John McAfee 'captured' - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/02/john_mcafee_captured_report/

<comment><AUTHOR> Or not.... <http://www.whoismcafee.com/i-am-safe/>

</comment><comment><USER2> What is goin on here?</comment>


Ask HN: Do you wish you could keep track of your comments on blogs? - <AUTHOR>

At Meddle (get.meddle.it) we're trying to solve this problem.
Also, anyone with a blog can embed this widget on their site too, here -->http://get.meddle.it/meddle-button-publishers/
Thoughts? <comment><AUTHOR> There's a lot of ways this can go. Meddle can be simply a a place where users can display their insights about on particular articles

AND/OR

It can learn towards a widget that bloggers can embed to allow readers to mark up text, comment and share throughout their networks, which in turn, would increase visibility.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [http://get.meddle.it/meddle-button-publishers/](http://get.meddle.it/meddle- button-publishers/)</comment>


When the close button doesn't close - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/2013/10/07/when_the_close_button_doesnt_close/

<comment><USER2> Close button functionality on pop-up windows _could_ be provided (and enforced) by the OS. The reasoning for it would similar to the "Trusted Path" requirement in multi-level systems. Fake pop-ups would lack some visually noticeable clue that is un-spoofable by applications.</comment>


Our Duolingo like app to learn coding is featured on ProductHunt today - <AUTHOR> Thrilled to announce that our app (Programming Hub 2.0) has been featured on ProductHunt today.
Programming Hub is a totally interactive and fun way to learn to code on your Android + iPhone + iPad - no coding experience required! We have short coding challenges and lessons in 30+ Programming Languages along with E-certificates for completion of each course.
Making the app as interactive and fun as possible was really important to us. To this end, we let you run, write and experiment with code in a mobile code editor and bring your code to life!
We are addressing 3 major problems through Programming Hub:
Making Programming skills affordable to the masses(including 1 Billion learning aspirants from developing countries to bridge the gap of 1 million programmers deficit by 2020)
Programming is complex: thus we simplified it by relating complex concepts with real world examples.
Programming is boring: hence we made the course as engaging, interactive and fun as possible. Inclusion of humor and sarcasm has made the course unlike anything you'll find anywhere else.
Courses are research backed using kolbs scientific model of learning and guarantee retention of concepts you learn through the app.
Happy to answer any questions, and I'd love to hear your feedback.
Here's the PH listing - https://www.producthunt.com/posts/programming-hub-2-0 <comment><USER2> Nice one, all the best!!</comment>


Tell HN: I think you're downplaying the PHP community - <AUTHOR> I consider the HN community, on the whole, to be very much concerned with their professional development.
Whether it's taking classes, working on side projects, or reading the latest blogs, everyone seems genuinely interested in learning.
Based solely on vote counts alone on the frontpage for the last few days,
there appears to be a very large portion of the HN community that both readily follows PHP and/or actively uses it.
What I find most interesting, however, is the comments section.
There's a large camp of developers on HN that are very outspoken regarding their abhorrence of PHP.
The language has been ridiculed for well over a decade, so this is to be expected.
What's most intriguing is what you don't see in the comments: the huge number of proponents of PHP.
So where does this discrepancy between vote counts and comments stem from?
I would venture to guess the vote counts themselves stem from silent proponents.
They likely don't provide counter arguments because it's simply not necessary. Nothing is gained.
Everyone here has a unified goal of working on cool problems, building amazing applications, and hoping to strike paydirt for all of our hard work.
Maybe it's time we all think about why it is we complain about language X vs. language Y
and just get back to trying to make our lives and those around us better, through code. <comment><USER2> My theory is simple: Have you ever heard the pithy saying that there is no worse non-smoker than an ex-smoker?

I think many of the loudest anti-PHP voices are ex-PHP developers. They/We naturally assume our own experience is normative, and since we didn't know X, Y, or Z back when we were coding in PHP, obviously neither does anybody else still coding in PHP.

Or, more graciously, back then PHP was the best language we had learned up to that point (better than BASIC or Perl, say), but now we use Ruby or Python or something else, so now we recognize the deficiencies in PHP. Clearly those other people, just a few steps behind us on the path, need to also learn about the deficiencies in PHP and how much better X is.

There are any number of nuanced ways for that to be expressed, but ultimately I think it's mostly tribalism, and obviously unhelpful. Sure, I used to write PHP. Built my first startup with it, sold it, and stuck with it for a few years more even after that. And sure, I don't write in PHP any more. These days it's Python or Java or Clojure for me. Because PHP sucks? No, because it doesn't suit what I'm doing these days as well. And not necessarily for reasons related to the quality of the language.

<comment><USER3> Give me a break. These are the orders in which I started learning my languages BASIC, C, assembly, (6502, z80, x86, MIPS 3000), Lisp, Perl, Java, Python, plenty of others then PHP. I really like Python, Ruby and Lua. I like the ecosystem for Python, yet want me to build a web application? I will pick PHP any day! It has it quirks and warts, but you can win big with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In British politics we have this concept of "The silent majority" which inevitably gets mentioned at referenda and elections. The effect was probably most prevalent in the Scottish independence referendum in 2014 where a no vote of 55% bet a yes vote of 45%.

Many many yes voters (including myself) were very surprised by this result - the internet was on fire with grass roots activism of all kinds. Glasgow had weekly rallies with thousands (sometimes tens of thousands) attending. And yet we lost.

I can't help but wonder if we're witnessing the same phenomena - a silent majority of people who feel no need to contribute to the discourse but have different opinions and values on the subjects us in the comments section are discussing.

Interesting stuff.

<comment> angry-hacker It is same in Spain with Partido Popular (PP). Everyone seems to hate them and talk how corrupt conservative fascists they are.

And yet after every election the map of the country is blue - - color that represents PP :))

<comment><USER5> Map for illustration purposes:

[http://www.levante- emv.com/elementosWeb/gestionCajas/MMP/Ima...](http://www.levante- emv.com/elementosWeb/gestionCajas/MMP/Image/2016/mapa-provincias3_1.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Php is objectively a bad language, and as the literature on why it is is wast like oceans, I don't feel the need to add to it. That said it's quite understandable why the language is used regardless of it's inferiority, there are some practical reasons, just like JavaScript. Thus it's understandable why people follow its news and also why it's harshly criticised. HN is a technical forum of tech entrepreneurs and computer hackers, and people discuss most often the technical aspects of things, and for Php it's more than expected that the tone be downplaying. Though I believe that should be taken as is and not be extended to community itself.

