Dispatch Author Responds to the Scala Email - <AUTHOR> http://code.technically.us/post/13548980134/the-gist-of-it

<comment><USER2> I think it is fair to criticize Dispatch in the following sense: "is this a library you should use in production code?". I think the answer is no, because it has an API that, while terse, is difficult to read and maintain; and furthermore it pays very little attention to robustness performance concerns (like failure accrual and more sophisticated connection pooling) that quickly become important in production software.

Dispatch is a good example of a library that is more fun/pretty than practical for systems engineering -- which is not uncommon in the Scala community, as Coda rightly points out. It's not bad to be fun/pretty rather than practical, but it is right to criticize that (strongly) from an engineering perspective.

I'm biased, but: Finagle has a substantially more robust HTTP client and server library than Dispatch, and it has been stressed at far larger deployments than Dispatch. If you're writing a high-performance system that needs to make tens of thousands of HTTP requests per second, Finagle is a good choice and Dispatch is not.

<comment><USER3> Finagle is a great library. We were able to pretty quickly write a HTTP load- testing tool; features like failover and retries give the impression that it's a battle-tested library.

However, like all the Twitter Scala libraries, it's currently stuck at 2.8.1 (2.9.0, the next version, was released May 2001). Most new Scala libraries are only being released for 2.9.x, meaning that most developers are forced to make a choice between using Twitter's libraries or other, newer ones.

Further, there are several outstanding pull requests on GitHub to add 2.9.1 support. It was relatively trivial to update the libraries to 2.9.1, but they're not getting integrated. I haven't gotten any feedback about when these might get merged, or why Twitter is stuck on 2.8.1. I've heard through third parties that this is due to problems with Java interoperability with 2.9.1. Also, the custom SBT plugins used seem to, for some reason, break SBT's ability to cross-build.

Unlike with Ruby gems, using forked dependencies is non-trivial.

I intend to keep using Scala. This problem, however, is representative of the relative lack of maturity of the Scala ecosystem. I hope and anticipate this will be resolved in the future. As of now, they represent real problems that get in the way of delivering working code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Some of the nastiest nerds become lambs when they meet in person. ... If you see people often enough, and know that you'll see them again pretty soon, calling them a retard on some forum becomes decidedly less gratifying."

Ha! I thought this was one of the most poignant statements in the post. Community engagement might be the solution to all the Scala backlash that seems to distract from making the language better and establishing best practices.

</comment><comment><USER5> Ironically, it may turn out that what appeared initially to be one of Scala's greatest strengths, the close integration with the JVM, may be its undoing. As a richly multi-paradigm language Scala is complex enough as it is, but the various warts and leaky abstractions it inherits as a citizen of the JVM make it that much more perplexing.

Perhaps the idea that Java programmers would find it an easy first step into functional programming was incorrect, and in fact those bold enough in the first place to dip their toes into FP would prefer a cleaner and less compromised view of FP as provided by Haskell, OCaml etc?

<comment><USER6> I think there's a sizable audience out there that would like to use more FP but would also like to be able to integrate into their existing infrastructure. If you're already using Java it would seem much easier to sell "Hey, let's try Scala/Clojure for this, it can call our existing stuff" than it would be to sell "Let's rework substantial portions of our infrastructure so we can integrate with Haskell."

<comment><USER5> Yes, but these are the same people that run screaming after their first stroll through the function signatures in the collections library. The kind of people willing to man up for Haskell aren't going to be so easily discouraged.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Having read this, I appreciate much more why Dispatch is the way it is. As a newcomer to Scala, I wish this wasn't the standard recommendation then. I was almost put off entirely when after 2 solid days I still couldn't issue an HTTP request. Fortunately I'm on the JVM and had other options, which I ultimately went with, but I was trying hard to embrace the Scala way and just coming up totally frustrated. If a simpler library were the starting point and Dispatch used for more advanced cases (again, as community recommendations), I posit there'd be a lot less vitriol.

<comment><USER8> But that's pretty much every Scala library right now. Every time I go out to find something I need it is always syntactically and documentationally complex/lacking and I wish that some of the visual simplicity that is available in things like python/ruby were available. After all, it is an incredibly versatile language right? So why is everything done in seemingly the most academically challenging way rather than in a way that allows developers to actually get shit done quick and go home for dinner. Any why do libraries get obsessed with having 2 or 3 ways to do something without documenting any one of them well enough or having any indicator of which one is better and if one is, why (Lift is particularly bad here though it is a fantastic tool once you get to grips with it).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Excellent response. I never understood the hate towards Dispatch - I had a lot of fun learning it with the help of <http://www.flotsam.nl/dispatch-periodic- table.html>

If you dont want the fun simply drop down to the Apache HTTP client and use its interfaces. Dispatch is just a thin wrapper around the Apache client anyway.</comment>


Someone Listed a T-Rex on eBay, and Paleontologists Are Furious - <AUTHOR> https://futurism.com/listed-trex-ebay-paleontologists-furious <comment><USER2> Shipping is a mere $65, that's value.

</comment><comment><USER3> It is fascinating how differently the neck is constructed, compared to an adult. Maybe adults didn't need to look around, as much, to see what might be sneaking up on them? Or maybe they fished. So much we don't know.

</comment><comment><USER4> Finders keepers losers weepers? But seriously if they care so much I'm sure they could crowdfund enough to buy it and lock it in a trust, or find a sponsor museum to do so.

</comment><comment><USER5> he owns it he can sell it

</comment><comment><USER6> [Buy it now] Whoops! :X

(Now accepting donations.)

</comment><comment><USER7> I'd be furious if it were fake and I bought it.</comment>


In Defense of Daylight Saving Time - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/technology/2019/03/in-defense-daylight-saving-time.html <comment><USER2> I'm ambivalent about DST as a concept (see e.g. here: [https://leancrew.com/all-this/2013/03/why-i-like- dst/](https://leancrew.com/all-this/2013/03/why-i-like-dst/)), but I feel like proponents of this scheme haven't really thought it through.

"Permanent daylight time" is no different from just getting rid of time changes and shifting one time zone to the East. And of course the whole point of having time zones is so that can be somewhat close to the middle of the day at noon (and that "midnight" isn't too much before or after the middle of the night).

The end result of this is that instead of saying "Oh my god I can't believe it's getting dark and it's only 4:30!", we'll quickly adapt and find ourselves saying "Oh my god I can't believe it's getting dark and it's only 5:30!".

This would also mean waking up before dawn throughout most of the winter for most people in moderately northern latitudes with conventional schedules, which is likely to be terrible for sleep health.

And yes, it's possible to adjust work and school schedules to be better in line with people's natural sleep rhythms, but then why not just do _that_ and leave our timezones alone?

</comment><comment><USER3> How ironic that this article (which was actually written in the spring and goes to great lengths to explain why people are mistaking DST for standard time) was posted here in the fall just after the switch to winter time; some master level trolling posting this here now.

</comment><comment><USER4> >I have no doubt that some Americans legitimately dislike DST—not just the change of clocks, but the redistribution of sunlight from morning to afternoon.

I don't really feel like most people complain about the specific time the sun sets, as much as they are complaining about the disruption to their circadian cycle. I dislike the short days during winter, but changing the time the sun sets an hour forward or backward isn't ultimately going to create more hours of sunlight during the day.

What i will say however, after a year of living in a country now that doesn't observe DST, is i greatly appreciate not having a disruption to my sleep cycles in either direction. My dog also appreciate not having the disruption to his daily routine either. I adjusted to just waking up when the sun rises, wanting to go to sleep within a few hours of the sun setting, and when it's cold outside and the days are shorter i find myself wanting to spend more time inside sleeping anyways.

</comment><comment><USER5> "two states eventually opted out: Hawaii and Arizona. Hawaii abandoned the law in 1967 because, well, it just didn't make sense. One of the benefits of Daylight Saving Time is that there's more daylight in the evening. But in Hawaii, the sun rises and sets at about the same time every day, TIME reports"

</comment><comment><USER6> Arguments about the merits of sunshine earlier in the morning or sunshine later into the afternoon are a distraction. Some like one, the rest like the other. They will never agree, but some will adjust their own schedule to their own needs. As a society, we could make jobs accommodate different needs.

The essence of DST is polititians drunk on the power to legislate sunrise and sunset, primal forces of the universe. Why do we extend them that power? When will we take it away?

<comment><USER7> It started with the introduction of time zones, which are really quite a reasonable idea and have more advantages than disadvantages. And they need to be regulated somehow, and politics is how we do that. No need to take that power away. We should however make our system such that politicians work for the advantage of the people, not for other interests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Each year our family braces for the impact of time change on both my wife and I and our kids. It takes weeks to get back to 'normal'. Light/dark/whatever... it's too impactful on sleep, moods, and health.

Set and leave it alone, for the love of the family!

<comment><USER9> How do deal with traveling across different time zones, this is basically the same thing?

<comment><USER10> I've found that traveling is distinctly different (within the United States) because the sun is still coming up at approximately the same local hour. Of course this can vary by more than an hour if you travel between opposite edges of a time zone, but somehow traveling is also less jarring to me than the DST shift.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >The media's inability to articulate the proposition's purpose may have led to voter bewilderment, as illustrated in the CBS article, which features a California resident who asserts: "I don't like Daylight Saving Time. It disrupts me every fall." Given that DST begins in the spring, this Californian probably meant to assail Standard Time but inadvertently contributed to anti- DST fervor.

There's nothing incorrect here, as the existence of a time switch to Daylight Savings Time necessitates a jump back to Standard Time. The individual is basically saying "I don't like [the switch to] Daylight Saving Time."

The rest of the article ignores that store hours etc. are changeable, and that those hours do not change infrequently. Some places have both summer and winter hours already.

