Was it wrong to hack and leak the Panama Papers? - <AUTHOR> http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/04/the-morality-of-panama-papers.html <comment><USER2> >Yet somehow many of us approve when the victims are wealthy and higher status, as is the case with the Panama Papers. Furthermore most of those individuals probably did nothing illegal, but rather they were trying to minimize their tax burden through (mostly) legal shell corporations.

This is a scary thing that has been building over the last 10 years. Wealthy people are vilified for being wealthy even when they play by the rules. You saw this a lot with Occupy Wall Street and you hear similar rhetoric from Bernie Sanders supporters condemning the "donor class" and being angry at banks for being big regardless of anything else. But these people do exactly the same thing you and I do. I take advantage of the tax system when I deduct education expenses. I lobby the government when I contribute to the EFF. I want the companies I invest in to be as big and as profitable as possible. If I had more money, those things would simply be in higher quantities. That is the only thing most of these people are guilty of, doing the same thing we all do but at a much higher magnitude. We can recognize that magnitude difference is a problem and want to shrink it without resorting to vilifying people who simply play the hand they are dealt.

<comment><USER3> The analogy I use is how people go shopping in a neighboring state for lower sales taxes, or buy a house in an inconvenient place for lower property taxes.

Wealthier people are doing the same thing.

People get angry more so because they don't get the privilege to participate in those advantages. While simultaneously taking advantage of what they can.

<comment><USER4> Well, this picture is from Finland (a country with very small differences in incomes): [http://hs10.snstatic.fi/webkuva/taysi/630/1460170330858?ts=5...](http://hs10.snstatic.fi/webkuva/taysi/630/1460170330858?ts=537)

Y-scale is the taxes paid

X-scale is the income

As you can see... people in middle class and lower play by the rules almost perfectly. Now the richest don't play anymore. There are those that play by the rules, but a lot of those that don't.

Finland has a progressive income tax.

So let's stop the bullshit that everything does it. This picture shows it clearly that only the richest are the assholes (in meaningful way).

<comment><USER3> And then there are jurisdictions that fund themselves primarily from offering incorporation services, instead of levying an income tax at all.

The state needs to make better rules, obviously passive taxation has pitiful compliance outcomes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The difference between sharing information about ordinary people charged with crimes and about the rich and powerful, is that the rich and powerful people are rich and powerful. These are people who exert power over the rest of society and therefore their business dealings - especially shady, quasi-legal or outright illegal business dealings - are in the public interest.

The fact some random person has been charged with a DUI is not comparable with the fact the Icelandic prime minister engaged in questionable business practices and possibly a conflict of interest, especially from the perspective of Iceland's citizens.

<comment><USER6> So privacy protection isn't an absolute right, more of a relative / subjective one and the deciding authority on the subject should be the internet at large. Weird to hear that kind of thinking on hacker news...

<comment><USER7> Not unusual to hear "absolute" anything being questioned on HN

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Slowly but surely, I'm coming to the position that "hacking and leaking" is _never_ "wrong". It's a form of speech, and I'm a free speech absolutist. Let's stipulate that some things are illegal and not "wrong", just as others are legal and "wrong".

It's not clear to me, however, that this case actually is a hack, in the sense that whoever released this material might have had legitimate access to it as a part of doing business. In that case this is certainly an unethical failure to uphold terms of contract. Who's going to enforce that contract, however? Certainly not IRS or any other USA agency.

[EDIT:] In case it's not clear, I don't think that society in general is ethically limited by any "poison tree" doctrine in situations like this. Once this information is public, however it came to be so, we are free to use it as we see fit.

<comment><USER9> > Slowly but surely, I'm coming to the position that "hacking and leaking" is > never "wrong". It's a form of speech, and I'm a free speech absolutist.

Wow, a "free speech absolutist". How absolute? So if I am a voyeur, poke a camera through your window and put it on the Internet that's OK per my free speech rights? I break into your bank's website and leak all the usernames and passwords -- I can be prosecuted for the break in but not be responsible for the consequences of leaking the login credentials? It's OK for me to publish a front page article claiming you're a convicted rapist, even if that's not true?

<comment><USER8> "Poking a camera through your window" is "hacking" now? Wow!

Sure, I would prefer that you not do that, or indeed that you not physically trespass in any way. A more interesting hypothetical would be for thousands of homeowners to install a bunch of IP cameras in their homes, and for you to hack _those_ without the benefit of physical trespass. I don't think you'd have much of a leg to stand on if you were to publish John and Jane Doe's humdrum bedroom activities. However, you might also witness some truly awful shit, which I'd have no problem with your bringing to the attention of society.

The bank example is another aspect of our bending all rational rules and expectations in the banks' "favor". They shouldn't build such brittle systems, and the more we coddle them the worse they get. It would be possible to prosecute fraud without criminalizing security research.

Libel laws are most often used for the benefit of the already powerful, so yeah getting rid of those would be an improvement.

<comment><USER10> >. I don't think you'd have much of a leg to stand on if you were to publish John and Jane Doe's humdrum bedroom activities.

Stand on against what? You seem to be arguing that it should be perfectly OK to do exactly that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _Furthermore most of those individuals probably did nothing illegal, but rather they were trying to minimize their tax burden through (mostly) legal shell corporations._

I've looked into offshore banking and shell companies and the like a bit over the years. I'm not sure why; I guess I just have a fascination with business and finance. My conclusion has long been that, for an individual who intends to comply with the law, there is very little benefit to these structures. Generally, an individual can't legally lower their tax burden through the mechanism of an offshore shell company.

The legal versions of this involve genuine corporations headquartering in a business friendly location. They don't do it secretly, however. It is done in the open, and the corporation's owners (the shareholders) still have to pay their taxes on any dividends or capital gains in whatever jurisdiction they live in. You can argue whether or not Google should be legally allowed to move most of their income to Ireland, but that is a totally different scenario to a single person starting a company in Panama to hold his investments. In the United States, at least, a single shareholder company that does nothing other than hold investments is treated as a pass through for income tax purposes. I.e. you can't avoid taxes simply by keeping the money in the company. Moreover, even if you could avoid the tax on the company profits, you would still have to pay tax when your wanted to take the money out to actually spend it.

<comment><USER7> Don't you only become liable to pay the tax when you repatriate the money? So perhaps you can spend it outside the US with impunity?

<comment><USER11> You are correct that a legitimate corporation will not be taxed on the money unless and until it is repatriated, but that doesn't help an (honest) individual; it only helps multinational corporations.

For every country (3) where I have filed taxes, you are liable for individual taxes as soon as you earn the income. So, in the case of a legitimate business, as soon as you pay yourself a salary or other benefit (perhaps, buy yourself a yacht; really, anything that is not a clear business expense). It doesn't matter where in the world you earn the income or spend it; you are taxed on your worldwide income.

However, to take it a step further, the IRS doesn't really recognize personal holding companies as legitimate businesses for tax purposes. You are liable to pay tax on any investment income as though it were personal income even if you leave it in the company name. Again, it doesn't matter where in the world the holding company is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > probably did nothing illegal, but rather they were trying to minimize their > tax burden through (mostly) legal

Mostly legal and nothing illegal are contradicting.

<comment><USER13> "The internet is used for (mostly) legal purposes"

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like how his comparison implies that of course everyone exposed by the Panama papers is already under criminal investigation.

</comment><comment><USER14> An article by Tyler Cowen of the Mercatus Center - "the most important think tank you've never heard of." [1]

If you're interested in the background of this interesting organization, there's some funding information at [2].

It's maybe not that surprising that a board member of an economics outreach effort heavily funded by Koch Industries would argue for the freedom of the very rich to "to minimize their tax burden through (mostly) legal shell corporations," especially considering that the Kochs were exposed doing just this by a previous round of ICIJ published leaks. [3]

But maybe it's worth asking why such a reasonable practice, totally within the law, would be so secret in the first place that it takes leaks like these to make it known.

1: [http://web.archive.org/web/20070824203256/http://gazette.gmu...](http://web.archive.org/web/20070824203256/http://gazette.gmu.edu/articles/index.php?id=5895)

2: [http://www.desmogblog.com/mercatus- center](http://www.desmogblog.com/mercatus-center)

3: [https://www.icij.org/project/luxembourg-leaks/new-leak- revea...](https://www.icij.org/project/luxembourg-leaks/new-leak-reveals- luxembourg-tax-deals-disney-koch-brothers-empire)

</comment><comment><USER15> That comparison makes no sense to me. There's a world of difference between blowing the whistle and subverting due process.

</comment><comment><USER16> _How many of us would approve of that behavior? Keep in mind the hacker is spreading the information not only to prosecutors but to the entire world, and outside of any process sanctioned by the rule of law._

The Panama Papers didn't get uploaded to the internet, it was distributed to journalists. The person who leaked the information was deferring to the judgement of journalists to publish information in a responsible way. It's entirely possible that there is material in the Panama Papers that is _exactly_ what he describes, but we haven't seen it because it's not being published.

