \- I need to buy xbox/ps/wii to play games :)

<comment><USER15> You might also have a hardware problem.

<comment><USER16> Yes, if you are getting actual BSOD under a recent version of Windows it is almost always the result of a hardware problem.

Make a note of the error message at the top of the BSOD and google for it.

If you want to do some tests , download something called "Ultimate boot CD" which is a boot disk with a combination of DOS and Linux based hardware test programs. I've used it to find faulty memory on many a misbehaving system.

<comment><USER14> I am pretty sure it is not hardware problem since I am using it for development and do all kinds of crazy stuff for last half a year. :) The thing about windows - you get more support from hardware manufacturer, but you get screwed by the fact it is all proprietary and often stuff from one manufacturer is not working with software from different one. And due to closed source approach there is no way to peek into it to see if it can be fixed or there could be workaround.

Another gem from this fresh windows install - headphones will work only if I boot into Windows while headphones are plugged in. If I boot without headphones and then plug headphones after I log in - no sound in headphones :)

My point is - there are all kinds of bugs in all popular OSes. I bet MacOS have bunch of them too. You just getting used to ones. Like it is never a problem for me to fix a webcam in linux, but it frustrates me to download 600 megs of drivers software to get my video card functional. The same way OP really frustrated by broken webcam and not really concerned about windows needs to update drivers, constantly monitor for viruses, etc.

One thing I noted tho - most frustration with Ubuntu (or any really linux desktop) I see comes the fact that some particular hardware is not working. The same hardware often have problems on Windows platform. And more often than not drivers/software for this hardware are closed source with bugs which never get fixed (because manufacturer's business in selling hardware, not software.) So apparently we would not have most of these issues with any OS if software required to run hardware would be open sourced. This will never happen probably tho..

<comment><USER16> To be fair, most of those things you mentioned sound like issues individual drivers rather than the OS. You are likely to have closed source drivers under Linux too, a variety of GPUs and Wireless cards do not offer open source drivers (or at least with full features).

You might not need 600MB of drivers for your video card, it's that the manufacturer packages it with 600MB of software. On a modern HDD 600MB isn't so much anymore.

BSOD really does overwhelmingly indicate some hardware failure, it is not uncommon for a PC (especially one that is highly used) to develop failures later in it's life. I would suspect common culprits to be your power supply, memory or HDD.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, I totally agree that major problems comes from closed-sourced drivers. And it doesn't matter what OS you use - Linux or Windows. MacOS it is a bit easier since Apple controls both hardware and software. It is not a case with PC platform in general.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> For those saying "why not try Debian, mint, etc", I've been running my mother on Debian for the past 18 months and it hasn't been at all easy and I am starting to wonder if I shouldn't move her back to Windows. I gave her fairly simple hardware (an Atom PC) with enough RAM and disk space. I migrated her to Picassa and Libre Office. She's surviving but supporting is a little tedious, there doesn't seem to be a convenient alternative to LogMeIn (any VNC requires mapping ports on the router and teamviewer needs user intervention at the target). I was also running Ubuntu with KDE on my main laptop at home but I recently bought a new laptop and my wife was delighted that it came with Windows 7 pre-installed. I haven't yet decided if Linux will go back on. Possibly not.

So much in domestic Linux is unprofessional, that is why the professional Linuxes command such money. Linux seems to remain a hobby system with similar process control because it allows everything, if you don't constrain your model then you can't ensure quality. For example: how much testing is done against the kernel? I don't mean beta testing, how about instituting some standards regime with unit testing and interface compliance measurement? Linux depends almost entirely on peer code review, in critical parts that is reviewed by 'experts' but it remains a manual process.

</comment><comment><USER18> How come researching hardware first is bad thing - you are not going to a shop and buy first thing you see.

Also windows is not perfect either, my old scanner doesn't have windows 7 drivers and will never have it seems. It works just fine in XP and Linux.

Sometimes things break, they even break in software that cost shitloads of money too. Six month old Oracle EBS SR with localization(!) problem - <USER3> critical, but surely half a year is enough to swap two strings. Sometimes it doesn't work well with some server vendor too (I don't know all details about this one).

Don't blame canonical for all the software in the distro, all they really do is adding eye candy and try to make it nicer, but they can't fix everything.

I find it silly when people try to force other people to migrate to Linux - show them around, tell about ups and downs and let them decide if they want to try it.

I use linux not because it open source, but because it does most of the stuff I need better. My parents use windows PC, because they can just install that thing which came with new printer and it works without calling me, despite I could probably make it work in linux just as easy since I know how to.

And for God's sake, don't install linux if you play games most of the time, but you read linux is better on the interwebz. Stop hammering nails with a microscope already!

</comment><comment><USER19> For fuck sake, please stop acting as if Ubuntu was the only Linux distro! Last time I tested Bodhi Linux, I found it quite simple to use and yet not flashy.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm encountering something similar this Christmas. We'd given my wife's grandma a Chromebook - and it has died of its own accord after just 14 months.

After talking about the replacement, she nearly begged for a Windows or a Mac. By name. This same woman that doesn't think she can run the microwave while being on the cordless phone.

We (Linux, and I'm lumping ChromeOS into this albeit a different beast) aren't going to win the marketing battle. With sites like Netflix not working on Linux and "you'll get it if you try it for two weeks" UX mentality (looking at you Unity), we're not going to win the experience battle - the only one where we stood a shot. Short of a product that thoroughly feels superior we just can't expect consumers to cope with a product just to "fight the [men]". And until that happens, I (and I suspect many fellow nerds) are following this round of the cycle and moving our families away from Linux (again, for now.)

<comment><USER16> I don't know if it's so much about UI. For a total novice I'm not sure if Unity would be harder to learn than say Windows 7, assuming unfamiliarity with both.

It's really down to compatibility and of course with a more common OS there are more friends and relatives that you can ask for help.

Compatibility with old software can be a big deal for some people too, for example my mother struggles to understand why she can't just keep using the same version of Wordperfect that she learnt in 1994.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Why move your parents to Windows rather than to some other Linux distribution? (Fedora, Linux Mint, Debian...)

<comment><AUTHOR> There were also all these other complaints like "I've got this book about photo editing from a friend of mine, can you install that software for me?" where I have to say, no, sorry mom, that only works on Windows.

Same with watching video's of a certain TV-channel (Silverlight 4, not supported by Monolight yet) and a dozen other things. Like I said, I always had faith one day all (most) will be good. But now that I've lost this trust, I feel all I can do is give in and no longer ask patience from them (with yet another Linux distro).

<comment><USER22> You say you started in 2009 - I'm assuming you started with linux a bit earlier than that. I started using linux on the desktop in 1999 part time, and moved 'full time' by ... 2003 I think.

I gave up around 2008. Gave up trying to migrate friends/family; gave up being an evangelist. The number of things that wouldn't work on someone's hardware was always greater than my ability to help/google/patch/whatever. And I got sick of:

      1) works for me.
      2) research your hardware first(!)
      3) build your own machine
      4) this latest release version X "just works"
      5) other tired canards you've already heard.

I've no doubt that for some people, some distros 'just work'. They never did for me.

Perhaps it was my hardware (the 6 different laptops and desktops I rotated through during 5 years apparently just never hit that magical elusive sweet spot of 'just working').

Perhaps my expectations were different - I'd like to have two different apps running at the same time and both play sound at the same time - pidgin/gaim would constantly lock the sound so that nothing else could play, causing no sounds and sometimes crashes.

I've got other stories - everyone does - but got tired. I went mac full time in 2008 and have a good balance of a system that lets me run osx with windows and linux in virtual machines when I need them. It's certainly not perfect - <USER4> have occasional crashes, that stupid beach ball, and I miss the FISH protocol in Konqueror something mad. But... I get far more actual _work_ done on this system than I ever did on Linux systems.