Going daylight savings time all year round because we're too lazy to bother with changing store hours is absurd. Why in god's name would we decide that noon, when the sun is at its highest point, is not 12PM? To highlight the absurdity, imagine explaining this to kids 100 years from now: "well, 13:00 corresponds to solar noon because a century ago people in the United States decided it made more sense to shift all our time zones one over rather than change work hours. That's why our time zone has the word 'Daylight' in instead of just being called Pacific Time."

(A note: I am aware that solar noon does not exactly correspond to 12:00 PM due to the peculiarities of Earth's orbit, but being off by up to 16 minutes isn't that bad, particularly as the variation is centered around 12:00 PM. And yes, as you move closer to the edge of a time zone the offset between solar noon and 12:00 PM grows, but there is generally an attempt made to correspond with solar noon.)

<comment><USER12> Why should I care about when the Sun is at its highest point in the sky? The Sun being at its highest point in the sky has no biological significance that I know of.

The arrival of morning light, on the other hand, is used to regulate our circadian rhythms. Thus, it makes a lot more sense to anchor our schedules for most activities to when the Sun rises, not when it peaks.

<comment><USER11> The choice of what 12:00 signifies has no bearing on where wake/sleep is anchored. If California decided to switch to Eastern time, people would just end up setting the average work day in the state from 11:00 - 19:00 (Eastern time), and people would wake up at 10:00 (Eastern time).

<comment><USER6> Indeed, all of China runs on Beijing time. Out west, the sun comes up at 10 AM, in summer. In Winter, at 2 PM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As a bike commuter, I'm pretty happy to be back on standard time. Light is much more valuable to me on my morning commute as it also makes things warmer.

<comment><USER14> What about commuting home in the dark? That's what I have to do and it sucks.

<comment><USER12> If there isn't enough daylight during part of the year to allow for both morning and evening commutes to be in the light, it probably makes more sense to give the light to the morning commute.

The morning commute is not only adults going to work. It's also kids heading to school, many on foot or bike.

The evening commute, on the other hand, is mostly adults coming home from work. School days are significantly shorter than adult work days, so the school kids are home by around 2-4 PM, before the evening commute starts.

Thus, if you only have enough daylight for one of them, you'll benefit more people by using that light for the morning commute.

<comment><USER14> Over 40% of kids do extra-ciriculars. We also need to factor in errands, hangouts, etc, that are done after school.

Similarly, there are more adults than children and Adults/parents commute at more dangerous busy times. "Think of the children" should only go so far.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Make the switch to DST permanent. Much better having longer days in the summer, which also helps not having to fight against light telling your body to not go to bed. This switch messes people up so bad for days or weeks

<comment><USER12> Unless you can also convince businesses and schools to open later in the winter, permanent DST is terrible then at higher latitudes.

In the Seattle area, for instance, under permanent DST sunrise could be as late as a few minutes before 9 AM. That puts a lot of people out traveling as much as 2 hours before sunrise.

<comment><USER16> How is that any worse than what you have now, where no one gets to see the sun after work until March?

<comment><USER12> Morning tends to be more concentrated. You've got people going to work, kids walking or biking to school, people taking their dogs out for the first walk of the day, deliveries starting, people heading out to shop for things they'll need that day, and things like that.

Evening isn't as concentrated, because there is much more variation in when people come back than in when they go out.

If we only can do one of them in the light, morning probably makes the most sense because of it having more traffic volume and more traffic diversity.

<comment><USER16> Is it actually true that 6:30am is more concentrated than 5:30pm?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Man-made super flu could kill half of humanity - <AUTHOR> http://rt.com/news/bird-flu-killer-strain-119/ <comment><USER3> Before 20th century: man can destroy man.

20th century: mankind can destroy mankind.

21st century: man can destroy mankind.

Edit: let me just add that I'm extremely positive about the future, it's just that there are certain challenges that we as a society must deal with.

The ability for one man or a small group of men to more or less wipe out the human race will be in our reach within perhaps just a few years.

We can deal with this by different control mechanisms in our society. I'm a firm believer in the transparent society but the way things are going right now we seem to be moving towards a government controlled big brother society.

Is that the way we want it? Now is the time to discuss these issues if we want to change route.

<comment><USER4> Isn't this the same problem as nuclear knowledge regulation though? We definitely need some controls here, but the government doesn't need to control _everything_ big brother style. Just a few specific items within a few domains of knowledge.

I'm not a big fan of government secrecy either but if the choice is between that and self-extinction, well...! Our Stone Age circumstances have left us with some pretty predatorial instincts and drives. It makes sense to put in safeguards to protect us from our own giant technological reach. It gives us time to let our social/cultural immune systems catch up.

And these probably don't have to be permanent - I'm not sure, but it does feel like we're moving towards greater freedom over time. Look at the chemicals you can buy in any hardware store or pharmacy today, and the instruction guides freely available on the internet. Individuals can already cause asymmetrically large harm but generally don't, because we're already fairly self- domesticated.

(Credit to Simon of Space for this line of thought - <http://cheeseburgerbrown.com/stories/Simon_of_Space/>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think there's more to gain than lose by publishing these results. First of all, the research states that ~50% of people _infected_ with the virus would die, not that humanity would be reduced by 50%, necessarily. It's unclear if this is an implication and I think, as a result, it's a bit of a misleading title.

Also, say the title is not misleading and they publish the results and some crazy dictator gets his hands on it. First, he has to be crazy enough to want to develop a virus that has a 50% chance of killing him. Then he has to find scientists that are willing to develop the virus that has a 50% chance of killing them and their family and friends, etc. The likelihood of all these things transpiring seems relatively low.

On the other hand, this research seems to indicate that it's not wholly unlikely that this kind of virus mutation could transpire organically, in which case this "recipe" being public knowledge would be instrumental in fighting the disease. Even if it doesn't arise organically (crazy terrorist convinces crazy scientists) the public knowledge of it would still reduce the 50% death rate.

And I also feel that the kind of sentiments that lead people to claim that this research should never have been performed in the first place are misguided. This kind of tinkering and hacking around is likely what would lead to the next big cure, etc. Never stop scientists from learning new things.

<comment><USER6> >Also, say the title is not misleading and they publish the results and some crazy dictator gets his hands on it.

The difference between bioweapons and nuclear weapons is the former don't require the resources of a state. It could just as easily be done by a few grad students. Maybe even a single grad student.

<comment><USER7> There was an article that went over exactly this in Discover magazine a month or two ago. Summary is that it's harder than you might think. To quote:

      "You would need more than a garage; you would need a great
      garage and a lot of money. And it's not trivial. You need
      the oligonucleotides to stitch genes together, and as far
      as I know, most companies will check the order if the
      sequence represents that of a dangerous virus."

[http://discovermagazine.com/2011/oct/21-dawn-of-the- biohacke...](http://discovermagazine.com/2011/oct/21-dawn-of-the-biohackers)

<comment><USER8> Soo if a university group can do it, then it's too difficult for North Korea to do?

<comment><USER7> The university group can do it because it can pay $500k to our biotech industry for pre-researched and in-production batches of chemicals, equipment, and other supplies. North Korea doesn't have that biotechnology industry to start with and would be starting over from a cottage industry.

<comment><USER8> i dont know where you're from, but your universities are RICH!

<comment><USER9> ([http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/may/16/cambridge- to...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/may/16/cambridge-tops- guardian-league-table))

> _Professor David Tidmarsh, vice-chancellor of Birmingham City University, > says [. . .] the university is investing £180m in new buildings, facilities > and equipment.

> _At Oxford, average spend per student fell to £11,232 in 2009-10 from > £11,410 the year before. The university spends substantially more than other > institutions. Cambridge spent £8,612 in 2009-10, a rise from £8,118 the year > before.*

Rough guide to student numbers (pdf) ([http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/global/wwwoxacuk/localsites/gazett...](http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/global/wwwoxacuk/localsites/gazette/documents/supplements2010-11/Student_Numbers_2010-2011.pdf))

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Reading some of the comments, I am reminded of the Greek concept of _hubris_...

In particular, it is funny how programmers, who make their living by controlling complicated systems, jump to the conclusion that every complicated system is trivially subject to human control. I had a professor once put it this way: disease is just that -- a dis-ease.

The first thing you have to understand is that no organism lives in a biological vacuum. Every organisms interacts with other organisms. When first two organisms meet, the interaction is usually rather messy. One or the other or both die in great numbers. Gradually, they make adjustments and the deaths decrease. One becomes a disease or parasite of the other. Eventually, the two organisms will reach a détente and begin living as symbionts. Given enough time, the distinction between the two may even vanish (see: endosymbiont hypothesis).

The flu virus is, in particular, a rather striking study of this process. Consider the vast majority of fowl who carry the virus asymptomatically. For them, flu is not a disease, but rather a simple hitch-hiker. For humans, you can predict the severity of a flu outbreak based on how well adjusted the virus is to humans. The more avian characteristics it has, the worse the symptoms and mortality are likely to be. At the same time, an ill adjusted virus is much less likely to spread.

One other thing to consider is that the flu virus itself does not exist in isolation from itself. The Spanish flu of 1918 is an interesting case in this respect. It was, as I alluded to before, ill adjusted to human hosts. At the same time, it was particularly communicable; something of an oddity for a flu with so many avian characteristics. It did kill a large number of people, but within a year or two the major damage had been done and the pandemic was over.

Why? Well, certainly a large portion of the human population that had become exposed but had not died were now immune. More importantly, though, the strain mutated and became better adjusted to human hosts. This strain, H1N1, then became the predominant form of the "seasonal flu". It is likely that you have become infected by a descendent of this very strain, probably many times over.

