A real-time collaborative HTML/CSS editor - <AUTHOR> http://jlongster.com:4007/ <comment><USER2> I think this could really be fun and very useful if you have mature ethical adults on. You can try this one if you want <http://jlongster.com:4007/noassholes>

<comment><USER3> I am really sorry about the copy paste i accidentally did that made everything red and yellow... I thought i was in my private pad to test something.

It came from [http://www.w3schools.com/css3/tryit.asp?filename=trycss3_ani...](http://www.w3schools.com/css3/tryit.asp?filename=trycss3_animation1)

<comment><USER4> So many people selecting everything and deleting, real mature people.

<comment><USER3> It seems to have quieted down again there. It's rather Google Wave like when it's not being reset over and over.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> So, people like to be destructive. That's pretty obvious.

I'd recommend creating a new pad with the button at the top if you really want to play around with it without any interruptions.

<comment><USER5> Shut this link down asap pls. On Safari, it completely takes over my browser (I was on a different tab when the page loaded and took over). Had to restart in order to get my browser back.

This is VERY annoying.

<comment><USER6> Same here. Had to restart a 4 hour download.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wooooow, it took me about 2 seconds to go from this is kinda cool I wonder how its built to giggling and spamming "PENIS". This is the best!

</comment><comment><USER8> Is this open-sourced? I'd like to fork this and use internally for workflow improvement.

This is PILF (Project I'd Like to Fork)

PILF Link: <https://github.com/jlongster/ahoy>

<comment><USER7> My rails apps bring all the boys to the engineyard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would just like to thank the utter MORON who put the infinite while loop alert box. No option to close it, can't switch to other tabs. I had to restart a 4 hour download thanks to you.

<comment><USER9> As with most things in life, you can't control what morons are doing.

However, you can control how it affects you. For instance:

\- Chrome asks you if you want to ignore dialog boxes after a couple ones pop. \- There are excellent "Download managers" to let you start again if it crashes or to overall have a better control. \- Lots of hackers disable javascript by default, and only enable it on trusted websites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Best way to think of this would be like an interactive pastebin. The more people on one pad, the more useless it becomes. But for 2 people troubleshooting it would be great.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh my gosh, seriously. The global pad just turned into a bunch of lolcats and script kiddies.

<comment><USER10> perhaps if the starter of the pad can set a password that has to be entered the first time ESC is hit for that pad? sorry for the armchair feature requesting.. i think the idea has promise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Well that's just a mess.

</comment><comment><USER12> <SCRIPT>a=/XSS/ alert(a.source)</SCRIPT>

basic injection works, it doesnt properly screen input

</comment><comment><USER13> This would be great for interviewing front-end candidates. There's a few out there already that let you share code, however this lets everyone see the results instantly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes! As I'm watching this unfold, I'm realizing that this would be great for asking XSS questions too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Isn't it fun building web apps nowadays?

The internet is unfortunately not kind to beginners. My sympathies.

I'd love to see this in action, though.

</comment><comment><USER15> Something like this works: <img src="/derp.png" onerror="alert(1)" />

</comment><comment><USER16> How was this built? Seems like Meteor could be an option.

<comment><AUTHOR> See the "about" link at the top. I used share.js [1], which is a great Operational Transform library, with the Ace Editor. With a little bit of js, I made the page auto-update with the contents.

share.js really made this easy.

[1] <http://sharejs.org/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> That didn't take long for someone to break it.

</comment><comment><USER18> lol, it or someone on there sent me to google.com somehow.

</comment><comment><USER19> haha this is fun.

</comment><comment><USER20> Fantastic. I should have known better than to have loaded this at work. Thanks for citrus fruit party, mature peers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I should have put a warning somewhere. I was foolish not to expect that.

<comment><USER11> Redirects are still possible with the <meta> tag</comment></comment></comment>


Pricing revisited - <AUTHOR> http://startupcfo.ca/2008/07/pricing-revisited.html

<comment><USER2> Very good primer for people without a heavy finance background.</comment>


Inside the Multimillion-Dollar Battle to Host the Air Force's New 'Cyber Command' - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2008/02/cyber_command?currentPage=all <comment><USER2> Good luck getting the tech people you need for this kind of operation anywhere but Hanscom AFB outside of Boston.</comment>


Plausible: Simple and privacy-friendly alternative to Google Analytics - <AUTHOR> https://plausible.io <comment><USER2> A free plan for small blogs could be great.</comment>


AI learns to solve quantum state of many particles at once - <AUTHOR> https://www.newscientist.com/article/2120856-ai-learns-to-solve-quantum-state-of-many-particles-at-once/ <comment><AUTHOR> Paper here: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.02318](https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.02318)</comment>


Ask HN: How do you find product ideas? - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN, how do you choose the passion projects you are working on?
I just wrote an entry about how I find my ideas - http://first10.255bits.com/wordpress/2013/01/01/how-to-find-your-product-in-a-sea-of-prospects/
TLDR: I write down one idea a day as an exercise and then choose which idea to productize when I have enough time to implement it. <comment><USER2> There are plenty of ways to find working startup ideas. It would be great if you can find some problem solving idea, but it's not necessary. I wrote an additional essay on how to find ideas to PG's essay.

<http://www.vusal.me/essays/ideas/>

</comment><comment><USER3> from the POV of a design researcher/strategist, this is a pretty typical if oversimplified process

1) find a problem through user research 2) asess scope & scale (is this a big problem? does it impact a lot of people?) 3) identify what the successful experience would include (more/less interpersonal interaction? faster or more leisurely? high energy or soothing?) 4) create divergent solutions, filter to find ones that work and might actually be profitable

</comment><comment><USER4> My rule of thumb is to find problems and create solutions using technology. If you can solve a problem you truly have a product worth working on.

</comment><comment><USER5> How do you determine the quality of your ideas?

<comment><AUTHOR> Idea quality is hard to quantify. I don't really worry about the quality of the ideas until I'm choosing another project to work on.

Some people advocate using an idea validation board: [http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2012/10/02/the- validation...](http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2012/10/02/the-validation- board-a-free-tool-for-testing-new-startup-ideas-from-lean-startup-machine/) .

Lean startup method advocate measuring market demand - [http://www.slideshare.net/explorics/4-tools-for-quick- market...](http://www.slideshare.net/explorics/4-tools-for-quick-market- validation) .

I'm not sure what's best to be honest.

<comment><USER5> I ask because I find it incredibly easy to come up with ideas for projects and startups but find it incredibly difficult to assess their commercial qualities, the amount of work required, etc. Just picking an idea and work on it isn't that optimal because it's difficult to know how much work it required and where it will lead to.

<comment><USER6> Lucky you! I am an experienced developer who really wants to do the whole startup journey. I am confident in my development skills, but ideas are something that escape me!

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VShmtsLhkQg> John Cleese of monty python talks about creativity and it's essence. May be relevant and is definitely fun.

