Ask HN: Just got an innocent man out of prison. What now? - <AUTHOR> Hi, I'm Clint Ehrlich, a hacker/law student who helped get an innocent man released from prison. I'm here on HN asking for advice about how to help my new friend get back on his feet.
A year ago, I saw a Dateline NBC episode about an Iraq-war vet, Sgt. Ray Jennings, who allegedly killed an 18-year-old girl in a parking lot. The evidence didn't persuade me, so my dad and I started our own investigation.
We wrote a 34-page letter to the DA's office, which you can read here: http://www.ehrlichfirm.com/criminal-cases/raymond-lee-jennin... The letter persuaded them to reopen the murder investigation.
Last week, after 11 years behind bars, Ray walked out of court a free man. But he was released onto the street with no resources. Do any of the great minds at HN have any ideas about how I can help him get money for housing, food, and clothes?
The most obvious answer is litigation. And in a year or two, Ray will probably receive some compensation from the State. Unfortunately, there's no way to access those funds in time to cover his immediate expenses.
In the future, Ray also may be able to earn some income talking about his story. Unfortunately, the charges against him won't be formally dismissed for another 2 months, and until then he is understandably reticent about speaking publicly.
I have set up a GoFundMe campaign. It did well, but momentum has stalled. I'd appreciate any recommendations about how or where to promote it:
https://www.gofundme.com/RayJennings
Thanks for your help. I'm sorry that I was a bit caustic in previous posts asking for help with this case. I contacted the Mods, and they encouraged me to try again with a different approach. <comment><USER2> Since you're in Los Angeles, you might try reaching out to Homeboy Industries: [http://www.homeboyindustries.org/](http://www.homeboyindustries.org/)

They specialize in helping get folks back on their feet with job training. They have a bakery program, a line of salsa, solar panel installation training, etc. They hire ex-gang and previously incarcerated men and women.

Disclosure: I have enjoyed the salsa.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm a big fan of Homeboy Industries, so I appreciate the suggestion. But I don't think it's fair to put Ray into a program for ex-gang members.

Ray is a clean-cut, straight-arrow kind of guy, so it's been very hard for him to spend the last 11 years of his life surrounded by actual criminals.

He really wants to become just another person — not an ex-con.

<comment><USER3> Look, you've really gone above and beyond here. I think that's awesome.

But it's a bit of a drag to see you write off "ex-gang members" the way that you did. These are human beings that deserve your respect. If someone does their time and holds down a job, what's not to admire?

Your man was a soldier and he survived 11 years in prison as an innocent man. I suspect that he'd really enjoy meeting the folks at Homeboy even if he didn't end up working there.

<comment><AUTHOR> I value what Homeboy Industries is doing and I respect the people who are participating in their programs and trying to turn their lives around. I wish them nothing but success.

That said, it isn't a normal job training program. If you had a friend with no criminal record who was looking for work, I doubt you send him to Homeboy Industries in order to get job training.

Ray was in prison, but he isn't someone trying to turn his life around after falling in with gangs or crime. He was a Sergeant in the U.S. military who had his freedom taken for no reason.

He has just been forced to spend 11 years of his life with people from backgrounds that led them into the criminal-justice system. Some of them are good people, others are not. But none of them came from the same circumstances as Ray, a man who risked his life for our country and never did anything to society for which he needs to atone.

I will certainly tell him about Homeboy Industries and let him make his own decisions. But I think it's totally reasonable if, after being forced to spend 11 years surrounded by convicts, he now chooses to seek out situations where he will be able to spend time around "normal" folks.

<comment><USER4> This is something I understand completely. My "crime" was being born with the wrong genes. My genetic disorder has closed a lot of doors for me, in spite of my strong academic background. I also think many programs to help such people do a lot of things inherently badly, so are often a bad idea, even if you need reform. My experience with homelessness has been that a lot of programs can be really detrimental to one's long term success.

I already left links to a couple of my sites in another comment. I will also suggest panning for gold as a potential path forward. You can set your own hours. The only human interaction required is finding a buyer, and I know an online site if he is interested. It can pay decently.

I don't quite know what else to say. It has been a long day and I am tired. If he is interested, I would rather discuss it (panning for gold) further privately.

You are doing a good thing. Unfortunately, most people you speak with will not see what you see: That he doesn't need reform because his life was stolen from him. Most people just won't really get it. So, trying to find good answers will be challenging.

My hat is off to you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Churches.

I currently tutor a formerly homeless man whom I met through an Episcopal church.

They saw him sleeping outside the front door and took him in. They connected him with low income housing services who found him a subsidized apartment and gave him a job working in the cafeteria of their school.

I'd visit a few parishes and ask friends/family who are churchgoing for direction.

Best of luck and I hope Ray gets on his feet.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a great thought.

Do you know of any online Christian outlets or forums that might be open to promoting Ray's GoFundMe?

<comment><USER6> I think people like to help more directly. I'd talk with churches in the same state as Ray. Physical goods and places to be are as useful as money to a person in that situation, and people typically have a lot of extra "stuff" that they'd be happy to part with to help a person in need, especially if it was brought up in church. They'd probably raise some money directly for him too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I know this is off topic to the direct question at hand but his case, assuming the talking points found on this page I found[1] are true, is scary. No evidence whatsoever, including fingernail DNA that _excluded_ him? What the actual fuck.

>> Mr. Jennings voluntarily submitted to hours of police interviews and interrogations and a polygraph test without objection or legal representation.

>> The evidence presented against Jennings at trial... statements and snippets of statements taken from the hours of police interrogation of Jennings which prosecutors said pointed to his guilt

It bears reminding, voluntarily speaking to police is _NEVER, EVER... EVER!!!_ the right thing to do. You try to help, but all it does is set you up as a scapegoat. I'll do some more searching to find the answer, but all I can think of now is what kind of judge or jury could have _possibly_ convicted this... unless he accepted a plea.

>> prosecutors called forensic behavioral consultant, Mark Safarik, who testified that it was his opinion that the crime was a sexually motivated encounter which went bad; this, based on the fact that when found, O'Keefe's tube top was partially pulled down.

A "partially pulled down" tube top means sexual assault?! It couldn't be that the attacker simply was grabbing at the victim?

>> because a security guard was on duty, it was highly unlikely that any other offender would commit such a crime

How does one know whether a particular area is patrolled by security? Does this forensic moron, and the judge listening to this testimony, really think this is relevant?

These kinds of horror stories come up again, and again, and again in the US. Just another reason I haven't crossed the border to that country in over a decade.

[1] [http://justiceforray.webs.com/](http://justiceforray.webs.com/)

<comment><USER8> Can a plea conviction be appealed / overturned? I admit my law knowledge is from watching Law & Order. :-). But "Lawyer-up" is the take home from that show (and by that token kids - ask for a lawyer not your mum or dad. you don't need a cuddle you need legal help)

<comment><USER9> Yes, in California a judge can allow a plea to be withdrawn if it "serves the interests of justice." This is the same mechanism used to expunge someone's record after, e.g., completing probation. They are _required_ to set aside guilty pleas if they learn that the party isn't guilty—even if the defendant doesn't ask them to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Clothing: Thrift stores. Specifically, if you go to the church thrift stores and you say "We are trying to help him get back on his feet" they will often give you a discount and/or some clothes for free.

Jobs: Side gigs on craigslist. Lawn care, concrete, helping people move...you can look on craigslist and find these. It's not perfect, but it's -some- cash flow until he can find someone willing to hire.

Transportation: There are enough funds to get an old car for probably around $1k or less just to start out. Can resell it later and get something better once he gets more stable. But it will provide transport to side gigs and worst case a roof over his head. I've had to sleep in my car more than a few times.

</comment><comment><USER4> If he is in the LA area, he is not far from San Diego. You can get there by bus, inexpensively, by taking local (commuter) buses instead of the Greyhound. I spent over 3 years homeless down there. Here is my blog about resources in San Diego county: [http://sandiegohomelesssurvivalguide.blogspot.com/](http://sandiegohomelesssurvivalguide.blogspot.com/)

The North County is cheaper and has more open land for stealthily camping.

I also do freelance writing and one of my newest blogs covers that. It is linked from that blog specifically, but here is the direct link: [http://writepay.blogspot.com/](http://writepay.blogspot.com/)

That doesn't mean that what worked for me in specific will work for him in specific, but it is a place to start.

If he is a veteran, he may also be entitled to free medical care and access to other military services, though I don't know how his conviction impacts that. I believe felons cannot get food stamps, so there may be a lot of things he cannot access until after things are completely cleared up legally. In the mean time, he can go to soup kitchens and the like for a meal.

My homeless blog takes the position that an individual's agency is incredibly important. A lot of charity is done in a really harmful manner. I am not the only person to have that idea. I recently tripped across a book titled "Toxic Charity." So I try like hell to blog about what a person can access without having to sell their soul, lose their dignity, give up their agency and so on. That limits what is available, but I think it preserves things that really matter.

Best of luck.

<comment><USER11> It gives me a weird feeling that you're trying to profit and become rich off of homelessness. But, this is HN so... I guess its to be expected.

<comment><USER4> I started the blog solely to help keep track of information for myself. I abandoned it for several months when I first left downtown San Diego and went to the north county. I even posted a "Goodbye" post. Then, weirdly, even without updates or any promotion whatsoever, it was getting organic traffic. I discovered this because of the occasional few cents here and there showing up on my Adsense account from the site.

Since the major city and the county have the same name and I was still in the county, I decided to make it a countywide resource to the best of my ability.

It is shockingly hard for a homeless person to find the information they need online. I have had a college class on how to do online search and sometimes have difficulty finding things online so I can get an address and phone number even when I know for a fact they exist.