Other people will have opposite experiences - good for them - I just wish people would quit blaming the "linux on the desktop" defectors as if they'd done something 'wrong'. The only thing most of them did 'wrong' was to believe the hype for too long.

<comment><AUTHOR> I largely agree, though I'm willing to research my hardware as long as I have the idea we move in the right direction of software that is more stable and intuitive to use (and where user liberties and rights are central).

I just got disappointed in the seemingly new direction of Canonical not sharing my values. The vision and hope was exactly the energy I needed to fight all the non-working stuff.

<comment><USER22> I had wireless issues 10 years ago on laptops - things like "driver X works with card foo version Y.ZZ". I went out and bought card foo, version Y.ZZ, only to find it didn't work, and then would be told "well DUH, driver X doesn't work with Revision D, only revisions A,C,B and F". Basically, stuff that was impossible to find out before a purchase - laptop companies would ship different revisions of the same card out, and just ship the appropriate windows drivers on a CD - no linux drivers (of course).

I got way too tired of having to deal with that, and even moreso of people replying "I've never had to deal with that - you were doing something wrong" or even better "Oh, it's not like that any more". Yeah, it might _not_ be, but I was also hearing that it wasn't like that _10 years ago_ , when clearly it _was_ like that.

So... after a while, you become numb to the claims of fanboys who've been using one linux distro for 9 months and think linux is the best thing ever and "M$ sux" and all that, and you just get on doing your work with a platform that fits your needs. When your needs change, and your platform can't meet those needs anymore, fighting the platform to change when it won't doesn't make sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Good work. I understand the stance you were taking but it's equivalent to "I think wooden bats are better for baseball, so I make my tee-baller use a wooden bat." You were fighting the right fight but on the wrong field. Don't let people make you feel bad. When it comes to an OS for a non-saavy family member ease of use and keeping those phone calls at bay are the only things that matter. Installing antivirus and running an anti-malware application when you visit for holidays is much easier than the nagging calls. Also, Mom won't get those weird looks in best buy when she asks the 16 year old girl if this copy of Microsoft word runs on Ubuntu.

</comment><comment><USER24> I had the opposite experience. Notice the out-of-band patch that Microsoft released Saturday? Yes, Viginia, if you run Windows, you better apply it and update your malware scanners. I spent a small chuck of free time this weekend scanning, cleaning and in vain before restoring from backup.

Vexed by the ease that malware slash through my defenses, I switched to running Linux as the main OS on my laptop and every other OS as a VM. It's amazing that Linux can deal with my hardware better than the OEM recovery disk. And if I need to reinstall or migrate, I can just copy the VMs from backup. I was using VMs on the other OSes, now Windows 7 joins the crowd.

</comment><comment><USER25> A lot of people doing this will quickly learn that Windows is not perfect either. On my Windows box, Chrome regularly crashes, the NVIDIA driver control software has a memory leak that causes it to balloon to using 3+ GB of memory, and DirectX 10 didn't work at all (games crashed) until a recent update. There are also intermittent problems with the screen going blank, requiring me to Remote Desktop in and reboot the machine.

I would much rather have a bug in Ubuntu than in Windows. I had no way to fix that DX 10 bug or communicate with the developers. I was just lucky that it got fixed.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess you're right, but not having to say "sorry, you're not on Windows so that's why I can't make this software work for you (software from friends etc.)" saves me a lot of explanations that an end-user isn't really interested in.

<comment><USER25> I usually give some explanation about how to open source is all about "fighting the man". I know plenty of gamer friends who have bought Macs, because they want to be hip. They put up with not being able to run all their games on their Macs (no, Parallels and/or Boot Camp are not viable for these people). You turn the lack of application choice on its head and make it seem cool. This isn't a real "issue", since it happens with every OS. Even Windows is missing software used by some "creative" types (or so they say).

And what I've found is that more and more stuff is on the Web now anyway, so OS doesn't matter as much.

<comment><USER26> > They put up with not being able to run all their games on their Macs.

It's quite easy to install Windows with Bootcamp, though if you have an SSD, space is an issue. If you're a remotely serious gamer, you're surely enough of a nerd to handle dual booting.

The problem is that every [desktop] OS is crap. I've been attempting to use various Linux distros in that role for over a decade, and I've yet to have an experience that wasn't riddled with bugs and annoyances. Windows 7 is generally the least frustrating option, though OS X has cool features to compensate for its own issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's sad to see what ubuntu have become.

<comment><USER28> I would rather say that it is sad to see Ubuntu going in a direction that doesn't align with your tastes/needs. I personally think Ubuntu is better today than ever before (for the most part).

<comment><USER29> Personally I think Linux on the desktop is in a far worse shape than it was 12 years ago. Sure, _Linux_ works much better on laptops then it used to, but what good is that since the software provided by _distributions_ is less stable and of a lower quality then it was 12 years ago. It's all anecdotal evidence, but I've had far more success 10 years ago introducing Linux to non- so-technical users, previously exposed only to Windows 95/98, by using a default Gnome/KDE environment then I'm having now introducing them to recent versions of Unity/KDE/Gnome.

Linux became worse when the commercial alternatives only got better.

This website under Chrome under Ubuntu 12.10 (Unity): <http://i.imgur.com/oUTwi.png>

This website under Chrome under Mac OS X 10.8.2: <http://i.imgur.com/UwTl8.png>

This is completely unacceptable as a default experience.

(edit: grammar; screenshots)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Yes

And the worse thing is that Ubuntu is moving away from 'common users' BUT ALSO away from 'traditional linux users'

Sincerely, it's been getting worse and worse by every release. Under the banner of 'making it more user friendly', they're adding more useless clutter, more 'funny pictures' but have no clear direction or desktop concept.

Yes, I believed it was going to be great as well.

I am much more productive in a linux distro with XFCE/IceWM, half of 'infrastructure' turned off (network manager, pulseaudio, etc) or I just go with Mac OS X

</comment><comment><USER31> Those people who claim Ubuntu is ready for parents, brothers, sister, and those with little computer experience to use are kidding themselves. I understand the work that has to go into supporting devices that don't ship with nix drivers, but the amount of issues I've encountered as a slightly experienced Linux user puts _me_ off, let alone anyone who hasn't a clue about the stuff you need to perform on command line.

I completely agree with OP.

</comment><comment><USER32> Out of curiosity: you gave Windows 7 to your parents, what are you using right now? Another flavour of linux?

I find apt-get and the huge amount of troubleshooting information available the main reasons I'm still using (K)ubuntu. I have tried other distros but always came back...

<comment><AUTHOR> I have a netbook with Ubuntu myself but only use it on holidays.

I'm using OS X as my main OS. I did try Ubuntu but really got crazy of the bad multitouch support (hovering over the touchpad was seen as a click, so I constantly lost the focus of my terminal while typing and having my palms near the touchpad)

So I'm waiting for good multitouch support for my Macbook Air and mayne switch then (not that sure anymore but I do have a little hope for those following Ubuntu's moves closely and the ability of apt-get like you pointed out).

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I downloaded Ubuntu 12.10 by mistake. Nothing worked that were not already included in the DVD.

I then downloaded Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and all my hardware (with the proprietary AMD driver) and preferred software (Opera, Blender, Skype) works there.

Lesson learned.

</comment><comment><USER34> Why not Kubuntu or straight Debian? I remember a few problems when KDE went Plasma on us, but they pretty quickly worked out the kinks and we have been pretty happy with Kubuntu for several years now.

</comment><comment><USER35> Bye bye Linux! Hello viruses, trojans, and ever-increasing bloat!

