Ask HN: How can you be rich without selling your company? - <AUTHOR>

From what I've read, the standard way for a startup to cash out is to sell it to a bigger company.
Here's the problem, I've watched many my favorite startups slowly die after they were sold. Except for a few rare ones, the service they provided was never the same again - if it still exists.
You want to cash out because you would like to do other things but you still care a lot about the quality of your previous product.
What other options are there? <comment><USER2> Create a big, profitable company; bootstraping, without investors to press you to have an exit. And be rich with your profit (remember the good old 20th century capitalism?).

I was just reading the case of weheartit.com - a brazilian "clone" of Pinterest. The quotation marks are there because Weheartit became big before Pinterest even exist.

They became big, but refused any external investment, while Pinterest were genius of raising funding.

There are two sides here: one is that Weheartit lost a billion dollar oportunity to Pinterest for both trying to bootstrap on 37signals style and/or just having worst execution.

Other is that Weheartit is still very big, with regular traffic, and surely large revenue from ads. They didn't die because of Pinterest, they are still a huge company, only by anchoring them to a billion dollar clone one may not call them a successfull company. And their founders are perhaps cashing out dozens (hundreds?) of thousands of dollars each month.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/weheartit-fabio-giolito- brazi...](http://www.businessinsider.com/weheartit-fabio-giolito-brazil- pinterest-clone-2012-9)

</comment><comment><USER3> Build a profitable business and pay yourself a lot through salary or dividends. Or go public.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can something like TechCrunch be big enough to go public?

<comment><USER3> Content sites and blog networks would have a very tough time going public, they're even tough to make into profitable businesses. But if you can build a profitable business that makes you rich and you're not beholden to investors, you don't need to worry about getting acquired or getting pressured by anyone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Find a company interested in your tech, make them a customer/client and sell them a minority stake?

If its a talent acquisition it might be hard to find someone passionate enough to run your startup, and near impossible to do in your spare time.

(My experience: none)</comment>


NextDNS first to block ALL third-party trackers disguised as first-party - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/nextdns/nextdns-added-cname-uncloaking-support-becomes-the-first-cross-platform-solution-to-the-problem-e3f437f84342 <comment><USER2> Neat, but Windscribe ROBERT already supported this for over a year: [https://windscribe.com/features/robert](https://windscribe.com/features/robert)

</comment><comment><USER3> Late to the party. Trackers are now moving to A records instead of just CNAMES just because blockers were already emerging.

<comment><AUTHOR> Source?

A records are blockable the same way, it wouldn't buy them anything here.

<comment><USER4> If it is true it would buy ad servers greater obfuscation since blockers were relying on CNAME metadata to differentiate between safe and unsafe targets. If more reverse lookup and secondary metadata and vhost dereferencing is required it will complicate performant ad stripping at a minimum.

[0] [https://discourse.pi-hole.net/t/apply-pi-hole-blocking-to- cn...](https://discourse.pi-hole.net/t/apply-pi-hole-blocking-to- cnames/25445/95)

[1] [https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock- issues/issues/780#iss...](https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock- issues/issues/780#issuecomment-552971940)</comment></comment></comment>


After Long Argument, BP Official Made Fatal Decision on Drilling Rig - <AUTHOR> http://www.truthout.org/after-long-argument-bp-official-made-fatal-decision-drilling-rig59875

<comment><AUTHOR> Engineer fails to persuade executive of danger; disaster follows. I feel like I've seen this story before.

BP should have had policies in place to prevent executives from violating known safety procedures. From the article it doesn't sound like there should have been any controversy.

Clearly the engineer was not at fault here, but people reading this are more likely to be in the engineer's position than in the BP policymaker's position, I want to talk about what the engineer could have done better.

It's important to present your views effectively and persuasively, and to know your audience. For example, for a scientific/engineering audience, it's important to acknowledge ways you might be wrong, otherwise you aren't credible. However, for other audiences acknowledging ways you might be wrong could be taken as a sign you don't hold your opinion strongly. I think the most concise way of overcoming this mismatch is to flip the uncertainty around, e.g. "If we follow your plan I can't guarantee this rig won't blow up."</comment>


How I Left a 12-Year Career in Silicon Valley to Work on a Beach in Belize - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/3062113/lessons-learned/how-i-left-a-12-year-career-in-silicon-valley-to-work-on-a-beach-in-belize <comment><USER2> I've had 2 friends do similar, one to work remote from the US Virgin Islands and one to do remote from a beach town in Brazil. One was successful, one was not. The issue seemed to be that in many towns the ex-pat community was small and was made worse in areas where most of the house are absentee owners. A small town can be made smaller if the houses are vacant or swapping out renters every week. It also makes community stuff think like softball leagues (or whatever hobby you have) difficult. Anyway, if you can do this, make sure you can find a community wherever you go!

</comment><comment><USER3> I appreciated that this article spent some time instructing on how to leave your job, instead of just praising the decision to leave.

</comment><comment><USER4> > "...and now I'm trying to make a living by submitting my blog posts to > Hacker News so I can be rich and have an easy, awesome life by working as > little as possible."

Sorry, Jeanna, but you're going to have to get a full time job again and hate your life like everyone else.</comment>


Stephen Colbert gets ahold of an iPad during the Grammys - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/56646

<comment><USER2> Brilliant PR by Apple. Not sure how many people actually watch the Grammy's but I bet you this cost a lot less than a commercial spot.

<comment><USER3> Actually, Colbert's been asking for an iPad from Apple this whole last week. Every show, he'd work in how he wants--nay, deserves--an iPad.

<comment><USER4> ... which might just as well be part of the PR :P

<comment><USER5> Perhaps, but it's also part of an ongoing bit. He did the same for the iPhone.

<comment><USER4> It might very well be authentic, but for some reason I'm a cynic when it comes to big business and advertisements.

<comment><USER6> I'm not really sure if he really wants one or just makes fun of the hype. Apple gave him one, so they think he really wants one or they dont care.

<comment><USER7> "I'm not really sure if he really wants one or just makes fun of the hype."

Why is there an 'or' in that sentence?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> the surprising thing is it must be a real one -- look at that orientation sensor going nuts!

<comment><USER9> That orientation sensor is way faster than my iPhone's.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Honey, does this make me look like a shill?"

<comment><USER11> No more than during The Stephen Colbert Presidential Campaign brought to you by Doritos.

Part of the beauty of Colbert's television persona is that he can shamelessly shill for products, and then pass it off as "just part of the character."

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Downvote me if you like, but it will still be Grammys.

</comment><comment><USER13> Holy shit his wife is hot.

<comment><USER14> That's his daughter, you horribly inappropriate person.

<comment><USER11> That's a reasonable assumption, you horribly prudish person.

<comment><USER14> Actually my wife made me sit through the thing which is why I know. Earlier in the show he talked to her after identifying her as his daughter.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, I just didn't think a person deserved to be insulted for what I saw as a relatively benign comment based on an assumption which was reasonable for a person who only saw the video clip.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> To all you nay-sayers: see, the next time you host the Grammy's you'll be able to pull out your nominees list in style! How's that for a use case scenario.

But seriously though, I think the iPad is going to be the next big revolution: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1091208> (I'm really desperate for readers).

<comment><USER16> As a fellow person seeking a little attention lately, just you know, for the motivation to get into something... it is a shame that the groups we mingle with (I've browsed HN for ~2 years without making account but have always felt at home here) do not support mini-adventures very much.

I always viewed HN as a place where I could go for reviews or receive some advice from other people seeking the same thing. Yet, it seems the groups I once called home are showing this aura of 'elitist' instead of lending a hand.

If HN is the group we associate with, why is a harmless plug after a comment on a fresh blog such a terrible thing? We want the group we associate with to give us feedback!

Do I need to take out a loan, invest $30,000 in a startup, and get VC funded to be able to plug a website?

I guess this is over-dramatization and full of useless e-motions; and not entirely aimed at HN, but communities in general. I participate in a few forums, but let a few years pass by and this elitist wave of old timers seems to just mock/bash the people coming up from the bottom.

If plugging a site isn't the right thing to do, explain why, and give some advice for pulling in readers. If HN is your only community and you don't have some massively read site, how do you get fresh readers?

edit: (I told you I was being over-dramatic), but yeah, I do tend to click the "Review my App: etc."

<comment><USER17> it's different when the person plugging the site hasn't even bothered to register a domain...and the blog only has the one blog post that the person is trying to link.

<comment><USER15> Since when does a domain equate to relevancy (in my situation here)? And doesn't everyone have to start somewhere?

EDIT: Can you tell me how I should have approached this then?

<comment><USER18> I don't think you were really trying to spam anyone, but your plug came off as such, to me, because: a) HN has been inundated with iPad blog posts and we've already heard opinions of all angles, so it's safe to say your post wouldn't have made any points not already made, b) Your post is somewhat irrelevant because although this submission is about the iPad, it's not about whether it's revolutionary or not, and so it seems like you were trying to shoehorn your plug in here, c) You plugged your blog by linking to the HN submission when you should've just linked directly to your blog post, and d) You admitted you desperately needed readers, which was probably meant to be taken in jest, but others might think you were being serious. HN humor is pretty hard to gauge sometimes.

<comment><USER15> There's no doubt I was trying to plug my post, but it's not as if I simply commented with that link.

I linked to the submission because I was hoping it would jumpstart it so that more people could see it. If I only linked to my blog post then I couldn't potentially bump up my HN submission. It was a practical decision, and morally I don't see what's wrong with it.

I could understand if people didn't bite, but I'm a little overwhelmed by the negativity. Sometimes this place can feel a little too stiff.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


You did a shit job. (A life lesson) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/what-i-learned-today/e32fc49ec772

<comment><USER2> I'm one of those people who learns by making mistakes (as many of us are), and I make much faster progress if people tell me things are screwed up sooner rather than later.