<comment><USER7> PHP is an _easy_ language that is usable by practically anyone. And it simply make tech snobs and self-proclaimed gurus jealous :j

<comment><USER8> Php is a language that traded off every bit of sanity and security for "ease of use".

So it is easy, but have you tried building a web app in Python? You don't even need a web server. Only in recent versions Php got it's own web server. The point is, that Php is easy is mostly a myth. Other languages have as easy path to building a web applications. But they just stop short of giving up any sanity or security...

I am not sure if we should encourage people to make that tradeoff..

<comment><USER7> Come on, choose one. Either PHP is easy but insane or it is not that easy, at least compared Python? Sorry, I can't get your exact idea.

<comment><USER8> Not sure what you mean. Which part of my message is not clear to you?

<comment><USER9> The bit where you contradicted yourself in the first line.

 _Php is a language that traded off every bit of sanity and security for "ease of use"._

There's nothing _sane_ about unusably difficult languages.

<comment><USER8> That is not a contradiction. I am quite baffled by the way your logic works.

I saw in another comment you accuse others of using 'dirty internet tricks'. I am afraid you are either using them to the limit by yourself, or your logic is all messed up.

I will try to explain anyway. A langauge can be made difficult just for the sake of it. For example, Brainfuck. But a language can also be a bit more difficult as a result of process/methodologies that make it more secure/sane. For example the borrow checker in rust and purity in Haskell. Both of these make these languages a bit harder to use than usual.

What Php does it the opposite. Examples are things like "10"=="0x0a" being true and Php arrays being a mashup of a number of different data structures, and include/require functions that provide zero namespacing, register globals, magic_quotes etc etc....Now some of these are removed, I know, so please don't come back with that. I am mostly pointing towards one of the founding principle of the language..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > So where does this discrepancy between vote counts and comments stem from?

People are probably concerned about not being viewed as a good or knowledgeable developer if they admit to using PHP here, so it's probably not a fight that's worth having for most posters. People don't always give their genuine opinions when they think that their personal reputations or livelihoods are on the line.

This isn't just the case in technical or career matters, but especially when it comes to personal reputation. Just ask people how many sex partners they've had: the results will probably be skewed up or down in fairly predictable ways if people think there's a chance that they'll be judged somehow based on the answer.

Personally I think PHP is a useful (and extremely imperfect) tool that is very appropriate to solve a fairly wide range of problems. For certain problems, it's arguably the best tool. That's why it's going to be around for quite a while.

</comment><comment><USER11> I would attribute this discrepancy to a natural extension of pg's thoughts about the blub paradox ([http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html)). Most PHP developers I've talked to justify their work in PHP by saying that essentially languages are more or less the same, and that PHP is "just as good" as any other language. It's rare for me to hear someone say that PHP is substantially better than other languages. By contrast, former PHP developers who now work in other languages usually say that PHP is significantly _worse_ than other languages. It seems natural that someone who thinks there's a significant difference would be more likely to comment about it than someone who thinks the languages are basically the same. There's more to say about the difference than there is about a lack of difference, and it's relatively hard to provide real arguments for the lack of a difference – it's usually more "there's no real evidence of a difference and this works fine for me."

</comment><comment><USER12> The PHP people are working instead of complaining about it [https://slack.engineering/taking-php-seriously- cf7a60065329#...](https://slack.engineering/taking-php-seriously- cf7a60065329#.by4zu6s1g)

<comment><USER13> According to that, they're _replacing_ PHP with Hack and HHVM.

HHVM is backwards compatible (so runs your PHP, lets you include it from Hack, etc) but it's hardly a vote of confidence in PHP, the language.

<comment><USER12> Ok, there is the other side to this coin WITHOUT replacing PHP [http://engineering.dailymotion.com/php-7-deployment-at- daily...](http://engineering.dailymotion.com/php-7-deployment-at-dailymotion/)

<comment><USER13> Again, that doesn't say PHP is good, just that they think PHP7 is a better upgrade path than HHVM if you want to "scale without investing too much" (their words). A rewrite in something better wasn't an option.

It does highlight an important issue with Hack though. Once you start to migrate to Hack, moving back to "pure PHP" is a pig.

<comment><USER7> "that doesn't say PHP is good" \- what are you trying to say here? That they hate PHP but keep working with it?

You see, that's a hater's logic.

Every PHP's advantage or eviddence you've given, you are trying to dismiss or even twist, calling it a disadvantage - usual tricks for the internet discussion when you aren't interested to find the truth but just to keep pressing with your opinion.

Honestly, this kind of discussion is the only problem with PHP.

<comment><USER13> It's the logic of a developer who has otherwise moved onto better things but had also had to maintain legacy PHP webapps.

I enjoy the speed boosts of HHVM or PHP7 as much as anyone else, because I benefit from it, but yeah, I still hate the language.

<comment><USER7> I pity you (no offense intended). Really. One of my own biggest fears is that it may happen that I would have to earn my living by doing things I hate.

May be your hate is entirely from the fact that you are forced to work with the tool you don't like.

<comment><USER13> I hated the language long before I stopped using it daily.

You don't need to pity me. I don't have much to do with PHP any more. All new development is either by a static generator or Django, or whatever's required... I just also maintain a PHP server for a client with a load of Wordpress installs.

That's was my point about liking stories about PHP getting better. A performance boost means a free upgrade for no extra work. I like that. Doesn't mean I like PHP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> That's a fair criticism. I do a fair amount of PHP and participate in the community, so I know what you are talking about. That said, to me, the PHP professional development community seems anemic compared to the communities of other languages. I also think the PHP professional development community is smaller than that of other languages when measured as a percentage of the total professionals using the language.

<comment><USER10> > I also think the PHP professional development community is smaller than that > of other languages when measured as a percentage of the total professionals > using the language.

Is this really the case? I've seen estimates of around 70-80% of websites using PHP as part of their backend. Granted, many of these would be simple Wordpress sites or other blogging/shopping/content management platforms where almost no actual coding by the user is involved.