The journalists have come up with some criteria about what's responsible here. It might be not be the right criteria, but it does exist.

</comment><comment><USER17> The writer assumes that the laws work and asks "Is it ethic leak this illegal activities?". And he says that in this condition, proper way would be the legal ways. No! The laws and legal ways do not work always, in such cases people themselves will be the law and the prosecuters. It is like asking to catch all ISIS members without killing them, that would be the proper law! Not bombarding them! Don't kill ISIS, catch them and prosecute them, oh yeah what lawfull legal world! Would you expect justige from corrupt countries and corrupt procecuters? Revealing these corruptins is proper act and I support these hackers.

</comment><comment> awinter-py These authors are confounding malum in se / malum prohibitum. Common error when the law legislates the boundaries of social / economic class.

Was it wrong for rosa parks to hack the segregated bus system in montgomery?

</comment><comment><USER18> I think the flaw in the analogy is that we as a society have had the chance to openly debate things like attorney-client privilege. We understand that we have a legal system in which guilty people may enjoy protection, and we understand the reasons for it. At the very least, the fact of the matter is public knowledge. That's not the case for kinds of tax-avoidance and general shadiness being revealed in the Panama Papers.

</comment><comment><USER19> When is vigilantism morally justified? I'd argue when people need a reminder not to take living in a civilized society for granted.

</comment><comment><USER20> It's quite simple. It's never wrong to reveal facts. It's always right to reveal facts. It's always wrong to hide facts.

<comment><USER18> I don't believe it _is_ quite that simple.

Suppose you're a gay man living in Yemen. I do not accept any definition of "right" or morality that would compel me to disclose that information.

<comment><USER20> I didn't stipulate _how_ to disclose it, only that the right thing is to disclose it. I doubt you'd suggest the person should live in denial and/or not fight for his rights in some manner. Disclosing things doesn't necessarily include stupidly getting oneself killed by revealing them in a poor manner, i.e. inappropriately or unskillfully. After all, that would hardly do a good job of revealing the fact it's his right to have his own sexual preference, wouldn't you say? The important question is how to do things, not what to do. Given this, would you agree now?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> If the net effect was good then the action was good.

<comment><USER22> The ends justify the means? The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

<comment><USER21> Platitudes like that are how intelligent people trick themselves out of doing what is necessary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)

<comment><USER24> This is one of the least appropriate use of Betteridge's Law of Headlines.

The article starts with 'yes' and waters it down to 'maybe' and a real discussion could be had about whether or not the ends justifies the means, especially when it comes to criminal acts revealing dubious but legal acts.

<comment><USER25> Agreed on the appropriateness of using Betteridge's law. MR's headline could have instead been 'Was it RIGHT to hack and leak the Panama Papers?'

<comment><USER26> Betteridge's law is totally appropriate : His point was that people heading an article with a question intend to defend a position while not immediately associating with it.

And that's totally what this article does.

<comment><USER27> This article discusses both sides of the issue, doesn't come to a firm conclusion, and leads the reader to consider the question in their own mind.

IMO, this is one of the few articles where I believe that a rhetorical question as a title is appropriate.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


You Can't Predict Who Will Change The World - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/2007/10/13/nicholas-taleb-prediction-tech-future07-cx_nt_1015change.html?feed=rss_news

<comment><USER2> And yet that's exactly the business we're in. I just stopped in to check Hacker News before getting on with reading applications, which consists of trying to predict who will change the world, and the top story is that one can't.

I agree with this essay, but I don't think the title is quite right. All the people who've changed the world have been energetic and determined. So you can to some extent predict by recognizing those qualities. You can predict the people, just not what the ideas will turn out to be. The title should have been "You can't predict how the world will change."

<comment><USER3> Hmm, I'd guess it's harder than that. Being energetic and determined may be a necessary condition to change the world but it is not a sufficient condition. There are plenty of energetic and determined people who won't change the world.

Though, as far as one can predict, I bet determination is the best indicator we can hope for.

<comment><USER2> I didn't mean to imply that we can predict perfectly. No one could, since luck is a factor. But we can narrow the field.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Random tinkering is the path to success."

This is of course why we're all using a neighborhood DC power station provided by Edison Electric.

Nope, sorry, "random tinkering" will get you only so far.

Not so random tinkering can get you farther, it's no accident that about the most popular handgun design in the USA was made by John Browning (the greatest firearms design genius in history) and adopted by the US Army in 1911 (!). (We're also still using his M2 .50 cal machine gun with no _real_ need to replace it, just as there was no real reason to replace the M1911.)

But if you combine "random tinkering" with "European math" (i.e. Tesla and the polyphase AC that Edison could not do the math for), now, there you _really_ have something.

When I read some histories of the founding concepts of MIT, it was very clear they desired to meld these two powerful themes into something new, the motto Mens et Manus (Mind and Hand) and the seal expressing this quite clearly.

And while I understand that a lot of you all who are focused on a niche that richly rewards "random tinkering" don't think there's much value add to e.g. the sorts of engineers that MIT turns out, I submit to you that you wouldn't be here unless you were standing on the shoulders of the people who produced artifacts like the transistor, the IC and TCP/IP (and maybe even ACID databases :-), none of which were pure "random tinkering".

To recast this a bit, maybe look at it through Clayton Christensen's lens:

The transistor, IC and TCP/IP were all sustaining innovations, replacing the tube, mechanically integrated modules and previous networking systems respectively. Each dropped right into the place of their predecessors with the usual teething pains, but represented qualitative improvements that in a while were game changers.

What you are doing is disruptive innovation at its finest (read _The Innovator's Dilemma_ for the full treatment).

There's a place for both, but I believe that while what one is working on might strongly emphasize one or the other, one should be reasonably grounded in both.

Otherwise you might find your lunch eaten by a disruptive innovation, or hit a brick wall when you're in the sustaining axis and e.g. something doesn't scale in an important way.

(And I thank keaneu for reminding why I dropped my subscription to _Forbes_ a _long_ time ago (before SCO vs. The World). :-)

<comment><USER5> I don't think he's saying to just take a bumble-along happy go lucky approach, with no rigor, training or mental discipline, but that you can't "sit down and invent things" most of the time. Sure, you can point yourself in a direction, but even then, you have to try, fiddle, experiment, and calibrate as you go along, and you might even then arrive somewhere that you didn't set out to go, if you're well placed to grab opportunities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yah, who would have thought that a guy in the 1920's would write a master thesis suggesting the idea that you could transfer information electronically in 1's and 0's (claude E. Shannon).

What I find more interesting is that it wasn't the idea that took time to develop, but the technology. Without people dreaming and working on ideas, we wouldn't be where we are. The beauty of the night sky lies in the constellations, not the indivdiual stars. If there was only one star, we'd get bored, but individuals stars are fun to look at because they increase the total beauty of the constellation.

So, if you want to change the world, shine like a star and belong to a constellation.

The allure of a small business is that it is not entrenched in keeping the status quo, but excitedly endeavoring to ask the next big question, "why the hell not?"

</comment><comment><USER7> I hope an occult style following does not develop for this book. Much of what he says in his book can be learned by going through David Hume's essay a "An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding" which is widely available and surprisingly to say, an easier read then Taleb book.

As for this article the only interesting thing said to was "Ignore what you were told by your college economics professor". I agree with this because economist have this notion that theory comes before practice. Often you will see abstract mathematical theories developed first, then secondly attempts to execute then in the world afterwards. Common sense should tell anyone it is the other way around.Successful execution preceeds any good theory.

This is essentially Taleb's point about trial and error, though if you follow that point religiously you end up adopting the concept that theories are of no worth at all, since everything can be reduced down to luck.

In the end even if that maybe true, I still think the idea of things being reducable to luck is a wrong way to approach the challenges that you will face with life. You start to say after this startup failed..."well i was just unlucky", when in fact you should reflect and make sense of your mistakes, rather then just playing it down to some mysterious luck hypothesis that you had no way of influencing.

</comment><comment><USER8> Good quotes:

 _"...[people] cannot accept that skills and payoffs may have nothing to do with one another."_

 _"We need more tinkering: uninhibited, aggressive, proud tinkering. We need to make our own luck. We can be scared and worried about the future, or we can look at it as a collection of happy surprises that lie outside the path of our imagination."_

<comment><USER9> "The high rate of failure in scientific research should be sufficient to convince us of the lack of effectiveness in its design."

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is good.

There is a role for randomness in every effort, but it needs to be understood. There was another article on the list today about failing a lot to succeed. Dedication and a great team will always overcome, but they will overcome only if they fail quickly and explore the chaos and randomness of the problem domain. At the risk of link-spamming, I wrote in my blog this morning about the role that divergent thinking has on social networks. [http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2007/10/do_you_want_m...](http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2007/10/do_you_want_mor.php) I think Paul and others make the same point in regards to how it's better to be in the valley than in Deluth -- you can harness the randomness better there.