Most websites for homeless service providers are not intended to be client facing. They are intended to impress potential donors. They typically do a poor job of telling needy individuals what they need to know.

So, there is demand for the info. I assure you, I am not getting rich off of it. One of my Achilles heels is that I like being helpful. So, although this is, sadly, one of the most successful projects I have ever had in terms of traffic and being taken seriously as a valuable resource and making a difference in the world, it has put damn little money in my pocket.

Further, I find it galling that a homeless individual is being criticized for trying to monetize their expertise in the topic. Most of the time, I get this shitty attitude that admitting to being homeless online amounts to me trying to panhandle people. So, in other words, I am homeless, I am not allowed to merit an earned income. I am only allowed to hope for charity and ingratiate myself for crumbs. No matter how I get my money, it is inherently immoral.

And people wonder why my financial problems are proving to be so stubborn, as well as why I have such strong feelings that the wrongly convicted individual we are discussing should be allowed to pursue an income that doesn't involve making a spectacle of his misfortune.

But, this is HN so...I guess it's to be expected.

(And I say "sadly" it is one of my most successful projects in part because homelessness is on the rise nationwide. The general rise in homelessness is part of why there is demand for the info. In my case, "getting rich" would mean what? Getting off the street? How dare I aspire to such self indulgence and selfishness when there are poorer homeless people than I.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder if Dateline would have interest in updating his story, and if there might be any compensation for something like that. I'm not involved in TV production, but you would think if they had enough interest to report on his conviction (which happens every day) there would be an even better story regarding his release.

<comment><AUTHOR> Dateline has asked me to sit down for an interview with Keith Morrison. I may do that, but there will be no compensation involved.

<comment><USER13> You _may_ do that? You absolutely should. You're promoting his cause. See if you can have space in the program to talk about his transition and the financial assistance campaign in particular.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a ton of media interest. I'm only going to appear on Dateline if I have some assurance that the new piece will be fairer than the original one that got my attention.

<comment><USER14> What did you find unfair about the original piece? I haven't seen it but I had assumed it would be relatively favorable if Dateline had chosen to publicize the case 15 years after the murder and 6 years after the conviction.

<comment><AUTHOR> The Dateline piece came out right after Ray's conviction. I just happened to see it 5 years later.

It portrayed him as a craven killer who was brought to justice only through the Herculean efforts of police and prosecutors who wouldn't let the absence of any physical evidence stop them from getting a conviction.

<comment><USER15> Well, people are often convicted based on circumstantial evidence. That's why there is a jury, to weigh the available evidence. Personally, I wouldn't give this guy any help based on what I've read, and certainly not without reading the entire record of each trial. Also, the prosecutor should have definitely sought a lower charge of manslaughter after the 2nd hung jury.

[http://www.thefreelibrary.com/TESTIMONY+IN+2000+SLAYING+CO-W...](http://www.thefreelibrary.com/TESTIMONY+IN+2000+SLAYING+CO- WORKER+SAYS+HE+OVERHEARD+SUSPECT+TELL...-a0146287222)

Edit: added the following

Yeah, down-voting doesn't invalidate my my feelings on the matter, and looking at the appelate court's decision to uphold the verdict [1] just affirms that I would need a whole lot more convincing this guy is innocent.

[1] [http://www.leagle.com/decision/In%20CACO%2020111219009/PEOPL...](http://www.leagle.com/decision/In%20CACO%2020111219009/PEOPLE%20v.%20JENNINGS)

<comment><USER16> Why don't you try reading the letter OP wrote which got this man _released_ instead of shody reports of hearsay "evidence" from a 2-bit not-even-cop trying to impress the detectives on the case?!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think sticking with the GoFundMe campaign is probably the best way to go. But since it has stalled, it needs to be reinvigorated through some others means. You need to get the attention of someone in the media who will publish an article on the guy. Multiple articles from different publishers would be ideal. If a few medium to high profile companies put something out there you can definitely meet (and probably exceed) your goal. Think of the influx of donations that would pour in if you made the front page of CNN, MSN, BBC, etc.

If you have social media accounts, post the links to your GoFundMe page and the personal website you have listed above out on Twitter, Facebook, etc. Better yet, include them as responses/messages directly to accounts held my media corporations because someone at that company is reading them to monitor their PR. And I bet most of the employees subscribe/follow that account as well - and they might see it and pick it up. Example - "Hey @MSN, this story needs to be spread. Please help this man get his life back. [http://...."](http://....")

I also just made a modest donation in support of this cause.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your advice and your donation!

I am doing my best right now to reinvigorate the GoFundMe campaign. I'm grateful to everyone who shares it with others!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Because of the man's relatively common name, it was hard initially to find articles in the mainstream press about his exoneration (at least compared to his 2009 conviction). Here is a recent LA Times article that covers the boilerplate: [http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-palmdale- student...](http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-palmdale-student- killed-20160623-snap-story.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> It's probably best to search for "Raymond Lee Jennings."

The media seem to prefer that formulation of his name, because it sounds creepier.

This is the best news article: [http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me- ln-20160624-jenning...](http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me- ln-20160624-jennings-release-snap-story.html)

And this is a great blog post: [http://mimesislaw.com/fault-lines/prosecutors- ask-court-to-r...](http://mimesislaw.com/fault-lines/prosecutors-ask-court-to- release-guy-they-wrongfully-convicted/10775)

<comment><USER18> The media is obligated to use full names as it differentiates people with common names.

You can see this at work when, for whatever reason, killer Joel Rifkin was only referred to by his first and last name for a long time in the tabloid press. Lots of people share that name and it was unfair to them to be associated with a killer. There was actually a Seinfeld episode making fun of this as it became a problem in NY which has a lots of Rifkins. Now he's typically referred to as Joel David Rifkin.

<comment><USER14> I had a friend named Adam Moss...at his wedding, his father-in-law related the shock he had in learning, via an Internet search, that the man his daughter had fallen in love with was recently apprehended as a mass murderer: [http://siouxcityjournal.com/news/local/adam-moss-who- killed-...](http://siouxcityjournal.com/news/local/adam-moss-who-killed-in- sioux-city-is-found-dead/article_a9b23621-4dee-575c-8176-1db4b1c7921e.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> How about a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for a self-published book? You two can be co-authors that way people get to read his experiences as well as your investigation.

It is an election year. Perhaps you could introduce him to Clinton's campaign. They could hire him to do campaign related work (so he has a paycheck) while she can use his story to make a case for reforms in the legal system.

<comment><USER20> I would definitely buy this book, and (Army vet here) a lot of my former platoon members probably would too. One of my former squad leaders is a cop now, and another platoon member is at the police academy. Anecdotally I can say that, since a lot of vets end up in the LE community, interest in this story would be there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've only just read about the case but from the current vantage point, it looks like a severe fuckup on the part of the district attorney. I know that suspects revealing non-public details of a homicide can lead to an investigation that uncovers more conclusive evidence...but to base an entire case around that, without any other evidence linking them to the crime? I'm looking forward to reading the post-mortem on how such a case gained enough momentum to drive the DA to prosecute on such flimsy evidence.

edit: by "severe" fuckup, I also mean, just plain incomprehensible. At least in other egregious cases, there's a mountain of quasi-science [1] or a coerced false confession [2]...if the drama that managed to propel this bumbling case this far forward doesn't result in at least a HBO miniseries a few years from now, I will be very surprised.

[1] [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/09/07/trial-by- fire](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/09/07/trial-by-fire)

[2] [http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/507/c...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/507/confessions)

</comment><comment><USER21> In Germany the reimbursement is be 25 Euro[1] (28 USD) per day. I hope it's more i the US and other countries.

[1] [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haftentsch%C3%A4digung](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haftentsch%C3%A4digung)

<comment><AUTHOR> In theory, California provides $124 a day in compensation to the wrongfully imprisoned.

In practice, the State makes it VERY hard to ever recover those funds. There are guys who were exonerated years ago who are still waiting to receive a single penny.

<comment><USER22> Can you expound a little on what makes if difficult to recover the funds? What hoops must one jump through that wouldn't be plainly evident in RLJ's particular situation?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure. There are two primary issues.

First, the standard for being compensated is higher than the one for being let out of prison. Ray is free right now because the state has admitted that it no longer has confidence in his conviction.

However, it has not affirmatively conceded his innocence. That may sound pedantic. It let him out of prison and admits he isn't the target of the ongoing investigation. But from a legal perspective, it makes all the difference in regards to whether he is actually entitled to compensation.

Second, even if the State agrees that someone is theoretically entitled to compensation, there are significant budgetary delays. State law requires public hearings before funds can be appropriated, so sometimes you have to wait months upon months for the funds to be allocated... much less actually delivered.

<comment><USER23> This is one area where Texas is far ahead of California.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> These people have gotten people out of prison, I'm guessing that they've run across your issue and probably have ideas or places to refer: [https://www.themarshallproject.org/about](https://www.themarshallproject.org/about)

</comment><comment><USER25> First of all you should take pride in what you have done already. You've gone way beyond what most of your fellow country men will ever do.

While I understand, you're doing the wrong thing by focusing on this single individual. Since this guy is someone you have gotten to know, you have an emotional tie that is making you blind to the cold hard truth.

This happens to someone everyday.

\- Parents have a falling out with their adolescent children and kick them out \- Runaway kids run out of money, and by running out I mean: zero zilch nada \- Addicts just run out of money as well as in zero zilch nada \- Explosive break up of couple where one gets locked out \- Eviction by landlords or as a result of bankruptcy etc etc etc

Most have friend or family to help out, and you'll never heard about them. Those who don't are the one you see sleeping on the streets. Thats assuming that you're not one of those that just stay between our office, the mall, and the safe gated community in the suburbs where the hobos are nicly or of sight out of mind. This is what most people do...