<comment><USER14> Sorry, that was unclear. What I mean is that a lower percentage of PHP-using professionals participate in professional development than, say, the percentage of Python-using professionals who do. I agree that PHP is popular.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> People are worried about how they are perceived by other developers. It's the same reason a lot of people loudly pooh-pooh GameMaker (citing Godot, UR4, Unity, etc. as superior) even though it's a super powerful tool that, in the right hands, can be used to rapidly prototype very complicated and versatile games.

<comment><USER16> Game Maker deserves the criticism it gets. It is easy for beginners to learn, but it traps you in its proprietary ecosystem with subpar tools.

Moreover, it is designed around bad practices in the name of simplicity. Games cannot be framerate-independent, for example.

It may be a useful prototyping tool, but I feel sorry for the people stuck using it when those prototypes turn into full-size games and they can't easily port to something better. It's better to teach people something more flexible and similar to what's used in the real world.

PHP doesn't have these problems, it's just painful.

<comment><USER17> >It may be a useful prototyping tool, but I feel sorry for the people stuck using it when those prototypes turn into full-size games and they can't easily port to something better.

On the one hand, yes. But on the other hand, I doubt the people who made Undertale are complaining.

<comment><USER16> Tobyfox has said he can't port Undertale to Nintendo consoles because he used Game Maker, despite wanting to.

<comment><USER15> "Fox had little experience with game development; he and his three brothers often used RPG Maker 2000 to make role-playing games, though few were ever completed."

Fox still has all the assets for Undertale. All he has to do is port the battle system to Unity or something and then drop in the old assets. Someone already did it for the Sans battle: [https://jcw87.github.io/c2-sans- fight/](https://jcw87.github.io/c2-sans-fight/)

The problem is, Fox is an unexperienced developer and doesn't know how to do that. He likely wants a one-click "convert my gamemaker game to nintendo" solution not an actual porting effort which would require rewriting parts of the game in a new language/engine.

<comment><USER16> > Fox still has all the assets for Undertale. All he has to do is port the > battle system to Unity or something and then drop in the old assets.

Porting the whole thing over is a lot of work, speaking as someone who has actually worked on trying to port a game away from Game Maker.

> The problem is, Fox is an unexperienced developer and doesn't know how to do > that. He likely wants a one-click "convert my gamemaker game to nintendo" > solution not an actual porting effort which would require rewriting parts of > the game in a new language/engine.

No, he just doesn't want to waste his time on reimplementing the entire game just to run on one more platform.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> PHP is the Toyota Corolla of programming languages. Not many are passionate about the Corolla, but it's one of the most widely driven cars in America.

I challenge you to come up with a better car analogy.

<comment><USER19> > Not many are passionate about the Corolla

But there is also nothing particularly wrong with it. It may not be better, but it has no worse maintenance record, crash record, or accident survival rate then average car. (In software world, that would be perhaps java).

To come with better analogy - PHP is like a 15+ yo car imported from neighbour country because that's the only thing you can afford. Its popular and you'll see it all around in you area, so you may be unaware that better cars even exist. It can be used, but something breaks every 50km, the rust has eaten so much that any minor collision will get you killed, and you'll see people frantically repairing it with duck tape on every street to ever get home. But yeah, you can drive one. And have you heard that next year the tax will be lowered, so you may be able to afford 14 yo cars, life is getting so much better here.

<comment><USER7> In fact PHP7 as well as PHP fork called HackLang used in Facebook are brand new cars and the latter even produced in your own country.

<comment><USER19> Some of the painting is new, but the engine (stdlib) remains the same.

<comment><USER7> So you are blaming PHP's excellent backward compatibility. Why I am not surprised? :)

<comment><USER19> I just oppose naming it "brand new". Its largely still just as broken as it always was. Fixing one issue per release will maybe get PHP to state comparable with other languages somewhere in the next century (if they stand still in the meantime).

Also PHP could easily add sane new stdlib if it wanted to, and keep supporting the old one as long as people want to. I just don't think anyone is really interested in doing so. Most PHP users don't care much, and few large companies that fund the work are mainly focused on keeping the ship from sinking.

<comment><USER7> "keeping the ship from sinking" \- surely you are a borad member for Facebook, Badoo, Dailymotion. I appreciate your first hand evidence.

Come on, if a handful inconsistent function names is all the problem with PHP to you, let me suggest you to get yourself a good _IDE with a code completion feature_. You'll forget that "broken stdlib" forever... of course if your aim is to get the job jone, not to slander a language you aren't working with.

<comment><USER19> That they are inconsistent is one problem. That they are functions is another (in otherwise object-oriented language). That they don't throw exceptions is one more (in a laguage that has them). IDE won't fix any of that.

<comment><USER7> You can make them throw actually.

set_error_handler("myErrorHandler"); function myErrorHandler($errno, $errstr, $errfile, $errline) { throw new Exception($errstr, $errno); }

Is all you need.

They are functions - yes. If your first language was fully OOP, then probably PHP is not your language of choice. It doesn't make it bad, though.

<comment><USER19> This will most likely break a lot of existing code. Even if it works, it means I'll be parsing text to figure out what exactly happened (exception not only signal "that something happended", but also "what exactly happened". In languages that use them properly that is). Third, nobody does it. Most importantly, stdlib doesn't do it. All of does make PHP bad for me.

<comment><USER7> It it will break BC, then don't use it? You guys are using every dirty trick invented for internet discussions in the last 30 years. You said it dosen't exist. When I showed the way to get it, __the agrument should stop this very instant. __

Instead you started nitpicking on the solution. That 's dishonest. And it makes the discussion endless.

> Third, nobody does it.

This statement of yours clearly states that you have no idea of the actual PHP ecosystem. __Every single major PHP framework __is routinely doing it.

<comment><USER19> > It it will break BC, then don't use it?

So the choice is between insane behaviour, or breaking the code.

> Instead you started nitpicking on the solution. That's dishonest. And it > makes the discussion endless.

Because the problem is unsolvable. You cannot get PHP to behave sanely unless you redo everything it does. If you fix one thing, dozens of other will fall apart.

>Every single major PHP framework is routinely doing it.