Granted, not sure I'd tell someone they did a shitty job, but certainly "this work product is not acceptable" is a reasonable thing to say :)</comment>


Treating your personal website as a startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.zacharytamas.com/blog/post/treating-your-personal-website-as-a-startup/

<comment><USER2> In other words, you're always building a product: your startup, your personal website, maybe even yourself.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly.</comment></comment>


Though Trump denounces Google Ads, transparency report shows prolific use of ads - <AUTHOR> https://transparencyreport.google.com/political-ads/library/advertiser/AR488306308034854912 <comment><USER2> surprised news agencies haven't picked up on it.</comment>


Ask HN: best implementations of FB Connect in registration page - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
At submate.com we want to rethink our integration of facebook connect notably to register on the website. I think lot of startup have the them issue.
So I would love if you could share the best implementations of FB connect you saw accross the web !
For the moment I only really like the foursquare implementation.
Thank you for sharing <comment><USER2> A little off-topic: Each time I have used RpxNow on my website, I got complaints from some users telling me they'd prefer a classic registration form. When I have only a classic form to register, nobody complains.

So my advice would be: make sure you allow to register the "classic" way.</comment>


Why Intelligent People Drink More Alcohol - <AUTHOR> http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/201010/why-intelligent-people-drink-more-alcohol

<comment><USER2> [2010] Previous submission with discussion:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1785561>

The author of this piece is widely criticized by more scientific writers:

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-barry-kaufman/satoshi- ka...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-barry-kaufman/satoshi-kanazawa- does-not_b_863359.html)

[http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/beautiful- minds/201105/b...](http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/beautiful- minds/201105/black-women-are-not-rated-less-attractive-our-independent- analysis-the-a)

<http://wicherts.socsci.uva.nl/attractAddHealth.pdf>

[http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/09/10/satoshi- kanaza...](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/09/10/satoshi-kanazawa-is- back/)

[http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest- blog/2011/05/23/th...](http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest- blog/2011/05/23/the-data-are-in-regarding-satoshi-kanazawa/)</comment>


Tesla and privacy - <AUTHOR> http://dangoldin.com/2013/02/21/tesla-and-privacy/

<comment><USER2> This wasn't lost at all, several sites and newspapers mentioned it. The answers were that Tesla collects this data on all cars given out to journalists for test drives and any cars where the owner gives consent.</comment>


Students in Laptop Spying case get to view 58k photos - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/05/judge-orders-students-be-shown-photos-in-laptop-spying-case.ars

<comment><USER2> What has struck me as most odd about this story is that I haven't heard any national news organizations really pick this up and run with it. Why? Is this story too hard to wedge into sound bytes? The dearth of coverage bothers me.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'll be amused that after some more investigation a pattern is found in the files (name, date modified, etc) and it appears chunks of the pattern are missing.

<comment><USER4> The patterns of who and when will also be notable. Were cheerleaders more likely to have been watched?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> So can they see all of the photos, or only theirs?

</comment><comment><USER6> I wonder if the LED of the webcam was on when they where spyed (and more generally if you can disable those by software).

<comment><USER7> I read several times that the light on the camera would come on periodically and they were told it was bug in the software...They were MacBooks.

<comment><USER8> As far as I know the camera LED in MacBooks is hardwired to the camera. You can't turn it off in software. If the camera gets power the LED gets power (as it should be).

<comment><USER7> right, but students were told it is a bug.. I dont know for sure, but probably by that sys admin lady whos job it was to administer the laptops.

I dunno about you, but I just find this whole thing way to bizarre. How it was found out, the magnitude, the fact that it seems one person has done all of this.

<comment><USER9> > the fact that it seems one person has done all of this.

Uh, where did you get that? The spying software was installed as a matter of school policy; it wasn't the act of a rogue admin deciding to wire up the school laptops to feed their appetites. They had budget meetings where they took notes about how much it would cost to purchase a site license that would cover the installation of this software on all of the school computers; everyone up to the school board participated in and signed off on this. It was not a secret.

<comment><USER10> It's possible jason_slack meant the whole thing was revealed due to one student, Blake Robbins: [http://arstechnica.com/tech- policy/news/2010/02/school-under...](http://arstechnica.com/tech- policy/news/2010/02/school-under-fire-for-spying-on-kid-via-webcam-at- home.ars)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This may prevent wider embarrassment from, ahem, moments of pubescent weakness...

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed, and probably why the viewings will be students sans parents.

<comment><USER12> From TFA:

> The students will be able to view the images with or without their parents, > and request that the court block their parents from seeing "sensitive" > photos if they so choose.</comment></comment></comment>


Tesla can detect aftermarket hacks designed to defeat EV performance paywalls - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedrive.com/news/35946/tesla-can-detect-aftermarket-hacks-designed-to-defeat-ev-performance-paywalls <comment><USER2> It feels like $40k is a lot of money to pay Tesla to license a car, at least so long as I can buy a car outright from its competitors for less than that.

I'd rather have a car I own, all things being equal. All things being unequal too, actually. Tesla cars would need to be much better to compete, given the licensing versus ownership model.

I imagine at some point, Tesla will switch to car-as-a-service models. I guess most companies already have those in the form of leases, but I don't lease cars.

<comment><USER3> All they are doing is voiding the warranty, so you're not exactly "leasing" the car.

Change it all you want, but don't expect Tesla to fix your car once you've messed with it yourself. And don't expect to sue them when autopilot kills you, because it's not their responsibility any more.

<comment><USER2> > All they are doing is voiding the warranty, so you're not exactly "leasing" > the car.

That's all that's described in this article. This is not an isolated article. You can see articles about:

* Tesla stripping features from cars when people resell them

* Articles from small repair shops, unable to work on Tesla vehicles because of locked-down software

* Articles about Tesla's surveillance on car owners

* Deactivating vehicles it doesn't think should be driven (e.g. ones from serious accidents)

* Forcing updates

And so on. With Tesla, you clearly don't fully own your car.

<comment><USER4> I'd really like to be able to disconnect my car from the internet.

<comment><USER5> Connected cars using a data communication module (DCM) are going to be required in every market eventually. The EU has already mandated this. In Japan, Toyota rolled out its Connected Cars initiative to all its vehicles in 2018. In the USA, Toyota put a DCM in select cars for telemetry almost ten years ago and this year they stated all their remaining vehicles will get them. All the luxury brands such as BMW and Porsche have a DCM for telemetry, safety, and service support.

States that use fuel taxes to fund road improvements will need to find other ways to tax electric vehicles and data derived from DCM will help them. Plus, autonomous transport will need to communicate.

<comment><USER6> > The EU has already mandated this.

Are you thinking about eCall? That is only supposed to be activated during an emergency.

[https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/security-and- em...](https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/security-and- emergencies/emergency-assistance-vehicles-ecall/index_en.htm#shortcut-3)

<comment><USER7> If communication module is mandatory even only for emergency, it makes easier entire car to be connected.

<comment><USER8> The EU requires the module to be powered off except in an emergency. So it's not in contact with cell towers all the time, except when it needs to make an emergency call. It's easy enough to detect the transmissions with simple hardware.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If I'd ever buy a car, I'd rather not have antifeatures in it. I'd rather have the Lada/Zhiguli [0] of the future:

\- safe

\- simple

\- electric

\- cheap

\- mass produced

\- open hardware

\- public road certified

The Dacia Spring Electric [1] might get close.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VAZ-2107](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VAZ-2107)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dacia_Spring](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dacia_Spring)

<comment><USER10> If you ever bought a car, your lifestyle would likely be very different/shifted, and your anticipated viewpoints might not hold. It's like saying, "If I was vegetarian, I would like these foods." You have no idea what you would like because you have never been part of that subculture.

<comment><USER11> I eat meat and dislike spinach. Will I suddenly start liking spinach if I cut the meat out of my diet?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > your connected car knows when you've hacked it, and it might be logging that > data to use against you in a future warranty claim. [..] Nobody except Tesla > really knows the answer to this right now, but knowing that my car could > potentially tattle on me to its mommy is a bit unnerving.

It's almost like the car is a hostile entity, loyal to its manufacturer instead of its owner..

<comment><USER13> Well imagine you download Te5lA-b00ster-5.zip from Pirate Bay and install it into the car. Next thing you know the autopilot goes haywire and kills you.

Who do you think will get the blame?

<comment><USER14> well, historically in the US, if I modify a car and have an incident, _if the modification is found to be the cause_ the liability falls to me, the person who modified it, not the manufacturer.

One can say that Tesla is further still limiting liability by going to these measures, but if other manufacturers have not chosen to take such measures , even with the same practical liability and ability to do so, then one can surmise that Tesla is acting in a way that is against consumers who feel strongly about personal ownership and right-to-repair/right-to-modify.

If car companies considered liability to be the penultimate measure of success they wouldn't sell 500+ horsepower sports cars. The risk is worth taking for a chance to capture the market sector. Same here -- Tesla might find this a good business decision, but a portion of their market will be inevitably lost on matters of personal principal.

It's up to them whether or not that gamble is worth taking. Given that sports- cars and car modification in general seem to have been on a downward decline, they're probably correct to assume such postures; but i'm not a fan.

<comment><USER13> Yes from a legal perspective I agree.

But what I am talking about is the MSM and they having field day. "Tesla autopilots off a bridge", "Telsa hacked, killed driver" etc etc.

And bad press is a real threat for business, especially when it comes to comes to safety of the driver/passenger.

For the downward car modification trend, I get the impression it's improved protection from manufacturers that are the reason, wouldn't you agree?

<comment><USER15> We have almost 100 years of history to show such concerns are largely not real.