<comment><USER36> This is so unfair...

Viruses, trojans and bloat are not a part of Windows, it is what users make of their systems. I use both FreeBSD and Windows (as desktops) and I haven't had an issue with any of them for the last two years.

<comment><USER37> It's not really "unfair", imo. It's obvious the GP poster is just regurgitating some garbage he heard somewhere else without doing any critical thought.

<comment><USER35> The most absurd things seem "obvious" to you. What is obvious is that you have not had to support friends who keep getting viruses, keep running out of free space on their massive disks, keep complaining about slower and slower performance.

<comment><USER37> But that's not the fault of the OS. That's the fault of the user.

<comment><AUTHOR> I tend to develop more and more by the "it's never the users fault" pragma in order to build software that is perceived as "it just works".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> d--b It's always been the same story. Of course you shouldn't give Linux to your parents...

<comment><USER25> My parents have been running Ubuntu since 2008, when I finally got tired of uninstalling spyware. It's been running like a charm ever since. Once Unity came out, I moved them to Xubuntu and never looked back. I do a clean install every year or two of the latest version.

The trick is to use compatible hardware. I gave them my old ThinkPads.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe a full reinstall gives less regressions than upgrading, but I didn't have the time to do full reinstalls.

<comment><USER25> Oh, that's the most likely cause of your problems then. There are all kinds of issues with upgrading Ubuntu installs. I always do a clean install for that reason, never an upgrade.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> So. Your updating your parents to a now obsolete operating system? Why not Windows 8?

<comment><AUTHOR> For what I've read Windows 8 flourishes on tablets but can be a bit annoying/split minded when controlled by a mouse. This combined with the fact that most businesses will probably skip Windows 8 and stay with/move to 7 gives me the trust it will be maintained for a while.

<comment><USER39> That is a pretty spot on summary of Windows 8. I use it on a laptop (no touch screen) and really like it but it can be a little bit disjointed to use. Saying that I never use any of the Metro (Modern UI) apps and uninstalled them all as soon as I installed Windows 8. They are not the kind of applications I want to use on a general purpose computer. A tablet? Yeah ok but not with a mouse. The 'old' desktop way of doing things is far better than the new way for 'old' input devices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> This story stinks, what an obnoxious sense of entitlement.

How dare they break YOUR webcam, and why should you invest untold hours in learning how to contribute and then fixing it.

World on a plate with no effort to give back? Meh.

<comment><USER41> Nonsense. The "it's open source, fix it yourself" argument only holds if your target audience is developers.

Ubuntu is intended to (also) target non-powerusers. They intend to be a competitor to other "normal people" OSes such as OSX and Windows. The fact that they give it away for free is entirely Canonical's own choice, and it does not magically take away users' right to criticize them.

Canonical puts a product in the market with claims to certain qualities, such as openness but also ease of use. The OP feels that some of these qualities have disappeared, and chooses a different OS for that reason. How is that obnoxious?

<comment><USER40> Straw man.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What programming language has you really excited lately, and why? - <AUTHOR> I realized that almost all I ever do on HN is press Cmd-F, type "lang", see 0 results, and close it. So I figured I'd just ask y'all instead. <comment><USER2> Rust: it provides extremely strong guarantees about your code at compile time so that usually it feels like a script language with C/C++-levels of performance. And the best part: no data races, and no runtime garbage collector overhead.

<comment><USER3> Is that all? That's a pretty generic reason IMO.

<comment><USER4> To long time C developers, it's a huge deal. I'm starting my first primarily rust job on Monday and I'm extremely excited about it.

<comment><USER5> Where, if you don't mind sharing?

<comment><USER4> ThreatX

<comment><USER6> If they'd be interested in sharing more about their usage of Rust, we'd love to have them represented on our page of corporate users at [https://www.rust- lang.org/friends.html](https://www.rust-lang.org/friends.html) .

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Rust: Which everyone seems to know about and I'm sure lots of people will be able to explain why.

So I'll focus on ... Haxe: Which is known in a few circles, but If I talk to a random person about it they've never heard of it.

Haxe is a garbage collected strictly typed compiled language with type inference. It compiles to a variety of platforms including C++, Javascript, Flash Bytecode, Neko VM bytecode, even PHP. More recently it has been growing support for C#, java, python and lua.

It's just a nice language to use. A combination of the cool features like pattern matching case statements, and the simple tidiness of the basics.

        for (minion in party) {
          minion.jumpToTheLeft();
        }

Just little things like not having 'for (var minion in party)'. It clears the clutter. while still protecting you.

In many respects, when compiling to JavaScript, it serves the niche that Dart and Typescript aim at. I think the fact that it is independent should not be underestimated. Google people tend to use Dart, Microsoft people use TypeScript. Haxe is not on a 'side' people use it because of what it is, not who made it. I'm rather against provenance as a reason to use a language.

The best way to get a good feel for Haxe is to go to [http://try.haxe.org](http://try.haxe.org) and look-at/run some of the examples.

<comment><USER8> > for (minion in party) {

> Just little things like not having 'for (var minion in party)'. It clears > the clutter.

Would be even less cluttered if it allowed

        for minion in party {
          minion.jumpToTheLeft()
        }

Parens around a for clause when there's braces following are unnecessary.

<comment><USER9> It'd be less cluttered if "in" wasn't in there.

<comment><USER10> The shortest is Haskell's:

        forM_ party jumpToTheLeft

Assuming there is a 'party :: [ Minion ]' and 'jumpToTheLeft :: Minion -> IO Minion' in scope.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Haskell, seeing I still have so much to learn. Elm, because there seems to be a sane web frontend language. Swift, because I can do daily work in a modern language with so many parts done right.

</comment><comment><USER12> A few people mentioned Python. Me, too. I left PHP (mostly) and can't stand the ascendency of JavaScript for everything under the sun (it's madness right now). I recently chose Python as my "go to" language for everything after reading a compelling post on Java for everything (not a typo). But I just don't like messy C-based languages like Java.

If someone would pay me big bucks one day for Java, I'd do it and program cool little machines and gadgets with it, but I love the web a lot and I am not about to continue the shoe-horning of Java and the Web (don't start with me).

So, I like Python for everything. Good web stuff. Great scripting and command line. Good for the Internet of Things (if you want to go down that path). Good for writing desktop. And yes, you could do games and mobile (although I admit the shoe-horning begins to show a little here). But I'm not in that space so much, so I accept that. And its pretty and stable (like Ruby) while not being quite as pretentious as Ruby.

Someone wrote WebAssembly. While not a language.... yes, yes, yes... I'm very excited about it. Because do you not SEE the reality that soon we could be writing web code on web pages with pre-compiled speedy fun stuff but written in our language of choice, including Python? Is no one talking about this? It will just take someone writing a Web Assembly Compiler (not sure if that will be the right terminology) in your language of choice. Oh. My. Goodness. Death to JavaScript. Maybe. Or at least an arm lopped off its torso.

</comment><comment><USER13> D (dlang). It's the C++ I always wanted. It's safe, modern, fast, and familiar. It's got classes with reference semantics, structs with value semantics, safe concurrency by default, support for functional programming, concise syntax yet with the C/Java/C++/C# flavour, speed, a compile-time complete D interpreter (thus allowing metaprogramming in the same language as the runtime language, almost lisp-like), plus all the common syntactic niceties we've come to expect from modern languages.

My only complaint so far is that the reference implementation has a stupid license, but most other D users just ignore the terms of the license. I had also found a performance bug in an stdlib function, but it's since been addressed in dev.

<comment><USER14> what do you mean stupid license? what are the restrictions?

