RMS: GitHub has done terrible harm to our community - <AUTHOR> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnu-system-discuss/2019-11/msg00277.html <comment><USER2> Maybe it has done harm to GNU and the GPL, since they have become less relevant. But despite its problems, GitHub has been a huge net positive for free software. They considerably lowered the bar for making a project available. SourceForge acted as gatekeepers and rejected projects. With GitHub, anyone could start a project and no-one would look down on you and tell you that your project is not novel enough or whatever.

GitHub also drastically lowered the bar for contributing to free software. Contributing to a project used to mean subscribing to a mailing list, submitting a patch there, and not much would usually happen. With GitHub you fork, submit a PR, get your PR automatically built and unit tested with CI, the project owner can merge your PR with a single button click. It's fine to prefer an e-mail patch workflow, but GitHub has shown that for most of the population, submitting patches through PRs is a much lower bar.

At this point, GitHub is largely unnecessary. Most of the features have been copied and reimplemented better in FLOSS alternatives such as GitLab, Gitea, Gogs, etc. But since they were one of the first, people will stay due to network effects.

<comment><USER3> > SourceForge acted as gatekeepers and rejected projects.

Did it? I remember starting two projects which made not much sense at all. I vaguely remember the process was automatic then. Has it changed with time?

<comment><USER2> Maybe it has changed later. In the mid 2000s, you definitely had to wait for approval. Some of my projects were rejected. There is still some documentation around the net about approval:

 _Once you complete your registration, you must wait a few days for the SourceForge administrators to review your request and set up the infrastructure. You should receive an email response informing you of the project 's creation when it is ready. You can check the status of any of your project requests by visiting your SourceForge home page: [http://sourceforge.net/users/your-userid/](http://sourceforge.net/users/your- userid/) . There, you can view all of your SourceForge projects. Also, on the 'my projects' page you can see all your projects regardless of their approval status._

Source: [https://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-Plugging-into- Sourc...](https://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-Plugging-into- SourceForge/sourceforge.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There is being direct and then there is speaking like an edgy teenager for entirety of your adult life. It's so difficult to take Stallman seriously when he makes these extreme generalisations.

<comment><USER5> I think he really just speaks his mind, I'm not sure he is trying to be edgy or anything, he always had quite radical ideas and positions. I mean people have been calling him a lunatic for years, he has been fighting for free software and warning people about proprietary software and the obvious risks it carries. Despite being proven right about quite a lot he warned about, people views never really changed about him.

<comment><USER6> What exactly do you consider radical about his position in this instance?

<comment><USER7> Radical might not be my choice of words, but he's got a certain type of ideological purity around free software that's definitely on the extreme end.

Here's a paraphrased version of what he's saying:

"GitHub [...] has done terrible harm to our community.

GitHub was so bad for free software, all along[.]"

Now, if you were to define "our community" as the open source community, this would be laughable - very few people would argue that open source software has been terribly harmed by GitHub (on the contrary, the rise of GitHub has seen many projects flourish). I don't necessarily think he means the wider open source community, though - he's referring to his own Stallman flavor of free software.

<comment><USER6> I absolutely agree. His lack of self-awareness and seeming inability to see the generally positive aspects of the growth of open source just doesn't sound radical to me. Quite the opposite in fact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is just RMS being consistent. He's never liked non-GNU licenses, and considers anything that allows the use of open source code in closed source projects to be the spawn of the devil. He'll continue saying this until his dying breath.

That said, GNU and the GPL have been very helpful, sometimes instrumental, in fostering and protecting open source code and developers, so I'll put up with his ivory tower vision for the practical benefits it's brought us.

Call him crazy (and he probably is), but he's been a net benefit to society, which is a lot more than most achieve.

<comment><USER9> > _considers anything that allows the use of open source code in closed source > projects to be the spawn of the devil. He 'll continue saying this until his > dying breath._

I claim that RMS has never said _anything_ like that, and I challenge _anyone_ to prove otherwise.

He's consistently said that it's _better_ if software was copylefted (like GPL) than if it was simply free software (like BSD), but he has consistently reserved the, like you say, "spawn of the devil"-type categorization for proprietary software and worse, like malware, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> GitHub probably did more good for the FOSS community than any other project I can think of. Before GitHub, it was so difficult to share code. Solutions available weren't anywhere close. I don't understand why he wants every little piece of software to be open sourced. GitHub was attractive to investors because it had closed source projects that have to pay in order to use it. I don't see how GitHub was going to succeed if they were purely open source and no-one was paying to use it. Those proprietary projects that he so hates are the ones who were keeping the lights on. They are the ones which were giving Investors hope than GitHub will make lots of money in future and they must invest more.

<comment><USER11> If you wanted to use that little piece of code, wouldn't it be better if it was open source? I remember when you could only get exe and projects didnt even think of sharing the code, even if it was just some small project.

<comment><USER10> If it is a library, I will prefer an open source one, but if it is some software, I don't mind even when it is closed source.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is his comment based on outdated information? I just checked and github appears to recognize a few dozen ([https://help.github.com/en/github/creating- cloning-and-archi...](https://help.github.com/en/github/creating-cloning-and- archiving-repositories/licensing-a-repository#searching-github-by-license- type)) license types including gpl2, gpl3 and lgpl

<comment> em-bee RMS argues against _licensing under only a single version of the GPL_

obviously he prefers "GPL2 or later" and "GPL3 or later"

does github offer that?

<comment><USER13> Yes.

[https://help.github.com/en/github/creating-cloning-and- archi...](https://help.github.com/en/github/creating-cloning-and-archiving- repositories/licensing-a-repository)

[https://choosealicense.com](https://choosealicense.com)

<comment> em-bee it takes some searching, but when one selects GPLv3 then the default text does indeed include the "or later" clause.

so not only is it an option, but it is the default option, because an extra step is needed to change that.

unfortunately, in my opinion, the whole choosealicense site could be improved a lot. for example the license templates could be actual form fields letting you fill in the details needed, and then producing a license text that is correctly filled out. as it is, some users will likely miss some fields

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> RMS has done terrible harm to our community

<comment><USER15> maybe he has recently... but he is one of the founders of it.

<comment><USER16> No, OSS predates Stallman.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> How does GitHub encourage sloppy licensing? How is GitHub bad for free software?

<comment><USER18> I think the reason is that GitHub lowers the barrier of entry to distribution of OSS.

This makes more people distribute OSS, and most devs do probably not care as much about OSS licensing as RMS would like and therefore do "mistakes".

RMS has a high horse stance, I think that easier access to OSS is better even though it might come with some side effects.

<comment><USER19> It's way easier for him to have a high horse about doing FOSS "correctly" when he was in an academic environment with different pressures for most of his career. There'd be a different tune sung if he were an average Joe with business requirements to fulfill.

<comment><USER20> You do realize that he is not an average Joe with business requirements to fulfill __because __he decided to mount that high horse, right ?

This argument of 'Oh, he'd be singing a different tune if he had to deal with today's reality' is so naive.

The fact that he doesn't (/doesn't have to) deal with everyday reality is his whole point -- he has claimed that it is unrealistic to use software that confirms to his set of values, so he denied to participate in that reality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Seems a weird sentiment to me. GitHub, as is, is largely a throw back to an older time that RMS sought to recreate. when people just wanted to share code, without much motive beyond that.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm sorry, but I don't see it.

> GitHub's encouragement of sloppy licensing, no licensing, or licensing under > only a single version of the GPL, has done terrible harm to our community.

There's many projects out there that are meant to be open source, but the author never put a license on it, so it's, legally speaking, "all rights reserve" and you aren'y even allowed to use the software yourself. Github doesn't really encourage this; in fact, it even offers initializing a new repo with a license, but it still happens that project owners just don't

> GitHub was so bad for free software, all along, that I could imagine > Microsoft's making it less bad

First of all, this is obviously just his opinion; I can't really attack or defend it like "good" or "bad" are some sort of mathematical constants. The fact is: github _does_ serve as a platform for non-free software (heck, every single one of my projects is either MIT or public domain, which means it can be put into a closed-source project), so if your ultimate goal is for all software to be "free" in the FSF sense, then yes, github has caused much harm.

> We should judge by what actually happens, not by prejudice.

This statement is so obviously correct, there's just no way you could interpret it in any unreasonable way.

</comment><comment><USER23> Interesting how RMS now views Apple as being worse than Microsoft.

</comment><comment><USER24> Can someone explain the issue with slopy licensing and what is RMS?

<comment><USER25> While GitHub encourages licensing and even help users with a dedicated menu for it they don't enforce it or help in making licensing decisions which in the eyes or RMS (Richard Matthew Stallman) is bad

<comment><USER24> Ok, this RMS's view not GNU. Now it makes sense. Thanks, Man!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > GitHub's encouragement of sloppy licensing, no licensing, or licensing under > only a single version of the GPL, has done terrible harm to our community.

> GitHub was so bad for free software, all along, that I could imagine > Microsoft's making it less bad, or making it more bad. We should judge by > what actually happens, not by prejudice.

> Keep in mind that Apple is much worse than Microsoft.

The title this thread "Github has done terrible harm to our community." is a very selective quote.

</comment><comment><USER27> It did, by making Git a monoculture. It's very difficult to get a project to take off if it's not on Github. When Github goes down, so do the majority of important projects, breaking builds and causing chaos across the developer world. It didn't have to be like this. Git hosting should've been distributed like GNU Social/Mastodon.