Nobody blamed Honda for the Fast & Furious movies, for example. Nobody blames Chevrolet for lowriders. Nobody blames Ford for these asshats: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVyBaX6sCd4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVyBaX6sCd4)

There's vanishingly few examples of modified cars generating mainstream media shitstorms. Appealing to fear is rarely a good justification for stripping rights & freedoms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The fact that they sell the hack for $1500 is pretty ridiculous.

Seems like there's a market for a reverse-engineered version of the hack, priced at slightly above the cost of materials (which I suspect to be around $50 at most).

<comment><USER17> The way I look at it, they have some time to failure calculation for the normal and performance usage. That TTF calculation goes into the price of servicing the warranty and that goes into the price of the car.

You're basically paying for the warranty extension and that doesn't seem that bad to me. Feels more like overclocking to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This can also be useful in some cases right?

\- What if some external accessory or change was made without the owner's knowledge?. As cars become more software dependent, steps like these might become necessary.

\- Manufacturers obviously want to take their hands-off during warranty claims if the car has been tuned or modified.

\- The owner in the issue mentioned above hasn't had any issues while driving except a notification that wouldn't go away. As long as i can modify my car and drive it without a hassle, i would like my car to tell me what changes have been made to it.

<comment><USER19> > _What if some external accessory or change was made without the owner 's > knowledge?. As cars become more software dependent, steps like these might > become necessary._

Should whoever built your house be notified if you modify it after buying it? After all, those changes could have been made without the owner's knowledge.

<comment><USER20> Although I agree with the sentiment, when changing a house after buying it you might have to notify your local government or even ask for permission, depending on what you're changing and where you are.

<comment><USER19> The motor vehicle inspection agency isn't the one who is notified when a Tesla car is modified, Tesla is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Nothing unusual and also applicable for other manufacturers and petrol cars. You loose warranty of course, but some people still opt for "chip" tuning right after buying. Others might wait the 4 years.

<comment><USER22> The difference is that tuning an IC engine is pushing components into/past its designed safety/mechanical thresholds. Does 'tuning' a Tesla actually do this? If it is designed to perform at this level after paying Tesla, how could they deny warranty coverage with Magnuson-Moss in mind?

<comment><USER17> Do they bin batteries and parts? Is the price based on a calculation of failure rates and warranty service costs? Or is it just a cash grab? I'm not sure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Maybe slightly off-topic but in general, do people buy random electronics over the internet and connect it to their car? Feels like a overly easy way of hacking a massive amount of cars, by simply having them buy a thing you connect to your already IoT-ified car, and allow anyone to read and control your car.

Seems like the detection feature from Tesla is meant to provide this, rather than preventing 3rd party mods. As I would never connect anything to my cars IT systems, I would happily receive a warning if the car did detect something like that.

<comment><USER24> Sounds like a great way to put yourself out of the tuning business.

Unless we are talking some Ocean's 11 style scheme where you make a tuner company just to get their exploit into cars, all to be turned on at once on the big day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I wonder if Tesla will limit supercharger usage to unmodified cars.

<comment><USER26> They do. Modified cars or those with a salvage title are blacklisted from Superchargers by VIN. It's their right of course, as it's their charging network.

<comment><USER27> It's worse than that, they also block fast charging at non-Tesla charging locations, which to me is an over stepping of the mark, abs punitive action against salvage vehicle owners.

<comment><USER26> Its Tesla's liability and reputation if a Tesla vehicle with questionable integrity burns at a DC fast charger. I don't think that's "worse", that's the deal if you own a Tesla vehicle (regardless of how you obtained ownership). Just takes one careless tinkerer to ruin the narrative for everyone. Tesla previously had a recertification program, where you could pay for a tech to inspect the HV battery and powertrain to confirm it's state supported fast DC charging, not sure if they're still offering it though.

<comment><USER28> > Its Tesla's liability and reputation if a Tesla vehicle with questionable > integrity burns at a DC fast charger.

That same argument could be made for just about anything being sold -- the original owner could still exert control over your purchase because their reputation might be damaged if you weren't careful. You're not wrong that the court of public opinion can be vindictive, but I think that's by far the lesser evil compared with not actually owning the things you buy. We grant exceptions here and there (can't use your baseball bat to kill a person, usually), but none anywhere nearly as invasive as prohibiting any activity that might give a former owner bad PR.

The fact that Tesla has an automated means of enforcement is a big part of why this is coming up at all. They don't have to wait to figure out what the courts say; they can use software to do what they want till they're explicitly forbidden.

<comment><USER29> It will be interesting to see what impact right-to-repair laws have here. They are already forcing the release of service documentation, tooling & procedures. But does that also apply to re-certifying a crashed vehicle? Will denying charging to crashed vehicles even be allowed?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> These aftermarket hacks should definitely be legal, but don't expect Tesla to provide any more online services such as automatic firmware upgrades. These would have to be done manually by the owner now.

</comment><comment><USER30> The pioneers in any field always get attacked when they add safeguards.

And then later when they catch up, the laggards add similar safeguards.

Usually there are valid reasons beyond just the usual "protect profits" this gets portrayed as. Even if that's part of it, it's often more about protecting the brand and product safety.

Autos are different from some products in that there are real safety issues if stuff is not done right.

</comment><comment><USER31> > Others bring up the very valid point of right to repair—but does that also > include right to modify?

Yes.

</comment><comment><USER32> So what happens, exactly, if you buy a Tesla and never connect it to the internet?

<comment><USER33> I believe they have a built-in SIM and mobile connection for its own purposes.

<comment><USER32> And if you remove that?

<comment><USER34> Presumably they can void your warrenty all the same since the car is no longer phoning home

<comment><USER29> Teslas don't have to phone home to operate. They work just fine off-grid, and you can also opt-out of any data collection/phone home [1] if you want. As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, the burden of proof is on the manufacturer to prove that the modification caused the damage (at least in the USA), so removing the sim and turning off wifi is unlikely to void any warranty

[1] [https://www.tesla.com/about/legal#choice- transparency](https://www.tesla.com/about/legal#choice-transparency)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: SoundCloud Wall - <AUTHOR> http://karan.github.io/SoundWall/index.html

<comment><USER2> Interesting UI concept, and nice demo.

On Firefox (version 29 on Linux), the labels for the upper and lower sets of players are both overlapping on the upper videos, and the lower videos have no labels.

Also, I assume this is a SoundCloud limitation, but it's disappointing that this seems to want Flash and does not support HTML5 audio.

Thanks for building this and showing it off!

<comment><AUTHOR> > On Firefox (version 29 on Linux), the labels for the upper and lower sets of > players are both overlapping on the upper videos, and the lower videos have > no labels.

Seems like an issue with jquery and certain platforms. I do not know how to debug it, unfortunately.

> Thanks for building this and showing it off!

No problem. Just share with friends and family. :)

<comment> j-hernandez Confirming UI behavior in FF 29 on Linux. No audio output in Chromium but both use HTML5 Audio. Might take a crack at the UI bug later. Great demo and thanks so much for sharing!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thought I'd share the source code: [https://github.com/karan/SoundWall](https://github.com/karan/SoundWall)

</comment><comment><USER3> Awesome demo!

While playing around with this, I found an interesting (and perhaps unintentional) use case.

By hovering over different songs at appropriate times, it mimics a hard cut using a DJ mixer.

I'm not as technical as I'd like to be, but it seems like a neat bi-product of very low latency using HTML5 with your simultaneous auto-play.

Might be an interesting opportunity for a new type of cloud DJ platform :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Funny. My friends recommended this exact use case for the app. What he said was, make the artwork look like rotating vinyls and keep the functionality the same except add cross-fader (which is extremely hard).

<comment><USER3> Right on!

The cross-fader would be an interesting project though; using a slider to adjust volume between sources...

<comment><AUTHOR> Will see if I can work on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady Nice concept. I was surprised to see it using HTML5 audio which was nice. Do you know how that affects the play count on SoundCloud? If you're using your own player instead of an embed do the artists lose out on the play?

Feature request: It would be nice if I could log in with my SoundCloud account and have the option to like tracks from your site.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I had to roll out my own player for performance purposes. I have no idea, but since this is stream I think it just counts as a play?

> Feature request: It would be nice if I could log in with my SoundCloud > account and have the option to like tracks from your site.

Probably won't happen since that would need a backend, and I want this to be a client side only app. FWIW I link to SC track so people can like, share, download, buy the track.

<comment><USER4> user sessions would get picked up by if you just injected the oembed player dom rather than hand-rolling it ([https://developers.soundcloud.com/docs/oembed](https://developers.soundcloud.com/docs/oembed)) - no authentication required.

<comment><AUTHOR> In the initial versions, I was using SC's own widget, but it was not performant and looked nasty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very cool... One critique I have is that you should respect the aspect ratio of the album cover art. At my typical browser dimensions the album art is very screwed up:

[http://i.imgur.com/5yKPIjZ.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/5yKPIjZ.jpg)

<comment><AUTHOR> So it was between a full-screen view vs aspect ratio and due to the nature of the app, I had to settle on former.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Spotify has a similar preview feature.

If you're logged in to the web player, you can use it by following this link:

[https://play.spotify.com/discover](https://play.spotify.com/discover)

</comment><comment><USER7> Great tool, fun for music discovery.

A graph style approach for this is [https://soundcloud- explore.appspot.com/](https://soundcloud-explore.appspot.com/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Nice! Soundcloud is fun to make things with. The API is awesome. Used it with a cool visual library to make this: [http://molli.es/](http://molli.es/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I love the SC API. Even though it's somewhat buggy, it just makes your life so much easier. I can't seem to find a way to change the song in your visualizer.

<comment><USER8> The site is pretty buggy but you should be able to click the left arrow! I made it just to put on the background or chromecast it to my tv when I am programming!

<comment><USER8> ERR, right arrow :p

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> If anyone's interested, leave your e-mail here [1] and stay tuned about my projects.