As hackers and analytical people, we've been brought up to feel like we should take a direct path from point A to point B. But it never works like that in the real world. Good solution-based thinking is divergent, and understands and accepts that you're not following a recipe as much as you're playing a game of chance -- but playing very cleverly!

</comment><comment><USER11> dupe: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24318>

</comment><comment><USER12> There were so many times when I started a project with certain intent and the final product was very different from what I had planned. Sometimes the product was simply me - the person who I became through the process was now able to take on many new things.</comment>


The Notion of "Trolling" in Ancient Sanskrit - <AUTHOR> https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=42700 <comment><USER2> The tradition of debate in India that this article is about (or dialogue, or dialectic, or whatever you want to call it) is very interesting, and unfortunately not well-known because most of the sources on the topic quickly get into technicalities.

Two non-technical (somewhat accessible to the general public) sources I've found are:

1\. The book "Religions, Reasons, and Gods" by the late John Clayton has many interesting essays that touch on the vāda tradition. One of his interesting points is that the goal of dialogue need not be consensus or establishing common ground, but simply the "clarification of defensible difference": understanding the other party better, and coming to shared understanding of what our differences are. Some of it is also touched on in his lecture here: [http://www.bu.edu/religion/mar25-98/](http://www.bu.edu/religion/mar25-98/)

2\. Elaborating on the _jalpa_ / _vitaṇḍa_ mentioned in this article, the _nyāya_ tradition recognized a long list of logical fallacies and poor arguments that were grounds for losing a (formal) debate. A list I've found is in the paper "Twenty-Two Ways to Lose a Debate" ([https://doi.org/10.1007/s10781-009-9083-y](https://doi.org/10.1007/s10781-009-9083-y)) which also carries out some comparison with the ideas of Grice.

<comment><USER3> I guess a pet peeve of mine, the Di, in Dialectic refers specifically to two- valued logic, resolving to a truth or false.

Which at least in the case of Jain philosophy, with 3 basic truth values true, false, and unassertable, so really these traditions are not necessarily dialectic. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaina_seven- valued_logic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaina_seven-valued_logic) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anekantavada](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anekantavada)

<comment><USER4> The prefix is _dia-_ , not _di-_.

My own pet peeve is people saying the same thing about 'dialogue', which is also 'dia-logue', not 'di-alogue'.

<comment><USER5> The confusion seems rooted in the relatively common word "monologue" which etymology seems to imply was a 17th Century French "back formation". Interesting how much that bit of word play seems to confuse things centuries later.

<comment><USER4> Wiktionary says it's ancient Greek.

Which makes sense, it doesn't need to be a back formation or slight pun - it's already different from dia 'across'/'between' (like diameter) talking, it's specifically not that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I frequently argue points I do not personally hold. This sometimes gets misinterpreted as me holding the opinion, or an attack on the person, or some such. But really I am testing the idea and recognizing that someone else could hold this opinion but not be in the room to advocate for it.

<comment><USER7> Here's my take on when people do this:

Unless someone prefaces their statements with a disclaimer (like "just for the sake of the argument"), I will assume in good faith they believe their own statements. Any later claim to the contrary leaves me with the following choice to make: were they lying then, or are they lying now.

<comment><USER8> Most of the time it doesn't even matter whether that someone actually believes what they say. It should be all the same to you either way.

<comment><USER9> It matters when one of your goals is to determine what the people around you believe.

<comment><USER10> >> Most of the time it doesn't even matter whether that someone actually believes what they say.

> It matters when one of your goals is to determine what the people around you > believe.

What people say is some of the lowest fidelity information to use when trying to assess what people believe.

Actions >>> Words

<comment><USER11> Body language is very important and sits between Action and Words.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> On a slight tangent, has anyone ever looked into the etymology of the modern term troll? There hasn't been too much serious scholarship that I can find on the term, seemingly arising in mid-1980s newsgroups. But, I did find this which is my current best understanding; I also read in an old student newspaper edition that it refers to the trollish inhabitants underneath Bridge building on campus. From an Oral History of Caltech:

> ERWIN:Could you perhaps tell about bringing back A Broader View with its > sequel, the new sequel? Because I think that's very interesting. CLARK:Well, > that was fun to do. The play readers group in 1987 decided to renew the > play-reading party, which was one of the great traditions of the fifties and > early sixties. And Bob Oliver asked me if I'd dust of f A Broader View. > Well, I looked at it and I thought of updating it. But the shift in the > twenty years had been so much that updating was impossible; it's just a > period piece or nothing. So we had to do it unchanged. And then I felt honor > bound to write a sequel to it, which is called Troll's Progress. The theme > of it is that the essential Caltech never changes. It's firmly founded on > terror. [Laughter] And no froufrou can disguise that fact. And people who > play together pray together, twitch together, stay together. Anyway, that > theme allowed for a number of wisecracks, and I like to think the dialogue > is rather funny. The kids who did it were tremendous. The undergraduates, of > course, we know are stars.

> ERWIN:What was the origin of the troll?

> CLARK:Well, that goes back into Caltech history. And it's probably Caltech's > only contribution to American culture. [Laughter] If you have to ask the > meaning of the word, you'll never understand what it means. But to put you > sort of in the framework—that's discussed, incidentally, in the dialogue of > Beautiful Beckman there's a segment on that. But a troll is a very high- > voltage nerd. It used to be he lived "under DuBridge." The kid that never > sees the light of day, really, he's so busy with his books. There are > apprentice trolls at other schools, but ours are an order of magnitude more > trollish. People who are compulsive and pathological students are much more > so here. > ERWIN:Somewhere you referred to this as a "random troll."

> CLARK:Oh, that's the worst thing you can be called. You see, it means you're > just like a number; you have no personality. You might as well be a > computer—nothing to distinguish. Oh, man, when you're a random troll, you're > beyond the pale. [Laughter]

> ERWIN:In A Broader View, you called the Caltech undergrad "intellectually > brilliant, emotionally immature, culturally deprived, and socially gauche." > And then, immediately afterward, I believe you gave the Caltech professor > the identical description. That brings us to the point of what the shows > were for underneath it all.

Source: [http://oralhistories.library.caltech.edu/95/1/OH_Clark_K.pdf](http://oralhistories.library.caltech.edu/95/1/OH_Clark_K.pdf)

<comment><USER13> On Usenet it always seemed to be a fishing metaphor, which is why people talk about taking the bait or spitting the hook.

I'd try to find references for this but Google has fucked the search of Usenet archives.

There's this, which uses both meanings

[http://www.faqs.org/faqs/net-abuse-faq/troll- faq/](http://www.faqs.org/faqs/net-abuse-faq/troll-faq/)

\---begin

Defining troll, flames and crossposts </comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>==

From the Jargon file ( [http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/T/troll.html](http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/T/troll.html) ):

troll v., n.

1\. [From the Usenet group alt.folklore.urban] To utter a posting on Usenet designed to attract predictable responses or flames; or, the post itself. Derives from the phrase "trolling for newbies" which in turn comes from mainstream "trolling", a style of fishing in which one trails bait through a likely spot hoping for a bite. The well- constructed troll is a post that induces lots of newbies and flamers to make themselves look even more clueless than they already do, while subtly conveying to the more savvy and experienced that it is in fact a deliberate troll. If you don't fall for the joke, you get to be in on it. See also YHBT.

2\. An individual who chronically trolls in sense 1; regularly posts specious arguments, flames or personal attacks to a newsgroup, discussion list, or in email for no other purpose than to annoy someone or disrupt a discussion. Trolls are recognizable by the fact that they have no real interest in learning about the topic at hand - they simply want to utter flame bait. Like the ugly creatures they are named after, they exhibit no redeeming characteristics, and as such, they are recognized as a lower form of life on the net, as in, "Oh, ignore him, he's just a troll." Compare kook.

3\. [Berkeley] Computer lab monitor. A popular campus job for CS students. Duties include helping newbies and ensuring that lab policies are followed. Probably so-called because it involves lurking in dark cavelike corners.

Some people claim that the troll (sense 1) is properly a narrower category than flame bait, that a troll is categorized by containing some assertion that is wrong but not overtly controversial. See also Troll-O-Meter.

The use of `troll' in either sense is a live metaphor that readily produces elaborations and combining forms. For example, one not infrequently sees the warning "Do not feed the troll" as part of a follow-up to troll postings.

<comment><USER14> > On Usenet it always seemed to be a fishing metaphor, which is why people > talk about taking the bait or spitting the hook.

This is why I'm certain it started out as 'trawling'. The conversion to 'troll' was a result of misspelling or misunderstanding the spoken word. Or perhaps just standard punning - one who trawls is a troll.

"trawling for opinions" is a well-known and still often used phrase.