</comment><comment><USER28> Open source not free source get the movement above the ground. Sometimes what start (rms), what help (Linus) may not be the one that make it great.

</comment><comment><USER29> Stallman being Stallman, let's move on people.

</comment><comment><USER30> This guy was my hero growing up because I'm fairly certain that the things the initial community set up is why open source is so common today.

But now he needs a handler. My god, man. Get it together.

<comment><USER31> A handler _now_? The linked article is classic RMS: pedantic, relentless, and reasoning so nuanced to the point of being indecipherable if not imperceptible to all but the few who have spent countless hours wrestling with RMS' ideas.

If you assume RMS is smarter than you, or at least more analytically rigorous (like a computer)[1], then you'd be hard pressed to find anything RMS has said which isn't consistent with the entire body of his thinking--including his opinions on certain age-related matters _and_ his recognition of and apology for the insensitive manner in which he expressed them. Which isn't to say you would consequentially agree with him, just that his reasoning is about as impeccable as is possible for such insoluble human social issues. You almost always end up having to wrestle with and reject his premises, which can be difficult because his premises are often agreeable on their face. But by doing so you develop and strengthen your own views. RMS is like Socrates, a pacemaker in a race, or the Energizer Bunny--absolutely exhausting, but if you're disengaging then more likely than not _you 're_ the one falling behind, not him. Which is fine--the biggest premise of all is that any of this matters, and if you have your doubts it's impossible to match his stamina; just don't pretend like he's the one slowing down or tripping up.

[1] I want to say that one should simply apply the HN rule of assuming the best version of the argument. But RMS almost always puts forth the best version of the argument, at least from a logical perspective, though certainly not necessarily a rhetorical perspective. Thus with RMS the better habit is assuming he's smarter than you, regardless of whether that's true or not, as it forces you to identify and trace the elements and threads of his reasoning, which are invariably present in plain sight.

<comment><USER30> The world's changed, man. He didn't. That's all there is to it.

<comment><USER32> He need not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> There is some awful stuff in that thread, like this gem [1]:

      After microsoft puchased Github, they encouraged "Codes of Conduct".
      So now 40k "opensource projects" hace CoC's.
      Obviously men won't be contributing to said projects, other than
      the people allready in them.

[1] [https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnu-system- discuss/2019-1...](https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnu-system- discuss/2019-11/msg00282.html)

<comment><USER34> Obviously it's hyperbole - but a lot of people are definitely put off by coc, myself included. It's a wretched, insidious text sneaked in by very bad actors into mainstream open source repositories.

<comment><USER35> The great thing about CoC is that they tend to be self-reinforcing, keeping out exactly the people who are bound to conduct themselves in ways that are inconsistent with the principles behind them.

<comment><USER34> before coc was snuck into these repos, was it just a shitshow of nasty people acting a fool in open source communities? I don't remember it that way.

<comment><USER13> I recommend you Google the name Linus Torvalds. You will find some truly shocking language directed at his fellow human beings.

<comment><USER36> Linus' use of explicit language was exactly something that should be used as an example. He rarely attacked people, but instead attacked the actions that they did or ideas that they had.

<comment><USER13> """My flippant attacks in emails have been both unprofessional and uncalled for. Especially at times when I made it personal."""

[https://www.businessinsider.com/linus-torvalds-linux-time- aw...](https://www.businessinsider.com/linus-torvalds-linux-time-away- empathy-2018-9)

<comment><USER36> He made those remarks after he pretty much was forced to "professionalize" by The Foundation.

I do agree however that at no times should criticism of code or work become personal.

<comment><USER13> I'm not sure what point you're making here? In hindsight, he views his words as inappropriate. I'm not sure I understand what the temporal distance between the words and the apology has to do with how appropriate they were.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Gate keeping

Imagine doing the wonderful things RMS did in the past, being a hero of both FOSS and software in general. Imagine then being remembered for the ahole tricks that came later instead.

Github opened up both software and FOSS to me. I found projects despite not having a computer science education, not working full time in software, not having a personal network of academic buddies, not using irc. Very occasionally I contributed, and my submissions were taken on the value of the bugs I fixed, despite my lack of reputation.

RMS is a gatekeeping mysogynist pxxxx. He is failing to damage the community despite his best efforts because he has marginalised himself by his behaviour.

Ps. I haven't started a repo on github in a while, but I firmly remember it suggesting you add a license, and linking to explanations of the different licences. Did RMS want them to force it on you?</comment>


A day made of glass - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=6Cf7IL_eZ38&vq=medium

<comment><USER2> not reality - since they changed sides of the bed from the start to the end of the commercial - totally unrealistic.

</comment><comment><USER3> A nice middle class family. Oh, wait, ...</comment>


Launch HN: Lvlup – your personal habit trainer - <AUTHOR> Hello world,
I'm excited to share with you my side project I've been working on for the last couple of months.
lvlup is a habit trainer app, which uses science-based methods and insights to help you develop new healthy habits and get you into the right mindset to build a better you. It tailors around your goals and sends personalized notifications to keep you motivated throughout the habit-building process. Each new habit is a 30-day quest you take, which will bring you rewards if you complete them consistently.
The whole idea of the app is to make you consistently repeat an action for 30-days until it becomes a habit. It leverages the smart notifications/reminders and the gamification model to help you do that.
https://lvlup.app
Play Store - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lvlup.android
App Store - https://apps.apple.com/app/id1499267060
Keep in mind this is the first public version of the app and it has a long way to grow and improve, but the basic functionality is done so I decided to share it with the public to get some feedback. The app is completely FREE for now, but it will have premium features in the future.
I am really excited to share this with you and I am looking forward to hearing what you think about it! <comment><USER2> As somebody who has a bad habit of downloading lots of apps I want to try, and then never tries most of them, the biggest thing that prevents me from trying an app is when I have to sign up for an account before I can see how it works. These apps are very much a subjective choice based on how the app works and the GUI. I don't like giving out my email to an app that I may not keep for long if it doesn't fit my needs. If the app is already regarded highly I'm more likely to give it a try anyway, but with new competitors in a sea of other habit tracking apps claiming to be backed by science and to be taking "a different approach" I'm more skeptical.

This is not to criticize your app of course, or to single you out. I haven't tried it because I'm not sure how it works and I'd rather not give out my email until I think that I might actually like to give it a shot and stick with it. Maybe I care a bit more about my privacy than the average person, but it feels a bit like walking into a brick-and-mortar store and the sales person asking for my name and phone number first thing. For iOS even adding sign in with Apple (which I believe is now required by the App Store guidelines if you offer other options like Google or Facebook) would make this better for me personally so that I can use private email forwarding.

<comment><USER3> Hi and thanks you for your feedback! The account is used so that your information is stored in the cloud so even if you lose or change your device your data is still there. I understand this may be a privacy issue, but you can always use the manual sign up method and type a random email, name and password to login and try the app :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love apps like todoist because I have my habits (daily tasks) and my irregular tasks defined in one place.

Apps that purely try to target habits end are confusing because you have to build the habit of using the app before you can build the habit of using the app. Since the app's content doesn't really change. It gets boring after a while and I stop using it.

Apps that track my irregular tasks as well as my regular ones force me to check in every day so I can see whats new.

<comment><USER3> Hi, thanks for the feedback! You are right it is a bit unusual to use at first, but the idea of this app is to give you or rather help you gain new habits, with every feature being designed for that, not just tracking it as another task in the to-do list. The current state of the app doesn't really reflect it's full potential, but the goal is to improve it over time with feedback from users and to make it a valuable tool which will help you easily gain or break habits. lvlup takes the gaming approach to developing new habits, by you taking habit quests and completing challenges, upgrading your character, having live challenges with friends and etc. on your way to achieving the habit. The ideas is to make the process an adventure.</comment></comment>


One A Day - <AUTHOR> http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2008/03/one-a-day.html

<comment><USER2> I think <http://thefeelgood.com/> also has this constraint, and they explain somewhere that it's for the same reasons.

<comment><USER3> " Q. Why can I only upload 1 song per day?

A. Our goal is quality over quantity. We found that limiting uploads to one song per day makes people really think about the music they are uploading and only post the best songs that they can think of. However, you can upload up to six songs for the next six days and they will be published automatically. "

from: <http://thefeelgood.com/static/faq>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Constraints can be good. The article reminded me of the tales of 'oldschool' hackers saying that lacking resources of early computers forced them to write good and compact code. The scarcity of a resource obviously leads to this resource being valued higher than if it would be available in abundance.

What I find noteworthy, however, are his examples: the resources described are constrained artificially, yet are still valued higher than if not constrained (and competing services not constraining the resource (Flickr or normal Blogs in his example) couldn't destroy this mechanism).

When, however, does this mechanism take place? When email accounts where strongly constrained in storage space, GMail with its then 1Gig storage was seen as liberation (the opposite effect).

</comment><comment><USER4> There are some constraints that consistently encourage creativity, and others that do not. Someone should come up with a list of examples of constraints and look for patterns. I briefly mentioned this on my blog a while back:

"The rich and variegated use of Twitter seems to be a case of technological constraints forcing creativity. One can't help but wonder, "At one point does less become more?" When adding new features we worry about increased cognitive load and reduced usability; should we worry about damping creativity as well? And is it possible to purposely restrict functionality to encourage ingenuity?"

