Do What the Fuck You Want to Public License - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WTFPL <comment> iso8859-1 It's a bad license for two reasons: One, it does not cover the case where it's not possible to place stuff in the public domain (CC0 does). Two, it's alienating some users unnecessarily. Licenses are practical, there's no reason to invent a new term for concepts that already have well-known identifiers. Put your jokes outside the license section.

<comment><USER3> (disclaimer: I wrote WTFPL v2)

I fart on your recommendation of the CC0.

Your first "reason" is totally bogus. There is no need to cover cases where it's not possible to place stuff in the public domain, because there is no need to place stuff in the public domain. That's a fabrication of the CC0 license and one of the reasons why the OSI does not recommend it. A license shouldn't even mention public domain since it's not a widely accepted concept.

Your second "reason" sounds like a matter of taste to me, especially since the CC0 goes to great lengths defining new terms such as "Commons" and "Affirmer". If there's a joke here, it's the CC0, in needing more than a thousand words to basically say "do what the fuck you want".

Moreover, here is a quote from the OSI about the CC0: "the Committee felt that approving such a license would set a dangerous precedent, and possibly even weaken patent infringement defenses available to users of software released under CC0".

It's also worth noting that the WTFPL predates the CC0 by nine years. Nine years to fill a non-existing void, and they couldn't even do it properly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There are many other licenses that are similarly permissive, but that lawyers actually have vetted.

If you ever want interesting commercial adoption of software, you need to make sure the associated ip / software licenses are solid

<comment><USER5> Well, the FSF has approved the WTFPL as compatible with the GPL. [1] Certainly that doesn't mean it's been as vetted as the other licenses, but it counts for something IMO.

[1] - <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#WTFPL>

<comment><USER6> You could always just dual license. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I use MIT for this. Already well known, stablished, and has the same effect.

It is also less offensive to people who get offended by words.

That can be an advantage or a detriment; it depends on you.

<comment><USER8> Exactly, the MIT license is my favorite out of all of theme. Apache, BSD, CC, etc - needlessly complicated and full of lawyer-lingo. MIT speaks to me and my priorities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This may be nitpicking, but it seems rather restrictive to force renaming of the license in the case of its modification. That is not very "do what the fuck you want to" ...

</comment><comment><USER10> This sounds like a more care-free way to do the same thing as <http://unlicense.org>

Personally I'd choose unlicense instead of WTFPL.

<comment><USER11> First, unlicense is a bad name for a license that is so different from no license.

Second, the first sentence and the third paragraphs do not work in most of the world: you cannot put a work in the public domain, even in countries that "recognize copyright laws".

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> How is this different from an impolite MIT license?

Edit: also, for the interested, there is a free e-book from O'Reilly explaining the major free software licenses <http://oreilly.com/openbook/osfreesoft/book/index.html>

<comment><USER13> the main difference is that this essentially places the work in the public domain, where the MIT license means it's freely available, but the copyright is still the creator's. Also, thou have to retain the MIT license and distribute it with all subsequent works.

<comment><USER14> I don't think this is true. MIT explicitly allows sublicensing, meaning you can essentially just change the license on any derivative. The copyright notice needs to remain, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> OMWFL

Obey my will forever license. Copying or creating derivative works shall irrevocably enslave you to my will forever.

<comment><USER16> BeerPL

I'd like a beer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> So, if I can just do what the Fuck I want to, then can I download your code and then re-license it as proprietary and charge royalties to everyone else who is just doing what the fuck they want to with it? I mean - I'm doing what the fuck I want to soooooo......

This is probably a stretch or something, but really, my point is that this license is so incredibly open to interpretation that I get worried about using code licensed with it every time.

<comment><USER18> Of course you can. Companies use MIT/BSD/Apache/etc licensed work in proprietary systems all the time, that's what they are for. You're better off using one of those since they leave no room for confusion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I tend to do things with less legalism, with the copyheart (which is not a licence)

<http://copyheart.org/>

<comment><USER20> So no one can safely use your code, and you can be sued because you don't disclaim liability properly. Great idea!

<comment><USER19> why should I have to 'disclaim liability'? Because our litigious society would like to take advantage me and sue my pants off for no real reason? Then the flaw is not in my code, is it?

<comment><USER21> Because those few lines of boilerplate you would have to add exist in order to make explicit your stance on issues you probably don't even know exist, and their inclusion would come at basically zero cost.

Programmers of all people should appreciate that the "plain English" explanation of something is often sorely lacking in comparison to a full and complete implementation.

<comment><USER19> well, I guess my answer is that copyheart is not for the faint of heart, but if you feel like standing up to our lawyerocracy, then you should do it. And you shouldn't have to worry about 'issues you didn't know exist'. There is this concept of 'mens rea', you can't be criminally guilty if you shouldn't have known it was a crime. As for civilly, anyone who sues you for something silly is a jerkface. Don't negotiate with terrorists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> See also it romantic counterpart: <https://github.com/pygy/The-Romantic-WTF- Public-License>

/shameless plug

</comment><comment><USER23> wow didn't know this was fsf approved.

the in-your-face-ness of the name makes it a great tool for talking about copyright with someone and making a point.

</comment><comment><USER24> Hackers care too much about licenses...

<comment><USER13> Not really. I mean, yes, more than the average person, but that's because code licensing helps make the world go 'round, and means we don't have to reinvent the wheel every time we want to do something.

It's mostly because modern copyright law really doesn't want knowledge to be shared easily, or until the author has had a good, long profit run. Or until Disney has a good long profit run with the author's work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> My gamedev bros use this for our libraries, and I'd love to see wider adoption of it--mostly due to the spirit of the thing.

However, the number of people who come out and bawww about not picking a more widely recognized license (generally, LGPL or BSD) is disappointing; folks, if you want good licenses, you have to set an example.

I implore my fellow developers to use this wherever feasible--show some guts.

<comment><USER26> Sorry, but please don't. The license has serious problems for developers. To start simple, first, while yeah, a judge is probably going to find you can do whatever you want, because it's not very explicit, there will be arguments over what you were allowed to do. It is entirely possible a judge will decide what is really meant is that you can do whatever _reasonable_ thing you want to.

Worse, it does not effectively disclaim liability for the software developer. He claims he doesn't want "obnoxious things", such as "reproducing a huge disclaimer that is written in all caps".

The reason that all caps language is used is because of a history of court decisions and laws around what is required to effectively disclaim implied warranties. Right now, the license does not properly disclaim _any_ implied warranties, which puts the developer at risk.

Worse than this, the text block he suggests putting in text if you want to disclaim warranty (<http://www.wtfpl.net/faq/>) would likely be ineffective in a lot of places.

I know everyone likes to think they won't get sued. But it does happen. It will wipe you out. It isn't worth taking a moral stand against a few lines of text in a source file.

To answer your other point, if you want good licenses, you have to actually know what the hell you are doing.

I really do understand that people want to not have to give a shit about this stuff, and have simple and clear licensing. Really. But this is not the path to accomplishing that.

The legal and political world takes a long time to adapt. Things like like free and open source software will eventually be sanely handled in the law. WTFPL is not going to be anywhere in that history.

<comment><USER25> _I really do understand that people want to not have to give a shit about this stuff, and have simple and clear licensing. Really. But this is not the path to accomplishing that._

You've hit it on the head--unfortunately, what else are we to do?

I don't trust the general legal intuitions of ourselves and our peers, since we seem to be so rubbish at creating a useful legal and political climate for our industry (based on ~30 years of case law).

So, in the meantime, let's instead live in our ideal world, pull no punches, and cross the legal bridges when (and if) they come up. Perhaps a proper rallying will be tenable then, instead of us all being chickens.

As for licenses, I think Apache currently is best for "serious grown-up usage", no, what with the patent indemnification and all, or am I misinformed?

<comment><USER26> "I don't trust the general legal intuitions of ourselves and our peers, since we seem to be so rubbish at creating a useful legal and political climate for our industry (based on ~30 years of case law)."

This is _entirely_ because of the penchant for the average software/etc engineer to stick their head as far in the sand as it can go, and then complain that this is ineffective. It is only in the past few years that this has changed, and headway has already started to be made behind the scenes.

