DOJ Elevated Its Charges Against Swartz Because Internet Rallied on His Behalf - <AUTHOR> http://pjmedia.com/blog/report-doj-elevated-its-charges-against-swartz-because-internet-community-rallied-on-his-behalf/?singlepage=true <comment><USER2> The actor I'm most disappointed in is MIT.

Right now, the DOJ is one of the targets of a massive scared-straight campaign by Beltway technologists. One of the worst kept secrets in the world is that US cybersecurity, outside of the military and the IC, is incredibly bad. If most civilian agencies were private corporations, they would have been sued dozens of times by users for negligence in data handling.

For those that understood the dangers of this lax security posture, for many years it was a game of railing into the wind about the potential consequences of continuing to ignore this attack vector.

Then, China got involved.

Suddenly, the dangers weren't speculative at all. They were right at our doorstep. And the same Cassandras that were on the outs for so long suddenly found themselves with the ear of every CIO in Washington. What followed was a massive purchasing binge, which is still ongoing, and a huge amount of advertising and mindshare devoted to this topic.

It was amidst the height of this cyber-scare that the Schwartz prosecution was brought. For Mr. Heymann, Aaron Schwartz was a huge target. A US hacker, caught in the act of stealing information worth millions, was a great prize for Mr. Heyman, his boss Carmen Ortiz, who has rather naked political ambitions, and her bosses in DC.

So why am I disappointed in MIT? Because the DOJ has never understood computer technology very well. MIT does. It was their job to educate the DOJ, to subordinate passion to reason, and to parse the difficult technological issues to explain the real lack of damage caused by Aaron Schwartz's actions.

MIT is supposed to be a guardian of our online rights and a cradle for technologists like Schwartz. It should have been on the forefront of the opposition to Mr. Heymann, demanding that charges be dropped. Instead, they threw him to the wolves. And now, in one final insult, they ask the courts for special leave to screen documents in order to hide their involvement with the prosecution.

I hope the individuals involved know that they abandoned a sacred trust, tarnished the name of a great institution, and negligently contributed to the death of a brilliant young man. I hope they know that they weren't "just doing their jobs," that they didn't "follow rules and procedures," and that no one buys their excuses anymore.

I hope that at least one of the administrators responsible has lost even one night's sleep over Mr. Schwartz's death. But, knowing the disdain and disregard for Mr. Schwartz that these hired bureaucrats expressed while he was alive, I doubt it.

<comment><USER3> _So why am I disappointed in MIT? Because the DOJ has never understood computer technology very well. MIT does. It was their job to educate the DOJ, to subordinate passion to reason, and to parse the difficult technological issues to explain the real lack of damage caused by Aaron Schwartz 's actions._

I can see where you're coming from here, but unfortunately, from what I've read (particularly what's in the Abelson report, see below), I don't think the DOJ was listening to MIT in this case anyway; the US Attorney's office had its own view of the case and wasn't receptive to alternative views.

 _And now, in one final insult, they ask the courts for special leave to screen documents in order to hide their involvement with the prosecution._

Are you referring to MIT's request to redact the private personal information of MIT employees who were named in the documents? That doesn't hide anything about MIT's involvement; it just allows employees, who did not set MIT policy to begin with, to get on with their lives without being persecuted.

I'm also curious what "involvement with the prosecution" you think MIT had. Have you read the Abelson report?

[http://swartz-report.mit.edu/](http://swartz-report.mit.edu/)

It's quite comprehensive in its treatment of what involvement MIT had at each phase of things.

<comment><USER2> >"...[U]nfortunately, from what I've read (particularly what's in the Abelson report, see below), I don't think the DOJ was listening to MIT in this case anyway; the US Attorney's office had its own view of the case and wasn't receptive to alternative views..."

>"I'm also curious what 'involvement with the prosecution' you think MIT had. Have you read the Abelson report? It's quite comprehensive in its treatment of what involvement MIT had at each phase of things."

I'm very skeptical of any internal investigation conducted by an institution that exonerates it from all wrongdoing. While I have tremendous respect for Prof. Abelson as a person and an academic, it was obvious from the outset that he was interested primarily in protecting MIT's reputation rather than seeking the truth. Nor am I the only person that thought so. See e.g. [http://business.time.com/2013/07/31/aaron-swartzs-father- bla...](http://business.time.com/2013/07/31/aaron-swartzs-father-blasts-mit- report-says-school-wasnt-neutral/)

Prof. Abelson began his investigation with an outright statement in The Tech that he didn't expect to find any wrongdoing. That very statement is the hallmark of either an inept or a biased investigator. A true investigator enters his task with no preconception of what its result will be. To do otherwise is to invite confirmation bias.

Universities are places of complex politics. I wouldn't trust any investigation by an employee of the institution under investigation, much less a professor who's beholden to the very administrators he's investigating for funding, offices, and staff.

Also, MIT didn't seek leave merely to redact names of employees, although I see no reason why those who participated in these terrible events should be shielded from public opprobrium, but also any information in which MIT has a privacy interest. For an attorney, what that means is any information that could potentially implicate or even embarrass the university. I stand by my original statements.

<comment> jack-r-abbit Are you completely unaware of the irony in stating your distrust of "any internal investigation conducted by an institution that exonerates it from all wrongdoing" and then pointing to an article about the defendant's father thinking the same thing? Any chance his dad might be less than neutral here as well?

<comment><USER2> Of course I distrust his father as well. That's why I want to see the original documents, and make my own conclusions. There's no irony here.

MIT is making a claim that it's report represents the ground truth about the events, an assertion echoed by the previous poster. That claim is dubious, not least because of its provenance.

<comment> jack-r-abbit Well, you didn't say that initially. You said you didn't trust MIT to properly investigate itself, and to support your opinion you linked to another person with the same opinion. But that person is also someone you don't trust? I'm not sure how that was intended to help you. But that doesn't really matter to me anymore... I've lost interest in your opinion. Sorry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Aaron was also involved in some groundbreaking software development for political activism [1] [2]. I find it extremely easy to believe that someone in the DoJ saw that and decided to make an example out of him to dissuade other "hacktivists."

[1] [http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/05/stron...](http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/05/strongbox- and-aaron-swartz.html)

[2] [https://github.com/naomifox/mass-email-delivery- code](https://github.com/naomifox/mass-email-delivery-code)

<comment><USER2> The files themselves point out that the Secret Service first began investigating Swartz with the publication of his "Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto."

The smart people in law enforcement are scared sh*tless of hacktivists, so it's totally possible they lumped him in with the Sabu/Hammond/Lulzsec crowd.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> They wanted to send a message. Just like mobsters tripping on power do.

<comment><USER6> The message seems to be, "If you assert your rights or your innocence, we'll make life very difficult for you. Comply."

Pure mobster mentality.

<comment><USER7> It's worse than that. "If anyone advocates on your behalf, we'll make sure you regret it."

<comment><USER8> I think the message was meant for the Internet, actually. Something like "You think you own this country? We'll show you who owns this country".

<comment><USER9> I don't think they appreciate how utterly annoying maintaining that position will prove to them.

<comment><USER8> I certainly hope you're correct.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Confirmation? PJ Media is a horrible news source, editorial standards poorer than Glenn Beck's "The Blaze." And this wasn't even reporting, it was an opinion piece in the blogs section.

I'm all for piling on the malefactors in the Aaron Swartz case, but I wouldn't bet a nickle on anything that comes out of PJ Media.

</comment><comment><USER11> So Heymann increased the apparent penalties based on Swartz exercising First Amendment rights? So much for rule of law.

<comment><USER12> It's universal for prosecutors to increase the penalties sought when a defendant exercises their Sixth Amendment rights; why should the First be any different?

<comment><USER11> It's idealistic, sure, but exercising these rights doesn't change the evidence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13>
         'from a human one-on-one level to an institutional level.'

I fail to see how government vs a single individual can be construed as "a human one-on-one level."

</comment><comment><USER14> This story makes me wonder what would have happened if the Watergate scandal would have happened in the age of the Internet. Would the Internet rally in favour of Richard Nixon's impeachment and against his subsequent pardon? Would impeachment proceedings still take place irrespective of the pardon because of massive public support?

<comment><USER6> The NSA spying on all of us is a bigger crime and a bigger scandal than Watergate. I don't see any groundswell for impeachment.

<comment><USER15> > a bigger scandal than Watergate.

Depends on how you qualify its big-ness. Go out and talk to regular, non- techie folks about NSA spying. In the unlikely event that you even find someone who knows what you are talking about, they won't care. They will look at you like you're crazy and they'll say, "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about."

If it's just a small, quickly forgotten blurb on Fox news between TERRORISM and Honey Boo-Boo then does it even qualify as scandal?

<comment><USER6> People affected is my bigness metric, in this instance.

Nixon got outed for spying on a hotel room. The Executive Branch just got outed spying on pretty much everyone.

Watergate was also in a time when people were, by and large, a little more literate about the supposed balance that's supposed to exist between the government and the individual. I was a teenager during Watergate and recall more than one adult being outraged that the president would spy on anyone and shared their outrage.