<comment><USER13> [https://lobste.rs/s/uafwxi/safe_c_subset_is_vapourware/comme...](https://lobste.rs/s/uafwxi/safe_c_subset_is_vapourware/comments/mkqkbv#c_mkqkbv)

Thankfully, there are other implementations with perfectly free licenses: gdc and lldc.

<comment><USER15> That's written tongue in cheek, and it basically means something totally different to what you understood.

The license doesn't forbid anything. At all. It simply states that it doesn't guarantee any use at all either.

Therefore, you can use it to do whatever you want to do, but because there was no guarantee, you can't sue the software creator.

I will paste the text here, for others to read it:

        "The Software is not generally available software. It has not undergone testing and may contain errors. The Software was not designed to operate after December 31, 1999. It may be incomplete and it may not function properly. No support or maintenance is provided with this Software. Do not install or distribute the Software if you are not accustomed to using or distributing experimental software. Do not use this software for life critical applications, or applications that could cause significant harm or property damage."

Now my explanation: Don't use DMD it in a peacemaker. Or use it, if you thing the technology is suitable. But if you do use it in a peacemaker, and it fails, it will be your fault and not the fault of the creator of the DMD compiler. It's pretty much a standard disclaimer and all licenses have one.

The equivalent disclaimer text of the GPL license (used by gdc and lots of other software) is this (the original text is in caps):

        THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.

        IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MODIFIES AND/OR CONVEYS THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

Anyway, the best part of D is that I think the confusing text will be discussed in their forums by their great community and something will be done about it.

<comment><USER13> > That's written tongue in cheek

Lawyers don't have tongues or cheeks.

I have been told that Walter regularly tries to change the license but Symantec just doesn't seem to care.

<comment><USER15> I was right about the D community, this has been discussed this month.

[http://firstname.lastname@example.com...](http://firstname.lastname@example.com)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Elm. Because it is super clean and easy to read. The compile time errors are fantastic. I feel, if my app compiles then it is going to do what I want. Not so when developing with other JS frameworks. The whole paradigm feels like it is build for making web applications.

</comment><comment><USER17> Lately?

C# triggered by: \- Open sourcing of .NET \- Open Sourcing of Xamarin

I want to live in a world where writing mobile apps for multiple platforms with a single codebase becomes the de-facto way of doing things. C#/Xamarin seems like the only viable way to achieve that.

<comment><USER18> What about react native?

<comment><USER19> React Native is "learn once, write everywhere" as opposed to "write once, run everywhere."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> JS ES2015. The syntax looks awful at first glance, but after heavily using it, there's much more power to this language now.

<comment><USER21> The syntax looks awful? It looks extremely clean. It cleaned up the JS syntax enormously...

<comment><USER20> Talking mostly about things like:

// 1\. [a + b] // [a + b] is an array {[a + b]: c} // [a + b] is not an array

// 2\. { x, y: x, y} // inconsistent object fields

and there are more examples. After you get to know the syntax, it can be used for good -- but some decisions are making the language more complex.

As written above, I enjoy its new features

<comment><USER22> Bracket notation isn't anything new to ES2015, using it in that context is though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Picat. A new language that blends different paradigms including logic programming, constraint solving, pattern matching into a cohesive whole. Allows for very compact, elegant solutions to many problems.

<comment><USER24> How's Picat performance-wise?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> F# is pretty sweet. It's concise, no ceremony, type safety, can be used with all .net libs, functional. I'm a beginner but love diving into it.

<comment><USER26> F# is excellent and the only reason I'd stick with .NET. Unfortunately, Microsoft doesn't think so, and continues to dump massive amounts of resources into C# while only paying lip service to F#. (See, for instance, the full- featured C# Interactive in VS. It arrived like 10 years late, but it's a much slicker experience, apart from the language.)

F# with C#-level tooling would be unstoppable. Though it's pretty fantastic as-is.

<comment><USER27> Are you developing in Windows or Linux? If Linux, what is your toolset and workflow?

<comment><USER26> Develop and compile on Windows with MS tools, deploy on Linux. VS+VsVim does a nice job with F# (I tried Emacs with evil but it's not as good for F#). Deployment is as easy as copying an exe.

<comment><USER27> Thank you. I've been fooling around with VS Code and Mono, but I have been considering doing exactly as you described.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Crystal, Elixir, Haskell, and PHP7.1

Crystal because it brings me the elegance of Ruby with better Type safety. The type inference in Crystal has been improving a lot since I started looking into it as well.

Elixir mostly because it fits the sweet spot where I'd have used node.js for network/event heavy apps.

Haskell because I'm still trying to learn it _properly_.

PHP7.1 because I work in PHP every day, and I am excited about lots of upcoming changes in the next release. There have been lots of interesting RFCs (for the language) as well as PSRs (for the interop packages) raised recently and PHP isn't the same old thing any more.

</comment><comment><USER29> I guess you were hoping for new cutting edge stuff, but I've been really enjoying Common Lisp.

I've used it for a bunch of small projects the last year or so, and just have a ton of fun. In particular, it has surprisingly good bindings to graphics libraries like Qt, SDL, and OpenGL, and it's super easy to get animations and graphical apps up and running quickly.

The compilers are great for such a high level language, and it's significantly faster than Python, which was my preferred language before CL. It doesn't beat the raw speed of C, but I rarely need that anyway. As an example, I just wrote a cheesy, animated FFT visualization and full screen at 2560x1440 it gets 90+ fps with no attempt to optimize on my part, except turning up the default optimization level. [https://github.com/jl2/qt-fft- viz](https://github.com/jl2/qt-fft-viz)

The REPL and code reloading makes iterating on ideas really fast, and I find I experiment more in CL because it's just easier.

<comment><USER30> I love writing Lisp, it feels not so much like coding but like writing poetry... Unfortunately, it has lots of problems with interpreter interoperability, lack of threading, etc. (unless I simply haven't found the solution to my problems yet). Therefore I often find myself forsaking it for Python, which has the added advantage that my friends will be able to read the code.

<comment><USER29> All of the modern Common Lisp implementations support threading. I'd almost even say the situation is better than most other languages, because there is very good threading support at several levels of abstraction.

First, all of the modern implementations include some kind of implementation specific, low level OS thread wrapper. It's unfortunate that these are all incompatible, but few people need to use them directly, so it's really not too bad.

Next, the bordeaux-threads library provides a wrapper around all of the implementation specific libraries. Thanks to macros, the wrapper doesn't add much (if any) overhead.

Finally, there are higher level libraries like lparallel and cl-cuda. I've used lparallel a few times, and much prefer it to writing my own low level threading.

I'm not really sure what you mean by "interpreter interoperability". Common Lisp is standardized, and sticking to the standard and libraries in QuickLisp, I haven't run into many problems running my code across multiple platforms and multiple implementations of Common Lisp. All of the problems I've encountered have been related to foreign libraries, which, IME, are problematic in most languages.

<comment><USER30> I wasn't aware of lparallel and cl-cuda, thank you for pointing those out! The only threading I knew of was the implementation-specific kind, which makes for some portability headaches. (Especially as I personally use CLISP instead of the more common SBCL.)

Yes, the standardized definition is a Good Thing. What I meant by "interpreter interoperability" (I probably should have said implementation compatibility) are things like processing commandline arguments, which are not defined in the standard and vary wildly between operations. (Is there a library for that too? I haven't come across any yet, but that might just be me.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Rust: low level performance, high level safety, functional, AMAZING community

Elm: beautiful front-end development in a tough to navigate JS world

Elixir: functional back-end programming on top of the BEAM VM

ES 2015 & node.js: I really enjoy and appreciate a language growing in the ways JS has and I love seeing the frameworks influence and borrow from one another (ember, react, angular). While the ecosystem is sometimes annoying, it's been a joy to see the evolution and natural selection of tools and libraries (e.g. flux, alt, flummox, and eventually redux coming out on top...for now)

</comment><comment><USER32> _Lately_ it's been Scheme because I've been using it to teach my 14 y/o daughter how to program. I had considered teaching her JS but she already knows that a little bit and I thought the concepts she'd learn while learning Scheme would really help her in the long run regardless of what language she used.