</comment><comment><USER5> Reminds me of Noah. He also got great results from the "one a day" model of photography.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6B26asyGKDo>

As an aside, the music to that video is spellbounding...</comment>


Stroke Victim Suddenly Speaks With Strange Accent - <AUTHOR> http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/080703-foreign-accent.html

<comment><USER2> This is really interesting - shows just how little we know about how the brain processes thinks like speech... especially the part about her not realizing she was speaking any different - basically, her "baseline accent" was adjusted to her post-stroke accent.

</comment><comment><USER3> I knew it all along, some Canadians are simply braindamaged</comment>


Ask HN: Would you recommend someone to learn Emacs now? - <AUTHOR> I use JetBrains products for the development. I was wondering if it makes sense to learn and invest time learning Emacs (or vim). <comment><USER2> I think for both Vim and Emacs the decision comes down to this: Do you intend to _invest_ in your editor? Not only in the sense of investing time to learn their idioms and acquire some basic muscle memory, but also to configure it to your liking.

Both Emacs and Vim are usable in the default state, but there's much much more you can get out of them. As opposed to most IDEs, which usually have one proper way to use them, both Vim and Emacs thrive on configurability. On the flip side, that means that you're going to spend time setting up and maintaining your config. If that's not something you can endure (or even enjoy), you might want to leave it be.

As far as I can tell, that's also the main reason both are often overlooked in CS classes: The goal of most professors teaching programming is to actually teach you a language, not explain an editor for a couple of weeks.

<comment><USER3> Isn't the initial learning curve the biggest time suck? I don't know either besides some basic vim commands. But seems like learning vim to the point of it being second nature would take up the majority of time.

<comment><USER2> That's one way of seeing it. You'll have to keep in mind, though, that you don't need to learn hundreds of Vim commands to be as productive in writing text as before - that's actually rather easy to achieve. So, for me, it doesn't seem like a timesink that much because anything past that point will speed you up. Hacking around in my Emacs config (I'm an Evil user) on the other hand _does_ eat up time. I don't know if it wouldn't be as bad if I wasn't annyed with minor things not working exactly how I want them to, though.

Edit: I'd also say that Vim bindings are something where "learning by doing" is the best way to get going, and I'd assume the same applies to Emacs hotkeys. If you want to use them effectively, you'll want to develop muscle memory for the most common actions, so they are a great thing to pick up while you're actually working on stuff.

<comment><USER3> Sorry for the late reply. But thanks for your response.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've used emacs for about... gosh, 18 years now since I first learned it in 1999 in my high school AP CS class.

I'd say the main benefits of learning emacs or vim today are:

1\. Exposure to the history of systems they embody.

2\. Experiencing the philosophy that customizability should be a key characteristic of your tools and work environment.

For the first, deep use of emacs will teach you about using lisp in a non- academic way; self-documenting systems; modularity; maybe even the unix command line. Oh, and the indisputable fact that your caps lock key should be remapped to Ctrl. :)

For the second, you have a fair bit of customizability in JetBrains but it's nothing compared with emacs or vim. In both of those there is incredible power to modify the behavior of the environment, and the incredible range of ways this power has been applied is a testament to its design.

</comment><comment><USER5> They taught us Emacs in college... it was clear from the beginning that this was an ultra nerdy and powerful editor and that the "serious" nerds should use it. I drank the cool-aid and used it for a while, but when I graduated I didn't use it again. I just started using what my co-workers were using. I suppose that makes me a bit of a follower on editors, but in my mind, I don't care, I don't get excited about editors.

My advice is to use what everyone around you is using and focus on making cool stuff.

</comment><comment><USER6> Xah Lee, infamous troll of comp.lang.lisp has a great emacs page [http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/emacs.html](http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/emacs.html) or the mini-manual [http://tuhdo.github.io/emacs- tutor.html](http://tuhdo.github.io/emacs-tutor.html)

I avoided starting w/Spacemacs or Prelude defaults but you may want them [https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude](https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude)

Emacs you'll find most productive if you live in it, so aside from development where you get your SQLI shell or whatever, also using magit, using pdf-tools to read papers, reading project mailing lists, using org-mode for billing if you're a freelancer, scripting your shell (and now your packages too [https://alezost.github.io/guix.el/](https://alezost.github.io/guix.el/) ) ect.

<comment><USER7> The _ad homimem_ is irrelevant and unwarranted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I do recommend Emacs for when you are not only looking for an editor. A while ago I wrote up why I really enjoy using Emacs: [https://elephly.net/posts/2016-02-14-ilovefs- emacs.html](https://elephly.net/posts/2016-02-14-ilovefs-emacs.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> [http://spacemacs.org](http://spacemacs.org) is Emacs setup that supports both Emacs and Vim keybindings, and it's quite nice.

On the other hand, JetBrains tools are supposed to be very nice.

I'd say pick one thing and learn it well.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'd say learn Vim. I also use JetBrains products for development, but can find my way around vim and can set it up to my liking. The skill has been a pretty nice timesaver for both me and my colleagues when they need to do something with it.

</comment><comment><USER11> If you do lots of console works (e.g. script shell, Linux system stuff), learn emacs or vim.

On the other hand if you're a front end Web dev or an Android dev there is probably not much point except from a curiosity point of view

<comment><USER12> As a web dev who does about 40% front-end, I find vim just as useful there as I do for all he other dev work I do--which is very, very useful.

I have no particular reason to want to jump into an IDE, which I imagine is what you're recommending instead. Vim acts as my IDE without much effort. I have a linter, syntax highlighting, etc.

I won't sing the benefits of vim here since they should probably be well-known in this thread, but editing code without vim movements is, to me, a nightmare.

I'm not sure what you think would be different in another editor.

<comment><USER11> That makes sense. Thanks for your perspective.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Emacs does some things better and some things worse. There is no Silver Bullet or free lunch. Language support is one of the things it does better than your favorite IDE. If you want to write code in Graphviz's Dot and Standard ML and Erlang and Clojure and C and Python with a consistent user interface, Emacs is a viable option.

Many IDE's also provide Emacs-like keybindings as does Bash by default. The ability to maintain a consistent user interface may or may not be worth the Emacs learning curve. Org-mode is another thing that may or may not be worth the curve.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER13> Yes and no. I generally don't recommend emacs to everybody by default because I've come to realize it's not what everybody wants. Until people _want_ to have a powerful, customizable editor I recommend something pretty and user friendly. Perhaps sublime text, where they can ease into being productive.

That said, I do definitely recommend it to people on a case by case basis (Power users, command line gurus, mouse haters, etc). Those who make it over the initial learning hump tend to really love it.

</comment><comment><USER14> Yes. If I had to give any advice to young programmers it would be these: 1. Learn to touch type. 2. learn to code in Python. 3. Learn emacs.

<comment><USER15> replace python with haskell, and emacs and vim, and i'm with you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Not sure. One part of me wishes I hadn't. Once you get used to emacs, working in other environments will get rather annoying. Don't think it makes me that much more productive either. Not to mention the days and weeks wasted customizing it.

I won't be quitting anytime soon, but wouldn't recommend it either.

</comment><comment><USER17> Only if you want to learn about the greatest piece of extensible software. Most software written nowadays doesn't have the same objectives as Emacs. Emacs unfortunately gives me RSI.

</comment><comment><USER18> Yes. Learn how to use emacs and use org-mode to organize everything. Also, the best way to learn emacs is to use it everyday. Emacs lisp is a powerful programming language too!

</comment><comment><USER19> Sure, it's getting better and better, with more exciting functionality builtin and just working, which was in the previous decades just optional and unstable.

</comment><comment><USER20> Yes. Emacs has the wonderful property of one time investment in time and learning curve that pays off over years to do all sorts of code and non-code editing.

</comment><comment><USER21> Not using Emacs myself, but read reports of long-time users getting RSI from all the keyboard shortcuts.</comment>


Ask HN: Can someone help me get into copywriting for web? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Check out <http://copyblogger.com> if you haven't already.</comment>


Life Inside the Aaron Swartz Investigation - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/13/03/life-inside-the-aaron-swartz-investigation/273654/ <comment><USER2> Never, ever, ever, talk to the prosecutors.

Learn from this story, and just don't talk to them.

The dangerous part of this story is that she reports her grand jury experience as a success, suggesting that you _can- talk to the state and 'win'. Maybe it was as successful as she thinks, maybe it wasn't. And we can't say that you can _never_ be succesful talking to the prosecutors; never say never. But what we can say is that they are _experts_ at 'winning' in those confrontations, they've trained for it and practice it every day, no matter how smart you are you're _probably_ going to end up hurting yourselves or your friends and loved ones by talking to the prosecutors.

Stick with the conclusion from the first part, never, ever, talk to the prosecutors.

<comment><USER3> This is a tricky subject but I feel compelled to point out that it's not so simple. If I hadn't talked to the USAO when I received a proffer letter in 2006, I might have been in Aaron's position trying to defend myself at trial for doing nothing wrong. Instead, the U.S. Attorney (a different one) decided to drop the issue (<http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/13/technology/13secure.html>).

I don't know if there's really a lesson to be learned from the story other than to be very careful when it comes to doing anything that might be even remotely perceived as "hacking" because the justice system is incredibly broken. You don't get to choose your prosecutor.

<comment><USER4> "Do not talk to the police" does not mean "do never cooperate or be utterly destroyed".