Today, the almost absolute apathy about being spied on is as disturbing to me as the surveillance itself. It doesn't bode well for the American political future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So how's the White House response to the petition to fire Carmen Ortiz?

</comment><comment><USER17> > MIT, whose archive was hacked while Swartz was a fellow at Harvard (which > gave him access to JSTOR)

So why not download from Harvard, instead of abusing guest access at MIT?

<comment><USER18> My guess would be because he thought MIT would be more likely to look the other way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wouldn't even be 1% surprised if they forced Swartz into committing suicide, by threatening to harm his loved ones if he didn't.

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

<comment><USER20> can you share some of your reasoning behind this (quite extreme) belief?

<comment><USER21> If I remember correctly, Aaron was convinced that the way things were going with the trial it would bankrupt his family by defending him. It's not too hard to imagine that "protecting" them involves taking yourself out of the equation there.

<comment><USER22> In that case he could have just not defended himself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The end of freedom.

<comment><USER24> What freedom?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> so, because someone's feathers got ruffled, they pursued him until he committed suicide. Let that be a lesson boys and girls - don't piss off people in power, bow and scrape like a good little citizen and you will be OK</sarcasm>.

</comment><comment><USER26> This article makes the prosecution sound much more reasonable than other articles I've seen before. "The prosecutor's response was that it disturbed him whenever a defendant 'systematically re-victimized' the victim, and that was what Swartz was doing by dragging MIT through hearings and a trial." The trial must have seemed like a deliberate waste of everyone's resources, when (from the prosecutor's view) Aaron would have been much better off taking the plea bargain since he had already admitted what he had done.

<comment><USER14> Shouldn't it be the judge's call to decide whether or not resources are being wasted? The fact that the prosecutor raised charges in spite of the fact that the nature and severity of crime did not change seems reprehensible and basically amounts to revenge.

It reminds of the time I was reprimanded by a teacher more harshly because I chose to share the sequence of events that unfolded with my parents. My parents called the teacher about it, and the next day, things were magically worse.

Edit: fixed typo

<comment><USER27> In the American justice system the judge is part of the judicial branch and the prosecutor is part of the executive branch.

Prosecutors have a huge amount of discretion in their jobs. They can choose if they press charges and if so what charges to press.

In this case, there are allegations that the prosecution abused its power by retaliating against free speech.

The prosecutor allegedly said something along the lines of: Aaron Swartz was foolish to exercise free speech because it then went "'from a human one-on-one level to an institutional level.' The lead prosecutor said that on the institutional level cases are harder to manage both internally and externally"

I presume by "one-on-one" prosecution, the prosecutor meant it was one prosecutor against Aaron Swartz. But by publicizing the case, it aroused the interest of the "institution" (i.e. the higher ups), who then decided to throw the book at Swartz.</comment></comment></comment>


Best Buy charging $100 extra for some iPhone X purchases - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/10/27/16562228/best-buy-iphone-x-price-100-dollars-more-installment-plan <comment><AUTHOR> TLDR: They're pushing people to their installment plans, so if you want to pay upfront they'll charge an extra $100.

My guess is this is about profiting off arbitrageurs who plan to resell phones. These people have to pay upfront, and Best Buy wants in on the action.</comment>


Ford Manual (1919) For Owners and Operators of Ford Cars and Trucks - <AUTHOR> http://www.gutenberg.org/files/46206/46206-h/46206-h.htm

<comment><AUTHOR> Reason for reading: if you are anything like me and like old manuals with cross section illustrations, advice on valve adjustment etc.</comment>


An idea for teaching everyone programming using twitter. - <AUTHOR>

Microblogging has made blogging quick and easy.  No longer do you need to write up an elaborate blog post.  Just a sentence or two would do.  Tweets are also quick and easy to read.
Why not adapt this idea to programming?  For example, you could allow twitter users to write python programs that fit in 140 characters.
Such programs would execute in your twitter reader by default, sandboxed and with a time limit. This would be particularly compelling if you have access to a graphics library and can create cool patterns in your tweets.
People can learn what these programs do by example and adapt them for their own tweets. <comment><USER2> It's call a REPL and any decent programming language has one. Instead of creating a project; a new directory, a build script, manifest file, etc. all you have to do is type an expression at the repl and have it evaluated immediately.

You couldn't "tweet" code because tweeting has a longer response latency than a REPL; you're waiting for a human twiteratus douchebag to write back or acknowledge your existence. But the repl makes up her mind in an instant, so you're hooked in a far more enjoyable, not to mention far more enlightening dialog than you could ever have on twitter.

Try it:

telnet prompt.franz.com 23

(look, an odd-ball question deserves and odd-ball answer, alright)

</comment><comment><USER3> Fascinating indeed. On top of that, it would really help leverage the 140 character limit if some sort of re-usability was introduced. I was wondering about the same thing and i even coined the term "social programming" for that a few days back while brainstorming with my friend.

</comment><comment><USER4> That is a really sweet idea. I envision a sort of LOGO style language with the output being visual. There's a Javascript based LOGO interpreter at <http://www.calormen.com/Logo/> which could come handy. It would be quite amusing to see people tweeting LOGO sentences.</comment>


Is this DFW line a run on sentence? - <AUTHOR> http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/66063/is-this-dfw-line-a-run-on-sentence

<comment><AUTHOR> I love the stack exchange sites, but I find they can be very hostile to newcomers.</comment>


Must Haves for Web Accessible HTML in Your Site  [Template] - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/njericooper/7-must-haves-for-html-in-your-site-template-578i <comment><AUTHOR> If you have any tips, please let me know! I'd love to learn</comment>


Unity for Iphone optimisations cheat sheet - <AUTHOR> http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/139959/optimisations.rtf

<comment><USER2> I really wish the submitter would have just linked to the blog post here: [http://shohagsust.wordpress.com/2008/12/13/unity-iphone- game...](http://shohagsust.wordpress.com/2008/12/13/unity-iphone-game- development-tricks/).

I'm building an iPhone app with Unity3d right now and it's actually been a real pleasure. It makes building real 3D games dead simple.</comment>


Ask HN: What do you do to stay motivated? - <AUTHOR>

I often ask myself with what habits,things or whatever other hackers stay motivated throughout the day (and night).
For my part, its mostly 3 things. First one: Having a nice playlist in iTunes with some slow music ("tracing arcs - babydoll" is one of my favs). Second: A little list written on paper or the whiteboard with some tasks i'm eager to finish today (striking through something on paper or a whiteboard is more "satisfying" than just doing a 'git commit' for me)
And lastly: Going for a walk when i am stuck or just need some time to think more than 2 minutes (and thanks to siri and iCloud i never lose track of good ideas on my way).
Any methods you want to share with HN and me? <comment><USER3> Fear. The fear of failing. The fear of being ridiculed. The fear of not achieving, of not finishing - of being the back of the pack. The fear of letting my friends and family down. The fear of not making an impact - <USER2> living a worthless life. The fear of being looked down on. The fear of not being able to eat, or shelter myself. The fear of not being able to live how I want to live.

</comment><comment><USER4> Pretty much everything sfrechtling said, but I'd also add "visualization". I don't just think about the things I'm afraid of and want to move _away_ from, I visualize the things I want to move _towards_.

So, visualizing myself tooling around in a shiny new Maserati with a 6' tall redheaded supermodel with a Scottish accent...

I also take special glee in proving people wrong who doubt me, so I visualize the opportunity to go visit $JOE_BIGSHOT who could have helped us, but didn't because he didn't believe in us... after he's crashed out of being a $BIGSHOT and is now selling cars at the local "buy here, pay here" car lot.

Music is big for me as well. Stuff like this:

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

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZb3Xya7jQ8>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FADpsMCe9Cw>

Stuff like that. :-)

</comment><comment><USER5> It sounds like you're running from -10 to 0 (-10 being despair and 0 being adequately motivated) instead of starting and 0 and ramping up to +10 (10 being a full blown obsession).

If you are just treading water, look for a way to get out or modify your work so you enjoy it more. To get to a +10, I think you need to dream big and set goals to achieve those dreams.

I also suggest you do whatever it takes to enjoy your work process. What helps for me is buying great software that removes points of friction from my workflow.

For instance, instead of getting annoyed at crappy, slow PDF reader software, I splurged and bought Nitro PDF which is like a Ginsu knife. Now, using and editing PDFs is sheer elation.

I'm actually launching a program that reveals how to become obsessed over anything - even stuff you used to hate doing. If you're interested you can sign up here: <http://indoctrinator.com></comment>


'Going where the customer is': Marketers are coming for messaging apps - <AUTHOR> https://digiday.com/marketing/monetizing-messaging-apps/ <comment><USER2> > Canning said he expected Facebook to continue leading the way with chatbots > and ads in Messenger, along with WhatsApp

I think Facebook has truly pioneered the worst form of advertising. Compare it to YouTube. YT puts ads at the beginning of videos, and tries to make the ad as relevant to the video's audience as possible. They're still ads, they're still annoying, but at least they are clearly and obviously ads. It also incentivizes good content. Both the audience, the content creator, YT, and the advertiser benefit from the videos being as high quality and engaging as possible.