[1] [http://eepurl.com/SRIPT](http://eepurl.com/SRIPT)

</comment><comment><USER9> Awesome work! It's very responsive.

On a side note, it's incredible how much Armin Van Buuren's style has changed since the early/mid-2000s.

</comment><comment><USER10> Super cool! I wish I could to go to the next six songs that match a given query in case I want to explore beyond the first set of results.

<comment><AUTHOR> I did try doing that, but since it's 6 players, it's super hard to manage events.

If anyone wants to add any features, I'm open to PRs: [https://github.com/karan/SoundWall](https://github.com/karan/SoundWall)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is sweet! I've been trying to learn how to use the SC wrapper and your code is a wonderful example. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER12> Good job. I felt like i have a DJ's control box :-)

</comment><comment><USER13> Nice UI. I love the concept too.

</comment><comment><USER14> Nice!

</comment><comment><USER15> fun!</comment>


Pikareader : new RSS feed reader - <AUTHOR> https://pikareader.com <comment><USER2> At the risk of insulting a project someone has worked hard at, I'm a bit worried about this trend.

There's been no fewer than 2-3 "Show HN: I made a Google Reader replacement!" posts a week over the past two months.

They all miss an important point, though: the problem was never a lack of RSS readers (there were already a ton). The problem is a lack of a canonical, fully featured RSS reader that's supported by a large company with lots of money and resources. If Google can't properly afford to operate an RSS feeder, why would someone be able to as a side project?

Plus, having a canonical RSS reader is good for the technology. ThePirateBay does it for torrents, GitHub for git, Reader for RSS, etc -- a central place that pushes the technology forward and provides a model for everyone else, rather than a fractured user base spaced out over dozens of sites made as side projects.

Anyway, sorry @meister -- this comment has nothing to do with Pikareader and all your hard work, and more to do with RSS in general.

<comment><USER3> We already had a fully featured RSS reader supported by a large company not lacking in money or resources. It got closed down _because_ the company had lots of money and resources: it wasn't a strategic product, and any contribution it could have made to revenue would have been immaterial.

In the medium term, I think canning Reader has hurt Google amongst the technically literate. It certainly has pushed Google from the 'creepy but mostly good' to just 'creepy' for me. It's a notch above Facebook now, and no longer worthy of a logged in session - relegated to a secondary browser, I can feel free to block all Google-related third party requests.

As for a Reader replacement, I'm currently going with Ino Reader. Free and unlimited (thus far). I don't know if or how it will make money, but it's been the best replacement I've tried yet.

And "there were already a ton" of readers? No. Almost all readers had to differentiate themselves from Reader, because it was so good. There's a massive gap in the market, such as it is, right now. It should and will be filled by a small company, probably a lifestyle business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The true value of Google Reader is that it is a huge archive of past RSS entries, many of which are no longer available from the source. No matter how powerful or beautiful or user friendly your new RSS reader is, you do not have access to these lost entries.

</comment><comment><USER5> This didn't look half bad until I saw the 5 rss feed limit. I don't even mind looking at ads half the time, but a limit on my feeds is not good. Maybe something closer to a 30-50 feed limit I could deal with. maybe.

Some screen shots to look at the UI wouldn't be half bad either.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion. I have to add some screen shots.

The 5 rss feed limit is part of our business model. Feeds consume resources and resources cost money. So we have to cover our expenses to ensure a reliable and durable service.

<comment><USER6> 5 is still too low in my opinion. How about giving users a 10-15 day trial of premium version? That way, you won't be wasting resources without any return and users can try reader without limits too!

<comment><AUTHOR> The 5 feeds limit is now over. You can test the Unlimited Plan as it comes with a 7-day free trial :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I would be happy to try this out and to pay your entirely reasonable yearly fee if I like it, but only if you provide a local login option that doesn't rely on google, facebook or twitter. I hate tying services to my other accounts, and I'm not making an exception for you. Not trying to be difficult, just letting you know the reality: tying login to other services loses you customers.

<comment><USER7> Note also that because of this, I still haven't been able to see what the service is even like, because there is no demo.

<comment><USER8> Is the form under the social signup buttons not a 'local' signup?

<comment><AUTHOR> It creates a local account, no need for a social account.

<comment><USER7> Did you add this after the original post or am I just blind? Anyway, signed up and trying it out! Can you comment on the status of the interface on mobile browsers / using touch?

<comment><AUTHOR> Local sign up was there since the beginning ^^

We use some responsive design for screen size. I have to optimize some UI action for tablets and mobiles. We will maybe publish a mobile app if customers ask for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I tried it. It failed on the first site I tried, polygon.com. It didn't discover the RSS. Even the first RSS readers back in the day did that. Yes, I checked the source of polygon.com. The RSS feed is linked correctly for discovery. Then I tried to add the link manually. Pikareader never responded after picking "Add"

I wish them all the success and luck in the world. I'll try again in a few months and see if it works.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> We have put hard work in this new project to replace Google Reader as a daily useful tool. Feel free to comment and suggest features or ideas !

<comment><USER10> Is there a way to play with the service without signing up?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not at the moment, but you can login in one click ... It is on my todolist :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> One thing which really bothers me is that you are always using a space in front of your exclamation marks. It's happening on Pikareader and your other site PikaCode.

<http://english.stackexchange.com/a/4646>

</comment><comment><USER12> Is there any way to show the full content of a feed in a river of news style? I only subscribe to full-text feeds because I use RSS to give me reading material, not headlines.

<comment><AUTHOR> I add this feature on my todolist ! Thanks for suggestion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> So what are the advantages of using this over other existing services such as Feedly?

</comment><comment><USER14> You might want to try your landing page on an iPad...

<comment><USER6> This is a criticism or what? I tried it on iPad and landing page was fine. The text fields overflow a bit but that's the only fault.

Would love if you elaborate or post a screenshot.</comment></comment>


Your AI skills are worth less than you think - <AUTHOR> https://www.kdnuggets.com/2019/01/your-ai-skills-worth-less-than-you-think.html#.XEslNMdJYLI.hackernews <comment><USER2> Interesting read. I wonder though, doesnt this also apply to ML data scientists? After all we are talking about basing a career on AI.

Perhaps developing software which does good ML/DL data science (or greatly helps with it) is the way to go?</comment>


Here's an iPhone Screen Doctor That's Cheap, Efficient, and Makes House Calls - <AUTHOR> http://www.yahoo.com/tech/heres-an-iphone-screen-doctor-thats-cheap-efficent-73532571476.html

<comment><USER2> While on the subject of fixing iPhone's I have an iPhone 4 with a dodgy home button (works 50% of the time) that I would like to get fixed but I can't find anywhere in West London that will do it for less than £70 with most charging almost £100. I would do it myself but it isn't as simple as replacing the back and I would rather pay a _little_ bit more to get somebody who knows what they are doing to replace the button. Anyone know of anywhere?</comment>


Show HN: Encryption in your browser with GnuPG.js (part of unix-toolbox.js) - <AUTHOR> http://manuels.github.io/unix-toolbox.js-gnupg/

<comment><AUTHOR> The GNU Privacy Guard suite was ported using Mozilla's emscripten [1] and requires a recent browser with window.crypto.getRandomValues() support (e.g. Chrome or the Firefox released yesterday).

For more Unix tools ported to Javascript have a look a the unix-toolbox.js project [2]

[1] <http://emscripten.org/> [2] <http://manuels.github.io/unix-toolbox.js/></comment>


What really happened at PyCon 2013 - <AUTHOR> http://peak5390.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/what-really-happened-at-pycon-2013/ <comment><USER2> I really enjoyed Pycon. I had never attended a Pycon, nor dealt with the Python community at large but the day I listened to Jesse Noller's keynote I knew I was in the right place. He discussed the values of teaching children, being an inclusive community, and philanthropy. I thought I was attending to get my Python on and discovered the warm fluffy side of a beautiful community. These people really mean well.

At Pycon I met the developers and project maintainers of high-profile projects I use all of the time like Django and SQLAlchemy. Heck, I paid $150 to receive classroom training from Mike Bayer himself. How inexpensive is that to receive training from the developer and maintainer of SQLAlchemy himself?

The tutorials were incredibly useful, the keynotes moving (Noller, Hettinger, etc.), the sessions well-produced and all of the speakers well-spoken.

I feel like we stole my ticket for as inexpensive as the trip was for me and several developers our company drug along.

How did they do? Awesome. I would like to say thank you to the PSF for such an incredible conference. My entire dev staff will be attending next year!

</comment><comment><USER3>
        > Eben Upton, one of the creators of the Raspberry Pi,
        > shared with us the brilliant insight that many young
        > people used to have to "choose not to program" when
        > they turned their computers on, in order to play games

What a quote. I remember this. My family had an Amstrad CPC 464, and when you booted it up, this is what it said:

         Amstrad 128k Microcomputer (v3)

         © 1985 Amstrad Computer Electronics plc
                    and Locomotive Software Ltd.

         BASIC 1.1

         Ready

The very next thing that appeared was the text cursor, the assumption being that you would now begin to type code. You could _choose not to program_ by putting a game cassette in the drive, holding Shift+Enter, and pressing play. But by default, you were programming.

I love that the Pi attempts to revive this for today's kids. At the moment I think the closest they come to anything resembling code is if they use Firefox or Chrome and accidentally stumble into the developer tools.

<comment><USER4> If you think about it, a shell prompt is just as much of an invitation to code. It's only really the GUI that changed this.

<comment><USER5> I agree that the GUI is the likely culprit.

Though, as far as hacking goes, I'd almost prefer a BASIC prompt [or `irb`, `idle`, or any other number of modern REPLs] as opposed to a shell prompt.

I can hack away at bash scripts... but bash just doesn't seem as warm and inviting as BASIC was.