<comment><USER30> Scheme is probably the most beautiful language I know, but, alas, of limited practical value :-(

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Crystal: Syntax inspired by Ruby, static types and compiled by LLVM. The standard library is mostly similar to Ruby (I'd say it's better. For example it rack-like functionality and websockets built-in). It's getting a lot of traction in the community.

<comment><USER34> Crystal looks interesting, but is it usable in production? Any examples of people using it?

<comment><USER33> Sidekiq was recently ported over to crystal and the speedups and memory usage improvements are amazing. There's also an officially supported heroku- buildpack so it can be deployed easily.

But there's a lot of breaking changes in the language (0.18 was released a few days ago with a few breaking changes). I would not use it for a long term project (yet). But for some personal project or prototypes, for example which you'd quickly set using Ruby/Sinatra, I'd choose Crystal/Kemal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Go. I may have to teach a mathematician with limited programming experience how to write parallel* algorithms, and Go seems far easier than alternatives (like C++) for a beginner.

* (or concurrent)

</comment><comment><USER36> None.

That's why I've been developing my own language ([http://web.onetel.com/~hibou/fmj/tutorials/TOC.html](http://web.onetel.com/~hibou/fmj/tutorials/TOC.html)). It isn't ready yet: there are still bugs in the IDE, and without a compiler it's slow. After fixing these problems, I also want to look at new ways to do graph processing. Then, I'll think about releasing it, if there's enough interest. Let me know what you think.

Features: visual, dataflow, HM type inference while editing, homoiconic, can call Lisp and callable from Lisp.

</comment><comment><USER37> Elixir makes me warm and fuzzy.

<comment><USER38> I second Elixir. Concurrency and HA are the future!

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> As primarily a C# and JavaScript developer, I'd say TypeScript. Best of both worlds and I feel pretty productive in it (once past the pain of setup).

<comment><USER40> Not a c# dev, but definitely typescript makes me feel more motivated to write code these days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Nim because of the syntax, performance, and base library.

<comment><USER41> ...and powerful templating, low memory usage, portability.

<comment><USER42> ...and user type-classes, compile-time AST macros, and GC-as-an-API

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Happy to see Python getting first party support for concurrency.

</comment><comment><USER44> Racket - I love everything about it. It has Functional Programming that makes sense to me, I went through Haskell books 3 times over the years and took a few weeks to be flying with Racket.

<comment><USER45> As a scheme guy in general, I myself am very excited by typed/racket. I have always been torn between ML-like languages and lisp-style, with the latter winning most of the time. I have gotten so used to the syntax that I prefer it to most other languages.

But I miss the niceness of typing, which typed racket provides. There are some warts, like having to explicitly typecast when using two polymorphic functions, and that the curry procedure doesn't work as in racket, but other than that it is not far from what I would perceive as the perfect language.

I could of course wish for some other things, like making a curried and strictly typed scheme-like language, but i'm not going to push my luck :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Clojure. Particularly with Paredit mode in Emacs. The experience of manipulating semantic units of code vs. editing text is a joy and I really, really miss it when I return to e.g. Python.

<comment><USER47> I really like parinfer for this, too. After switching to it, I've had a great time using it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Ponylang. Just seems to fit my mental model well. Wish it was more ready for prime time.

</comment><comment><USER49> PHP: With the new 7 release, it gets a surprising speed boost, a collection of elegant new syntax, and maintains backwards compatibility with an incredible ecosystem of packages. Modern projects like Laravel and Slim continue to push best practices, and the community is one of the largest. It's an incredibly versatile language with a robust feature set.

</comment><comment><USER50> None, because the existing languages were close to good enough for the problems that I try to solve. There's nothing that's opening up new frontiers in a mind-blowing kind of way, at least not from where I stand.

But some languages are kind of interesting:

C++11/14, because it opened up some new ways of writing efficient code safely.

Haskell, because of HM types.

Lisp, because of homoiconicity and macros.

</comment><comment><USER51> Elm, because it helps to unload part of the cognitive burden of frontend development.

Elixir, to taste functional programming on the backend.

</comment><comment><USER52> [https://github.com/monte-language/monte](https://github.com/monte- language/monte) is reviving E, the distributed capability language.

</comment><comment><USER53> Elm because I'm new to functional programming and it hurts my head.

</comment><comment><USER23> Also like newLISP. Powerful, small, practical and thought provoking.

</comment><comment><USER54> Laravel (PHP Framework)

Great Documentation [https://laravel.com/docs/5.2](https://laravel.com/docs/5.2)

Local Development Tools/Box [https://laravel.com/docs/5.2/valet](https://laravel.com/docs/5.2/valet) [https://laravel.com/docs/5.2/homestead](https://laravel.com/docs/5.2/homestead)

Easy to Spin Up servers and deploy [https://forge.laravel.com/servers](https://forge.laravel.com/servers)

Zero downtime deployment [https://envoyer.io/](https://envoyer.io/)

Micro/Slim version [https://lumen.laravel.com/](https://lumen.laravel.com/)

SaaS in a box [https://spark.laravel.com/](https://spark.laravel.com/)

Great Learning Videos and Community [https://laracasts.com/](https://laracasts.com/)

</comment><comment><USER55> Myrddin ([https://myrlang.org](https://myrlang.org)). Mostly because it's my pet project, and it's fun to work on it.

</comment><comment><USER56> Dart: For me it's still _the_ successor of JavaScript. However, the market didn't adopt it as well as Typescript. Thus, in work life I play safe with Typescript.

Eve (Dev Blog: [http://incidentalcomplexity.com](http://incidentalcomplexity.com)): the guys are "working on bringing programming to everyone". A lot of innovative stuff here. Not yet ready but _really_ exciting!

</comment><comment><USER57> Scala: I love the mix of FP with OO all on the JVM with access to battle- tested Java libraries. I can also use it on the frontend with [https://www.scala-js.org/](https://www.scala-js.org/) and potentially as a lower level system language with [http://www.scala- native.org/](http://www.scala-native.org/)

<comment><USER8> It's a pity Apache Groovy's ongoing governance problems stopped it achieving a similar goal. Groovy's still great, though, for writing quick'n'dirty scripts for testing Java classes and defining builds, and Grails still offers Groovy exclusively for scripting (though I wouldn't be surprised if Grails soon follows Gradle down the path of enabling Kotlin as a scripting language).

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Modern Perl with Mojolicious makes me happy. Perl has enjoyed yearly releases and with Moose has fantastic OO; also the community is vibrant.

<comment><USER59> Ditto.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> C# and ASP.NET Core. No more IIS server. Instead, built in web server that can be configured via pure C# code. Visual Studio is the most powerful GUI on the planet. C# & ASP.NET is now open source. CNTK is a multi-core GPU optimized deep neural network run via C#.

</comment><comment><USER61> [http://lbstanza.org/](http://lbstanza.org/) because it reuses all the good stuff from Dylan.

</comment><comment><USER62> jq is a command line tool and also a language for expressing transformations on JSON with concise one-liners. It is useful for processing the output of mongoexport or an elasticsearch query.

The basic constructs are "filter expressions". Pipes (|) can be used to direct the output of one filter expression to another, and commas (,) can be used to concatenate the output of two filter expressions.

</comment><comment><USER63> Ceylon, because after you've seen union types you wonder why they aren't implemented in every statically typed language.