<comment><USER6> Thanks, I will try to get a look at this when I get home from work tonight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Provide a solution for a pain experienced by the masses.</comment>


Don't Waste Your Time With Guy Kawasaki - <AUTHOR> http://mlyoung.wordpress.com/2007/07/07/dont-waste-your-time-with-guy-kawasaki/ <comment><USER2> I totally agree that "Art of the Start" is a waste of time. It reads as if Guy just collected a couple years worth of notes and Powerpoint slides from his inane pep talks and grinded them up into book form. And yet, paradoxically, it is difficult to criticize Guy. The very fact that he has managed to achieve some measure of Internet renown from the warmed-over banalities in "Art of the Start" represents a certain type of business success that I can't help but begrudgingly admire.

In a strange way Guy reminds me of a fascinating series of articles about Noka Chocolate that I read some time back ([http://www.dallasfood.org/modules.php?name=News&file=art...](http://www.dallasfood.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=78\).) While the author of the series clearly demonstrates that Noka chocolate is grossly overpriced and deceptively marketed, I ended up respecting Noka's chutzpah for convincing so many people to pay an exponentially higher price for repackaged Bonnat chocolate.

Such is Guy. He repackages the same slogans and epigrams that you can't throw a rock in the business section of any bookstore without hitting, and yet he is perceived as a creative business author. His entrepreneurial resume shows only the Web 0.01 Nutsack that is Truemors, and yet he has convinced a respectable cross-section of our industry that he knows something about building startups. You have to respect that. Guy Kawasaki: the Noka Chocolate of Startup Gurus.

</comment><comment><USER3> I really liked Art of the Start. I read it cover to cover in a day, and then read a couple of his previous books.

However, when reading his earlier books I noticed that a lot of the ideas had been picked up by other bloggers, e.g. Seth Godin. Because of this, the book didn't seem nearly as insightful as it would have if I read it when it was published.

I suspect the same would be true today for AotS because of all the VC bloggers. While many VCs did have blogs two years ago, most of them weren't giving that kind of practical advice at the time. Paul Kedrosky and Fred Wilson had yet to publish many of their best columns, and Venture Hacks and Presentation Zen didn't even exist. Not to mention that PG had only published the first two or three of his essays on startups, the ones in Hackers and Painters (not counting the essays on lisp/coding).

<comment><AUTHOR> This is true and probably explains part of my frustration with the book. The first pieces I ever read on startups were PG's, so I suppose by the time I read AotS, all the points were sort of cliches.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is silly. Guy Kawasaki is a good writer, and his books are good, inspiring books. They are not full of secrets, nor are they going to guarantee you success, but they do sum up a lot of things you need to know to be successful. Maybe you already know them, and if so, that's great! You've got a head start. Not everyone does.

I really enjoyed his Art Of The Start talk. I also found "Selling the Dream" among the best marketing books available, along-side Ogilvy on Advertising, "Focus"/"Marketing Warfare" (either one will do, as they are effectively the same theme by the same authors), and "What's the Big Idea?" by George Lois. As someone else mentioned, Seth Godin has successfully re-purposed quite a bit of "Selling the Dream" into "Permission Marketing" (and it wasn't original when Guy was pushing it over ten years ago). It doesn't mean "Permission Marketing" sucks, it just means some things are worth repeating.

<comment><USER5> That is the one thing that I can be sure benefited me greatly in pg and Guy Kawasaki's writing - the inspiration they provided.

I'd read more writing like this for inspiration alone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Lots of Guy haters here... why? AoS is an excellent book. If you followed his "obvious" advice, you'd do well. Fact is, there really are no big secrets to being successful. All it takes a lot of effort, tenacity, ethics and perseverance. Guy's AoS captures these perfectly. Look at successful people... many of them have no formal education and no degrees from Ivy schools. WHat they do have are those qualities I mentioned above... and they excel at them. Because his book has a lot of common sense in it, that should tell you something: just do it! Persevere, release that app... get the feedback and iterate until it works and the feedback becomes positive. Never give up!

<comment><USER7> Personally I didn't get very much useful out of AoS. As others have mentioned, most of the advice was simply common sense, at least if you've already read PG's essays. I also found the writing style to be annoying and gimmicky -- one "top 5 list" after another, and terms like "make mantra" and "rainmaker", for example. In general, the book felt like it over-promised and under-delivered. For example, the book is _not_ for "anyone starting anything", it is plainly about how to start a startup company, and not a school, charity or non-profit organization. Chapters on bootstrapping, raising venture capital, and pitching investors aren't very relevant to a typical charity organization, to the best of my knowledge. Although I bought the book with only an interest in learning about startups, there's something to truth in advertising...

Then again, I put the book down after a few chapters, as I wasn't getting anything out of it -- but in fairness, I should probably give it another try.

<comment><USER8> Not trying to be a jerk here but all books are supposed to refresh our mind and open our eyes wider. Some can be applied, some can't. It's up to the readers to use the "mantras" (mix-match) to help them to be successful.

Take PG's essays (or books). Some of us love it because it has the sense of defending and making geeks as a superstar. It goes down to whom the author is. Is he voicing our mind? Is he in our field?

If you're a marketing guy, GK and Seth Godin are probably your top authors. If you're from Software industry, Eric Sink and Joel are probably your guys. And if you're in the euphoria of startups (specifically of Web 2.0), Paul is your guy.

When people from Paul's world read Joel's, they probably boo him because he's "too Microsoft" style-ish. But if you actually an ISV (micro or not) like Eric Sink and the rest, Joel's essays made sense a lot.

It's just a different world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Some people seem to feel that GK is mocking them with his mantras. Ie you are spending lots of money on your startup, he spreads the word that you can do it with 12000$ etc.

I think that is just the typical text communication issue. My impression is that GK'S intention is not to mock other people, but to motivate them to do something great. Also, to chill out in a way, I guess. At least in "Rules for Revolutionaries" he is also mocking himself, when he lists famous blunders and also mentions him dismissing the offer to work for Yahoo in it's early days, for how could it possibly successful.

I like his books, and even if not everything is new (how could it be), some things need to be repeated over and over again to finally sink in.

Also, I just looked at trueomors again: it seems the quality of submissions has improved greatly compared to the early days.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think Guy is being somewhat maligned here. I am not particularly fascinated by his work, the same as others who have posted, but I think we are missing something.

Read _The Mythical Man Month_ by Fred Brooks, one of the truly innovative works on software development. And you know what? Its boring. Its saying the same obvious stuff over and over, who gives a damn? The thing is that what he wrote was brilliant, when he wrote it. Work derives much of its meaning from context.

The same point can be made about Rachel Carson and _Silent Spring_. Its pretty much torturous to read: we have already had these ideas drilled into us. But when they were first written they sparked a global environmental revolution.