I think part of that is: shells are _primarily_ an interface to your filesystem. They offer IO redirection and the ability to run arbitrary executables.

While their scripting facilities are certainly "complete", and plenty usable, I'd disagree that they're _designed_ for it.

When I fudge my fingers writing some Ruby, Go, Python, or Perl, the compiler or interpreter is usually pretty helpful in guiding me to my mistake. Often times it's also helpful in _suggesting_ the means to fix that mistake.

When shell scripting goes _wrong_, (as it often _will_ for a complete novice), I don't think the shell is as helpful in correcting the mistake.

That's my $.02 anyways.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I had a great time at PyCon. My son who is 7 attended young coders and learned a lot. All the kids got Pi's too so now we have two Pi's to work on.

I did not even hear about the Twitter incident. I consider it a twitter incident and not real.

<comment><USER7> It was really, really cool to see all the young folks around this year. I'm glad your son could come.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great write-up!

I'm a Ruby developer, but it sounds like your community is really excellent. I'd love to come check out PyCon sometime in the future.

<comment><USER9> I almost went this year, and I often go to Python related events if I'm around when they happen. You should go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> In the Adria Richards trial there are 2 upstanding people. Jim Frankiln (CEO of Sendgrid) Who offered not only a pertinent, but fair fair reaction to this entire thing, but also The Pycon staff members. Who, without ego or vendetta, enforced the rules as described. I salute both of these people.

</comment><comment><USER11> Author here. It's so nice to see the conversation get back to all the good things that go on at PyCon.

<comment><USER12> Hear hear. I learned a great deal about the IPython Notebook and Python 3 this year. Pycon was a great time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is a pretty unrelated question, but how does one find out about these conferences? I typically only hear about them afterward (Heroku's Waza and now PyCon). Are there any that are known to be particularly good?

Additionally, any recommendations for which to try to attend as a first year computer science student?

<comment><USER14> <http://lanyrd.com>

<comment><USER15> Thanks! Such a shame that if you want something in Europe, you have to look country by country, since selecting "Europe" returns no results.

<comment><USER16> If you're looking for Python cons, You should definitely check out DjangoCon 2013 in Warsaw, Poland (<http://2013.djangocon.eu/>, 15-19 May, possibly sold out) and EuroPython in Florence, Italy (<https://ep2013.europython.eu/>, 1-7 Juli).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> You forgot StartupRow! 6 startups on Friday (we were one of them) plus another 6 on Saturday. Got to make some great contacts as a result.

</comment><comment><USER18> "The PyCon Code of Conduct was tested twice that I know of, and it worked well."

No.

Imagine if PyCon had a reasonable code of conduct instead of this "Sexual language and imagery is not appropriate for any conference venue, including talks...In particular, exhibitors should not use sexualized images, activities, or other material. Booth staff (including volunteers) should not use sexualized clothing/uniforms/costumes, or otherwise create a sexualized environment."

Which I suspect was designed because a bunch of sex-negative feminists like those at the Ada Initiative just don't _like_ booth babes. They have an obsession with marginal things that they believe _might_ lead to sexism.

When I was more involved with Drupal, I wrote a letter against adding this kind of language to DrupalCon's code of conduct, because I felt it should focus on dealing with actual harassment instead of things some people don't like. I think because I am a woman, people listened to me. Working in tech can be dehumanizing enough as it is without having codes against an entire aspect of humanity- sex, because it _might_ make some people uncomfortable. It's also vague enough that it could turn into a witch hunt pretty quickly.

I started out in Python but it's been like six years since I used it seriously, but if I were still involved I would try to get that removed from the Code of Conduct.

<comment><USER19> A professional tech conference shouldn't have a code of conduct banning sex talk which, by the way, is completely irrelevant to technology? Just because you, as a woman, don't have a problem with it then _no other woman_ is allowed to have a problem with it? Nice. Hey ladies, mamoswined ain't faded. Sexism is OVER.

<comment><USER18> Irrelevant to technology? I don't think so. Let's ban everything some people think is irrelevant to technology that might offend someone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> to your point about intro programming courses and python:

my wife used to teach python to gifted middle schoolers as an intro programming course. she brought this up at a regional educator's event when the speaker asked if anyone was doing intro to programming in a language other than VB (or something else, maybe Java). my wife raised her hand sheepishly and said "I used python". everyone was suddenly interested.

the kids did great with python, but she eventually gave up on it because the kids wanted instant gratification and slick UI games. she explored scratch but got pulled in different directions in her teaching load. however, several of her python students over the years have gone on to do interesting things at university.

</comment><comment><USER21> To the top with you! This almost exactly mirrors my experience, right down to last year being my first PyCon and giving a lightning talk this year for the first time. It was an amazing experience, and I applaud all those who worked so hard to make it great for everyone, Jesse Noller especially.

</comment><comment><USER22> Thank you.

Also don't forget that we had an amazing Python Data conference during the sprints, with over 300 people and featuring Peter Norvig and Fernando Perez as speakers.

<http://pydata.org>

</comment><comment><USER23> This is a really great summary and it is too bad that so much great knowledge sharing is going unnoticed because of the lure of controversy. Solid explanation.

</comment><comment><USER24> I hope it's a good message that there were only 2 problems PyCon staff had to deal with - but I wish the current shitstorm had stopped here: [http://pycon.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/pycon-response-to- inappr...](http://pycon.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/pycon-response-to- inappropriate.html)

<comment><USER25> Do we know that those pertain to the same incident? It seems likely to me that they don't.

<comment><USER26> They don't. One was at the testing BoF. <http://term.ie/blog/how-to-get- banned-from-pycon/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This was my first PyCon and I had an awesome time.

There were so many interesting talks and I have so many new ideas that I am going to hack on when I get home. It's a shame that I didn't meet as many people as I would have liked.

It's a real shame that all the good things that went on seem to have been forgotten.

</comment><comment><USER28> Thank you - so good to hear something positive.

</comment><comment><USER29> See, now this sounds like something I want to go to. It sounds like something that would directly benefit me and make me a stronger programmer.

I was surprised at how damaging the "incident" was to my perception of pycon overall. The only thing I really heard about the event was all this BS, so I'm glad that this post really informed of the true value and importance of events like these.

<comment><USER30> I would highly encourage you to go next year if you're on the fence. This was my first PyCon and it was phenomenal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> That's a very refreshing use of a link bait title for a change ;)

</comment><comment><USER32> This is good, it's sad that someone doing something stupid and making a spectacle had to overshadow people getting together and doing interesting stuff.

</comment><comment><USER33> I have to admit; I read this title and rolled my eyes. I came back to it an hour later just out of curiosity and what a pleasant surprise!

</comment><comment><USER34> "The last 24 hours have been some of the ugliest on the internet."

Uh, no. There are far far uglier things that happen on the internet. every. single. day.

</comment><comment><USER35> This is the PyCon news I wanted to see!

</comment><comment><USER36> How dare you linkbait non-gossip.

</comment><comment><USER25> Thank you for posting this. I wasn't at PyCon 2013, but I really wish the discussion would get back to the fact that 99% of what happens when technical people get together is positive and cool. It's really sad that the ridiculous 1% gets so much attention.

I actually don't think technology people are _that_ bad, not as a class. Most types of ambitious male business people are a _lot_ more vulgar and perverse than the technologists. VC-istan execs tend to have inappropriate, power- imbalanced office affairs, traders and bankers go strip clubs more often than is healthy... programmers swear slightly more than average and some are socially awkward. Not the same category.

<comment><USER37> That's an interesting point. I don't have any real basis to generalize, but I _have_ been in a number of situations where business people think that tech people are too politically correct. Coming from a general view that tech isn't really a role model in that category to begin with, that was surprising to encounter.

My limited time in Europe suggests that European culture on the whole is less attentive on this subject as well. Rather notable lapses in that category also occasionally make HN (<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3975588>) but usually it somehow avoids the radar, perhaps due to Europe otherwise having a reputation as progressive/liberal.

<comment><USER38> Without overgeneralizing too much, Europe does not have the same culture of political correctness as the US does. If someone makes a joke people get offended less quickly. In this case people would just think of the jokers as immature and move on.

The only exception I can think of is concerning the holocaust.

EDIT: Anyway, I can recommend anyone to live in another culture for some time in their life. First you will feel alienated or even offended by many of the things you hear and see. However if you look deep enough (and many people don't) you will understand that neither your culture nor theirs is right.

<comment><USER37> I'm an American who lives in Denmark, and I agree, but I'm not sure it is people getting offended less quickly in general, versus on specific subjects. There are plenty of ideas that Danes consider to be _completely_ crazy, not really debatable in polite company. For example, suggesting that abortion should be illegal, which is a mainstream position in the USA, is such a crazy- far-right position in Denmark that you couldn't bring it up in a regular social setting. Also, suggesting that healthcare should be a purely private responsibility, not guaranteed by the state, would position you as quite far- right, with even many far-right people distancing themselves from the full extent of that position.

On the other hand, Danes can come across as rather crass about some subjects, especially race.

<comment><USER39> I'm a Romanian.

> _suggesting that abortion should be illegal, which is a mainstream position > in the USA, is such a crazy-far-right position in Denmark_

Personally I think Americans are spoiled.

In Romania under Ceausescu (so before 1989) abortions were illegal. Hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of women (in a country with a population of less than 19 millions) ended up doing illegal abortions under unhealthy, unsanitary conditions. Many of them had health issues because of that, thousands died or were prosecuted for it.

Many of the women that didn't manage to get an abortion, ended up with unwanted children. Conditions were tough as we were living with harsh austerity measures, many of these parents barely had enough money to put food on the table, many of these children grew up in families that didn't want them, many of these unwanted children were given up for adoption, filling the streets with beggars.

Abortions may be murder, but making them illegal is also murder.