</comment><comment><USER64> C++: Because it (and C) runs the world. Including other languages (Java/Python/Ruby/Clojure/...)

</comment><comment><USER65> Swift. I've been doing more and more iPhone development lately, so much nicer than ObjectiveC and half the files (I refuse to miss header files).

But I was also doing a lot of Java, which has made me more excited about getting back into C#. As far as language features go, Java is C# poor cousin.

</comment><comment><USER66> Picolisp. And of course OCaml.

</comment><comment><USER67> C++ because of it's power and because it is evolving in intelligent way

</comment><comment><USER68> Clojurescript. Because it's better Javascript than Javascript.

</comment><comment><USER69> DLang. Golang. FreePascal. All 3 for speed of both compiling and running. And some good language and library features too.

<comment><USER69> Also Python, because VHLL, batteries included, and community.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> Kinda chocked that nobody mentioned JuliaLang yet

</comment><comment><USER71> clojure due to the release of clojure.spec a few days ago.

</comment><comment><USER72> WebAssembly. A real game changer!

</comment><comment><USER73> jai, a language for game developers without gc from Jonathan Blow

</comment><comment><USER74> mIRCSCRIPT</comment>


Route to Air Travel Discomfort Starts on Wall Street - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/28/business/corporate-profit-margins-airlines.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> How is it that Southwest Airlines -- which is also a publicly-traded company -- continues to offer low fares, while remaining laser-focused on customer service in this environment? It's unfortunate that the reporter doesn't take any time to explore this long-standing exception.

It's easy to blame the public market system, but when exceptions like this are readily found, it's worth investigating whether there are other factors in play than the income statements alone.

<comment><USER3> I've admittedly not done extensive research, this is mostly from memory, so if someone else remembers differently please correct me.

BUT - the reason Southwest was the "low fare" leader was because they locked in fuel prices back before we had the massive spike in prices in the early 2000s. That gave them a tremendous advantage over the other airlines given fuel is such a massive part of their overall costs. That combined with standardizing on a single plane (less impactful but still helpful) allowed them to both claim and honor the "low-cost leader" title.

Now that fuel prices have returned to a more "normal" state, their prices had to revert to the mean. They may be cheaper on some legs, but it's not universal anymore.

<comment><USER4> Its worse than that. A hedge on oil price is a bet on the way it will swing.

When oil prices went up, Southwest got to make record profit. When oil prices went down, Southwest got to make record losses.

Southwest also just offers no service to many unprofitable markets. If Southwest were the only carrier, many smaller airports would shut down. There would be maybe 40 larger airports, with high volume flights.

<comment><USER5> Southwest has been profitable for the last 43 years: [http://investors.southwest.com/news-and-events/news- releases...](http://investors.southwest.com/news-and-events/news- releases/2016/01-21-2016-112617923)

So, if by record losses you mean lower profit than normal then sure they got hammered in 2008.

<comment><USER4> Yes it was a bit in jest. But the same amount they save as price goes up, they lose when the prices go down. And yes stability is good, but it's not as big of a deal as ppl make it out to be

<comment><USER5> Hedging can be a net win.

A simple example suppose if price of commodity increases by x your company fails and that has say a 10% chance of happening. If you usually profit 10 billion per year and you can hedge for say 1 billion per year then money wise it seems like a break even. However, failure costs not just this years profits, but every year after that. So, your expected profit over the next 10 years increases even if the hedge does not save you any money over that same 10 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Basically people shop based on price then have a miserable experience, but somehow not miserable enough to stop shopping based on price.

My favorite airline is awful. Uncomfortable, slow, frequent delays, etc. But it's also cheap enough that I would never fly anything else. So I am the problem, but there's no way I'm paying an extra $50/flight.

<comment><USER7> Exactly. If you want a better experience, you can have it, but you have to pay for it.

Airline crap bothered me a lot less once I realized this. I still shop almost exclusively on price, but now that I've internalized that tiny seats are ultimately _my_ choice, it's less annoying.

Blaming Wall Street doesn't make sense to me. Companies would still want to make more money regardless of Wall Street. Blame the customers. Airlines are just giving us what we want! Ask the typical airline passenger what they want and they'll probably say they want a double-wide seat with 6ft of legroom and a free filet mignon meal, but when you watch what they _buy_ it's obvious that they much prefer a cheaper seat that they can barely fit into. Turns out I prefer that too.

<comment><USER8> You can actually get that (and more) in first or business class. Most people don't want to pay for that level of service though.

<comment><USER7> Exactly! The stuff people say they want is only a click away, but when the time comes to pay, their real desires make themselves known.

<comment><USER9> Sure, but the price differential is crazy. I will frequently pay extra for an exit row, at $50-$75. But an upgrade to business class is often three times the price of economy. And it's just not worth that much.

<comment><USER7> Sounds reasonable to me. That seat probably takes up close to 3x the area.

<comment><USER10> The market is segmented reasonably. Most people won't pay for business, so most seats are economy. On certain routes, the flight is so unpleasant that economy would be unbearable for most, so airlines have planes that don't have economy (e.g. SIN-JFK on Singapore Airlines used to be all business class; when the route comes back with their A350-10 deliveries, it'll be all premium economy and business).

Personally, I fly only in business or first on long flights, and buy economy on short flights. It's worth it to me to avoid the jet lag and be able to bear the amount of travel I do (in the past year I've probably done over 40 flights >5h and close to 100 flights total). Flying domestically in economy becomes a lot more comfortable if you give a legacy airline your loyalty. e.g. I get upgraded to first two third of the time and always get the best seating, priority lines, free drinks & food onboard, and lounge access as a United 1K frequent flyer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Having recently bought a mortgage, a car, and a family vacation, I am convinced that the internet has made all of these transactions worse. Maybe there was a time when the internet tilted things in the consumer's favor but nowadays thre are no deals. These industries have figured out how to collude to control all information channels, obfuscate the actual product and discriminate prices to the maximum extent possible.

<comment><USER12> The internet has made buying a car worse? I'm assuming you have either never bought a car without the research and pricing tools available via the internet, or are looking back with rose-colored glasses.

<comment><USER11> My experience is that the internet somehow agrees on the exact price of a specific car and then there is no budging from that number anywhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It seems to me that at some point Economy class will be miserable enough that passengers start comparing metrics of service (seat width, seat pitch, etc.) rather than just price and price alone. We just haven't gotten there yet.

<comment><USER14> But as it is now the Economy class tickets are a fourth of the price of the business class, and the only thing you get is more of everything. Where is the alternative to pay 25% more for the ticket, yet skip the extra stuff, but just get a nicer smoother experience?

<comment><USER8> It's called "premium economy" generally. You get slightly bigger seats, maybe better food options (or it's included as part of your ticket) and sometimes early access to the cabin.

<comment><USER15> >bigger seats

Really? As I recall, Delta and United premium economy are normal economy seats in the forward half of the airplane. It saves you a few minutes deplaning, but does nothing for the comfort level in flight.

<comment><USER16> > As I recall, Delta and United premium economy are normal economy seats in > the forward half of the airplane. It saves you a few minutes deplaning, but > does nothing for the comfort level in flight.

On United it is the same economy seat, but it does have more legroom due to increased separation between rows of seats, compared to standard economy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> For me I just want 1 thing:

Sleeper economy: Something that will let me lie flat that isn't 4x the price, for trans-pacific 12 timezone flights that take 12+hrs. I would be totally fine with beds that stack, it's too bad it doesn't exist.

If a flight is waking hours long then economy or economy+ is good enough for most people.

<comment><USER10> Something that lets you lie flat usually takes >4x the space of economy seats, so must cost >4x the price to be sustainable for the airline.