There may be some damn good reasons to cooperate, but you need an attorney to estimate the impact of any statement you make, even if you did nothing wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The entire wealth and resources of the federal government when wielded by a prosecutor against an individual is truly terrifying, and not surprisingly abused constantly.

Those powers are meant to go after "well armored" entities like organized crime and "well entrenched" corporations, bankers, wallstreet, etc. to protect the people of the state from what they could not individually protect themselves against.

But going after individuals guarantees wins which helps the victory scoreboard and political careers. Going after entities that have armies of lawyers and boatloads of cash is far less profitable and far more risky.

</comment><comment><USER6> From the Editor's notes on the article:

"A couple of publication notes. First, Quinn Norton did not accept money for the publication of this story. We offered. She has chosen to donate the money we're paying her. Second, I edited this story. Third, we've published several snippets of writing that Norton penned during the time of the trial along with her present account because their content -- a letter to the prosecutor and a reflection on Norton's father -- are an important lens for her state of mind at the time of the investigation. "

[http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/13/03/editors-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/13/03/editors- note-to-quinn-nortons-account-of-the-aaron-swartz-investigation/273666/)

<comment><USER7> > First, Quinn Norton did not accept money for the publication of this story. > We offered. She has chosen to donate the money we're paying her.

No wonder she's too broke to afford medical care. :(

<comment><USER6> This one article would not make the difference, though I wonder if your greater point may be that it can be hard to get by in this country when you grant money an ethical/emotional/moral or otherwise personal value beyond beyond the apparent financial value.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Wow. I had no idea she was so relatively destitute; it's a lot easier to criticize someone's actions and unfamiliarity with the legal process when you're used to dealing with startup founders, people who have had Jennifer Granick on speed-dial, etc. I guess being an independent journalist doesn't pay well, and if you're being entangled in something in your personal life, vs. through through something you've published, you're kind of on your own.

Still, a personal "document retention policy" is essential if you do anything interesting at all. In addition, I have a pretty bad memory.

<comment><USER8> Wasn't Aaron a fellow at Harvard Law school and didn't he hang out with Larry Lessig? The part of the story I don't understand the most is why the high profile lawyer who was egging Aaron on to break the rules seems to have played a minor role after his arrest.

<comment><USER9> As far as I can tell, Larry (Lawrence) Lessig is a civil copyright/technology/IP rights attorney, and not known to be a criminal defense attorney. Even with his high profile status, he may not have much criminal defense experience.

<comment><USER10> Yes, but that does not explain that the EFF as a whole didn't see fit to help out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why is weev getting relatively no support?

EFF circa 2013 is a large institution. It does good, but it isn't at all focused on defending people in "boring" cases, which was kind of its original mission (Steve Jackson Games).

There isn't an organization in the tech community which defends people from computer related crimes on bogus but boring grounds the way the ACLU does for pure, conventional free speech.

I think that would be a useful organization; even if a defendant is a racist troll, he deserves a competent defense, and computer crimes are still complex and novel enough that normal legal defense is probably not ideal. Unfortunately I'm not (yet) in a position to fund something like that.

<comment><USER11> EFF isn't that large (I work there). It takes on cases in exactly the same way as ACLU does, for impact on the law.

It was involved in the Swartz case, but mostly as a resource to help people find other criminal defence lawyers. Lots of people got caught up in the investigation, and they couldn't all be represented by the same firm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> >>These days, I not only don't log, I refuse to talk to anyone who does. I often refuse to communicate without encryption.

This is the lesson to take away from all this. People on this forum have always talked about freedom to bear arms. It is not that difficult to realize this fact, Freedom to bear arms in our times is cryptogrphy/encryption not guns.

<comment><USER13> Encryption is not relevant when prosecutors can subpoena all your electronic equipment and find every single trace, log files, historical messages, etc.

But agree, the real lesson to take away if you ever find yourself in a similar situation is: don't ask, don't talk, don't write.

Sadly, Aaron was right in trying to avoid any conversation about the case, even with loved ones. The only way to "win" is not to play.

<comment><USER14> Computers are an extension of one's mind, and should be subject to the same fifth amendment protection. We wouldn't say that protection against self incrimination no longer applies once information can be scanned directly out of the brain (although the doublespeaking sovereign nine probably would, sigh). I have hope that ubiquitous stenographic file systems can maybe show people the way and encourage such push back. We'll see.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> To me this paints a striking, and damning, picture of these prosecutors as egos run amok.

These are not the kind of people I want to see paid with my tax dollars.

</comment><comment><USER16> I feel sorry for Quinn Norton an innocent bystander in all this. It seems everything she did including talking to the prosecutors she did what she honestly thought was the best thing to do. She did need to protect herself and her daughter. Her life was thrown upside-down during those months she was involved in this case, unfairly.

</comment><comment><USER17> "I was told that changing my behavior while being investigated could be held against me, because in an investigation it is suspicious to learn from your mistakes."

Google "subsequent remedial measures" and know that this isn't always true. INAL yet but I'd love to represent tech-savy clients who need help navigating the horrible world of the law.

</comment><comment><USER18> According to this, he never planned to release the documents at all?

<comment><USER19> According to this there is no _evidence_ he planned to release the documents at all.

<comment><USER18> Right, but not only that, there was a very plausible explanation as to why he downloaded them, which had nothing to do with releasing them.

<comment><USER17> "I told them about the Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto. And in doing so, Aaron would explain to me later (and reporters would confirm), I made everything worse. This is what I must live with."

Not just worse, she gave them a case they didn't have (although arguably a better prosecutor would have googled)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Which Ben Affleck Acceptance Speech Do You Prefer? - <AUTHOR> http://neiljoglekar.com/which-ben-affleck-acceptance-speech-do-you-prefer/

<comment><USER2> Neil, just curious, but why do you feel this relevant to HN? Besides being written by you, of course?

(I'm not trying to criticize, I think your answer would be valuable.)

<comment><USER3> The video is not relevant, but it allows him/them demo reelsurf using current events

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Didn't know Reelsurfer lets you create >1min clips. Is that a pro feature? It always restricted me to a few seconds.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> OP here, what do you think makes a good acceptance speech?</comment>


JackDB Heroku Plugin - Explore Your Databases In Your Browser - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jackdb/jackdb-heroku-plugin <comment><USER2> It took me a few clicks to figure out what JackDB is.

With all the new datastores out there, ending your project with DB seems to imply it's yet another database, then you go to your homepage and I have to click the about button to even figure out what the product might be.

Also, I kind of hate the tagline "make a lasting connection with your data". Given that your homepage only shows that and 2 buttons, it seems that you really want me to "make a lasting connection with my data" more than figure out what your product is. Why would someone even click the "Try JackDB Now" button if they don't know what it is or does?

<http://www.jackdb.com/home.html> is a much better page and maybe it should be your hope page. It certainly explains your product better.

On a side note, I'm not sure that there is a market willing to pay $12 or $29 a month for a web based database client, but I can see the basic appeal. Best of luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. This is actually great feedback for us.

The distraction-free splash page is designed for first impressions. For return visitors, we make it easy to log in or try JackDB in a couple of clicks. We're always trying out new things with our design.

Our vision for JackDB is building a ubiquitous platform for working with data. Hence, "Make a lasting connection with your data."

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi founder here - Hopefully the github page does a decent job explaining how it all works. If not, I can answer any questions you guys have.

</comment><comment><USER3> Believe it or not (given we live in the age of gmail and the cloud), the big issue for me is trust. How am I supposed to provide login information on mission critical databases, get the convenience of using a cloud-based product AND sleep well at night?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a great question.

Of course, trust is an ongoing concern. Being upfront about how we handle security is a start. There's already a lot of trust in *aaS platforms, and we think JackDB is a great tool for building new data-driven projects in the cloud.

We also offer enterprise and private cloud deployments of JackDB.

I'll personally answer any security-related questions that people have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This looks really nice but the plan structure is very weird.

Why do I need to know or care how many concurrent connections my querying or administration requires? Is this to stop people having more than one tab open? Why can't you just use connection pooling and probably not exceed more than 2 or 3 regardless?

The tiny limits on returned rows means many tasks are going to made tedious, simple stuff like pulling out every name/email subscribed to a mailing list is going to take multiple queries even on the pro plan.

<comment><AUTHOR> As we scale up JackDB, we'll be bumping up the usage limits and revising our pricing plans.

Connection pooling doesn't really make sense in this context because users can't share a database connection; if one is in the middle of a transaction, he could get clobbered by the other's work.

<comment><USER4> Connection pooling usually happens at the driver level, basically when you 'close' a connection it doesn't typically close it just gets flagged as ready to be re-used so the next query doesn't suffer the full overhead of establishing the connection.

Unless you're counting connections in some other way (or persisting them?) this means in the pro plan for instance I would need up to 20 literally- concurrent queries executing to actually use those connections at the same time which is really only applicable in a web-facing situation where you might have 10s or 100s or 1000s of concurrent users running queries.

From a technical stance an entire team of people accessing the database may fit within the '2' connections of the most basic plan just because there's not enough people to trigger high enough concurrency to require additional connections.

In an administration etc context it seems extremely unlikely unless I've got some long running queries which are also unlikely in a session/browser based service since the odds of closing before a query completes are too high.

It would make much more sense to charge directly based on the number of _people_ actually administrating the database.

It would also be cool to see "plug your S3 credentials in" and have backups taken care of, this is something MongoHQ does and it's beautiful in its simplicity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is great. Any plans to support nosql datastores like couch and mongo? These datastores could really use an exploratory interface like JackDB.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Definitely. NoSQL support is coming soon, starting with MongoDB.

