Why I picked Node.js for my startup - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/why-i-picked-nodejs-for-my-startup-dbcc83aa5495#.o6wjkwdkx <comment><USER2> TL;DR "It's what I know best"

~FIN~

My two cents:

Coming from stuff like Java and PHP I like JavaScript quite much. Async stuff bit of a pain in other languages I used, but JS integrates it nicely within its event loop. With Tasks, Promises and Observables it even seems to get managable. And with the Web and its browsers it seems to be the open platform for applications we have today.

Problems I saw in the past:

Founders using popular languages to get more people from the job marked, but I had the experience, you can use languages to pre-filter applicants. I assume the average JavaScript developer isn't as good as the average C++ or even Haskell developer.

But I'm happy about my switch to JavaScript 5 years ago, much jobs for mee~ :)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's about the scale of it, the other stuff is pretty nice all the same. Thanks for reading.</comment></comment>


Сonquer the law of inertia and discover your personal productivity method - <AUTHOR> http://www.kanbanchi.com/productivity-methods-e-book <comment><USER2> Direct link to ebook: [http://1pw8z314201u11lztq1ulowz.wpengine.netdna- cdn.com/wp-c...](http://1pw8z314201u11lztq1ulowz.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/07/Conquer-the-law-of-inertia-and-discover-your-personal- productivity-method.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> My 2 cents:

There's not enough in the article to make me think you know what your talking about. either build some kind of authority or give some kind of example were its worked.

<comment><USER3> I was trying to add constructive advice. Not sure why it's being downvoted?</comment></comment>


The future DBA - <AUTHOR> https://community.emc.com/community/connect/everything_oracle/blog/2014/02/27/the-future-dba

<comment><USER2> Cool

</comment><comment><USER3> good sharing</comment>


Snapshot of HN submissions, sorted by votes over comments - <AUTHOR> http://www.upthread.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> In the very long discussion[1] about auto-submision 'bots it was suggested[2] that the value of a thread might be better predicted not by its votes, but by votes divided by number of comments. Expanding on the original rationale given[3], roughly the idea is that low value submissions get lots of votes, but lots of comments as well. Better value submissions get fewer comments, but each person commenting still upvotes it, so the ratio is still high.

So qeorge[4], co-founder of Illuminati Karate[5], made this snapshot[6] - <USER2> results actually look pretty good.

[1] Original thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2386443>

[2] Original Suggestion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2386658>

[3] Original rationale: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2387054>

[4] Author: <http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=qeorge>

[5] <http://illuminatikarate.com>

[6] Original pointer: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2390239>

</comment><comment><USER3> Isn't that kind of how forum software like vBulletin or phpBB works? Every comments bumps it back up and the most active threads of the moment tend to hover at the top.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is doing the opposite - comments drag a submission down. In this scheme it's upvoting without commenting that push an item up.</comment></comment>


Stack and Nix = portable reproducible builds - <AUTHOR> http://www.tweag.io/blog/stack-nix-portable-reproducible-builds <comment><USER2> I highly recommend Nix. We used to use apt-get, pypi, rubygems, npm, make, and others, and now it's all replaced with a single tool: nix. It's dramatically simplified builds and dependency management for us at MixRank.

Benefits:

* It's declarative, so no one has to run anything to get to the correct state when a dependency has changed. Open a new nix-shell and automatically get everything. It's impossible to get in a bad state because it doesn't touch your system.

* We know we're all running the same software because the build will fail if hashes don't match.

* Portable across most unix's, and windows support is in progress.

* Patching other people's code is as easy as referencing a .patch file from a nix expression. You don't have to wait for your patch to be accepted in the main project or fork the project to build a custom release.

* There's no virtualization of IO like in containers. It effectively has no overhead.

* We can easily use different versions of the same piece of software in parallel; they don't collide because the hashes don't match.

* It has a very active community. The package repository, nixpkgs [1], has 73k commits, 650 contributors, and median pull request acceptance of 18 hours.

* Our software won't silently break because one of our package managers replaced a package. We maintain a fork of nixpkgs which we rebase on our own schedule.

If you've ever been frustrated with your package manager or build tools, give nix a shot!

[1] [https://github.com/nixos/nixpkgs](https://github.com/nixos/nixpkgs)

<comment><USER3> If you're like me and have a hankerin' for something other than the nix language, check out guix!

[http://gnu.org/s/guix](http://gnu.org/s/guix)

All of the scheme your heart could want. I run archlinux + guix and it's a magical happy land. I'm sure the same could be accomplished with nix, but I enjoy writing scheme too much!

<comment><USER2> I've watched a few talks on guix, and there's lots to like.

I recall there's supposed to be compatibility between nix and guix, but can't remember the details. Are they going to share package expressions, have a transpiler, or something like this?

<comment><USER3> They both use the same daemon (guix-builder is a fork of nix-builder), so I think they could share packages given the hashing is the same. This hypothetical has not been implemented yet, I'd love it.

Their is an importer[0], but this is basic and just grabs the package metadata, it's up to the packager to implement the package still. Hopefully this is further automated in the future.

[0]: [https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/html_node/Invoking-...](https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/html_node/Invoking- guix-import.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm curious how this handles changes within nixpkgs itself. For example, if developer A has nixpkgs version 111, and developer B has nixpkgs version 222, and they both attempt to build a Haskell project depending on "libxml", they may compile against different versions of libxml (or worse, an older version of libxml might be incompatible with the Haskell code).

Nixpkgs solves this itself by "owning" the entire dependency tree. That is, if there's a definition in nixpkgs that requires libxml, you can bet it works with the libxml derivation defined in that same nixpkgs. If not, there might be libxml1, libxml2 derivations defined.

In practice, using the ~latest version of everything, or whatever nixpkgs happens to have, usually works well. I started moving toward building my own nixpkgs distribution, which included a vendored copy of nixpkgs _at a specific version_ (rather than whatever version was available at the time you downloaded it), combined with a few customizations for specific (older) versions of, say, libxml. This ensured multiple developers could download things months apart and still expect everything to work. (nixpkgs changes somewhat rapidly.)

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I've done something like this as well. It's wrapper around nixpkgs that provides:

      * baseline nixpkgs at a specific version
      * customized overrides of specific packages
      * a library of functions to aid packaging our own software

It works great. It's actually not very much code, but it took a while to figure out what we wanted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Probably the most succinct comparison of Nix and Docker I've seen.

So this works by having Stack (a Haskell build tool?) emit a nix file to build a Haskell project? Very cool.

The more natural approach for this seems to be to use your language's package manager spec as a base to build Nix packages. Since package manager spec files already contain build instructions, this frees you up from any dependency on a specific build system. It would then be straightforward to generate Nix packages from a repository and serve them through a Nix channel.

All that being said, I should implement this for OCaml and OPAM. Nix is amazing, but it is "all-in." Native Nix builds the right way involve all your dependencies being Nix packages. (Nix builds using a language's package manager are impure and would likely require hand-holding with external deps.) This article seems like a nice step towards solving that, but I think the real solution would be tooling around the package manager itself.

<comment><USER7> > The more natural approach for this seems to be to use your language's > package manager spec as a base to build Nix packages. Since package manager > spec files already contain build instructions, this frees you up from any > dependency on a specific build system. It would then be straightforward to > generate Nix packages from a repository and serve them through a Nix > channel.

Yeah `Stack.yaml` is weird because it is both manually edited and generated. I'd rather see a split where the `Cabal-file + overrides/extra-info => build- plan` (not any central package db is not consulted). Then either Nix, or the built-in default can interpret that build plan (and just the build-plan) to actually build the thing. We can add a feedback loop `Cabal-file + overrides/extra-info + Maybe(solved-versions) => build-plan solved-versions` analogous to Cargo's and Bundler's lockfiles too.

Basically the goal is to separate the less deterministic aspects of querying versions and solving constraints, vs the entirely determinstic simple-stupid steps of actually building things.

Ideally then, nixpkgs would need no knowledge of upstream packages, and just the ability to interpret build-plans per language package manager. Caching would follow from just making sure the build-plan didn't very in stupid ways (of course the nix interpretation of the build-plan should be deterministic).

For system packages relying on a langauge package manager (xmonad...) use a "dynamic import" (import result of derivation) to avoid the need of caching these steps in the nixpkgs source.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have never used stack: I went from cabal-install hell straight to NixOS.

My current approach is: write the usual .cabal file, run

      cabal2nix --shell . > default.nix

then build and install the package (with `nix-build` or `nix-env -if.`) or open a nix-shell (just `nix-shell` in the project root) where I can run cabal- install to do things like uploading to hackage, building haddock docs, using cabal repl.

The nix expression is deterministically generated by the .cabal so unless you update the nix channel it won't change and you can safely delete it and regenerate it at anytime. While stack.yaml is not, or not entirely generate, if I understand correctly.

Are there other advantages over cabal2nix beside parallelization and incremental recompilation? I hardly handle 2 package at once so it's not really an issue for me.

<comment><USER9> Incremental recompilation is a big one, but beyond that, out-of-the-box handling of multi-package projects without the hassle of custom scripting or setting up .nix files just right. If all your projects are single package, `cabal repl` should work pretty well. Where stack really shines, and where it's interesting to simply reuse that, is for multi-package repos, which tend to be very common in private company Haskell developments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> How are the security update/fixes handled in NixOS?</comment>


Mexico Bans GMO Corn Effective Immediately - <AUTHOR> http://ecowatch.com/living/mexico-bans-gmo-corn-effective-immediately

<comment><USER2> Disappointing. In a world where hunger remains an issue, it's sad to see fear- mongering preventing us from using the best technology available to produce the most food with the least negative externalities.