You can do one of two things. a) Take the position that's you've helped one guy out of jail. If every body helped one person, everybody in need would be out of homelessness in a forth night. Quite frankly, your guy is just so much better of just living on the street than in jail, so if you take this position you've done your part for king and country. I will not fault you for taking this position.

b) Start working on something, anything, that goes towards a solution that take care of everybody.

I'm a bit astonished that you can't go to the court and argue that as there is no way he is not going to get some kind of compensation, the state can just as well right now front up something like $1000 - $10000 to help him get reestablished. If there is some crap about there is case law not too, then this is call to start working on abolishing the whole concept of common law and switch to a civil law system. (I know this means getting the legislative to replace the current body of case law with some more sensible civil code. A task for which the word "hard" falls short.)

I just take the position we need to work on the whole problem , and that doing this by individual you're effectively just doing a band aid. Remember the phrase "the road to hell is paved with good intentions?" You make actually be making it worse by doing it by individuals as it may hide the true scope and scale of the problem.

<comment><USER26> Yeah, if our system puts innocent people away they should reimburse them for that severe fuck up. Maybe focus on changing that law, for the big picture.

<comment><USER27> Such laws vary by state: [http://www.innocenceproject.org/compensating- wrongly-convict...](http://www.innocenceproject.org/compensating-wrongly- convicted/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > A year ago, I saw a Dateline NBC episode about an Iraq-war vet, Sgt. Ray > Jennings, who allegedly killed an 18-year-old girl in a parking lot. The > evidence didn't persuade me, so my dad and I started our own investigation.

You're amazing!

I donate to The Innocence Project, because I think putting innocent people into jail is just about the worst thing you can do to someone short of rape/kill them.

<comment><USER29> Indeed, and then when you look a little deeper and realize that the goals of the "Justice" system are essentially to "prosecute and convict" as many people as possible and the people who prosecute are almost 100% protected from anything bad they do as long as they are chasing those goals

And then realize that even if it becomes obvious that someone is (or most likely is) innocent or has been pushed into a plea deal to avoid an even longer sentence for something they didn't do

You just want to puke

Somehow the ideals of justice got thrown out somewhere here in the US

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Apologies if you already thought of the following:

Post it on Reddit and also see if CNN will pick up your story. I have seen CNN post stories involving GoFundMe campaigns related to good/human interest stories in the past and those campaigns got a good boost. Plus, the folks on Reddit also always love to support a good story.

If Mr. Jennings does decide to open up in the future, maybe even try to get an "IAmA wrongly convicted man" story published where Reddit can interview him? That would be an interesting raising awareness attempt.

With regards to Reddit, you might try reaching out to Alexis Ohanian via Twitter or other channels to see if he has any suggestions.

P.S. Go Claremont :) Used to live there.

</comment><comment><USER14> Maybe premature to think about this, but once the full story can be told, this seems like the perfect candidate for Serial Season 3...I'm really fascinated to know what jurors, detectives, and prosecutors were thinking.

(Coincidentally, the accused murderer who was the focus of Serial's first season, has just been granted a new trial, according to an announcement just 5 minutes ago [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/01/us/serial-adnan-syed- new-t...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/01/us/serial-adnan-syed-new- trial.html))

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm an Afghan combat veteran in Los Angeles who has recent first hand knowledge of how to navigate the homeless-to-housing pipeline through the West LA VA, along with a great resource list of other things: transitional housing, transport, getting into the VA system, psychiatric care, benefits claims, VSOs (veteran service organizations) and so on.

Also, if Ray wants to speak to a good counselor, a Vietnam combat vet and outstanding man, I can't speak any more highly than my own counselor. I credit with him with me still being around.

Happy to assist in any way whatsoever. My email is username at gmail.

</comment><comment><USER32> Post in the appropriate "Hometown forum" on AR15.com. As he is a veteran, I'm confident that someone there will be able to help - I've watched the members of that site have come through in a big way innumerable times in the past.

[http://www.ar15.com/forums/b/8_Hometown.html](http://www.ar15.com/forums/b/8_Hometown.html)

</comment><comment><USER33> This may not be the greatest idea, and may not even be realistic but are there not cash advances on a pending/future lawsuit? I imagine the terms are not friendly, but it may be more successful than a GoFundMe campaign if he becomes desperate enough.

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately, Ray's case has not advanced far enough to make litigation financing a practical option. Financing firms need significantly more assurance of a realistic payoff than they would be able to obtain at this juncture.

<comment><USER34> Do you have a link to anything more concrete about that?

<comment><AUTHOR> Just my own experience submitting judgments to litigation funding firms while cases were pending on appeal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> You succeeded in getting a lawyer to take on this case(okay, he was your father, but still.) Now try doing the same with getting a top notch PR person with experience getting television exposure.

1) Reach out to top PR consultants

2) Explain this story to them in a paragraph

3) Tell them you need their help in helping get his story out

4) Big part of getting his story out would involve pushing his gofundme page.

<comment><USER4> I hope you do not take this suggestion too seriously. He didn't want to be convicted and he may not want the entire rest of his life to be dependent upon him telling his story and spilling his guts in public to pay the bills. It is one thing if he WANTS to tell his story. But maybe he just wants his damn life back. In which case, this could be just a way to add insult to injury.

I would try to give him options for getting his needs met that did not require him to make a spectacle of himself to eat. If he wants to be a crusader or if he finds it therapeutic to talk about it publicly for the rest of his life, that's fine. But maybe he just wants his life back and THAT'S IT. In which case, trying to go this route without asking him how he feels about it or offering him other alternatives is not great.

<comment><USER36> "trying to go this route without asking him" \- who said anything about not asking him? Seems pretty obvious that this would be the implied first step.

<comment><USER4> I have spent 4.5 years homeless. Prior to that, I was an award winning student, and then a respected military wife and homeschooling mom. (Edit: Oh, yeah, I also worked for a Fortune 500 company for over 5 years.)

Being homeless has given me loads of firsthand experience with how cavalier people are about completely disregarding the human dignity and agency of individuals they view as _charity cases._ So, I felt compelled to speak up and say "Please, don't view this as necessarily a great idea. There is more at stake here than money. Please, don't sell this man out because of his current financially desperate straits. That can make it impossible for him to get the life he desires and it can be done to him without his permission."

And the degree to which people here are shouting me down suggests to me that, no, most folks here wouldn't ask. They think it's a great idea. I am a lone voice on the side of respecting his dignity, personal choice and right to privacy first and foremost. And I find it baffling that people can claim well "Obviously, we wouldn't do any such thing" while doing exactly that thing. I have always found that baffling. But here it is again.

<comment><USER37> Just my 2 cents, so please read with a grain of salt.

From your story, you appear to have a stronger connection to Ray's story then most folk on this site. Since you were in similar circumstances (without means), you have an understanding of how one can feel in that situation and your reaction is just, when viewed from that side.

On the other hand, people who read HN are entrepreneurial in spirit and instantly see it through their lense of "solving a problem". It is my opinion that most folk here have no problem doing what is necessary to get their story across or "sell themselves" to achieve a goal (within reason). Hence, to them, Ray's situation should be attacked with a similar POV as drumming support for a startup or idea.

I believe the misunderstanding comes from the way you are viewing Ray as a person and attempting to preserve his decency in the event he's not comfortable with some of the suggestions while others are viewing his situation as an issue to solve/conquer without similar experience. Both opinions are right but for different reasons.

Regardless, I'm glad that you had the strength to overcome your own hardships. Hopefully Ray has similar success.

<comment><USER4> Thank you for commenting.

My view is strongly shaped by the negative reactions I have gotten over the years on HN, where I have only sought to be taken seriously as an entrepreneur, but have largely failed in that endeavor. So I am very familiar firsthand with how much harm can be done to one's ability to support themselves when there is a lot of public attention given to them in a way that frames them as a victim, a charity case, and so on.

I have about six years of college. I was an award winning student. I am the top ranked woman on HN _while homeless_ and, yet, I cannot get people here to take me seriously that the only damn thing I need in order to make my fucked up life actually work is arranging for an (adequate amount of) earned income that does not keep me ill.

In spite of the famous saying that _There is no such thing as bad publicity_ , I have experienced firsthand that there absolutely is such a thing as _bad publicity._

Entrepreneurs are promoting their work and accomplishments. It has a completely different impact on your life when what is publicized is how you have been a victim, how pathetic your life currently is and so on. That in no way convinces people to give you paid work, whether as an employee or a freelancer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I write this knowing how bad of an idea it is but it still is a gut reaction so I will say it. Find a way to move him to Oakland and get him to be on the YC Basic Income experiment. I bet the learning to YCR from this would be extremely high, given I feel like fixing the prison system will probably be on their agenda for future research.

<comment><USER39> It would pretty much ruin the experiment if they allowed volunteers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> The letter itself: [http://www.ehrlichfirm.com/jennings/Ray-Jennings-Letter- to-C...](http://www.ehrlichfirm.com/jennings/Ray-Jennings-Letter-to-CRU- October-2-2015.pdf)

<comment><USER41> I've read about halfway through it and I'm just appalled. They prosecuted Jennings for the sole reason that they had no idea how to find the actual killer. But someone had to pay, and Jennings was the least unlikely suspect that they actually knew how to find (though they had to wait for him to come home from serving in Iraq!).

This conviction is a black mark on the record of the great State of California. And it really shows the dangers of listening too closely to victims and their families, who are (understandably, in their pain) often much too quick to fixate on a suspect. Yes, they wanted justice for their daughter -- I get that. But true justice required finding the actual killer. Putting an innocent man in prison is not justice for anybody.