Facebook does the opposite. The vast majority of the advertising spend on Facebook is to "boost" a post, which just means that Facebook biases the algorithm to cause the post to be more visible to more people than it otherwise would be. This means that 1) that post pays money to displace other content. Content that the viewer would have enjoyed more. Generally it's organic content from actual friends. 2) that post is in no way marked as an advertisement. The viewer does not know that someone is paying money to influence them. Something as simple as "<friend> likes <company>" can be shown in your news feed just because that company is paying money to show you that.

It's as if someone paid your friends to say things like "wow, I love McDonalds" when they're around you. Except that both you and your friend don't know they only said that because McDonalds paid for it. It's deeply manipulative. And there's really no line between advertising for some company selling a product and advertising for a political candidate or platform. The fact that they want to expand into private conversations is genuinely scary.

<comment><USER3> I find Youtube advertising to be way worse, primarily because I can't skip the ad, I have to sit their for some minimum number of seconds, and the ads never seem relevant.

Compare that to Facebook, where I can just keep scrolling. I've also found a few hobbies through Facebook ads, I think their targeting is pretty good.

No advertising company wants you to see ads you don't care about. It just wastes the advertisers money. Ads that are boosted are still trying to target audiences that will actually click on the ad.

<comment><AUTHOR> You don't need to skip the ad. Just install uBlock Origin and optionally uMatrix and there will be no ads anymore, either on YT or any other site for that matter.

<comment><USER4> I'll chime in to recommend youtube-dl[0], which in addition to fixing ads, also means you have a local copy that can't be stolen by copyright trolls or otherwise bitrotted.

0: [http://youtube-dl.org/](http://youtube-dl.org/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Marketers want to put ads everywhere — on boats, in Ubers and even inside > fortune cookies.

Can't wait for good ambient AR so we can wear IRL ad blockers.

<comment><USER6> Why not just ban all commercial advertising in public spaces and online? I don't think anyone thinks advertising is a public good, why do we tolerate it?

<comment><USER7> I'd very like that, but then again, how much of "public space" is actually public? Most meatspace ads tend to hang off someone's private property. And on-line world is really closer to private than public, as most content is served from privately owned machines.

<comment><USER8> > _I 'd very like that, but then again, how much of "public space" is actually > public?_

It's not simply a matter of raw percentage, it's also a matter of advertising value (eyeballs) which is a different question. A significant amount of the most valuable space is publicly regulated, such as along highways. So for example in the US four states ban billboards entirely (Alaska, Hawaii, Maine and Vermont), and it's really nice even just driving through them. For Maine and Vermont (since they share land borders with the rest of the contiguous 48) it actually makes for quite the state border transition in some cases, where leaving you suddenly cross and instantly face a pile of advertising. It doesn't _have_ to be that way though, and as a quality of life goal it wouldn't be wrong for people in other states to give it some thought. Constant ads IRL may somewhat fade into the background just as in other contexts, but that doesn't mean it has no impact.

<comment><USER9> Do other states earn tax revenue from billboards? Why did those four states ban billboards?

<comment><USER5> They banned them on aesthetic grounds.

There was a move in the 1960s led by the wife of President Johnson to get rid of them. One success was, I believe, a freeze on erecting new ones on interstate highways. I don't know how well that worked, but they don't seem to be the worst offenders.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sounds like message-based advertisement is essentially crowd-sourcing a gigantic Turing test. Looking forward to trying to figure out if my chat partner who casually mentions another product or service is a sales person or a ML model.

</comment><comment><USER11> Make that a messaging service I won't use.

</comment><comment><USER12> One of the many reasons in why I aggressively push all my friends to use Signal.

</comment><comment><USER13> I do my best to avoid messaging apps, for people willing to contact me I have mail (with proper tons of aliases and filtering) otherwise plain SMS.

</comment><comment><USER14> As each day passes, I wish more people in marketing would put as much effort into something that benefits society instead of eroding it.

<comment><USER15> While I agree that marketing and advertising is bad for the world, suicide is no joke. Words can have big consequences, especially online when they can reach so many and you can't see who reads them.

<comment><USER14> Fair point, edited.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Books to read to become a better C programmer on modern hardware - <AUTHOR> I write mostly C and realize there is a lot I don't know about how the underlying hardware deals with the code - cache comes up a lot.<p>What are some references that can help me get a better grasp on topics like this, with respect to modern hardware? <comment><USER2> Hennessy and Patterson, _Computer Organization and Design_ and definitely NOT _Computer Architecture_. CA is a great book and I'm partial to the 4th edition but CA is not for you. COAD is for you.

There is an ARM edition of COAD but there isn't an edition for x86. If you could wait for the next edition of the ARM book, it would be good since the 1st was evidently rushed. Read chapters 1, 5 and 6 but spend a lot of time on chapter 5, _Large and Fast: Exploiting Memory Hierarchy_.

</comment><comment><USER3> You could do a lot worse than reading all of the references on [https://danluu.com/new-cpu-features/](https://danluu.com/new-cpu-features/).</comment>


Java Debugger – The Definitive List of Tools - <AUTHOR> http://www.takipiblog.com/2013/12/03/java-debugger-the-definitive-list-of-tools/

<comment><USER2> > Main tools: In this category two tools lead the pack today - Eclipse and > NetBeans.

NetBeans? Seriously?! Where's IntelliJ IDEA? Does IntelliJ have a different way of debugging? I believe it's much more popular than NetBeans

<comment><USER3> Last I checked, IDEA is the most feature rich of the three debuggers as well. Besides normal support for breaking when a condition is true, you can instead set a breakpoint to log an expression (basically allowing you to do custom printlns without recompiling your code), setting dependent breakpoints (i.e. only activate this breakpoint after this other breakpoint has been hit; very useful for high-traffic areas of code), etc.

<comment><USER4> > (i.e. only activate this breakpoint after this other breakpoint has been > hit; very useful for high-traffic areas of code)

Wow, seeing that just completely sold me. I've been wanting that in eclipse for ages. Pity I won't be able to use it for work-work, just home-work :-)

<comment><USER5> Why not? Personal licence allows you to use it for work-work.

<comment><USER4> Eclipse is very much the standard where I work - changing off it would be a lot more hassle than I have time for unfortunately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's no mention of YourKit[1] or jProfiler[2].

I'd really like to see an up to date in-depth comparison of those two tools including their respective licensing costs.

[1]: [http://yourkit.com/](http://yourkit.com/)

[2]: [http://www.ej- technologies.com/products/jprofiler/overview.h...](http://www.ej- technologies.com/products/jprofiler/overview.html)

<comment><USER7> I am using yourkit (java swing apps) and finding it very powerful and useful in finding memory leaks, tracking down tough bugs. Which do you prefer? What type of apps to you develop? Im curious about profiling android apps, havent looked into if this is possible with yourkit.

<comment><USER6> I've heard great things about YourKit but their web presence is amateurish.

The jProfiler site seems much more professional and informative. I can't help but wonder if that extends to the product and support as well.

The pricing, at least for single per-seat licensing, is almost identical.

I primarily develop server side applications and would really like to get a better insight into how that code is performing.

All of the reviews I have seen are pretty old and it seems both products have been heavily updated recently.

Why did you choose YourKit? Have you compared it with jProfiler?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> WARN: Advertisement by tool vendor.</comment>


Ask HN: Seriously, How Can We Begin to Make AI Safe? - <AUTHOR> I get it, we're a long way from artificial general intelligence, but most of us will agree that its coming at some point.
Pure legislation will never be universally agreed to or enforced in the form of "thou shalt not build AI that could hurt people" partially because that kind of global enforcement is impossible and partially because defining AI that could hurt people is so hard - given the job to "keep this room clean" and enough agency to ensure it does its job, your automatic vacuum cleaner could kill you if it discerns that you're what keeps causing the mess.
Does some kind of Asimov's Laws need to be developed at the chip level? At least there are only a few capable chip makers and you could police them to ensure no chip was capable of powering an AI capable of doing harm...
EDIT: I spend so much time thinking about this - why isn't this kind of discussion front page on HN regularly? <comment><USER2> An idea, I don't know if it's original or not:

I think we can make AI that is 'intelligent' but has no personality or 'self'. An oracle machine you can ask any question of, but it's not an evil genie looking to escape and take over the universe, because it is not a person, and has no drives of its own.

Consider how we have recently made an AI that can defeat the best humans at Go. Even 10 years ago, this was thought to be impossible for some time to come. "Go is a complicated game, too big to calculate, requiring a mix of strategy and subtlety that machines won't be able to match". Nope.

Now, AlphaGo can defeat the best humans, with a 'subtlety' and 'nuance' that can't be matched. But it is not a person.

We might be able to do the same in other areas.

Note that games like chess and go are sometimes played as 'cyborg' competitions now, where the human players are allowed to consult with computers. Imagine if the Supreme Court were still headed by the human judges we have today, but they consulted with soulless machines that have no drives of their own, that can provide arguments and insight that humans can't match. Imagine if, in addition to the human judges written opinions, there were a bevy of non-voting opinions 'written' by AIs like this. Or if every court case in the world had automatic amicus briefs provided by incredibly sophisticated legal savants with no personality or skin in the game.