<comment><USER13> But trolling is a type of fishing. Trawling uses long nets, trolling uses long lines with hooks. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolling_(fishing)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolling_\(fishing\))

<comment><USER14> Thanks. TIL.

I'd still guess that it comes from the phrase "trawling for opinions" \- everyone has heard of that phrase and knows what a "fishing trawler" is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Vada and Vitana. I love this. When I was a prof. in a CSC department, I often had to persuade computing services or some other part of the university bureaucracy to do or get something for the students. I soon learned that I would encounter two types of beuracrats. (Actually, three, but I will discount the ones who were just not very smart. The other two types were smart.)

The first type I called "obstructors". If I (our my department) proposed something, the obstructors always had a dozen or more compelling reasons why the proposal was impractical, infeasible , or otherwise without merit.

The other type, I called them "enablers" might have some initial objections, but they would typically work with me (or us) to overcome the objections so that we could get what we wanted.

In the second case, it was "Vada". After a while I learned that the best way to achieve an outcome was simply to avoid ever engaging with the people whose style was "Vitanda".

Of course at the time (1980's and 90's) I did not think of them as Trolls - just as jerks who didn't want to do anything that created work for themselves.

</comment><comment><USER16> > The third type of dialogue, if it can be called dialogue at all, is known as > vitaṇḍa (Nyāya Sūtra 1.2.3). We may call this "trolling", because its > objective is not to win by proving one's own idea correct, but to make the > other person lose by opposing every argument of the opponent no matter what. > Vitaṇḍa is considered a destructive style of argumentation. Here, the person > who employs vitaṇḍa has no position of one's own, and does not attempt to > defend any thesis. A person may even adopt a viewpoint that is opposed to > one's own for the sake of vitaṇḍa. There is nothing to be gained by either > party in this encounter. It is the troll's point of view – "I will humiliate > you and argue that you are wrong, not because I fundamentally disagree with > your position, but because it was you who said it!"

Sounds very much like what in the West is called the Socrattic method championed by Socrates... who used to ask questions until he proved that his opponent was an idiot who did not know what they were talking about.

<comment><USER17> The Socratic method doesn't come with the intent of making the other person "lose" by blunt-force contrarianism, is a difference I'd like to think matters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Ancient sanskrit, yes. But the term vitanDa is very current. It is a common word in my language, Kannada and I imagine in other Indian languages as well.

This article is as much about the etymology of a modern term as about a concept from Sanskrit philosophical texts.

<comment><USER19> Telugu too! It's called "vitanDa vaadam"

<comment><USER20> Which is a direct translation of the same word from Sanskrit which carries the same meaning. Hardly surprising as Telugu is at lest 50% Sanskrit

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> There's a nice parallel in Ancient Greek, and from there to modern philosophical parlance: Eristic[0]. Here's Plato, for example: "it is on the purely verbal level that they look for the contradiction in what has been said, and employ eristic, not dialectic, on one another." (Republic V 454a, translated by Reeve)

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eristic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eristic)

</comment><comment><USER22> This is interesting to read and especially since their understanding of trolling is actually accurate.

"Here, the person who employs vitaṇḍa has no position of one's own, and does not attempt to defend any thesis. A person may even adopt a viewpoint that is opposed to one's own for the sake of vitaṇḍa."

I think people mostly misuse the word trolling, a troll's final goal is to disrupt and incite reactions often times for the lulz. To me (you may very well disagree) anybody claiming that trolling is used to achieve something is wrong. It may have consequences but if they are intended it's just manipulation of opinions.

I also have my doubt about the motivation given to trolls, I believe they target people that are "weak" to trolling because their propension to react help the troll reach his goal faster. i believe this is a reason why trolling it can quickly become harassment or at least be perceived as such.

I used to like being a troll as a teenager and my first reaction when reading an opinion that looks absurd is to wonder if the author is trolling. This first reaction is slowly shifting to "who does this statement serves" since organisations of all sizes have weaponized internet to spread such opinions.

</comment><comment><USER23> Did they have a word for the intellectually dishonest practice of just making stuff up to support one's argument?

<comment><USER24> I think gish galloping is the modern phrase, gish gallopers are toxic.

<comment><USER25> Gish galloping is burying an opponent in an avalanche of claims or factoids that would take far longer to refute. The practice of just making stuff up without regard to its truthfulness is called _bullshit_ , and has achieved some traction as a technical term thanks to this excellent little essay on the topic: [http://www2.csudh.edu/ccauthen/576f12/frankfurt__harry_- _on_...](http://www2.csudh.edu/ccauthen/576f12/frankfurt__harry_- _on_bullshit.pdf)

It reads like a joke at first, but is well worth your sustained attention.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The useful thing to take away from this is to how to combat them.

> Simply by asking them what their position is, or what they propose to > debate, they are forced into a quandary: if they propose something, then > they have to defend it, and can be argued with; if they do not propose > anything, then they may be asked to exit the debate. This may be easier said > than done, but it may also help stop a troll once in a while!

Be sure to read the linked posts

"The toll of the trolls" (5/25/19)

"Eristic argument" (4/6/19)

</comment><comment><USER26> If I could be forgiven to be meta here, are there any comments in this thread which are elaborate trolls on the nature of trolling?

I'm not as sophisticated as some of you but it seems as if those with more experience in these matters wouldn't find it easy to be sucked into discussions with a troll. Could there be a master troll or two here which you have fallen for?

</comment><comment><USER27> Seems like Socrates would fall under that definition.

<comment><USER28> Socrates "knows that he knows nothing" and spends his time trying to refute that. He looks for knowledge earnestly but usually doesn't find it. Socrates is less devil's advocate, more "how can we be sure of X when Y? If not Y because Z, doesn't Z also make X problematic because of (blablabla)?"

Sure, he gets people RAGEing like a great troll, but at least ostensibly he's doing more the 2nd type of argument described in the article, but with kind of a backdrop that precise intellectual beliefs are _really hard_ to specify or maintain. It's like dialectic but it's not Hegelian; he wants to return to some central question and doesn't necessarily see that thesis/antithesis climb as crucial, he just finds problems with the premises and wants to find better ones (Hegel's whole thing was a bit more nuanced than that).

Re: article, trolling initially meant trying to get a rise out of people. It's not so much you won't admit you're wrong or you're eristically tearing everything down, it's that you're pretending to play the argument game (or some other game, like "art criticism" or "testimonial") but in fact you're fucking with people of varying levels of specificity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> What's called "debate" at high schools and universities fell to vitanda decades ago.

</comment><comment><USER30> In the Roman Catholic Church there was once an official position known as the Advocatus Diaboli, or Devil's Advocate. Their task was to be the skeptic, and argue persuasively against the canonization of a new Saint - essentially an applied version of the third form of dialectic mentioned here.

</comment><comment><USER31> This was taught to us as kids.

3 types of arguments - vaada, vivaada, and vittanda vaada.

</comment><comment><USER32> This is very neat, and the last paragraph is indeed very heavy-hitting. It's always hard to read that some of our societies greatest present-day problems are so many thousands of years old.

However, I think this definition is narrow and only encapsulates part of the modern definition of 'trolling'. Today, 'trolling' is used as a weapon of war, not only in debate with other individual people. Trolling is as much a mechanism of creating emotional trauma among a large population as it is a mechanism for 'debating' in bad faith.

Modern trolls will post violent content, often based on lies, in order to get an emotional rise out of a population. This is a large-scale effect that wastes huge amounts of people's time and energy, as they 'debate' with these soldiers of war whose task at hand is to create unnecessary emotional pain and waste the time of their enemy.

Yes, trolling is also happening on a more individual 'debate' level still, but narrowing our notion of trolling down to these ancient definitions is doing a major disservice to our modern understanding of how language is used in debate.

<comment><USER33> > _Trolling is as much a mechanism of creating emotional trauma among a large > population as it is a mechanism for 'debating' in bad faith._

Perhaps this was not present in older societies (and other countries today) because people were not as touchy feely as the current generations...

And I'm not trolling. I seriously think modern western societies are too snow- flakey and touchy feely for their own good. It's like going out in life expecting padded roads, walls, and everything, lest you ever get hurt...

And that's despite older societies having it much harder, and having much more difficult problems to be "traumatized" with...

<comment><USER32> > It's like going out in life expecting padded roads, walls, and everything, > lest you ever get hurt...

What? How offensive.

Let me be clear, then. _The United States is committing a genocide against minorities as we speak and it is enabled and emboldened by "trolls"_. This is not touchy-feely. This is children in cages, separated illegally from their families and put into places of extreme disrepair, unhealthy conditions, etc, while the President goes on TV to state that machine guns would be a more "effective solution".

This is not touchy feely or snowflaky stuff and I honestly have no idea what you're talking about. What I'm talking about are _trolls going online an on TV_ to spread messages of hate and cruelty. This directly results in human suffering and death of innocent people.