<comment><USER6> I assume you didn't focus on MongoDB first because there's already MongoHQ. How does their admin interface compare to your open source project and to your paid solution?

<comment><AUTHOR> Although JackDB works great as a management and administration tool, a big use case is developers and DBAs running ad-hoc queries and digging deep into their data sources. We don't host databases.

To start, our focus has been on building an interface for SQL databases (Postgres, MySQL, etc). We're still polishing our support for MongoDB and other NoSQL databases.

<comment><USER5> Would be awesome if the connection part of jackdb could be open sourced so the community could help bring NOSQL support. I understand you've got to make a living though. Just think of all the DBs you could support if you used an ORM (just thinking about Ruby there us Sequel, ActiveRecord, DataMapper).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> this looks great. since i switched to postgres from mysql, i was missing something like sequel pro. i tried induction, but it is buggy. will be trying this out shortly!

<comment><USER3> I've had good experience with Navicat.

<comment><USER7> thanks, will look at this too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> so in other words, a prettier looking phpMyAdmin

<comment><AUTHOR> JackDB is about more than just database administration. There's nothing to install. And it's much more interactive.</comment></comment>


European startup scenes compared - <AUTHOR> http://www.whiteboardmag.com/european-startup-hubs-compared-tel-aviv-london-paris-moscow-berlin/

<comment><USER2> This is just an extract from the Telefonica startup ecosystem report that can be found here: [http://blog.digital.telefonica.com/?press-release=country- hi...](http://blog.digital.telefonica.com/?press-release=country-highlights- startup-ecosystem-report-2012#filter=*,media=The-Startup-Ecosystem- Report-2012-–-Global-map)

It's an interesting report, though unless there's actionable information in this for you (there is for me, actually), it's probably infoporn rather than anything worth reading...

</comment><comment><USER3> Quick question: Do people think the rising cost of living in a place like London will have a negative effect on start ups?

Currently it doesn't look like it from that report but I'm currently on an intern's wage and have struggled to live here, I can only imagine how hard it is to potentially work for a small wage maybe even just equity whilst being a bit older than I am and potentially more responsibilities.

<comment><USER3> N.B. I have heard the cost of living in other European cities is a lot lower which is why I thought they would be in a similar shape to London before reading that article.

<comment><USER4> Yes, but for legal/tax reasons, UK is much more attractive than most other EU countries.

<comment><USER5> Good point. I've come across quite a few Berlin based startups that are actually incorporated in the UK e.g. Soundcloud. Someone said to me that one of the reasons for this is share capital requirements. You only need £100 to incorporate an ltd in the UK whereas in Germany it's apparently in the thousands.

<comment><USER6> There's actually no minimum capital requirement for the UK. You can incorporate a company with £1 in capital, if you wanted to.

<comment><USER5> Ah yep you're right. Don't know why I had £100 in my head.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd say the UK certainly has the lead in Europe in terms of talent pool size, legal services, tax regime and government support.

I'll shortly be moving back to there and incorporating a company for my bootstrapped startup. I live in France at the moment and the decision to move and kick it off from the UK was a no brainer.

One of the major attractions is the SEIS scheme and the potential this gives me to attract funding via a crowd funding platform like <http://www.crowdcube.com> This sort of startup friendly business environment just doesn't exist anywhere else in Europe (at least that I'm aware of).

Edit: in connection to the above, would love to know if any UK HNers have had any experience with <http://www.vwv.co.uk/> ? I need some legal advice before I incorporate and I've heard they're good and very startup friendly.

<comment><USER7> Interested in the reasons behind the 'no brainer' move. We're in France, and the regime for startups, with innovation tax cuts and other security nets is pretty favorable. The engineers are pretty good too!

<comment><USER5> YMMV but for my specific setup, it was just easier on all fronts. My French isn't terrible (my partner is French) but English is my mother tongue and what I'm most comfortable in (especially for business stuff). It's also much easier to get quick, good access to startup focussed legal advice. Then there's the SEIS scheme which is very attractive if I run out of runway after launching and need to look at additional seed funding. Company incorporation is easy and inexpensive. Rent is cheap if you aren't in the South East (and I'm not locked in to a long contract as is standard in France). If my startup turns out to be successful and I need to employ people it's much easier and more cost effective to do this in the UK than in France. And the list goes on.

I'm currently under the Auto-Entrepreneur scheme here and frankly it's a bordel :) I'd like to kill URSAFF sometimes...

Edit: I should also say that I'm out in the sticks in the Limousin region. I imagine things are a bit better in Paris. Where are you guys based?

<comment><USER7> haha, everyone would like to kill URSAFF, but they are your life after your biological CPU has turned into a good old Pentium :)

And yes Limousin, may not be your startup hub of choice, but after all, it is probably cheaper than everywhere else. Probably good enough while you are in the coding phase, not that good afterwards for sure.

The language problem is real though, and I understand your move much better now.

We're in Toulouse, some other startups I know are in Paris. Ping me if you ever come down South (everything above Bordeaux is Great far 'beyond the Wall' North for us :) ).

<comment><USER5> Haha je connais bien "la ligne de Bordeaux"... My partner is Catalan and we lived near Perpignan for 3 years before moving here - she thinks of the Limousin as another country!

Would be great to meet up for a beer/wine/ricard and talk startups the next time I'm in the South. I can't see your email but mine is in my profile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Last time I checked Tel Aviv is in the Middle East not Europe.

<comment><USER9> > As the only "European" startup hub, Tel Aviv...

Indeed! Use of quotes in original piece says it all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Tel Aviv is in Europe now?

<comment><USER11> Enough to be in the Eurovision (it's a more complex question than you might imagine).

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93European_Union_r...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93European_Union_relations#EU_membership_for_Israel)

<comment><USER12> Except that Eurovision has as much to do with the European Union as the UEFA champions league (read: none).

<comment><USER11> For some purposes, Israel is grouped with Europe; that's all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There's no question that London is suffering from a funding gap however some of the excerpts seem incredibly difficult to quantify:

 _They are more motivated by building a great product than by changing the world compared to SV entrepreneurs_

I also don't really understand how a preference towards mobile orientated start-ups is indicative of quality:

 _London has been slow in adopting mobile as a new trend. It has 30% less startups than SV or NYC in the mobile space_

<comment><USER14> Because the less it is like SV the less intersting it is. I am joking obviously, but I found the article strange: it compares all these places with the be-all-end-all bay area and obviously concludes that it is not the same. It doesn't seem to consider that being different can also be an advantage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Depending on what happens with UK politics over the next 3-5 years that might change dramatically due to the constant drum beating on immigration and EU reforms.

<comment><USER16> Agree, as an non-British EU company founder based in London I can not think of a better way to discourage investment. Berlin will be the beneficiary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Tel Aviv scores fairly high in the funding and support index but poor on the performance and trendsetter index. Kind of proves the point that $ isn't all it takes but sure helps you become visible.

</comment><comment><USER17> The Berlin pin looks more like Bremen.</comment>


Your Timeline: Revisiting the world that you've explored - <AUTHOR> http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2015/07/your-timeline-revisiting-world-that.html

<comment><USER2> Easily remember all the places I've been, eh? Sounds familiar. Is it like Google Latitude, which I used to easily remember all the places I had been until it was retired in 2013?

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm interested to see if this prompts privacy concerns as I feel it should actually appease them.

The problem with location tracking previously was that it was too easy to not notice it. Click through a few confirmations during app setup and fail to dig into menus and you might never know about it.

The more it's front and center (and useful) as a feature the more likely people with legitimate concerns are to be aware of it and the ability to disable or selectively remove data.

I was pleased to see 'delete day' was so prominent in the UI.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you're into this kind of tracking but don't necessarily want to go with Google, check out the Moves app (available on both iOS and Android). It's pretty no-nonsense and has an API. It guesses at locations based on things that FourSquare has, which would be its main weakness compared to this, I think.

Also, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that one of the things that I love that uses the Moves API is Gyroscope ([http://www.gyrosco.pe](http://www.gyrosco.pe)). Development seems to have stagnated a bit, but it's still a really neat site.

<comment><USER5> One thing to note, Moves was acquired by Facebook a while back. I believe they changed their privacy policy after the acquisition to something a bit more fishy.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the heads-up! I had no idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Google Now is becoming increasingly impressive to me. For instance, last time I rented a car when it was time for me to return it, it showed me locations of gas near the airport. That's incredibly useful.

<comment><USER7> Or, you know, one can open their GPS/Maps app and with 1 or 2 clicks (or even a voice command) ask for gas stations near the airport.

Google Now sounds paper-clippy and diminishing returns to me...

<comment><USER8> I think the point imgabe is trying to make - and I've had a similar experience - is that you occasionally receive information that _you don't even know you need to know_. For example, if I'm familiar with an area, I may have a particular gas station (or whatever) in mind, only to suddenly be given information that shows there is, in fact, a better option available to me. It's not (just) a question of saving clicks, it's the idea of giving you information off the cuff that is contextual to your situation.

Just my two cents.

<comment><USER9> Usually, the information is just noise though. And the information is never essential. That combination makes it something I'd rather not use.

<comment><USER10> Well, it's not exactly hard to disable: [https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2824784?hl=en](https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2824784?hl=en)

<comment><USER9> I'm getting tired of disabling stuff. I want my services to stay unchanged, unless I tell them otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Not like Google and the (in the UK) the coppers don't already track our movements - so it's nice to see what they can see.