Oh well, I guess if we just dump a lot more pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers, along with using more fresh water for irrigation, we can almost replicate the results of GMO seeds.

<comment><USER3> Well,

As I understand it, the most common form of GMO corn is "round-up ready". This is a variety which is immune to the common herbicide. But this immunity means that the crop invites more, not less, use of herbicide in the environment and it has naturally lead, in the US, to Round-up resistant pests.

The problem isn't genetically modifying organisms as such but rather the modification schemes involved. So far they haven't been terribly far-sighted.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate)

Edit: Note also that "hunger remains an issue" today but not through the world not producing enough food. The world produces enough food to feed everyone. The primary question is distribution, which GMO crop, of course, aren't going to solve.

<comment><USER4> Um, RoundUp is an herbicide, not a pesticide. RoundUp resistant pests are a non-sequitur.

In fact, RoundUp is supposed to be among the most benign possible herbicide, since it binds instantly to the soil and breaks down. It is a contact herbicide; you have to brush it on the weeds to kill them, which is done with a variety of wicks and boom arms on tractors to touch the weeds poking up above the corn and miss the corn.

I suspect GMO fear is all FUD and no science. Even intelligent people spout nonsense on the subject (maybe even me I suppose).

<comment><USER3> Jeesh Mr. Pedantic,

Pesty herbs, eg weeds, can you not parse in context or isn't that the point.

Round-up is _supposed_ to be one of most begin herbicides, yeah but throw enough of a supposed good thing around and you get problems.

see: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate#Resistance](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate#Resistance)

Edit: The better way to deal with weed, insects and what-do is Integrated Pest Management, IPM, where one adopts an integrated, _sustainable_ approach to the plant and animal, uh, _pests_ that hinder food production.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_pest_management](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_pest_management)

<comment><USER4> All very cute when you have 2 acres of organic potatoes to manage. Throw in 20,000 acres of variable corn seed and 150 microclimates (waterways, wood boundaries, roadsides etc). Go ahead and write that app (to manage pests manually) but until then its more efficient (profitable at all) to do a single-pass application of chemicals.

Reading that article, it has little or nothing practical to offer the farmer of over a acre or two (lets call them 'gardeners'). 'hand-picking, erecting insect barriers, using traps, vacuuming'. Try any of that over 10,000 acres. Its ludicrous.

Farm application rates for herbicides (any chemicals actually) are regulated by federal law. Also, chemicals cost money so only a fool over-applies.

The problems with chemicals getting into the water etc are because of city- dwellers who are exempt from the law; you can put any amount of chemical on your home lawn you like and flush it down the storm drain. So that's a problem, sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nassim Nicholas Taleb : _" Genetically Modified Organisms, GMOs. Top-down modifications to the system (through GMOs) are categorically and statistically different from bottom up ones (regular farming, progressive tinkering with crops, etc.) To borrow from Rupert Read, there is no comparison between the tinkering of selective breeding and the top-down engineering of taking a gene from a fish and putting it into a tomato. Saying that such a product is natural misses the statistical process by which things become "natural".

What people miss is that the modification of crops impacts everyone and exports the error from the local to the global. I do not wish to pay —or have my descendants pay — for errors by executives of Monsanto. We should exert the precautionary principle there —our non-naive version — simply because we would discover errors after considerable damage."_

Mathematical Definition & more -> [http://blog.longnow.org/02013/07/08/the- artangel-longplayer-...](http://blog.longnow.org/02013/07/08/the-artangel- longplayer-letters-nassim-taleb-writes-to-stewart-brand/)

<comment><USER6> Whenever I stumble across someone arguing about the transference of genetic material and how one method is "more natural" than the other, I can't help but walk away with the feeling that the author is working from a series of fundamental misunderstandings of genetic science.

<comment><USER7> Agreed. "Natural" doesn't mean that it's better. And, there are very few things we eat at this point that are natural anyways.

Shoes and clothing are not natural, but I don't see Mr. Taleb running around barefoot and naked.

<comment><USER8> Taleb does enjoy barefoot running.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How The New York Times Uses Software to Recognize Members of Congress - <AUTHOR> https://open.nytimes.com/how-the-new-york-times-uses-software-to-recognize-members-of-congress-29b46dd426c7 <comment><USER3> The example made me lol: "Mitch McConnell (red, almost certainly - <USER2> = 100.0)

On that note, they could utilize the box color to match the party affiliation.

<comment><USER4> No no no! Snap chat filters with a donkey or an elephant!! XD

<comment><USER5> as long as you don't use that to retrain the software...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm waiting for journalists to walk around with google glass type device to do this on the fly. Bonus it could record what they see and hear for later use.

<comment><USER7> I can't wait to live in that future, glasses that let you know if you bumped into anyone famous

<comment><USER8> I get the excitement, but this sounds like a terrifying future for famous people.

<comment><USER9> also sounds like a terrifying future for child kidnappers or fugitives or anyone on some wanted list.

whether they deserve to be on that wanted list or not

I mean right now we have cameras everywhere but they're not all HD so the govt can't run facial recognition reliably plus they need access to all the cameras. But when people voluntarily put facial recognition devices on their own selves, en masse? Wow.

Sounds like something Google or Amazon could benefit from practically giving away.

<comment> J-dawg Am I right that sex offender registers are public in the US? And they sometimes include people convicted of very minor crimes?

Yep, definitely a Black Mirror episode in the making.

<comment><USER9> you are correct

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I was hoping to read an article about NYTimes setting up video cameras outside of popular restaurants in DC and using ML to perform facial recognition on everyone to try to find members of congress and well known lobbyists. oh well... it would be like TMZ-4-DC

<comment><USER11> Why set up video cameras when people bring their own...

> Rachel Shorey found members of Congress at an event hosted by a SuperPAC by > trawling through images found on social media and finding matches.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The author says that training their own model would have been too hard due to lack of training data, but evidently Rekognition had sufficient training data to make it work? Why can't NYT use the same training set Rekognition uses? Does Amazon somehow have a secret non-public collection of celebrity photos?

<comment><USER13> It shouldn't take an intern too long to collect a representative set of Congress people and other high officials for training. Maintaining it would not be an undue burden. That would eliminate the false positive matches for all the unwanted celebs. Clearly Amazon's models aren't that great to begin with so there's little reason to stick with them.

Wrap it up into a simple native app and you can bypass the MMS BS. Even better, a sufficiently capable dev could integrate an opensource recognition library [1] to have it entirely implemented on the device.

[1] [https://github.com/rudybrian/tuFace](https://github.com/rudybrian/tuFace)

<comment><USER14> Hi! I'm Jeremy, one of the developers.

We'll probably work on something like this for the next version. One reason it's harder than you think: We would have to buy / own rights to the photographs before we could use them to train -- most of those photos are owned by Getty or the AP. And our own photographs are perfectly lit and square, which made them awful for training face recognition.

The other hangup (which I didn't get to in the article) is having to add / remove people. New members are constantly being added and that's a maintenance burden for us. Amazon usually has the new member within a day or two. (Our team is very small and we have a lot of other responsibilities!)

But good points, definitely.

<comment><USER15> "We would have to buy / own rights to the photographs before we could use them to train..."

Is this actually true?

<comment><USER16> Really doesn't matter - the legal team at the NYT thinks it might be, and lawyers exist to tell people "you'd better not".

<comment><USER17> And it's our job, as someone who knows what a computer is, to move forward with common sense if they're overreaching which, is their job.

They have every incentive to be as conservative in their advice as possible, and no incentives to "allow" risks. Doesn't increase their compensation any.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I can't wait to see how long it takes Congress to pass a law making it illegal to use facial recognition software on members of Congress.

(And no one else)

<comment><USER19> Thankfully, only high capacity assault facial recognition software is likely to be banned as a result.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> So you should be able to send a selfie to this api and it will tell you which member of congress you look most like

<comment><USER21> Except in Illinois, where sending the data off device is illegal.

(See previous HN discussion)

<comment><USER22> If you're going to state something is illegal, you need to provide a source. What previous discussion?

<comment><USER23> It was 6 days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17177663](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17177663)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It would be fun to see which members are the most requested by NYT reports.

<comment><USER14> Oh, that is interesting. Also, hi Jon!

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I have wanted for awhile to build a site which trained a machine learning system on the various data made available surrounding Congresspeople and information on members which were eventually found to be guilty of adultery or other similar crimes - then produce a score for every member of Congress rating how likely it is that they are cheating on their spouse, or taking bribes, or similar. Give them a sneak preview into the types of systems they are aiding and abetting in the creation of. I am uncertain of whether it could be considered defamation to have a brainless machine learning system decide there's an 85% chance some random member of Congress is an adulterer. I don't actually believe that any such system could ever reach any reasonable level of actual effectiveness due to the fundamental complexities of human behavior and circumstance, but that's not stopping the law enforcement side of things from moving forward so I don't see why it ought to stop the side trying to point out fundamental flaws in the strategy.

<comment><USER26> _> adultery or other similar crimes_

Adultery is not a crime.

(You can argue that it's an indicator of a person's character, or lack thereof, sure. But that's something different.)

<comment><USER27> Lying about it is an impeachable offense.