Is Guy in the same league as Brooks or Carson? No, I don't think its quite fair to say he is, but I do think dismissing him off hand is unnecessarily judgement... which happens to be a big trick for blog articles these days, and seems to be a connecting thread in the articles you write. Perhaps I am now being the one who is unnecessarily judgmental.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just curious, in which other blog posts does such unnecessary judgement show up?

I am perfectly willing to admit that I wrote a completely subjective, unbalanced post. If I wrote thousands of words in an attempt to keep things balanced, would you have read it? Would it have sparked a discussion? Probably not...

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The Bible is full of ridiculously common sense stuff. Some people still manage to use it as a tool to keep them doing those common sense things. That one doesn't strike my fancy, but I have some books that are similar for me.

It's so easy to understand a concept intellectually and yet fail to practice it on a day-to-day basis. Books can be a tool to refresh your thinking and get a (partially) objective point of view. A clear-thinking real person is almost always best, but books can be used in total privacy and on-demand.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm not a huge GK fan, but I don't agree with YC disliking him so much. I think that he writes for a different audience.

I'd compare his books with Entrepreneur Magazine (does he write a column for them?). Practical, yet oversimplified, advice for the average joe.

We are the Wired and Business 2.0 crowd. I bet that 90% of Kawasaki readers have never even heard of del.icio.us, let alone YC.

<comment><USER13> YC doesn't dislike him. Even News.YC doesn't dislike him. Since there's no downvote link, all the article's (current) score of 13 means is that 13 News.YC users dislike him. We currently get 4500-5000 uniques per day, so that's not a large proportion.

<comment><USER14> Even the score is not necessarily reflective of the number of people that might dislike him.

It simply indicates the number of people that found the associated article interesting or valuable enough to give it an up vote.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I get what you're saying re Guy's common sense rhetoric, however his business of selling books and hosting seminars appears really successful. What do you make of that?

<comment><AUTHOR> So are Robert Kiyosaki's books and seminars, but if you actually have a clue about finance and the industry, you know he's a total sham. I felt the same way after reading Guy's book.

I do not deny that the book sells well, all I'm saying is that for the serious (aspiring) entrepreneur, it's not worth the money or the time.

<comment><USER6> Kiyosaki is one of the worst scammers of all time. His books are not only wrong but dangerous to your financial health. Absolutely irresponsible. He got rich by writing books about how to get rich. This is a must read:

<http://www.johntreed.com/Kiyosaki.html>

<comment><USER16> Read this some years back during the "Rich Dad Poor Dad" craze. It opened my eyes I can tell you that.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Smartphones backdoor using AT command allowing full control via USB cable - <AUTHOR> http://news.ufl.edu/articles/2018/08/smartphone-security-risk-compared-to-having-a-ghost-user-on-your-phone.php <comment><USER2> See, that's interesting, because full control via USB cable is actually something I _want_ and for which there seems to be no elegant solution.

Kinda like the inverse of shazow's observation, "Sometimes I worry the NSA might be spying on me through my desktop's webcam. Then I remember it's Linux and even I can't get it to work."

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I used a title that better reflects the story than the original one.

More details, paper and video demo available on [https://atcommands.org/](https://atcommands.org/).

</comment><comment><USER3> I looked at atcommands.org, saw no mention of iPhones. Am I correct in assuming that iPhones don't suffer from this vulnerability?

<comment><USER4> The article says that they have AT commands also.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> On the topic of flashing unsigned fw: could this used to root a phone that otherwise could not be?

</comment><comment><USER6> The Hayes command set still lives on? Wow.

ATDT1,3103106000</comment>


API Errors – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - <AUTHOR> https://luno.io/blog/api-errors/ <comment><AUTHOR> Errors are often not given the attention that they deserve in APIs. In this post we take a look at API errors and what makes a good error response. I'd love to hear HN's thoughts on what makes a good API error (and what makes a bad one)!

<comment><USER2> You could start with naming things properly. You didn't describe errors generally in APIs, you described errors returned by REST applications. For example, your post is completely useless for people writing libraries.</comment></comment>


Global upsurge in nearsightedness is perplexing - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-myopia15-2009dec15,0,6467519.story

<comment><USER2> Something I heard years ago was that people who live in cities are more prone to be nearsighted because their eyes never focus on objects far away.

Because of this, among other reasons, I always try to make sure that my computer is positioned in front of or next to a window, since it encourages me to change my eye focus to a far away object.

Maybe it's this practice, and maybe (most likely) I'm just blessed with good vision like my mother, but despite the hours and hours I've spent in front of a computer since I was a kid my vision is still 20/20.

<comment><USER3> How old are you?

Next month I'm turning 30 years old and a couple weeks ago I was diagnosed with myopia. 0.25 of it, and 0.50 of astigmatism.

The doctor said that I should only wear glasses when on the computer, and I thought "shit... the whole day then".

<comment><USER2> This is a good point -- I'm several years your younger, so I guess I have plenty of time time ruin my vision between now and then. :)

That said, in my family vision seems to either go early or stay with you forever. My brother has been wearing glasses since he was about 8. My mom wore glasses for a while back in the 80's when she was working as a secretary (I think? Something that put her in front of a computer all day...), but after she left that job her vision quickly restored back to 20/20. Now, as she's getting older, she sometimes needs reading glasses, but I think that's more a function of age than anything else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why the editorializing in the headline? The article itself makes no mention of the phenomenon being "perplexing." In fact it identifies a likely (and fairly obvious) cause -- increased computer usage -- right there in the subtitle:

> A study finds that 17% more Americans have myopia than 30 years ago. Close- > up computer work could be a reason.

<comment><USER5> I just did a Google search on the submitted title. When did the title change occur? When a link to this article was submitted to another social linking site? Or right here on HN? I'm perplexed at how an L.A. times article that has the same title in a heading at the beginning of the article and in the HTML title element for the article can get a title change to what was submitted here, but I know the New York Times sometimes has link titles to its own articles from its own front page that don't match the article title, and for all I know this article did too in the original newspaper.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I read the headline completely wrong (metaphorical nearsightedness) and expected an article about why everyone is taking actions that hurt them in the long term...

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm nearsighted and every eye doctor I've had while I was growing up said it's just genetic, and there's nothing you can do about it even though none of my grandparents were nearsighted.

But more to the point--there's probably nowhere near the proper amount of research money being spent on preventing myopia or preventing the seriousness of it because there's no money to be made in it. What is the eye doctor going to charge you if you don't need new glasses?

</comment><comment><USER8> There is a better article on this at: [http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427331.100-generatio...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427331.100-generation- specs-stopping-the-shortsight-epidemic.html?full=true)

Research discussed there suggests that what appears in peripheral vision may be important. That may also explain why myopia gradually gets worse during years of wearing glasses.