BTW I've chipped into the GoFundMe campaign.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I own a small business in OC (miltonsecurity) and I have a Vet program where I hire them for up to 6 months, pay for training courses (CCNA online at the office) and rotate them around to different groups (sales, support, engineering) If they get their CCNA we then advance them.

I would be willing to do this for him (its not a lot of money to start, but its something, and he can get some training while he waits for the DA)

jim

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Woah, thanks to all the HN posters who just started donating money!!! That's REALLY generous of you guys. I appreciate it, and so does Ray.

</comment><comment><USER43> What'd he do in the military? He may be able to leverage those skills for immediate employment.

<comment><AUTHOR> He was an infantryman. Kicked down doors in Iraq going room-to-room searching for insurgents.

Until the charges are formally dismissed, it's hard to imagine any employer will actually be willing to hire him. The DA's office is really making his life hard by refusing to just immediately stipulate that he's an innocent man.

<comment><USER44> I suspect you could probably convince smaller businesses to be ok on the background check, with disclosure. If I were hiring, I'd do it on his merits (Iraq vet makes up for the extra hassle with a background investigation, at least for me.)

(Also, fuck the DA. What is it with SoCal and horrible DAs?)

<comment><USER45> s/SoCal/USA/

It's not really a surprise; no decent person would voluntarily sign up to send pot-smokers to prison.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Jon Eldan, a former corporate attorney who works with exonerees, runs a project called After Innocence that may be able to help/provide some guidance with respect to healthcare, pro bono legal representation, and social services: [http://www.after-innocence.org/](http://www.after-innocence.org/)

</comment><comment><USER47> You may want to reach out to the Medill Justice Project at Northwestern University ([http://www.medilljusticeproject.org/](http://www.medilljusticeproject.org/)). What you and your dad did is what they do all the time, so they may have some resources that can help out.

</comment><comment><USER48> I'm maybe a little optimistic but why not ask a big and rich university to give him a free education and shelter for 3/4 years ? It could be good for him and for the university image (It would be a better usage of university money than recruiting people bases on their athletics skills IMHO).

</comment><comment><USER49> Talk to the St Vincent de Paul society [1]. It's part of the Catholic Church, but they are there to serve everyone, regardless of religious beliefs, and won't pass judgement or bang on about their own religious beliefs. Helping people in Ray's situation is what they do every day, with material assistance, counseling or any other need. Even if Ray doesn't want direct assistance, he may get some useful advice by chatting to them. No need to walk into a church. Just walk into any of their shops and ask to talk to someone, or Ray can call them and they will discretely come to him.

[1] [https://www.svdpusa.org/Assistance- Services](https://www.svdpusa.org/Assistance-Services)

</comment><comment><USER50> Reach out to faculty at UCLA (and other unis/colleges in the area) who work on issues of incarceration. See for example the list of attendees/organizers at this conference: [https://law.ucla.edu/centers/social-policy/critical-race- stu...](https://law.ucla.edu/centers/social-policy/critical-race- studies/events/2014/2016/9/23/2016-Prisoners-Advocates-Conference/). They often have slush funds to hire research assistants, guest speakers, etc.

</comment><comment><USER51> One place to look is resources for veterans. California has some great ones.[1] See about filing for any disabilities that may be related to time in service and if there is any way to get treatment and help through the VA. Also, look for other non-profit veteran resources beyond just the state and federal.

[1][https://www.calvet.ca.gov/VetServices/Documents/Veteran_%20R...](https://www.calvet.ca.gov/VetServices/Documents/Veteran_%20Resource_%20Book_2016.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER52> Hollywood, maybe? Netflix made a series on Steven Avery that created an enormous amount of attention to that case. Him being in the army, coming back to his country, being arrested for a activity that he didn't do, spending 11 years behind the bars and finally being released as an innocent man is a great story to tell. Since hollywood is running out of stories these days that could be an option. Hell, maybe Netflix would want to tie this to the next season of "Making a murderer"?

<comment><USER53> It might be a naive question, do you know if Steven Avery or his family came away from those TV shows with some money?

<comment><USER52> Don't know those details but his lawyers obviously worked with Netflix on creation of the series. It would be hard to imagine that there was no compensation involved.

<comment><USER52> Also on a different note, investing a little money/time on creating an emotional video and posting it on social networks might help on advertising the GoFundMe campaign thus generating more funds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> There are many organizations around the country that supply free business attire to people in need. In New York City, where I'm based, main one is "Dress for Success" and in Baltimore there is "Success In Style". I'm sure there is something similar in Clint's area. There might be a directory these organizations online OR just call up either of the ones I mentioned, I bet they could connect you to a place that would help.

</comment><comment><USER55> Before I moved away recently, I had dinner pretty regularly with the guys at Dismas House Nashville (dismas.org), which provides transitional housing for former offenders. They do a great job helping people get back on their feet with housing, jobs, etc. I don't know if they can help directly, but if Ray has roots in North Carolina perhaps the staff there (I've worked with Davey and Scott) know people in the southeast region who could help.

</comment><comment><USER56> For some local reentry links in the area you can use 211 San Diego:

[http://www.211sandiego.org/Re-entry](http://www.211sandiego.org/Re-entry)

Also, I can put you in contact with an individual in the LA area that may have some contacts as well (he served 25+ years in federal prison and is works to help people who have been released. He is in LA). My email is in my profile.

</comment><comment><USER26> I was thinking of starting a website a while ago and even bought the domain, then released it, called www.helpahomelessperson.com. The goal behind it is/was to just list a homeless person and their needs, a person who is more well off would have to post their listing most likely and they would take pictures, video interviews and tell their story for them.

Then you would have people that wanted to help (visitors) and would browse around the site and find a story of someone who struck a chord with them and they could donate anonymously or publicly in terms of anything they wanted.

The key to the site is for someone to be an amabassador for the homeless person and really get that persons story out there and up on the site. The 'internet' would do the rest.

Also caution would need to be taken to not force someone to accept a person's donation, because some people might expect something in return or just be bad news, like a company who just wants publicity.

Anyways, the idea is still valid, I just haven't had the time to pursue it yet.

This happens all the time I am sure. Would be a great Show HN.

</comment><comment><USER57> If you don't know what church the Mormon Church will help whomever.

[http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2016/06/24/mormon-...](http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2016/06/24/mormon- welfare-program/31091/)

</comment><comment><USER58> In addition to what others have covered, connect him with a pro bono counselor to help him smooth out the inevitable ups and downs as his new life unfolds, and also to help coordinate other medical care. Also, help him get signed up for base health insurance under Obamacare. Finally, find him a pro bono accountant, if you can, to help him discover and correct any tax issues that may have come up while he was in prison. It would suck for him to go from freedom right back into the court system due to some easily corrected tax issue.

</comment><comment><USER59> I read this post earlier and then just read this City Journal article where the founder of the company America Works describes his history with the war on poverty and welfare to work programs. The focus is to get people entry level jobs and he apparently has a good track record of doing it.

Good luck!

[http://www.city-journal.org/html/what-i-learned-poverty- war-...](http://www.city-journal.org/html/what-i-learned-poverty- war-13513.html)

</comment><comment><USER60> Have you tried contacting a social worker in their locality?

</comment><comment><USER61> Please help Ross Ulbrich

[https://freeross.org/](https://freeross.org/)

[http://www.drugpolicy.org/news/2016/03/retired-federal- judge...](http://www.drugpolicy.org/news/2016/03/retired-federal-judge-law- enforcement-and-leading-drug-reform-organization-ask-court-re)

</comment><comment><USER62> [Off topic] I am surprised that the DA reopened the case, particularly with an actual jury verdict under their belt. What incentive do you think the DA had to reopen the case? Were they just afraid to lose on appeal? Speaking of appeal, how far up in the court system did the appeal go? And was the original prosecutor still at the DA's office?

<comment><USER63> District attorneys are supposed to work for justice, not to win cases. If there is compelling evidence that a guilty verdict is incorrect, then re- opening the case is the right thing to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> > The most obvious answer is litigation. And in a year or two, Ray will > probably receive some compensation from the State. Unfortunately, there's no > way to access those funds in time to cover his immediate expenses.

Make sure this money gets managed properly. You don't want him to spend this money in just a few months.

</comment><comment><USER65> "The 12 jurors convicted Ray, then went to a candlelight vigil with the victim's parents."

Words fail me.

</comment><comment><USER66> This is fantastic! It's a shame to lose eleven years of your life, but it's inspiring that a citizen was willing to put in the effort to clear his name.

Outside of the immediate help, it'd be great for Dateline to do a follow up story documenting your efforts.

</comment><comment><USER67> You might try getting in touch with a local Quaker Meeting. Quakers tend to care a lot about social justice (many have backgrounds in social work) and often support the types of organizations that help folks find things like housing, food, and clothes.

</comment><comment><USER68> From the sounds of it the man is former military and has been mistreated by the justice system. I presume his "record" will soon be clean.

We should find this man a job inside the criminal justice system. Would he consider working in a police department?

<comment><USER69> From the various articles, he was in the process of becoming a US Marshal when these events unfolded.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> A lot of colleges and churches will lend people suit jackets and or leather shoes for job interviews. That really helps people, just make sure they feel comfortable and warm/cool enough and don't smell bad for job interview.

</comment><comment><USER71> I'm amazed both at the injustice of this ruling and at the nobility and skillfullness of you actions which rescued Mr. Jennings from decades of imprisonment. Well done sirs! Sadly I can't help with you original question.

</comment><comment><USER70> Basic simple cheap outdoor/indoor clothing that is suitable for job interviews. See if you can find it at goodwill. Merino sweater, patagonia jacket or old wool suit, glasses, toothbrush, good backpack, from thrift store.