"As for licenses, I think Apache currently is best for "serious grown-up usage", no, what with the patent indemnification and all, or am I misinformed?"

This is, IMHO, correct. The only downside to apache is that the defensive patent termination clause only terminates patent rights. If there were no patents on the software, and they sue you over patents, they can go right on using it. Sadly, it's not possible to make a license that does terminate both copyrights and patents on being sued, and still hae such a license be GPL compatible.

<comment><USER27> > The only downside to apache is that the defensive patent termination clause > only terminates patent rights. If there were no patents on the software, and > they sue you over patents, they can go right on using it.

IANAL - could you explain what you mean by this?

<comment><USER26> Sure: Apache grants a patent license and a copyright license. The _patent_ license (but not the copyright one) terminates if i sue you. So right now the situation is:

You license your stuff under apache.

It has no patents on it.

I sue you for patent infringement.

I can still use your stuff, since the only thing that got terminated was the patent license I had received. There are no patent rights, so nothing was really terminated. So in effect, I can sue you without worrying about how it impacts my ability to use your software.

This is true of most current open source licenses, btw. Suing does not terminate anything.

A better situation would be: Apache grants a patent license and a copyright license. Both patent _and copyright license grants_ terminate if i sue you for patent infringement.

Then it would be

You license your stuff under apache.

It has no patents on it.

I sue you for patent infringement.

I can't use your software anymore.

The problem is such termination clauses are at the very least GPLv2 incompatible (They have been tried). Because everyone wants license compatibility, and people like GPLv2, nobody can really make this situation. In fact, it makes the situation worse.

Worse than this, what ends up happening, often, is that Apache 2 projects (which provide _some_ protection at least if you own patents, since you can countersue) get pressured by GPL projects to move to a less protective licenses. See, e.g., <https://github.com/twitter/bootstrap/issues/2054>

This was, IMHO, a bad move for the Bootstrap project (full disclosure - <USER2> company I work for refused to let Bootstrap relicense the code we contributed because we viewed this as harmful to the open source ecosystem. This is/was drupal's problem, not Bootstrap's, and you shouldn't make a bad licensing decision to make up for another)

<comment><USER27> Ah, I see the distinction that you're making, though I would disagree with the statement that the latter situation is "better".

If I'm release software with that clause, I'm in a position to take advantage of anybody who uses the software, because they would have to cease using it before they could sue me, even on legitimate grounds.

That said, I'm not surprised that you (as a lawyer) would prefer the latter; it exposes your client to less liability, and lawyers tend to be very risk- averse, for obvious reasons.

<comment><USER26> You gave them software for free, it's not clear what legitimate grounds you want to accept liability for, but that's up to you :)

Given the "get sued by people over patents for releasing popular open source software" occurs very often for companies that deal with open source software and have money, ...

As for risk aversion, I am probably one of the least risk averse lawyers you will meet.

My goal in this case is not to protect my clients, my goal is to see the open source ecosystem stop being destroyed for dumb reasons.

<comment><USER27> Nevermind, I just re-read the text of v2, and it seems more limited in scope that what I previously thought.

> If You institute patent litigation against any entity (including a cross- > claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that the Work or a Contribution > incorporated within the Work constitutes direct or contributory patent > infringement, then any patent licenses granted to You under this License for > that Work shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed.

I was also trying to thing of some pathalogical edge case in which I release something under an Apache license in order to preempt a lawsuit that I've infringed on someone else's patent... but I guess that doesn't make sense, since that would require that they accept the terms of the license to begin with.

So, I guess that's not really as much of a problem as I thought.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple's growth to drop to half of what it could obtain during the recession - <AUTHOR> http://www.asymco.com/2011/03/24/analysts-apples-growth-next-year-to-drop-to-half-of-what-it-could-obtain-during-the-recession/ <comment><USER2> The article set out the analysis's premise and disagrees.

"Either they're in agreement that we're in for something resembling a global plague starting in six months or they believe Apple is singularly positioned to drop the ball."</comment>


RubyMine 5.0 now available. - <AUTHOR> http://www.jetbrains.com/ruby/whatsnew/index.html <comment><USER2> I have a question: why on earth does this editor use 5% of the CPU on my MBA just sitting there doing nothing with a blank file loaded? I'm programming on a laptop--I'd really like for the CPU to be able to go to sleep during the relatively long seconds when I'm reading or thinking rather than actively typing. People say Emacs is bloated, but it uses exactly 0% of my CPU when it's sitting there doing nothing.

<comment><USER3> Wild-ass guess: polling for file changes.

<comment><USER4> i'm pretty certain they use fsevents for file changes on osx.

5% blank sounds more like the typical inefficiencies in either certain java or macosx things.

back when I switched back to linux a couple years back I noticed that the glowing ok button would cause a cpu spike of 4-5% on my core2duo macbook pro.

Have you tried turning power save mode on?

<comment><USER2> 5% is with power save on.

MacOS X apps do not just use 5% for the hell of it. Vico, Sublime Text, Textmate, Emacs, Chocolat all use 0% when sitting there doing nothing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Easily the best choice I made when switching over to Rails.

The IDE works so phenomenally well, it's amazing! I couldn't work without Rubymine.

<comment><USER6> I feel like we are not the cool kids for not using vim or textmate or whatever else people use, but I also only use Rubymine.

<comment><USER5> How so? If they want to program in nano or use a dvorak keyboard, let them. It's about what makes YOU happy and productive. Who cares what other people use?

<comment><USER4> i actually use vim and dvorak. nano just makes you sound silly(although i know what your intention was).

But rubymine is a way awesome ide. The whole jetbrains stuff is actually.

<comment><USER7> A fellow vim/dvorak user here. I started using ruby around three months ago and am only just starting to integrate that back into my regular vim workflow. RubyMine actually looks pretty useful if I'm ever tempted to step back outside my zen (vim) garden...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For those of us who bought IntelliJ IDEA during the end of the world sale because people told us it does everything RubyMine does... When will IDEA do these things?

<comment><USER9> Have you tried installing the IntelliJ ruby plugin? <http://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/?id=1293>

<comment><USER10> I bought IDEA during the EOW sale, but after I got familiar with its plugin I switched to the RubyMine 5.0 EAP after reading that the plugin trails RubyMine releases. Now I wish I'd had bought RubyMine too -- it's nicer to work in its dedicated interface.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> RubyMine is fantastic.

I've come to Ruby from PHP and PHPStorm (Jetbrains) and both are incredibly powerful. It marries so well with Rails and Git that I just have no need for anything else. And it runs so smoothly on my MBA 8GB.

I shall be upgrading right now!

</comment><comment><USER12> I've gone emacs => Rubymine => Textmate => Rubymine => Textmate => Sublime

The issue I have with Rubymine is that it's way too slow. It's just too slow to be productive in.

Macbook Air 2nd gen, 4 gig.

<comment><USER13> I use rubymine on fairly large codebase and while I did initially experience slowdowns with Ruby3 on a machine with 4GB ram, both software upgrades and a switch to faster cpu with 8gb of ram and an SSD drive has improved things drastically.

You have to remember that the way Jetbrains code analysis works is that it indexes the hell out of your code to allow you jump to function definitions using CMD-B, error identifications, code completion, etc. CTRL-B alone make learning a new codebase a lot simpler. I appreciate visual debugger a lot. It allows me to avoid polluting my code with debugger statements which is especially evident with conditional debuggers.

<comment><USER14> These are called "breakpoints".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Great. I'll get one as soon as 5.02 will become available.