I would not fear this virus for the same reason that I do not fear Ebola or Marburg virus. Viruses that kill quickly and efficiently do not spread as well as those that cause some disease but allow their host to continue functioning more or less normally (all the while exposing many more to the virus). Of course, this is little comfort to the dead, and there will always be those who die from any outbreak (just go look at the annual death toll from "seasonal flu"). It is far, far from a reason to start predicting the end of humanity.

One final note on the bioweapon/bioterror angle: if you follow the thinking of the people that actually contemplate the use of bioweapons, you'll find that bioweapons are only ever considered as denial-of-area or knock-down agents. That is, you can use a bioweapon to prevent your enemy from gaining or holding a strategic position. What you don't find is anyone proposing to use a bioweapon as a coup de grace. Those that study these things understand that any biological agent has an in-built time limit on its effectiveness.

 _Edit_ : I just realized I should mention that while I don't appreciate the sensationalism espoused by the scientific press, H5N1 is a very real, very troubling threat. It won't wipe out the human race, but it does have a good chance of setting humanity back a decade or two (not from disease, but primarily from the knock-on effects of people reacting to the disease, halting productive work and worldwide travel). In my mind, though, this is all the more reason to publish this research and, while we're at it, pour some more money into the worldwide flu monitoring network.

<comment><USER11> > Every organisms interacts with other organisms. When first two organisms > meet, the interaction is usually rather messy.

But you also seem to assume that all such interaction are taking place under natural conditions (humans are just a passive agent, one of the mammalian species, like a cow perhaps). In reality though humans are actively manipulating this virus in a laboratory environment and are able to select strains that are deadly enough, but not too deadly, also transmittable enough. That is the real danger I think.

> Why? Well, certainly a large portion of the human population that had become > exposed but had not died were now immune.

What if you or your family isn't. Are you willing to brave on a new hardened strain of avian flu just to find out. Would you soldier on with a stoic face? Nobody would right? Therefore the panic. So this is another side of the issue. Humans are going to react to the disease not just in a sort of automatic biological way but in a proactive way. Close borders if they can, quarantine and so on.

> Viruses that kill quickly and efficiently do not spread as well as those > that cause some disease but allow their host to continue functioning more or > less normally

I think again, you are assuming a naturally evolving environment outside of human activity. With plane travel for example, and ever larger densities of population centers, the same assumptions about the rate of spreading of a virus cannot be made as they would have been 100 years ago. (On the other side there is the pro-active element of having access to quicker and better information, so which one will win -- quick information that could be used to establish quarantine zones for example or the disease carried by fast traveling passengers? But that is a whole other discussion).

> bioweapons are only ever considered as denial-of-area or knock-down agents.

I don't think that angle was assumed as much as some ideological angle of depopulating the planet, by a lone extremist, for example. Here is an example profile: a virologist at some research facility who has strong beliefs about the world reaching a tipping point as far as natural resources are concerned vis-a-vis he accelerating increase in population, becomes obsessed with the idea, that de-population has to take place and they are willing to actively encourage it. They start the process of cultivating a strain of flu. When finished they travel to another continent and try to find ways to spread it.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Here is an example profile: a virologist at some research facility who has > strong beliefs about the world reaching a tipping point as far as natural > resources are concerned vis-a-vis he accelerating increase in population, > becomes obsessed with the idea, that de-population has to take place and > they are willing to actively encourage it.

tom clancy's lawyers called, he said to stop using the plot of "seal team six" in internet-forum posts ;)

<comment><USER11> Oops. Sorry Tom ;-) I was actually thinking of someone like Bruce Ivins. He wasn't a de-population fanatic and wasn't even proved to have sent the Anthrax letters. He ended up killing himself (or "killing himself" if you are more conspiracy theory inclined ;-), but anyway, I had someone like him in mind. Was surprised that all these movies and books already have the same plot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I found this article on the same topic more informative and less sensational: [http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21195-bioterror- fears-...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21195-bioterror-fears-could- block-crucial-flu-research.html)

<comment><USER13> This has more info also, with moderate sensationalism: [http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2011/11/scientists...](http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2011/11/scientists- brace-for-media-storm.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> _After 10 generations, the virus had mutated to become airborne_

Can someone more qualified than me comment on this? I was under the impression that this is as ridiculous as saying that you started out with dogs and ended up with cats 10 generations later. That viruses belong to specific families, and those families include how they're transmitted.

My knowledge of this field is extremely limited; can someone please clear up my confusion? :)

<comment><USER10> In fact you are more or less correct. It is as if they put in dogs and got out cats. That's just how Influenza works. It mutates, adapts, and evolves extremely rapidly. This is why it never has been, and likely never will be, eradicated (notice that those "in the know" don't even talk about Influenza eradication in passing).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This story is from RT, or Russia Today. It's a news network that's been known to run sensationalist stories.

</comment><comment><USER16> Thanks to the commenters who pointed to more balanced news stories about this line of research. Some of the other comments here mention the difficulty in developing strain-specific flu vaccines. That difficulty is why research on universal flu vaccines

<http://www.nih.gov/news/health/jul2010/niaid-15.htm>

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/feb/06/flu- universal-...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/feb/06/flu-universal- vaccine-test-success)

is going on in multiple countries, with some major funding support. Antiviral medicines that treat cases of the flu tend to be in short supply in every flu season, but some governments have taken care to stockpile those in ways that ensure that essential services would go on in those countries even during a severe flu pandemic. Further research on broad-spectrum flu vaccines, including a possible universal vaccine, is warranted to prevent natural strains of the flu and is ongoing. Further research, development, and production of antiviral medicines to treat people who catch the flu is also warranted and ongoing.

A new pandemic, from whatever source, would be extremely disruptive, but as an astute previous comment pointed out, people can do things like self- quarantine, and such simple forms of self-protection were very effective in stopping the SARS epidemic in 2003. Predicting the death of half of humankind based the preliminary finding reported in the rather sensational story submitted here is not a prediction I believe or worry about.

</comment><comment><USER17> Any reason why we can't cripple the virus and start testing vaccines now? Publish it and immunize against it.

<comment><USER10> The trouble is not making the vaccine. As soon as you have the virus you can make the vaccine. The trouble is that we currently lack the capacity to rapidly produce large quantities of the vaccine.

Why do we lack the capacity? Because there's no profit in making flu vaccines! Gotta love capitalism, eh?

<comment><USER18> no profit in making flu vaccines? please do some research.

<comment><USER10> Here is some of the evidence I'm going off of: [http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2004-10-19-flu- leinwand-...](http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2004-10-19-flu-leinwand- questions_x.htm)

 _Edit_ : I did find this article which mentions new vaccines being more profitable ([http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/apr2009/tc200...](http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/apr2009/tc20090427_386206.htm)), so perhaps the market is not as bleak as I had thought. Still, I worry about things as vital as vaccine and antibiotic manufacture being left to the whims of the market (new antibiotics are, last I checked, still not profitable).

<comment><USER19> As opposed to the whims of a government bureaucracy? Large amounts of the "antibiotics" and other drugs available in the Soviet Union were saline solution, sterile saline if you were lucky. Do you really think any other dictatorial (ie, government run) system wouldn't sink to that state eventually?

<comment><USER10> I don't recall saying anything about government run... On the contrary, I find it equally sad that given all the creativity that people exercise in designing ways for me to talk about what I had for lunch, all we can think of for motivating production is market economics or government bureaucracy. There is obvious demand but it is too volatile for the market to capture efficiently and often those with greatest demand are also those with the least means. Perhaps there needs to be some sort of population amortized vaccine/antibiotic futures market?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> To me, the scariest thing (which seems to be overlooked) is that this particular strain of Avian Flu is only 5 mutations away from the Avian Flu in the wild.

While we're fretting about whether this will get out of a lab, it's not entirely unlikely that a similar strain will evolve in the wild (now you know why they burned all those chickens in China).

Edit: "A genetic study showed that the new, dangerous strain had only five mutations compared to the original one, and all of them were earlier seen in the natural environment – just not all at once."

</comment><comment><USER21> According to Wikipedia, Erasmus Medical Center (or, for that matter, all of Rotterdam) only has labs rated up to Biosafety Level 3. This sounds like it should be the _definition_ of BSL4. I wonder whether the research was conducted elsewhere, Wikipedia is wrong, or if they're really doing this in a BSL2 or BSL3 lab.

</comment><comment><USER22> Just seems like playing with fire. I get the whole idea of helping humanity cope with an epidemic, but not clear why they didnt just do THAT research instead.

<comment><USER23> It's hard to figure out how to put out fires based on news reports of what fires are like. At some point you just have to set fire to something in a laboratory and see if you can actually put it out.

It helps that just like it's not actually possible to start a fire that would actually incinerate half the globe, it's not actually possible to create a virus that would wipe out half of humanity. The article is wrong and sensationalist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The ethical dilemma is interesting and, I think, parallels the "security through obscurity" approach to software security. If the findings are published, the scientific community at large can work to fight a pandemic which may happen anyway, but at the same time may decrease the time until a pandemic occurs by giving information to those who would willingly produce it for their personal gain.

</comment><comment><USER25> Is it time to stockpile Tamiflu again?

But, seriously, isn't it obvious that publication of the fact that this research is blocked is already enough for terrorists? From the preliminary report they already have an outline of what needs to be done, they know where to go and who to ask or what to steal if they can't do it themselves.

</comment><comment><USER26> Unfortunately, if the virus has already been created, the antidote has to be found ASAP. For this to happen, a large number of scientists have to know how to make it first before knowing how to destroy it.