Air New Zealand tried that with their "SkyCouch" concept, though, where you could join 3 economy seats together into a flat couch/bed thing. It failed and they're removing it from their fleet, however.

<comment><USER18> Three joined economy seats you can't sleep in (it's shaped all wrong), it wastes a bunch of space (where the legs go), and it's not stacked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> A new "basic economy" class, that doesn't allow you to take carry on baggage and makes you sit in the middle of the row? That's exactly what I want, pissed off people in the middle of every row.

Now introducing "coffin economy" \- once you climb into our sleek new fully reclined seatboxes, you'll wish you were dead!

One thing the article doesn't point out is that oil prices have been on a tear lower, which allow the airlines to get more profitable. We'll see how long that lasts. There's a reason why the P/E multiples of the airlines is well below that of the rest of the S&P

<comment><USER20> >P/E multiples of the airlines is well below that of the rest of the S&P

umm that means they're discounted right? you're suggesting contradictory things

<comment><USER19> If you want to call it a discount, that's fair, but it's not really. People aren't willing to pay 15 or 20x earnings, they want to pay 9 - 12x earnings. You might call this "value" investing, or a "value" trap. This generally suggests that the income stream is less reliable to maintain, and allows for heavier discounting of future earnings.

On the other hand, for a "growth" company, a high P/E might be justifiable, because in a few years they will have higher earnings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I just watched the 1974 movie "The Parallax View". There's a scene aboard a 707, and I was amused how flying is just the same as today. Except that the aisles were wide enough that someone could squeeze by the drink cart.

<comment><USER22> Fun, tangental fact - that's probably more down to it being a movie set than an actual plane. There's actually a soundstage in Hollywood that's dedicated to plane sets. Here's their 737:

[http://airhollywood.com/aviation-sets/narrow- body-737/](http://airhollywood.com/aviation-sets/narrow-body-737/)

...you can see how the aisle is much wider than a typical aircraft.</comment></comment>


UC makes landmark decision to drop ACT and SAT requirement for admission - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-05-21/uc-drops-sat-and-act-test-requirement-for-admission <comment><USER2> The main discussion for this is here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23266209](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23266209)

</comment><comment><USER3> I can't help but wonder at the motivations for these changes, at UC and other schools. It seems to be a combination of equity (it favors rich kids), effectiveness (it's not that predictive) and risk aversion (can't prove racist admissions if there's no standardized comparison).

And yet... I wonder if we're throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Standardized tests _seem_ like they could be such a such a powerful force for fairness & efficiency. I wonder that there isn't a way to improve the test - especially since, at this rate, the SAT could be obsolete in a decade or two.

<comment><USER4> I think the problem with standardized tests is that they're standardized; you can prepare for them. It reduces both the effectiveness and the equity, because preparation for the tests is something that rich kids will have better time and access to.

<comment><USER5> I read an article, that I can't find now, that convincingly argues that the SAT is one of the most equalizing factors for privilege. Impressive extracurricular, recommendation letters, and even grades are easier to buy than a higher SAT score.

Prep helps, but prep has a limit. A Golf tutor, high tier equipment, admission to private school with a large golf team, etc. are more easily bought.

<comment><USER6> as are all the great college recs from all those various coaches, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Also discussed here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23266209](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23266209)

</comment><comment><USER8> I wonder if the decision was made on data. Is SAT score correlated to college GPA? Educated guess says high school gpa has a stronger correlation.</comment>


Hybrid AI/Human collaboration answers most COVID19 mysteries, solutions found ! - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@nkalex/can-thinking-outside-the-box-lead-to-immediate-solutions-for-the-covid19-pandemic-258dfc036afe <comment><AUTHOR> COVID19 is not a pneumonia, it is a mostly asymptomatic blood and central nervous system disease, it didn't start in the Wet Market and a vaccine may not be required, looking hopeful !</comment>


YouTube Leanback - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/leanback

<comment><USER2> I feel like the the passive viewing experience is one area that's really been lacking for web video.... this is a pretty good start. If any youtube product guys are listening i'd like to see some 'curated' (sponsored?) channels.... that would be cool. Something to cut through all the junk- I would watch that.

<comment><USER3> Currently the top YouTube channels make around 10-30K a month from ads and sponsorships (some much more). They put out really quality stuff. Just go look at the top subscribed channels and you will find some really great video creators. What your asking for already exists, it happened naturally as people became more and more popular on YouTube.

I highly recommend this guy, he has over a million subscribers: <http://bit.ly/b4aivv> and you should buy his iPhone app ;)

<comment><USER2> I don't think that model of viewing is that compelling- first of all because the channels are all kind of narrowly themed, second of all, it really is mostly junk... first page for most subscribed and most viewed channels? mostannoyingorange... case closed....

also, they don't cycle through the videos automatically (i.e., it's not passive) -from one video to the next, how do you find other content to watch? Most of the other videos I end up clicking on turn out to be video responses and stuff like that.... I think this part of the youtube UX is pretty broken if you're just browsing videos. Even if it was active you would want to be able to click through to another video you want to see, but it doesn't work this way.

I don't doubt that youtube is making money from their ads, but I was just suggesting if they were to pay someone to curate their content they could still make money from it.

<comment><USER3> <http://youtube.com/realannoyingorange> is hilarious, just ask one of his one million fans... case closed...

And YouTube isn't the only ones making money from this, the video creators are actually making 10-30K a month. From my experience working in this space curated videos will never draw as much of a following as individual video creators.

I was thinking about passive video watching today and the thing is I don't think that will ever really take off on the Internet. People are too busy when they are online, and sitting back and consuming content does not deliver the same 'buzz' as switching quickly from one topic to another. Our start-up delivers video content to users from Channels they love, intermittently throughout the day through Facebook/Email/phones, etc. This seems to be a much more realistic future for video content on the web. It seems to fit much more naturally into the experience of being online, than the idea that a user will sudden stopping 'browsing' and start leaning back. IMHO Leaning back in general may be dying.

You should really try to find a YouTube channel you like and start following along. Unless you do you will never really understand where (I believe) the future of video is going. If you didn't like my previous selection, try this guy he is great: <http://www.youtube.com/user/KassemG>

<comment><USER2> alright, well, some people may find really annoying orange funny. In general though I see more of this type of irreverent content on youtube than anything else... -where the point of the thing is to make non-sensical jokes... I can throw in my elitist intellectual HN ideals here and wish for more substantive content...

I also don't think that passive consumption of content is going anywhere. To take music as a parallel, radio is dead, but pandora is really taking off. I think you just have to be smart about how your content is presented and in what context. I would think there's plenty of room for youtube type sites to bleed over into where tv is now. There's no real reason really annoying orange couldn't be presented in a passive context. I might even watch it and think it was ok, but there's no way I would willingly click on it and watch the whole thing, let alone more than one of their videos. That's the problem with channels, and content discovery on the internet in general- You're asked to dive deep too soon, or when you only have a passing interest.

The fact that it's on the "internet" or that people are "online" shouldn't really matter. All devices are going to be hooked up to your wifi/home network soon, if they aren't already. (e.g. netflix, etc.) Not to mention mobile/tablets. We'll see if google can do something with googletv.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wasn't expecting this to really hold my attention, but I ended up watching for 25 minutes the first time I tried it.

I just hope they add a way to add videos to the favorites and view the original youtube page for a video. Also a bit annoying that you can't control it with the mouse, but they'll probably fix that.