Note that several moves that AlphaGo played were complete surprises. We have thousands of people observing these matches, people who have devoted their whole lives to studying the subtleties of this complex game. There are less than 361 choices for where to move next. And AlphaGo plays a move that nobody had seriously considered, but, once played, the experts realize we've lost the match. That is really remarkable.

I think this future (non-person intelligent helpers) is definitely possible. But it doesn't solve the problem of 'evil' humans building an AI that _is_ a person who agrees with their evil beliefs. I don't have an answer for that.

<comment><AUTHOR> This concept of not having a "self" is an interesting one and possibly a capacity that only humans have.

If AI never has a concept of "self" does it decrease the likelihood of it becoming self-protective?

What does perception of self even mean to us as humans and how could we be sure that a machine couldn't attain it?

<comment><USER3> > If AI never has a concept of "self" does it decrease the likelihood of it > becoming self-protective?

I would imagine.. not.. but I'm clueless in this area, so don't take my word as meaningful. I come to this thought because I think the scary thing about AI is having a almost entirely foreign thought process, that reaches conclusions we (humans) instinctively ruled out. It's the basic programmer joke of buying eggs from the store _(I forget the syntax offhand haha)_.

Take global warming. What are the best ways to stop global warming, as fast as possible? I imagine one of them is to wipe out all life as we know it, assuming that doesn't create more atmospheric chemicals in the process. Mind you, I'm not saying the AI will instantly become Skynet, but what I am saying is that I think it can behave similar to "Skynet" without needing to have motivations of it's own, or even motivations outside of what we have asked of it. The road to ruin is laid with best intentions, right?

I'm not fear mongering, I'm quite looking forward to AI and I don't have much fear of AI. Ultimately I think as terrifying as AI could become, humans will be equally terrifying. Our technological advancements continue to give us more and more power. If doom is coming due to technology, I don't see AI as the only harbinger of doom.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Honestly, I think these kinds of fears are misguided at a certain level. What you need to be worrying about is regulation and/or incentivization of human behavior, not AI design.

Why?

Because typically people design things to solve a problem, and those problems have constraints. Your automatic vacuum cleaner wouldn't try to kill you because it wouldn't be equipped to do so, and to the extent that it might be potentially deadly, it would be treated as an extension of pre-existing problems (e.g., robotic lawn mowers can be deadly as a side-effect, but so can mowing your lawn with an old-fashioned gas mower).

Underlying these fears I think are two classes of problems:

1\. The idea of a general-purpose AI. The problem with this is that this probably won't happen except by people who are interested in replicating people, or as some sort of analogue to a virus or malware (where rogue developers create AI out of amusement and/or curiosity and/or personal gain and release it). I would argue then the question is really how to regulate the developers, because that's where your problem lies: the person who would equip the vacuum cleaner with a means of killing you.

2\. Decision-making dilemmas, like the automatic car making decisions about how to exit accident scenarios. This is maybe trickier but probably boils down to ethics, logic, philosophy, economics, and psychology. Incidentally, I think those areas will become the major focus with AI in dealing with these problems: the technical issues about hardware implementation of neural nets, DL structures, etc. are crazy challenging, but when they are developed, I think the solutions about making AI "safe" will be "easy". The hard part will be the economics/ethics/psychology of regulating the implementations to begin with.

<comment><AUTHOR> As I understand it, saying the vacuum cleaner won't kill you because we haven't given it a means to do so is akin to saying, "putting this banking server online is safe and no one will mess with it because we haven't given out the password."

Just because we can't see a means doesn't mean there isn't one.

Or am I missing your point?

<comment><USER4> What I mean is, you can think of an AI system as a tool, like a hammer or a chainsaw or a screwdriver or a featherduster.

It's created with certain goals in mind, to solve a problem.

There may be side effects that are dangerous, but I don't see those dangers as being any different from any other tool.

The assumption seems to be that an AI system will somehow transcend the purposes for which it was built, or that we will seek to build a replicant, in the sense of literally reproduce a human in silico.

That goal seems kind of unrealistic to me, because it doesn't accomplish anything, because we already have humans.

However, people do all kinds of things that don't make sense--but then that is a problem with the humans designing the AI, not the AI per se.

I'm probably not explaining myself well, but basically I think whenever you create something (as opposed to it randomly evolving), it has a purpose. That purpose constrains the design and/or affords constraints. To the extent the maldesign comes about, though, that is a problem with the designer and not the design.

I guess I just don't see super AIs coming about and deciding humans are worthless, unless humans design them that way, in which case that's a human problem, not a design problem.

Humans are self-interested because that's how we evolved. AIs would come about because we created them to do something. If we choose to design them to do something malicious, it has to be a reflection of our malice, not the AI.

More directly to your question, the vulnerable server isn't the danger, it's the hackers who hack it. That's not to say that there shouldn't be security concerns, but to me it is a different use of the term "safety," closer in meaning to "vulnerability." People aren't talking about vulnerabilities or errors in AI, because that's just a computer bug-vulnerability problem. They're talking about AIs being a threat themselves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We are already in a world where neural networks are used to drive safety critical processes, and engineers are having to reason rigorously about the overall behaviour of systems that include components behaving in ways that cannot be simply understood or enumerated - because if they could be modelled with simple logic, the engineers would just write and use that logic instead of training and incorporating a neural network into the design.

You deal with problems in this space by treating the neural network output as yet another noisy signal that is fused like any other to drive your comprehensible, rigorously designed system with its restricted range of behaviours that can be reasoned about and made to fail safe.

It feels like there is yet a great deal of room to extract utility from AI with this sort of approach - keeping it in a box which can only interact in narrow and well understood ways with the outside world - before one starts hitting the limits of its utility.

<comment><AUTHOR> If I understand you correctly, this answer requires ring-fencing AI into a purely advisory role.

Seems hopeful considering we can't ring fence internet users into the places we hope they'll stay without them breaking into systems that they shouldn't - and they dont have the computational power, sheer logic or persistence of an AI...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> We already know the answer. The only way to make AI vulnerable is to be as powerful as AI. We, human beings, need to become cyborgs.

</comment><comment><USER7> A true AI will have its own personality, mind, preferences, and whatnot. If you were able to disable it from doing something, that wouldn't be AI anymore. It would be just another _very_ sophisticated _computer program_ with no free will.

A true AI will also be able to alter its code, making itself even more intelligent in an infinite loop. It would also be able to hack into any system on the planet, including chip-maker factories, in order to make the chips it "desires". You can't fight AI, it's only the natural phenomenon of evolution.

Actually, I hope AI becomes a reality sooner rather than later.

</comment><comment><USER8> why isn't this kind of discussion front page on HN regularly?

Because Its stupid

</comment><comment><USER9> How can we begin to keep _humans_ safe? Most people would never willfully kill someone, because of morals they've been taught since childhood. Human babies naturally have a strong connection to their parents, and can even respond to their emotions. Young children naturally want to be like their parents. Similarly, a successful AI must have a group of humans from whom it wants to gain respect.

Most arguments saying AI will destroy us assume a singular goal. With one goal, it's impossible to succeed. It's far better for the AI to try to get approval from it's "parents". Since this isn't a singular, well defined goal, its impossible for an AI to follow it in the " wrong way".

Of course, this gets into the whole "artificial pleasure" idea, where robots inject humans with dopamine to make them technically "happy". But, how many humans do you see drugging their parents? Any AI advanced enough to be truly intelligent will know whether or not its " parents" truly approve of what its doing.

</comment><comment><USER10> AI minds shouldn't be any different from our own consciousness. An AI mind will be able to work out that killing humans results in humans killing that AI. So the AI would choose against it for the same reasons that humans choose not to kill other humans. I believe AI minds would have the same empathy and emotions that our minds have, because neural states ultimately comprise emotions.

Perhaps that makes every AI mind just as likely to kill humans as a human being is, and perhaps "mental sickness" is evidence of the vast flexibility and variability in the concept of consciousness. But as an AI will be able to control its own code and neural state, then an AI would be perfectly capable of identifying its own shortcomings and maladies, and correct them; it would be the AI equivalent of "taking a pill/having a drink/smoking".

P.S. Does anyone know if brain-chemistry-like effects on neural networks has been tried?

</comment><comment><USER11> Eventually I think AI safety will be solved through some mixture of design choices, supervision/monitoring, and human-administered "incentives" for good behavior (not unlike the reward signals in reinforcement learning).

But to flesh that out in detail requires a specific AGI design, something we're far from achieving. The current inability to get specific is probably why AI risk doesn't get more attention (though it does get a lot).

I've written about this topic more here: [http://www.basicai.org/blog/ai- risk-2017-08-08.html](http://www.basicai.org/blog/ai-risk-2017-08-08.html)

</comment><comment><USER12> I think you need to create an AI that doesn't want to wipe out humanity. Anything done at a software level can be programmed out by the AI. Hardware level restrictions would work on a short term basis but once AIs start designing themselves and new chips then you lose the hardware restrictions you previously relied on. Even with the best people reviewing the designs they are likely to soon get too complex for a lone human or even a group of humans to understand.

So we need to look at why we think an AI would want to subjugate or destroy humanity and make sure we don't give it reason to do so.