How you decide who should have access to this information is now the problem. If they are not careful, the censoring could piss of some crazy scientist who would now announce such discoveries with a blogpost and allow anyone have access to it than through a sort of regulated process that would at least give the 'right people' a lead on the info; so they can start working on an anti- dote before is gets to the mass market.

As to what kind of research should be allowed, I have no comment.

<comment><USER27> There is an interesting short story called "Talking To God" [1], which postulates that sentient species only survive if every individual has the ability to destroy the entire world, but chooses not to.

Our capacity for mass destruction is only going to get worse. I think it's far more efficacious to look toward managing that reality than to try to postpone or prevent it.

[1] <http://www.fullmoon.nu/articles/art.php?id=tal>

<comment><USER28> If so, we may be doomed. Assume there is a percentage of people who would use that ability. We need to either destroy them, or transform them. Assume they were 'fixed', our next problem would be fixing those who might temporarily be inclined to destroy the world, for example a jilted lover or anyone who is depressed and angry enough due to temporary circumstance. We then have to either ensure those circumstances never occur, or 'fix' those people. That likely covers most people, given an infinite amount of possible situations. Can't kill everybody, and 'fixing' them likely means we lose too much of what makes us human to be worth it.

I vote for taking it out of the hands of people and debugging Skynet for longer than they did in the movie. Then stop competing and enjoy the flowers.

<comment><USER29> > I vote for taking it out of the hands of people and debugging Skynet for > longer than they did in the movie. Then stop competing and enjoy the > flowers.

Watch "Colossus: The Forbin Project".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Maybe a requisite for researching and developing dangerous diseases should be that you make the vaccine immediately after (or before, if possible).

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't get how a US body has to decide whether Dutch and Japanese research papers are allowed to be published.

<comment><USER10> Science is an American publication. If this were submitted to Nature, I suspect we'd be hearing about some British committee fretting over this...or perhaps not since Americans seem particularly prone to sensationalism.

<comment><USER8> Ahh right. That makes sense.

That said, I can't see Science (the magazine) being mentioned in the article anywhere - unless the "Science" in "Science Insider" and "US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity" refers to the magazine.

<comment><USER10> Yes, "Science Insider" is Science's online, rapid publication site for science policy: <http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/> .

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Why would anyone even begin to think about developing this sort of thing?

</comment><comment><USER32> How stupid.

</comment><comment><USER33> First off, way to sensationalize. Due to the writing style and title I don't think this should be e number one story right now.

But anyway, published or not "bio terrorists" are not the kind of people the article wants you to picture. The only likely way such an attack could be carried out would be with massive support of some unfriendly government.

There's no bio-weapon Al Quaeda working group or anything like that and if there were the worst they could do is try to infect us by releasing some infected animal loose somewhere in the hopes it would infect someone.

I wish this post didn't have "fluff piece" written all over it and focused in a far more detailed way about the merits of publishing scientific studies that could be used for nefarious purposes. Unfortunately, the post gives us so little facts on that subject that none of us could really build a good argument for or against it without doing a fair amount of research first or resorting to uneducated guesses and opinions. It's too bad, really.

<comment><USER9> > _There's no bio-weapon Al Quaeda working group or anything like that_

You're aware that Aum Shinrikyo released aerosolised anthrax spores for a week in Japan before they stopped, and that it's only because they used the wrong anthrax that there wasn't widespread infection?

That was in 1993; I imagine it's technologically much easier and cheaper to do it now, but that there are tighter controls over chemicals etc.

The article is sensationalist. Bio-terrorists don't need to kill anyone, they just need to cause economic harm. They can do this by releasing blue-tongue or foot&mouth or whatever in a few farms. That costs billions and long lasting damage.

(<http://www.fmd.brass.cf.ac.uk/>)

<comment><USER34> Yeah, they released the wrong Anthrax spores. An amateur move, they weren't a hard core group of bioengineers--just some guys who happened to get hold of some anthrax spores.

The issue here is creating this strain, sure some crazy death cult would _use_ a weaponized flu, but the OP is arguing they wouldn't be able to _create_ it in the first place.

<comment><USER9> > _they weren't a hard core group of bioengineers--just some guys who happened > to get hold of some anthrax spores._

They aerosolised the spores, and released them for over a week. That's not as simple as putting powder in an envelope and putting it in the mail.

(<http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/281/18/1735.full>)

> _Most experts concur that the manufacture of a lethal anthrax aerosol is > beyond the capacity of individuals or groups without access to advanced > biotechnology. However, autonomous groups with substantial funding and > contacts may be able to acquire the required materials for a successful > attack. One terrorist group, Aum Shinrikyo, responsible for the release of > sarin in a Tokyo, Japan, subway station in 1995,6 dispersed aerosols of > anthrax and botulism throughout Tokyo on at least 8 occasions. For unclear > reasons, the attacks failed to produce illness._

> * the OP is arguing they wouldn't be able to _create_ it in the first > place.*

The point I'm responding to is this:-

> _The only likely way such an attack could be carried out would be with > massive support of some unfriendly government._

I disagree that "massive support of some unfriendly government" is needed; the example I give is Aum Shinrikyo weaponising anthrax spores (albeit the wrong anthrax spores.) AS successfully recruited undergraduates and graduates; getting access to suitably stocked labs wouldn't be that hard for them.

<comment><USER34> > Most experts concur that the manufacture of a lethal anthrax aerosol

They didn't make a lethal anthrax aerosol, they used a completely harmless vaccine strain of anthrax, I would say that classifies them as amateurs.

If it really required vast bioengineering expertise to make an anthrax aerosol, one would think they wouldn't make such a ridiculous mistake.

<comment><USER9> The hard part is aerosolising the anthrax.

As to using the wrong anthrax - Identifying anthrax is hard.

PDF: (<http://jcm.asm.org/content/39/12/4566.full.pdf>)

> _Strain identification in Bacillus anthracis has been problematic due to a > lack of distinguishing features, both phenotypic and molecular (1). With the > identification of variable-number tandem repeats (VNTRs), identification of > strains (unique genotypes) by multiple-locus VNTR analysis (MLVA) is now > possible, and worldwide clone-based diversity patterns have been > demonstrated (2). The VNTR loci are hypervariable and have multiple allelic > states that provide high discrimination capacity for differentiating among > strains and for identifying evolutionary relationships._

That's from 2001. Aum Shinrikyo incident was in 1993.

<comment><USER35> There's easy way - test it on humans. The strain that kills the host is the deadly one.

Remember these people don't think dying is bad - they usually believe in an afterlife.

<comment><USER9> Maybe spraying the aerosol over a populated Japanese city for a week was the test on a human population?

<comment><USER35> Bad idea because it requires a lot of effort (you need large qantities of tbe agent) and may call unwanted attention. It would be better to test the sample on a volunteer before. Then you weaponize the agent that best matches your needs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Captain Trips.

<comment><USER36> No fans of The Stand here? :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> But can it spread to Madagascar?

</comment><comment><USER38> What could possibly go wrong?

</comment><comment><USER39> Let's all hope Umbrella Corporation doesn't get a hold of this...

</comment><comment><USER40> whether or not the they publish this information - if it exists indeed - <USER2> it really matter?

I mean; why bother with a future that does not exist yet? If it gets out and holds to be genuine information then some fascist group (sect, terrorists, whoever) develops it and releases it into the wild... What will happen? WE DON'T KNOW. It could kill half of humanity but also only a few people, we can't say.

All we know for sure is that there may be hugely harmful virus data in some lab. That's all there is to say, future will tell what's gonna happen. Why bother with a future we can't predict?

</comment><comment><USER13> It seems like the United States should invest in a dream team, atom bomb, go to the moon type of operation to deal with this. It's hard to see why this information even got out in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER41> I feel like this is the ultimate "money where your mouth is" question for the "pre-publish-the-exploit" hackers. Would they release this? I'm not sure we shouldn't, but it's pretty crazy that we've made this.

Hell, I'm not so sure that any virologist or two worth their salt might not be able to do the same. Modified-Nature you scary!

</comment><comment><USER42> Yeah let's keep spending money on the TSA groping everyone, terrorists would never just spread a super-flu instead.

Ironically the TSA could be the ones to spread a virus from person to person because I am sure they do not change gloves on every grope?

</comment><comment><USER43> Maybe I'm being naive, but this sounds a lot like critical software that, if compromised, could be a danger for our society. You would definitely want that piece of software to remain as secure as possible: open source is definitely the way to go!

<comment><USER44> For a more apt analogy, the human immune system is like an old piece of critical software that society depends on, and H5N1 represents a piece of shellcode that exploits a serious flaw in the system which is currently a 0day. It allows an attacker to remotely disable a large number of machines, err, people. There is currently no patch -- vaccine -- available to fix the hole.

The relevant buzzword is full disclosure. Even I'm not sure if you can take that so far, but I'm pretty sure that if this is released, nobody ever gets to complain about someone publishing an exploit for their personal project, because that's nothing in comparison.</comment></comment>


Record 7M Americans are delinquent on car loans - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/auto-loan-delinquency-number-record-new-york-fed-2019-2 <comment><USER2> Previous discussion from yesterday: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19148081](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19148081)

</comment><comment><USER3> So many people in the UK have car finance now, even if they have bad credit. I wonder if this will be the next "sub-prime" crash?

<comment><USER4> Too many people are buying cars using financial products they don't understand: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14476381](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14476381)</comment></comment>


My day one Mac Appstore sales - <AUTHOR>

There aren't too many data points about the mac Appstore, so I decided to let you all know just how lucrative it is to make a great app.
My app: http://www.typeli.com Appstore: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/typeli/id503079958?ls=1&mt=12
Day 1 sales:
11 (USA 7, Germany 2, Japan 1, Singapore 1)
which translates into 10.5 * 11 = $115.5
What's most interesting however is the relative performance as compared to other apps. I checked the top grossing list for Productivity apps multiple times yesterday, and was very surprised to outperform some apps that Apple features on its website. Typeli fluctuated in the region between 108th and 150th place.
What do you think? Is it really that bad out there or am I missing something? <comment><USER2> My experience with an app in the Productivity category is similar to yours.