Right, I wasn't aware of this. How do you write libraries for PHP than, you choose between using what's in stdlib as it is and being used within a framework where exceptions are thrown? Support both? Ignore the problem? Or every library makes its own choice how stdlib should behave? Do the frameworks convert strerr and errno into something usable?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've never worked on PHP code in a truly professional context, but I've had one-off (very) small jobs where I've had to perform maintenance on some PHP. I have no doubt that the language and tooling has improved over the years, but I have no desire to ever work on any of it ever again. This is my honest opinion, and I'm not writing it to signal anything. There are dozens of viable production languages and life is short, so why work with one that you find very painful? If PHP works for you, that's fine, but people who don't like PHP are going to be vocal about it because they don't want to find themselves in a situation where they have to write it. You might not end up being forced to write PHP for pay these days, but it's not unrealistic to imagine that you might end up writing (for example) Java because you need a job even if you really don't like it. So you end up with language advocacy and trash talking and there's nothing wrong with any of that, it's just a way to let off steam and preserve your sanity.

</comment><comment><USER21> See, the thing is: I spend much of my time trying to show people that good tools can be used to make good software. We have MUCH misinformation, and people don't even understand that you can prove a software right using theorem provers, don't know anything about type system - "C has types but they don't work" \- and etc. I've heard arguments like this all the time, and that really sucks, because then you get limited by tools "you can hire people to work with".

In fact, I've been hearing for 10 years things like "what, OCaml? where do we hire someone to work on this?", "Haskell? nobody uses that", and more recently "we cannot use Rust as we don't have anyone that can possibly understand this". Saying "PHP is just another language/tool" is just throwing the towel without trying to understand anything.

What would you think if someone said "coal is just another fuel, stop trying to push electric, let me use coal and go on with life"? Well, a lot of people believe this, but let's pretent there's a consensus on this, shall we?

So, the question is: you CAN use PHP for doing web development. You can also use coal as a fuel. Not only that, but all libraries are written with this in mind, all code bases and fragments of code are focused on web development, etc. Coal is also combustible, a lot of manufactures dominate the technology, it's cheap, so.. hey, energy!

Even if the language is pure crap - as coal is as a fuel - people will only hit the crappy parts when their system is already implemented and being used by more people. "Hey, this language has a lot of issues" \- "hey, this coal thing really polutes". Too late. You already have a full system implemented, you have experience with the language - or energy production technology... so you just change your workflow to accommodate this. Or you just never realize it - "whatever, no big deal" \- and keep using it, as you see the advantages as more important.

There's tons of factors that contribute to the PHP popularity - the same thing with C, Perl, etc. Doesn't mean the language is good, and also doesn't mean everyone has to agree with you that "it's just another tool, let's go back to business".

So yeah, no.. I won't let you go on with PHP, sorry. I want better tools, better systems, and I want to spread knowledge. I guess we are going to agree to disagree on that.

</comment><comment><USER22> Because arguing on the internet tends to be an exercise in frustration. If I like PHP and you don't it is unlikely that either of us will change the other's mind. So it's not really worth my time or effort to defend the language to virtual strangers. I can respect your dislike while going off to code in PHP anyway, and the world won't end. If you ask me my opinion, I'll be happy to share it, but I don't feel the urge to offer it unsolicited.

</comment><comment><USER23> /me raises hand

I've been writing php professionally since 2000, and I like it well enough. I know it so much better than any other language that, 20 years into my career, I can't see how I'll ever learn another one well enough to compare them.

</comment><comment><USER24> I write a lot of perl. You see a similarly depressing response there as well.

Mostly I file it under "hipsters gonna hipster" and then go back to doing something useful.

</comment><comment><USER13> Use and hatred are not mutually exclusive. I can't be the only developer in here who has to maintain legacy webapps written in awful languages. If I see a post offering a 200× speedup on my crappy old PHP scripts, it gets an upvote.

</comment><comment><USER25> I wish PHP had methods on primitive types, but I can live without them. PHP is not my first choice of language to develop in, but I don't think it's a bad language, and it paid my bills for quite a long time.

</comment><comment><USER26> People that state it's such a horrible language are "follow" types. I believe some people actually do think it's a bad language, but for the most part, I would say people are just following the status quo.

<comment><USER16> I've contributed to the PHP codebase for 3 years, and I think it's bad.

<comment><USER27> Hello Andrea... May I ask a question?

You're quite critical of PHP, and often claim it's bad and flawed. And yet you're a core contributor, are you not?

Well... what are your suggestions? What would you do? What's the future of the language? Should people bail or not?

<comment><USER16> > And yet you're a core contributor, are you not?

A contributor to the core, certainly. I can't say if I'm a "core" contributor.

> Well... what are your suggestions? What would you do?

I can't say with certainty what I will do, but I can point to what I've done. I've tried to fix some things which have bugged me.

> What's the future of the language?

I have no idea. There's not really a roadmap.

> Should people bail or not?

If they want to. If they'd rather use something other than PHP, and they have the choice to, then they're free to do so.

<comment><USER27> That's... oddly neutral, yet slightly discouraging.

Still... if you were building a web application today, would you consider using PHP, a "flawed language"?

<comment><USER16> I have. I write some things in PHP, because I'm familiar with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Flagged? Interesting.

<comment><USER28> Meta-discussions are often flagged because they're less likely to be _intellectually_ interesting, but this one seems to be proceeding reasonably so we can try turning the flags off for now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Not everything in the world is apples and oranges..</comment>


Victory for Users: WhatsApp Fixes Privacy Problem in Group Messaging - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/press/releases/victory-users-whatsapp-fixes-privacy-problem-group-messaging <comment><USER2> Not so much a victory considering whatsapp is in complete control over metadata. Even if it somehow lay in the interests of Facebook to give users a private instant messaging platform, the rootkits known as google play and whatever apple incorporates for complete control over the device are sure to catch any terrorists using their phones like normal people. The ship already burned to a crisp before anyone jumped out.</comment>


Ask HN: Why is so little known about Apple, it's culture? - <AUTHOR>

Time and again, I come across articles on HN and other tech site that talk about the Corporate culture at Google and Microsoft. We see images of Google Employees skateboarding in their offices and game station they have in their offices.
But I have never seen anything about Apple and its corporate culture. I don't think anybody there tweets either.
I am aware of Apple secretive nature about its products, but I was not sure if this applied to other parts of the company as well.
Does anybody has any idea?
Thanks. <comment><USER2> I don't think what you are talking about is 'culture'. Skateboarding in the offices or playing games is only a portion of the culture at start-ups. The Apple culture that gets talked about is the secrecy of their product development, their dedication to clean design (even to the detriment of product), etc. etc.