</comment><comment><USER72> I tried to contribute and I get this message:

Campaign Not Ready There's an issue with this Campaign Organizer's account. Our team has contacted them with the solution! Please ask them to sign in to GoFundMe and check their account

</comment><comment><USER73> Man, that's insane. Does anyone have links to articles about the prosecution? I want to see how this was sold to the public so I can look out for "warning signs" that show up in other cases.

</comment><comment><USER74> Go to reddit, there'll be people willing to help. Start with an AmA

</comment><comment><USER75> Very hard to understand how he was convicted in the first place:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYYiAT0g3iQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYYiAT0g3iQ)

</comment><comment><USER44> I assume you will be going into criminal defense law once you pass the bar? Seems like it would be a waste for you to do anything else.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually no. I hope this will be the only criminal case I'm ever involved in.

I'm about to spend a year as a Visiting Researcher at the Moscow Institute of International Relations, where I'll be writing my dissertation on nuclear game theory and international law.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> I read the articles a bit, but I didn't find any information on who the real killer was. Are there any leads?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, but I can't talk about them because it's part of an active investigation.

<comment><USER76> Also, was there one piece of evidence that really proved he couldn't have done it? I read a bunch of it, and it sounds like you can't prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt, but that he still might have done it (meaning, there just isn't much to go on).

<comment><USER77> Your comment might be read to imply that he shouldn't be exonerated unless proven innocent, but giving the benefit of the doubt I expect you're just wondering whether the evidence does in fact prove innocence, or whether it was simply shown not to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt (both of which should result in exoneration). I'm curious myself.

<comment><USER76> I know and agree he should be exonerated if the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard can't be reached. I was just curious if there was some evidence that showed that he was factually innocent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> Basic good looking comfortable outdoor/indoor clothing from thrift stores suitable for job interviews.

</comment><comment><USER78> Try Reddit.

<comment><USER79> [https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4q0c3k/iama_law_stude...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4q0c3k/iama_law_student_who_just_freed_an_innocent_man/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> What did he study in prison?

</comment><comment><USER81> Clint (or @dang if it's too late for Clint to edit the OP):

Can you please update the OP to include this:

[http://GoFundMe.com/RayJennings](http://GoFundMe.com/RayJennings)

Put it on its own line like that, near the top.

You have many up-votes (probably thousands of readers), but only a few donations. This might be because the URL is easy to miss.

A lot of people skim large posts.

<comment><AUTHOR> This was a very good suggestion! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> Ask Peter Thiel to fund his litigation against the state and to put up his living expenses until he wins.

<comment><USER83> If Peter helped this man to get on his feet and find justice, that would be a very noble act. I'm personally willing to donate this exonerated man a computer and teach him how to code user interfaces remotely if he wants. If I could afford to do more, I would. OP Please e-mail me at email@example.com

<comment><AUTHOR> That's very kind of you, Eddie! I'll be in touch.

Ray actually just got a laptop, and I'm teaching him the basics of computing. It's amazing how much things have changed in 11 years!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> I don't understand why there's such unanimous words of support for someone who directly contributed to the half million deaths in the Iraq war. I know it's unrelated to his case, but perhaps his prison sentence and current predicament can be seen as karmic retribution. I know that's not how justice works, but I don't think we'd see such enthusiastic support for a serial killer who had trouble supporting himself after getting released.

<comment><USER85> The way society is presently arranged, military personnel are absolved of (a great deal of) their moral agency. They have surrendered it to a higher authority, to the state. You can see it experientially in the Milgram experiment. It's incredible more people don't find this troubling, it has me at a loss for words.

<comment><USER84> It seems to be that way. Weren't the Nuremberg trials supposed to have established the idea the soldiers, or at least officers passing orders along can be guilty even if they're following orders? I suppose those were for more clear cut war crimes and the Iraq soldiers were mostly quite removed from the actual killing they triggered.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> I wish this question could be directed at the people who put him in prison.

</comment><comment><USER87> Start a Go fund me campaign.</comment>


Structura Bio Is Hiring Software Engineers in Toronto - <AUTHOR> Structura Bio is hiring Software Engineers in Toronto! Join our friendly team developing scientific software: https://structura.bio/careers/software-engineer/ <comment><USER2> Please see the FAQ entry about posting job ads: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

A new who's hiring has in fact just been posted and will probably be on the front page shortly. You might want to post to it: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21419536](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21419536)</comment>


Interactive Top Programming Languages 2016 from IEEE Spectrum - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/static/interactive-the-top-programming-languages-2016 <comment><USER2> J edged out OCaml by two positions!

Happy to see it on any list, since most shy away from its usual terse, tacit examples.</comment>


Fedora 30 - <AUTHOR> https://fedoramagazine.org/announcing-fedora-30/ <comment><USER2> Fedora and the Dell XPS laptop are the current best of breed developer machines. Top notch keyboards, brilliant OS and a futuristic architecture (Silverblue - all containers all the way down).

My compan has a couple hundred cheap AMD ryzen laptops with Fedora giving macbook pros a run for their money! I spend about 500$ on them (which includes a SSD). Its the world class desktop OS for the developing world!

<comment><USER3> I'd love to share your enthusiasm but until we get macOS-level consistent touchpad gestures, rock-solid stability, instant wake from suspend without draining battery consistently, great GPU drivers, ...(I can go on), it is difficult to proclaim that.

I love developing on Linux too, and I really want it to be the best, but it's just not there yet.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h Mac OS supports exactly one line of hardware. So let's pick exactly one line of Hardware to run Linux so it's a fair comparison. I nominate either thinkpads or Dell XPS. Now then, in a _fair_ comparison...

> consistent touchpad gestures,

GNOME has this.

> rock-solid stability,

Yep.

> instant wake from suspend without draining battery consistently,

Has that even been a problem this decade?

> great GPU drivers

I defy you to claim that _great_ GPU drivers exist on any operating system, but as long as you're not using Nvidia Linux is perfectly good.

<comment><USER4> Ugh, I just wish there was a slick laptop like the Dell XPS line that both supported Linux AND had a Radeon (or just not-nvidia) graphics card.

I've been looking for a viable contender and it appears that it just doesn't exist

<comment><USER5> Purism makes very nice Linux laptops with Intel graphics chips.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Love this, switched today! Definitely the most easy to use distro out there and, especially in the case of Silverblue, the most modern by far (containers only!).

<comment><USER7> Silverblue is pretty incredible, but after a month of using it (Fedora 29) I did hit the occasional RPM I couldn't install because OSTree didn't support layering packages to that directory. It's also weird about third-party repos. I also wish more software was available as a Flatpak - unfortunately Ubuntu's mindshare means more developers are aware of the proprietary Snap format.

I'm super excited about it though and will keep using it every month, it finally solves the dependency problem most distributions run into.

<comment><USER8> Not to trn this thread into an argument about formats but snap isn't a proprietary format at all. It's a squashfs file with some metadata.

]and congratulations to Fedora!]

<comment><USER7> My problem with it is that there's no concept of a Snap repository, like Flatpak. Snap is intrinsically tied to Canonical's Snap store.

<comment><USER9> The fact that the Canonical store is hard-coded n the source code of the package manager does not make it proprietary, I suggest you use the actual facts and not FUD, proprietary has a clear meaning so let's not make it vague,

<comment><USER10> The central store controlled by Canonical is pretty central tenet of snap design. If you start removing it, you can pretty much switch to entirely different packaging/delivery/sandboxing system.

<comment><USER9> First of all I did not contradicted this, I just want to use the correct terms. So please use proprietary,free software, open source, open format, open standard as it is correct and not as you like to promote your preferences.

Just think about it, your full argument is FUD because you try to imply that some open source code is proprietary when in fact it is not.

On the other topic, did Debian or other big distro submited a patch to include support for configuring third party stores, did they submit test code for the changes and it was rejected? If yes please link that instead of the FUD.

<comment><USER10> I wasn't the OP, so accusing me of FUD is somewhat misguided.

On the other hand, the design of snap, despite the code being open source, does not mean that the system (system as a collection of code, network services, network effects, network control, bizdev relations, etc) as a whole is non-proprietary. For similar story, see also: Android.

<comment><USER9> This is still false. Android is open source, see the forks. What is not open source is the services on top. The development process is not open for Android but you did not provided any fact to show contribution was not accepted by Canonical.

You are complaining that an open source tool is not using your preferred thing, you want snap to point to a Debian store, get the source, replace the Canonical store url with a Debian store, then create the store backend and implement the APIs.

Do you have any complaint about the Canonical store? Did they censored your favorite thing or your issue is that you can't just from principles.

Edit About my FUD accusation, maybe you should not get involved in a comment where I correct the OP about him spreading FUD in a vague attempt to protect him. The comment thread was not about what format is better is all about what proprietary means and not have fanboys use the terms wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The Fedora 30 image has been available on builds.sr.ht for CI for several weeks now :) you can use it as fedora/latest and fedora/30.

[https://man.sr.ht/builds.sr.ht/compatibility.md#fedora](https://man.sr.ht/builds.sr.ht/compatibility.md#fedora)

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h ... I'm in love. When did sr.ht get this good?

<comment><USER11> It always has been ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Too bad they didn't get Sway 1.0 package in time for Fedora 30. That's the issue with non rolling releases, you miss the train and now we have to wait months.

I also tried out Silverblue, but it was super unpolished, not a lot of documentation, and there's rpms I couldn't get installed that I needed for work.

Fedora is still my favorite Linux distro for just getting things done. Red Hat is a focal point for kernel and systems developers so you know you're getting no frills quality.