The Mac App Store is definitely not a miracle channel on its own, it needs to be complemented by other marketing. What that is depends greatly on the app and the team, I guess (which is another way of saying that I suck at marketing). Some apps like Sparrow seem to be doing consistently well on the MAS thanks to a successful launch hype on tech blogs and social networks, but not everyone can do that.

Btw, your app looks really great at least on the typeli.com site. I think the price is a bit steep, though. For me, 15 USD is too much for an impulse purchase when I have no idea whether I'm actually going to use the app.

If you don't want to lower the price, maybe you could do a half-price launch promo? That seems to be a popular thing (but I have no idea how well it actually works).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! From your experience what's the ceiling for impulse purchases? I'm thinking $8.99?

<comment><USER3> As owner of > 500 purchased apps on Mac App Store and iOS App Store, and careful observation of buying trends at various price points, I'd say $4.99 is the impulse ceiling.

For iOS apps I am familiar with and use regularly, I have paid as much as $49.99; Mac apps, as much as $299.

This app, to me, in its current incarnation and marketing, looks like $4.99 "launch price" and $9.99 tops once it's finished (it doesn't look finished). There are notably (sorry) better editors for less money.

        Writeroom $9.99
        iA Writer $8.99 (iOS $0.99)
        Byword $9.99 (iOS $2.99)
        OmmWriter Dāna II $4.99

Perspective:

        Pages $19.99

Given the competition and its marketing, I'd recommend undercutting the other guys by as much as 1/2, and discounting your launch pricing further.

 _// Disclaimer: utterly speculative opinion, YM will V_

EDIT: While researching these, I discovered "Marked", and saw it offers GitHub technical markdown preview. I purchased it for $3.99, because I hadn't spent money on coffee today.

<comment><USER4> I would have to agree with @Terretta. A launch price is probably your best bet while your user base grows, praises and criticisms flow in (along with reviews), a few updates to the program happen and you finally settle on a price that can sustain further development and feed your family.

All of this is moot if $14.99 is indeed your launch price.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Clickable

<http://www.typeli.com>

[http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/typeli/id503079958?ls=1&m...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/typeli/id503079958?ls=1&mt=12)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll edit it in the post. What's the syntax for links?

<comment><USER5> You did it right. HN allows you to submit a URL or Text, but not both. It's customary around here that someone replies with the clickable link.

Nice job on the app by the way. If you add the ability to doodle a free-form drawing I might consider purchasing it. My notes tend to contain illustrations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Also, you need an obvious spot on typeli.com that states exactly what your app does and who it is for, perhaps what particular problem it is the answer to. It was not obvious to me.

</comment><comment><USER7> You could probably do better creating an app that solves a new problem. People who need notes/reminder apps already have enough of them.

Also, $15 is _very_ steep.

<comment><USER8> > Also, $15 is very steep.

My counterpoint to this...

Don't start off engaging in the race towards all apps' pricing going to zero. Because it will. Someone is going to clone your app and make it a $1, or free. There's more than enough time for those shenanigans, so you might as well price it somewhere where some people might think it is steep and you think is fair. You can always bring it down as a "limited time sale", but it will be hard to raise it if you price it too low to start.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> very interesting convo. i think your app looks promising. apologies in advance for any "i know best" tone in these remarks, but here are some thoughts:

1\. $14.99 was indeed way too high to get impulse buys (the question of what you deserve being separate from the question of what you'll actually get);

2\. i agree with the earlier comments about the need to market more energetically;

3\. however, slight disagreement with those who said that the central issue is "what problem does it solve?" that's very rational and all, but people love aesthetic beauty and simplicity, and your app looks gorgeous. so I'd play up that aspect of it.

4\. that being said, i agree with 'tawhaki': people have to know what it IS first.

5\. most important, though: strong agreement with 'terretta' that the app just doesn't look finished yet. haven't tried it myself, but if the one review on the App Store is correct (viz. no preferences, no window resizing, no font or font size options), then maybe you released it a bit too early?

BEST of luck to you. like I said, this app looks well designed and I think it has promise.

</comment><comment><USER10> I guess I was one of 11. I like the app's style, but after using it a little more - I doubt I will use it very often. It's very clean, but it could use a little more context. From your original post I got the impression that you were trying to create a single app (without multiple docs) that could be a repository for all notes. In the end - I think it's clean, but lacking purpose.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, sry I didn't see your response before. Thanks for trying out the app. Could you please elaborate on what you mean by "more context"? Thanks.

<comment><USER10> Yeah - if you look at onenote as an example their are pages & tabs that can be labeled. This makes it very easy to switch to the right page/workspace.

The pages in your app require scrolling through to get to the right page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Would you consider changing the font of the headers on your website? They look really weird on my iPad--like half the letters bold weird. I tried sending you an email of what I'm seeing, but the contact button didn't work on iPad either. Also, when I zoom in, the web page momentarily covers itself with the background wood.

Congratulations on your success so far!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for letting me know. I'm looking into it.

<comment><USER11> Thanks, here are some screenshots I took.

The bold/not bold problem is worst when zoomed out, like on the words 'organizing' and 'interface'.

[http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8010387/Photo%20Apr%2014%2C%209%2016...](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8010387/Photo%20Apr%2014%2C%209%2016%2026%20AM.png)

And this is what happens when I zoom in:

[http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8010387/Photo%20Apr%2014%2C%209%2057...](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8010387/Photo%20Apr%2014%2C%209%2057%2054%20AM.png)

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome! Thanks for taking the screenshots. If you would like to get Typeli, send me your email (<http://www.typeli.com/support.html>) and I'll send you a promo code so you can get it for free.

The zooming issue I obviously understand and will try to fix. For bold/not bold however, I'm not really seeing it?

<comment><USER11> It depends on the zoom level, but in the screenshot look at the the two 'i's in organizing. The one on the left is bolder than the other. My roommate sees it on the iPad, too. It looks fine in Chrome on my laptop, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> also, I did send you the promo code so if you didn't get it... let me know

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Your Contact page has a Help link at the bottom that isn't a link - doesn't do anything. That link doesn't appear on the other pages. Help would be a useful page.

</comment><comment><USER13> What other kinds of "marketing" have you done for the app? Do you think those 11 buyers were random app store surfers, or did they come in via a link?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hard to say but it's probably all from outside links. Few websites picked up the app + I posted on facebook, hackernews.

Beside submitting the app to macappstorm and techcrunch I haven't done any marketing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I visited your website. I read it all. I still have no idea what exactly your app actually is. This is... problematic, to say the least.

<comment><USER15> I don't get it either. The top of site should surely have.. "Typeli is a... "

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good point. I added that (I will need to make it look better) but yes, I agree it adds a lot.</comment></comment></comment>


Minecraft's worlds get a new look - <AUTHOR> http://boingboing.net/2013/09/05/minecraft-gets-wild-new-terrai.html <comment><USER2> Despite no longer playing, I love the continued updates for the game. Just yesterday I suggested the game to my Basic PC Literacy class and a handful of the students were nodding in agreement.</comment>


PGP, TrueCrypt-encrypted files cracked by £300 tool - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/20/elcomsoft_tool_decrypts_pgp/

<comment><USER2> The discussion is over here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4948234></comment>


A Seed VC's Decision Tree  - <AUTHOR> http://robgo.org/2013/10/29/a-seed-vcs-decision-tree/ <comment><USER3> It's interesting to see this mapped out so clearly, but each step along the way is still entirely subjective.

Most investors, IMO, are not great evaluators of founders (e.g., are easily fooled by elite credentials), markets (they tend to chase shiny things), or founder / market fit (this takes a lot of operational expertise to realistically evaluate).

<comment><USER4> Agree with you. I'm actually unclear what exactly this is a decision tree for because its steps are so subjective.

Definitely isn't the decision tree from first contact to investment - <USER2> would be much deeper. It would also have to factor in how much heat there is behind the deal already - which for most seed firms is probably the most important signal! Seems accurate as a decision tree to take a meeting with someone though.

As an exercise, try running some of their portfolio companies through that decision tree and see what kind of results you get.

<comment><USER5> I'm also curious what inputs they use to evaluate the founder. Surely there's some objectivity to that element of the decision tree beyond "great guy, articulate, firm handshake" \--- I'm thinking probably quality of undergraduate / graduate schools, past exits, years in industry, etc.

<comment><USER6> _" great guy, articulate, firm handshake"_

You can tell a lot by the first five seconds with a person. That's why so many founders today are the cool kid/hot guy variety and not the Bill Gates/slovenly nerd variety.

VCs won't take seriously a guy who shuffles-when-walks with zero eye contact and stares-at-floor-constantly habits unless they come with someone vouching for them.

VCs will take seriously someone who can project all the right social signals, act strong, and not let anyone see into their weakness.

<comment><USER7> This is precisely why VCs will miss truly disruptive founders. Tech entrepreneurship is still fairly young, but in that short time, we've already invented our own unique brand of cool: young, credentialed, hot, saying the right things.

Oh wait: those are the values of society at large.

We've already abandoned all pretense of disruption. This is just the next iteration of the elite, where your value as a person hinges on how well you project your own narcissism.