I was talking to a friend yesterday who used to work for Apple. I assumed he got discounts on all his Apple stuff, like former Microsoft and Adobe employees (among others). His words 'Apple doesn't do that stuff'. Very minor discounts for employees, no employee catering, dry cleaning, etc.

So I suspect the 'cultural cues' you are looking for don't exist at Apple.

Another thing that was said yesterday is that Apple's culture essentially boils down to 'You should be honored to be allowed to work here and create this stuff, so why should Apple bother catering to you'.

Still, my friend is a crazy Fanboy. I don't get it.</comment>


Argentina on Two Steaks a Day (2006) - <AUTHOR> https://idlewords.com/2006/04/argentina_on_two_steaks_a_day.htm <comment><USER2> I know Argentine culture very well. I still drink _mate_ a couple of times a week even if I am not there.

I agree on most things written in this articles, except that sadly, very few can afford eating meat two times a day (and it's not advised either).

Not agree at all with the rant about dulce de leche. I traveled around the globe, and I can tell that many countries will be better countries if they include dulce de leche in their recipes (specially Italian pastry and ice cream).

A mention to roasted _molleja_ ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gizzard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gizzard)) would be deserved, since it's one of the most appreciated component of the _asado_ (roasted meat).

The article is about restaurants, mostly. There is also the Sunday morning tradition of making _asado_ , in family, where the man prepares the meat, and the women make the salad and side dishes.

<comment><USER3> Argentine here, drinking lot of mate every day, and of course doing asado on weekends! Maybe we eat too much meat, yes, but it's not too expensive vs other countries, in terms of quality too. Dulce de leche and the ice cream is one of the best tastes that you can try. We have a lot(really a lot) of milk derivatives like yogurts, creams and cheese too.

</comment></comment><comment> matt-snider Really entertaining! For whatever reason the writing style made me think of this classic:

[https://www.cs.utah.edu/~gback/awfgrmlg.html](https://www.cs.utah.edu/~gback/awfgrmlg.html)

<comment><USER4> Thanks for linking this. Didn't know about it, and loving it !</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What language are you learning and why? - <AUTHOR>

I've spent the last year and a half learning ruby. I've used it for scripting tasks, building apps with sinatra, rails and eventmachine. There were a few reasons for my choice. We have a RoR team at work so I would have colleagues to go to for help, there is a great community surrounding ruby and its dynamic scripting language with OO.
I'm now looking for another language to branch out into, the likely candidates being java or scala. The reason for that is, I would like to learn a solid language on the jvm that is statically typed, has a good concurrency model and can be used for doing heavy backend processing.
What programming language are you guys currently learning? What are your reasons for doing so?
I'm hoping this thread helps give a bit of insight into why people pick languages. Whether its popularity, solving a certain problem, or just out of curiosity. <comment><USER2> I'm learning Haskell, because I've heard good things about it, and it sounds like fun.

I already know most of the better known languages, at least on a read level, so I figured I'll learn something else, for fun.

</comment><comment><USER3> Scala: for the actors thingie, dsl abilities and general power. Fits great in my mind for stable (ha) and fast backend server stuff. Afterwards i'll check clojure. Background: I already know Java, and am a Ruby convert.

</comment><comment><USER4> fexl, because it looks and sounds cool, should be easy and fast to implement, is easily embeddable, and makes it easy to create hard/soft layer abstractions.</comment>


Universal UI Components - <AUTHOR> http://jxnblk.com/writing/posts/universal-ui-components/ <comment><AUTHOR> I really liked this article, and I thought other web developers would enjoy it too.

The concept is to write functional UI components which are decoupled from the DOM rendering engine, such as React, hypserscript, etc. There's an example repo ([https://github.com/jxnblk/universal- components](https://github.com/jxnblk/universal-components)) which demonstrates a couple "universal" components being rendered by different libraries. Pretty interesting to compare final minified file sizes, and I wish someone would create performance benchmarks based on this concept.</comment>


Microsoft to buy Aquantive for $6 billion - <AUTHOR> http://news.com.com/Microsoft+to+buy+Aquantive+for+6+billion/2100-1030_3-6184778.html?tag=nefd.top <comment><USER2> Wow! And here I was thinking $3 billion for Doubleclick was rich!

Whatever the merits of the acquisition on its own, deals like this is bound to send a strong signal to entrepreneurs and investors that the 'new' MS sometimes will buy rather than crush. Since they're sitting on the biggest cashpile this side of China, that is a sweet thing indeed!

<comment><USER3> Is this new? They've been acquisitive for decades.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Google schools them again. Microsoft is late to the party again, getting #2 for twice the price.</comment>


Diversity Policies Don't Help Women, Minorities, Make White Men Feel Threatened - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2016/01/diversity-policies-dont-help-women-or-minorities-and-they-make-white-men-feel-threatened <comment><USER2> If we accept the paper's thesis that diversity policy promotion increases stress in white male interviewees leading to worse interview performance, wouldn't that lead to higher ratios of women and minorities in those organisations since they will perform better relatively?

The picture presented is too simplistic. We need some better statistical analysis of the underlying data.</comment>


How To Value Your Startup Using Comparables - <AUTHOR> http://blog.nahurst.com/how-to-value-your-startup-using-comparables

<comment><USER2> Nice, simple idea. Though the real problem is finding companies that are actually similar to you in all of these areas. I imagine the most unrealistic part is thinking that your teams will actually be similar (taking into account your respective networks, domain expertise, etc).</comment>


Amazon expands frustration-free packaging - <AUTHOR> http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2009/10/amazon_expands_frustration-free_packaging_ahead_of_holidays.html?ana=from_rss

<comment><USER2> I hope they expand frustration-free product search next.

 _Just a rant, move on unless you want to join in…_

If I click the amazon-prime box, then I only want to see amazon-prime merchandise. I don't want to see the prices if I bought the part at AffliateCo's and paid heaven knows what for shipping, or the odd product that isn't even available for prime shipping but maybe you really want to sell anyway. Show me your price and the things you ship so I can choose.

And when I search for USB keyboard mouse combos, don't sneakily slip a PS/2 one into the results. I loathe you every time I see that misbeboughtten box on my extra gear shelf.