<comment><USER13> You can use the following COPR repository from the Sway SIG in the meantime: [https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/g/sway-sig/sway- desk...](https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/g/sway-sig/sway-desktop/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is good distro for developers by developers. I wouldn't suggest it for everyday users though. There are too many beta quality bugs since it uses really bleeding edge releases.

<comment><USER15> If the 6-month release cycle is too frequent for you as a desktop user, consider using RHEL/Centos. In general Red Hat's distros are top-notch and easier to reason about than other distros.

<comment><USER16> What? The software in CentOS' official repositories is horribly outdated (aka 'stable', which is why it runs on many servers). Why should a desktop system run CentOS? I'd rather recommend Ubuntu or one of its descendants. They also have LTS versions, if stability is a concern, but are not as outdated as CentOS.

<comment><USER15> Fedora is too cutting edge and CentOS is too outdated? Ok then, go off to Canonical land where everything falls apart outside the most common use cases and your entire desktop experience changes every couple of years.

Fedora isn't cutting edge compared to actual rolling release distros so if that's still too much for you then RHEL or CentOS should be enough.

<comment><USER17> Debian works just fine, IME - better than Ubuntu LTS provided that the hardware support is OK. Even OpenSuse is a nice middle ground.

<comment><USER15> Debian was nothing but trouble for me. I found myself in opposition to too many of their design choices and some packages to be too outdated. At the end of the day it lacks the polish and moddability I've come to expect from Fedora.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I first tried out Fedora a few weeks ago. It was a terrible first impression because there were banner ads in the installer. They were relevant to Fedora, but still, they were banner ads sticking out like a sore thumb. I've never seen anything like that when installing a Linux distro before and it was a major turn off.

Yes, I got it from the official website. Yes, I checked the hash.

The impression probably would have been a lot different if the messages were delivered in a format that didn't look exactly like banner ads on the WWW.

<comment><USER19> The banner ads will likely not be in the new release, but for a different reason. The top-level screen where they are shown no longer hosts any configuration screens during default (Fedora Workstation) live installation and only two screens on network installation, which will also be soon moved to the previous "summary" top-level screen.

Due to this the "adds" might look out of place as the rest of the screen is empty. At the moment it is unclear if they will be replaced by some new bigger artwork or just by a bigger and more fancy installation progress reporting.

<comment><USER20> Uh, I only remember some highlights for some of the bundled software... Something like "if you need a office suite, libre office is available in the store" ...

Are you seriously complaining about that? Or is it something else I just didn't see yet?

Because if it's the former, I sure hope you're not using MacOS, Ubuntu, centos, opensuse or windows either to name a few. They do the same thing after all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I guest it's time to upgrade to Fedora 29 now.. :)

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h I get why you're getting downvoted, but staying one release behind a certainly a way to avoid bugs, and if you're on 28 then this is definitely a good reason to bump up to 29.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Can someone say if the font rendering is improved compared to previous releases? This might sound like nitpicking but it's the thing that kept me from switching from Ubuntu, which generally has superb font rendering.

<comment> old-gregg It's not nitpicking at all. Readability of text is hugely important, especially if your job is to read text on computer monitors all day.

Also, I saw this in the news a while ago: [https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Fedora-C...](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Fedora- ClearType-Subpixel-Font)

... so it looks like it's enabled, but not configured? If Fedora's freetype contains all the patches, perhaps the Reddit thread above is obsolete now?

<comment><USER22> > Also, I saw this in the news a while ago: > [https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Fedora-C...](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Fedora-C..).

Hmm, that's interesting, so this is the same ClearType algorithm as the one currently used in Windows 10? I actually hope Linux distros won't switch to Windows-like antialiasing, I definitely prefer Ubuntu's antialiasing (Windows' fonts are too thin an pixelated for me).

<comment><USER23> Have you tried using the built-in ClearType Tuner to tweak the rendering to your liking?

<comment><USER22> Yes, I run it several times, but each time the effect wasn't noticeably better. And I would prefer to have an option for an explicit configuration of the rendering properties (like "hinting: slight/medium/none") instead of going through a series of sample screens, because this is getting really tiresome after a few passes...

I recently switched to a 4K/24" monitor and I actually cannot say that the Windows fonts are pixelated, but they are still too thin. And the larger fonts don't look good - as if the hinting was completely disabled for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> [https://github.com/silenc3r/fedora-better- fonts](https://github.com/silenc3r/fedora-better-fonts)

<comment><USER25> Can someone comment on how these compare to Ubuntu fonts?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've been using F30 through the beta, it's been great (I've been away from Fedora since 21? or so)

Using both the default and KDE spin in VM's and on Lenovo laptops.

Ubuntu is much more 'polished' in feel and appearance, but (especially the KDE spin) Fedora feels so much faster or maybe just smoother.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm on a Macbook Pro and would love to try this out. Aside from installing on bare metal, would VirtualBox be the second best option?

<comment><USER28> Virtualbox is your only option. You will not get (good) bare metal options at all with apple hardware made in the last few years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Cool, I guess I'll upgrade from 29 in a month or so once other people have figured out any potential upgrade issues :)

</comment><comment><USER30> Thoughts on Fedora vs Arch? I've been using Arch on my Thinkpad for a while now, no major complaints, but forgetting to mount my boot before a `sudo pacman -Syu` (full system upgrade) always gets me.

P.S. I know that this is a non-issue...a simple alias would prevent future woes.

<comment><USER17> Arch is not quite a real-world-usable system IMHO, it breaks way too easily if you're not constantly updating it, which means that at some point you'll have to reinstall from scratch. Debian Testing/Unstable just tends to work better (for a rolling distro) in my view.

The Arch vs. Fedora comparison is not very sensible given how different the update models are... if you're ok with Fedora's update schedule it can be a fine choice.

<comment><USER31> > it breaks way too easily if you're not constantly updating it

I sometimes go as long as a few months between updates on my desktop – and that's been running Arch for some years now and hasn't needed a reinstall from scratch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Has Fedora got sane upgrade paths yet? Last time I used it was Fedora 14, and the recommended way to upgrade was a wipe/reinstall from scratch. There was no supported upgrade-in-place path.

<comment><USER33> It has, a long time ago. I have been using Fedora since (I believe) version 23, now on 29. The system is heavily customized (with a lot of the relatively core stuff (like firewalld) ripped out), and I haven't had a single problem with the upgrades.

<comment><USER34> My experience have been similar. 24 to 30 beta on my desktop without a single issue.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Soragora Helps You Build Real-Time, Multiplayer Mobile Games - <AUTHOR> http://www.soragora.com/

<comment><USER2> I've just thought today that there should be some game server software / framework for MMOG that allows to just focus on your instead of some server backend. Seems as if someone's already done that :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Great, signed up for invite! Do you have support for Unity3D?

<comment><AUTHOR> At the moment, we're still in the early stages of development for supporting most game engines, but Unity3D is definitely on the roadmap.

Thanks for the sign up! If there's other support / suggestions you might have, feel free to email me at email@example.com. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> congrats guys, can't wait to start using it!

</comment><comment><USER5> This isn't a comment about Soragora, but rather this "Google Play Store".

I clicked through to the demo from the Soragora site, clicked Install, and just got this message: "You haven't accessed the Google Play Store app (the white shopping bag app icon) on your device with this email account."

No further details about what I should do, or calls to action, or anything that would actually let me play this game or any other game.

Furthermore, I couldn't even copy the damn message text directly. I had to go into the DOM editor and find it there.

Should anyone consider spending their time and resources developing apps or games for an interface and experience this is so sub-par?</comment>


Weekend Project - Missouri River Flood Info Aggregation - <AUTHOR> http://mightymoriver.crowdmap.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> now with mobile view, date filter hack & updated custom search</comment>


Why Scala seems difficult but really isn't - <AUTHOR> http://markusjais.com/why-scala-seems-difficult-but-reallyisnt/

<comment><USER2> As a replacement for Java, Scala is a failure. It is a language too complex that doesn't provide enough benefits for people that just want something better than Java.

The perfect Java replacement would have - local type inference, less verbosity (e.g. public by default), full closures, anonymous blocks, no generics, special syntax for arrays and hashes, operator overloading and the ability of a variable to behave as if dynamic (e.g. leveraging the future InvokeDynamic). I would also completely purge checked exceptions and also get rid of the general syntax for anonymous classes - basically get rid of anything not useful.

People actually liked earlier versions of Java. It was a simple language, while still a lot more productive than C++. They fucked up its evolution and IMHO it's pretty sad that people like Scala so much; it just shows how low are the standards.

<comment><USER3> "The perfect Java replacement would have"...

"local type inference". That's Scala. List(1,2,3)

"less verbosity (e.g. public by default)". That's Scala. def myMethod(arg:Int=1, arg:String="myDefaultValue") ... with no boilerplate crap.

"full closures". That's Scala. val myImmutable = { runThisCode }

"anonymous blocks". That's Scala.

"no generics". That's-- more or less Scala.

"special syntax for arrays and hashes". That's Scala.

"operator overloading". That's Scala.

"the ability of a variable to behave as if dynamic". That's Scala.

"I would also completely purge checked exceptions". Scala, so long as you stop writing try catch blocks.

"and also get rid of the general syntax for anonymous classes". Scala.

Look, I just recently rewrote a ten-thousand-line Java web app into Scala. I got-- no joke-- 75% code reduction, and the only reason I didn't get more was due to the fact that I decided to stick with Struts2 instead of moving to Lift.

Think of your typical method that accesses a Hibernate named query, and returns a boolean as to whether or not that item exists.