If you are interested in what happens when abortions are made illegal, there's a good documentary movie about what happened in Romania. Search for " _Copiii lui Ceausescu_ " (in translation " _Ceausescu's Children_ ")

<comment><USER40> Perhaps you are not aware-- that is precisely the same situation as in the United States until _Roe v. Wade_ in 1973. The phenomenon you're describing is pretty common knowledge in our left-wing political circles; on the right, it is deliberately ignored.

<comment><USER41> Uhm... no. This is factually incorrect. If it's "pretty common knowledge in [your] left-wing political circles", that's fairly pathetic. Roe v. Wade overrode state (and occasionally local)-level laws making abortion illegal, but it did not suddenly switch abortion from "illegal" to "legal" in the entire country. (How could that even happen... from a practical perspective?)

There were 193,491 legal abortions in the US in 1970. Prior to Roe v. Wade, abortion was a state-by-state matter, and the lines were being drawn in fairly predictable ways based on the right/left state-makeup of the time.

<comment><USER40> Your point is well-taken, but I don't think it actually goes against what I'm saying. Abortion in the US was not Federally illegal, but it was illegal for many women and many women died for that. That ended when _Roe_ established it as an affirmative right-- though perhaps not for good, as we're starting to see again entire states where legal abortions are simply not available.

I do appreciate the correction, though I'd have appreciated it more in a more constructive tone.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Sparkpost breaks promise to grandfather free accounts, deletes own blog posts - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/search <comment><AUTHOR> Context: In 2017 Mailchimp decided to let go of its transnational email service, Mandrill. They made an agreement with Sparkpost in which Sparkpost would "take on any departing Mandrill users and to honor Mandrill's pricing for those users" [0].

Sparkpost CEO wrote personally and very explicitly in the company's blog:

" I want to make a further commitment to you today: should the terms of our free tier of pricing ever change in the future, I promise we will nevertheless honor it for any customer currently enrolled at that tier, for the life of that account.

And for anyone who wonders if it's really possible for SparkPost to keep this promise, the answer, unequivocally, is yes. In his post last week, Alec explained why. I agree with his analysis one-hundred percent. " [1]

18 months later, Sparkpost changed their pricing model, yet said "

These changes notwithstanding, I would like to reaffirm a promise I made to honor the terms of our former 100K free plan for all existing customers of that plan. In fact, we are grandfathering all current customers, free or paid, into their current plan's sending volume and price point if they choose to remain on their existing plans. " [2]

Yesterday, the free tier users got an email saying their accounts will be terminated in September. All the relevant blog posts were removed from the company's blog.

A twitter rage ensued.

\----

[0] [https://www.sparkpost.com/blog/my-promise-to-developers- spar...](https://www.sparkpost.com/blog/my-promise-to-developers-sparkpost- pricing/)

[1] [https://web.archive.org/web/20160609035125/https://www.spark...](https://web.archive.org/web/20160609035125/https://www.sparkpost.com/blog/my- promise-to-developers-sparkpost-pricing/)

[2] [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:-GvlFr...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:-GvlFrLCYnQJ:https://www.sparkpost.com/blog/updated- service-plans/)

</comment><comment><USER2> since this twitter link does not seem valid, this topic should probably be merged...

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20448800](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20448800)

That being said, searching "sparkpost" on twitter today does yield some fun results...</comment>


The man who saved 'The Resurrection' (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16306893 <comment><USER2> "It was a brave action. Had Allied infantry been ambushed as they advanced on Sansepolcro, his court martial would have been brutal."

Yes very brave. I'm sure his reputation might have suffered as his fellow officers wrote home to all the families of the dead who would never see their loved ones again. He might even have lost his rank! Thank God he knew better than his superior officers. /s

I understand people can come down on both sides of this issue based on their priorities, but praising him for risking a "court martial" is silly. Considering what was at stake he barely risked anything at all to himself. The real risk was run, unknowingly, by the infantrymen tasked to take the town. He gambled with their lives, not his own.

It worked out this time, and maybe it was a good decision, maybe not, but he is certainly no hero.

</comment><comment><USER3> This was a stupid, selfish act. He endangered the objective of his unit. He endangered the lives of his fellow soldiers. He misled his superior officers. All this over a painting. A painting that has probably been copied many times. In my book, no piece of art, no matter how famous is worth a human life. I would gladly sacrifice even the Mona Lisa if saving it required endangering a human life.

</comment><comment><USER4> Amazing story. It's often (relatively) small, individual acts of heroism that preserve the best things in the world. Sometimes that means not doing what your boss asks when you know it will have unintended consequences.</comment>


This desk-sized turbine could power 10,000 homes - <AUTHOR> https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/04/this-desk-sized-turbine-could-power-10-000-homes/?utm_content=buffere0771&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer <comment><USER2> Its simply a turbine using CO2 instead of water as a medium to be used in existing facilities e.g. power stations.

Here is the original press release: [http://www.gereports.com/this-scientists- got-the-power-plant...](http://www.gereports.com/this-scientists-got-the- power-plant-in-his-hands/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Where does it get the energy to pressurize the carbon dioxide? Could that produce waste?

I'm not chemist, I'm genuinely interesting. It sounds exciting.

</comment><comment><USER4> and it will be available in 5 years!</comment>


Diagram as Code - <AUTHOR> https://diagrams.mingrammer.com/ <comment><USER3> This looks really neat! Is it possible to have embedded diagrams. For example, Gitlab lets you embed a PlantUML[1] diagram in any Markdown or ADoc file using a proxy server. This makes it really easy to write and serve documentation.

Personally, I'm a fan of PlantUML. Having an svg served in a browser that has labels linking directly to the relevant entity (code, resource etc) is a huge plus for new hire onboarding.

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

<comment><USER4> I wish plantUML would update it's default theme, I feel like more people would use it if it didn't look ancient.

<comment><USER5> I personally enjoy the style of it, but it could be described as "retro."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was hoping this tool would support directionality/sequencing of nodes.

A tool I've used in the past is SequenceDiagram.org for diagraming a sequence of service calls. While a bit old-school, it's good for its purpose.

I've also used Whimsical[0] to model flows and graph-like relationships. It's got the added benefit of allowing multiple users to view and edit the same document. Whimsical is still my favorite tool right now due to flexibility, but it's a closed-source/paid product, so I'm open to alternatives.

[0] [https://whimsical.com/](https://whimsical.com/)

<comment> dorian-graph What about mermaid-js? Here's a sequence diagram example: [https://mermaid- js.github.io/mermaid-live-editor/#/edit/eyJj...](https://mermaid- js.github.io/mermaid-live- editor/#/edit/eyJjb2RlIjoic2VxdWVuY2VEaWFncmFtXG5cdEFsaWNlLT4-K0pvaG46IEhlbGxvIEpvaG4sIGhvdyBhcmUgeW91P1xuXHRBbGljZS0-PitKb2huOiBKb2huLCBjYW4geW91IGhlYXIgbWU_XG5cdEpvaG4tLT4-LUFsaWNlOiBIaSBBbGljZSwgSSBjYW4gaGVhciB5b3UhXG5cdEpvaG4tLT4-LUFsaWNlOiBJIGZlZWwgZ3JlYXQhXG5cdFx0XHRcdFx0IiwibWVybWFpZCI6eyJ0aGVtZSI6ImRlZmF1bHQifSwidXBkYXRlRWRpdG9yIjp0cnVlfQ)

<comment><USER7> Exactly. PlantUML and Mermaid have really been very useful to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Slightly different, but there is now an VSCode extension to use draw.io directly in the editor.

[https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=hediet.v...](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=hediet.vscode- drawio)

If you don't know draw.io, it's an free diagram software that not only has an XML format to save them, but can also be used to save it as a PNG that EMBEDS said XML, so you can edit it again, but display it like a regular image.

</comment><comment><USER9> The author has made DSL in Python by (ab?)using context managers and the bitshift operator. It's very interesting, and I haven't seen anything quite like it.

Python can lend itself to horrific abuses through shenanigans like this. I sometimes feel that siren call myself, and usually regret it.

So by default I'm pretty skeptical of this kind of thing, but I'm actually on the fence about this one.

<comment><USER10> Check out Sagemath for an entire Mathematica thing done entirely through overloading.

<comment><USER9> Yes! A good point of comparison.

(n.b. I have only used SymPy, not Sagemath. I'm assuming they're similar)

I think sympy (and maybe sage) is a bit different because they're (mostly?) overloading operators for their intended purpose -- that is, the "+" operator does semantically add python objects that represent symbolic math.

<comment><USER10> Sagemath is a big package that includes sympy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have been thinking about using this for some diagrams, but whats been on the back of my mind since I heard about it is how to combine it with Terraform, or Troposphere, and have your infrastructure as code also draw the diagrams automatically.

<comment><USER12> IME diagrams resulting from production code are not helpful - code is full of boilerplate, irrelevant details and is generally made to solve a problem instead of being documentation.

...but if a tool that simplifies configuration or code into a diagramable state exists, i'd like to know :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is cool! I was hoping it would look something like:

''' import diagrams calc_d = diagrams.new_diagram("calculator_123")

calc_d.Datum("SuperNumber") class SuperNumber(int): pass

@calc_d.Service("Calculator", "takes numbers and operations and operates") class Calculator(object): @calc_d.Endpoint("Add", calls=["Increment"], main_data={"b": "SuperNumber}) def add(self, a, b: SuperNumber): out = a for i in range(b): calc_d.multi(calls=["Increment"]) out = self.increment(out)

      @calc_d.Function("Increment")
      def increment(self, a):
        return a+1

def integration_test(): calc_d.instantiate("Calculator") calc = Calculator() ... '''

EDIT: Dear dang and YC Hacker News, I would love to create code blocks using surrounding triple quotes..