<comment><USER16> I've been using the beta and RC versions - haven't run into any problems running on Xubuntu 12.04.</comment></comment>


Slowing aging by purging senescent cells - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/22/science/in-bodys-shield-against-cancer-a-culprit-in-aging-may-lurk.html?_r=1&src=dayp&pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> This research is actually a good example of the profound institutional problems with funding of aging and longevity science. Peter Thiel's call for radical philanthropy addresses this issue - that funding has become staid, and there needs to be more high-risk, high reward research funding akin to the venture industry. See:

[http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/11/the-need-for- visi...](http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/11/the-need-for-visionary- philanthopy-in-longevity-science.php)

"So after Mayo Clinic researchers discovered they could delay degeneration of the tissues in a fast-aging strain of mice by purging senescent cells, they applied to the agency's National Institute on Aging for financing for the next essential step, that of repeating the test in mice with a normal life span. Under the agency's peer review system, panels of fellow experts judge each proposal and assign it a score. On paper, it's hard to think of a better system. But in practice, experts often differ, even on the best proposals, and a single dissenting vote can reduce a proposal's overall score too low to get financed. The Mayo proposal got a less than perfect score, and was denied money. ... Their peer review process is not promoting innovative, high-risk research. ... They were able to get their research started only because private funds were available from the Ellison Medical Foundation, supported by Larry Ellison of the Oracle software company, and from Robert P. Kogod, a philanthropist in Washington. After publication of the Mayo Clinic team's paper in Nature this month, they were approached by the Glenn Foundation, set up by the commodities trader Paul F. Glenn, who has a longstanding interest in aging research. The foundation gave them an unsolicited $60,000 and said it would be around to talk later."

You'll recognize a number of those names as supporters of the SENS Foundation and Methuselah Foundation before it over the past four or five years, having put millions of dollars collectively into the work of those organizations on (a) the basis for rejuvenation biotechnology and (b) what might charitably be looked on as kicking the research community in the pants to make them get on and do the damn job and make some noise about it.

In fact wherever there is somewhat innovative research into aging and longevity - looking at repair, not just trying to find drugs to replicate the effects of calorie restriction and push through the same old tired FDA processes - you'll see many of the same visionary philanthropists behind the scenes.

A related item by Aubrey de Grey on why people with the means are not pumping as much funding as they can into longevity science, given the clear and amazing payoffs:

[http://hplusmagazine.com/2011/11/21/why-arent-more- wealthy-p...](http://hplusmagazine.com/2011/11/21/why-arent-more-wealthy- people-funding-aging-research/)

<comment><USER3> There's also the possibility is that this is less deserving of study than you may think. If this is the paper I saw a couple of weeks ago, they built mice that die rapidly of a thing that mimics old age senescence by causing cells to die of something that appears to be old age, then demonstrate that by flushing out these artificially aged cells, which they accomplished via picking these cells out with a tag they created in the first place, they can get back to the mice's original life span without these modifications. As legitimately interesting as this is from a research and learning point of view, I do not think it is at all clear that this is actually going to lead to a therapy that works on animals that haven't been artificially manipulated to produce this particular problem.

The press releases make this sound like the sort of research that should be shot to the top of all priorities, but when you really examine it, that assessment doesn't hold up very well. It may still be important, but it isn't as important as the news articles make it sound. The less-than-perfect grading is probably correct.

Now, had they demonstrated mice that lived _longer_ than the core breed after this treatment, I'd be singing a different song.

<comment><USER2> This is actually one of the more important pieces of foundational work in the last year in longevity science; it validates a great deal of other work and theory on the role of senescent cells, and provides a working method of eliminating senescent cells, which had been lacking until now. See commentary:

[http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/11/a-demonstration-o...](http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/11/a-demonstration- of-the-merits-of-apoptosens.php)

And heavy in depth commentary:

<http://sens.org/node/2449>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cell death: you're fired, pack your stuff, it's too risky for you to stay

Cell senescence: stay, but your contract won't be renewed

I wonder if it's possible to reactivate a senescent cell by repairing the damage that triggered it in the first place: repair and rejuvenation.

Add: possibly no: "repair to DNA normally take place during DNA replication when cells are dividing, but post-mitotic cells do not divide. The main concern in this instance is not whether there is a decrease in the ability of cells to repair DNA with age, but instead whether post-mitotic cells can themselves repair DNA, if at all they need to"

[http://ageing-research.blogspot.com/2008/01/post-mitotic- tis...](http://ageing-research.blogspot.com/2008/01/post-mitotic- tissue_21.html)

Also, is it possible to replace a cell that has already suicided by causing an improvement in conditions that'd ensure a replacement cell isn't tagged with the same fate: reconditioning and recruitment.

</comment><comment><USER5> I wonder if low dose radation or low dose toxins that foster hormesis are actually killing off these senescent cells.

<comment><USER6> Other candidates: fasting, exercise, and low carb diets.

<comment><USER5> all of these are also good for you, but the senescent cell model was the first one to suggest a mechanism of action for hormesis to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Discussed on the Diane Rehm show on NPR today [http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-11-22/new- development...](http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-11-22/new-developments- aging-research)

</comment><comment><USER8> What kind of skills/training are necessary to do research on stuff like this?

I can imagine few things that are more worthwhile (and probably stimulating to work on as well).</comment>


Does Windows 7 have any must have features that Windows XP does not? - <AUTHOR>

If so, what are they? <comment><USER2> Hype and misconceptions. I've tried it today, after a few hours of working with it, i conclude that it is usable, but nothing that special. It comes with powershell, so i didn't have to install it myself, but other than that, i didn't notice anything "must have". The gui has some nice little things added to it, and some of theme are useful, but noting groundbreaking _, just another UI you can get used to. I guess its the sum of the little things that we can judge it. I might be wrong, I've only tested it for two hours, 20 minutes of which i played chess.

_ the taskbar is pretty cool, some people are going to have trouble with it thou.

</comment><comment><USER3> It actually has less features than Vista, and for me that's a good sign. Microsoft focused on just making sure everything works better and faster. Memory usage is significantly lower, for example, and boot times are shorter.

The Control Panel and some menus have a more logical organization. Each app can adjust its representation in the new taskbar, so for Internet Explorer you can see a list of all open tabs, not just windows. You get Prev, Pause and Next buttons for Media Player. They took out some of the bundled applications, like Photo Gallery. They didn't even change the default wallpaper! Kudos!

If only they had released this instead of Vista things would be golden.

</comment><comment><USER4> I actually remember when I was telling my friends about Windows 95 when it first came out, and what it has to offer over Win 3.11. It sounded like "well, it has a button in the lower-left corner with a menu, and all the programs are started from that menu". My firends were quite unimpressed, untill they got to try it later themselves.

The moral of the story is that even if people can not explain why, new windows can be a serious improvement over the previous version, and quite more popular, too. Give it a try.

</comment><comment><USER5> It doesn't look like dirt for one. Windows XP has never been pretty.

I'm pretty excited to see what can be done with the jumplists, [http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081028-first-look- at-...](http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081028-first-look-at- windows-7.html)

I've also noticed that boot times are much faster and the UI reacts much faster than Vista.

And of course the Paint ribbon ;)

<comment><USER6> Windows XP with the Royale theme looks quite professional.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Has anyone tried running Windows 7 in VMWare? The boot sector got corrupted when I tried, so it's hard to answer the question. ( I suppose it runs great in Hyper-V, but who actually runs Virtual Server?).

<comment><USER8> I got the 32-bit version running in VirtualBox OSE on an x86_64 Linux host without too much trouble. (network driver needs to be installed, the one from Win2003 works; guest additions complain so you need to "troubleshoot" them) The Installer for the x64 Version didn't start. Might work with the non-OSS 2.1 Version, which supposedly has better 64-bit support.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does any OS let me right click on a window and select "stay on top" or are we still in the stoneage?

<comment><USER10> My GNOME desktop lets me do that to any window. I don't think I'd pick an OS on that alone, mind.

<comment><USER8> KDE has that too. I suspect Xfce has it, too. There's got to be some widget that enables such functionality on Windows or even OSX, considering you can do it from the API.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> upgraded vista sp1 on my macbook pro to beta build 7000. Went smoothly took about 2 hrs. No driver issues etc. Taskbar is much cleaner, and the horrible aurora green/blue theme throughout Vista is replaced with OSX aqua style coloring. Very stable, more responsive. Fewer icons on the taskbar, and the gadgets dont sit awkwardly on the left. All minor improvements that add up to be what Vista should have been.

Only gripe so far is slower when coming out of hibernate ... Wont be going back to Vista ! Hooray!

<comment><USER12> I actually got running the Windows 7 leaked out version on a VMware machine. I suppose the new beta official release has is more stable and has other features but as far as I can see, there is no big differences in windows XP and windows vista</comment></comment>


Forgotten Rails features: HTTP Streaming - <AUTHOR> http://robotmay.com/post/24054884390/forgotten-rails-features-http-streaming

<comment><USER2> My thoughts on this 630 days ago — <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1671437>:

I've been doing some research for this earlier, and my conclusion was: This is very hard, if not impossible, to implement automatically. The main problem is that it's impossible to handle exceptions correctly without making the whole stack aware of it.