Here's the Scala version:

def domainExists(domain:String) = Option(HibernateUtil.getSession.getNamedQuery("domain.findByName").setParameter("name", domain.trim.toLowerCase).uniqueResult.asInstanceOf[Domain]).getOrElse(new Domain()).id > 0

That's a one-liner, and I'm sure there are Scala experts out there who could reduce that code even further.

<comment><USER2> You made more or less my point -- but my point was that Scala provides too much; and I don't want to choose a subset, as my subset will be different than yours.

Also, I would like a language that's as close to the JVM type system as possible, yielding the same performance as Java in all instances (including on Android, where Dalvik doesn't have the same GC and optimization characteristics).

         "no generics". That's-- more or less Scala.

Generics are an inherent part of what Scala is. Surely it takes care of some gotchas, but I see many code samples where I feel like puking.

Generics weren't really meant for languages without Hindley-Milner.

         "the ability of a variable to behave as if dynamic".
         That's Scala.

Scala is not dynamic by any stretch of imagination, no matter how much wishful thinking you can incur because it has structural typing -- I see this notion flying by all the time, but people generally don't know what they are talking about.

E.g. you don't see people saying this same thing about Haskell, when compared to Lisp, even if Haskell is even more concise than Scala, taking structural typing to extremes.

What I mean was that I'd like something like the dynamic types in C#.

<comment><USER4> I believe grandparent point about dynamic variables is the newly introduced Dynamic type in scala 2.9.

<comment><USER2> Oh, sweat, I may be wrong but that's what I wanted.

Unfortunately, for now it is an experimental feature. But thanks for pointing it out, it seems that it's coming :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can someone please explain to me why Scala has been getting such vitriol on HN comments lately? I've never found Scala "difficult"; you can use Java and take in new bits as you go. Why do people keep saying its too complex? It's no more or less complex than Ruby, and certainly less of a learning curve than Haskell, more familiar syntax than Lisp (for more programmers), yet the comments here indicate that "Oh, Scala is so complicated, how could anyone learn it?" This article seemed on the money for me.

I know things like type erasure and other programming language bits and bobs upset the PLs gurus, but I really don't care about that. I can write concise code that looks like a dynamic language, but get full static type-checking. That's a huge win.

I really just don't understand it.

<comment><USER6> It so happens I've been trying to write my first "real" Scala application these past few days. It's been a harrowing experience. Just a few highlights off the top of my head:

* Eclipse support is spotty. Apparently legal programs suddenly develop lots of errors. Sometimes restarting Eclipse will allow the program to run anyway.

* Types are constantly getting in my way. Sometimes types are correctly inferred, sometimes I need to add types to hint the compiler about what I'm doing.

* Writing anonymous functions remains hit and miss. I just throw in underscores at random until something works.

* I don't understand where the round or squiggly parentheses go in for comprehensions; i.e. what goes in the parens and what stays outside.

* Hashmaps have a cool "+=" operator to add a key-value pair. So why does "put" work but "+=" doesn't? Another mystery.

* Sometimes the parentheses after function invocations are optional if there are no parameters. Sometimes not. Why?

It's not Scala's fault that the Eclipse plugin is less than perfect, it's already very powerful. As for my little struggles with the language, none of this is witchcraft; I'm sure there are well-defined rules and sensible answers to all these questions and many more. But I must say I'm annoyed with the huge number of rules behind Scala. The amount of stuff I need to learn to really use Scala effectively is daunting.

Contrast this with my Ruby experience. This is a language that places great value on orthogonality: wherever possible, every operation works the same in every situation. So you have a smallish number of versatile functions, not too much stuff to absorb and things generally Just Work (TM). I taught myself Ruby and Rails and wrote my first useful Web app in a couple of weeks' worth of evenings, and it was a very pleasant experience.

Clojure, similarly. All the parentheses took some getting used to, but the language's syntax is wonderfully simple and consistent, so getting stuff done is mostly just a matter of looking up the most appropriate function in the cheat sheet. I managed to be productive (for small programs) with Clojure in a couple of days.

Scala is no doubt a fantastic language. But thanks to its kitchen sink attitude, it's not an easy language to come to grips with for someone with an aging memory and a less than full-time commitment.

<comment><USER5> _But thanks to its kitchen sink attitude, it's not an easy language to come to grips with for someone with an aging memory and a less than full-time commitment._

Perhaps this is one of the things that is tripping people up that I'm not doing. I tend to still be quite verbose in my code, even if only as a way of reminding myself what I thought the code was supposed to do (ever look back at Python and you're not really sure whether the variable is supposed to be a list or a tuple or a string? I have that problem _all the time_ ). I don't tend to use all the flourishes like underscores and such.

It seems a bit like Perl's many ways to do it attitude. Except I feel like Perl was designed by ideology, whereas Scala has a lot of bits and pieces because it wasn't clear to Odersky et al. which bits people would like and which they wouldn't. Perhaps rather than trying to enforce an idomatic style, they wanted programmers to find their own way. But that means there's things in the language that exist and can't be taken out (XML literals), and there's no documentation cohesion (by which I mean different documents will tell you to do different things, and you're not sure which is best).

If you Google "effective scala", you'll see a number of people clamoring for a book along the lines of Effective Java, and Scala sorely needs it, but Scala is still too much of a moving target to warrant putting anything in dead tree form yet. The Davetron Scala Style guide, however, is a really good stop gap, and helped me a lot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've given up PHP for Scala recently, and it doesn't seem too difficult yet. Do yourself a favor, pick up a copy of "Programming In Scala" by the languages author, and read it starting from page one, even if you think you're an expert programming.

I can't learn a new language quickly, so to learn I'm blogging about my experiences at <http://leftnode.com> and trying to write as many small programs as possible, moving into larger ones when I'm ready.

I'm trying to ignore many of the larger projects and in-depth Scala projects for the time being so I don't overwhelm myself and give up on learning the language.

<comment><USER8> I used scala for a few projects, and overall I like it much more than java. Let's just get that out of the way upfront :)

I loved scala when I was writing and reading my own code, but it started to feel like perl when I had to use and dig through other peoples code. This is a fairly superficial feeling, and I could be off mark, so take it with a grain of salt. I definitely plan to use scala again when I need the performance over jruby/clojure, in place of java of course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Down for me, cached link here: [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:q2kp8R...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:q2kp8RKQ5h8J:markusjais.com/why- scala-seems-difficult-but-reallyisnt/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk)

</comment><comment><USER10> I have the same problem with learning Ruby. The official tutorial basically runs you through "regular" style imperative programming. But when you see real-world Ruby in the wild, it's always so cryptic, and uses popular language features that don't really get touched on in the tutorials.

<comment><USER2> If you're talking about the Picaxe book, Ruby is all about meta-programming, so that's only a book to get you started. I also think it's a highly overrated book and personally I haven't had the patience to read it.

Ruby code gets really clear when you understand "self", eigenclasses and closures.

Required reading: <http://pragprog.com/titles/ppmetr/metaprogramming-ruby>

Also, Ruby is not a functional language; but IMHO is much better and more elegant than many languages that claim to be functional.

<comment><USER11> Pickaxe is pretty awful for learning Ruby. I also did not have a great experience with it. My favorite Ruby book is [http://www.amazon.com/Ruby- Programming-Language-David-Flanag...](http://www.amazon.com/Ruby-Programming- Language-David- Flanagan/dp/0596516177/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1308760667&sr=8-3).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A bit off topic rant on the Eckel's article linked in the post.

1\. I wish people stopped saying "static language that feels like dynamic". This is just a marketing slogan. Type inference is not a substitute to dynamic typing.

2\. I know that coming up with a good, plausible code examples is difficult but it's not an excuse to give bad examples. House has-a Bedroom; House not is-a Bedroom.

3\. > Scala has the best of both worlds: true multiprocessor parallelism and a powerful functional programming model

This sounds as if usually multiprocessor parallelism and functional programming are mutually exclusive and Scala finally managed to have the best of both worlds.

4\. > v.foreach(println)

... eh, isn't this just passing a named function as a parameter?

<comment><USER4> as someone pointed out on HN before "dynamic" seems to be an increasingly common way of saying "doesn't annoy me much" or something like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Coincidentally, today is the first day I'm seriously looking into Scala, and I think his points serve well to temper one's approach to language.

I think Scala is an admirable and ambitious effort to allow oo + func programming on the JVM. I also got the impression that the type system is "good enough" for most DRY efforts. But then, my background in this area is virtually non-existent.

Depending on what sources you learn from, you don't need to learn all the intimidating language features in the beginning itself. I am currently working through [1] - well written, but slightly outdated. [2] is where I got oriented initially.

It's also great that they do well to come within striking distance of Java in performance (this is not my impression of Clojure). Another super cool approach seems to be that of Mirah (no special runtime, Ruby-like syntax).

[1]: [http://www.codecommit.com/blog/scala/roundup-scala-for- java-...](http://www.codecommit.com/blog/scala/roundup-scala-for-java- refugees) [2]: [http://grahamhackingscala.blogspot.com/2010/12/guide-to- lear...](http://grahamhackingscala.blogspot.com/2010/12/guide-to-learning- scala-by-graham.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> As someone who is curious about Scala, what's the current "state of the art" in terms of a web framework? Can you point to some example code?

<comment><USER15> Lift (<http://liftweb.net/>) is the most widely adopted Scala web framework. Scalatra (<https://github.com/scalatra/scalatra>) is another that is based on Ruby's Sinatra.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've found Scala to be more intimidating to approach than the average non- functional language because the people who tend to use and write about it are of a relatively high level of expertise.

I'm rather sold on it, though. I've been warily learning it in dribs and drabs for about a year, and one of these days will actually write something that accomplishes a task.

</comment><comment><USER17> Scala runs on the JVM, which is owned and encumbered by Oracle. So... why should we care?