There is no logic behind talking about using machine guns to kill people who are trying to legally migrate to your country. To make those statements is to wage a weapon of war and to do it online and on TV en masse is a new kind of trolling that is _physically dangerous_.

Your ..... dismissal of the problems of youth....and use of .... to not finish...sentences makes it difficult to understand your point.

Trolling in the modern era has _nothing to do_ with any of this "touchy feely" or "snow-flakey" rubbish.

 _It has to do with enabling genocide._ Trolls normalize bad behavior to the point where it goes unpunished. Bad behavior to the extreme, unpunished from the top, for years on end, can and does result in really bad things like genocide.

I'm not making leaps here. This is real, it is physical, it is urgent, and it matters.

<comment><USER33> > _Let me be clear, then. The United States is committing a genocide against > minorities as we speak and it is enabled and emboldened by "trolls". This is > not touchy-feely._

The United States has committed some soft of genocide or another since the days of the Native Americans. That's not touchy feely.

Crying about this or that opinion being published, or whether a coworker can make or not make a comment, or what group is the more victimized for BS offenses (where usually the crying is made white middle/upper middle class self-appointed spokepersons) is.

And I'm not talking about the "children in cages" either. This is obviously not a kind of "touchy feely" issue.

Plus, the "children in cages" has been going on since forever one way or another. My people were hunted by the KKK back in the 20s and 30s for not being white enough. I've written (in other places) about the Mexican immigrants fueling the California agricultural sector, and how they're exploited and sent away when bosses are done with them (eg. the strawberry picking business).

Even the Wall is nothing new, there has been a wall, beatings, and killings at the border well before Trump. Now it's just fashionable to speak against it (because Trump), whereas under Obama 2 million could be deported and it was OK (and it didn't involve as many children imprisoned, so late night talk shows didn't feel the need to cover it).

Still, I'm not an American myself. But the hypocrisy is strong, as if all those "good souls" care about the "children in cages".

There are "children in cages" all over Europe, in camps for immigrants (where they're not allowed to leave):

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/10/life-in- italy-...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/10/life-in-italy- migrant-camps-a-photo-essay)

> _Your ..... dismissal of the problems of youth....and use of .... to not > finish...sentences makes it difficult to understand your point._

You could replace "..." with "." in my comment, and nothing would change of its point. Instead you've chose to point an inconsequential stylistic issue, and exaggerate it to death.

Let's make my point even clearer: aside from general economic prospects (college debt and so on), there are no serious "problems of youth" in 2019 in the USA in the white middle/upper middle-class population that cries about being "traumatized" the most. It literally never had been better trauma-wise, today when people cry the most about it, for anything and everything.

And I don't expect you to agree with this assessment. That's my opinion, it's a free universe.

<comment><USER32> > Crying about this or that opinion being published,

I have absolutely never once in my life seen someone cry over an opinion being published. I have, however, seen _hundreds_ of people complain about others 'crying', or 'literally shaking' but I have never seen it once happen and I have been looking. I honestly think such people do not exist. Can you cite any? This is surely not the cultural phenomenon you make it out to be.

> Plus, the "children in cages" has been going on since forever one way or > another.

Something happening in the past does not make it okay to happen today. Are you suggesting that nobody should protest children being put in cages, simply because it has happened before? I don't understand. Since it has happened before, and it's awful, and it's happening again right now, don't you think we should stand up and stay that it should be stopped?

> Even the Wall is nothing new, there has been a wall, beatings, and killings > at the border well before Trump.

Again, just because something isn't new doesn't have any bearing on it being bad or not. In fact I think it emphasizes how important these issues are. They persist and we must fight against them fully.

> Now it's just fashionable to speak against it (because Trump), whereas under > Obama 2 million could be deported and it was OK (and it didn't involve as > many children imprisoned, so late night talk shows didn't feel the need to > cover it)

What are you talking about? Putting children in cages, family removals, etc of legal immigrants is completely different from deportations of illegal immigrants.

Are you suggesting nobody should speak out against these atrocities or try to avoid them happening in the first place, simply because they have happened before? I don't get it.

> There are "children in cages" all over Europe, in camps for immigrants > (where they're not allowed to leave)

That sounds awful. Everyone should be protesting this everywhere. Everyone should aim to avoid the circumstances that allow this to happen: chief among them is trolling.

<comment><USER33> > _I have absolutely never once in my life seen someone cry over an opinion > being published._

Well, I've seen then cry, demand it's unpublished, demand the person writing it is fired, and so on.

> _I have, however, seen hundreds of people complain about others 'crying', or > 'literally shaking' but I have never seen it once happen and I have been > looking._

Well, perhaps not looking unbiased enough.

> _Something happening in the past does not make it okay to happen today._

Which I didn't say in the first place. My point is that as an old thing this is not related to the recent touchy-feely behavior I spoke against. (Nor of course are the people kept in cages, or the people who complain about them, are complaining about touchy feely issues).

> _Are you suggesting nobody should speak out against these atrocities or try > to avoid them happening in the first place, simply because they have > happened before? I don 't get it._

No, there are two threads here: 1) tons of younger people today complain about touchy feely issues, and 2) most younger people complain about these serious issues only when it becomes fashionable (e.g. now under Trump or previously under Bush, not before under Obama or Clinton).

I argue that (1) the touchy feely issues should be dropped, and (2) the important issues should be complained all the time, not when it's in vogue.

> _That sounds awful. Everyone should be protesting this everywhere. Everyone > should aim to avoid the circumstances that allow this to happen: chief among > them is trolling._

Trolling is nowhere in the list of things that "allow this to happen".

Capitalism, EU immigration policies, hypocrisy, exploitation, and other things are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Very well written article.

If I may add to this, the vāda usually composes of 3 parts. 1\. Purva paksha. 2\. Khandana 3\. Uttara paksha.

Purva paksha which literally translates prior view is when the debater should talk from the opponent's perspective. This has to be confirmed by the opponent, which proves that the debater has understood the opponent's view point.

Then comes khandana, which is the actual opposing view point that the debater puts forward refuting the view point of the opponent.

The last is Uttara paksha, the opinion of the debater. (Or siddhānta as mentioned in this article)</comment>


Introduction to Calculus with Derivatives - <AUTHOR> http://adit.io/posts/2018-02-18-Introduction-To-Calculus-With-Derivatives.html <comment><USER2> If one wants to learn calculus, I can't recommend Silvanus P. Thompson's _Calculus Made Easy_ enough.

It's one of those old (1920's, IIRC) books that gets right down to brass tax, and doesn't clutter your understanding with useless fluff designed to make learning maths "fun". These kinds of books are all too rare.

<comment><USER3> This was one of the books Feynman used to learn Calculus.

The other was _Advanced Calculus_ by Woods:

[https://libgen.pw/download/book/5a1f04723a044650f5fbaf91](https://libgen.pw/download/book/5a1f04723a044650f5fbaf91)

<comment><USER4> I have seen this discussed online several times. Here is a HN thread:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14192894](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14192894)

that indicates the text Feynman first used was _Calculus for the Practical Man_ by J. E. Thompson. Both are quality texts and as the linked HN thread notes, can be found on archive.org.

<comment><USER3> My mistake. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When I was on vacation a couple weeks ago, I was inspired by the Feynman lectures on physics to review basic calculus.

This time I tried my best to understand derivatives at a low/basic level. When I was in college, many years ago, I was doing my best to just to tread water in physics and the early stages of the calculus classes.

I did my level best to try to explain derivatives as if I knew nothing of calculus. Used my wife as a guinny pig. What I ended up with explained both derivatives and integrals at the same time in a very basic, but correct (I believe) sort of "add up the arrows" sort of way.

I really struggled to do this, but I thought it was really cool when I finished. Well finished is perhaps too strong a term. Most of it is scrawled out in handwriting on my iPad.

I've been meaning to go back and wrap it up and put it on the web. I think I'll try tonight and post back here or somewhere.

<comment><USER5> Just read through the post to make sure there was still value to me doing this. Seems like it. We start similarly, which is good. The visual description seems to be pretty different so I think there will be value in another point of view.

<comment><USER6> Don't hesitate to do that!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "That change c never truly goes away, but it is so small that it doesn't really matter: if you make c small enough, the derivative is basically 8. So we're just going to pretend that all the cs are so small they have become zero."

My first calculus teacher taught us derivatives in a similar way - but I have to say that, for me, this imprecise language confused me. When and why is it OK to pretend that c is zero!?

Further on, the official definition using a limit claims that the "c->0" means "make c as small as possible". But that's not what it means. Again, this is imprecise language that confuses more than it explains. What does "as small as possible" even mean? If we want to make it as small as possible, why not set it to 0!? How small is small enough?

I think somewhere in this article there should be a precise definition of what a limit is, using epsilon and delta.