</comment><comment><USER9> better article: [http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427331.100-generatio...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427331.100-generation- specs-stopping-the-shortsight-epidemic.html?full=true)

discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=929524>

</comment><comment><USER10> Do you guys think a new cure for this will be invented in the next five or ten years? I can't afford lasik, and after reading all of the things that can go wrong, I'm not even sure if I would want it.

Any chance there will be some new, inexpensive technology invented soon? Or maybe everyone will start wearing glasses for augmented reality anyway so it won't matter.

<comment> brown9-2 Is Lasik a "cure" or just a way to correct around the underlying problems?

<comment><USER11> Lasik isn't really a cure. It simply changes the curvature of your eye so that you can focus on distance better. However, it actually makes you less able to focus on close items, so it's a trade-off.

<comment><USER12> And, at least when I looked into it, it reduces your night vision.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here's a potential solution. Computer monitors that appear to be say 500 ft away, but take up the equivalent field of view as your current monitor.

I.E., it would appear you screen were being projected onto the side of a mountain, but as a visual illusion (not really projecting a 1000 ft screen).

Is that possible? How might it work, holograms?

<comment><USER13> A couple of lenses should do the trick.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Everyone I know in Italy has glasses. I've always wondered why that was.</comment>


I Learned to Program... - <AUTHOR> http://www.jeanhsu.com/2011/05/01/i-learned-to-program/

<comment><USER2> Hmm. I've just put "Unlocking the Clubhouse" on my list of books to read, because this post is making me rethink one of my long-held assumptions about computer programming ability. I've long held the opinion that computer programming is something that some people are hardwired to "get" more than others, and that the ability to "get it" is not really correlated with overall intelligence.

Now I'm starting to wonder if this assumption is just a result of crummy Computer Science teaching. In particular, I grounded a lot of that opinion on my experience as a CS undergrad. Students seemed to fall into 3 buckets:

\- Could program when they came in (had been doing it since they were kids, etc.) Did well, became good programmers.

\- Couldn't program when they came in, worked hard and came to "get it", became good programmers.

\- Couldn't program when they came in, didn't really get it, most disliked programming, graduated (!) and became mediocre programmers or technical managers.

... I've always been inclined to see that split as a direct consequence of "innate ability", given that category (3) contained some intelligent people who just weren't programmers for whatever reason. Now I come to think about it, though, our CS teaching program was not very good. Amusingly, a professor told me that the CS department was consistently rated worse in the entire university on student course assessments but "I think it's just because this stuff is hard, and people don't like doing things which are hard. If we were teaching something easy then they'd give good scores." (paraphrasing, but that's very close.)

So maybe my perceived division is more an indictment of teaching practices and programming culture than some ingrained difference. Time to read that book, I think. :)

<comment><USER3> Great point (and good story about the prof's reaction too). It's quite possibly a combo: some people have innate ability and just "get it" no matter how bad their teaching is; others get it by a combo of teaching and work.

And yes, time to read the book for this and other reasons!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> <http://www.ilearnedtoprogram.com/></comment>


Feedback needed: Social app for restaurant lovers based out of friends tips - <AUTHOR> http://www.miskapp.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hey - we're three cofounders with experience at Google, Bloomberg and Intel and would love to have your input. Please signup on our landing page for early access and lmk if you'd like to test it to give feedback!</comment>


Co-Living Buildings Going Big in Brooklyn and Bay Area - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/co-living-buildings-going-big-in-brooklyn-and-bay-area-1539687600 <comment><USER2> this particular article (once I got around the paywall) was scant on details, but the concept is interesting. I could see this spreading beyond NY and SF. Not everyone wants a house with a yard, but at the same time not everyone wants an apartment to deal with either. The way my work/life schedule is, something like this would be great.</comment>


Ask HN: Where do you look for code examples? - <AUTHOR>

Especially for a library you don't know well. <comment><AUTHOR> I encountered this problem when searching for a sample to bring a window top most in wxpython. It was surprisingly hard.

</comment><comment><USER2> <http://stackoverflow.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Github Gists, and snipt.net</comment>


Benchmarks: Node.js vs Go (vs PHP) - <AUTHOR> http://societyofcode.com/articles/benchmarks_nodejs_vs_go_vs_php_3_14_2013

<comment><USER2> You should benchmark things that happen on most web sites.

Such as, connect to mongodb using the best drivers for each language and then...

\- Return 1kb of json from the db

\- Return 50kb of json from the db

\- Return a 5kb template from the db

\- Return a 50kb template from the db

Most web work involves strings. Go is really fast when it comes to dealing with large strings but once you factor in db calls then it doesn't matter one bit because the I/O call to the db out weighs any benefit.

If you want to really compare them then bring in Express and build yourself a mini-Express framework in Go then compare the 2 with equal features.</comment>


Why Can't A Startup Build A Self-Driving Car? - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/15/why-cant-a-startup-build-a-self-driving-car/ <comment><USER2> They can. There's a startup in the current YC batch working on self-driving cars.</comment>


Everyday DSP for Programmers: Signal Envelopes - <AUTHOR> http://sam-koblenski.blogspot.com/2015/10/everyday-dsp-for-programmers-signal.html <comment><USER2> That is very well done. There's a whole series of those articles; start at [1].

[1] [http://sam-koblenski.blogspot.com/2015/08/everyday-dsp- for-p...](http://sam-koblenski.blogspot.com/2015/08/everyday-dsp-for- programmers-basic.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Great article and the interactive diagrams did a better job visualizing than any I've come across.

DSP is an area I just haven't had the opportunity to work in, so I always find it interesting as I piece things together over time.

I may just be motivated to sit down and give it some proper time and effort, thanks for a great post.

If you have any other links or resources you recommend, I'd be super interested. I'll likely look into audio, but will spend some time on the fundamentals. It would be cool to mess with SDR at some stage too...

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, for another good introduction to DSP, there's this excellent website: [http://jackschaedler.github.io/circles-sines- signals/index.h...](http://jackschaedler.github.io/circles-sines- signals/index.html). It also has good animations, and some are more interactive than mine. It takes a bit of a different path through DSP concepts, and focuses on the relationship between circles, trigonometric functions, and signal analysis.

For a more in depth study of DSP, I would recommend this book: [http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Digital-Signal- Processin...](http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Digital-Signal-Processing- Richard-ebook/dp/B004DI7JIQ). It's quite readable for a textbook, and from my experience with linear algebra and signals and systems texts (they're all related), it's more understandable.

It would be nice to have a full online, animated DSP book, as that's a natural fit for DSP, but I'm not aware of something like that, yet. Maybe these posts could be the beginning of something like that.

(edit: Amazon link)

<comment><USER4> There is no better book than Rick Lyons' that is linked above on Amazon (and I have browsed many others). I believe his book has several other frequency- specific methods for envelope estimation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you need something more robust but more complicated, the Hilbert envelope can be a good choice.

<comment><USER6> The Hilbert transform is a good choice when dealing with an amplitude modulated signal with a carrier frequency, but is useless for something without one (like a speech signal).