<comment><USER28> Only under oath

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is an embarrasingly bad approach to face recognition for a small set of frequently photographed people.

Several comments from the article give me concern

\- They seem to think Rekognition is a panacea for their problem, but there are many known issues with Rekognition celebrity detection. Not to mention that the cost-per-request is often highly unfavorable compared with building a higher-accuracy, situation-specific solution with extensions to pre-trained models.

\- They say some interns took a "novel approach" by creating a hard coded look-up table for disambiguating similar politician-celebrity pairs. This creates awful tech debt and failure cases. I'm not knocking it too hard because it's pragmatic, which is a good sign about those interns, but this should be seen as a necessary wart to be improved, not a point of pride.

\- As others have pointed out, even considering turnover in Congress, it seems like people who report on Congress for their full time job should recognize them. It truly seems like a silly, wasteful use of resources to solve this with computer vision.

This is all consistent with what I've heard from colleagues at NYT data science. As well as people I've known in data science bootcamps around New York, like Insight, who heard recruiting pitches.

Their department seems self-aggrandizing, using highly overwrought personalization models and seeming to have 538-envy for how they want their data science work to come off despite 538 exiting, among other important figures like Mike Bostock.

It just comes off as a place that wants to do status signalling to _seem_ like a machine learning or data science thought-leader, but they don't pay competitively or do what's needed to retain good people and would rather do patchwork stuff like this with interns than to take the work a little more seriously.

I don't get the impression it's a place serious ML practitioners would want to go.

</comment><comment><USER30> Isn't this the same technology that would allow surveillance on every private citizen?

> Most recently, Rachel Shorey found members of Congress at an event hosted by > a SuperPAC by trawling through images found on social media and finding > matches.

I bet nothing in the technology says "member of Congress" or depends on the target being member of Congress. So anybody can mine social media and collect surveillance data on people. And that is probably already happening.

</comment><comment><USER31> TL;DR: They use a API from Amazon that's already trained for Congressmen.

</comment><comment><USER32> If anything this article doesn't reflect well on Rekognition

</comment><comment><USER33> >Nope, it's too hard! Computer vision and face recognition are legitimately difficult computer science problems.

Someone is woefully ignorant how good facial-recognition surveillance is.

<comment><USER34> There's a difference between "difficult" and "can't be done". Yes, facial recognition has come a long way, but it's still non-trivial to set up a custom facial recognition service for your particular needs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> the obvious next step to this would be to build a mobile app with a built-in model to recognize everyone deemed important using live video from the camera.

</comment><comment><USER36> Cool. Maybe next they can tackle subscriptions without ads.

</comment><comment><USER37> This reminds me of Casino Royale. Wow.

</comment><comment><USER38> Hmmm ... your job is to cover the actions of 540 people elected to DC, many of whom you already recognize, and you can't remember what they look like? I'm not a journalist, but that seems like an essential thing to memorize, along with some minor metadata (locale, party, a bit of bio). Spend a weekend and do it.

Every profession has things you can look up and things you just have to memorize. 540 people isn't much - can sports journalists recognize 540 athletes? Otherwise you'll be in situations where you don't have an opportunity to look them up (e.g., can't get a photo, no time, etc.), and you'll have many false negatives: If you don't know what they look like, you won't realize it's a member of Congress at the party with the coke.

<comment><USER39> As the article states up top, there's decent churn in Congress, making this more than a one-time or annual thing. Also, it's not just members of Congress who are important to cover in a beat, but their senior staff members and aides.

Spending a significant amount of time developing a process for face memorization and undertaking it would be an example of needless/premature optimization, especially for people who may be covering Congress tangentially. Most of a Congress reporter's job does not depend on having random encounters with members of Congress.

<comment><USER38> > Most of a Congress reporter's job does not depend on having random > encounters with members of Congress.

So much for my fantasy of a reporter's life; press conferences and hearings sound boring. But I will nitpick a minor point:

> there's decent churn in Congress, making this more than a one-time or annual > thing

I don't remember the rate at which incumbents are re-elected, but it's pretty damn high. Unfortunately, after you memorize them once, you'd only have to learn a few more at a time.

<comment><USER40> The House turns over a lot. The Senate is a different story, those guys fossilize.

<comment><USER38> > The House turns over a lot. The Senate is a different story

I respectfully refer the gentleperson from Spooky to the following:

[https://www.opensecrets.org/overview/reelect.php](https://www.opensecrets.org/overview/reelect.php)

 _Few things in life are more predictable than the chances of an incumbent member of the U.S. House of Representatives winning reelection._

They don't provide a number but eyeballing the chart, I think that number starts with a "9" over several decades, and is increasing. Here's an article that says it was around 96.6% in 2014;[0] it must be embarrassing to find yourself in the bottom 3.4 percent of any group.

(It also says House members are reelected more often than Senate members.)

[0] [http://www.politifact.com/truth-o- meter/statements/2014/nov/...](http://www.politifact.com/truth-o- meter/statements/2014/nov/11/facebook-posts/congress-has-11-approval- ratings-96-incumbent-re-e/)

<comment><USER40> You're totally right, but being a rank and file congressman is kinda miserable... many transition to other offices, federal/state appointments, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> _A text-based interface is easiest for reporters to use, so while texting is slow, it's superior to a web service in the low-bandwidth environment of the Capitol._

This is disturbing to hear. How can our congress make the best decisions possible if it can't access and communicate relevant information quickly? The ROI to the United States of simply having a high-bandwidth network at this global powerspot is so obvious that I had just assumed it was the case—so to hear that reporters can't even use a web interface to quickly send images is frightening if true, and perhaps even indicative of a broader issue of our government's inability to effectively execute, partially rooted in its inability to empower itself with the tools necessary to effectively execute.

* _Edited at burkaman 's prompt to be less sensationalist_

<comment><USER42> It's the 3G connection used by the public in one of the basement floors of the capital building that has low bandwidth. The capital has its own internal network for congressmen and their staffers, they just don't let random reporters connect to it

<comment><USER14> Even worse (weirder), the Senate bans electronic devices on the floor. If a Senator wants info, they have to sprint out one of the doors to the lobby where they have an aide waiting with an iPad (usually).

<comment><USER14> The House allows iPads on the floor, and reporters are allowed to bring laptops into the gallery. It's how we get our live votes transcribed! [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/08/insider/how-we-beat- the-h...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/08/insider/how-we-beat-the-house-in- tallying-the-health-care-vote.html)

<comment><USER43> Interesting quite different to the HOC where the result of a division (vote) is read out quite soon after.

I have worked at large 500+ delegate conferences using parliamentary procedures and now they often use electronic systems for both teller and card votes which is much faster</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


MessageMe already has over 1M users, nabs $1.9M in funding - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/19/messageme-funding/

<comment><AUTHOR> Not really sure what to say about this, but congrats to these guys.

Two weeks in the App store, a monster raise, insane user base, not sure if it's any different/better than WhatsApp or others. Seems like they took a lot from Facebook's chat app, among other things. Proves you don't really have to reinvent the wheel here but crazy, rapid user growth and a nice raise to get them to the next level.

The constant high-profile funding of basic and regurgitated social apps is difficult to comprehend.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you build your startup before growing a team? - <AUTHOR>

The typical approach is two co-founders (ideally both technical). What do you do when you need more help and can't afford to hire someone?<p>The limiting factor to growing our product seems to be how much work we can get done in a day. Is this normal? To be clear, we haven't "launched" and are working on the first iteration. <comment><USER2> "ideally both technical"

Absolutely not ideal in my opinion. Someone is going to have to be selling, marketing, networking, raising money, etc from the earliest days of the business - and that isn't something that a technical founder is necessarily good at or able to do alongside the technical stuff. Looking at the alumni of the accelerator I went through, the successful companies (eg the ones that haven't folded yet) have all had at least one non-technical founder.

The fact is, this is exactly the sort of question that technical founders struggle with - you want to be coding when the problem you're facing is something that requires getting on the phone, going to events, meeting people, and finding either someone who'll put in sweat equity or someone who'll put in cash based on your vision alone.

My advice would be to cut down what you want to build to the minimum, build a demo, and take it to people who might buy based on that alone, and try to raise some angel cash at the same time if possible. But with an angel who knows your market and can put in time as that non-technical business-side person.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes, this is typical. The usual approach (besides working harder, which has limits) is to scale down your initial offering until it's something that a couple guys can do in 3-6 months. Failing that, scale down your initial idea into a prototype or demo that can be done in 3-6 months and that's impressive enough to get investors to give you money to hire a team and expand it.

This puts a sharp limit on the size of problems that can be attacked by a startup. That's just the way the world works. The trick to building a giant company is to build a small company in a market that will grow alongside the company, so that you can gain an initial toehold and then secure additional resources afterwards.

</comment><comment><USER4> _What do you do when you need more help and can 't afford to hire someone?_

You sell them on your vision and convince them to work for equity, just like you're doing.

Or...

You find a potential customer who just plain "gets it" and can see your vision even before the thing is done, and you sell it to them before it's even done, and let them help fund development.

Or you find a potential partner and convince them that it's in their best interest to help you finish developing your thing, so you can co-brand it when it's done (maybe you let them focus on a vertical or demographic that you aren't interested in).

Or you scrape together whatever $$$ you can, maybe even doing a dreaded "friends, fools & family round" and hire offshore developers to chip in.

Or you find a local university and engage with them and get some of their students involved on a "work study" basis, so that helping you becomes a project they get course credit for.