<comment><USER8> _Tech entrepreneurship is still fairly young, but in that short time, we 've already invented our own unique brand of cool: young, credentialed, hot, saying the right things._ _Oh wait: those are the values of society at large._ _We 've already abandoned all pretense of disruption. This is just the next iteration of the elite, where your value as a person hinges on how well you project your own narcissism._

I had a chronic illness in my teenage years and 20s, hit a nadir around 24, and recovered by 27-28. I'm healthy now, but didn't have the start that's "expected" of people with +4 sigma talent. It's obvious, since I'm 30 and not earth-shatteringly successful, that I have some kind of health story... but I prefer not to get into the details with people I barely know. I don't want it to be the first conversation, but in the contemporary Valley, it would be. ("If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?")

Silicon Valley used to be _for_ weird people. It was about second chances (and third, and fourth) and outer-range creativity and acceptance of weirdness. People were too busy building for the cool-kids shit and high-school drama that dominates now. _That_ Silicon Valley was worth defending, and protecting. This iteration, this Disney-fied new one, is worth attacking, humiliating, and bringing to its undignified end.

<comment><USER6> _( "If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?")_

I wonder that of myself all the time. I don't have any medical problems other than the tragedy of living inside my own fucked up head.

I find the cheap ways of getting rich untenable (abusing users, SEO affiliate ad crap, stealing personal information, facebook viral shitfests), and the hard ways are too much for my unconnected self to tackle alone (remaking credit card processing, remaking flight finding, anything requiring network effects to get off the ground).

But, for now, I'm not homeless and I have a view of Manhattan from my window. It could be worse.

<comment><USER7> So did I.

I felt that if I wasn't 'great,' then I was squandering my life, and that I always had to hustle more. I'd internalized a bunch of toxic messages (some from well-intentioned family), lived in a fast-paced area that focuses on power (DC), had impostor syndrome, and was a nerd when growing up. It was easy to think that once I reclaimed my 'rightful' place, that life would be as it should be.

It should be little surprise that I was well on my way to predicating my identity on my career. I placed enormous pressure on myself to succeed, and rapidly started viewing many facets of life as inherently zero-sum. I became reductionistic in many areas, and my interests narrowed, as I pursued only things that I was good at.

It was all an enormous lie. I'd bought wholesale into a weird, Nietzsche- Darwinian belief system where I had to become the ubermensch before I could allow myself to be human. I had to become someone so I could see myself as someone worthwhile. I had to achieve so I could rest. I had to be the best, lest I become undesirable.

In short, I believed I was not worth loving until I'd received a certain amount of external validation. I'm still being broken of this, but the break/repair/rebuild cycle is much better than the desperate grasping. Fuck status. We think we have to waste our lives accumulating it, when it's really borne out of fear of the future.

<comment><USER9> Very interesting writeup because I see shades of that in my own personality. So how are you overcoming this?

<comment><USER7> This is probably a life-long pursuit, but in the short-term:

1\. My wife is very supportive of my ambitions while not letting me be consumed by them. The vulnerability and accountability are key here.

2\. Regular time doing wholly non-constructive things: video games, reading, guitar, etc. This took some time to acclimate to, but now I can play a game or the like and lose track of time, as well as not feel guilty.

3\. Killed my Twitter account, which was sort of the symbol of my personal brand. Not sure what I'm going to do there.

4\. Pulled back from open source work for now, as it got too close into the realm of 'being someone' in a particular community.

5\. Meditation and prayer is huge. Admitting I have a problem is still hard but there's a huge relief that comes from being honest with yourself.

6\. I work at a lifestyle company, which is fairly unheard of on the East Coast. This helps a bunch with being flexible about when and where I work.

I still make time to do side projects and such, but the effort is mainly directed towards learning and fun over developing my personal brand. I'm still strategic about it, as I'd love to do more Clojure in the future, esp. professionally.

Hope this helps.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for the writeup.

 _2\. Regular time doing wholly non-constructive things:_

So how did you get started doing that? I have a reeeaaly hard time with that one, to the point that I even see time with the family as non-constructive. It feels like time spent doing anything that is not pushing one of my goals forward is actively stopping forward momentum (including posting comments on the internets) so I end up getting frustrated at having wasted time and get depressed that I haven't done anything. Its a tough cycle.

<comment><USER7> I know the feeling. I have a few things I'd like to work on myself.

But the bit about your family? Sounds like a red flag to me.

Do things for yourself on a regular basis. Make time to exercise and spend with quality people. Talk about this issue. It's _very_ tough to fix by yourself; you effectively been mentally rooted for now. Understand it will take time to fix, and the process of recovering will feel strange. I'm convinced half of it is showing up and resisting the temptation to do just one more thing.

Optimize for happiness, and trust productivity will flow out of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What's the point of making a "rational decision tree" when your first decision point is based on _awesomeness level_ of the founder. That's a useless tree if I ever saw one.

<comment><USER6> How else can you take credit for _picking_ the winner? Otherwise you're just following something any dumb programmer could put together. You're not a dumb programmer. You're an awesome VC who controls the lives of dumb programmers. The rules of logic, society, and sanity don't apply here.

<comment><USER11> Not surprisingly, the same argument can be applied to:

        - investment decisions,
        - hiring/contract decisions,
        - travel agencies,
        - and probably countless other services too.

We only need some service provider that automates all these functions...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Seems in line with a few published results that I've run into recently:

\- For one VC, market size was the main predictor of whether a company would get a term sheet. ([http://iterativepath.wordpress.com/2013/02/11/how-vcs- decide...](http://iterativepath.wordpress.com/2013/02/11/how-vcs-decide-to- invest-in-your-startup/))

\- A survey showed that angels and VCs care about the management team more than anything, although market characteristics and the product rank highly, too. ([http://www.go4funding.com/Articles/Angel-Investors/Angel- Inv...](http://www.go4funding.com/Articles/Angel-Investors/Angel-Investor- Decision-Making.aspx))

<comment><USER13> Reminds me of Marc's post from 2007, asserting market is biggest factor.

[http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee204/ProductMarketFit.html](http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee204/ProductMarketFit.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Most Seed VC's are investing in a Team and an Idea.

"Founder" as a singular rarely get investments. No man is an island, and you don't want your investment to get hit by a bus.

<comment><USER15> > you don't want your investment to get hit by a bus

So take out life insurance on the founder.

And if two founders are _essential_ for a successful startup, then there is actually twice as much chance of it failing by one of them being hit by a bus.

<comment><USER14> A typical pair is a business guy and an IP guy. You don't have twice the risk because it is assumed that they talk to each other, and you could replace either based on what the other could fill in.

You can only insure for the amount of your investment, that offsets the risk but doesn't cover your gains. Also since the cost to do so is 1/10th of your investment over 3 years, you would typically not opt for the coverage. I don't know of an investor who does.

There is also a belief that no one guy is "that smart" that anything 1 person can build has any competitive advantage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What is an awesome founder? Or maybe, what does an awesome founder look like?

This is a serious question. It actually looks easier to gauge the marked than the people..

<comment><USER17> There's been some interesting research on what characteristics successful founders have (actually, the research was on what successful VCs look for in founders, so maybe the extrapolation is unwarranted, but... research!)

Here's Geoff Smart's Phd thesis (Management Assessment Methods in Venture Capital: Toward a Theory of Human Capital Valuation): [http://www.ghsmart.com/media/press/methods_in_venture_capita...](http://www.ghsmart.com/media/press/methods_in_venture_capital.pdf)

And a simpler overview [pdf]: [http://www.ghsmart.com/media/press/human_capital.pdf](http://www.ghsmart.com/media/press/human_capital.pdf)

And, he wrote a book called "Who", but he generalized the research to hiring anybody. Still a good book.

TL;DR: VCs who hire people that have successful experience doing what they plan to do end up getting the best ROI. VCs who hire people based on their gut ("I like the cut of your jib!" keeps popping into my head as I write this) do worst.

The simpler overview is interesting reading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Always look for the hidden agenda." Okay:

(1) Get publicity for the VC firm and, thus, more deal flow. We can conclude that they are not getting much deal flow.

(2) Have criteria that look good to the LPs, that is, easy to understand and like nearly all other VCs. Then forget about the 20% and live on the 2%.

</comment><comment><USER19> TLDR: Primarily looks for a good market. Without a market, fund only if founder top 0.01% (whatever that is).

An insightful, actionable blog post. A true gem in the HN treasury.</comment>


Uncertain, lazy, forgetful, & impatient: It's what you want your code to be - <AUTHOR> https://blog.photostructure.com/uncertain-lazy-forgetful-and-impatient/ <comment><AUTHOR> Author here.

After coding in Scala for a while, I brought a couple FP-isms with me to TypeScript, including Option and lazy. A couple other battle-tested, small classes and functions are also shared in this post.

I couldn't imagine working on a TypeScript codebase without these, and thought I'd share.

</comment><comment><USER2> Blue text on black background is really hard to read. Also use a dark theme for code snippets to match the theme of the page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'll get that fixed.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are you hearing while you're coding?  - <AUTHOR>

yep, what's your recent development soundtrack? <comment><USER2> From the phrasing of your question, I thought you were asking a different question. If you'd said "listening to", I'd have assumed your actual question, but since you said "hearing" instead I took that as an intentional effort to imply a different question. One of "While you're coding, what is the auditory portion of your brain processing?" Are you hearing yourself think? Do you hear the sound of your typing? The people around you talking? Or do are you concentrating so deeply that you block those out?

</comment><comment><USER2> Today I listened to Beats Antique's new Album: Elektrafone [1] and Mexicans With Guns.