It should be saying something using the words "arbitrarily close" and "sufficiently small".

Something like : "we can make the approximation on the left arbitrarily close to the expression on the right by choosing any value of c sufficiently close to 0, even though the expression might be undefined when c=0. Epsilon: you tell me how close you want the approximation to be. Delta: I tell you how small c needs to be".

There used to be a great website that was precise but also informal: karlscalculus.org - but sadly it appears to be down now.

<comment><USER8> I think it was Weierstrass who first gave a proper definition in terms of epsilon / delta (e,d). To say it more precisely:

We say that the limit

lim x -> c f(x) = L,

if for all e > 0, there exists a d, such that for all x, if

| x - c | < d,

then

| f(x) - L | < e.

<comment><USER7> The history seems to be summarized well in this wikipedia entry: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/(%CE%B5,_%CE%B4)-definition_of...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/\(%CE%B5,_%CE%B4\)-definition_of_limit)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Essentially from the definition of the derivative you can write

f(x+h) = f(x) + h f'(x) + O(h^2).

If you use this to solve differential equations its called the Euler method.

<comment><USER9> > its called the Euler method

Disclaimer: and it sucks

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like this take on introducing derivatives.

My first intro to derivatives was a little less than 20 years ago, but I feel like it was very much in the "traditional" vein of: Suppose we have "f'(x) = lim(h->0) (f(x+h) - f(x))/h" and we substitute in various equations. What will f'(x) be?

The difference as presented here: I (re?)learned an estimation method for decimal place mathematics while at the same point tying it to a larger/underlying principle.

I think a great approach would be to then do the stuff I started with, e.g. finding f'(x) given f(x).

Out of curiosity, how many of you have seen the approach as seen in the above article? I can't recall seeing it before, but again, it was a fair time ago for me.

</comment><comment><USER11> Just have to add K.A. Stroud's Engineering Mathematics to this list. Easiest maths book I've ever known, with only the slightest amount of hand waving. If you're having any trouble with it, this is your go-to book.

</comment><comment><USER12> Unrelated to calculus, a simple mental trick for quickly calculating squares close to round numbers is to just break it into (a+b)^2=a^2+2ab+b^2. E.g. 51^2 = 2500+100+1=2601.

<comment><USER13> This is a slight reduction of the FOIL method, a classic in any first year algebra course. A decent trick to remember on tests when you are trying to quickly solve a lot of algebra problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Great article. Though I know some basic calculas but I never really thought about calculas this way.

This is an interesting and eye opening perspective. Wish to see more of such articles.

</comment><comment><USER15> It looks like a very nice careful description, but where is the physical intuition? Where's the plots of tangent lines on a function at various points?

There's nothing wrong with the article (I think), I am just curious about the pedagogy and motivation for not immediately introducing a graphical conceptualization of a derivative especially for such a "from the ground up" exposition.

<comment><USER16> Hi, author here. This is what made derivatives finally click for me (as opposed to the tangent line) so that's how I wanted to explain it...maybe the same thing would click for others!

<comment><USER17> I was looking for a tutorial on derivatives the other day and most of the results popping up at the top of Google were a bit dry.

This one is very good though. Excellent work.

How did you do the diagrams?

<comment><USER16> The Procreate app on the ipad

<comment><USER3> Do you have any recommendations for learning the app to make what you've made?

I don't suppose I could bribe you into recording a video of yourself making some diagrams...

Your algorithms book is excellent and fun!

<comment><USER16> IMO it is more about drawing ability vs app knowledge, so I would suggest learning to draw! Just start drawing and you'll get better over time. You could join something like [https://streak.club/s/8/daily- art](https://streak.club/s/8/daily-art) to keep motivated.

<comment><USER3> The daily art streak was an awesome suggestion, thank you.

I have one specific question. When you write in your diagrams, what brush settings do you use? Are you using calligraphy mode?

The handwriting in your diagrams has a unique look and feel that I was hoping to emulate.

For example: [https://i.imgur.com/8Bb1wEY.png](https://i.imgur.com/8Bb1wEY.png)

That question mark is beautiful, and the thickness varies in a particular way that is quite unlike regular handwriting. It's more like chalk on a chalkboard. That's why I was hoping to know the exact settings.

I spent some time with the Procreate app today and was able to pick up the basics. I'll try learning by copying your work. Thanks again!

<comment><USER16> Oh I see ... that's done non-digitally using a fountain pen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Isn't there a better, more clearer, and more intuitive notation for calculus than dx/dy, or even f'? I feel these notations are somewhat ambiguous and bordering on abuse of notation.

<comment><USER19> Yes. There is an operator notation for the derivative where you can both avoid the not-quite-division and specify the variable you're dealing with. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notation_for_differentiation#E...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notation_for_differentiation#Euler's_notation)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm from Belgium, and here kids learn this in high school (5th year). It's basic knowledge. So why does this show up on HN?

<comment><USER21> Only kids who got into higher education tracks get calculus. No need to be smug about it, many kids don't get in those tracks for any reason and might find later in life that they are interested in calculus.

I feel if anything the US education system exposes to more children than the European systems, even though I feel the system is misguided.

In any case, I had calculus in highschool, then more of it in University and I still feel I could do with a fun refresher every now and then.

<comment><USER20> > I feel if anything the US education system exposes to more children than the > European systems

What do you mean?

<comment><USER21> Well, the way I understand the US system is that all children basically get the same education, and they are divided only by grades. In the NL and I think other European countries also, children go in separate highschool tracks depending on their performance in elementary school. A child that exhibits weakness in logic/maths/puzzle solving in the last year of elementary will likely be recommended to go into a vocational track and only ever receive basic maths education unless they opt in to a higher education track afterwards.

In the NL often these tracks are even in separate schools, but always separate classes. So my sister went to a different highschool than I did because I was showing more proclivity towards scientific education. After her highschool if she wanted she still could've opted for a track that would qualify her for scientific education, but since she had a preference for arts she went to an arts academy instead.

<comment><USER22> FWIW, your understanding is incorrect. While true that in US schools, all students are expected to complete a full 13 years of schooling (Kindergarten + 12 grades), students receive individualized courses of study. By high school, there may be 3-4 levels of instruction for Math ranging from remedial to college-bound, to college-level coursework. Additionally, non-college-bound students at most schools have the option of taking classes that prepare them for more traditional blue collar work (like automotive repair, etc) and often students have the option to go to a different school more aligned with their talents/skill level.

The primary difference between US and European education is in the US taking particular courses of study is the decision of the student/parents and not of the state.

<comment><USER21> Ah cool, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> d--b I think this is backwards. Explaining derivatives by Physics (speed or slope) seems a lot more intuitive to me.

<comment><USER23> Backwards for you - different people approach things from different points of view.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I was hoping this article was going to introduce calculus using financial derivatives in practical examples.

Instead the article asks how would one extimate 4.1 squared without a calculator.

I can't recall of any time in my life when I needed to do so. Now that I have a smart phone and watch, I don't anticipate needing to do so any time soon.

<comment><USER25> If everybody was of the same opinion as you, we would not have smart phones and watches.</comment></comment>


A Brief History of Erlang and Elixir - <AUTHOR> https://www.welcometothejungle.co/articles/history-erlang-elixir <comment><USER2> Server not found. Even Google cache is not working for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Works for me!</comment></comment>


How leaky is shale gas production? - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/02/how-leaky-is-shale-gas-production/ <comment><USER2> Who can we trust to tell us the answer?

[http://www.democracynow.org/2015/2/25/climate_deniers_expose...](http://www.democracynow.org/2015/2/25/climate_deniers_exposed_top_scientist_got)

<comment><USER3> Any time an article headline is "climate deniers.." Then immediately the rest of the article is suspect. Even the attempt at objectivness is absent. In terms of that article, where's the investigation into Al Gore becoming a billionaire from this issue? Are his scientists somehow less influenced by money? Al Gore has been debunked on numerous occasions; weren't the ice caps supposed to have disappeared? Over 5 years ago he made that claim but they're still there. Al Gore has almost godlike status among the global warming crowd yet he flies in private jets with motorcades and has a massive mansion. If he was so worried, why has he done nothing to curb his own carbon use? It's hypocricy at its absurdest.

<comment><USER4> The ice caps are disappearing, just at a slower rate, the Northwest passage is now open for shipping: [http://news.discovery.com/earth/oceans/cargo-ship-is- first-t...](http://news.discovery.com/earth/oceans/cargo-ship-is-first-to- solo-the-northwest-passage-141002.htm)

Climate scientists admitted they didn't have a complete model and worked to improve that. Satellites are being launched to add data to the model: [http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News- Wires/2014/0629/NAS...](http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News- Wires/2014/0629/NASA-to-launch-replacement-global-warming-satellite)

Ocean currents have been found to be storing up heat: [http://www.sciencemag.org/content/345/6199/897](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/345/6199/897)

The earth is an organic system, one that adapts. Nobody can truly know what will happen, the body of evidence and the majority of scientists agree that changing the balance of CO2 is not a good thing.