Apply for grants that might be available to you. Call the "economic development" office of your local city / state / county / parish / whatever, and see if they can do anything for you. Those guys have a goal of attracting businesses and creating jobs, and sometimes have access to grants and what- not. At worst, they may be able to make some beneficial connections for you.

If it's applicable, look into a Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign for your thing.

If you need salespeople, advertise on Craiglist and recruit part-time salespeople who will work for just commissions. Yes, there are actually people out there who _want_ that sort of arrangement.

Be creative, use every arrow in your quiver.</comment>


1Password – Standalone licenses vs. new subscription service - <AUTHOR> https://discussions.agilebits.com/discussion/67588/standalone-licenses-vs-new-subscription-service <comment><USER2> Full disclosure, I work for AgileBits, the folks that make 1Password.

I hear and appreciate your collective concerns that we are getting rid of the standalone license option. However, I'd like to assure you that not only are there no plans to get rid of it, we are continuing to develop the standalone version. We know that we have a critical mass of customers who appreciate the ability to store their password data outside of the cloud. And given that we are entirely customer funded, those are customers that we cannot and are not ignoring.

Our subscriptions options remain new and we are still figuring a lot of things out. One of the ongoing issues has been customer confusion between licenses and account. That is why we have made it a bit harder to locate information about licenses on our site. Nothing insidious, just an attempt to make it easier for the majority of our customers to locate what they are looking for without confusing them.

If anyone has any additional questions or concerns, I would encourage you to contact us directly at email@example.com.

Best, Eva

<comment><USER3> Hey, I'm a happy 1pass customer, but give me fucking break.

Maybe 1 visitor in 100, visiting your website, would even realize that there's a fixed-price option still available. It's buried way at the bottom of the pricing page, hidden inside the FAQ.

The link itself just leads to a purchase page, with absolutely no attempt to explain or lay out the differences between the subscription and fixed price option.

To claim this about "preventing customer confusion" seems to me pretty absurd. Be more honest, please.

<comment><USER4> I think the explanation is reasonable even if you disagree with it, and the world isn't a polarity between "company behaviors I agree with" and "shady, insidious, underhanded behavior by a company that deserves basically openly harassing someone who volunteered to talk about it and questioning their integrity and honesty in a comment." People are too quick to accuse someone of dishonesty these days and I don't think most realize how serious of a charge that actually is. If you said something like that to me in person we'd have a serious problem because at the end if the day, integrity is all anybody really has.

Anyway, completely happy subscription user here and it's actually the reason I went back to 1Password. I used to do the standalone Dropbox thing too and the subscription is just night and day better, and given the value I extract from this product I'm not going to freak out over half a coffee a month nor accuse AgileBits, a company I've tremendously respected for many years with their attention to support and customer experience, with suddenly being the axis of evil as you've done here.

I'll drive this point home: I actually got the standalone licenses cheaper through work way back when and _still_ happily entered into paying for a subscription from my own funds.

I think the people extremely upset about this, including you, are the ones being disingenuous and forgetting how reasonable AgileBits is in everything else they do. I'm not even a fan, it's just been apparent to me for a long time.

Again, this is $36 per year. How much value do you extract from the stuff you store in 1Password? Is it really that unreasonable for a company to move toward more recurring revenue? It's a really weird opinion here, of all places, the "let's build a hypergrowth SaaS" home of the Web.

<comment><USER3> I'm not accusing them of being evil, or even commenting on the change to a subscription model -- I'm just calling out what to me looks like transparent dishonesty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wasn't aware of this change, so I read the entire linked support thread. Although the company responders did some nice verbal gymnastics, I think it is pretty obvious that this is just mainly just a money grab on behalf of AgileBits.

Additionally, several comments implied that AgileBits was hiding the option to buy a standalone license, so I looked at their pricing page[1]. I have to say I agree; it is not listed as an option alongside the two subscription options. In fact, you have to scroll all the way down, to the end of the FAQ, to even find a mention of it.

[1][https://1password.com/sign-up/](https://1password.com/sign-up/)

I'll concede that a subscription option might be better for some users, especially those using it on multiple devices, but I think AgileBits should not be hiding the regular license option.

<comment><USER6> As a multi device user, it's definitely better for me. I have 2x windows desktop, a Mac laptop, an iPhone and an android tablet. With the current non- subscriptioin pricing model, it will cost me 65 dollars for the two desktop apps, plus another 20 dollars for the android + ios apps - that's a fairly hefty upfront fee. 3 dollars a month (after 6 months) is far more appealing really.

As an aside, it's extremely difficult to find out how much the android pro feature currently costs, I ended up finding it in the comments sectino of one of their posts rather than the google play store or on their website.

<comment><USER7> But the idea behind a password manager is that you effectively use it in perpetuity. I bought 1Password in 2013 for $50, and the iPhone app for $9. I use it several times a day, and don't see that changing at any point in the near future. At $3/month, I would have be approaching twice what I actually paid, with no prospect for being done with that payment. I get why AgileBits is going to a subscription model; I'm sure they would prefer that I had paid them $96 by now, rather than $59, and that I would go on to pay them another $36 per year every year forever. But the idea that you, as a consumer, are looking at this and seeing an appealing deal suggests you haven't really thought it through very well.

<comment><USER8> Out of curiosity, when new versions of iOS and macOS get released over the next several years, are you willing to pay for the upgrades the developers will have to inevitably release in order to maintain compatibility with the OS?

Or do you expect your initial $59 purchase in 2013 to truly last in perpetuity?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have been a paying customer since 2010 or so. We have done a trial of 1Password Family, but I just don't see the advantage for customers. You just get locked into someone's data silo and you cannot purchase upgrades anymore at your own leisure. I agree with those who say that it primarily benefits AgileBits.

Sadly, my experience with other products that switched to a subscription model has been that at some point all kinds strategies ('incentives') are applied to get people to move to subscription licensing. So, I am carefully watching the situation as it unfolds.

</comment><comment><USER10> I know this question comes up time and time again, but as it seems a good fit here: What are the best password managers out there that do _not_ force you to use their "cloud" for syncing between devices and are available on all major platforms?

I am a very happy 1Password user up to now because of it's local wifi sync feature, but I think with this announcement the writing is on the wall: The standalone sync will go away sometime down the road to "improve" everyone's user experience by moving them to the cloud sync and the accompanying subscription revenue. So it might be a good time to explore (open source?) alternatives...

<comment><USER11> I'm a former 1Password user and switched to KeePass ports.

On the desktop I use KeeWeb [1], which works great on both Linux and OS X, and I assume on Windows as well, on Android I use Keepass2Android [2], which is actually better than 1Password on Android btw, and on iOS I use MiniKeePass [3]. This last one is a little weak, but it works. All 3 are open source btw.

And seriously, it works better than I expected for $0.

What made me switch is their move to a subscription model. They pretend that the old licensing model will still be around, but if you pay attention, that's not true. The first thing they did for example is to get rid of the Mac-only license, in order to make subscriptions seem more competitive. And they also stopped developing standalone features. I'm a Linux user as well, I would have liked a Linux port. And the only sync option is Dropbox, but Google Drive or other options would have been nice.

On cloud syncing, I do syncing by means of Dropbox, but my Dropbox directory isn't a big target for hackers and at the very least I know how KeePass and GPG work, what ends up in my Dropbox being just an encrypted file. I don't know how LastPass and 1Password work, even though they claim the encryption is only client side, and frankly I don't care anymore.

[1] [https://keeweb.info/](https://keeweb.info/)

[2] [http://keepass2android.codeplex.com/](http://keepass2android.codeplex.com/)

[3] [https://minikeepass.github.io/](https://minikeepass.github.io/)

<comment><USER12> KeePass comes with built-in security flaws, so that's the main plus over 1Password! [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9727297](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9727297)

<comment><USER13> KeePass is not the same as KeepassX, or KeepassDroid, or any of the other clients.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Their pricing fell a bit decisive as well:

$2.99

and a bit smaller: "per month billed annually"

I know breaking it down to the month is popular, but it makes 0 sense for me if the only way I can pay is anually and there is no way to pay monthly (even for a premium).

Sorry, but I'm now over to Dashlane (clear $39.99/year)

<comment><USER15> Thanks for recommending this. We currently use 1password for our business but and while the Mac client is ok the teams website leaves a lot to be desired and no Linux client at this point is embarrassing. It's expensive too! You get the feeling that agile bits is ok at developing Mac and Windows software but basically has no idea about developing software for the web.

<comment><USER16> Try [http://genpass.supergenpass.com](http://genpass.supergenpass.com) ! :)

<comment><USER16> Woops! I actually meant to post super gen pass but at least the website I referenced points directly to super gen pass so it wouldn't be too hard to figure out I would hope!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've hit subscription model overload at this point. I've long-since stopped using most of the software and services in my life which are subscription based. I'm likely to just go back to an encrypted text file, and cutting & pasting passwords.

You are not netflix, and I am not your personal ATM.

<comment><USER18> Seriously. I get that's it's good for business - but it's like mobile apps. I only have the capacity for a few, and all others are past saturation point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I am a long time 1Password customer and have recommended the software to family and friends. This new subscription model was confusing when it launched and I am now more uncomfortable with the company's explanations and backtracking.

There are other options for password management out there. If Agilebits are not super transparent about everything, users will leave for the competition. I am much less comfortable with Agilebits than I was pre-subscription model.

The standalone version should be promoted equally on the website, not as a small link in the FAQ.