<comment><USER7> Still, the Hilbert transform is fundamental knowledge. Although it may not be particularly suited for analyzing speech, it is crucial for understanding communications theory. It's a good next step in the study of envelopes.</comment></comment></comment>


Bitcoin – How high can it go? - <AUTHOR> http://simonwinder.com/2013/11/bitcoin-how-high-can-it-go/ <comment><USER2> Please, someone, get this trash off of the front page. Not only is this entire article completely content-less, but the number of fallacies in it is palpable.

I wasn't going to waste my time on this, but after skimming for 20 seconds I came to this:

> In many ways, Litecoin is looking like a better investment. For Litecoin it > is still early days because the infrastructure is not quite there. However, > it looks to be a more promising currency from the technical standpoint, > e.g., allowing faster transactions and a longer time until the end of the > mining cycle.

Faster confirmations _DON 'T MEAN SHIT_. Just because it takes 2.5 minutes for a Litecoin confirmation doesn't mean it is any better. Yeah, a Litecoin confirmation is 4x faster than a Bitcoin confirmation, but all that means is that a Litecoin confirmation is 1/4 as secure as a Bitcoin confirmation. Which is actually _worse_ , when you think about it because the blockchain is more bloated.

>Its current market capitalization is $215 million, giving a factor of 45 potential growth to simply catch up with Bitcoin.

Are you fucking _serious_?

<comment><USER3> Just to clarify, the transactions are actually instant in Bitcoin. What takes ~10min are the confirmations, which like you said, take time for a reason: security.

Litecoin adds nothing to the table.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great analysis.

Although, I have to chuckle when I hear about people buying fractions of a Bitcoin, expecting to become multi-millionaires in a few years. Bitcoin has had a great run and the exponential growth it has experienced is extremely unlikely to repeat again. It's an issue of scalability and you don't just go from $1K to $1M the way you did from $1 to $1K, simply because the large scale implications are different. The implications of $1 to $1K were pretty insignificant, whereas to get to one million, entire governments would have to abandon their currencies in favor of Bitcoin or something else really drastic would have to happen.

I personally own BTC and hope to see it succeed, but some of these people are delusional, plain and simple.

<comment><USER5> Indeed. If bitcoin were to go from $1K to $1M in the near future, we would be talking a 12 trillion USD market cap - roughly on par with the US GDP. Not to say it is an impossible scenario, but like you said, the implications are much greater.

The other interesting aspect is the existence of other alt currencies. For example, the so called "silver" Litecoin (as compared to the "gold" bitcoin), has increased almost 1000% in the last two weeks. Litecoin itself is up to a $1 billion market cap. Basically, we now have an alt currency at 10% of bitcoin's already impressive market cap.

I do wonder if some of these alt currencies will be where some of the big gains will next be seen. If crypto currencies become widely established, I imagine the environment would support multiple currencies.

<comment><USER6> Wow. I haven't seen one news item or mention of anyone using litecoin, except comments like this that mention the existence of litecoin when folks discuss bitcoin.

As always, though, market cap isn't really the current share price times number number of shares. It is the accumulated sum of all the buy offers over the top N share bids (N = number of shares in existence), not all of which are max price.

<comment><USER5> It seems the media is just starting to notice the non-bitcoin crypto currencies:

[http://finance.yahoo.com/news/litecoin-heres-everything- know...](http://finance.yahoo.com/news/litecoin-heres-everything-know- digital-193238685.html)

Although, to be fair, Wired noticed it back in June:

[http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-06/16/litecoin](http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-06/16/litecoin)

Litecoin is still minor news, but with more exchanges starting to support it [1], it _might_ actually amount to something.

As for my own bias: I own a very trivial number of litecoins and bitcoins (most from a small amount of mining), so I wouldn't mind these increasing even more. That said, I am still skeptical, but I am enjoying watching this all play out.

[1] [https://www.okpay.com/en/company/news/okpay-now-supports- lit...](https://www.okpay.com/en/company/news/okpay-now-supports-litecoin- currency.html)

 _Edit_ : And yes, agreed on your mark cap point. Still a useful benchmark, but not without some caveats.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Litecoin is just a me-too bitcoin clone. I see it as analogous to PhpOnTrax, Groovy on Grails, or Castle vs. Ruby on Rails. Although, it is actually worse than that as it is mostly a fork stealing the original codebase and repurposing it for spurious reasons, I believe.

For some reason, with open source projects like this, the real innovations usually continue to flow from the original project, not the clones.

<comment><USER8> I think litecoin will do better in the long run because of faster transaction times. I can't buy a soda with bitcoin because I would have to stand around for too long.

If people opt to pay with a digital currency, it will be LTC.

<comment><USER3> It doesn't have faster transaction times, only confirmations. Do you even know why confirmations take time? Security.

Anyone who understands this new technology knows that Litecoin doesn't have any significant improvements over Bitcoin.

Besides, you wouldn't wait 10 minutes, but you would wait 2.5 in average? I know I wouldn't, nobody would. That's what 0 confirmation trades are for, and you can do that with Bitcoin just fine.

If you want to gamble you should as well put money on Tenebrix, Infinitecoin, and Vaginacoin. I've heard they are great.

<comment><USER9> Why is longer wajting time for a block more secure? Isn't the security given more by the number of miners?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Article was a transparent attempt to pump Litecoin.

</comment><comment><USER11> Great write up! Only fools think that a $100 investment in bitcoin today will turn them into millionaires. This has to do with risk vs reward. A $100 investment in 2009 may have turned people into millionaires but at that time the chances of losing $100 were quite high. Now, with a lower risk than back in 2009 you're going to have to have greater skin in the game. $10,000 may see you with some good returns. You may still lose it but the chances are lower than back in 2009.

How high can it go? While your analysis based on market cap is mostly correct, unfortunately it's just a good guess. Bitcoin has the potential to replace currencies, MasterCard, Visa, Paypal, and more! Which of these will it do (if any)? Nobody knows. But if it replaced stuff, it's market cap would be way higher than the conservative 1% of X niche that you've estimated.

Personally, I'm optimistic for $10k. That's 10x now vs the 10,000x gain already seen since '09.

I have no clue whether it will go to 10k, 100k, or 1MM per bit coin. I'm on for the ride though and it's been pretty fun so far. I'm excited to see which problems bitcoin will solve and which industries it will disrupt.

<comment><USER12> In 2009 it would be an investment. Now, it solely is speculation.

Nobody is going to be surprised, if next day the Bitcoin will evaluate at $100 a unit.

Though I am just as you excited on what is going to happen. Sadly, my ignorance and scepticism were a result of not invseting into Bitcoin in 2010, moreover I feel it is being too late to invest now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Digital currencies will eventually be the only kind of currency there are; "plastic money" (AKA credit cards) were created to ease the handling of personal and business finances; digital currencies are one step further, were we don't depend on a piece of plastic but paying via web or by proximity and confirming on your personal phone (similar to the way two-factor authentication works).