Currently, when an exception occurs, the system can simply change the response (since the response hasn't been sent to the client yet, but is only buffered inside the system). With this approach, a response can be in x different states: before flushing, after the 1st flushing, … and after the xth flushing. And after the 1st flushing, the status, headers and some content has been sent to the client.

Imagine that something raises an exception after the 1st flushing. Then a 200 status has already been sent, togeher with some headers and some content. First of all, the system has to make sure the HTML is valid and at least give the user some feedback. It's not impossible, but still a quite hard problem (because ERB doesn't give us any hint of where tags are open/closed). The system also need to take care of all the x different state and return correct HTML in all of them. Another issue is that we're actually sending an error page with a 200 status. This means that the response is cacheable with whatever caching rules you decied earlier in the controller (before you knew that an error will occur). Suddenly you have your 500.html cached all over the placed, at the client-side, in your reverse proxy and everywhere.

Let's not forget that exceptions don't always render the error page, but do other things as well. For instance, sometimes an exception is raised to tell the system that the user needs to be authenticated or doesn't have permission to do something. These are often implemented as Rack middlewares, but with automatic flushing they also need to take care of each x states. And if it for instance needs to redirect the user, it can't change the status/headers to a 302/Location if it's already in the 1st state, and therefore needs to inject a <script>window.location='foo'</script> in a cacheable 200 response.

Of course, the views shouldn't really raise any exceptions because it should be dumb. However, in Rails it's very usual in Rails to defer the expensive method calls to the view. The controllers sets everything up, but it's not until it needs to be rendered that it's actually called. This increases the possibility that an exception is raised in the rendering phrase.

Maybe I'm just not smart enough, but I just can't come up with a way to tackle all of these problems (completely automated) without requiring any changes in the app.

<comment><AUTHOR> Aye, I think enabling this automatically would do good things for user experience but it would require a pretty significant change to the Rails stack. It's a shame that there isn't a way to tentatively pass the status code (i.e. '250: This is probably OK') then alter it in later chunks should exceptions occur. Or at least there isn't a way to do that which I know of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Aside from the obvious benefits, even just streaming certain responses can be useful when your app lives on the Heroku cedar stack and you want to keep connections alive for longer than the default 30 seconds. I put this to use (albeit with an older Rails technique) for processing credit cards. Long description of it here: <http://icelab.com.au/articles/money-stress-and-the- cloud/>

<comment><AUTHOR> I read that article after reading your one about the NewRelic trouble. It's a nice technique and it's great to see someone else actually writing about this in regards to Rails (your NewRelic post saved me a load of agony) :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Really? No

Let me repeat: don't do streaming using RoR (or Django, or PHP)

This belongs in the web server. There are several extensions that do exactly that, in NGINX, Apache, etc. Including streaming, seeking, etc

Unless you want your server to have a ridiculous cpu usage and maybe only serve 1, 2 concurrent requests, do it in the web server.

<comment><USER5> You can easily do it in PHP, Python or your language of choice using Mongrel2[0]. Because of the asynchronous nature of the messaging between your processes and the Mongrel2 webserver, a single process can efficiently serve 1000's of clients to stream mp3 or whatever file you want. This is because you are not "locking" a process or a thread for a single client.

[0]: <http://www.mongrel2.org>

<comment><USER4> That's what I was trying to remember!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Btw Dalli no longer requires a reset -

[https://github.com/mperham/dalli/commit/ee5193e206c3934cb175...](https://github.com/mperham/dalli/commit/ee5193e206c3934cb17596ae88099ea36da8d576)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah ha, I see that's in the latest gem release - I'll update my version later. I have a feeling I was the cause of some slowness at Memcachier when I first switched to Unicorn without closing the connections, which must have been on a previous version :D</comment></comment>


Compiled GraphQL as a database query language - <AUTHOR> https://blog.kensho.com/compiled-graphql-as-a-database-query-language-72e106844282 <comment><AUTHOR> Author here -- happy to answer any questions!

The source code is on Github and we have a package up on PyPI. The code is battle-tested as we've been using it in production for many months now, and also has very good test coverage. We've been working on this project for about a year, and we've now moved all development to the public Github repo.

[https://github.com/kensho-technologies/graphql- compiler](https://github.com/kensho-technologies/graphql-compiler)

[https://pypi.python.org/pypi/graphql- compiler](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/graphql-compiler)

</comment><comment><USER2> Great job, finally you can use GraphQL on top of OrientDB without any performance penalties.

</comment><comment><USER3> wow! impressive work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!</comment></comment>


Saudi Attack Makes Electric Vehicles Even More Important - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-09-18/saudi-drone-attack-is-another-reason-to-switch-from-oil-to-evs <comment><USER2> Because the literal destruction of the ecosphere due to global warming is not a sufficient motivation.

<comment><USER3> Curious - how much impact we would have on global warming if each and every car currently running is electric? Given that most of the electricity is provided by fossil fuels.

Dont want to come across as a denier, this is a genuine question.

<comment><USER2> Probably a rather small impact. On the other hand, replacing all energy consumption _but_ transportation with carbon free alternatives isn't enough either.

Global warming doesn't have a simple solution. We need to attack a large number of problems simultaneously if we want a chance to prevent catastrophe.

<comment><USER3> I was hoping for a number, like say 1%. I wish there was a website which shows you exactly what are the causes of global warming and how much they contribute to it, preferably by industry and country. For example a small country like Australia which has less than 1% of human population, contributes enormously (15% of methane due to animal husbandry) but there is very little being done in that country to control this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The significance of this attack is entirely overblown. DA isn't as crucial to the world's oil supply as they used to be, and they're the only country that might be at risk. It's probably also a one-off attack as SA and the US adjust to the new threat model. The likelihood of another successful attack is going down by the day.

</comment><comment><USER5> I know this is completely off topic but news on the internet is such a mess. I wanted to read this but I'm going to pay for a bloomberg subscription. I would happily pay some amount of money to read this but there are at least 10 publications in line in front of Bloomberg and because buying one individual subscription get's me access to very little of want I end up willing to pay money but still with no subscriptions and no access to online news.

Netflix for news is such an obvious unicorn and seems like it would be a better situation for medium sized publications like Bloomberg. I don't understand how it doesn't exist yet.

<comment><USER6> In the Netherlands this exists as Blendle. It worked so well and "threatened" news paper revenue that the news papers now starting their own alternative. The interesting bit is that news papers also make some articles available for free which are paid for on the Blendle platform.

Afaik, Blendle is also expanding to the US.

<comment><USER5> I hope so! I would pay for that no question. And I have a feeling many other people would as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't see policy moving in that direction as a result of this incident. The leaders are happy to find alternative sources to buy oil from.

<comment><USER8> > _I don 't see policy moving in that direction as a result of this incident_

No, but it would if hostilities escalated. Taking Saudi production offline would spike oil prices. Dramatically.

That would prompt political change, in the same way the OPEC crisis in the 70s did. At that point, the well-positioned ( _e.g._ cities with public transit and electric car manufacturers) will prosper while those with their heads in the sand ( _e.g._ communities dependent on cars for cheap transport and ICE- only manufacturers) will face a quick reckoning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's not this attack, it's the next one...and so on. Not sure how and when they can defend their massive infrastructure. A small explosion can cause interruption for days, weeks...

<comment><USER10> The same is valid for other countries. Destroying towers with electricity transmission lines can cause serious blackouts. Especially in the middle of cold winter. Grid map is online: [https://www.entsoe.eu/data/map/](https://www.entsoe.eu/data/map/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> For my small country (NL) that would mean having to import gas from Russia to power our gas-plants to generate electricity for cars. I'm not sure which option is worse.

<comment><USER2> Or you could build more wind turbines and solar panels. The Netherlands are famously windy.