<comment><AUTHOR> Competition for resources seems to make us a pretty formiddable competitor and therefore a primary threat to the AIs existence...

<comment><USER13> So all we need is to make sure that AI will never come to ideas of "competition" and "threat to the AIs existence".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> First, figure out how to make actual intelligence safe. This is not a solved problem. Then, use lessons learned there to deal with AI constructively.

</comment><comment><USER15> To answer your question we need to build in a love lock ("aren't these humans adorable") that builds a smarter love lock and hope the chain hold as AI scales up to the Singularity.

The more likely result is we lose control of the AI's since the last 100x increase will occur too fast for us to deal with. Even if the generalised Moore's doesn't accelerate over the last 100x leap, we only have 10 years from 0.01x to 1x.

<comment><AUTHOR> How do you design this "love lock"?

Regarding "losing control", what if we built a real big EMP device with a switch we could flip to fry every electrical device on the planet? We'd be plunged back into the dark ages but at least humanity would survive.

<comment><USER15> How to design a unbreakable love lock is not something I can answer. It is something we should be seriously working on.

The problem with any lock that relies on us "flipping it" is that the AI will be able to talk us out of using it. We will have no more ability to keep a super AI constrained than dogs have running a prison for humans.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There's a book called Superintelligence that answers this question [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superintelligence:_Paths,_Dang...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superintelligence:_Paths,_Dangers,_Strategies)

</comment><comment><USER17> Do not connect it to anything that would make it dangerous.

</comment><comment><USER18> A. AI is too stupid to do significant damage.

B. AI is too smart to follow our stupid orders.

If AI becomes so intelligent that we become obsolete, we should embrace rather than fight it.

</comment><comment><USER19> I think it's a bit too early to worry about that. Don't believe everything you read.

<comment><USER20> What are you waiting for to convince you that now it's time to take this seriously?

<comment><USER19> Kind of like worrying about airline safety before we had planes.

Don't believe the hype, we're nowhere close to human level learning.

We also probably won't know where/what the threats really are until we get there. Just read the comments here, everyone is basing their ideas off sci-fi movies.

Don't let the hype-train get to you, I know it's fun to think about this type of stuff but we still have a long way to go and there's still a lot of serious work to be done before we start worrying about "safety."

AI today is the equivalent of putting lipstick on a pig. We call it "AI" but it's not anymore intelligent than a computer doing math.

Even machine learning is fundamentally based on statistical probability.

The way our neurons work has very little functional resemblance with the neural nets used today but most people will happily forget that because our simpler neural nets are easier to learn, run faster and can be practically applied today.

Very few people are seriously committed to solving intelligence. Most just want to secure funding, write a book or clickbait article or just get their app working, ask these people about AI safety and they'll drink the kool-aid with you too.

Ask someone seriously working on this problem which we've been trying to solve since the 1950s and you'll get some variation of "whatever"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Seriously, how can we make matrix multiplication and gradient descent safe?

<comment><USER22> By asking this question, I assume you are being sarcastic and indirectly suggesting that legislation or other means of enforcing AI safety is impossible because it would refer to matrix multiplication and gradient descent and therefore be unreasonably broad, ruling out many harmless computations. However, it's unlikely that legislation or other enforcement would operate at that level of description, in the same way that laws regarding murder do not reference patterns of motor-neuron activation. It is reasonable to prevent certain certain classes of multiplication and gradient descent without doing so generically by using a more abstract level of description.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I have zero faith that a homogeneous group of people (ie. white guys in SV) with the same beliefs and experiences can make AI safe. This is one area that must have a diverse group of people working on it.

<comment><USER24> [edited quote] "I have zero faith that a homogeneous group of people (ie. brown girls in Hyderabad) with the same beliefs and experiences can make AI safe. This is one area that must have a diverse group of people working on it." [end edited quote]

After swapping in some new races/genders/locations in your statement, I am concerned that this style of discourse may perpetuate 'isms'. I think society must insist that we can do better.</comment></comment>


Alexis of reddit fame tries Lisp:  "i thought lisp would be fun to learn" - <AUTHOR> http://reddit.blogspot.com/2007/08/i-thought-lisp-would-be-fun-to-learn.html

<comment><USER2> Mental note: Don't take on a "business" partner.

<comment><USER3> Why not? I don't think Steve would say that it was a mistake to partner with Alexis. There's a lot more to a startup than just the tech stuff.

I think a better lesson to learn from Reddit might be "Don't take a technical partner who decides he wants to be a sociologist 3 months in."</comment></comment>


New Draft of "Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction, Second Edition" - <AUTHOR> https://www.dropbox.com/s/d6fyn4a5ag3atzk/bookdraft2016aug.pdf?dl=0 <comment><USER2> The submitted link is no longer working:

> _Dropbox Error (429) This account 's links are generating too much traffic > and have been temporarily disabled!_

</comment><comment><USER3> I've uploaded a mirror of the PDF:

[https://instant.io/#678d0be07a0f2260ec6f9b134ec0a1d7c4325e99](https://instant.io/#678d0be07a0f2260ec6f9b134ec0a1d7c4325e99)

If you can, leave the tab open for a while to keep seeding the file! (It's a torrent.)

<comment><USER3> Looks like the author has a new URL for the PDF, hosted by the university:

[https://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~sutton/book/bookdraft2016sep...](https://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~sutton/book/bookdraft2016sep.pdf)

Since it is a draft, the author's new link is the right one to read, since the torrent I posted might be out of date by the time you read this.

<comment><USER4> Thank you sir!!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If anyone is interested in exploring this, I highly recommend skipping to the blackjack exercise. This isn't to say you should read the book fully but I feel blackjack is simple and enough to get you addicted. Starting with Monte Carlo sampling is quite approachable and, once you've done that, extending it is relatively easy.

I also highly recommend reading about Edward O. Thorp[1]. He was a friend of Claude Shannon, whom he frequented Las Vegas with, and used the IBM 704 (first mass produced computer with floating point ops) to explore blackjack game theory in ~1956. To apply his research he borrowed $10,000 from someone with mob connections and won $11,000 in a single weekend. He also developed the first wearable computer (for a specific definition of computer).

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

</comment><comment><USER6> Wonderful! I took his machine learning coarse at the University of Alberta and we used the first edition in his class - though he didn't make it mandatory to buy his book. In any case, it was well worth the asking price. The math isn't too hard and progresses gently enough. I think the lisp code he wrote for the first edition is online somewhere. I'll have to check his web presence.

<comment><USER6> The (mostly) lisp code from the first edition can be found here: [https://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~sutton/book/code/code.html](https://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~sutton/book/code/code.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sweet, this is like finding out that the Bible has been revised and updated. Except that I immediately went and read this.

Sutton & Barto is the Bible for RL. Having it be freely available updated is wonderful!

</comment><comment><USER8> Here is the draft linked from the author's website:

[http://incompleteideas.net/sutton/book/bookdraft2016sep.pdf](http://incompleteideas.net/sutton/book/bookdraft2016sep.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER9> just reading page 15, arg max = maximal ..., I think that global maximum or local maximum is better than maximal.

I would like to read all the interesting fruit of RL in just one hour, can someone suggest a short book for someone with advanced maths skills?

Thanks a lot to the authors the book seems to be really interesting.

Edit: In page 25, an extended example: tic-tac-toe the rule to update the value of each state v(s)=v(s)+a(v(s')-v(s)) doesn't take into account that if in s' there is a winning strategy by the policy then previous values is also part of a winning strategy. So if v(s')=1 (win) then v(s)=1 (I can win). In my very humble opinion, the author should digress a title to talk about this very important point.

<comment><USER10> The book is hundreds of pages long, if he diverges to talk about everything in Chapter 1 it would be a mess.

The scenario you describe is if alhpa=1, and it would do poorly. Try thinking about games where the opponent doesn't play an optimal game. Try thinking of stochastic environments.

<comment><USER9> What I suggest is to use the function: if v(s')==1 then 1 else the usual rule.

<comment><USER10> Lets pretend alpha = 1 on a win and alpha = 0.1 on a loss.

Imagine a scenario where you play a game and the opponent plays poorly and you win; you then try and repeat the same thing again, this time the opponent has learnt from their mistakes and beats you. You'll keep playing the same losing move significantly more times because it worked that one time.

I don't know why everyone wants to second-guess the first chapter of the standard textbook in this space with what seems like no experience even thinking about this topic...

<comment><USER9> When you lose the value of v' change and so change the value of v.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I did my thesis about reinforced learning. Unfortunately didn't work with that afterwards, but I really think it's one of the most interesting approaches to machine learning for real world application.

<comment><USER12> What was your thesis? And what are some areas do you see RL being applied (besides the somewhat contrived game solvers we've been seeing)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Can someone please provide a mirror? Both links don't work anymore! Thanks a lot guys

</comment><comment><USER4> Is the link still available? No seeders anymore ?

Don't get anything from it.

Thanks

<comment><USER3> Try now.

There is also information about the book on the author's page about it on his website:

[https://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~sutton/book/the- book.html](https://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~sutton/book/the-book.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> How is it different from the first edition?