<comment><USER3> You know how easy Amazon returns are, right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've always wondered why companies spend so much money on making packaging that requires a sword to open? I guess it ships better and has less theft of internal parts. From what I've seen products from Japan generally have a clear way to open them (little tear-away tab), but American products are made to need a chainsaw.

<comment><USER5> It's so it looks nice on the shelf - you want every piece to be visible and tastefully displayed but hard to steal. Once it has been bought, dealing with the packaging is your problem.

This serves no purpose for something bought online, hence Amazon as the driving force. Toys R Us would never push for it because they want attractive packages that sell.

<comment><USER6> The trend has also been to make the toy actually available to operate from inside the packaging.

So there are all these intricate ways of tying certain parts down but letting others stay free, all while a hidden microswitch is held down by another piece of plastic to cripple the toy in a demonstration-only mode with less battery wear. Oh yeah, let's not forget the preinstalled batteries. Wanna bet the Amazon toys have none included?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I just ordered 5 books.

They came in one tiny custom box that was folded over the books. The only waste was a minimal amount of cardboard. From an environmental perspective I would support giving businesses some form of tax credit for minimizing waste and packaging.

Pressure from large distributors will help force every company to comply.</comment>


We must bulldoze what's left of the nerdy white men's Internet - <AUTHOR> http://kernelmag.dailydot.com/issue-sections/headline-story/11843/angry-white-male-internet/ <comment><USER2> This is some of the most hateful and deceitful words I have ever read on the internet. And I would be all for letting these words stand unchallenged, only the left always cry foul when 'blacks', 'women' or whatever other group is bullied. So why then is it OK to bully nerds now?

GamerGate is one of the most inclusive groups of people I have ever had the pleasure to know. This shines through with the diversity of people that support GamerGate's mission. It has never been about hate, and it is funny how sockpuppet accounts are drawn into the mix here when Anti GGers use them extensively themselves.

</comment><comment><USER3> Perhaps a good first step would be altering the saying: The Internet where the men are men, the women are men, etc. To better suit the rhetorical situation, and get on with bulldozing.

</comment><comment><USER4> While I understand the need to pile on the subject to be counted as one of the enlightened, this kind of stuff stopped being interesting a long while ago.</comment>


Great Read: Performance Limitations of React Native and How to Overcome Them - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@talkol/performance-limitations-of-react-native-and-how-to-overcome-them-947630d7f440#.gpgul218e <comment><USER2> Informative Relevant Applicable And easy read!</comment>


The man who 'got it' too much - <AUTHOR> http://www.kernelmag.com/comment/analysis/4696/the-man-who-got-it-too-much/

<comment><USER2> As Frank Zappa used to say, _pheeeeeeuuww_.</comment>


How the Feds Took Down the Silk Road Drug Wonderland - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/11/silk-road/ <comment><USER2> If this has not been posted before, its good to see that all the worries about the tor protocol can be laid to rest.

They did not identify the server by some advanced technical hacks against tor. They used simple basic police methods and arrested an administrator with the use of an undercover agent posing as a drug seller. The administrator purchased a kilo of cocaine, and by doing so, gave his home address to the undercover agent. After interrogation, they gained user credentials that even included DPR's private messages.

This could have easily been a episode script for the wire.

<comment><USER3> If simple, basic police methods sufficed here, then why the massive dragnet surveillance the rest of us are caught up in?

Either (a) the dragnet surveillance isn't doing what it's supposed to or (b) there's another reason for the spying.

And yes, I could be accused of whipping on the NSA no matter what, that in my view, they're damned if they do, and damned if they don't. So what? Even if I don't have "standing", and the NSA is doing "legal" things, and the 3 Prong Test for Violations of Privacy hasn't been met, the NSA is still doing things that until recently were considered grossly unamerican, a violation of the principles that made the USA different than commie Russia.

<comment><USER4> You're forgetting: (c) parallel construction lead to the "simple police work" success.

It possible that this wasn't such a cut and dry case of police work, and instead the police were handed leads that came from the NSA work.

<comment><USER2> The differential factor of an conspiracy theory, and a plausible event is the matter of indicating clues. In this case, there is not a single indicating factor to point towards the conspiracy theory of parallel construction, so why should it be considered?

An other equally plausible would be that the silk road was a false flag operation, run by a undercover unit. Nothing points in that direction either, but hey, it "could be" right?

<comment><USER5> I think you're too quick to dismiss the possibility. The point of parallel construction is that the police construct a plausible (and, more importantly, legal) means of finding the evidence that they used in an investigation that masks its true, illegal origin. More importantly, unlike false flags -- where the only "evidence" for their use is the ravings of conspiracy theorists and some internal suggestions by government officials in the 60's -- parallel construction is a technique that we know the government uses by their own admission.

From Reuters ([http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/05/us-dea-sod- idUSBRE...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/05/us-dea-sod- idUSBRE97409R20130805)):

> The undated documents show that federal agents are trained to "recreate" the > investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information > originated, a practice that some experts say violates a defendant's > Constitutional right to a fair trial. [...]

> After an arrest was made, agents then pretended that their investigation > began with the traffic stop, not with the SOD tip, the former agent said. > The training document reviewed by Reuters refers to this process as > "parallel construction."

> The two senior DEA officials, who spoke on behalf of the agency but only on > condition of anonymity, said the process is kept secret to protect sources > and investigative methods. "Parallel construction is a law enforcement > technique we use every day," one official said. "It's decades old, a bedrock > concept."

> A dozen current or former federal agents interviewed by Reuters confirmed > they had used parallel construction during their careers. Most defended the > practice; some said they understood why those outside law enforcement might > be concerned.

> "It's just like laundering money - you work it backwards to make it clean," > said Finn Selander, a DEA agent from 1991 to 2008 and now a member of a > group called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, which advocates legalizing > and regulating narcotics.

Given how they talk about parallel construction, it certainly sounds like it's not an uncommon technique, so do you think it's so implausible? I'm not going to say they did or didn't use it, because the simple fact is that I don't know, but given that "Parallel construction is a law enforcement technique we use every day" that is "decades old, a bedrock concept," it doesn't seem too implausible that they would use it in such a high profile and important case.