I stopped buying Adobe products when they went to subscription as well.

</comment><comment><USER20> Have they actually removed the standalone option?

I'm perfectly happy with it (using iCloud sync) and will continue to be a happy 1Password user unless/until they force me to subscribe.

<comment><USER5> It's a bit hidden but you can still license a standalone version.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've been waiting for a way to access my 1Password data on the web, e.g. from a Linux machine (no 1Password Linux client exists) so I'll gladly pay the subscription fee now that this exists.

Also the quality of the software (in terms of user experience)---both on the desktop and on iOS---is fantastic. Also the ability to contact a human for support is excellent. In general I like to support high quality software using $.

I am however nervous about the idea of storing all my passwords on someone else's server. If there ever were a security breach, imagine the consequence.

Instead of "change your password, we've been hacked" it would be "change ALL 100 of your passwords, we've been hacked". Ugh.

<comment><USER22> _> I am however nervous about the idea of storing all my passwords on someone else's server. If there ever were a security breach, imagine the consequence._

This doesn't necessarily follow, depending on the security model of the software you're using. If encryption/decryption is handled on the client, then a breach yields encrypted data rather than anything of use. (You can then attack the encryption on that data, sure, but that's a tall order to do wholesale.)

Also, 1pass is (was? I haven't used it for a few years) handy for command-line access and it runs on Linux.

[https://github.com/georgebrock/1pass](https://github.com/georgebrock/1pass)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've been watching this carefully, because the subscription model has zero benefits for me and both Chrome and Safari have started to implement basic password management solutions that already do cloud syncing. They're weak and obscure, but usable, and 1Password's benefit is that it's smarter and prettier.

However, I'm not keen on cloud sync that I don't control or that I can't audit somehow. So no AgileBits for me in the new model, ever, and if they drop the Dropbox sync option, I'll move everything to KeePass.

Shame, though, the UX and integration with other apps in iOS is pretty nifty.

But to be honest, I suspect AgileBits' market share to shrink significantly over time as browser and OS-based password managers become better.

</comment><comment><USER24> I wonder if they would have met this resistance if they had started as SaaS from day one. I mean, I get the benefit to them of recurring revenue, but from a customer standpoint this is right up there with Adobe trying to force everyone to creative cloud (albeit handled much better imho). People viewed it as something you pay once for, and not something that warrants paying in perpetuity. Customers fully realize that increasing LTV for AgileBits means a massive price hike for them over multiple years if you do the May on percentage increase.

<comment><USER25> > I wonder if they would have met this resistance if they had started as SaaS > from day one.

Day one for Agile Bits was in 2006, and a SaaS model just wouldn't have worked at that time. People would've just laughed at "renting software for a personal computer" (Mac OS X).

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The idea of using a cloud-based password manager has always sounded rather bizarre to me. For low priority sites I just use the PasswordMaker browser extension, and the KeePass app for the important ones.

<comment><USER27> The data format of 1password is open. There open source packages out there that can read and manipulate the vault which confirms this specification is true.

The format has attracted quit a bit of scrutiny, and no-one has found a weakness. If the underlying crypto'd be broken your passwords are probably useless anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Does AgileBits being a Canadian company mean that the NSA and/or the FBI has full legal authority to intercept communications with the service without regard to the locality of the servers? Presumably they would be limited in what could be done on scale based upon the use of encryption for transport and of the vault itself, but does this change the threat profile vs Dropbox sync with respect to legal process?

</comment><comment><USER29> $600 for 10 years is a bit much for a password manager. I think may switch to readysignon ([https://www.readysignon.com/](https://www.readysignon.com/)) which is compatible with keepass.

<comment><USER30> How do you get $600?

$3/month is $36/year. At 10 years, that's $360.

Where do you get another $240 for the standalone product?

<comment><USER31> Multi-user option, at $5 a month.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Is this why texting people passwords from one password does not work anymore? This shits whack, that was the one reason why I tried to get other people to use app, we could share passwords.

Over this app, looking for something else.

<comment><USER33> I recently switched to Enpass[1] and am reasonably happy with it: it might be an alternative for you to consider as well.

It's very much a 1Password ripoff, which I mean as a compliment: the UI will be familiar to you. It's not nearly as polished as 1Password, but there don't seem to be many native password managers that are. Their desktop clients are free, and their mobile clients are flat licenses (actually free downloads with limited functionality as a demo, and in-app purchase to unlock, but whatever).

Sync options are actually a bit better than 1Password I think: the usual suspects like Dropbox are there, but you can also sync over your own webdav server if you want to.

I switched because I wanted something that had a decent Linux client. If 1Password is going the way of subscription pricing, it seems like I made my switch none too soon.

[1]: [https://www.enpass.io/](https://www.enpass.io/)

<comment><USER32> Thanks dude I'll look it over. Wonder if there's any migration tool....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> oh well.. there's so many apps that do this nowadays, i got used to it by now. As soon as the 'non-subscription-model' of the app is no longer actively developed i just dump it and switch to another app. There are plenty alternatives anyway.

</comment><comment><USER25> In the recent past it definitely has seemed like AgileBits is struggling for revenue or looking at new and steady streams of revenue, which is where the subscriptions fit in.

Although AgileBits has had responsive customer service (not always necessarily the same as useful or good customer service), it has made at least one prominent mistake that it had to backtrack out of after a long time. One was putting 1Password on the Mac App Store (MAS) and saying it would be "MAS only" (like Pixelmator) and refusing to provide a separate AgileBits store option, with the justification that MAS simplifies things (it probably did remove some overheads) and that it didn't want to maintain its own store, payment processing, etc. What was hypocritical of AgileBits was that it still had to maintain its store, payment processing, etc., for its Windows version of 1Password. Many customers complained, and complained quite a lot, on their forums, but AgileBits' attitude and response were very poor and seemed downright obstinate. After a long time, AgileBits realized that MAS wasn't that great (not sure of the reasons) and brought 1Password (Mac) to its store while retaining MAS as an option.

The current push of a subscription model, while stating that standalone licenses continue to remain (although obscured on the site "to avoid confusion"), seems to be a repeat of history. The outcome is unknown at this point in time. Maybe a lot of people will find the subscription easier to use and force AgileBits to shutdown the standalone licensing model. Most people who belong to the consumer segment (those who do not make money with the software they use, like in the case of Adobe products) do not prefer subscriptions and like the flexibility of "owning software" (license) and having the freedom to choose when they would upgrade and at what price (in many cases waiting for some special discount sale).

Hopefully, AgileBits will remove the obscurity of the standalone licenses and provide it prominently, because the current scheme just doesn't fit with what AgileBits as a company always aims to be. It's too cheap of AgileBits to do something like this. Also hopefully, the subscription models will continue to be optional (with standalone licenses available at reasonable prices) and perhaps segmented differently (with lower price points?) to attract customers for specific features that are of value to them.

It would also be better for AgileBits to get into making other kinds of software applications instead of trying to squeeze more and more out of password management and shared password systems.

I'm an occasional 1Password user on Windows, but I switched most of my passwords to the built-in browser based password management (since I mostly use only one or two browsers). For some other purposes, I use KeePass and KeeWeb (though 1Password's browser extensions, where they work, are quite convenient). I personally don't see a lot of value in getting 1Password anymore, and as for a subscription, that would be inappropriately wasteful.

</comment><comment><USER35> Why pay for a password manager when keepass is free, more secure, and offers better features than all of the alternatives?

[http://keepass.info](http://keepass.info)

<comment><USER12> Because free software that doesn't offer the feature set and platforms out of the box actually costs me a lot of money in convenience and features that I use? YMMV.</comment></comment>


Assembly is too high level - <AUTHOR> http://xlogicx.net/?cat=6 <comment><AUTHOR> Really enjoyed this series of articles showing hacks to micro optimize in a few architectures</comment>


Google Rewrites Its Powerful Search Rankings to Bury Fake News - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-25/google-rewrites-its-powerful-search-rankings-to-bury-fake-news <comment><USER2> One man's unpopular idea is another man's fake news. I'm not sure I want google making such editorial decisions.

Also:

> We noticed that you're using an ad blocker, which may adversely affect the > performance and content on Bloomberg.com

That is VERY fake news right there.

<comment><USER3> Trump has conflated biased news with fake news. Google is running off the 2016 definition of fake news - remember what it meant way back half a year ago?

It means headlines like "Shocking - senate hearing erupts into fistfight" or "Trump won the popular vote by 1.5 million"

Fake - written by Moldovans for Facebook revenue. Not simply biased.

<comment><USER4> What you're calling "fake news" has been called "spam" for a long time. If they're talking about spam, why do they need to color it under some new action instead of just saying "We're detecting more spam"?

It's because they know that "spam" is not a credible way to censor the voices that they want to censor.

"Fake news" emanated from John Oliver. It was the excuse the establishment offered for the mainstream media's horrendous and transparently detached coverage of the election cycle, assuring the public that a Clinton victory was a near-certainty, engaging in fear mongering by indicating that a Trump victory would be a dystopian nightmare, etc.

Oliver said to his followers, on behalf of the whole broadcast establishment (CNN and HBO are both owned by Time Warner), "It's not us, it's them." It is, after all, probably the only logical thing to say.

In predictable but hilarious fashion, the "fake news" mantra almost immediately backfired on the establishment, as the same masses that elected Trump instantly (and appropriately) applied the label to reporting from the MSM, which had just been _proven_ vibrantly "fake" by the election outcome that they refused to acknowledge as a possibility.