[1] <http://beatsantique.com/ba_product/elektrafone-cd/>

</comment><comment><USER3> late 90's early 00's -- nsync, bsb, nelly, eminem, britney spears, mandy moore -- classic. I used to listen to just about anything...just randomly started listening to this old stuff recently...nostalgia is a crazy thing. I was about 10 when these groups were popular. Now I mostly listen to 90s rock and classic rock, and some newer bands like Shinedown

</comment><comment><USER4> I've been listening to the soundtracks of shows and movies remotely related to coding. e.g Tron and Battlestar Galactica.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm listening to Faith No More right now.

</comment><comment><USER5> That CPU fan is really loud.</comment>


Show HN: Job alerts for companies you love - <AUTHOR> http://www.letmeknow.email/ <comment><USER2> Please don't bother with obvious promotional abuse like this. It just gets accounts and sites banned and irritates the community.

<comment><AUTHOR> what are you talking about? I have been building this website for a couple of weeks...Show HN is exactly to promote your work...

<comment><USER2> The fake account voting and commenting.

<comment><AUTHOR> These are my friends that are also readers of hacker news (even though to be fair they did not have an account)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Looks nice. It would be nice if you could add search tags there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. Glad you like it. Yep search tags are definitely on the roadmap!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> User friendly and really nice and clean user interface. Love the idea of tracking position openings in companies you love!</comment>


India Is Too Poor, Snapchat Is for the Rich People – Evan Spiegel - <AUTHOR> http://www.indiatimes.com/news/india/india-is-too-poor-this-app-is-for-the-rich-people-feels-snapchat-ceo-evan-spiegel-275707.html <comment><USER2> Cultural attitudes and differences still exists in this globalized economy. Premonitions like "Indians are poor" are the basis of western businesses misjudging the markets in developing nations. Get out of your cocoon if you want to develop your business internationally. US is not the world. It is true that Indians(including myself) are value minded. You need a different business model that caters to a higher volume than looking gor higher margins. But, saying Indians and Spanish are poor so I won't focus on them is just naive. You could instead say - "I don't want my business, in a low-margin market like India because I don't know how to make money there." and that is understandable.

<comment><USER3> Did you read the story?

This is an alleged comment made in a private mtg in 2015. When in private do you make full statements with nuance every time you speak?

<comment><USER2> I did read the story, and the fact that he said it in 2015 doesn't matter to what I opined. I'm not crying out loud that someone said something bad about the country I was born in. I'm just sharing my opinion in a forum of hackers (who could end up running businesses in India) that businesses work differently in India, and that a CEO of a billion $ startup would be just naive to not realize that and word his views accordingly.

If I say something that misses the point entirely, I expect my friends to just tell me, I'm wrong, and also tell me why. That's what I intended to do. Albeit publicly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What proof is there that he actually said this, and what were his exact words?

</comment><comment><USER5> India it is very poor. What Evan said was India was'nt an appropiate market to invest in. India is poor, that is a fact. You shouldn't be offended by the true. Everywhere you find richs and poors, but yeah, India is a poor country, deal with that!

</comment><comment><USER6> May be he forgot to check this - [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_the_num...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_the_number_of_billionaires)

<comment><USER3> How does having billionaires mean there is a large population that you can monetize?

<comment><USER7> Hey you just gave me an idea. An exclusive photo sharing app for people who are worth a billion dollars or more. I mean, how will those poor people show off their private mansions without attracting unnecessary scrutiny? Since the service has no need to scale, I will personally visit every billionaire to verify their identity when they join. And then I will start a bidding war amongst all the luxury goods makers to advertise on my network.

All I need to do now is to befriend a few billionaires.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > "I don't want to expand into poor countries like India and Spain."

Spain is a poor country?

<comment><USER9> I was prompted by your question to search around, and I saw this site which puts two sets of country economic data side by side [0]

[0][https://country- facts.findthedata.com/compare/122-131/India-...](https://country- facts.findthedata.com/compare/122-131/India-vs-Spain)

<comment><USER10> Decent website, but pretty sure it's not 100% polished yet. One (of several) things that threw me off was the "Female Survival Rate to Age 65" comparison. I was shocked to see that India is only at 3.7%, and the color filling in the picture also makes it seem so. It is actually 73.7% and the 7 is hiding in the picture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Indian here, I'll cross post from Facebook.

"Why Netflix? Torrent karle." "Steam? Tu rich hoga bro." "Tu apps ke liye pay karta hai? WTF!" (don't think I need to translate)

... and we get offended when Evan Spiegel points out the (bitter) truth.

<comment><USER12> Translations which parent should have offered:

"Why Netflix? Torrent karle." Why Netflix? Torrent it.

"Steam? Tu rich hoga bro." Steam? You must be rich, bro.

"Tu apps ke liye pay karta hai? WTF!" You pay for apps? WTF!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Search engines as good as "old Google" for finding information? - _-___________-_ Several years ago, it was possible to use Google to find up-to-date topical information even from obscure sources, using a general search query.
For example, you could set a Google alert for, say, "embedded linux" and get a wide variety of good results. Now if you set the same alert, you mostly get spam results (many of which have been removed from the index by the time you click on them), and a surprisingly small amount of results overall even though a general query should give large numbers of results. The non-spam results you get are always commercial, no blog posts, mailing lists, etc.
I refer to Google Alerts as an example, but searching manually on Google gives the same impression. This makes Google mostly useless for finding actual information on a general search query, as opposed to advertisements and websites that function as advertisements.
Are there any search engines which are as good as "old Google" for actually finding recently-published _information_ when given a general search query? I mean blog posts, mailing list posts, and the like, not the Wikipedia article for the query.
I've tried DDG, Qwant and Bing and they don't seem to be improvements. <comment><AUTHOR> I have been thinking about the same problem since a few weeks.

The real problem with search engines is the fact that so many websites have hacked SEO that there is no meritocracy left. Results are not sorted based on relevance or quality but by SEO experts' efforts at making the search results favor themselves. I can possibly not find anything deep enough about any topic by searching on Google anymore. It's just surface-level knowledge that I get from competing websites who just want to make money off pageviews.

It kills my curiosity and intent with fake knowledge and bad experience. I need something better.

However, it will be interesting to figure the heuristics to deliver better quality search results today. When Google started, it had a breakthrough algorithm - to rank page results based on number of pages linking to it. Which is completely meritocratic as long as people don't game for higher rankings.

A new breakthrough heuristic today will look something totally different, just as meritocratic and possibly resistant to gaming.

</comment><comment><USER2> I think the web has changed, that kind of information is no longer surfaceable within the current paradigm of search engines. SEO won, and I think in the short term we will just see walled garden websites create a monopoly on page views. In the long run, someone somewhere will solve this problem, probably will happen once nlp can understand language.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've found using Reddit (e.g site:reddit.com _QUESTION_) or [https://hn.algolia.com/](https://hn.algolia.com/) to search for valuable articles etc.

</comment><comment><USER4> I just built an MVP for a search engine that lets you use a whitelist or a blacklist for your searches. [https://cowjar.com](https://cowjar.com)

</comment><comment><USER5> I feel you. And I hope someone, somewhere is working on a search engine for personal websites only...

</comment><comment><USER6> Yandex.

</comment><comment><USER7> Yandex, DuckDuckGo, Bing</comment>


25 Years Later: Interview with Linus Torvalds - <AUTHOR> https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/25-years-later-interview-linus-torvalds <comment><USER2> >Bob: Is there any advice you'd like to give to young programmers/computer science students?

>Linus: I'm actually the worst person to ask. I knew I was interested in math and computers since an early age, and I was largely self-taught until university. And everything I did was fairly self-driven. So I don't understand the problems people face when they say "what should I do?" It's not where I came from at all.

This is a problem I don't understand too. If you are really into something you motivating yourself in doing things. You can see how stupid people are when you just read the questions on Stackoverflow today. Nobody seems to figure things out by themselves anymore.

Same with YouTube, when people explaining simple math things with extremely effort people complaining then that today's teachers are shit. But it's more your own lack if you're not able to imagine these thing inside your mind by yourself.

<comment><USER3> I don't think stackoverflow is a problem at all, I think it's much better to have people ask stupid questions than to call them stupid.

That being said, I do think people owe it to themselves to read the documentation first. I'm extremely rarely in a situation where the official documentation isn't monumentally better than every other option. There are a few exceptions of course, when the official documentation flat out sucks.

I do think we have a general issue with how we teach CS though. Especially outside the hardcore CS degree, because we're really not teaching young people computation anymore, we're teaching them how to produce results. This is especially true for places like Udemy and YouTube, but it's frankly also true on more UX centric or academy/bachelor level degrees.

I do external examinations on academy levels, and earlier this year I went to a place where they teach associate degrees in CS. Only they opted to build their places as a "gaming education", so they had a heavy emphasis on Unity. And sure enough, the students were pretty good at unity, but only a handful of them knew how to calculate Big O of a few simple examples and only a single student knew how a computer actually works.

When I did my own freshman year, one of my first tests was to decode a hidden message by altering the contents of a bitmap file using C. That's pretty useless, sure, but it teaches you a lot of things, including how to read the official documentation for a bitmap, which is a much more useful skill than knowing how to use a certain version of some framework. At least in my opinion.

<comment><USER4> It seems to me there is some kind of political war going on when it comes to education about computers.

One side argues, they must know what a computer is, how it roughly works, what it can do and cannot do, and how you can program it.

The other side says, knowing how to use Microsoft Office and Excel, and Facebook and Instagram 'responsibly' is enough, and they fight tooth and nails that the education doesn't become deeper.

This is my experience in Germany, though, where digitalization is understood as replacing books by tablet computers from Apple in school.

Have you made similar experiences?

Edit: Let me reiterate on that. I think part of the fierce resistance against deeper education is fueled by fear.

To explain that, I see how mathematics is used in schools as a rough intelligence test. And the results in math are important, not because people would need differentiation of nested functions at work, but because the grade in math is used as a proxy by the society.