</comment><comment><USER12> "Show this ad to people who walk past my coffee shop on the way to work, at a date and time when they are walking to work, and haven't already stopped at a coffee shop." \-- Future Google Ads Feature in 2016

<comment><USER13> To be honest, I'd be alright with that as a consumer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's a bit surprising they didn't implement this long ago. I quit like this google tracking feature, I can see how some people might have privacy concerns but I don't personally care at all.

<comment><USER15> Location history has been available for at least two years on Android, but without many of the bells and whistles described here such as location-delete and photo location-marking. But recording where I am at every waking -- and sleeping, for that matter -- moment and storing it in google's cloud for it to be analyzed, correlated with my search history, sold to advertisers, and possibly hacked or subpoenaed seems shamelessly intrusive and voyeuristic. So no, I am not signing up for this. If I forget where I parked I'll just walk around in concentric circles of increasing radius while repeatedly activating my remote until my car chirps its presence. Small price to pay for maintaining the last vestige of privacy I think I have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> super interesting...Google's really digging into mapping, first with the revamped MyMaps and now with this...I'm just wondering if a timeline is the best way to see places...If I had a great date with my girlfriend a few months ago, I don't remember the day or even month...there's gotta be a better UX, no?

</comment><comment><USER17> They write:

"Your Timeline is private and visible only to you"

I would like to challenge Google to provide proof for this: make it work without needing to login anywhere and without sending data to any place.

This will be great marketing and it is heavily needed to restore trust into a US based company after it has been destroyed completely by authoritarian lunatics.</comment>


The problem with Coffeescript: debugging - <AUTHOR>

To keep it short, you can write your so called "elegant" coffeescript, but when it comes down to debugging the output it's going to be JS. JS _you_ didn't write.
So yeah, it's a sophomoric exercise that only adds complexity to building software. Obviously this is the #1 thing that should be avoided (unnecessary complexity) in all software. Adding more complexity is why developers _should_ get fired.
edit: Suggestions adding extra complexity to the development lifecycle do not make a case for coffeescript. They only make a case against it. That includes having to learn a useless language. <comment><USER2> 1\. if you keep your methods small, and have tests, you rarely need a debugger.

2\. the generated js isn't that complex and you can easily map it in your head- it's not like trying to "debug" asm generated from C.

3\. you'll get debugging soon (as wmf said, source maps- now waiting for cs guys to support in chrome, Rubymine IDE supports in D1 2013)

4\. productivity is important.

<comment><AUTHOR> All of which add _unnecessary_ complexity and time to the development lifecycle. Don't tell me you don't need a debugger in JS no matter how small your methods are and how many tests you have. All code has bugs. Period. You are arguing against fact. That's fallacious.

<comment><USER2> False dichotomy.

"All code has bugs" claim is true, but it doesn't mean you need debuggers in order to solve/fix the problems.

If your methods ARE small enough, and you have tests for OTHER cases, printing/console is actually _faster_ (at least for me) than using a debugger. I have a JS debugger in firebug, and I rarely use it (for pure JS, not just CoffeeScript output).

<comment><AUTHOR> That's your experience and anecdotal. Advocating against the use of a debugger when it's necessary (and it is necessary a lot especially with others' code) just shows you really do not understand program flow, let alone software development. I'm glad you only work on your own code and you should be too.

<comment><USER2> In your experience, it's necessary with others' code. In _my_ experience, it's rarely necessary.

As long as you're _glad_ with your false assumptions, I have nothing more to add.

<comment><AUTHOR> So your code has no bugs? That's a first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> lucian303, your comment history is littered with uninformative blather such as this submission. Since you oppose "extra complexity" so much, consider this: the process of finding actionable information at Hacker News would be less complex for everyone if you were to stop posting.

<comment><AUTHOR> And the process for you to stop being such a trolling asshole ... well there is none. You're stuck being an asshole.

You may not think this is an important point, but that doesn't mean that people who actually understand software development do.

See, even those who use it can't actually make a real argument against this other than it was easy for them. Whatever that means ... <https://tech.dropbox.com/?p=361>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have a feeling that you have not and do not work on anything big or important. It's highly likely that you're still in high school OR you are in some sort of college / University.

</comment><comment><USER5> ...but...but no semicolons!

<comment><AUTHOR> ... make it shite ... LMAO

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Source maps.

<comment><AUTHOR> Extra complexity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> stop using what you can't use.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't use Coffeescript</comment></comment>


The $22,500 MP3: Does The Constitution Protect People Or Just Corporations? - <AUTHOR> http://www.litigationandtrial.com/2009/08/articles/litigation/ideas/the-22500-mp3-does-the-constitutional-protect-people-or-just-corporations/

<comment><USER2> The statutory damages for copyright infringement were put into place when peer-to-peer infringement was unimaginable. They were clearly intended to dissuade businesses from engaging in wholesale copyright infringement for profit, say by selling pirated movies.

Nonetheless, the law is the law, and I can't foresee even a committed grass- roots effort convincing lawmakers to reduce the statutory damages for willful infringement. The best bet would be to get a high court to determine that willful infringement doesn't apply when there is no profit motive for the infringer.

<comment><USER3> Napster's fines amounted to a grand total of little more than 1000 songs shared based on this compensation.

<comment><USER4> Exactly. This is way out of proportion. Professional pirates that operate a for-profit business were the reason these amounts were set, and their height is reflected by the potential profits of those pirates.

To use those same penalties against ordinary citizens acting without a profit motive is madness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I feel this whole issue needs to be explained more clearly. It isn't that these people downloaded the songs that are getting them in trouble. It is the fact that they allowed other people to download them from their shared libraries. If you could get in trouble for downloading illegally, then this person's argument makes sense, but he is comparing apples to oranges!

<comment><USER6> I'm the author of the article. Let me clarify (this is hinted at with the asterisk footnote at the bottom of the post) what happened here: the record company elected, under the copyright statute, not to prove any actual damages and instead use "statutory damages." At that point, they didn't need to prove anything at all other than "infringement," which would include his own use of the music and of his making them available to others, regardless of how much infringement there really was.

That's part of what's so preposterous about our copyright regime: it permits copyright holders to elect, at their discretion, to pursue an amorphous claim with fantastically huge damages that doesn't require they prove much.

It's like if a slip and fall plaintiff could elect "statutory damages" of millions of dollars if they proved nothing more than that the defendant spilled something on the floor. Such would be swiftly declared unconstitutional.

<comment><USER7> > At that point, they didn't need to prove anything at all other than > "infringement," which would include his own use of the music and of his > making them available to others, regardless of how much infringement there > really was.

Your logic is wrong. While it is true that all the plaintiffs needed was unauthorized reproduction, that doesn't mean that finding additional infringements won't cause a jury to award higher statutory damages: indeed, the jury is specifically _instructed_ to take into account the nature of the infringements.

<comment><USER6> See my response to you below. You're confusing multiple issues. For purposes of my discussion about the constitutionally-permissible compensatory-to- punitive ratio, the sole question is what actual damages were proven. At trial, the defendants only proved $0.99 actual damages for each song.

Your argument about other unproven damages has already been rejected by the 'Philip Morris' Supreme Court case, which explicitly said jurors could only consider, when deciding on punitive damages, actual damages proven in court. (In that case, the jurors had considered damage to other smokers in the state who weren't plaintiffs in the actual case.)

<comment><USER7> > At trial, the defendants only proved $0.99 actual damages for each song.

I suspect you mean the plaintiffs. In any case, it really doesn't matter; the damages in this case _are not separable into punitive and compensatory parts_. You can argue that this is unconstitional, but you can't argue that that damages awarded are unconstitutional on the basis of _your_ or the _defendant's_ estimate of the compensatory damages, seeing as those aren't what the jury used in their determination of damages. So your $0.99 "actual damages" is a red herring. Had there been more of an onus on the record companies to provide more evidence of actual damages, they would almost surely have been able to provide at least rough estimates, using studies that were cited in the expert testimony of Stanley Liebowitz. There was however, no onus to do so, so it was reasonable for the plaintiffs not to go in greater detail here.

> Your argument about other unproven damages

What argument about "unproven damages"? I have not used that language, please don't put words in my mouth. It's fine for you to quote me; please don't misparaphrase me.

<comment><USER6> I was referring to the unproven damages you wrote about above, the unproven distribution damages. Fact is, at trial, the only actual damages proven was the unauthorized personal use of a $0.99 song.

"Had there been more of an onus on the record companies to provide more evidence of actual damages, they would almost surely have been able to provide at least rough estimates ..." Yet, it looks like they didn't, likely because they would have been much, much lower than the $150,000 per infringement available under the statute, and they wanted the jury to think big numbers. It was a tactical gamble, the same type made daily in trials across the country.

Like I wrote in the post, Congress can't simply call a duck a goose and get around the due process protections established by the Gore, Philip Morris, and Campbell cases. The statute's language does not trump due process and the fundamental fact that we have actual damages proven at trial (~$0.99 per song) and a grossly excessive award ($22,500.00 per song) awarded by way of a punitive element ("willful"). They are "punitive" damages by any measure.

That undoubtedly triggers due process protections.

<comment><USER7> > Fact is, at trial, the only actual damages proven was the unauthorized > personal use of a $0.99 song.