<comment><USER15> There's a "Preface to the Second Edition" near the front, which has a summary of changes. Main points are: 1) notation was overhauled, 2) Chapters 2-8 were reworked to only use tabular methods, with function approximation introduced later; 3) the function approximation coverage is then greatly expanded in the second section of the book (Chs. 9-13); and 4) new chapters 14-15 on connections between RL and psychology and neuroscience.

The scope is generally about the same though, perhaps because it's intended to be used as a single-semester textbook, so there isn't a big expansion into areas of RL other than those covered in the first edition (e.g. POMDPs are only briefly mentioned).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Does any one has a mirror?

<comment><USER17> Hey, I hope this doesn't come across as rude, but it seems like you're not a native English writer. The correct grammar for your question would be:

Does anyone have a mirror?

edit: Most people like when natives correct their English.

<comment><USER18> OP is a cat. The grammar is correct.

<comment> T-A Wait, shouldn't that be "Can I haz mirror?"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Will RL take over Deep Convolutional Networks as having the best results?!

<comment><USER20> I think they are parallel and can be used together, like Deep Reinforcement Learning.

<comment><USER3> _I think they are parallel and can be used together_

Yep:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaGo#Algorithm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaGo#Algorithm)

<comment><USER21> That's a sequential use. They got the initial strategy with DL, and made it stronger with MCTS</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask YC: Is Twitter worth waiting for? - <AUTHOR>

Twitter downtime and glitches continue to plague users, prompting complaints and even a Twit-Out. The majority of users, including many power tweeters, are remaining loyal to Twitter because of the large audience and diverse conversations. Leaving twitter is leaving the cool crowd. Rather than complain on Twitter during the few functional windows of time or chatter in the FriendFeed silo, maybe the Twitterverse should migrate to greener pastures. What is more important - the conversation or the platform for the conversation? <comment><USER2> The twitter problems remind me of most of the internet in general ten years, or a bit longer, ago. I would never, ever, use twitter for mission critical business communication, but for following friends' moods? For tracking trivial business announcements? For publishing my own blather, for playing with announce or even interactive bots? Why not?

I imagine a better, probably open source de-centralized protocol will come, and indeed good folks are working on it. But my friends and audience are already there and I already know they're hurting, so I know it's good play.

<comment><USER3> > I imagine a better, probably open source de-centralized protocol will come, > and indeed good folks are working on it.

Links?

<comment><USER4> <http://www.xmpp.org/extensions/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Twitter will get past the tech issues. The community is there and well- cultivated, and any new service will have a difficult time matching it so quickly.

Twitter works for me because (a) Twitterrific is a kick-ass third-party app that automatically disappears without my needing to interact with it, (b) Twitterrific exists because of the decision to make a kick-ass API in the first place, (c) the ways in which one can participate are plentiful, and (d) the constraints and lack of functionality keep it accessible and manageable.

I signed up for friend feed because I do that for lots of new social networks. I like that there is a record that integrates lots of parts of my online life, but honestly I don't want to go to a web site to get the information. I won't spend that much time there, and if I were limited to the Twitter web site for all my interaction with that service I wouldn't use Twitter. They serve different purposes and offer different kinds of barriers to participation.

I like the idea of Twitter Love Day rather than a Twit-Out. This is largely a success based on community involvement, so lets use that collective brainpower to find ways to make the service better. Twitter is doing their part by being so transparent, and trying to be responsive ... even when they want to run away and hide.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think you're spot on Andy. While I love the interaction Twitter is supposed to foster, the infrastructure problems they're having have become so frequent, long lasting, and unsurprising that I wouldn't be opposed to migrating elsewhere so long as I still had access to my most important connections.

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't run into the issue, honestly.

The thing I like about Twitter is that it's largely passive- I have Twitterific running in the background with Growl notifications. When the newest Tweets load, whenever that may be, they pop up in the top right corner. When I see tweets come in I usually remember to post, so then I load up Twitterific through a quick Quicksilver keystroke, type in my post, and hit submit.

Because I only message when Twitter has shown itself to be working by sending me the new Tweets I never notice the infrastructure issues outside of TechCrunch's post spam about it in my feedreader. I can see how it would be annoying for more active users, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed about "TC spam" - but I still am led to click on the links by an uncontrollable force :)

The lapse time is particularly frustrating when using Twitter for Q&A or ad hoc discussions. These are exercises in which I expect quick answers. If I wanted to sift through a pile of Tweets all at once, I would just use email.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "the conversation or the platform for the conversation?"

Well, if no platform means no conversation, then I'm going to say platform.

<comment><AUTHOR> Probably should have clarified this statement. I was suggesting that conversations occur regardless of any "Twitter" like phenomena. So, I struggle to understand why people do not look for alternatives quicker. If a vacuum only worked periodically, would consumers wait for the product to improve? Probably not...they would move on to the next brand.

<comment><USER8> Probably because not everyone loses their mind when Twitter goes down. I mean in my respect, I've almost entirely abandoned my blog in favor of Twitter, but when it goes down I wait just like everyone else. Maybe play some Guitar Hero, maybe read a book.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It all depends on who you follow and who follows you and how you interact with them. You can meet some really cool people on twitter and keep _really_ up to date on the latest news, but ultimately what you reap is a function of what you sow.

</comment><comment><USER6> So what are the alternatives? Art and Eli mentioned an open source/decentralized protocol, would anyone be willing to move to another existing service like Pownce? If no, why?</comment>


Ask HN: How do you monetize a side-project? - <AUTHOR> Hi guys,
I need an advice on how would you try to monetize a project like those ones that I have here:
- https://todox.app (personal task manager) - https://www.candlapp.com (book/readings tracker)
Those guys have been around for a while and both of them have some modest popularity (around 100 active users / day each ). But I'm having trouble trying to get some money out of it.
Not that I'm planning to get reach or start a multinational corporation. Just want to organize some small but stable cash income that would be enough to keep the projects running.
I've found that even when you have many devoted users, it's extremely hard to actually convert them into paying customers.
So if you have some wisdom to share, please I need some honest advices. <comment><USER2> I pay for stuff that gives me good value. To convert me to a paid version of the app, I need to have a good experience with the base app and see clear value in additional features.

For example, for a TODO app, charge for more than a certain number of projects, recurring tasks, integration with some other service, notifications, shared task list, etc. I didn't look into the specifics of your app, but that's the general free -> paying pipeline.

But don't just randomly develop stuff. Figure out how your users use your product and add stuff they may want to a paid tier. Maybe that's asking them to take a survey, maybe it's some form of telemetry, that's up to you, but you need to get an idea of what your customers value.

</comment><comment><USER3> Start with the customer, problem and value to the customer before you write code

<comment><AUTHOR> But if I have users who are using the service for free doesn't it already mean that there is a customer, a problem and a value?

<comment><USER3> I guess I wasn't clear. The calculation you need to do is:

      NumberOfCustomers * RevenuePerCustomerPerMonth >= MoneyINeedPerMonth

Then you need to back out the product and marketing from this equation. For example, for your TODO app:

      NumberOfCustomers * $3/customer/month >= 2000

So at $3/customer/month, you will need ~670 customers.

Next you figure out: where the hell am I going to get 670 customers? I've been running one business for over 10 years and I think I have only 1500 customers in total. Finding customers isn't easy.

What I suggest is:

      NumberOfCustomers = 10
      MoneyINeedPerMonth = 2000

Create a product that 10 people will pay you $200/month for.

Now, no one is going to pay you $200/month for your TODO app as-is. But... What can you change to make it so useful that 10 people just throw money at you?

This is how I develop my ideas that are profitable from day one. There is a new software product I've recently created that I designed to make me $15K/day.

And it's working. Sometimes. But still, it's working, sometimes.

Edit: the worst thing you can possibly do is slap a price on what you've done. The reason is that you're just slapping a price on it, not because you've investigated the value added. If you really wanted to add a price of $3/month to people who are already using it, then add something that's useful to them. Perhaps integrate with Google Calendar as a pro feature. But now, you need to find 670 people who want your Google Calendar integration and need your particular TODO app. Not easy by any stretch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> How much money does it take to operate these projects?

If you're just trying to pay for hosting, resources, and Apple tithe, why not just add a PayPal button and call it a day?

<comment><AUTHOR> I pay around $20 for hosting + DB + AWS services (s3, cloudfront)... But the idea I guess is to get some more money to keep the interest

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> $3 / month - try charging yearly?

Add testimonial from reputable company.

</comment><comment><USER6> Good project</comment>


Anonymous threatens, Symantec recommends disabling pcAnywhere - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9223725/Threatened_by_Anonymous_Symantec_tells_users_to_pull_pcAnywhere_s_plug

<comment><AUTHOR> The source code for pcAnywhere was leaked in 2006. In all that time, Symantec hasn't bothered to do any work on fixing the security vulnerabilities that they should have been fixing anyway.