Approximately half of the American public is stubbornly conservative. It greatly irritates the broadcast media that it's no longer simple to control the narrative; their propaganda is now challenged and rejected by online voices. This makes the establishment very unhappy, so they've attempted to label all such challenges as "fake news".

<comment><USER5> > fear mongering by indicating that a Trump victory would be a dystopian > nightmare, etc.

I do, on occasion, feel like I'm living in a dystopian nightmare. I'm certainly wondering about the ethics of having children, knowing that they'd live to see dramatic climate change and all the horrors of it.

Colbert's "truthiness" was eerily prescient, meant in satire, yet followed by Conway's "alternative facts" without irony.

<comment><USER4> >Colbert's "truthiness" was eerily prescient, meant in satire, yet followed by Conway's "alternative facts" without irony.

"Alternative facts" is an irrelevant quibble over wording. Everyone understood the intention. It's exactly these quibbles over technicalities that everyone thought would end Trump's campaign, but it doesn't work; if anything, it generates more sympathy for the speaker.

Conway was not saying there is no such thing as objective reality (a belief called "relativism", which is much more repugnant to the conservative side of the aisle than the liberal one). Rather, she meant "we have different sources". Come now, that's not really such a crazy thing to express, is it?

The MSM heartily strains at these gnats to try to promote their agenda (not surprisingly, it seems Democratic politicians rarely make such snafus). They are apparently unconscious that all they're doing is spreading the message that these strategic gaffers want spread.

<comment><USER5> > different sources

That's not how I understood it. I find the alternative facts and related screed to be more similar to wearing your team's colors than expressing an opinion.

Some years ago, back when Bush was in office, I tried to argue/discuss politics with someone who held quite different beliefs than mine. We went back and forth for a while as I tried to find some common ground. At one point, I realized he had asserted something that was false, according to several sources. I showed him the relevant Wikipedia article. He laughed and replied, "You got me, I lied." I suddenly realized he had no intention of finding anything to agree on, but simply wanted to "win."

<comment><USER4> Sorry to be daft, but I'm not really sure what you're getting at. Yes, one can choose to interpret the statements of politicians either charitably or uncharitably. Yes, some people are interested only in tribalism.

How is this related to demanding Conway's statement be interpreted as a credo of relativism instead of a) an unfortunate turn of phrase with accidentally- negative connotations; or b) a gaffe intentionally planted with the expectation that the media would seize upon it and spend 3 days nitpicking a technicality, unaware that they're only broadcasting the intended message to the open-minded listeners in the public, who will disregard the media's hostile spin?

Liberal use of (b) is exactly how and why Trump won. He beat the media at their game by allowing them to think that foaming at the mouth over technicalities of his ambiguous wording was doing him damage, when it was actually helping.

<comment><USER5> I think there are more ways to interpret Conway and Trump than those you've suggested. It's not relativism per se, but the belief that for some topics, being correct is less important than demonstrating loyalty.

Further, it's possible that Trump and team just say whatever comes to mind without planning. Sometimes life is just dumb luck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm curious what liberal bias looks like in algorithm form?

> Google is also setting new rules encouraging its "raters" -- the 10,000-plus > staff that assess search results -- to flag web pages that host hoaxes, > conspiracy theories and what the company calls "low-quality" content.

Oh that's how, it's going to be trained by people...

Considering how often I've seen Snopes get stories wrong, or are subtlety misleading (such as marking something as false because an insignificant part of a statement is incorrect, by that I mean if it was deleted from the statement the overall meaning wouldn't change, but the general statement as a whole was still actually true).

This is really concerning. I get marking hoaxes and to a lesser extent conspiracy theories. But "low-quality content" and "fake news" in general is not just difficult to identify but open to abuse. And there will likely be no appeal process. It will happen transparently and silently.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think there's an interesting question here that I haven't really seen discussed: Is it the responsibility of Google/Facebook to filter out "fake news"?

Obviously both of them already do some content filtering for illegal content etc. but where do we draw the line? Personally I think it's unfair to be blaming them, considering they never claimed to filter this type of content. Also, if it is decided that they should be responsible, how do you determine what is and isn't fake? Seems like a dangerous thing to be in charge of.

edit: since it took me so long to finish typing this, everyone is now asking similar questions. whatever

<comment><USER8> > Is it the responsibility of Google/Facebook to filter out "fake news"?

Their employees certainly think it is.

The reason Google/Facebook/Twitter/Reddit/etc. are so obsessed with fake news at the moment is because their employees believe that their product, which was supposed to "change the world for the better!" inadvertently helped Trump be elected. I'm sure more than a few Valley employees have had nervous breakdowns over this.

Now, banning Trump from Facebook or Twitter would be a little bit too obvious, so they're doing the next best thing: making sure, under the guise of "keeping you safe from fake news", that Trump or Trump 2.0 can't leverage their offerings to help his cause.

<comment><USER9> I find it more likely that their advertising partners don't want the brands and companies they represent to be associated with fake, possibly libellous and politically inflammatory content.

<comment><USER8> Yeah they _just_ figured out that this kind of stuff exists on the Internet...

<comment><USER9> It _just_ started reaching the mainstream and causing serious controversies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> At this moment, is there a general consensus or definition as to what is a "fake news" and how and who decides upon it?

<comment><USER8> General consensus? No, but it seems that nearly everything emanating from a conservative-leaning source is labeled as such. _Purely a coincidence_, I'm sure.

Who decides it? Well right now traditional media sources are leading the charge, and our benevolent Silicon Valley overlords are working feverishly to help out. Media and tech companies are both filled with people of a left- leaning persuasion. Again, pure coincidence I'm sure, and we all know these people are above injecting their own personal biases into protecting us from fake news, so we're in good hands.

<comment><USER11> Stuff that's from conservative-leaning sources can be accepted just fine, so long as it's anti-Trump. So for example really dubious claims from Louise Mensch, a conservative who thinks Russia is involved in literally _everything_ , are fairly widely accepted. Likewise, people were quite happy to take Glenn Beck at his word as soon as he came out against Trump. It's bizarre.

<comment><USER8> > Likewise, people were quite happy to take Glenn Beck at his word as soon as > he came out against Trump.

What's even funnier is to see people on r/politics say "you know I always thought Beck was an OK guy, just a little misunderstood" after he went nuts about Trump.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Gee I wonder if the 10'000 "raters" will have a bias. I have no problem with such an idea in concept, but I know the process and what is being driven down will be opaque as possible.

I wish they would change their search engine to how it worked years ago instead. The search results now are so packed with nonsense that I had to stop using them.

</comment><comment><USER13> Are there any alternative search engines? I would rather decide what's fake.

<comment><USER14> I've been using DuckDuckGo [1] as my default search engine for a couple years.

By adding a !g to your duckduckgo, you can then search Google easily if you're not finding desired results.

[1] [https://duckduckgo.com](https://duckduckgo.com)

Edit: added actual url to DuckDuckGo

<comment><USER4> Is there any way for DDG to confirm that it's not engaging in the same type of censorship?

IMO this is really the time for a Ethereum-esque solution to shine. These algos should be adaptable, confirmable, pluggable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Google is playing a dangerous game. What else is there "powerful search ranking" burying? If I decide to compete with Google tomorrow, would they bury every site that mentions my business?

<comment><USER4> Yes. You wouldn't get far. Falling out of Google's favor is a disaster for any company that relies on "organic" search traffic. Many have died from this.

I don't think many people really appreciate the extent of influence Google has over individual behavior. Local businesses die when they get pushed out of the "local box". Platform vendors have a _huge_ amount of control over the ecosystem.

We need to update our legal structures to make the internet available for open competition instead of locking it up in Google/FB server farms. Of course, there's no reason to do so as long as Google is playing ball with the elites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Who decides what is and isn't fake news? Surely an enormous corporation whose leaders are active in only one political party will be a fair and impartial judge.

<comment><USER17> With respect: after literal decades of the right wing using its stranglehold on talk radio to inculcate some awfully racist, awfully homophobic, and downright untrue things into members of my family (who I love very dearly despite it), I'm pretty okay with the shoe being on the other foot with regards to _literal fictionmongers_ like Alex Jones on the Internet.

I'm sure, if The Market cares that much (and the right wing loves The Market), then there will be a thriving Conservoogle that will rise to provide unskewed results a-plenty where InfoWars and friends can cavort at the top of the SERPs.

<comment><USER18> _I 'm pretty okay with the shoe being on the other foot with regards to literal fictionmongers like Alex Jones on the Internet._

The problem isn't that Infowars won't be ranked highly for news queries, the problem is exactly what GP said and what you glossed over: SV/academia people, who are overwhelmingly left-leaning (by location if nothing else), are not impartial arbiters of factuality.

And it's not like anyone is, but _only the SV /academia types are getting input here_.

That is a problem.

There is no way, none, that this won't be used against factual news with a conservative bent. I'd wager my entire net worth on it.

Eropple, please stop deleting your comments. You've done it twice now, and it makes having a conversation very difficult. Many of us are using a notification service and so your words remain in email inboxes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Will they let fake news providers buy ads still?

<comment><USER20> Indeed. Buying ads would be an act of redemption, and will bring Legitimacy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Really skeptical about the false positives/negatives. The ML they are using around "rich snippets" is pretty lousy. I can find lots of bad autogenerated answers in just a few minutes.

Or would this use some approach radically different, and more accurate[1], from what's driving rich snippets?