Wrong, as I've pointed out to you numerous times. Defence did not have any expert testimony on damages (this was indeed one of big blunders of the Tenenbaum team, and was due to their basing the case on whimsical fair-use arguments). Plaintiffs did have an expert on damages (Stanley Liebowitz), but neither he nor any of the plaintiffs witnesses contributed any proof of the "actual damages." If you wish to persist in making this claim, please provide documentary evidence.

> Yet, it looks like they didn't, likely because they would have been much, > much lower than the $150,000 per infringement available under the statute, > and they wanted the jury to think big numbers. It was a tactical gamble, the > same type made daily in trials across the country.

They didn't because they didn't need to, as I've said elsewhere. Everything else is pure speculation on your part.

> the fundamental fact that we have actual damages proven at trial (~$0.99 per > song)

Show me evidence of your "fundamental fact". I submit that you can't: _there was no determination of actual (or compensatory) damages_.

<comment><USER6> You're making my argument: "neither he nor any of the plaintiffs witnesses contributed any proof of the "actual damages.""

That's not entirely true, as the record companies did briefly call their own lawyers to testify as to ownership of the songs, thereby establishing Tenenbaum's wrongful (i.e., unpaid) use of them. Ergo, $0.99 actual damages.

Otherwise, that's the whole point: we have a $22,500 award (per song) on $0.99 proven damages. That means the vast majority of the award -- over 20,000-to-1 -- is for punitive damages, triggering Gore/Campbell due process concerns.

What part of that don't you get? The fact that a statute says this is okay is meaningless: the constitution prevails.

<comment><USER7> Your argument is just plain silly. Since the plaintiffs didn't have to "prove" the amount of damages due to unauthorized distribution, you unilaterally and rather brazenly set the figure at zero. You then use the figure used during a separate demonstration (by the defendants, I might add) of how easy it is to download music legally, along with the courts determination that unauthorized reproduction took place, to get to your 20,000-to-1 ratio. You do see that this is preposterous, don't you?

Essentially, your logical flaw is to apply a court case that has nothing to do with copyright to one that is purely about copyright. In the case you reference, it is in theory possible to determine the damages caused: just sum the quantities spent by each of the plaintiffs on doctors' fees and other medical expenses. It is impossible to do that in the context of unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material. This is why the statutes give the courts leeway in this domain -- as you have acknowledged elsewhere.

If we take your argument it its logical conclusion, the maximum damages for sharing a song should be $4, since one can never "prove" the quantity of damages resulting from unauthorized distribution. Do you really think that damages of this size are going to deter anyone from filesharing?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a classic case where a law passed to deter certain very serious activity (willful copyright infringement) now finds itself being applied to new circumstances where it falls with a particularly heavy and disproportional hand.

The remedy needs to be tailored to the nature of the wrong - that is, the law needs refinement, not jettisoning. This can come from Congress or perhaps from judicial refinements via statutory interpretation.

It will _not_ come from some wild approach striking down the concept of statutory damages as unconstitutional. The article is way off on this.

<comment><USER6> It's not as "off" as you think. Punitive damages limitations have already been applied to common law copyright cases, and numerous courts have considered, but not ruled on, their application to the statutory regime.

But there's a more basic issue: it doesn't matter if the damages arise by statute or common law, the constitution protects the defendant all the same. Congress has no power to override a due process protection.

<comment><USER8> I obviously agree with the basic issue that Congress has no power to override a due process protection. I just don't think this approach to the problem is going anywhere.

 _Mea culpa_ (and apologies), however, for overstating my point. There are two sides to this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The author mistakes "downloading" for "sharing", and it all goes downhill from there. Based on this and a series of other false assumptions and deductions, he arrives at the conclusion that the award of $675,000 for the plaintiffs is unconstitutional.

This is pretty silly stuff, especially from someone claiming to be a lawyer.

<comment><USER6> Please see my reply below -- your distinction isn't relevant, because the record company elected statutory damages, thereby eliminating the need to prove any actual damages from "sharing." The downloading itself is all they needed.

<comment><USER7> > your distinction isn't relevant, because the record company elected > statutory damages, thereby eliminating the need to prove an actual damages > from "sharing."

a) The plaintiff is not a "record company", it is: SONY BMG Music Entertainment, Warner Bros. Records, Inc., Atlantic Recording Corporation, Arista Records LLC, and UMG Recordings, Inc. If you can't even get the basic facts of the case right, how can you be trusted in your opinion as to whether the damages awarded are constitutional, or anything else regarding the case, for that matter?

b) While it's true that downloading is all that is "needed" for eliciting statutory damages in a case like this (being a form of copyright infringement), it is not true to say that the "distinction" isn't relevant. As you ought to know, the jury is left considerable discretion in its decision of how large to make the damages. The nature of the infringement has an impact on the damages awarded (this wide leeway for statutory damages exists _precisely because_ the impact of copyright infringement is hard to measure and varies widely according to circumstances), so it is ridiculous to claim that Mr. Tenenbaum's sharing of the files had nothing to do with the damages awarded. Just to underscore this point, look at Judge Gertner's order granting the plaintiffs' rule 50 motion on liability:

<snip>4 Judge Nancy Gertner: Electronic ORDER entered with respect to reconsideration of rule 50 motion: The Court has reviewed the transcript of the defendant's testimony, which had not been before the Court at the time of the earlier ruling. The last question asked by Mr. Reynolds on direct examination was Question: "Mr. Tenenbaum, on the stand now, are you now admitting liability for downloading and distributing all 30 sound recordings that are at issue and listed on Exhibits 55 and 56 of the exhibits?" Answer: "Yes." Notwithstanding the protestations of Tenenbaum's counsel, Tenenbaum's statement plainly admits liability on both downloading and distributing, does so in the very language of the statute (no "making available" ambiguity) and does so with respect to each and every sound recording at issue here. Thus, the Court reverses its earlier ruling; Rule 50 motion is granted with respect to infringement. The only issues for the jury are willfulness and damages. (Gertner, Nancy) </snip>

Note that the order specifically mentions "distributing"; not just "downloading". You can find the instructions for the jury at [http://beckermanlegal.com/pdf/?file=/Lawyer_Copyright_Intern...](http://beckermanlegal.com/pdf/?file=/Lawyer_Copyright_Internet_Law/sony_tenenbaum_090731JuryInstructions.pdf) . The nature of the infringement is mentioned in the instructions, as well as the financial impact on the plaintiff. How could sharing the file possibly be irrelevant to this?

<comment><USER6> Obviously, you shouldn't "trust" my "opinion" at all. It's just an opinion on the internet from someone you never met.

You should, however, think about the underlying issues. Fact is, the plaintiff proved only $0.99 in actual damages per song from Tenenbaum's use and apparently (I write "apparently" because I have not seen the transcripts, just the report I linked to in the post) chose not to present any evidence of actual damages arising from distribution. It's in the court order, but the actual damages (which is the relevant issue for a 'Campbell' due process analysis) proven were solely from his personal use.

Your "hard to measure" argument is a good one, and the one that the RIAA will raise on appeal. Yet, damages in every case are "hard to measure" and that doesn't stop courts from routinely limiting those damages on constitutional grounds. Can Congress grant copyright holders a presumption in court -- without proving anything at all -- that, for each song made available online for any amount of time in any capacity, the defendant suffered up to $15,000 in actual damages? That's not so clear to me. And you haven't said why it's clear to you.

(I chose "$15,000" because it's the only way the statutory $150,000 could be constitutional under the Campbell case's "single-digit" punitive ratio.)

<comment><USER7> > the plaintiff proved only $0.99 in actual damages per song from Tenenbaum's > use and apparently

The plaintiff didn't "prove" "$0.99 in actual damages per song", or any other figure, for that matter. It was in fact the defence that brought in the expert witness who demonstrated downloading the song via AmazonMP3 (this turned out to be counter-productive, because it showed just how easy and cheap it was to behave legally).

Let me say that again: Plaintiffs did _not_ prove any figure for "actual damages", whether $0.99 or otherwise. When asked this specific question by the defence, the plaintiff's experts and witnesses repeatedly stated that it is up to the jury to determine the statutory damages.

You _cannot_ separate the awarded damages into the compensatory and punitive damages, because the jury hasn't given you the information to do so. Therefore your argument on the constitutionality of the compensatory/punitive damage ratio falls apart.

If you think I'm wrong, the right way to proceed at this point is to provide evidence from court materials, not other cases that you think are relevant or your guesses. All the information is freely available, so there's really no excuse for you to be more specific in relation to the facts of the case. In particular, if you can provide me with evidence from court documents that the jury used or was instructed to use a certain figure as the "compensatory damage" figure and told to derive a punitive one on top of that, then you will have proved that you are correct.

Otherwise, you're just another lawyer emitting hot air -- rather like Professor Nesson.

<comment><USER6> See my reply above. The record companies did indeed prove unauthorized use of the songs by Tenenbaum, and thus the approximately $0.99.

Your "cannot separate" argument completely misses the point: just because Congress lumps compensatory and punitive damages together in one statute doesn't mean constitutional protections don't apply. If that were the case, Congress would easily legislate its way around every Supreme Court ruling by lumping issues together.

Are you arguing there is no punitive element at all to the statutory damages? If so, then why are the damages raised for the exact same conduct if it is "willful?"