</comment><comment><USER5> This redirects to [http://www.youtube.com/?ytsession=vjlEKpY0_U2hKWQ_KC-- 4GLSYy...](http://www.youtube.com/?ytsession=vjlEKpY0_U2hKWQ_KC-- 4GLSYyeexKi_t6bEvsJJAPA20l10nWEcBn_fpRE3pz7fcSP- ZdcT3PqyCC68Pz9yPHDVp4H-VRAa6JI_H9FqctOakgaVE25tszJy5WBivTa5YIH- ZpsfmrVCQIa0sBvlTkGHkeRhV0VseBxDSima85sIqV-n9NcLrFWlAYUaHdkVY3PIT3wScql7ppvC9GA0mGVl9FgNTBa6nOf2WdOnbfY3HPRnkjm38lLEEl6WjQ0TEMS1hOSIj64svuFFxbrfUWdJlyWg-1MdgDadrPuM8nc) for me, with the helpful message "Your account has been permanently disabled." at the top of their homepage. So, what am I missing?

EDIT: Ah, I get it. Google connected a throwaway youtube account to my google account a while back. I disconnected them, which google interprets as "permanently disabled," which is not that same thing as "delete this link permanently" in my mind!

</comment><comment><USER6> Very confusing at first, and it seems impossible to share videos. But I like the idea.

</comment><comment><USER7> Not a bad start at all. This could work very well with Kinect if MSFT ever decides to let in YouTube.

</comment><comment><USER8> The best thing about it is the lack of ads.

Does anyone know if this is done in HTML5?

<comment><USER4> It's Flash. Easy way to check, by the way, is to right click on it. If it's Flash it'll say "About Adobe Flash Player 10".

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is there a volume control? I couldn't find it.

<comment><USER10> yes, the volume control for your television.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Very nice.</comment>


When knowledge makes us hesitate - <AUTHOR> http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2221-when-knowledge-makes-us-hesitate <comment><USER2> I think this post can be summed up as "With experience comes the ability to make intelligent educated guesses with limited information".

Seems to me that once you reach a certain level of mastery, any chance event that happens can be seen in the light of previous similar chance events, and so that person with the most experience is able to say "this is likely how things will go from here" and move forward.

At least, that's been my experience. When I was green, and something changed, I had no idea what to do. Now, when there's something that changes, it barely slows me down. I've seen it all, I've heard it all, and at the end of the day, everything has a solution.

At least in software.

<comment><USER3> The key is that there are some individuals that can be masters at their craft and still doubt themselves, and some that know nothing and are able to create new realities.

Subject matter knowledge is only a part of the equation. The ability to "think on you feet" - and to do so _correctly_ for often than not - is one of the most undervalued yet important skills of modern life. It affects everyone from Generals to Data Entry clerks, and will probably mean the difference between a meteoric rise up the success ladder and questioning why that other guy got promoted over you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Patton: "A good plan violently executed now is far better than a perfect plan executed next week."

</comment><comment><USER5> Making decisions blindly is far worse than hesitation. I agree that you can't let new information keep you from making a decision forever, but it's valuable to take a bit of time to fully consider the repercussions this information may have on you.

<comment><USER6> I would agree with you when it comes to life and death situations, like in a war or something.

But in an office building, I don't see this being a problem. Having long meetings to discuss the virtue of different options is more often a waste of time and productivity.

<comment><USER7> That isn't the only option though. I would prefer that the person closest to the problem make the decision, which isn't usually the person most willing to make a decision.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This phenomenon hit me hard when I was learning to play Poker back in the day.

</comment><comment><USER9> One of the really interesting things that the US military took from this is to make decisions within the opposing force's ODA (Observe-Decide-Act) loop. The theory goes that if you make your decisions within their ODA loop that your actions appear to be random and start to cause analysis paralysis in the enemy force's command structure gaining further advantage for your force.

</comment><comment><USER10> This reminds me of the line from The Cable Guy: _He who hesitates, masturbates_ ;)

In non-critical situations, I think it holds true, be it for chatting up girls, starting a new code project, or when you're facing a pile of dirty dishes in your flat.</comment>


Ask HN: Assassination Robots - <AUTHOR>

Looks like slow news day to me, so I have a question to the HN community.
Last week there was a story about a hit team in Dubai that got tracked from multiple CCTV cameras as they did their job. It was a large team and performed a very-well coordinated assassination.
It occurs to me that such hit jobs with big teams are a thing of the past due to constant surveillance, and we've probably seen the last one. That means that a shift might be coming, with lower-cost disruptive technology doing the work that highly-trained paramilitary people used to do.
We're already seeing a lot of recon being done by man-portable UAVs in Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition, we're seeing some very complex IEDs being created by insurgents using off-the-shelf technology.
So, without getting into the politics of assassination, what do you guys think the next step in technology will be? Small UAVs with sniper rifles? Pre-positioned automated sniper rifles? Robot bombs disguised to look like ordinary street items?
If speculating makes you uncomfortable please don't participate, and I'm not crazy about working all the bugs out of these ideas, but I am interested in what sorts of unique ways you guys can come up with for whacking somebody. Note that effectiveness and anonymity are the scoring criteria. And let's stipulate that the goal has to be to whack one person with a very low chance of whacking anybody else by accident, so IED's aren't going to work. <comment><USER2> I think your premise is wrong - constant surveillance did jack-all to prevent this assassination and will continue to be little deterrent. Surveillance doesn't often detect crimes/attacks before or even during their commission. It's primarily good for piecing events together after-the-fact.

Until behavior-analysis and/or facial recognition become ready for primetime so that a hotel security's gets an alert saying, "possible organized covert activity by these people", such operations will only continue.

<comment><AUTHOR> Really?

I was under the impression that something like 25 agents had their covers blown by having their pictures in every major newspaper in the world.

If the Israelis did it (which looks very likely), they sure are acting like it was a major disaster for their intelligence services. There have been calls for people to resign, editorials about what went wrong, etc.

The problem as I read it is that this was conducted like a military operation -- probably very similar to the way operations are conducted in the Gaza strip. Only in a modern western city, you leave a lot more dirt behind you than you do in a poor slum somewhere.

That's just what I've gathered from half a dozen articles or so, though. Perhaps you are right: perhaps these same guys can be effective in other operations. I doubt it, though.

<comment><USER2> " _Really?_ "

Is the target dead? Were they stopped?

Really.

 _"I was under the impression that something like 25 agents had their covers blown by having their pictures in every major newspaper in the world."_

And their names are...?

Considering that a number of analysts point out that the involved people appeared aware of, but not concerned by, the security cameras, it seems unlikely that any exposure was unexpected.

<comment><AUTHOR> _Considering that a number of analysts point out that the involved people appeared aware of, but not concerned by, the security cameras, it seems unlikely that any exposure was unexpected._

I think that's the key question. From what I've heard, the assumption is that they never expected the Dubai authorities to connect up all the videos. After all, the hit was staged to look like a natural death.

Remember the goal isn't just to kill the guy. It's to kill him preferably by making it look like a natural death and definitely by not getting your face on the nightly news. Ideally nobody ever suspects anything so nobody goes back and pieces together the video.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


12-year-old builds low-cost Lego braille printer - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57618878-1/12-year-old-builds-low-cost-lego-braille-printer/

<comment><USER2> This is truly interesting. It's amazing how Mindstorms can be used to develop it. I'm not sure how practical it will be as the author has mentioned it's currently capable of printing 1 char/5-7 seconds. So that might be too slow. But kudos to him to develop a solution; to think out of the box. Kudos to Lego to offer a tool to let dreamers build.

</comment><comment><USER3> hmmm, I was imagining something entirely different: Moving lego block around to create a tactile braille 'screen'. (see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refreshable_Braille_display](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refreshable_Braille_display) )

Making one of those from lego blocks would actually be a really cool project; and can probably be done for way under the cost of a real one.

</comment><comment><USER4> At 12 I was playing Diablo II like it was going out of style. Oh how our minds are wasted. GJ kid, bright future in store for you.</comment>