<comment><USER11> That is correct. Wind energy is at 1.7 percent in our energy usage. But due to the high density of people and the ageing population we have a high amount of NIMBY.</comment></comment></comment>


IOS terms of service say you are soley responsible for validating certs - <AUTHOR> http://imgur.com/ZzCnPxs.jpg

<comment><USER2> Good lawyers</comment>


Show HN: JSONFIddle - <AUTHOR> http://jsonfiddle.me <comment><USER2> It's nice that you build something that works, I'm happy for that. But this is kinda useless.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi! Thanks for stopping by. Really appreciate that you had a look. Well, I was building out a real-time IoT application back in college which required me to store some data online and feed my dashboard app without the hassle of creating a whole database. I used myjson.com that time but I found I couldn't edit them once a url was generated. So there, I did have a "use". But anyways, really appreciate the time.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> A dead simple way to create a JSON store online and use/edit later using an API.

</comment><comment><USER3> nice and simple keep up</comment>


Beyond the Tablet: Seven Years of iPad as My Main Computer - <AUTHOR> https://www.macstories.net/stories/beyond-the-tablet/ <comment><USER2> Quote: " The website turned 10 last month, and I've managed it almost exclusively from an iPad for seven of those years. And yet, I feel like I'm still adapting to the iPad lifestyle myself – I'm still figuring out the best approaches and forcing myself to be creative in working around the limitations of iOS"

This was all I need it to know about from productivity point of view of making a tablet your main work tool. And this is applicable to all of them, regardless of their OS. In the end a tablet is not made for work, but for recreation. Same way you can use a huge 1 meter tall pen to write your homework but is better to just use it as a giant sword in a imaginary fight.</comment>


Grit & Determination - <AUTHOR> http://blog.adamsmith.cc/2011/12/grit-determination.html

<comment><USER2> Buffett's most favorite founder in Berkshire Hathaway, Rose Blumkin, is the ultimate example of grit: [http://www.buffettsecrets.com/rose-blumkin- nebraska-furnitur...](http://www.buffettsecrets.com/rose-blumkin-nebraska- furniture-mart.htm)

[http://www.nytimes.com/1998/08/13/business/rose-blumkin- reta...](http://www.nytimes.com/1998/08/13/business/rose-blumkin-retail-queen- dies-at-104.html)

Also a cool read is Dr. Arthur Jensen's research on calculating prodigies: <http://stepanov.lk.net/mnemo/jensen.html>. For me, the last paragraph is the kicker:

"But the nature of this hypothesized advantage is really still uncertain. It might well turn out to be characterized more as a motivational variable than as primarily an attentional or ability variable. Why did Devi as a girl practice numbers so assiduously? Or why did the young Richard Wagner, to the consternation of his parents and teachers, repeatedly play truant from school just to be able to spend whole days concentrating on the orchestral scores of Beethoven's symphonies? Or Ted Williams, the famous baseball player, whose mother worried about the normality of his running all the way home from school every day to practice until nightfall relentlessly pitching baseballs through a hole in a backboard? It is the same story repeatedly in the biographies of the world's truly exceptional performers in every field. A good case could probably be made that the most exceptional performers and creative geniuses are much further out from the average of the general population on some kind of motivational factor than on any traits most psychometricians would consider a basic ability or cognitive capacity."

<comment><USER3> Rose Blumkin is the classic American-immigrant-rags-to-riches-by-hard-work story. I loved this bit:

"Omaha retailers began to recognize that Mrs. B would offer customers far better deals than they had been giving, and they pressured furniture and carpet manufacturers not to sell to her. But by various strategies she obtained merchandise and cut prices sharply. Mrs. B was then hauled into court for violation of Fair Trade laws. She not only won all the cases, but received invaluable publicity. At the end of one case, after demonstrating to the court that she could profitably sell carpet at a huge discount from the prevailing price, she sold the judge $1400 worth of carpet."

\-- Warren Buffett, Letter to shareholders, 1983

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Grit & determination are for me defining factors in a person's character IMO. What initially turned me onto this was the Teach for America article on the effectiveness of teachers. One of the most surprising items on the research was the effect of grit on the teacher. More specifically:

"What did predict success, interestingly, was a history of perseverance—not just an attitude, but a track record. In the interview process, Teach for America now asks applicants to talk about overcoming challenges in their lives—and ranks their perseverance based on their answers. Angela Lee Duckworth, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, and her colleagues have actually quantified the value of perseverance. In a study published in TheJournal of Positive Psychology in November 2009, they evaluated 390 Teach for America instructors before and after a year of teaching. Those who initially scored high for "grit"—defined as perseverance and a passion for long-term goals, and measured using a short multiple-choice test—were 31 percent more likely than their less gritty peers to spur academic growth in their students. Gritty people, the theory goes, work harder and stay committed to their goals longer. (Grit also predicts retention of cadets at West Point, Duckworth has found.)"

That started the initial conversation with Adam Smith. This let to a fascinating conversation with respect to startups, teaching, and everything else too.

[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/01/what- mak...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/01/what-makes-a- great-teacher/7841/)

</comment><comment><USER5> While I very much like the word "grit", I feel like opting out of 6.001 is huge mistake.

Even if you know how to program, and have been doing so for years, this is an awesome class.

In fact, I'd argue that if you've been programming for years, it is an even MORE awesome class.

Go get gritty. Don't skip 6.001.

<comment><AUTHOR> Here were the terms of the compromise:

* that you read the textbook, and take the quizzes and final exam in the course;

* that you can skip the online problem sets and projects, except for project 3 (which will deal with Object Oriented programming);

* that you engage in some independent project. One possibility is for you to read "Code" by Lessig and work to design/implement a system informed by that perspective. A good example might be a Scheme implementation of an information/document management system -- perhaps modeled on DSpace -- with (a) encryption/DRM in a strong "IP owner" centric fashion, or (b) with a user-centric/fair-use vision. (N.B. this was 2003.)

(The independent project ended up being a failure.)

You're totally right about the great content in 6.001. SICP was amazingly meaty.

<comment><USER6> Heh, I was about to write the same thing as Sanj--SICP was great and I'm happy I took a course on it (at Berkeley). Part of this is due to the fact that the professor that taught it was the best lecturer I've had so far, but mostly because the material was intereting.

I'm assuming your projects were basically the same as ours. Was project 3 about writing a text adventure game? If so, I find that funny: I thought that was the weakest part of the course and a complete waste of time; the Logo interpreter we did for project 4 was _infinitely_ better in pretty much every way. Out of curiosity, when you read the book, did you cover all five chapters?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup it was the text adventure game, and yes I read the whole book. I remember finding the last parts to be the most amazing; I think they were about register machines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not that passion can't reinforce grit, but I tend to think that it's actually grit that causes passion, as Cal Newport often argues: [http://calnewport.com/blog/2010/01/23/beyond-passion-the- sci...](http://calnewport.com/blog/2010/01/23/beyond-passion-the-science-of- loving-what-you-do/)

So, indeed, what increases grit?

Sayemm's quote about prodigies seems to imply that there is something innate causing a singleminded obsession. Maybe in some cases, but there are cases like Mozart and the Polgar sisters (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judit_Polg%C3%A1r#Early_life>), who were basically raised into the target of their grit and passion.

I think one of the answers, as in the forth point, is environment. Take programming. In my case, I got started at a young age because I had a computer and found a programming book one time when I was bored. From there it was extremely easy to surround myself, via the internet, with people who are gritty about programming, to read books and blogs all the time, and to have projects all around me.

<comment><AUTHOR> The relationship between boredom and grit, or maybe an intermediate variable like finding what you love, is an interesting one to ponder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The author touches on a very important point here by distinguishing determination and grit. I think most of us, myself included, will use sheer willpower and determination to perform tasks on a super-human level, e.g., work 20 hrs/day, stop reading unnecessary emails, stop twittering, exercising, etc.

However, performing these tasks could be overlooking the big picture. Sure we can push ourselves to work 20/hrs a day and be productive, but to what end? I think true success yields from constant introspection of the "big picture", where you want to be, and how you are going to get there. It requires the discipline to assert the practices that will keep you on the path to your long-term goals without succumbing to practices that although productive in the short-run will eventually burn you out.

At times, it requires a lot more mental toughness to keep the "goal" in your sights than it does to charge ahead full-steam with everything you've got; especially when the startup landscape is so fickle.