<comment><USER7> > The record companies did indeed prove unauthorized use of the songs by > Tenenbaum, and thus the approximately $0.99.

a) "and thus" is a deduction that you form yourself. At no point did the plaintiffs assert this to be their figure for the financial damages resulting from the defendant's actions. If you can find such a statement in the transcripts, please produce it.

b) Even assuming the plaintiffs had made a statement of fact regarding the financial damages wrought by the defendant's unauthorized reproduction of the copyrighted material, there is the significant unknown of the financial damages wrought by the defendant's unauthorized distribution of the material. You conveniently assume that by not providing evidence as to the size of this figure, the plaintiffs, defendants and jury have valued it at zero. This is of course completely wrong.

c) Since the financial damages wrought by the defendant's behaviour is the sum of the financial damages wrought by each individual infraction, and the damage of one of those infractions hasn't been determined by either the plaintiffs or the defendants, and moreover, the jury hasn't provided us with the formula they used to arrive to their value of the damages, we have no way of knowing the punitive/compensatory ratio, and your argument breaks down.

To look at it somewhat differently, supposing the plaintiffs had only filed suit for unauthorized distribution. What happens to your argument then? Answer: depending on how dim-witted you are, you'll either argue that the ratio is infinite or (more sensibly) you'll acknowledge that the ratio is indeterminate, whence one can't draw any conclusions as to its constitutionality.

> Are you arguing there is no punitive element at all to the statutory > damages?

Of course not. It is right and proper that there is a punitive element to the statutory damages, simply to deter further unauthorized distribution. All I'm saying is that you're not in a position to say that this quantity is (total damages awarded) - $1.

<comment><USER6> "You conveniently assume that by not providing evidence as to the size of this figure, the plaintiffs, defendants and jury have valued it at zero."

It's irrelevant what they valued it at: no evidence means no damages. Period. Cases are dismissed every day for failing this fundamental requirement.

But, you say, there's a statute that presumes some level of damages. That's true. What's also true is that the statute authorizes punitive damages, lumped together with actual damages.

That's a problem under recent due process / punitive damages jurisprudence. Per the Campbell case, you cannot have punitive damages that grossly exceed the actual damages. Here, actual damages appear to be a single person's use of 30 songs, yet the jury awarded $675,000. There is, quite obviously, a large punitive element.

You are not in a position to argue these punitives were only a small fraction of the award, since, as noted above, actual damages proven were, at most, $30.

Your argument is that Congress can simply sweep these issues aside, lump them together in a statute, and be done with it.

That's not how constitutional law works.

<comment><USER7> > It's irrelevant what they valued it at: no evidence means no damages. > Period.

...

> That's a problem under recent due process / punitive damages jurisprudence. > Per the Campbell case, you cannot have punitive damages that grossly exceed > the actual damages.

...

> Your argument is that Congress can simply sweep these issues aside, lump > them together in a statute, and be done with it.

> That's not how constitutional law works.

But if we adopt such an uncompromosing position, the maximum possible "constitutional" penalty by your own criteria is surely not more than $5 (for each song).

I submit that your constitutional arguments would lead inexorably to a situation in which it is, in effect, impossible uphold copyright ownership. The deterrent to unauthorized distribution is for all practical purposes removed. Moreover, litigation simply due to the costs, becomes economically irrational, removing the only vehicle of redress for any damages inflicted.

You are, in other words, proposing to use a relatively expansive constitutional interpretation of due process in order to usurp another _explicit_ constituional right, namely that provided by Article I, Section 8, Clause 8: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

I think this stretches constitutional law too far (I would go so far as to say that it makes a mockery of constitutional law -- but, hey, I'm an adherent of originalism). And I would certainly hope and expect that were the supreme court to be presented with such an argument it would reject it as frivolous.

<comment><USER6> An adherent of "originalism" would have supported Lessig in the Eldred case; your "original" view is at odds with the understanding of copyright at the time of the Constitution, yet oddly consistent with the understanding of copyright by the RIAA and MPAA.

More importantly, your objection is ridiculous. Of course Congress has ample authority to regulate copyright. That doesn't mean unfettered authority to impose excessive punitive damages in civil cases in violation of the due process clause.

You act like a clash of constitutional clauses has never occurred in the history of the Republic. The constitution was designed with "checks and balances," a phrase you may have heard before. The bill of rights (including the due process clause) is a check on the powers of the government (including to regulate copyright).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nominally, it protects both.

But because some corporations have vastly more money and resources than the people they wish to bully (individuals, in this case), the outcomes are distorted, not to mention the lobbying power of a corporation vs. that of an individual.

<comment><USER4> It's especially the latter that is the cause of a lot of problems.

Lobbying has its uses but for the most part it is simply a channel that ought not to even exist. I don't recall any modern democracy that includes a 'right to lobby' in its charter. Corporations already have an edge over us 'regular humans', they're immortal. Lobbying skews it to the point where there effectively is class justice, corporations can pay to get their laws passed and the general people get to vote who passes the laws.

It's like being able to inject something after the filtering function has already been applied.</comment></comment>


ABC Sydney HQ Raided by Australian Federal Police over Afghan Files Stories - <AUTHOR> https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-05/abc-raided-by-australian-federal-police-afghan-files-stories/11181162 <comment><USER2> Live tweeting of the raid can be found here: [https://twitter.com/TheLyonsDen](https://twitter.com/TheLyonsDen)

</comment><comment><USER3> When will journalists learn to hide digital and paper documents better than "in my house" or "in my office".

Anything unpublished should be encrypted, and either the encryption key or the data (or both) should be in an off-site location known only to the journalist themselves. A microSD card hidden in a tree in a park for example.

<comment><USER4> The Crypto party in Sydney runs regular instructional meetups for media types, it sadly doesn't get much participation.

This stuff is vital if not essential for democracy. Australia is slowly devolving into an authoritarian state and the wellfed masses don't really seem to care. Being a whistleblower used to to be a lot safer.</comment></comment>


Stochastic magnetic circuits rival quantum computing - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02742-x <comment><USER2> The title is very misleading and the whole article is quite misleading too. If Nature want to protect it's brand it should raise the quality of their blog because it's not the first time they posted something misleading.

They factorized numbers that are smaller than 1000 in 15 minutes. A classical computer can factorize it instantly. It's not clear that the new method is more efficient than a classic computer. [Moreover, I'm almost sure that it is clear that it is not more efficient, but I may be missing something.] More discussion in a previous thread [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21014681](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21014681)</comment>


GistHero: deploy your Gists to Heroku from your iPad - <AUTHOR> http://www.gisthero.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone, I'm the developer here. I made it to scratch my itch: an iPad app for managing gists. And, the Heroku deployment is just the additional feature. You can use it to deploy your micro web sites or web services.

Some promo codes

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Hope you'll like it.</comment>


Monty, Stallman, MySQL, Oracle, and Sun: Open Letter Wars - <AUTHOR> http://kirkwylie.blogspot.com/2009/10/monty-stallman-mysql-oracle-and-sun.html

<comment><USER2> If Monty isn't happy about what's happening with MySQL, he could always buy it back with the $1Bn Sun paid him for it. But it sounds like he wants to have his cake and eat it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I predict the new data stores like Redis, CouchDb and MongoDb will soon replace MySql as the default standard for new development. Once people start downloading and getting comfortable with these data stores, there will be no turning back.

MySql will be less important two years from now, regardless of what Oracle does.

<comment><USER4> The NoSQLs need a unified a data-interchange format ASAP. Do something based on JSON or XML.

Without interchangeable data you need a unified API, and I am not sure they're willing to collaborate on that.

RDBMSes win because of _ANSI_ SQL, ODBC and ORMs. If it wasn't for backend independent code bases the RDBMSes would have no leg to stand on.

<comment><USER5> That's a good idea. This could even be the start of a viable product catagory.

While in many cases it's trivial, I think it would also make sense for NoSQL's to add some kind of way to support common INSERT or COPY FROM .csv file commands. That would make it easy for organizations with existing SQL databases to see if a NoSQL could better solve some of their needs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Mostly well argued (in favor of Oracle acquiring MySQL), with a couple of weak spots. For one, overlooking Apple as a potential acquirer; it _is_ unlikely, but they do have the cash, and already own CUPS (Unix printing) and invest heavily in Webkit/KHTML (the KDE HTML engine - not sure what's the exact status there nowadays).

The "never even worked for a profitable commercial enterprise" (thus cannot know how it would affect the market) bit actually weakens the piece. Yeah, right, it's a prerequisite and no one credible does that kind of thing, from analyst to critic to regulator ...

<comment><USER7> I intentionally left Apple out, actually. While Apple definitely has done work in some back-end technologies, a $1Bn acquisition for something so clearly outside their current strategy (which is far more consumer and mobile focused than server focused) wouldn't make much sense. They invest in Webkit and CUPS because they feel they're necessary (in the case of CUPS so that printing actually works) or strategic (in the case of Webkit); MySQL? Not so much.

My point on RMS was that he's actively and completely rejected the commercial world in every form. A stronger argument is that he's been talking about there being MULTIPLE paths to financial riches using the GPL, but then whining because if OraSun stops selling commercially licensed versions of MySQL, nobody else can. While I agree with a stance that F/OSS is superior for consumers, RMS has been completely useless at figuring out how to make successful business models, and should be ignored.

Quite frankly, why RMS didn't speak up when Sun acquired MySQL, but is now, is just another one of the mysteries about what in the world actually goes on in his mind.

<comment><USER8> RMS is not again commercial software <http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/selling.html></comment></comment></comment>