<comment><USER14> Indent with 4 spaces at the start of each line for code blocks.

<comment><USER15> This is annoyingly difficult in a browser.

<comment><USER16> Just copy the text and use `sed` on your clipboard to transform your text.

On macOS:

        pbpaste | sed 's/^.*$/    &/' | pbcopy

<comment><USER17> Perhaps it's more readable/writeable with Awk:

        pbpaste | awk '{print "    "$0}' | pbcopy

Although this also seems to do the same thing

        pbpaste | sed 's/^/    &/' | pbcopy

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It seems to be hyperfocused on system architecture diagrams.

There are some other kinds of diagrams would we like to draw that's not system architecture diagrams, eg:

\- algorithms

\- decision trees

\- UML/ER Diagrams

Mermaid (JS) helps draw quality diagrams quickly - more than system architecture diagrams.

It would have been perfect if the development cycles that went here was used to create Mermaid templates instead.

Unless this also lets us draw more than just system architecture diagrams.

<comment><USER18> The focus would make sense to me if, say, it exported to initial terraform templates or something like that.

<comment><USER19> I'd prefer to avoid text blob artifacts if this was being used at work with plenty of text blobs to babysit already

IMO the end days for TF and YAML engineering are close, at least for new work

It's all HTTP APIs. Build a web UX and store the state in a DB.

SRE/ops people ...at work just use the methods everyone else does

Unless the company still has hardware, cloud ops/SRE is just making their lives harder to be different

<comment><USER20> > It's all HTTP APIs. Build a web UX and store the state in a DB.

Please no. Don't make running a stateful service a requirement for tooling people need to use when the world is on fire. Or needs to load 40Mb of JS to rebuild a deployment, and works only on Chrome 46.012.2039465. Ops/SRE/DevOps/SysAdmin/SysOps/etc _are_ different, and have optimised things to reduce the amount of dependancies.

<comment><USER21> What's the alternative you'd recommend?

<comment><USER20> The explicit, declarative model, using tools that don't need a ton of other things deployed.

Ideally the same tool can be run locally and in CI (with the same invocation commands) so that an Op can run tests locally, and even see the potential diff, before putting it up for review.

The advantage of this approach is you can see a diff, and use standard tooling like git / pr reviews to approve changes in day to day, and when the world is on fire, someone can break the glass and run it locally.

Never underestimate the value of peer review on a change to the infra - <USER2> is a reason things like ITIL exist, and we should learn from them.

<comment><USER7> > The advantage of this approach is you can see a diff, and use standard > tooling like git / pr reviews to approve changes in day to day, and when the > world is on fire, someone can break the glass and run it locally.

sounds sweet. imagine applying gerrit to infra

> there is a reason things like ITIL exist, and we should learn from them

spot on.

That said, I am unsure if most people here are ITIL aware/certified.

TBH, the primary reason why I am familiar with ITIL is our clients from Accenture days requires certification to win contracts.

<comment><USER20> > sounds sweet. imagine applying gerrit to infra

Yeah, it is cool - [https://opendev.org/](https://opendev.org/) is done that way, as is some of the wikimedia labs infrastructure

I am not certified either - I have just worked in places with ITIL inspired processes, but I can really see a way they can move forward with tools like terraform / pulumi / ansible and git

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Why do we need a tool to draw its architecture and we don't have a tool which auto discover the architecture and auto updates it and draw it form here ?

That will shrink the gap between the current architecture and the current diagram that almost always exists

<comment><USER23> xloudcraft.com auto-generates and updates from live account and gives you info like cost etc.

Looks really.i.ptessive

<comment><USER23> cloudcraft.com

Stupid mobile keyboards...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I just created a Dockerfile to run: [https://github.com/skhaz/diagrams](https://github.com/skhaz/diagrams)

</comment><comment> seph-reed When I was ~10yrs old, I would play with a program called RPG Maker 2000. It had a really interesting code system where you could click blocks of code and it would bring up a UI for modifying them. It was always simple stuff like if/else, for, switch.. but it merged the simplicity of clicking dropdowns and the like with the complexity of actually seeing the code and learning to read and navigate it. You could also go rogue and write custom code.

I still think that this solution has more life to it and would like to explore that some day.

</comment><comment><USER24> Slight tangent, but some of the cool tools noted in the comments remind me of some of the amazing things put out by Netflix engineering in recent years, like Vizceral^1 and Flux^2.

1\. [https://github.com/Netflix/vizceral/wiki](https://github.com/Netflix/vizceral/wiki)

2\. [https://link.medium.com/LY2vw4Rsr6](https://link.medium.com/LY2vw4Rsr6)

(Sorry about the Medium.com link; all I could grab on the spot on phone)

</comment><comment><USER25> When I first read this I thought this did the inverse of what it actually does. Let you interactively draw out diagrams then it would generate the boilerplate code to achieve that diagram.

<comment><USER26> I have the exact seem disappointment ;(. As we evolve towards a world were low code will become a part of everday tools, diagram generating code is to me a good answer, at least on a scaffolding level...

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> my favorite: [https://plantuml.com/](https://plantuml.com/)

<comment><USER7> PlantUML and Mermaid have really been very useful to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've got a similar project which takes a diagram of your infrastructure, such as [1] and runs the diagram to build your devops infrastructure [2].

[1]: [http://devops-pipeline.com/architecture.tb.png](http://devops- pipeline.com/architecture.tb.png) [2]: [http://devops- pipeline.com/](http://devops-pipeline.com/)

<comment><USER14> Interesting. That was going to be my next question!

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I was recently looking for something similar, allowing me to draw network diagrams using text or code. I came across [0] which looks great, but has some rough corners and seems to be abandoned by he author. Does anyone have any other recommendations for more bare-metal oriented topologies?

[0] [http://go.drawthe.net/](http://go.drawthe.net/)

</comment><comment><USER30> If you are interested in this kind of thing please check out the blockdiag series of tools (seqdiag, rackdiag, netdiag, etc) I haven't looked back since I started using them other than a workplace that uses lucidchart.

[http://blockdiag.com/en/](http://blockdiag.com/en/)

</comment><comment><USER31> Sent this to a few people at work and it spread pretty quickly. We all love it!

</comment><comment><USER32> > from diagrams import Diagram

Slightly off-topic, but I wish JavaScript's import syntax was designed to be this way around, for better autocomplete in your editor.

<comment><USER33> SELECT column FROM table

:(

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Why the obsession with product names and logos? Having a Python class for a specific product is not necessary.

...and then people talk about CV-driven development...

</comment><comment><USER20> I like this a lot - trying to store diagrams that look good, without sticking a visio file into a git repo is something I keep an eye out for.

<comment><USER35> You may also find value in diagram.codes (I'm the author)

It's focused on non technical users so the syntax will always be very simple (at the cost of flexibility but that's on purpose).

<comment><USER7> > diagram.codes

looks fascinating. is this closed source?

Can I run this over an API or a local container?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This looks pretty cool and has as nice modern look to it. I can see did a good job with the layout/design too.

If you don't mind sharing (or if anyone knows of any toolkits/libraries): I wanted to try getting at drawing some custom diagrams and was unsure where to begin coding just project. Any know of anything that comes to mind?

</comment><comment><USER37> This is great. Code needs to replace more drag n drop tools, at the very least to give people options.

</comment><comment><USER38> Came here half-expecting to see probabilistic programming implemented via Direct Acyclic Graphs (DAGs). This is cool, too, though.

</comment><comment><USER39> Thanks for sharing! This is really cool.

</comment><comment><USER40> So, how well does this compare to graphviz? Seems a heck of a lot more verbose.

<comment><USER34> Graphviz is way more flexible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> this is going to send me down a rabbit hole for a long long time .... there was another thread some months ago about an architecture diagraming tool that reads the code and outputs architecture based on methods.

</comment><comment><USER42> Why is this better than Mermaid? It works in Markdown, you can version control, and Git(Hub|Lab) displays it automatically.

I'm really curious. Maybe for doing something programmatically, but GraphViz may be better.

<comment><USER43> > Why is this better than Mermaid?

It isn't. Apples and oranges; Mermaid deals with UML-ish type diagrams whereas 'Diagram as Code' is illustrating cloud system architecture.

> but GraphViz may be better

GraphViz is actually doing the rendering. You might want to take a moment and study the site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> cool stuff</comment>


Amateur ISIS Investigator Ends Up in Prison - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/us/an-amateur-vs-isis-a-car-salesman-investigates-and-ends-up-in-prison.html <comment><USER2> Holy Moly.

> Without access to his records, prison psychologists assumed his tales of > talking to Islamic State members were fiction, symptoms of a mental illness > that made him incompetent to stand trial. Prosecutors sought a hearing to > decide whether he should be forcibly medicated.

<comment><USER3> This is sadly common. There was a famous case where a woman in a car accident was committed to a psychiatric prison because they didn't believe that Obama followed her on Twitter. Psychs believe that anyone who claims to know famous people is insane, just like cops believe everyone they encounter in the beat who looks sketchy is a criminal. Psychiatry is petty in the same way as police: anyone who seems "better" than the official is taken down a notch using the official's power.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Guy was clearly unstable and in over his head. Not against the law mind you, but his mental health was deteriorating (by his own mothers admission) and he began threatening FBI agents.

The 14 months in prison without due process could have been expanded on more in the article, there was next to no info regarding that situation which leaves the reader with a fair few unanswered questions.

<comment><USER5> What's there to say? Involuntary mental health commitment in the US is a disaster. The doctors operating state-run mental health prisons are overworked and underqualified. And, if you've had run-ins with the doctors operating _private_ mental health hospitals, you know that's saying something!

Lopez was apparently armed and, from the picture painted in this article, pretty much unhinged. Something needed to be done. But the only "something" the criminal justice system has in its bag of things is, by pretty much all accounts everywhere, a total debacle.