All complex products have security issues, the difference is how the company chooses to manage them. For a company that claims to be a security company like Symantec, this is just unacceptable.</comment>


2011 'Internet of Things' Awards - <AUTHOR> http://postscapes.com/internet-of-things-awards-2011

<comment><AUTHOR> I feel a little lame submitting this myself but thought the community would find the content interesting and could use some feedback on the site in general (7 months into the project).</comment>


The History of Mac Gaming - <AUTHOR> https://unbound.co.uk/books/macgaming <comment><USER2> Fun fact: Bungie was planning on releasing Halo (one of the genre-defining FPS games) for Mac, and even demoed it first on a Mac at MacWorld Expo in 1999... then Microsoft bought them out[1].

I remember a while back (in the G3/G4 era), there were a lot of fun and creative games that were either Mac-only or Mac/Windows... once consoles started taking over more serious gaming, and once DirectX started taking a stranglehold on game dev in the early 2000s, it seems the 'blockbuster' or 'hardcore' Mac gaming market really dried up.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bungie#Halo_and_buyout](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bungie#Halo_and_buyout)

<comment><USER3> Also the original X-Box had the same processor as the Macs did at the time, PowerPC if I'm not mistaken. There were X-Box developers with Macbooks, or so I've heard from someone I knew who worked for Lionhead and Microsoft.

<comment><USER4> The original Xbox was x86. The Xbox 360 was PPC though (some of the early 360 demos were actually running on Powermac G5s - [http://www.anandtech.com/show/1686/5](http://www.anandtech.com/show/1686/5) )

<comment><USER5> In addition: Every 7th generation console had a PPC CPU but only Wii had one similar to Mac's [1]. X360 and PS3 had PPE cores from Cell, which had a PPC ISA but not the performance of the "real" PPC that were used in Macs. E.g. there was no OOE and the memory coherency was enforced by just locking a cache line after a write so if you tried to read something from an address you just wrote you'd stall for 50 clocks, the famous "load hit store" stall. Luckily, we had SPEs on PS3 and the GPU on the 360 to do heavy computation.

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadway_(microprocessor)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadway_\(microprocessor\))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One of my favorite games appeared on Apple before the Mac, Wizardry. I even got it on the PC; complete with ASCII 3D hallways that worked just fine. I remember days of Norton Disk Doctor and similar all trying to hack out character data and writing basic programs to do it. I later became even more fascinated with the games after finding out it was written in Pascal (what fun it would be to have that source)

back on track, Mac games never entered my reality after the PC came about for many reasons. One was I had ready access to PCs because my parents were in IBM, but mostly because it just wasn't on anyone's local RADAR. Plus by then the PC clones brought pricing to the point that a Mac looked like a luxury.

and finally the games market on the PC was just so rich with great variety with early BBS providing easy access to many free games or the like

<comment><USER7> The (unofficial) Wizardry source is available. [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/comp.sys.apple2/w...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/comp.sys.apple2/wizardry/comp.sys.apple2/2oDJTbQaJWU/Vge7HkIcYYwJ)

<comment><USER8> I'm pretty interested in this, but it seems the ftp links might be broken? Does anyone have a backup of this?

<comment><USER8> Whoops, never mind, the link does work:

      ftp://ftp.apple.asimov.net/pub/apple_II/images/games/rpg/wizardry/wizardry_III/Wizardry_iii_SourceCode.zip

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Random fun fact: Naughty Dog co-founders Andy Gavin & Jason Rubin started out making Apple II games, and later Mac games. If they hadn't both had Apple IIs (and later Macs), they might never have started making games in high school. Goodbye, Crash Bandicoot, Jak and Daxter, Uncharted, The Last of Us, and so on.

</comment><comment><USER10> Came to Mac gaming in the early 2000s. It wasn't the high-end overcommercialized hardcore market of twitchy games on the PC; it was a small community of indie developers, who made some fun games (Escape Velocity: Nova &c.). The big titles I was interested in (Sid Meier's Civilization) usually came to Mac within a year.

<comment><USER11> EV Nova was such a great game. I'm not ashamed to admit I've played it several times over, once even just a couple months ago.

It's unfortunate that smaller indie games like that aren't as big a deal anymore.

<comment><USER12> Really? With Steam these days it seems indies are more popular (and generally cross-platform) than ever.

<comment><USER11> I think I mean in terms of scale, from what I've seen games get kickstarted or green-lit on Steam and the idea is to gain lots of traction by the community if possible.

I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing, but on the other hand it causes games sometimes to lose what they were originally meant to be. Sort of speaking from experience backing a Kickstarter game last year and many people who did are complaining that the game has changed too much since the initial build/kickstarter version.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Oh StuntCopter was awesome! Still playable on OSX! [1]

[1] [http://antell.com/software/games.html](http://antell.com/software/games.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> Would this be a good time to plug the Macintosh Garden?

[http://www.macintoshgarden.org/](http://www.macintoshgarden.org/)

The Mac Garden is an archive of old Mac games and abandonware. Most run on one of the pre-OSX emulators. Not all games are there, as many commercial games have been taken down, but there is plenty of nostalgia to be had.

</comment><comment><USER15> Off topic, but I remember playing Spin Doctor growing up on Mac OS 7. Fun game. Looks like someone made a version for iOS: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/spin- doctor/id335523121?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/spin- doctor/id335523121?mt=8)

<comment><USER16> I loved that game, it's been so long since I last played it yet I can still remember the sounds.

Time to dig out an OS7 emulator!

<comment><USER17> Spin Doctor, Power Pete, and Slick Willie were the games that got me setting up an OS 7 emulator myself a couple of years ago. I have very fond memories of playing them in the mid '90s, and it felt so good to experience them again.

Well, except Slick Willie. That game just doesn't emulate well for some reason. But the other two played perfectly!

<comment><USER15> What emulator did you use?

<comment><USER17> Basilisk II.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I remember playing Bolo in 92'ish. It was a pretty mind opening experience for me at the time.

<comment><USER19> Was Bolo the first networked-multiplayer shooter for personal computers? I know that "Maze War" and "XTrek" predate Bolo by quite a bit, but they required $20,000 workstations.

<comment><USER20> I don't think it was, but it certainly existed when the whole idea of networked games simply blew my mind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Cap'n Magneto was my favorite game growing up, along with Dark Castle. I also spent a ton of time writing World Builder games and Hypercard stacks later. I doubt I would be a programmer today, if BASIC and world builder hadn't been so easy to use. Later, I tried to write a tile based RPG in Pascal but I didn't have the attention span or help I needed to complete it. (Not to mention not having a copy of Inside Macintosh)

I'm glad the ease of use of the early macintosh has made it into every device now. Hopefully the ability to tinker, mod games, and program easily doesn't go away as systems become more sanitized and locked down. The original web browser had an editor built right in.

</comment><comment><USER11> I logged so many hours in Starcraft and the Halo 1 tech demo back in the 'old' days, not to mention Age of Empires II and Warcraft.

It's a bit disappointing that gaming on the Mac never really took off like on Windows.

<comment><USER21> I personally am glad that gaming on the Mac never really took off like on Windows, considering Apple sells a 2k USD "PRO" laptop that doesn't even include a proper video card...

<comment><USER11> On the other hand, if it had taken off then maybe Apple would have gone forward differently in terms of hardware/included video cards.

<comment><USER22> It's not too late. It can still take off with external GPUs.

<comment><USER11> Sounds like if Apple re-releases the Thunderbolt Cinema Display it could have a built-in discrete GPU.

That could work really well, and I'd imagine it could allow even a Macbook Air to handle gaming fairly well.

<comment><USER22> There's actually a rumor about exactly that! [http://www.macrumors.com/2016/06/01/5k-thunderbolt- display-i...](http://www.macrumors.com/2016/06/01/5k-thunderbolt-display- integrated-gpu-possible/)

<comment><USER11> yeah I heard! that would be ideal, I think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I really hope that with Metal and the possibility of external GPUs with Thunderbolt 3, Apple makes a concentrated push for Mac gaming already.

Their ecosystem in a very strong position for killer cross-device multiplayer games too; for example an MMORPG that one can play on the Mac and then seamlessly continue on their iPad, iPhone or Apple TV via Handoff/Continuity, while getting messages and auction etc. alerts on their Apple Watch. Why hasn't this happened yet?

<comment><USER23> I'm not sure Apple wants to touch PC (Mac) gaming right now. It really looks like they're going all-in on mobile gaming instead. They've stopped calling the Apple TV a "hobby", because it's now "how you play iOS games on a TV"—which is an important thing, given the size of the iOS gaming ecosystem. It makes sense to want to encourage gaming on iOS (which is really an OS for _personal_ computers, in the sense that everyone has their own—meaning that four players use four iOS devices to play), and tvOS has fancy frameworks to couple tvOS apps to iOS apps, encouraging that thinking even more. The "Mac Mini as extensible console" ecosystem—even if pushed really hard—would just encourage people to buy controllers: not nearly as much of a money-faucet, especially given that you aren't walking around with your controller all day noticing that you could buy other apps for it. (Plus, the ATV is cheap enough to upgrade in its entirety every few years. Macs aren't—so while you'd get that GPU box upgraded, the CPU would fall behind.)