"Real" money is just a piece of paper that represents value supported by the government behind it; so representing it on bytes supported by the open-source cryptography behind it is less dramatic than most people would assume.

<comment><USER14> i don't think many people expect to use plastic money forever -- they are already comfortable buying things by scanning an iPhone. And I don't think the lack of government endorsement is so much the issue with Bitcoin either, though it certainly will be if things don't go smoothly.

i think it really comes down to the crazy hyper-distorted-redistribution-of- wealth-dispersement/adoption scheme (early adopters have wild fortunes for pennies compared to those spending thousands today), liquidity issues, extreme market volatility, not a ton of evidence of use in transactions aside from being siphoned immediately back to traders via 3rd party processors

describing its problems in a way that can be summarized as "its so revolutionary its blowin minds too quickly and needs time to settle in" is really sugarcoating it to an extreme degree

<comment><USER15> The way I see it, the technical aspect of Bitcoin is fascinating; the economic aspect, less so.

<comment><USER14> Yes, that I can live with. If the tech were implemented within a more sane economic system I would be very intrigued indeed, but I think it would bore the open-source world.

I'm slowly beginning to believe that this is part of a movement where open- source is becoming like.... well like the software equivalent of Videodrome snuff films or something. Closed source & corporate is just too "traditional", even though it's likely a more solid A-to-B solution could be created with expert help. Especially since Bitcoin has tech allure (layman can't use it) without being prohibitively difficult (you don't actually have to know how to code), it's the perfect balance of intrigue versus commitment with a bit of an ego boost on the way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16>
        9. Bitcoin has a mining system that produces a maximum
           number of 21 million coins at the end. Its really not
           clear what the long term viability of this exponential
           drop in mining activity will be and whether it will
           cause problems in time.

This last point is completely wrong I think.

There won't be an "exponential drop" in mining activity, because mining rewards exponentially decay anyway, so the system involves no sudden changes at all.

<comment><USER17> There may not be any sudden changes in the rewards, but that doesn't change the fact that the rewards are decreasing, and with more people involved, the competition is increasing.

It's also pretty much impossible to CPU mine anymore, and with the addition of ASICs to the mining pool, even running a GPU miner is no longer profitable after calculating electricity costs.

I understand that you don't have to be mining to assist in verifying transactions, as simply running the bitcoin-qt client aids processing of transaction, but there no longer is a financial motivation to do so.

With an increase in the rate of transactions as the Bitcoin market continues to grow, it seems that the transaction speed will certainly slow down, and the security of the network will decrease.

If there is anyone here that can explain to me why I shouldn't be worried about this situation, I'd absolutely love to hear it. I'm bullish on Bitcoin, and I think there is still a good future for the currency, but I'm worried...

<comment><USER18> Miners will make money from transaction fees. As with everything else in the bitcoin protocol, this is a beautiful self-regulating mechanism: Transactions attach a fee of any size (or no fee), to motivate miners to process the transaction.

If there were to be fewer miners to the extent that transaction time becomes a problem, people will attach higher fees to transactions to get them to complete quicker, which increases the profit from mining, which makes more people want to mine, etc. etc.

<comment><USER17> The transaction fees go to the miner who originally created the block, not just any miner who processes the transaction, and with increased difficulty to find new blocks, it's less likely for new miners (without paying for some really nice hardware) to ever see a cut of the transaction fees.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Can anyone comment on the implications of the sub-divisibilty of bitcoins? Is it practically infinite? This would seem to be totally new territory for "currency."

It does seem to be a near perfect vehicle for pure speculation right now, and I see no reason an alternate like Litecoin couldn't join the party. It obviously already has!

<comment><USER20> Bitcoins are divisible to 0.00000001

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Bitcoin will come down to near 250 by Jan (end)/Fed(mid), if we go by the patterns shown in forex/stock markets. I'm not very sure if the patterns for Bitcoin/USD can be compared to the forex markets or stock markets.

<comment><USER21> On a second thought – I think a significant crash like this can be destructive to bitcoin and make it slide much further – considering that the sentiment towards bitcoins is still that of a "bubble" or a "ponzi scheme"

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> While I love bitcoin and have some myself, I think the number of stories is approaching spammy. Not complaining about this story in particular.

</comment><comment><USER23> coinrx.com - this domain is parked..?

</comment><comment><USER24> in theory there is no limit!</comment>


Terms of Service; Didn't Read - <AUTHOR> https://tosdr.org/ <comment><USER2> I actually don't really support these movements. I would prefer that we entirely deligitimize the notion of 'terms of service' having any measure of enforceability or weight.

No, I have not read your terms and I do not agree with them. I do, however, reject the legitimacy of their use and will happily check a box that lets me proceed unmolested.

And by continuing to provide your service to me, you agree that that my implicit rejection of your TOS' legitimacy is correct. That attitude from a customer towards every business is just as reasonable as a business expecting every customer to read and implicitly accept their specific and lengthy legal stipulations.

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately, I believe a count of law would side with the company with the TOS.

<comment><USER4> It depends. See MEYER V. KALANICK where the court held some provisions of uber's adhesive terms of service unenforceable since a small hyperlink to a TOS was not considered sufficient notice to the user that they were waiving their right to a trial by jury.

[https://casetext.com/case/meyer-v-travis-kalanick-uber- techs...](https://casetext.com/case/meyer-v-travis-kalanick-uber-techs-inc-1)

<comment><USER5> I mean neither is a giant wall of legal text that everyone is just going to skip over either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The ToS box is a debasement of standards of public discourse. Not only do most individuals knowingly lie, everybody _knows_ that they lie, and they know that everybody knows that they lie, et cetera. It makes me question the legitimacy of marriage vows and statements like 'How are you?'

</comment><comment><USER7> I haven't been involved with this project for a while, but I am still following their mailinglist. Please note that there hasn't been a lot of development and hence the ratings are somewhat out-of-date. The main reason for this is that they need developers (preferably Ruby/RoR, but I guess they'd be open to others as well) to redevelop the rating system.

They've actually got funds, so if anyone is looking for a side job on a project they appreciate, hit them up on their mailinglist: [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/tosdr](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/tosdr)

</comment><comment><USER8> I see this site pop up about once a year. It hasn't had a real discussion in the past year, or I believe it may be a dupe. Previous discussions (ordered by number of comments):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4350907](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4350907)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5888393](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5888393)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9678357](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9678357)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8394144](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8394144)

</comment><comment><USER9> Mildly amusing, tosdr.org itself doesn't have a TOS, just the following disclaimer which says that it's not a replacement for reading the full terms to which you are bound :)

> Nothing here should be considered legal advice. We express our opinion with > no guarantee and we do not endorse any service in any way. Please refer to a > qualified attorney for legal advice. Reading ToS;DR is in no way a > replacement for reading the full terms to which you are bound. Disclosure: a > list of donors and supporters is published. All legal information and > Imprint.