Abstract thinking is difficult for many. And they dislike it. A fundamental education in computers requires abstract thinking. So with that, there would be even more filterng between those who think good, and those that don't. People are afraid of that. So they fight that change.

I think people are afraid of loosing out and becoming meaningless and irrelevant in a world of computers, i.e. a world of abstract thinking.

<comment><USER5> Feels like what you are describing was the state of affairs like 15 years ago when i was in secondary school. We had an "Informationstechnischer Grundkurs" teaching office / excel and a separate programming course for guys like me who wanted to focus on that. I don't really follow the state of education that closely, but would be quite surprised if the latter is not at least more widely available now.

Does everyone need to know how to program? I don't know, probably not. Us humans specializing is the only way we have to handle the huge amount of knowledge necessary to support our society. I certainly would have a hard time just surviving by myself. Also education slots are limited, we'd have to abolish other courses in exchange. This obviously will generate opposition.

Now let imagine we have an open slot to teach "CS" for 90min a week for a year in such a young age. What do you teach that would actually be useful to most of them later on? A bit of python? Basic C, since it doesn't come with many complicated abstractions on top? Javascript, since many of its courses quickly give colorful results? Even the programming bachelor I later did had trouble answering those questions, they switched from c->java->c++ to teaching 3 courses java. Plus all the languages other courses used and had to teach pretty much from scratch.

<comment><USER6> Personally, I think there is far too much focus on 'which language', rather than on the fundamentals of how to think/reason about a program, troubleshooting, and exposure to the actual documentation. Once you have a solid grasp of one language, picking up others becomes much easier. So someone who only has Javascript experience would likely be able to at least grok the basic structure of a c++ program. I feel the main problem with all the intro courses I have ever taken was too much reliance on textbooks/tutorials, and too much desire to over-simplify. I remember multiple people I took CS101 (Java) with who had no idea how to do anything outside of eclipse, and when they wanted to expand their skills through self-study had no idea how to use the documentation in a helpful manner. They knew how to write a class diagram, but all functions & classes had been introduced piecemeal, so they got overwhelmed looking at the official docs & just gave up out of frustration.

That said, I don't think something like haskell or straight assembler is a good choice, but any of the C-likes or Python would be fine, the differences just aren't great enough to matter much for the absolute beginner. A strong case could be made for Javascript, simply for ease of development, since any computer is almost guaranteed to have the basic software for writing, executing, & debugging. It is far from my favorite language, but for early intro courses I think pedagogy is far more important than language or tooling.

And personally, I feel that the only 'CS' that should be required for all students is keyboarding. Does someone who wants to go into the trades (excepting trades like machining) really have any urgent need for programming? However, almost any job will require typing skills.

Students have limited time, and I think it's foolish to force everyone to learn to program. Those classes have their benefits, but so do music classes. But, given avaliable time and resources, should we also require all students to learn an instrument?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Bob: Anything else you want to comment on, either publicly or otherwise?

> Linus: I've never had some "message" that I wanted to spread, so ...

It's a pity that a man with such influence has no message that he wants to spread, but I can somehow understand this respond. My personal take of this quote can refer to another quote from his TED interview[1]:

> I'm an engineer. I'm perfectly happy with all the people who are walking > around and just staring at the clouds and looking at the stars and saying, > "I want to go there," but I'm looking at the ground and I want to fix the > pothole that's right in front of me before I fall in.

While I wish such leader can speak for values like democracy or human rights, it is just not possible to happen.

[1] [https://www.ted.com/talks/linus_torvalds_the_mind_behind_lin...](https://www.ted.com/talks/linus_torvalds_the_mind_behind_linux/transcript#t-1020235)

<comment><USER8> > _While I wish such leader can speak for values like democracy or human > rights, it is just not possible to happen._

Why would he have any great insight on "democracy or human rights" compared the average population? Because he wrote successful software?

<comment><USER9> That is such a true remark. I've always been shocked by the unsufferable ego one needs to have to feel authorized to give public statements on complex global issues or life advices.

<comment><USER10> Yeah we live in an age where professional athletes, musicians and celebrities play an integral role in shaping global socioeconomic policy.

What the fuck could possibly go wrong

<comment><USER8> Or worse, career politicians and career policy advisors. That is, people totally removed from any implication of their policies for others, and usually far removed (economically, socially, culturally) from the population they decide for.

I think the ancient Athenian democracy had it right: some law-making bodies should be filled by lottery -- akin to juries or the draft.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Linus' view on anonymity was surprising to read. I'm not sure I agree with him on that but his view on social media being a platform for the lowest common denominator sure seems agreeable.

<comment><USER12> He's essentially a performer/personality though, and I'm inclined to say his answer is a self-serving performance itself. It would be fine, except that he writes out people who have valid reasons for anonymity - from "i feel like it", on up. I'm personally not fussed by Linus' antics, but cringe thinking about sensitive people, maybe still forming their personalities or sense of self, looking up to him.

Hard to argue with his technical chops and many successes, but that doesn't make him expert in everything he's got an opinion on. He even punts on a softball question and makes it about himself: "what advice do you have for young programmers and students?" - how about "have fun, exercise and stay healthy and dive in!"

I'm sorry to be negative here, but I wish Linus did better in this regard.

<comment><USER13> > _He even punts on a softball question and makes it about himself_

That's because it _was_ about himself! Bob asked _him_ for _his_ advice.

> _how about "have fun, exercise and stay healthy and dive in!"_

That's such an overused, uninspired, undistinguished answer. Why would you ask Linus if that's what you want to hear?

<comment><USER12> It is - a simplistic throw away I came up with as I typed, and still more valuable than "don't ask me". I'm just bemoaning that after 25 years he's still an antihero.

<comment><USER14> I'm still more comfortable with an antihero that is down to earth and knows when to shut up like Linus than with a full-time worshipped Hero persona, e.g. Elon Musk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> >As to C, nothing better has come around.

>The kind of languages people see under active development aren't for low- level system programming.

I found it interesting that he didn't mention Rust. Or is Rust not suitable for kernel development?

<comment><USER16> He was once asked about Rust during an interview: [https://www.infoworld.com/article/3109150/linux- at-25-linus-...](https://www.infoworld.com/article/3109150/linux-at-25-linus- torvalds-on-the-evolution-and-future-of-linux.html)

<comment><USER17> > I'm not convinced about Rust for an OS kernel (there's a lot more to system > programming than the kernel, though), but at the same time there is no > question that C has a lot of limitations.

> To anyone who wants to build their own kernel from scratch, I can just wish > them luck. It's a huge project, and I don't think you actually solve any of > the really hard kernel problems with your choice of programming language. > The big problems tend to be about hardware support (all those drivers, all > the odd details about different platforms, all the subtleties in memory > management and resource accounting), and anybody who thinks that the choice > of language simplifies those things a lot is likely to be very disappointed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Btw. ice hockey is _not_ the national sport of Finland (it's not even the national sport of Canada!). The Finnish national sport is pesäpallo (Finnish baseball).

<comment><USER19> Hockey is the national sport of Canada. But so is lacrosse.

<comment><USER18> Looks like you're right. Ice hockey is the national _winter_ sport of Canada while lacrosse is the _summer_ sport.

<comment><USER20> OT: you could fix the intended italics in your comment by using '<asterisk- char>' instead of '_'.

> Looks like you're right. Ice hockey is the national _winter_ sport of Canada > while lacrosse is the _summer_ sport.

See here for the formatting options supported: [https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc](https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc)

<comment><USER18> Too late to edit now, but thanks. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'd like to see someone ask: If you were to redesign Linux from scratch right now what would you do differently?

<comment><USER22> Would he use C++ or Rust?

<comment><USER23> IIRC, I think he's said previously that he doesn't want C++ in the kernal and doesn't think Rust is suitable.

<comment><USER24> I think you're replying to a joke.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> What a boring interview.

The questions he asked doesn't even give us new insight into Linus's opinions on tech.

</comment><comment><USER26> A meta issue here...

> Nancy and I and our three daughters are all doing well. Our eldest, Zoe, who > was 11 when Marc and I started Red Hat, is expecting her second > child—meaning I'm a grandparent.

First off, I don't give a damn about the interviewer's family, Red Hat founder or not. Not sure why it's included in the article. But you know who does? Identity thieves. I feel like Young should be more aware of the issues this kind of thing can pose. He's a high net worth guy and it seems reckless to publish anywhere, much less an unprotected article like this one.

<comment><USER27> You're going to have to learn to deal with some editorialization. That's part of life and reading articles on the internet You're an anonymous observer to two peoples' conversation, who clearly have a history that spans decades. Stay in your lane.

<comment><USER26> > Stay in your lane.

Meaning what?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Ah, Id love a video of this. Is there a video?

</comment><comment><USER29> Heh, he's using an XPS 13. Take that, Thinkpad snobs.

<comment><USER30> Snobs? I have an XPS after previously being a ThinkPad fan, the XPS was _much_ more expensive.

<comment><USER31> ooo, I was just about to choose thinkpad over xps mainly because of the keyboard. Does XPS have any advantage?

<comment><USER32> Price. That's literally it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why aren't we going for carbon frames (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://polebicycles.com/why-arent-we-going-for-carbon-frames/ <comment><USER2> I'm rooting for the future of carbon materials as a way to monetize atmospheric cabon dioxide. So this article pointed out a few opportunities for carbon:

1\. robotic assembly of carbon products to lower costs

2\. eliminating use of synthetic polymers in the process

3\. learning more about "carbon nanotubes are asbestos"

</comment><comment><USER2> and since this article is 6 months old, any updates in the meantime?</comment>