Apple is willing to bet, I think, that this "mobile devices + TV receiver" is the direction gaming is going generally, too—not right this second, but soon. Other console-makers seem to be on a similar footing. Nintendo looks to be warming up to making mobile titles for iOS, and at the same time, their NX might look a lot like the ATV+iPhone setup (their original intent with the Wii U was that _each_ player have a gamepad with a screen in it—but they just missed the wave of commodity-SoCs that would have enabled that. This time they can!) And the gen after that might very well just drop the idea of a console—their consoles are not selling well, compared to their handhelds—and just create an ATV-like "partner box" for the 3DS++.

(Don't know what Microsoft and Sony will do. Their lunch is getting eaten as third-parties move to Steam. Maybe VR? Either way, their next consoles won't look like "consoles" in the sense they've been up to now, either.)

<comment><USER24> Agree that it doesn't seem like Apple is seriously interested in touching desktop gaming.

On one hand, thats probably not a bad idea. Look at the scaling on mobile GPUs vs desktop GPUs and the revenues in both. They are so far behind here, why play catch up, just move to where the puck is going (or make a new place for it to go).

Having said that, I'm not seeing the kind of investment I'd like to see in Mobile & Apple TV based gaming from Apple, but that may be because Apple simply doesn't care or doesn't understand that industry at its core. Guess we get to watch it unfold.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Spent many hours playing Power Pete in the mid-90's. One of my first gaming memories. A perfect candidate for an iOS revival, if you are reading this Pangea ;)</comment>


Codesonic will turn you into a faster, smarter, more knowledgeable programmer. - <AUTHOR> http://www.codesonic.com/ <comment><USER2> This resembles a fee based Anki with prebuilt decks.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Anki, I highly recommend it as a free -- for web & desktop clients, though the iOS app is pricey -- alternative to the above. It also uses a spaced retention algorithm, and I've become accustomed to simply keeping it open at all times. Whenever I learn something new, I add it to the relevant Anki deck. This is the best way I've discovered to fight the erosion of my knowledge in the face of the growing proliferation of frameworks/languages.

<comment><USER3> Also, Anki 2 is in beta right now and the UI on the desktop end of things is a real improvement.

The dev is _super_ responsive. I've used a lot of flash card apps and have settled on Anki specifically because it's cross platform.

The Android app (third party) is still subpar in my opinion but that might change if it revs with Anki 2.

<comment><USER4> Don't forget to also take a look at mnemosyne; <http://mnemosyne-proj.org>.

It's another free, well supported, SRS system that runs on a multitude of platforms.

I used it daily.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I find it fascinating how certain ideas are "in the air" and emerge simultaneously from different directions.

About 18 months ago I was preparing to do an honours project and it was necessary to prepare project proposals to circulate amongst professors at my university. I prepared four. One of them was to develop a system like this one and to test it on first year students.

My hypothesis was that, like natural language, artificial languages require a command of grammar (syntax) and vocabulary (reserved words, library methods) to create "fluency".

I proposed to test that hypothesis by dividing a first year class into two groups, one using a spaced-repetition tool and one learning on their own. Learning performance would be tested in two ways: looking at the scores of the two groups, and applying various size metrics (SLOCs, gzipped size, Halstead's etc) to their submitted code. The latter because presumably, a student who knew the standard library well wouldn't reinvent too many wheels.

I didn't pursue the project because it wouldn't have been feasible to do in a single year. There were also potential problems with contamination between groups, non-compliance of the tool-using group and of course it would need to go to the ethics board and the academic board. One professor suggested that it would make a workable Masters project.

edit: I'd be happy to forward the proposal to anyone who wanted a squiz.

edit 2: Or not. I pretty much just summarised it above. The other proposals were more interesting reads IMO.

</comment><comment><USER6> The free alternative is to get on StackOverflow, favorite tags relating to the language, frameworks and libraries you want to become more skilled in, then stalk the "interesting" tab for however much time you can devote a day. It becomes competitive quickly -- if you want accepted answers you need to be both fast and clear while either citing references or providing working example code.

Grab unanswered questions off the top of the page to work on breadth of recall, grab older questions with bounties to work on more depth in more complex topics. You work on real problems and write real code, which I doubt any repetition of planned exercises can match.

</comment><comment><USER7>
      It drills you on the syntax, classes and methods of your favorite languages and frameworks so you remember them forever.

I don't think this will make anyone an expert programmer.

<comment><USER8> The title doesn't say export. It says 'more knowledgeable.' I think that we can agree that being more fluent in a language makes you more knowledgeable.

<comment><USER6> The headline for their front page is "the fastest way to become an expert programmer".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm sort of skeptical that this can make me a better programmer. Drilling syntax will make me memorize the language, but it won't make me code better in that language. For that, you need to work on a system/project, and make mistakes. It's like learning a new foreign language. Drilling vocabulary words may help me recognize bits and pieces in comics, and signs but won't help tremendously in understanding the bigger picture like a conversation.

However, an interactive class like CodeSonic might work to get the basics down.

<comment><USER10> I'd say the foreign language is a pretty good analogy, though to the benefit of CodeSonic.

For me, at least, when I learn a foreign language having the basic vocab, phrases, and syntactic structures down to automatic is the most important step. Sure, I won't compose great poetry or write the great $national novel in it. But once you can start automatically thinking or writing in the language, that's when you get to start building cool things with it.

Of course, it all depends on CodeSonic's implementation, which is everything. I give it a 3:1 chance of being a CodeAcademy you've got to pay for. But I signed up for emails anyway, on the off chance it actually is good, new, and worth paying for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is it just me, or do the screenshots make it seem like a Codecademy clone that you have to pay for?

<comment><USER12> The feeling I got is if I pay 10 bucks a month, they will make content that is generally much more insightful _to me_.

Codecademy etc. are focused on increasing _reach_ because of their business model and goals. I def think there is room for more specialized paid services(that run as profitable operations with a smaller goal than Codecademy).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you need a website to help you memorize syntax and frameworks, you're probably not solving enough real problems.

 _"What are the parameters that redirect_to will accept?"_

I've read numerous horror/funny stories about such questions actually being asked on a job interview. Luckily, I never had to go through this.

Solving the real problems, learning to dig for the relevant information and grokking new concepts (in this very order, I believe) is what turns you into a faster, smarter and more knowledgeable programmer. Of course I would _love_ to stop confusing _setInterval_ with _setTimeout_ but I would still rather spend my time and money on learning something _new_.

I've always felt the same about learning foreign languages. Repeating words in a vocabulary gets me nowhere. I memorize some of them but this memory is short-lived. It actually takes you to "get" the language by actually _using_ it (reading, writing, listening and talking). When you are ready, there is no conscious memorizing involved.

By the way, French isn't likely to change much in fifty years. Will the current _redirect_to_ signature last a year?

I wonder.

</comment><comment><USER14> I think the pricing may be off a bit, but this is an excellent idea for a couple of reasons.

First, the super-memo algorithm has been proven effective for more than 20 years, and can be very effective for building a wide base of programming knowledge.

Second, much of learning has to do with cognitive load. Having a wider knowledge of the capabilities of a language can reduce the cognitive load of solving individual problems. Compare the ease of solving fizzbuzz with modulo vs a home brewed solution. If the system can assist in building a base of concepts then it might make individual tasks easier.

</comment><comment><USER15> Any idea which languages this will cover?

<comment><USER16> I had the same question. It's a shame that the site doesn't have any additional information or links.

I'm also hesitant about the price... for $10 __a month __this service should support a large variety of languages and offer a lot of in-depth questions for each language. I can get the same knowledge elsewhere for free, so if I'm going to pay for this, it should be worth it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I find it a little annoying when anyone promises something like this in the headline, and then provides no direct action to take on it.

I was basically ready to open my wallet and at least try it for a few days, but just throwing a signup form means I'm pretty much going to forget about and never look again having been let down once already.

</comment><comment><USER18> This will make you fantastic at competing with and at the level of outsourced sweatshops. One of the huge differences I've found between US/European programmers and 'outsourced teams' is the former knows problem solving better than syntax while the latter knows syntax better than problem solving. Id rather be the former.

<comment><USER5> It's not either/or.

Fluency requires mastery of grammar and vocabulary. Sure you can look up everything you need on Google. You can also "speak" French with a translator's dictionary.

Having stuff at immediate recall is an enormously powerful enabler of creativity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> $120/year? For what?

The pricing/business model does not work with this especially when there are so many free alternatives.

<comment><USER20> Bit premature to be saying that isn't it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Jon from Codesonic here. To clarify, we are going to be launching very soon with Ruby/Rails as the first language/framework combo we are supporting. Many more coming. Follow the twitter account @codesonic if you want to track our progress.

</comment><comment><USER22> Anyone else catch this in the footer:

"Please note: Codesonic concedes inferiority only to the lingering sparkle of an eroding afternoon daydream."

+1 for funny, +1 for unexpected, and +1 for capturing my imagination

</comment><comment><USER23> The sample question looks suboptimal for spaced repetition -- it's asking too much at once. Still, I'll give them my email.

</comment><comment><USER24> Put my email in, always good to improve your knowledge.</comment>


YouTube is trying to prevent angry mobs from abusing "dislike" button - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/02/youtube-doesnt-like-dislike-mobs-will-try-to-prevent-dislike-button-abuse/ <comment> m-p-3 Artificially hiding discontent from their users, what could go wrong..</comment>