[1] well, as much as you can be accurate for subjective measures

</comment><comment><USER10> Sometimes, to build immunity, you need to be exposed to the raw, unfinished stuff.

If you manicure everything you will lose the ability to build critical thinking and discern among various opinions.

From this angle, the "curation of fake news" looks very paternalistic, if not even a sign of patriarchy. :)

</comment><comment><USER22> In light of this new politico article: The media bubble is real. [http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/04/25/media- bubb...](http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/04/25/media-bubble-real- journalism-jobs-east-coast-215048)

I think this is a bad idea. Fake news is already a loaded term combined with the media bubble it will just make things exponentially worse.

We need to deal with the media bubble bias first, to restore faith in real news.

</comment><comment><USER23> Aren't Ads the ultimate Fake News? Is Google the "Ad Company" also now only allowing modest and critical endorsements instead of Ads?

</comment><comment><USER24> If the plan is to remove misleading results, most of the advertisements need to be removed as well.

</comment><comment><USER25> I wonder what else it will be burying, going by its recent fiasco of demonetizing legitimate YouTube channels that weren't "brand-friendly" (quite different than "extremist").

<comment><USER26> I don't think that view is popular here, even if it is supported [1]. You should only read and watch videos approved by the intersection of the DNC and Bernie.

1 - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RslP2HGBqWI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RslP2HGBqWI)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Sounds good to me.

The use of the adjective _powerful_ stood out to me. If Microsoft does the same thing with Bing, would a different adjective be chosen? Would it even be news?

<comment><USER28> Yeah, it's a sloppy way of saying "market-dominating", ultimately an unnecessary puff-piece worthy adjective.

<comment><USER27> I thought it was unnecessary as well. I assume Bloomberg knows their audience and if that's not something their readers know I guess it makes sense to include it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> They should just rebrand it as the ministry of truth already.

</comment><comment><USER30> Google… I don't understand the praise of it's search engine.

For example, when I search for my App name, pirate sites come first, and when I search for functionality keywords, 2011 blog posts from Apps that have been disappeared off the map appear first.

When I was writing my thesis, Google Scholar offered no help. Engineering Village did everything.

Google emphasises too much on blogs and other ephemeral content, which as we all know, is often written in a careless manner, rarely maintained, and even just completely made-up. Google doesn't understand that, and I don't think it's accidental.

<comment><USER31> Sounds like your seo game needs some work.

<comment><USER30> 1\. It's not a game.

2\. No it doesn't, I did everything.

3\. It appears first result on the AppStore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This whole "fake news" problem feels like a giant ruse. Their candidate (Hillary) lost, thanks in a large part to the democratization of media on the internet and right leaning online media outlets, and now they're trying to bury those same sources from being on the front page. The thousands of liberal / globalist engineers and business people feel so guilty that they helped get Donald Trump elected president that now they're actively censoring websites. All under the guise of "fake news". Sure there are some blatantly fake news articles, but it's nothing I don't see on the magazine rack at the super market and laugh off. This is much more than that, this is active censorship from the left wing globalist who control Google.

<comment><USER33> Hi - can you define what a 'globalist' engineer is please? How would I tell if I was one?</comment></comment>


Are aliens hiding in plain sight? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/sep/05/are-aliens-hiding-in-plain-sight <comment><USER2> If the universe is infinite, then everything within the realm of physics exists, so we should expect that there is life all around us (even on Earth) that we are unable to recognize because of biological limitations in our senses.

Maybe as we begin to augment our senses we'll start to discover all kinds of weird things floating around.

</comment><comment><USER3> They are so, SO, freakin' lost.

Just look closer in the tunnels / craters below the surface for god sake.</comment>


Ask HN: How can we improve the U.S. recycling industry? - alex-wallish <comment><AUTHOR> I think one factor which has to be dealt with is that supply and demand for commodities is always changing.

Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s my dad and I would ride our bikes all over Manchester NH and pick up Aluminum cans and make nearly $100 every weekend. Pretty soon we made enough money to buy a fancy new Aluminum bicycle!

At that point the demand for Aluminum was high and it was worth picking up the cans even without a bottle deposit.

At the moment Chinese reprocessors don't want recyclables from the U.S. but now that there is a glut on the market, people here will look for ways to use them and fewer recyclables will come on the market until things come into balance again.

It's not a bad thing or a good thing that commodity prices are this way, but it is just a reality you have to face.

</comment><comment><USER2> Maybe put a plastic tax on producers.

I don't think the problem at a psychological level is getting people to recycle correctly (although we should get as many people to recycle). People/businesses will generally do what's easiest/cheapest to do. The problem is making biodegradable containers more attractive than the ones that are not. Currently, I believe, this is impossible since we don't really have the capabilities to manufacture anything like it(formable, heat resistant, durable, flexible, transparent, cheap). There are people experimenting, but we're pretty far away from a solution.

I really think that the only solution that will work at a psychological level is to get companies to pay fully for their environmental impact. Unfortunately, This can't happen unless all companies around the world play by these rules, and even then we're talking about corporations that twist to avoid taxes.

Having said that, why can't we just ban plastics/non-biodegradable materials like its cancer? We survived millennia without it? I'm sure we can figure something out.

</comment><comment><USER3> We can think about making existing products reusable or creating new products from previous materials.

There are a few furniture manufacturers who are taking plastic from the ocean and recreating them into high-end designer furniture.

When creating new products, the functionalities need to closely replicate what plastic has been able to do. There's not enough net benefit to convince people to switch to alternatives at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER4> We need to start thinking about how to make products reusable, not just recyclable. Encourage glass bottles that last longer, and are easier to clean to refill.

Another way to tackle this problem is to stop generating so much waste. Discourage people from buying one-use items that can be replaced with reusable alternatives. I get that plastic water bottles are convenient and quick, but we generate so much waste (albeit recyclable) just through water bottles alone.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think we should look to industrial engineering and package design.

I was in trader joes and was looking at bags in produce section. They are made from corn and start to biodegrade in 180 days.

</comment><comment><USER6> We probably have to switch away from single-stream recycling. It increases the cost of sorting and the amount of contaminated material.

</comment><comment><USER7> Shift demand with mandatory recycled content mandates, inclusive of imports.

Shift supply with vendor lifecycle recovery requirements.</comment>


Antonopoulos on the Bitcoin forking debate - <AUTHOR> https://disruptive.asia/bitcoin-forking-debate/ <comment><AUTHOR> Andreas Antonopoulos was talking in Singapore last night. Vitalik Buterin was in the audience. Here's my initial writeup of what transpired.</comment>


You don't need push notifications - <AUTHOR> http://jmduke.com/posts/push_notifications/ <comment><USER2> As a user you probably don't need more push notifications in your life. As a developer, my app benefits from higher user interaction if I have push notifications.

In my opinion, the onus is on the user to be responsible with their time, guarding their attention from competing interests. But we as developers can probably help out as well. One way might be giving people easy ways to opt out of notifications (or opt out by default).</comment>


Lessons learned from open source communities - <AUTHOR> https://email@example.com/lessons-i-ve-learned-32f5d8107e34#.1j69w4al1 <comment><USER2> As a troll, I must say "Troll Hugging" is indeed very real--if someone does that to you, be sure to reassert the trolling statements until they respond to them, even if negatively.</comment>


Using deep learning to detect malaria in images - <AUTHOR> https://blog.insightdatascience.com/https-blog-insightdatascience-com-malaria-hero-a47d3d5fc4bb <comment><USER2> This is really important. I caught Malaria in Ghana, but the symptoms did not develop until I was in the UK. The hospital wanted to identify the type of Malaria I had before treating me, which I think was a mistake. In Ghana they take a blood sample and then immediately start treatment. The treatment can always be altered if the strand is different from the best course of action.

But the issue was they had a hard time identifying the type because I did not have one type of Malaria but two. In a hospital in the temperate world they do not have the cases to gather the skills to be able to quickly identify the strand.

</comment><comment><USER3> Shameless but relevant plug.

I co-founded a startup with Mark Plaskow earlier this year to help make hematological analysis including detection of parasites more accurate and affordable. Mark has been doing image based detection of parasites for years and is published here: [https://malariajournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/14...](https://malariajournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1475-2875-11-155)

There are various issues with capturing images of this quality level in the field. It's something we have made a lot of progress on.

We hope our devices can have an outsized impact in these regions.

If anyone reading is interested in our work we have a teaser page live at [http://www.paean.io](http://www.paean.io) and can be reached by email using email@example.com

<comment><USER4> Thanks for posting, I've been looking into this space. Have you looked at the College of American Pathologists Blood Parasites survey? The organisms one may encounter in the peripheral smear of a patient with fevers in the tropics is not limited to malaria (filariasis, babesiosis, etc). How are you dealing with those?

<comment><USER3> We believe that our solution can automate the work Doctors do with microscopes.

This isn't limited to one parasite.

We can provide a demo today of our robotics that can automate these tests.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is the kind of thing I'm expecting to see more of coming from the ML field. Orgs fighting malaria should take these efforts into consideration, back them, develop ever more robust tools. Which might already be happening, I don't know.

</comment><comment><USER6> > I found a great dataset that consists of 27,558 single cell images with an > equal number of infected and uninfected cells.

This seems to be the key of the article. I wonder how the author would have proceeded without this data-set and if they would have been able to build anything useful at all without it.