<comment><USER2> One should not quickly to dismiss the possibility. Especially, one should keep a eye out since the proof of parallel construction as a tool is indeed verifiable true.

But in the mean time, one should not jump to it directly when more simpler explanations are available. Using undercover cops to entrap drug sellers is even older, and even more common method than parallel construction. It also extremely simple and effective.

I would also suspect, that entrapping a first time offender, an 47 year old administrator who sells drugs anonymously on-line from his home, to not be very hard. Especially if the undercover cop could impersonate flawlessly established "trusted" drug sellers by taking over their accounts, as it seems to be in this case.

All points toward parallel construction as an something that might had been, but in this case, is less likely to actually have happened.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _Investigators staged the torture and killing — which included mock waterboarding according to officials — and sent Dread Pirate Roberts about half a dozen pictures, including photos depicting what they said was his corpse._

So much for the absolutely inane "it was all a face-saving ruse" theory of the murder-for-hire scheme.

<comment><USER7> I think that "face-saving ruse" was in relation to the second "hit", which sounded incredibly implausible. Someone says they need $500K and blackmails DPR, then the creditor shows up and is willing to kill the blackmailer for 20% of that? Yeah, OK.

The details on the first "hit" weren't known before, were they?

And it still doesn't invalidate the logic behind it some people were proposing: _Given the prior that the USG will do harm to SR users and dealers_ , is it less harm to kill one person that is going to give information to the USG? (Again, that logic only works if you take the assumption that the USG is acting immorally and will impose a large amount of suffering onto many others.)

<comment><USER6> It freaks me out that anyone would believe that any amount of message board political bullshit could justify murder. But I bet you're right.

<comment><USER7> Murder is justified for all sorts of reasons. IIRC, the US was founded on a base of murdering people over disputes on taxes and government. Treason was (or is?) punishable by death. I'm not sure why message board political bullshit is intrinsically less valid than "official" government or LE reasons.

Additionally, most people believe lethal force is justified in cases of defense. It's not a huge jump of logic to view these hits as defense.

<comment><USER8> "Additionally, most people believe lethal force is justified in cases of defense. It's not a huge jump of logic to view these hits as defense."

uh, wat?

The dude was a drug dealer protecting his criminal empire. If I'm robbing a bank and shoot a cop who is going to shoot me, is that also defense? So I should be charged for the original crime but not for killing the cop? Because that's pretty much what your argument sounds like to me.

<comment><USER7> I'm not saying he's right and not criminally liable for his actions. I'm just questioning why people are so confused as to why this is justifiable, in some peoples' opinions.

As to the specific example: If someone is trying to shoot you, no one would wonder why you shoot back. The bank robber would be held responsible because it's his action of robbing the bank that started the whole mess.

If you were sitting peacefully in your home, and someone broke down the door and started firing, you'd be quite justified in returning fire. (Even legally, depending on state, AFAIK.)

Folks sympathetic to DPR are more likely to view him in the second category. He was peacefully minding his own business running a marketplace when someone threatened him, his buyers, and his vendors. These folks are likely to view access to medicines as a moral action, and thus DPR and people involved with SR to be people doing the right thing, despite an oppressive government

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This seemed a bit worrying:

 _Federal agents say the use of Tor and Bitcoin were major obstacles for them and that investigating the site was "uncharted territory" that involved a reversal of their usual investigative methods. Instead of starting with probable cause against a specific suspect who is already identified and then obtaining a search warrant to collect more evidence, the investigation of Silk Road involved collecting evidence from the site first and then trying to identify individuals._

Sure it is "uncharted territory" in terms of the technology for maintaining anonymous identities, but shouldn't most investigations start with evidence of the crime and an empirical investigation into who could have committed it, rather than starting with suspects and trying to link them with the crime? Maybe I am naive, but sounds like dodgy criminal investigation methodology to me...

<comment><USER10> > shouldn't most investigations start with evidence of the crime and an > empirical investigation into who could have committed it, rather than > starting with suspects and trying to link them with the crime?

This might surprise you, but there are very often situations where the police and the public are remarkably aware of the facts of the crimes being committed, but unable to do anything about it. Drugs fall into this category. Everyone knows that "that's where the deals go down" and "that's where they count the money", but that's only because we're not completely stupid. Proving direct culpability, on the other hand, is an entirely different story, as is proving the culpability of people who matter. (Street level dealers, for instance, are pretty interchangeable: one gets shot, you get someone else to do his job. Ain't no thing.)

If you find a druggie on a corner, it's not exactly a stretch of the imagination to recognize he's probably guilty of possession. It's also sort of pointless to prosecute him, since the actual issue you're fighting is lots of people _taking_ particular drugs, which means what you care about are the people _managing_ the city-wide operation. You want evidence of that crime? That's also the druggie on the corner. Half of whom can tell you exactly who it is who manages the city-wide operation. None of which are willing to take the witness stand to accuse him in a court of law. Because he knows that he goes right back to that corner the next day and not only does he no longer have someone bringing him drugs, but he's also get a bullet in his head for the trouble.

If you want a visceral primer, watch _The Wire_.

<comment><USER11> _the actual issue you 're fighting is lots of people taking particular drugs, which means what you care about are the people managing the city-wide operation_

That is a complete non sequitur.

Actually, if you really want people to stop using drugs, arresting and imprisoning users is the single most effective technique yet known. It's especially effective against the middle class white population that consumes most drugs in the USA, but it works against poor minorities and addicts, also.

And if you want to stop dealers, arresting and imprisoning retail dealers is the most effective technique. It clears the ones that work in public or sell to strangers out quite quickly.

Arresting the kingpins or traffickers is totally ineffective at reducing drug use or reducing drug availability. If reducing public harm were a priority, the kingpins and traffickers could be ignored. Once the users and retailers are imprisoned, the bosses are out of business, anyway.

And if you do catch the kingpins and traffickers, your efforts are completely ineffectual. There are always more kingpins in line to get rich quickly and easily. Decades of police targeting kingpins has only seen increases in drug availability. In fact, the faster you turn them over, the more violent the whole business becomes.

The reason police agencies target kingpins and traffickers is because the purpose of the war on drugs, from the point of view of police administration, is to seize cash to fund police operations. There is no law enforcement justification for such a policy, merely an agency budgeting justification.

<comment><USER10> > That is a complete non sequitur.