</comment><comment><USER10> What we really need is a set of standard (or at least de facto) ToS, like we have for OSS licences, so that companies can then list deviation from the standard ToS. That would reduce the body of text required to be read and might actually make people read it and they would be more likely to understand the requirements the ToS.

<comment><USER11> Thanks, this is it. I've just posted the same thing before reading your comment.

Who should start that movement? Perhaps we could trigger it by having a public repository of (provisional) licenses and start linking to it from our side projects?

<comment><USER10> Well I dont have any projects (let alone side projects) that need a ToS. Ultimately those who start it will be those that benefit from having readable unambiguous ToS. Some benevolent company? A company that has been bitten my unenforceable ToS? A startup that doesn't want to complicate legal? ISO? EFF?

What stops me from contributing to that effort is at that I don't know (and dont really want to know) enough legal to know common variations of in ToS. Not to mention the wide range of fields that ToSes cover.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think the class numbering over-summarizes things to the point of having almost no meaning. It pretends too much that we all care about the same things.

Each of us is willing to accept different sets of terms. If standardized terms were available, matching up what I am will to accept (presuming a register such information somewhere) against a ToS could algorithmically show me whether or not the ToS is acceptable to me without me having to read it.

</comment><comment><USER13> We should enforce software to pause on the term of service page for a period of time that is sufficient enough for a average human to read through (say 1 min per 500 words). Then it would be at software companies' interests to simplify their shit. No companies want their customers to stay on the TOS page for an hour

<comment><USER14> I minute reading ToS won't give you any worthy information.

<comment><USER7> GP didn't say they had to force users to read them for 1 minute, but that they had to force users to read them for a length of time appropriate for the length of the ToS. In effect, this would make it harder for companies with lengthy ToS to attract users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm actually kind of proud of this one (I wrote, had our lawyer review, he added a stanza or two and said good to go.)

[https://www.fracturedveil.com/terms-and- conditions](https://www.fracturedveil.com/terms-and-conditions)

Our privacy policy is amazing, too.

Edit: It's a little swear filled...

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm pleased to see the forced arbitration and class action waivers get noticed, here.

I was going to recommend the EFF's "TOSBACK" program, but it turns out they're already linked to TOSDR. I'm pleased that TOSBACK is still running! I expected to find it dying from lack of support, like the EFF's printer tracking dots list.

</comment><comment><USER11> Just like there are standardized open-source licenses we can just look at and recognize (MIT, GPL, Apache etc.) there should be standardized terms of service.

Or perhaps modular terms. COOKIES = We use cookies blablabla. NON-GUARANTEE = You are by yourself etc., I don't know, I've never read these things carefully.

</comment><comment><USER17> Great service! Their browser plugin is sadly not compatible with Firefox Nightly as it exclusively uses WebExtensions[1].

I won't switch back from Nightly. The performance difference is just too great to ever go back to the "stable" versions. :) Not had any crashing issues yet.

1\. [https://developer.mozilla.org/de/Add- ons/WebExtensions](https://developer.mozilla.org/de/Add-ons/WebExtensions)

</comment><comment><USER18> I think it's funny a company named Evernote doesn't let you delete your account.

</comment><comment><USER19> Not related to the article, but I was happy to see a Flattr link. I thought it was dead. Apparently not!

</comment><comment><USER20> I actually quite enjoy lying about having read them.

<comment><USER21> I actually enjoy writing ridiculous things inside my app's terms of service. Stories, making fun of the possible users of said apps, quips about when the Undertaker threw Mankind off of cage

Its fun.

Also, Penny Stock newsletters also have similarly funny things in their disclaimers, check them out, its a by product of the regulators strong-arming and the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. It was my inspiration.</comment></comment>


The China Effect - Can the world survive China's rush to emulate the American way of life? - <AUTHOR> http://rense.com/general79/chna.htm <comment><USER2> I was reading an article that they have a real problem with toilet paper. As more people are using toilet paper in China it is wiping out the trees (1.3 billion people all wiping) so they are encouraging people to not start using toilet paper if they are not doing so already.

They definitely have scaling issues, they can't even scale up toilet paper usage.

<comment><USER3> And just think of all the water they will wast in flushing:

"The world is divided into two categories of people: those who shit in drinking water and those who don't. " (<http://weblife.org/humanure/chapter2_2.html>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> End of world predicted: fate of Internet uncertain.

</comment><comment><USER5> I automatically ignore all rense.com content, regardless of its content.

There are other ways to be open to new points of view than to listen to the incoherent rambling of conspiracy theorists.

These are the same people who were stockpiling ammunition and food because they thought the world was going to end when the Y2K bug took effect on January 1, 2000.

</comment><comment><USER6> I love the taste of fresh produce. It rocks.

I hate the smug around organics. The fact is that it takes an order of magnitude more land to produce the same output.

Forget cars, TVs, and McMansions. China and the rest of the world couldn't hope to live the purported ideal without destroying a great deal of natural habitats.

</comment><comment><USER7> When resources become scarce, the prices will go up, forcing people to change their habbits. Problem solved. We're all in the same boat - if anything, we're the ones who started the whole consumption frenzie, so we should be the first to show a different way of life.

</comment><comment><USER6> I read a statistic from around 2002 that China consumed slightly more coal than the US, while polluting twice as much and generating half as much electricity.

You needn't be an environmentalist to be concerned with such numbers. You also don't have to be an optimist to expect this to get better.

More wealth will mean more efficiency and less pollution. More wealth dispersed throughout the population will mean greater demand by people to take action against already horrible air pollution, and other damage.

But the pattern is familiar, and we only point out China because of its size. Production will move to poorer countries, and they will outsource their pollution generation just as we have.

</comment><comment><USER8> On the bright side: according to the below article, if long-term trends of energy efficiency continue, "[b]y 2100, with a world population of 10 billion people, everyone can be living at the current European standard of living and yet expending half the energy we are using today."

<http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/12871/>

(It's old -- 2002 -- but I think I'll submit it as a story link just as an antidote to some of the developing-world pessimism that's been surging of late.)

</comment><comment><USER9> Oh dear...</comment>


Swedish King's 'forgotten' 17th-century warship found in central Stockholm - <AUTHOR> https://www.thelocal.se/20170906/swedish-kings-scepter-shipwreck-17th-century-warship-found-in-central-stockholm <comment><USER2> Relevant random factoid: the Baltic Sea is almost completely enclosed by land and consequently unusually brackish (low in salt), which means a number of sea creatures common in saltier seas, most notably the shipworm, can't live there. Add in the fact that the water is really cold most of the year, and you get a large number of unusually well-preserved wooden wrecks, most famously the _Vasa_ , that would have long go have been eaten away in any other ocean.