</comment><comment><USER9> It occurred to me why people don't value intelligence as much as perseverance. IQ gives you instantaneous understanding of a problem. However, whatever advantage this might give, the fact that it is intelligence over time that matters. And while the Einsteins of the world may look at a problem and have an instant epiphany, it takes only moments of thinking for every one else to derive the same conclusion. To really have an advantage, Einstein would need to be in an environment where everyone else can't keep up, where an epiphany is necessary to succeed. This is not how business works. In business things are comparatively slow and steady and there is a right course of action that can be discovered in time. While Einstein might see a strategy instantly, Joe average can spend a couple hours and come to the same conclusion. In either case it may take months to implement.

</comment><comment><USER10> After certain incidents within the Royal Navy ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Iranian_seizure_of_Royal_N...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Iranian_seizure_of_Royal_Navy_personnel)) the training programme has changed to deliver more "Grit and Determination".

To answer the question on how to train it, the RN believes that it's done by pushing people through difficult situations during training and showing what's possible. I'm not convinced it's possible to self-improve grit to any significant level.

</comment><comment><USER11> A couple of observations. While I am now a very gritty person, looking back over my life I was not always so in practice, although the potential was there. The inflection point was an idea whose import completely enslaved me. I have no more choice to work on it than I have over whether or not to feed my children. So sometimes at least it can be about surrender of ego. The presence (absence) of other gritty people around me has been of no significance whatsoever.

</comment><comment><USER12> Here's a helpful mental hack that I've found has increased my grit as an entrepreneur:

I am very optimistic that I will be successful in the long term, but very pessimistic about the odds that the immediate next step will come easily or go well. This way, when a step proves difficult (and it very often does), it's not unexpected, making easier to keep moving forward without getting discouraged.

</comment><comment><USER13> Grit, as described by Adam, is one of the most important attributes of a successful entrepreneur. Both my cofounder and I believe this strongly, and have discussed this since the early days of founding our company. We still believe it wholeheartedly today.</comment>


Flying: It's Worse Than You Think - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/05/is-flying-safe-coronavirus/611335/ <comment><USER2> In times like these what society needs is a leader who appeals to our better angels, who pushes everyone toward the greater good. Instead we have one that puts the worst of human foibles on full display, thinking only of getting the blame elsewhere so ratings don't suffer. It normalizes that behavior across society.

It will take a long time to recover from that. We will still be suffering for it long after the virus is tamed.

<comment><USER3> >Instead we have one that puts the worst of human foibles on full display

How did we get here? What drove the worldwide populist uprising? It's not like this event was unique to the USA, it happened all around the world, near simultaneously.

Did people get left behind by globalism and a few influential people in the limelight (Wall Street, Hollywood in America)? Politics started speaking towards a narrower and narrower sect of the populations, confusing the loudest for the most. Or was it hate weaponized by a different elite, who themselves felt they were being left behind? Sort of a chicken and the egg.

<comment><USER2> All of the above. I would add a breakdown of local community institutions - churches/temples/mosques, fraternal clubs, unions, etc., and the switch to online "communities" with no real human contact.

<comment><USER4> And the pandemic didn't make that better. "No human contact" is maybe the toughest part of sheltering in place for many people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's something that I'm not getting in all this: given the R0 for this virus, the situation isn't going to disappear until about 70% of the population has developed immunity.

The purpose of all these isolation and social distancing measures is to slow down the process in order not to overwhelm hospitals. But the news reports I've been reading about hospitals is that in general, in developed countries, the hospitals aren't overwhelmed.

If 70% or so haven't developed immunity, then the pandemic will just re-emerge as soon as the restrictions are lifted. It seems to me that eventually 70% are going to get it. Shouldn't we just let it loose and go through our destined suffering faster?

So why are we making ourselves go through all this? ELI5?

<comment><USER6> I'm not an epidemiologist or involved in government policy decisions, but I agree with your assessment that we won't be able to truly go back to normal until we have 70%+ immunity, be that through infection or vaccine (2+ years away). My guess as to what is driving current policy decisions is that a few factors are in play:

1) If we just "let it loose" then we will quickly overwhelm hospitals and see greater loss of life than is necessary

2) We may be able to delay widespread infection until there are more effective treatments. And, given how much we don't know, it is almost certainly the case that a delay of a few months until widespread infection means that we will have a better understanding of how effective our current treatments are, allowing better treatment and better allocation of hospital resources

3) Slowly reopening allows high-risk groups to keep themselves safer, while people who are eager to get haircuts and play sports and aren't worried about the risk can volunteer themselves to be part of our herd immunity group.

<comment><USER3> Something like 80-90% of the deaths in some states are age 80+ and or at communal living situations. Is there a takeaway here, about more surgically precise lockdowns?

Also, many projections appear to predict spread uniformly. Should spread be modeled more by frequency of travel and interaction, moreso assuming that people with frequent interactions are likely to be infected first?

There has to be a way to model, predict, and account for the ebb and flow of which demographics are getting hit, and how to shape the spread with regard to capacity and risk. Hospitals are empty, open the gates a bit. Opening up restrictions on the lowest risk populations first, and tightening them back up as cases rise too fast. This would likely be predicated on a stronger welfare state, more equipped to serve people they are asking to stay locked down. "Stay inside, but we got your back" coupled with "your risk is low, go build herd immunity, stay away from the vulnerable."

Maybe something like a pollen or wildfire indicator, or defcon, county by county. "Free to do anything. Slightly elevated risk. High risk quarantine. Quarantine for all" with week by week or day by day updates. I understand that such a volatile type of lockdown would be hard for businesses to adapt to.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, it seems that daily or weekly indicators like we currently do for pollen, wildfire smoke, smog etc could be very helpful. In order for that to work, though, we'll need very widespread testing - currently we're observing spread with a 1-2 week lag once symptomatic people get their test results back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So I flew on Delta from National Airport to Atlanta and it was one of the best flights I've ever had. There was no one in the middle seat, everything was very clean, the airport was mostly empty and quiet, no children, and my drink, snack, and complementary Purell wipe was given to me in a plastic bag. It was surreal to be sure, I'd never been treated so well on an airplane.

</comment><comment><USER8> That picture of the dude in the full face respirator - he appears to have the mercury/chlorine gas cartridges with no particulate filters? Sigh.

</comment><comment><USER9> Has there been a single peep from the federal government about how to make airports and air travel safe?

<comment><USER10> How about "don't."

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> This Vox Weeds episode pretty much sums up my anger at this point in history. [https://megaphone.link/VMP6490531372](https://megaphone.link/VMP6490531372)

</comment><comment> huy-nguyen > The things we miss most about our pre-pandemic lives—dine-in restaurants and > recreational travel, karaoke nights and baseball games—require more than > government permission to be enjoyed. These activities are predicated not > only on close human contact but mutual affection and good-natured patience, > on our ability to put up with one another. Governors can lift restrictions > and companies can implement public-health protocols. But until we stop > reflexively seeing people as viral threats, those old small pleasures we > crave are likely to remain elusive.

At this rate, life will not fully return to normal until a substantial share of the population has been vaccinated.

<comment><USER11> I don't think life will ever return to what it was before.

Just like 9/11 changed air travel forever, this pandemic will have long lasting effects on how we live as a society.

<comment><USER12> I used to think that we'd emerge a cleaner more considerate society. I was naive.

Too many Americans are far too selfish and inconsiderate not to return to the "way things were". We're already seeing the 1%'ers of that class coming out of their caves demanding a return to normalcy regardless of the costs in lives.

When, is answered by either when there is a vaccine or the virus has touch pretty much everyone. Given the political distaste for doing things like other countries or upon the advice of people who know about pandemics, my money is on the latter.

<comment><USER13> I'm not worried about normalcy, I'm worried about running out of replacement parts for the huge distributed system that we all rely on for food and energy and communication. We're draining the queue right now, and I don't believe a command economy can replace the continuously tuned marketplace we halted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> this is a silly, perhaps stupid, touchy feely article, done poorly in obvious haste. zero insight. don't waste your time.