One persons hypocrisy does not invalidate everything else. Plus how do you know he's not offsetting his carbon footprint by planting trees?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should we tax robots? - <AUTHOR> Recently, Bill Gates has claimed that we should tax robots, as a solution to the unemployment they contribute to.
I don't see how that would work.
Let's say someone build a free software that automates the job of 100 million people. Surely, this would contribute to massive unemployment. Who should pay taxes, and how much? <comment><USER2> Bill Gates is suggesting that we move from taxing "income paid to employees" to taxing "value of work done".

If my employer replaces me with a robot, _and nothing else changes_ , then my employer saves the cost of my wages minus the cost of the robot. I'm worse off, the robot manufacturer is better off, my employer is much better off, but society as a whole is worse off as it now has less tax income but one more unemployed person to support. Gates' suggestion means that I'd still be worse off, the robot manufacturer would still be better off, my employer would still be better off (but slightly less so), but society _wouldn 't_ be as worse off because tax revenue stays the same which (theoretically) covers the cost of my unemployment. Everyone wins (except me).

In the case of "Let's say someone build a free software that automates the job of 100 million people.", why should employers who replace people with said software get the benefit of the software _and also_ reduce their contribution to society? Why can't they 'just' get the benefit of the software?

<comment><USER3> The first problem I see is that it's relatively easy to track an existing company that fires ten people and replaces them with machines; it's not so easy with the new company someone creates today. How many people are they not employing? How the hell do you determine that?

If you don't get it exactly right, and new companies are at an advantage, old companies will be replaced by new ones. If, on the other end, new companies are at a disadvantage, you risk stagnation.

<comment><USER2> That depends entirely on how it was implemented. A reasonably simple way would be to tax the value of transactions between companies.

Essentially, as I understand it, Bill Gates was suggesting we need to move away from taxing _people_ because the number of people employed in a company is going to fall away to somewhere close to zero. Instead, if we want to raise taxes, we need to move towards taxing something else - that could be work done, or revenue, or transactions between companies, or electricity used, or CPU time.

Bill Gates isn't wrong. If we continue to link taxation to people as we always have then we will end up with tax revenues that don't even _begin_ to cover the costs of running a functional society.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: On Demand Promotional T-Shirt Printing for your Company - <AUTHOR> http://companytee.com

<comment><USER2> Not much to look at here. What is the pricing model? Do you have pictures of previous shirts you've printed? What brand are the shirts?

Screen printing one shirt is very expensive and impractical at remotely reasonable prices. I'm very interested in the concept and I'm looking forward to seeing more. Not sure if you've looked into it, but CAD-cut heat transfer vinyl can emulate a screen print pretty convincingly and comes in a plethora of colors. Would definitely suit the one-off nature and for a period of time it is what Spreadshirt (and others) were using when people ordered low quantities of simple designs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah - we're just starting and moving slowly. We're figuring out a lot of the stuff on the go (brand, price point).

We really want to make things simple so ideally we'll pick one brand of tees, and one single price per tee, regardless of size and color. We have some idea of what it's going to be but don't want to set anything in stone since this could all change.

<comment><USER2> Well, I'm looking forward to seeing the progress. Good luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> What is the printing process, I checked all the tabs and wasn't able to find out anything about types of printing available, resolution, number of colors, or anything else.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi - we're just starting out and moving forward slowly but I'll try to answer your questions:

\- We use a standard screen printing process: we'll start out with printing your logo or image on the front of the tee. We may do more custom stuff later. We can print any color. We're starting with a batch of white, black, dark grey, light grey, and dark blue tees in all sizes (youth - XXL), but we can do custom colors on request.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Does such a programming language exist? - <AUTHOR>

A language that is simple and readable like Python, is static and strongly typed, supports multi paradigm and leverages multi cores or has non blocking IO. <comment><USER2> Believe it or not, Visual Basic is probably exactly what you want.

You may have already heard many good things about C#, but it turns out that VB is slightly more expressive and elegant than C# (I say this as someone that loves C#, and primarily programs using it along with F#).

Here is what VB offers:

* A syntax that almost looks like pseudo code

* A static type system with a kind of optional typing

* Object-oriented programming (classes, inheritance, ad-hoc polymorphism, etc.)

* Functional programming (closures, lambda expressions, parametric polymorphism (generics), etc.)

* Monad Comprehensions (LINQ)

* Type classes/traits (in the form of implicit conversions to an abstract class -- this is another kind of ad-hoc polymorphism, and something that not even F# can easily do)

* XML Literals

* Support for multicore programming in the form of syntactic sugar for writing asynchronous code in a familiar synchronous style (the `async` and `await` keywords)

* All of the .NET framework

* The Roslyn compiler infrastructure -- instead of the compiler being a black box, you can hook into the compiler pipeline

* It runs everywhere Mono runs.

</comment><comment><USER3> Scala! It's mutli paradigm, it can be very simple to read, has amazing concurrency support and can utilize all the NIO goodies from the JVM.

Here's an example of me using it to make multithreaded NIO calls with XMPP:

        val conn = Connection.create(getConnParams("username", "password"))
        val result =
              for {
                (conn, myjid)     <- ConnectionHelper.gchatConnect(conn, "xmppzExampleClient")
                (conn, presence)  <- conn.sendGet[Presence](Presence(from=Some(myjid), to=Some(tojid), presenceType=Some("probe")))
                conn              <- conn.send(Message(body=Some(msgtext), to=tojid, from=Some(myjid)))
                conn              <- conn.send(StreamEnd())
              } yield conn

Each <\- is actually an NIO callback that uses a threadpool (so you aren't spawning too many threads).

But you don't get the nested craziness of ugly callbacks like you would in python or javascript (for instance).

Edit: If you _really_ want whitespace, maybe F#?

[http://www.tryfsharp.org/](http://www.tryfsharp.org/)

<comment><USER4> Maybe C# or the next release of TypeScript? You'd have asynchronous / await so async IO looks more like regular code than generators. Like Scala though there's still a lot of unnecessary syntax. AFAICT the answer to the parents question is 'No, but this would be good'

<comment><USER3> My two main languages I work in are C# and Scala. Hands down I prefer the latter. The only pro in the C# column is the fact that Visual Studio is (finally) pretty nice. Otherwise Scala is just better. So much better inference, pattern matching, currying, less syntactic noise, higher kinded types, implicit parameters, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think Nim[1] or Crystal[2] may be a good fit.

[1] [http://nim-lang.org/](http://nim-lang.org/) [2] [http://crystal- lang.org/](http://crystal-lang.org/)

</comment><comment> vezzy-fnord OCaml, with a caveat that it's "or has non-blocking I/O", though ostensibly SMP is on its way.

<comment><USER6> Wrong or right, I don't think that most people would consider ocaml simple to read.

<comment><USER2> I don't know OCaml, but to the degree that it's like F#, then it is the case that while it is not easy (at first), it is very simple. I can almost always understand any piece of ML code within a few passes, but that has a vanishingly low chance of happening with C# or VB, both of which I know extremely well.

N.B. I am using Rich Hickey's definition of "simple" from his excellent talk "Simple Made Easy".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Haskell is all of these things, though it's library ecosystem has a pretty lengthy learning curve.

</comment><comment><USER8> Go!

func factorial(x int) (result int) { if x == 0 { result = 1; } else { result = x * factorial(x - 1); } return; }

</comment><comment><USER9> Have you looked at Genie? [https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Genie](https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Genie)

<comment><USER10> I think this is as close as it gets in terms of syntax.

Only on HN would such a discovery be made of such a language.

The others that mention: Go, Nim, Crystal - all have valid bases to say it is "similar", but Python is Python and none of those 3 quite read like this one.

Interesting language though and it seems the author is active (with an edit in June 2015).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> [http://kotlinlang.org/](http://kotlinlang.org/) with [http://docs.paralleluniverse.co/quasar/#preview-quasar- kotli...](http://docs.paralleluniverse.co/quasar/#preview-quasar-kotlin- actors)

</comment><comment><USER12> No. I assume by 'simple and readable,' you mean that you want whitespace to be significant. Most languages don't do the Pythonesque 'look! executable pseudocode! (hope you like underscores though!)' thing.

<comment><USER4> CoffeScript and it's variants too. However they're dynamically typed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Nim

</comment><comment><USER14> FreeBASIC. It is simple, has OOP features, Strongly typed, it has threads and is compiled.

</comment><comment><USER15> Statically typed and simple generally means it's pretty hard to actually write reusable code and it's unlikely to "support multi-paradigm" very well. That said, "simple like Python" is an interesting phrase...

<comment><USER4> Why does static typing make it harder to write reusable code?