</comment><comment><USER7> Great work, you might consider not just feedback from experts, but also from the patients themselves, perhaps if they have their own cell phone they can report feeling sick, or testify they did not get sick etc...</comment>


Now you can give out your phone number without giving up your privacy. - <AUTHOR> https://www.numberproxy.com/

<comment><USER2> I can't find any information about it, so I ask here: Will this work world- wide, or just for specific areas? Or will it just cost more having a call routed to an other country?

And what kind of numbers will I get? Getting a US number will probably mean zero calls for me, as I'm not in the US and people will probably not call a foreign number.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right now we only have support for US and Canadian numbers, but you can call and receive calls world wide. We have been working on support for non-US phone numbers, what country specifically would you like to see?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> cost, how much will it cost. do not make me fill out a form before you tell me.

<comment><USER4> The costs are identical to Burner: $1.99 gets you a short-term temporary phone. They use the same price points and credit system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What does this service offer over the market leader, Burner (<http://burnerapp.com/>)?

Is it the Bitcoin support?

<comment><AUTHOR> NumberProxy and Burner both offer similar services. The main differences are _Burner is a native iOS/Android app so your disposable number is tied to your cellphone. NumberProxy is a web based application so you can use any phone, or no phone at all._ NumberProxy accepts Bitcoin. *NumberProxy has SIP support.

We feel that response so far from our users is that the two applications are unique and have some very different feature sets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> There have been a number of these services over the years. Some have disappeared.

I first used one in 2001 to stop recruiters calling me after I had found a job. I use several numbers to put into web forms as well.

<http://Flextel.com> offer free (i.e. disposable) numbers and a lot of other sophisticated telephony.

</comment><comment><USER7> Do you recycle your numbers? I once got a T-Mobile prepaid phone and had drug dealers and bill collectors calling me all day.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, we don't recycle numbers. But just because we don't recycle our numbers doesn't guarantee that you will get a "clean" number from our service or any other carrier. Numbers, like IP addresses are a finite resource and they do get reissued eventually. In any case, with NumberProxy, if you get a number that has some "history" you can just toss it and get a new one. They are designed to be ephemeral.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> About "using bitcoin for complete privacy", the service will know the client phone number, no?

<comment><AUTHOR> Many users want to know if using NumberProxy allows you to use your phone anonymously, and the answer is no. NumberProxy was created to provide user-to- user privacy, meaning that if you call or text someone your primary number is not visible to the person you are communicating with and is not easily traceable. Full details can be found in our Terms of Service and Privacy policy, but these are the basics: Once a number expires or you manually toss it, it's not easy for us to figure out much about you or your conversations, your associated phone number is removed from our active servers. We do keep backups of our data for 24 hours and should these records be subpoenaed, we will cooperate with law enforcement. NumberProxy is great if you are trying to protect your phone number from other people. If you are trying to protect your phone number or conversations from the police or equivalent, it's probably best to seek another solution.

<comment><USER9> I'm assuming that "our data" includes records of who communicated with who?

In other words, once "[y]our data" is deleted (after 24 hours), you have no other record of who (e.g. "a phone number") communicated with who (e.g. "another phone number")?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Cool, always wanted one of those... could be useful once you expand outside North-America</comment>


Computerworld on Age bias in IT - What's your take on this? - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9219187/Age_bias_in_IT_The_reality_behind_the_rumors

<comment><USER2> It depends on the company. I'm 57 and I've been programming for 35 years. I was hired to write air traffic control software for a contractor to Lockheed Martin because I had "a lot of experience" which I figure is what you need when you're trying to prevent one plane flying into another one. After that contract ended, I tried to get a job writing air traffic control software at Thales and was turned down because there were "too many jobs" on my résumé. I explained that most of them were short-term contracts but it didn't help so perhaps the "too many jobs" was a legal way of saying I'm too old.</comment>


A simple, possibly correct LR parser for C11 [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://jhjourdan.mketjh.fr/pdf/jourdan2017simple.pdf <comment><USER2> A simple, possibly correct, implementation: [https://github.com/jhjourdan/C11parser](https://github.com/jhjourdan/C11parser)

</comment><comment><USER3> > _Here, if the else branch is attached to the second if construct, then the > last occurrence of T must denote a variable, which implies that the program > is syntactically invalid. One might therefore interpret paragraph 184.108.40.206, > §3 as dictating that the else branch be attached to the first if construct. > Under this interpretation, the last occurrence of T would denote a typedef > name, and the program would be syntactically valid._

That's pretty cool.</comment>


Hard Decisions - <AUTHOR> https://avc.com/2019/09/hard-decisions/ <comment><USER2> Their cryptocurrency doesn't seem to be doing well either: [https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/kin/](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/kin/)

<comment><USER3> The market cap is currently at 666 BTC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder if they tried selling it off first, surely somebody would want a minor social network

<comment><USER5> I would think so too, kinda shocked IAC isnt interested.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> TL;DR Kik's VC says that their messenger is shutting down (but their cryptocurrency is intact).

He ends the blog post with:

> I will end this with a quote that the founder of one of our portfolio > companies sent me this week. I think it sums it up nicely.

> My centre is giving way, my right is in retreat; situation excellent. I am > attacking.

Were I a newly unemployed engineer on the messenger team, and I'd just been described as "giving way" or "in retreat", I think I'd file that under adding insult to injury. That seems kind of tone deaf.

<comment><USER6> Fair point. I think Fred meant the comment more for the founder mentality of not giving up etc. Given that a lot of his readership is founder/investors vs. typical startup employees, maybe that's OK?

And while tone deaf to a newly unemployed engineer, I'll risk downvotes to say that perhaps it's not a bad attitude for them to take either. Yes, this is really shitty and the immediate outlook doesn't look great, but go on attack, don't sit around / wallow, go make something happen! etc.

<comment><USER3> That's a very reasonable viewpoint, thanks. I hadn't looked at it that way.</comment></comment></comment>


Microservice on-top of distributed filesystem for NASA data - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@lorenzogotuned/applying-some-good-open-source-savvy-hacking-4a32323c64a3#.wvan5s8ex <comment><USER2> Misleading title, filesystems aren't mentioned outside the headline at all.</comment>


Show HN: Should you wear a shirt? - <AUTHOR> http://shouldiwearashirt.com/

<comment><USER2> Site asks question, see image of shirt, and the question.I then get prompted that site is requesting location information from my browser which I deny and my question goes unanswered :(

Apparently location plays a big part in wearing a shirt to work or not :\

<comment><USER3> I assume it's using location to determine the local weather and basing it's recommendation off of that.</comment></comment>


John Cleese on how to be creative - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VShmtsLhkQg

<comment><USER2> If we're going to share this across the entire web, let's give credit where credit is due: Merlin Mann, Back to Work 62: <http://5by5.tv/s/14y>

</comment><comment><USER3> There is so much truth packed into that 36 mins -- so many juxtapositions -- it would take several hours to reference them all.

For starters, see Rich Hickey's talk on "Hammock-Driven Development" for more on the "background mind" (<http://blip.tv/clojure/hammock-driven- development-4475586>), and then see how what Dan Pink is saying about motivation (<http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html>) and what Sebastian Deterding is saying about gamification (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZGCPap7GkY>) all connect into what Cleese is saying about creativity.

</comment><comment><USER4> In the context of software development, I think his idea that we should switch from open mode to closed mode when it's time to implement something is dead wrong. I today I gave a demo of something epic at work that I had developed exclusively on my own time. The way I managed to get myself to spend 30+ hours of my free time producing something for work was by remaining in open mode: i.e. I was playing.

<comment><USER5> You might be missing something here. In the Open mode you came up with your epic idea. You saw connections that were not immediately obvious and formed the kernel of the idea.

It takes the closed mode to focus on 'divide and conquer' and implementation of the idea as envisioned. This doesn't stop you going back in to Open mode to frequently consider where you are. Judge your work against it's initial goal etc.

If you are perpetually in Open mode you would continually add new features and extend the brief and never implement anything. I've worked with those kinds of people, they are a PITA.... although very creative.

Some people seamlessly switch between open and closed and others are stuck in one or the other.

I personally struggle to get in to the Open mode. After 30 years of disciplined coding, leading teams and divide and conquer my mind is highly specialised. It doesn't mean I'm not creative but it takes me longer to get in to that mode of thinking.

<comment><USER4> No, I'm fairly certain I was in open mode the entire time I was implementing the system. It wasn't a single epiphany followed by many hours of implementing the ideas generated in that epiphany; it was a continuous stream of idea after idea, with little "what if" explorations. I was experiencing flow: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28psychology%29>

I wasn't stressed, thinking about deadlines, or worrying about whether my system would work or not. I was simply playing, with no goals in mind other than improve the "beauty" of the system. It was very similar to what I experience when I'm painting or composing music.

There was another system I developed a few months back - again, exclusively on my own time. I would only work on it while in open mode. Only once I felt my "art" was complete did I present it to my manager and a few execs. They loved it! My system has now replaced the old system and is now part of a real product. Had I instead tried to develop the system at work, because my boss said I had to, I highly doubt it would have turned out as good as it did.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A very important nugget of wisdom is at 27:18. In short: it's very useful to be creative w/ other people, but you have to be supportive even if you disagree. Don't tell people "no" or that they are wrong. Provide constructive redirection.

I watched this last week, and this was my big takeaway. Programmers too often want to argue about what is right.

</comment><comment><USER7> tl;dw: Watch it. It's well worth it. You can spare half an hour.</comment>