Are things better in other countries? Who's doing this well? What does Norway do?

<comment><USER6> In The Netherlands I imagine it would go like this:

He would annoy the AIVD (or RIVD?), at some point possibly breaking a law (the threat). The AIVD isn't authorised to arrest I think, so they would make a complaint and a police officer would come to his door, interrogate him, recognise the mental health issues and send a note to his physician.

The physician would call the guy and try to get him into a voluntary institution or at least to see some kind of therapist on a weekly basis. Let's say the guy is unreceptive to his.

Next step is that a social worker in his neighbourhood (this is a new system called wijkteam) is assigned to him that will visit his residence once a week. The worker will knock on his door and try to connect and build trust, family and friends are encouraged to participate in this process.

If the guy screws up too bad though, and the police gets involved another time or two the physician will be asked to authorise an involuntary treatment and he would end up in an institution of which would be much like a rich state in the US (NY, CA) one I think.

Note that nowhere in this process there would be a solitary confinement or separation from his family. That might happen in the NL but I can't imagine it would ever happen for more than a few days.

<comment><USER5> NY and CA state-run mental hospitals are deeply unpleasant and staffed with overworked, underqualified doctors who have caseloads consisting of the very most difficult patients in numbers that would overwhelm private-practice doctors even if they were just teenagers with mild eating disorders. Is that the case in the Netherlands as well?

(For whatever it's worth: the NYT piece doesn't say Lopez was ever held in solitary, or that he was denied visitation by his family --- but solitary confinement is a distinctive US problem and a legit contrast to draw with the Netherlands).

<comment><USER7> > solitary confinement is a distinctive US problem

Not really, it's a problem in Europe too. We just don't talk about it.

If you get arrested here in Finland, you'll by default be in solitary and will remain so until the cops, not the courts, feel like letting you out.

<comment><USER8> Has anyone tried to challenge that sort of thing in the European Court of Human Rights?

<comment><USER7> Yes, and Finland for example has consistently lost. The problem is that in practice these court decisions only end up benefiting the individuals bringing the suits, as it's almost impossible for public workers to get fired here they can safely ignore those decisions in most cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I found the most surprising aspect of the article was the guy absolutely refusing to believe that his Skype contact was phony and trying to scam money from him, even when the very law enforcement he so trusted to help "save the hostages" 1/2 way across the world told him so.

I wonder what sort of physiological issues must be present, and why, that allows someone to be sucked so deeply into believing the fantasy of the situation, even in the face of overwhelming evidence, and how that very thing exists in so many other decisions that confront people.

<comment><USER10> I just finished a book[1] that explains this pretty clearly. Dissonance between reality and a person's self-image (i.e. "I am difficult to fool") is often 'resolved' in favor of the more important factor, which is the person's self-image. So they deny reality.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Mistakes-Were-Made-But- Not/dp/B003HFFI...](http://www.amazon.com/Mistakes-Were-Made-But- Not/dp/B003HFFIUM/)

<comment><USER11> That book looks very interesting, but note that you link to an old edition. The new edition is here:

[http://www.amazon.com/Mistakes-Were-Made-but- Not/dp/05445747...](http://www.amazon.com/Mistakes-Were-Made-but- Not/dp/0544574788)

This URL also lets you preview the book with a "Look Inside" link.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This guy was really asking for trouble when he went ballistic on an FBI agent, from the article:

 _he sent an agent 80 increasingly overheated messages in 10 days. In one, he declared, "Just remember whatever ends up happening to you … You deserved it," and added an expletive._

<comment><USER13> Valid reason to arrest him. Not a valid reason to sit in prison for 14 months, with no due process, trial, etc.

Edit: Also, to me, the context is fairly clear that the "threat" of "whatever ends up happening to you" is talking about the potential embarrassment or career consequences to the agent around ignoring advice that might save some hostage. He was (incorrectly) convinced he was trying to save lives, and frustrated that nobody would take him seriously.

<comment><USER5> Just to be clear: he was in prison for a portion of his detention, after being arrested for making the threat and being informed by his mother that he was armed. He was then moved to involuntary psychiatric commitment.

The article is unclear on the amount of time he spent in each kind of detention, but gives the strong impression --- by marking time in terms of psychiatric evaluations --- that most of it was spent in psychiatric inpatient detention.

<comment><USER13> >>most of it was spent in psychiatric inpatient detention

Apparently, mostly because extremely important information needed to make a serious psychological evaluation wasn't made available to the medical people doing those evaluations.

See this image from the article: [https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/04/24/us/24salesman- psy...](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/04/24/us/24salesman- psych/24salesman-psych-articleLarge.jpg) They finally got the information on his 3rd eval, which is what led to his release. All charges were dropped at that point.

<comment><USER5> Maybe. But the documents make a pretty compelling case for mental illness, because they also indicate that he expected to talk to the President about freeing Kayla Mueller, and became unhinged after she died. Lopez's grandiose claims about his connections to ISIS _were in fact fictional_ \--- it looks like he was being set up for an advance-fee scam.

None of this is meant to excuse the criminal mental health care system in the US, which is, I think, criminal.

I think it took over a year in Lopez's case because pretty much nobody gives a shit about people in this system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you live in England and think this kind of psychiatric detention needs stronger controls you might be interested in looking at becoming a "Mental Health Act Manager", or "Hospital Manager". This is often a voluntary position that looks at some detentions under the Mental Health Act and sometimes orders the de-sectioning of people detained under section.

[http://www.mentalhealthcare.org.uk/mental_health_act](http://www.mentalhealthcare.org.uk/mental_health_act)

[https://www.rethink.org/resources/m/mental-health- act](https://www.rethink.org/resources/m/mental-health-act)

[https://www.rethink.org/living-with-mental-illness/mental- he...](https://www.rethink.org/living-with-mental-illness/mental-health- laws/discharge-from-detention)

In England it's rare to become a mental health inpatient. Only about 8% of the people getting care from mental health trusts ever go in-patient. Some of that is lack of beds (especially for children), but mostly it's because hospitals are sometimes harmful (This is true for physical health too) and people should get better care from "Crisis Resolution and Home Treatment Teams" (for short term emergency care) and community teams (for longer term recovery and rehabilitation).

But if you think it's something that might happen you should probably think about advanced directives, and sorting out who your "nearest relative is", and getting a crisis plan set up.

</comment><comment><USER15> People are saying he was "unhinged" or mentally ill, but it sounds like he was simply sucked into an online scam. That happens to normal people all the time (even professionals through "whaling"). If you believe your scammer, and he tells you about freeing hostages, and those stories corroborate with what you hear on the news, then what normal person wouldn't get agitated and emotional? That doesn't sound like mental illness, it sounds like normal reaction to finding out that the one person who could save some hostages is refusing to cooperate. Don't forget his friend was actually killed in Afghanistan so he's got some genuine emotional connection to these troubles already, making the other stories easier to believe perhaps.

What would you do if you believed you had a way to free a hostage and the FBI just told you to get some sleep? When the hostage was killed, what would you say to that FBI worker? Normal mentally healthy people would get angry and obsessive when they believe they're being impeded from saving lives. I've seen more extreme reactions for far lesser problems.

<comment><USER16> I would consider getting some sleep.

I agree with your point about the emotional involvement, but honestly, this is an unemployed former car salesman and restaurant manager. For him to think he's legitimately negotiating release of hostages over twitter and skype... sure, maybe, but it falls into the 'requires extraordinary evidence' bucket for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Off topic, but why does the NYT website have a 'show full article' button (on mobile at least)?

<comment><USER18> Guessing, but probably to get more accurate engagement stats. It would be better to assume a user has read most or all of the article if they clicked that button. Maybe also a way of determining if the introductory paragraphs were written in an engaging way, because they determine whether I will continue reading or not.

<comment><USER19> Seems like monitoring the scroll position would have the same (or better) effect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Contacting fake ISIS members and FBI agents is one thing.

Really sad that he was contacting american hostages families.

</comment><comment><USER21> Man who made a vague threat against FBI agent is disappeared for 14 months.

<comment><USER5> I know this is just a drive-by comment, but on the off chance you don't actually know the difference between unjust detention and "disappearing", I'll spell it out:

* Lopez was apprehended in daylight at his house by uniformed police acting on an arrest warrant. The disappeared are snatched by anonymous or covert paramilitaries.

* Lopez was taken to the NY Metropolitan Corrections Center. The disappeared are tortured and killed.

* Lopez' family was aware of his location throughout his ordeal. The families of the disappeared never know that, which is why they're called "disappeared".

* Lopez was released. The disappeared usually stay disappeared.

<comment><USER21> You're right, it was an exaggeration, to highlight the fact that he was held and not tried for fourteen months, and charges were only dropped when an evaluator finally got access to evidence that should have been available from the beginning. How much longer would he have been disappeared in plain sight if the government were able to suppress evidence/information even longer?

(And yes, I know the difference.)

<comment><USER5> Maybe. But I don't think that's what happened. What I think happened was, the guy was involuntarily committed through the criminal justice process, and so like everyone admitted to psychiatric inpatient care --- under any circumstances --- he was stuck until the facilities got sick of him or he lucked into a doctor that actually gave a fraction of a shit about him.

Unfortunately for him, private psychiatric inpatients are there on the dollar of their insurance companies, and so there's an implicit clock ticking on their stay. The same is not the case for the utterly unaccountable state-run involuntary mental health care system.

<comment><USER21> Then why would the prosecutor be motivated to have him "forcibly medicated?" They clearly were taking an interest in his "treatment."

<comment><USER5> What do you think involuntary psychiatric commitment is? This is what it is. Yes! The prosecutors believed --- with some justification --- that Lopez was crazy. The system is set up to err on the side of indefinite psychiatric detention.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>