<comment><USER15> A simple type system makes it difficult to express useful invariants that are _also_ flexible enough for the code to be reusable. Static typing makes it _easier_ to write reusable code, provided the type language is sufficiently expressive.

<comment><USER4> What does invariants mean in this context?

<comment><USER15> Per wikipedia, ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invariant_%28computer_science%...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invariant_%28computer_science%29)):

 _" In computer science, an invariant is a condition that can be relied upon to be true during execution of a program, or during some portion of it. It is a logical assertion that is held to always be true during a certain phase of execution. For example, a loop invariant is a condition that is true at the beginning and end of every execution of a loop."_

I didn't mean it in any more specialized sense, except that there will always exist some invariants that can't be statically enforced (Halting problem). That said, there are lots of things that types _can_ enforce - that's what types are good for (and they are spectacularly good things).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> And compiles to machine code. Please.

</comment><comment><USER17> C# is gonna be your best bet.

</comment><comment><USER18> COBOL :)

</comment><comment><USER19> Julia

</comment><comment><USER20> ADA.

</comment><comment><USER21> C.

<comment><USER22> +1</comment></comment>


The JavaScript Guy - <AUTHOR> http://latviancoder.com/story/the-javascript-guy

<comment><USER2> Your answer can always be: Do what you can to keep me around..:)

On a more serious note, working with newer JS frameworks you'll always run into the issue of long term maintenance. Why do I pick jQuery (most of the time) for projects that I won't solely maintain? It's easy to hire for, it has a big enough community to support and there are a decent number of developers that know jquery (and/or can easily go from JS->jquery). I would try to move some items to jquery-like functionality as you go from prototype to production.

</comment><comment><USER3> In my team, I'm the one that knows JavaScript the best. Everyone is asking for a help and I'm happy to answer.

Anyway, I somehow have this feeling that JavaScript is 2nd-level language and I'm not so proud that I'm the only one that knows it good enough. I would be much prouder if I would be "The Python guy" or, hell, let it be "The PHP guy" even...

<comment><USER4> I know that feeling all too well.

I'm a .NET developer, but I often find myself working with front-end code because I know it fairly well. I also find myself being the main person to write JavaScript.

Don't get me wrong, I like being good at something and I'll keep working at it to become better, but I find JS to be so annoying at times! I feel that I'm only good with it because I've taken the time to read about it, and because I'm able to take lessons from writing back-end code and apply what seem to be obvious lessons to writing JS (i.e. cache jQuery lookups, name functions to aid stack traces, etc). The reason I learned to write JS well was because the overuse of JS annoys me so much, especially when no legacy brower fallback is provided, or when the overuse of plugins causes the page size to be huge.

What's even more annoying is that ever since LinkedIn added those stupid endorsements my main endorsement by far is JavaScript! Now, potential employers will view me as good with JavaScript over anything else.

JS is a good thing to know, but sometimes a part of me dies when I'm referred to as "the best with JS". I'd prefer to be "the best with C#", or "the best with Python", but I'll take what I can get.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's indeed not wise to use technologies only one employee knows. The best way is to chose technologies together and find developers who want to learn those. You have to motivate your colleagues to jump on board. And tell the senior developer websites will be more and more depending on JavaScript. It's not 2000 anymore.</comment>


Scientists Say Destructive Solar Blasts Narrowly Missed Earth in 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/20/us-space-solarblasts-idUSBREA2I1SV20140320 <comment><USER2> "Massive bursts of solar wind and magnetic fields, shot into space on July 23, 2012, would have been aimed directly at Earth if they had happened nine days earlier, Luhmann said."

This is incredible to think about. The chaos this would cause is hard to imagine. We lost power in a data center last spring during a thunder storm and we're still dealing with fallout and problems 9 months later.

</comment><comment><USER3> Where "narrowly missed" is "23 million km away." (For scale: the distance to the core is ~6,000 km and the distance to the moon is ~400,000 km).

<comment><USER4> Narrowly missed as in "Massive bursts of solar wind and magnetic fields, shot into space on July 23, 2012, would have been aimed directly at Earth if they had happened nine days earlier, Luhmann said."</comment></comment>


Interstate (YC S11) Plots Your Development Progress On The Map - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/12/yc-funded-interstate-plots-your-development-progress-on-the-map/

<comment><USER2> Ever since I saw the Cultured Code status page[1] a few months ago, I have been wanting this product. I think a lot of companies would benefit from being more open with their customers about progress.

1\. <http://culturedcode.com/status>

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I really like the ability to make certain sections of the roadmap public.

Good luck to the Interstate guys!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm surprised Github integration isn't on their own roadmap. It would be killer to mark things as completed via commits and see code activity in one application.

<comment><USER4> GitHub integration is now very high on our list of ideas (added it to our roadmap as per your suggestion - <http://roadma.ps/8d#road-4e1ca10c8927f6eb50000273>)!

We've already added support to pull in your commit log to your Overview feed (see: <http://cl.ly/2r2K3N052j0G3w2G2i2O> \- you can enable this via your roadmap's settings page) and we're now looking at pulling in individual commit messages and posting them to roads as update messages, etc (like you suggested).

We're just now trying to decide on the best way to do this :)

<comment><USER3> Ah, missed that section down the page. Very good!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Some really beautiful, pixel-perfect design across the site and the app. Did they do it in-house or hire an outside contractor/agency?

<comment><USER6> It is very nice looking, well done guys. Though it is strikingly similar to Lighthouse, at least at first glance: <http://lighthouseapp.com>. Perhaps a source of inspiration, or just coincidence?

<comment><USER4> I don't see too much resemblance myself and there was no conscious effort of mimicking their design but a lot of project management apps do look fairly similar, UX wise.

<comment><USER6> Maybe it's just that I use LH daily, and that bug trackers and project management apps have only so many possible options for UX - but to me, these two look more alike than any other combinations I can think of. Not implying it's a rip off - it just struck me as funny.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For some reason I thought they would actually overlay this onto a map, and that sounded bizarre and cool. Guess not though.

<comment><USER8> No, I was visualizing the same thing when I read the title.

<comment><USER4> Haha, sorry if the title mislead you. We didn't pick it ourselves although it does fit in with our whole 'Interstate' brand and theme which is nice!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've started using Interstate with my team. The core features are great, and it definitely helps to get organized. The one fundamental problem that I've found early on with the product, which will be a severe detriment unless they can find a workaround, is that there isn't much that keeps me coming back. The only thing that would keep me coming back is a constant stream of updates, but the way that the system is set-up currently, updates come infrequently enough that I'm not concerned enough to regularly check it. This might change with a bigger team and once we get more involved, though. I think one way to improve is to build some type of real-time collaboration platform to supplement the core product. That may be too great a pivot, but the ability to actually use it as a communication suite for my team while building our roadmap is compelling.

<comment><USER4> We've got a some new features which will be arriving across the next few months which will improve the communication aspect of Interstate, among other things.

As you would expect, keep checking our roadmap for more info on what we're working on :) (<http://interstateapp.com/roadmap>).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've been playing around with it for a week and I really like it so far, enough to transition everything over from Basecamp.

I really like that I'll be able to incorporate the development progress easily into an internal status page for our startup. (Actually thinking of doing a road-based metaphor visualization of the 'interstates'.)

I'm very hesitant to have a publicly visible progress page though, out of concern that would encourage people to wait to pay until a certain announced feature was in place. Would at least have to be handled carefully.

<comment><USER4> First of all, great to hear you're finding the app useful!

We've somewhat surprisingly already heard stories regarding the opposite of users waiting to pay until a feature is added; where users have actually joined a site because they noticed a feature which they thought was missing was actually in the works on the app's roadmap!

I do see and understand the worry that it can be risky for /some/ larger businesses to share all the inner workings but we haven't yet heard anything negative back from our users. Also, you aren't required to share everything that you have planned. If you want to, you can start off by just the information that you think you think would be great to share with your users, whatever that may be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Having sub-tasks would be cool that auto-percentaged the completion of a milestone.

IE: "Wireframes" as a milestone/road, should have stops per wireframe.

Otherwise its way too abstract to use to manage a granular project.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm excited about this project and even more excited that we were able to utilize it with our startup. I know these guys personally and this is only the beginning... I promise you.

</comment><comment><USER13> Well done. Watch out! We are chasing you! :)

</comment><comment><USER14> Congrats guys!</comment>


How to prevent iPhone ATM PIN code hack - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Vc-69M-UWk

<comment><USER2> I believe it was found out that this video is fake and created in order to sell the infrared camera attachment for the iPhone.

Some people tested the claims (using a DSLR with the infrared filter removed) and weren't able to remotely get the same level of heat on plastic buttons as shown.

<comment><USER3> > Some people tested the claims (using a DSLR with the infrared filter removed

I don't know if the video is faked, but that is a horrible way to test the claims. Regular image sensors only detect near-IR and not the mid to far IR radiated by hot objects.</comment></comment>