<comment><USER15> Agreed; the headline made me hope for an evaluation of the worldwide climate impact or air travel.</comment></comment>


Just Tap Your Phone On Every Wall and This App Will Draw a Floorplan - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/just-tap-your-phone-on-every-wall-and-this-app-will-dra-1548674446

<comment><USER2> If they can improve the accuracy it will be useful for architects, handy people and people buying new furniture... which means there will be people using it everyday... meters/rulers are done. Great idea.

</comment><comment><USER3> The pro version must be very nice. I hit the room limit before I finished scanning half my house in the demo version.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Gizmodo says this uses GPS but there's no way that's accurate enough, is there?

<comment><USER4> Article says it is accurate within 1 foot, which really isn't accurate enough if you are generating floor plans for rooms.</comment></comment>


Should holiday email be deleted? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-28786117 <comment><USER2> Related: Daimler has a PGP policy. Whoever works on their email likes to get things done.

Last year I emailed a car dealer who worked for Mercedes Benz USA, and I got an auto-reply from Daimler that my signature was unacceptable because the expiration date on my key was too far in the future, and they wouldn't deliver my message at all, unless I fixed it.

I know the salesperson had no idea what was going on with this - but as soon as a contacted him with a signed message and a shorter-term subkey I generated just for them, his outgoing messages started being signed too.

Then, a month ago, I got a notice from Daimler that my key was expiring and I needed to get a new one on file with them.

I've been signing emails as a policy for awhile, and it's the only experience of this sort I've had.

</comment><comment><USER3> I know there are things at my job that only I can do, even if they are documented. If certain things will need urgent attention while I'm out, I'll arrange to have someone cover for me.

I can understand not reading it, and setting the expectation with your employer and coworkers that you're on vacation and you won't be reading emails. That's very reasonable.

But just deleting emails? That sounds kind of nuts. I handle my email when I get back. And I send emails to other people with the expectation that they'll handle theirs when they get back.

If I have a question for a coworker, I'll email it to them. I don't expect a response if they're on vacation. The question is now theirs to deal with, in due time. By auto-deleting it, it reverts to being my problem. I'm sending that email for the purpose of getting work done. In that sense, auto-deleting it is preventing me from doing my work. And then I just have to send it again once they're back.

Setting proper boundaries and expectations is the solution. If you're getting so much email that it's an insurmountable task once you get back from vacation, maybe your company needs to reexamine its email culture and practices.

<comment><USER4> >> If I have a question for a coworker, I'll email it to them. I don't expect a response if they're on vacation. The question is now theirs to deal with, in due time. By auto-deleting it, it reverts to being my problem. In that sense, auto-deleting it is preventing me from doing my work. And then I just have to send it again once they're back.

Yes, it's still your problem when the other person is on vacation.

Think about it the other way, you go away for two weeks. You come back to hundreds of emails, many of which are questions. Most of the questions probably got answered by someone else, or are no longer relevant at all. If a question does still need answering, hell yes it's the asker's responsibility to communicate to you that it's still important.

<comment><USER5> _Yes, it 's still your problem when the other person is on vacation._

That is just naive. Many problems can wait until the person gets back. Yeah, sure, if it's something that needs to be dealt with before the person gets back from vacation, it's my problem. Otherwise, it is NOT my problem.

<comment><USER4> >> Many problems can wait until the person gets back.

And many have gone away when the person gets back, then the first thing the person has to do is trawl through a backlog and send out a bunch of "is this still needed?" emails. Putting the onus back on the person that needs it is a positive.

>> Yeah, sure, if it's something that needs to be dealt with before the person gets back from vacation, it's my problem. Otherwise, it is NOT my problem.

It's your problem because you need input from the other person, so it's your responsibility to chase it up no? Even with the backlog system there's a greater than average chance that your email will be missed in amongst noise.

<comment><USER5> You keep replying to the really, really unlikely case. I can't remember the last time I got an "is this still needed?" email.

<comment><USER4> Why is this unlikely?

Last time I worked a traditional job I would get back after a couple of weeks away to find hundreds of emails. Many were corporate spam, sure, but the majority of the rest were time-sensitive requests for my input which you may as well file straight to trash, if you can figure out which ones are now irrelevant.

Far better to have an auto-trasher and a notice to say 'ask me again in two weeks if this is important'

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think this is misguided and would seem to reinforce bad practices, poor etiquette and bad culture.

bad practices, i.e. if you want work life balance, don't check your email when you aren't in the office. Manage your co-workers expectations that you won't be replying when you aren't on the clock, don't work for a boss that has the expectation that you are functionally on-call at times when you should be with your family and friends.

bad etiquette, i.e. stop sending so much email yourself and stop responding to email that doesn't merit a response. OOO messages and other auto-responders are vile and just add to the mess - calendar requests, project updates, FYIs, CC"s, etc. Most of this messaging traffic is just unnecessary and only adds to the weight of one's inbox without making much of a contribution. Deal with your messaging in your app - turn off the notifications and update options and actually log into your calendar once or twice a day to view requests. Same goes for the rest of your web apps (I'm thinking of project and task tools like Asana, et al).

bad culture, i.e. be part of the solution, tell people when their email practices are dysfunctional. We have this thing at our office where staff will send out an email to 10 people asking "when is a good time to get together?" which triggers an avalanche of 25 messages all with conflicting instructions and requests about what might be the best time. I actively ask people to use my calendar and ignore the rest of the email on the subject. People are slowly starting to use my calendar for this sort of thing. Same goes for after-hours email. If you don't want people to think you'll respond after-hours, don't send email after hours! In the most extreme cases, if you can't change culture, then find a better place to work. Life is too short.

Corporate policy along the lines of "delete email while you are on vacation" just serve to reinforce all of these other bad practices. Email can be a force for good, you just have to use it that way.

<comment><USER7> I think what many people fail to realize, in a corporate setting, is that email is asynchronous communication. Email is not chat, and we need to approach it differently. When I send an email, I expect an answer when you get time--if it's something I need within 24-48 hours, I will call, visit, or IM you if you're online.

<comment><USER6> Totally! this is exactly right. I work with one small group of people that outside of our weekly status meeting, shares a ton of chatty one-liners via email several times a day. It drives me crazy that I can't get them to adopt Slack for these types of interactions but sometimes it is impossible to teach a dog new tricks ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I agree with deleting the emails. The US is woefully behind Europe in this regard. I would like to see a French-style work week, with the added goodness of France's recent email/phone call law forbidding employers from contacting employees after a certain time.

I would like, at the very least, to see a federal law forbidding more than 40 hours max. The world has really deteriorated in regard to family life since the 80s. When everything started becoming 24-7, that's when the decline began. I remember the sanity of the 80s whilst living in a couple of countries in western Europe at the time. The pace of life was better, more family time, the fun challenge of getting a popular restaurant reservation before they closed at a sane hour. It wasn't all about profit then like it is now.

I make it clear to my current employer that I don't do nights and weekends. When I leave the office at 1700, I'm unemployed. My wife and children come first.

<comment><USER9> > I would like, at the very least, to see a federal law forbidding more than > 40 hours max

This seems like a nice sentiment but it comes across and being out of touch with the general public.

Many, people need to work more than 40 hours, pretty much anyone who works for an hourly wage that is around the minimum wage level, a week just to make ends meet. If your law is enacted you've just doomed a non negligible portion of the population to poverty.

How would you even enforce your no more than 40 hours a week? What about anyone with a small business, or a lawyer who can bill $400/hour, should he be told he can't make any more money this week?

We just ran a new gas line in our house, the plumber doing it was doing side jobs to save up for a Harley. Your law of not permitting anyone to work more than 40 hours a week seems to make the world a worse place than it is now:(

To clarify, the op said 40 hours should be the most anyone is allowed to work, no exceptions, I'm fine with a law that says no one can be force to work more than 40 hours. But limiting people to 40 hours just seems like a really bad law.

As to the email deletion, I like the idea but it seems like a nightmare from a compliance perspective:)

The biggest down side I can see is that most services only send out one out of office email. What if someone is gone for more than a few days. I"m likely to forget that they are out, or now I have to add everyone's holiday schedule and all correspondence I want them to know about, to the list of things I need to keep in my head so I can resend emails when they come back. I'm scared already:(

<comment><USER10> I might be wrong, UK law is different than the rest of the EU (you can opt out of the working time directive here).