<comment><USER18> There are many JVM implementations:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Java_virtual_machines>

<comment><USER17> And how many people running Scala are actually using those other JVMs? How many of them even compare to the Sun/Oracle JVM? I mean, honestly? And given Oracle's new penchant for suing people and their spat with Google/Apache, do you really want to keep your eggs in that basket?

People keep trying to sell new languages to Java developers using the JVM. The problem isn't the language, though, it's the JVM itself and the licensing problems, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Either you care about shipping products, and making things of value, or you care about what the latest fashionable language to do it in is.

<comment><USER20> That brings us to point (1) of his article. He asks us to make a large investment in learning a language that might pay off in the future... might.

My understanding of Scala is quite imperfect but the more I've learned the more it seems that it's got pretty facades built over weak wood. Rather than being a 'scalable language' it comes across like a fake town that was built as a set for a Western. Look at any beautiful concise code sample that they try to seduce you with and you find that any small change requires tripling the code size. Look at the chapter in the book on DSLs and the take-away is "don't try to build internal DSLs".

Be it looking at the profiler running on on a Scala program that uses actors or finding that I never quite seem to get away with not having to declare types explicitly, I have a facepalm event every hour or so working with Scala.

In my case, (2) has nothing to do with it. I'm quite familiar with functional programming, both in languages that support it well and languages that don't. These days even my PHP looks like LISP.

(3) is certainly true, and I think it has something to do with the cultural difference that @speckledjim points out.

Anyone who's got to work with Scala will definitely confront (4); if you're working in Java or PHP or some other commercially viable language you can probably solve a high fraction of problems by using Google and Stack Overflow.

If you're programming in Scala you'll have a lot more success understanding the fundamentals of the language. If, for instance, you need to access Scala objects from Java (particularly the super-prevalent ones like Option and List) you'll find that cookbook-style documentation is 100% AWOL. Go look at the scaladocs for Option and List, however, and you'll be calling methods on them in no time from Java.

If you insist on working with Scala, get a book and read it all the way through from the beginning, skipping forward when you don't understand something.

<comment><USER21>
        Look at the chapter in the book on DSLs
        and the take-away is "don't try to build
        internal DSLs".

Which book do you mean? Also, do you mind elaborating on why one should avoid building DSLs with Scala? In my own experience [1] I've found it extremely nice for internal DSLs.

[1]: <https://github.com/fogus/baysick>

<comment><USER22> Presumably he means Ordersky's Programming Scala. While it is possibly one of the better Scala books available it is downright bad, having committed the doorstop producing sin of confusing a language tutorial with a reference with a thesis defense. The second edition of the text is all over the place, providing little in the way of even trivial program examples and maintaining shockingly conservative advice from the first edition, written for the language in its state a few versions back.

The assessment that Scala is a pretty structure built of weak wood is not too far off, at this point. Compared to other strongly functional languages-- Haskell and ML, say--the type system is shoddy and limited. In part this is a frustration of maintaining objects on Java's terms, but also defects in the JVM: type erasure is a hair-shirt that neither of languages I mentioned previously have to wear. You can somewhat avoid the loss of types with manifest hacks, but it's shoddy business. Often you can't; note that Akka has a distinctly dynamic feel, being that certain messaging functions--!! and !!! --must return an Option[Any] even when the original message is well-typed. The system loses the type information at runtime!

Compilation speed is also an agrivation. It's a slower process than Haskell-- not zippy to begin with--and comes with less result, to boot. All that said, I tentatively like Scala, especially if a project is required to run on the JVM. I find it to be an especially pragmatic language, if unbeautiful and not something I intend to use for long-term, exploration coding. A fine choice for a language to be used in anger, let's say, if the memory usage of the JVM is of no concern.

<comment><USER23> I was very surprised, having only started Scala recently, that it cannot infer types in function arguments. OCaml has no problems with this.

<comment><USER21> Scala doesn't have Hindley-Milner global type inference (of which OCaml has an extended version of) and instead uses a form of local type inference. Hindley- Milner doesn't work well (i.e. undecidable) in the face of overloading and inheritance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I think this is just a case of different viewpoints. The author clearly states himself in the last paragraph that learning Scala in under 3 weeks should not be expected. Personally, I consider any language that I can't learn to a reasonable level in 2 days difficult.

<comment><AUTHOR> Any language which uses concepts which you haven't used before (Like Functional Programming or in the other direction OOP etc.) will need more than 2 days. You will need the time to learn the new concepts and not the language. So the language per se isn't difficult but the new concepts...

<comment><USER25> I've been an OO programmer for a long time and I really, really like the way functional programming works. It takes some time to re-think your previous assumptions, but even when in pure Java, a more functional approach provides a much better code. And, maybe it's because I've used another languages that I find Scala pretty straight forward.</comment></comment></comment>


Teen Hacker Found Bugs in School Software That Affects Millions - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/teen-hacker-school-software-blackboard-follett/ <comment><USER2> The next Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg.

<comment><USER3> >the next Zucc

That's more of an insult nowadays than a compliment, no?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> apparently he was suspended for it.

<comment><USER5> I really hate this whole mindset, and it's even worse that we're punishing students for learning to find vulnerabilities. Instead of a suspension, they should have found a way for him to expand on this hobby safely (say, IT classes at the local university).

If you don't find a positive outlet for things like this, you risk them finding that stimulation elsewhere.</comment></comment>


Why Andrew Yang's push for a universal basic income is making a comeback - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/29/why-andrew-yangs-push-for-a-universal-basic-income-is-making-a-comeback.html <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23993259](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23993259)</comment>


Top countries by robot density (Graph) - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/images/dec08/images/data02.gif

<comment><USER2> It's interesting that Europe, with its (in-)famously stricter labor laws, has a higher robot ratio than the US. I would have thought that companies in the US would be able to fire workers much more easily to replace them with robots, and yet this doesn't appear to be the case.

<comment><USER3> I find that very logical - in countries where employees are expensive to hire and to let go, buying robots is a easy strategy to cut costs. Given that you have to train a new employee with uncertain success, getting a robot with a limited but constant output will seem a safer bet.

<comment><USER4> I'm sure that's a part of it, but a bigger reason is probably just that the US has a very large number of manufacturers and most of them are too small to afford the robots this survey is discussing.

I've known many small job shops turning out thousands of parts a day with (automated, but not robotic) WW II surplus equipment; in some cases with the stenciled words "Property of War Department" still visible on the cabinet! Machine tools have lifetimes measured in human generations. There are also many small manufacturers that do everything by hand -- remember that most US small businesses are run part time -- a quick look at my bookmarks shows URLs of a few tiny businesses making just a few thousand units of their product a year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Honest question: how do they count robots ? I mean, where does one end and the other one start... unless we are talking about humanoid robots of course.

<comment><USER6> Since they put the numbers in relation to manufacturing workers they surly only count robots used for manufacturing, not Roombas.

But then the problems start: Say you have two robot arms, one to hold a part up, the other to weld, are those two arms two robots or one? Is a CNC machine a robot? And so on.

Those differences don't matter so much if they managed to get their definition of robot somewhat right (the amount of CNC machines is probably highly correlated with the number of [other?] robots, so it doesn't really matter whether CNC machines are included or not) and if they counted consistently. You probably shouldn't read too much into the worker:robot ratio. (Oh look, all Japan needs is a 35-fold increase in the number of robots, then they won't need any workers anymore …)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This of course measures industrial robots per 10k workers, so it is woefully inadequate as it does not take into account robot dogs.

</comment><comment><USER8> Random: Iceland is part of Europe, not the Americas.

</comment><comment><USER9> So in a Terminator-like situation, the best bet would apparently be to head for Africa.

</comment><comment><USER10> I can't wait for the Creepy Robot Armageddon. I'm tracking the situation at <http://creepyrobots.tumblr.com/>

</comment><comment><USER11> Italy's surprisingly high on that list, if you think about the stereotype of the country. If you know the reality, that there are a lot of interesting things going on in industry here, the numbers make sense.

<comment><USER12> Italy's economy is roughly the same size as California's - hardly a third world country.

A _lot_ of very desirable things are manufactured in Italy :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wish they had China on here, even though it's probably like 0.5.

</comment><comment><USER14> How is the world average higher than any continent except Europe?

<comment><USER6> Seems to be wrong. You get an average of about 26 (assuming 4.2 billion people in Asia, 1 in Africa, 0.9 in the Americas and 0.7 in Europe).

– edit: no, it could be right. It's the number of robots per 10,000 manufacturing workers, which is not the same as just population. If there are massive amounts of manufacturing workers in Europe and only a few in Africa the average could still be right.

<comment><USER15> Not quite that massive. With 3 degrees of freedom it's impossible to say for precise (see simpson's paradox), but according to the numbers,

      europe's industrial robots = americas's*0.09 + asia-pacific's*0.51 + africa's*41.66
      europe's manufacturing workers = americas's*0.06 + asia-pacific's*0.28 + africa's*1.67
      africa's manufacturing workers = europe's*0.60 - americas's*0.03 - asia-pacific's*0.17

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> why america sucks when it comes to robots?

<comment><USER17> Robots are used for manufacturing. The US hasn't been doing a whole lot of manufacturing recently, so it has less use for robots.

<comment><USER18> The graph is per-10k manufacturing workers.

I'd say it's due to strong unions in the US.</comment></comment></comment>


List and Cost of Mega Projects World Wide - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_megaprojects <comment><AUTHOR> I just thought was a fascinating list of mega projects, what really stands out to me is the cost of some of these projects in comparative terms to alternative or potential projects. I wonder what are their effective rates of return? Also, the cost to stage a large-scale event like the Olympics is enormous</comment>