Agreed. I'm not remotely a fan of the war on drugs or its consequences for the prison-industrial complex or the militarization of the police.

The real root is really shitty legislation based on shitty moralizations based on shitty philosophical grounds, the absurd nature of how the police are funded, and the ridiculous political reality of law enforcement offices. It's such a multifaceted problem that I'm unwilling to try to tackle it myself.

But all of this was just a handy example for why wishing for an "empirical investigation" is not necessarily the right way to go about things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder how much of this was actually parallel reconstruction vs "investigative research"

<comment><USER6> How exactly would parallel construction have helped here? To effect a search, with or without "parallel construction", you have to have probable cause.

<comment><USER13> the entire _point_ of parallel construction is to construct a legal explanation for the presence of data needed for the conviction.

ie, I would use illegal means to obtain proof that you have convicted a crime, then I would use parallel construction to provide a legal explanation for how I obtained the proof.

iee, parallel construction is what they use when they did not have probable cause.

I am having trouble believing that you do not understand that? what am I missing?

<comment><USER6> You're having trouble because you are incorrect about how parallel construction works. Parallel construction is not the Orwellian term for simply "coming up with a bullshit story about where you got your evidence when it in fact came from NSA". Instead, it is the Orwellian term for "coming up with the complicated story of what precise piece of unrelated probable cause enabled you to effect a search that was motivated by evidence that came from NSA". Notice that the latter definition includes some notion of some kind of probable cause. The NSA is not PC in a "parallel construction" scenario.

<comment><USER13> ok, I do understand the distinction you are making.

I am not sure how you are so confident that the NSA was not at all involved in this capture, and that parallel construction was therefore entirely unnecessary.

When reading that article, and various other sources, one thing that stands out is that even after arresting an administrator - which did lead to various other arrests - they still had no direct link or identification for Ulbricht.

Ulbricht was careful enough that although the police were apparently communicating directly with him, and arresting a number of others that were more directly involved, there was no way for them to locate or identify him.

Note, that this remains true even after he believes that one of his contacts has murdered someone on his behalf. He maintains the firewall between himself and that contact.

Frankly, that is fairly impressive, he must have been a careful man.

Suddenly they find a link buried in the forever webs between a nickname he uses and his actual name and bingo, they have him.

Now, it entirely could have gone down like that. It is completely plausible. Most likely the link was there all along, just waiting for someone to stumble on it.

BUT, that is rather the point of parallel construction, isn't it? to bridge the gap between the information they have and the information that they can present in court, in a totally plausible way.

I am not claiming the truth to be one way or the other, who knows (hell, who cares in this case), but I am claiming that to disregard the possibility and maintain that it is absurd is to ignore the fact of parallel construction and the fact of its frequent use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Sounds like a police thriller novel. That said, and BitCoin hitting an all time high, is it even possible to convert BitCoin into dollars any more? I note that the article says the agents seized over two million dollars from the Mt GOX founder [1]. So given how many btc to dollar exchanges have been targeted how does that work now? Western Union or something?

[1] "The seizures included $2.9 million from a Dwolla account that was controlled by a U.S. subsidiary of Mt. Gox and $2.1 million seized from two Wells Fargo accounts, one controlled by the same subsidiary, the other by Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles."

<comment><USER15> Yes, it's easy to convert Bitcoin to USD. You can sell them at Coinbase, Bitstamp, LocalBitcoins and all kinds of other exchanges.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wow, this is the funniest thing I've read all week!</comment>


MITIE: MIT Information Extraction - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mit-nlp/MITIE

<comment><USER2> This looks pretty cool, are there any comparisons to NLTK et al? The examples seem pretty straight forward and well commented, but overall Documentation is a bit lacking.

Now the really important question: Is it pronounced the same as a "mai tai" or more like "mitty" ?

<comment><USER3> It's very fast after the model(s) have been trained. The training can take a long time, it might be something like N^4 where N is the number of distinct types of features. Something about intersecting planes for each dimension.

It is used in several DARPA programs including XDATA and MEMEX to name a couple. One of the committers is actually now a DARPA PM (Wade Shen) who has taken over some programs from a previous PM you may remember from MEMEX on 60 minutes.

As far as speed, once trained we used it as part of a batch job to enhance various types of freetext and semi structured text, and the performance was very good (I don't have numbers in front of me, but some groups should)

We also would wrap MITIE with a Tangelo wrapper so we could use it as a REST client (for other webapps to hit at runtime), posting freetext to it and getting back a list of entities and annotated freetext.

It can also work well on semi-structured text, for instance a table of semi- regular data that was pasted into a string, losing it's pagination/formatting. This requires a tailored model but works well.

The training of MITIE can be a bit challenging if you have too many types that might appear in similar locations in text. One of the DARPA teams built a MITIE trainer which allowed a SME to annotate text in a web ui to help build the model, which is then run against the corpus of data in batch.

The stock model is built on newspaper data, IIRC, so it may not be suited to something like, say, tweets or books.

I hope this helps. I highly recommend checking it out if your project needs something like this. A lot of man hours went into developing it, and the developers would love for it to gain traction and have the technology transfer outside academia/defense. Drop them a line or a pull request!

Note: there have been suggestions for including some rudimentary low-hanging- fruit post process techniques, like applying supplied regexes, whitelists, blacklists, pronoun dictionaries, etc. One variant was also looking to pull out relationships as well as entities as tagged fields.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for that explanation. I bookmarked the site but was going to pass on playing with it before reading your post. I am most interested in generating relationships between named entities. I can find NEs in my NLP code but I can't generate links like "owns", "located at", etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What can you do with it?

<comment><USER6> natural language processing

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Has this been published somewhere? The usage guide looks good, is there a model description?

</comment><comment><USER8> Is there any documentation for this anywhere?

The "binary relation detection" looks interesting, and I'd like to know more about it. Are there any other NLP libraries that can perform similar functions?

</comment><comment><USER9> Uses BLAS but no mention of cuBLAS to speed things up? Does that mean the linear algebra wasn't big enough a component to merit optimizing on?

</comment><comment><USER10> So what does MIT stand for?

<comment><USER3> Massachusetts Institute of Technology

It's a school you should know of.

<comment><USER10> Okay. I was assuming that too but I couldn't find a reference to the school on README... hence this question. Okay...</comment></comment></comment>