That said, isn't it a 40 hour max on contracted hours? Otherwise it is completely un-policeable. The idea is that you can't lose your job for refusing to work past 40 hours (i.e. refusing to take overtime). But you are allowed to work the overtime if you so please.

<comment><USER11> 40 hours/week is maximum your contract in the UK can oblige you to work. Having said that, when I got my job in the games industry I had to sign a statement stating that I voluntarily decide to work over that limit(but I am not required to). And no, overtime is not paid.

<comment><USER12> 48 hours. [http://www.hse.gov.uk/contact/faqs/workingtimedirective.htm](http://www.hse.gov.uk/contact/faqs/workingtimedirective.htm)

It is not legal to make you sign the opt out.

<comment><USER11> Ok 48 hours. And yes, I was told I don't have to sign it, but it's one of these situations when not signing it is ill advised. And in the games industry if I was working more than 48 hours per week it would be because I want to,not because I have to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As a contractor at Daimler, and somebody who is technical works for a German company this trend is catching on in a lot of Germany, and frankly I'm tempted to try it myself.

It solves a lot of problems in a single blow, and most problems people have with it can be answered by:

 _You shouldn 't use your work email for that_

or the opposite

 _You shouldn 't use your personal email for that_

<comment><USER14> It depends, I think there are probably a reasonable number of automated processes that could be messed up by something like this. For example, reminders that you need to do some sort of training or HR process could get black holed; creating a larger problem in the long run (e.g., instead of doing it at your leisure you have to do it in a big rush).

That isn't something that falls under your "you shouldn't use your work email for that", and it may be an acceptable trade-off; but it is certainly something that could cause pain. Probably not as much pain as the number of emails you'd wade through anyway, but something to consider.

<comment><USER13> Most automated processes thats report to one and only maintainer who's currently on vacation sound like a problem. Responsibilities and event emails should shift accordingly with vacation.

Also HR department invitations that do not have a secondary reminder, or take place while an employee is on vacation sound like the issue of the HR department not that employee in particular.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Vacation deletion of emails could be workable IF the only things that came across your work email were work-related requests from real people. However, for most people, the separation of work and personal (or pseudo personal) in email is not so complete, and many emails are notifications from automated (no-reply) systems. Deleting messages in these cases may cause more headaches upon return than it's worth.

Being resolute about putting aside work and email while on vacation is a personal responsibility, not an email robot's function. Put up a reasonable out-of-office message and put down the technology if you're on vacation.

</comment><comment><USER16> While an idea like this sounds appealing it seems to assume all emails you get are a bother (either because they're irrelevant or because they're asking you to do something).

I get useful emails all the time (or at least, emails that I should see) and quite a few of these are from automated systems which don't give a damn whether I'm there or not. If a third-party support desk sends me an automated "Ticket Closed" email for a call I've had open for months then I need to be aware of that, and deleting the email doesn't really help anyone (except them maybe).

</comment><comment><USER17> How does this work when, say, someone from outside the company emails you? I've been badgering the shit out of a bunch of different companies to try to get a solution for a very specific and complex problem. I need to have good relationships with their application engineers. Auto-responses telling them I'm deleting their emails seems like the sort of thing that might make them decide that my business isn't worth their time. Would outside emails be exempt from this policy?

</comment><comment><USER18> This is a brilliant idea. A corporate email account gets lots of emails: people leaving, people joining, meeting requests, missing mobiles, cars parked wrong, fire drills, etc. Not to mention broken builds, etc.

Holiday email within work environment where there is someone else covering for you suould all be deleted. In the case of Dailmer, the out of office clearly explains that the email is going to be deleted.

</comment><comment><USER19> Seems that this defeats the purpose of email. You can send someone an email and they can handle it when it fits their schedule. The auto reply is nice, giving the names of others that can help them is nice, but telling them the message will be deleted and that they will have to send it again doesn't serve a purpose. Maybe this differs across cultures.

<comment><USER4> Questions and problems have a habit of answering themselves or becoming less important when a week has passed. Should I spend hours going through 'stale' email when I get back, when 90% of it probably isn't important any more? The first action for each one being to check that?

I had an old manager who didn't go quite so far as to delete it, but he didn't go through his backlog after a vacation because "if it's important they'll ask again". I quite agree with this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This seems like a solution looking for a problem. The proposed "problem" of trawling through hundreds of emails doesn't seem like a problem to me.

I just go through and flag actionable items, instead of trying to answer anything right away. I start with the newest messages first, so I can ignore the thread of messages that lead up to the latest.

I've never spent more than an hour narrowing hundreds of emails down to a few that still require my attention. A small price to pay to keep things from falling through the cracks, because guess who is going to get blamed when someone forgets to resend an important message to me?

</comment><comment><USER21> I hate out of office replies. Usually they are just filling my inbox with something I already know or don't care.

If I need a response within a short timeframe, I'd email the details AND use a synchronse communications platform, like a telephone.

Use the right tool for the job, whats next the post office offering out of house replies to people that post something to you?

</comment><comment><USER22> I knew of one VP who got away with trashing his inbox while on vacation because he was the boss, but understandable that his email box was full all of the time with stuff that he didn't need to know.

The logic is simple though: If your email is really important then it's important enough to resend.

</comment><comment><USER23> If I deleted all my holiday email on the day I returned, then I would actually have to work that day. I much prefer the current system of, "Sorry, I'm still working my way through my emails" while I get back up to speed.

</comment><comment><USER24> Despite the few odd drawbacks to this approach mentioned elsewhere here, I think I speak for most of us who have worked in a corporate office when I say...

FxxK YEAH!!!

Give the surplus email the "FAX machine" treatment! ("Office Space" reference)

</comment><comment><USER25> This sort of rules usually result in double standards. HR drones and other departments have great work-life balance. While software devs are chained to their desks, and can only take holidays when it suits company.

</comment><comment><USER26> "Sorry I didn't get your message. I must have been on vacation and it got deleted."

Also what kind of holes does it create in email threads for conversations that happen before and after the vacation?

</comment><comment><USER27> I don't just receive email on major holidays (let alone vacation), I receive code reviews! Code reviews still roll in while the office is closed for major US holidays.

</comment><comment><USER23> Doesn't this assume that people actually read the out-of-office message?

<comment><USER28> If you send a mail and don't even read the response, why the hell did you send the mail?

<comment><USER23> As mentioned elsewhere, most people just read the title that says "out of office" and take action based on that. If it's low priority, they'll just let it wait until the person returns. They certainly wouldn't expect it to be deleted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It's a shame something like this would never fly in the US.

<comment><USER30> Johnson spent his Christmas answering support emails, too bad you aren't a team player like him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> we had a joke..if they can't get someone to take over you while you're on vacation then the problem is not big enough..</comment>


I Hate Ad Networks - <AUTHOR> http://www.briansugar.com/I-Hate-Ad-Networks-7457885

<comment><USER2> Ironic considering this whole "article" is one drawn-out ad.

<comment><USER3> Double irony bonus: it's an ad for a glorified ad network.

<comment><AUTHOR> ShopSense is an ad network, but surely you see the difference between those ads and ads for acai berries, teeth whiteners, and the University of Phoenix online?

The author doesn't hate ad networks per se -- he hates ad networks as they exist today. So his company went and built a better one, which not only looks better but performs better.

<comment><USER3> I agree completely. I think some ad networks are precisely the reason people end up installing ad blockers. Others filter and target very effectively (The Deck, among others). I think there is a great space in the market right now for non-sleazy, well-targeted and well-designed post-ad-network ad networks, and I think the author's fits the bill nicely.

It just seems a little silly to promote your forward-thinking foray into the ad network space under the blanket statement of "I Hate Ad Networks". :)

From the site: "We already have strong business relationships with all the top retailers and ShopStyle gets paid for driving them traffic. Why not distribute ShopStyle around our sites?"

They act as if this is a brand new idea, when in fact this was the driving force behind the creation of ad networks in the first place. Theirs just happens to be a particularly well-implemented one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What he means is,

• I hate other ad networks, dont' you?

• Subtext: don't we all?

• Check out mine!

• Subtext: hey, don't we all want our own ads seen?

</comment><comment><USER5> i love the deck...</comment>