[https://www.vasamuseet.se/en](https://www.vasamuseet.se/en)

Speaking of eating, access to the salty Atlantic means that the Norwegians eat lots of shrimp, crab, mussels and even whale, none of which were historically available on the Baltic shores of Sweden or Finland.

<comment><USER3> Sweden has a western side too, which is where we get all the delicious [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandalus_borealis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandalus_borealis) from.

<comment><USER4> Hey, you misspelled [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surstromming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surstromming)

<comment><USER3> :) On a serious note, every other kind of shrimp I have tasted besides "northern prawn" (Pandalus Borealis) is just meh in comparison. To clarify: the rest of the culinary world use non-tasteful shrimp as taste carriers. Meanwhile, north sea shrimp are.. the primary source of taste, here.

I think you will be surprised when you eventually taste it!

That surströmming thing is mainly a bravado thing our northern people do. It's good for headlines and machoism both, which is why it has survived, I guess.

<comment><USER4> I was going to say - bah, in Canada we have exceptionally tasty shrimp on the west coast, sold directly from the boats and it will beat your borealis to a pulp. But then, just in case, I checked what your shrimp looks like and guess what - it's the same one! :)

<comment><USER5> I'll second this. I recently spent some time in Sweden and, on the whole, really enjoyed the shrimp. In particular, the shrimp salad sandwiches. There were bad ones, of course. Bröd & Salt was a fast-food/bakery chain whose shrimp salad wraps weren't very good at all. However, I had some at other places that were good enough to inspire me to try my hand at them once back in Canada.

The results with Canadian shrimp? Superior to anything in Sweden, but probably because the shrimp went from frozen to cooked and on the plate in under an hour, while the sandwiches I had in Sweden probably had shrimp that had been sitting in the fridge for a while. The taste of the shrimp was very similar. In any case, I strongly recommend trying your hand at making Swedish shrimp salad sandwiches. They're easy to make and delicious!

Edit: It would appear I used "Wild Atlantic Prawns", which were likely Pandalus borealis. So, probably the same species. They're very common in Canadian supermarkets. I didn't realize how lucky we are!

<comment><USER6> Frozen shrimp? It has to be boiled in sea water on the boat it was caught and eaten the same day. I refuse to eat frozen shrimp.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I briefly worked for a company at this little island, Skeppsholmen [1], a while back. It's beautiful and fairly hidden/quiet, despite being in central Stockholm. There's a hostel ship you can stay at too [2], which I highly recommend if you are in Stockholm on a budget. The Museum of Modern Arts [3] is quite good too, as far as museums in Stockholm go. As well as the Vasa Museum, which people have already mention.

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

2: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Af_Chapman_(ship)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Af_Chapman_\(ship\))

3: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moderna_museet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moderna_museet)

<comment><USER8> There's a couple museums around the Chapman, but other than those it's inconveniently located. The other hostels in old town and sodermalm are better (and less bare-bones/no-frills). It is beautiful to look at in the moonlight, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Anyone else get a spam virus warning pop up on this site? I got one on my iPhone.

<comment><USER10> Yup be careful on this site!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Reminds me of the buried ships under San Francisco. There sure is a lot of history underground.

[http://www.sfgenealogy.com/sf/history/hgshp1.htm](http://www.sfgenealogy.com/sf/history/hgshp1.htm)

</comment><comment><USER12> The article mentions that the ship may have participated in the Battle of Oliwa, though there is no mention of it in the manifest on Wikipedia[0]. Regardless, the battle (and the Polish-Swedish Wars in general) are historically very interesting in themselves, esp. given that they -- the Deluge in particular -- were a contributing factor in the fall of Poland.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Oliwa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Oliwa)

</comment><comment><USER13> Right next to museums. A very convenient find! :)

<comment><USER14> A similarly convenient find in London was that the Roman amphitheatre was right underneath the City of London's main museum [1], the Guildhall gallery. Because the museum is on one side of Guildhall Yard, the historic seat of the City's government. Which is located where it is because that is where the Saxon guildhall was. Which was there because it was a nice open space amongst the rubble of the old citadel when the Saxons recolonised London. Which it was because it was the old Roman amphitheatre.

[1] In a sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "We took some chronological samples in the summer and we received the results which showed that wood is oak from Sweden, and it was cut in the winter between 1612 and 1613, which is a really good, precise measure."

I'm really curious about the analysis process involved here. Is C-14 dating that precise? How do they know it was oak from Sweden?

<comment><USER15> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendrochronology](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendrochronology)

Apperently there are enough core sample data to determine when a tree was cut down anytime the last few thousand years!

<comment><USER3> (Thanks to everyone who pointed this out.)

Wow. This is fascinating stuff. (I didn't think this field could be so interesting.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> the Swedish kingdom power peak of 17th century when it conquered almost all of the land around Baltic and deep into Poland and modern Ukraine correlates nicely with the Little Ice Age. To the south, south/east of Baltic that was the time of "Deluge" when among other things rows of bad harvest years weakened the economy/society/state. Effects of climate changes :)

</comment><comment><USER17> I warmly recommend everyone visit the Vasa museum in Stockholm [https://www.vasamuseet.se/en](https://www.vasamuseet.se/en)

Its a massive warship that capsized on her maiden voyage, and was raised in 1960s and is preserved in staggeringly amazing detail and completeness. Its absolutely gobsmackingly breathtaking :)

<comment><USER18> Very warmly recommended, an awesome museum.

I especially liked the story about the Vasa construction being an example of bad project management: If there's too much of a power difference between different actors, people might drown.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> On the heels of the release of "It" in theaters tomorrow, and "The Dark Tower" last month, this has been a great year for Stephen King!</comment>


Weak men are superweapons (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/12/weak-men-are-superweapons/ <comment><USER2> This article is flawed. It assumes that just because someone stands up for their category means others who aren't a member will listen and respond reasonably. The examples given in the article contradict the very idea.</comment>


Etymology of tea - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology_of_tea <comment><USER2> The Finnish language is wonderful, and there is a link between the verb "to do" (tehdä) and "tea" (tee).

"tee tee" : You say this when you are a foreigner (like myself) and you want to tell a Finn to make tea. Saying "tee tee" will make two things happen simultaneously and immediately: 1) the Finn will switch to English, and 2) if it's your girlfriend or wife, she will tell you to make your own damn tea. Less certain and immediate is whether you actually get a cup of tea. Correct, but less interesting: "tee teetä".

"te teette teetä" : A correct way of either commanding a group of people to make some tea, or of letting them know that the are, in fact, making tea, ie: You all are making some tea.

(Read "ee" above as a kind of extended "eh": eeehhh, and "ä" as the short a as in "hat" (like, "hät" is pronounced exactly like hat is))

<comment><USER3> Estonian is even worse, as "tee" is also road (in Finnish, "tie").

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This reminds me of a series of etymological (European) maps that I found once and really enjoyed[1]. I geek out over the footprints that history leaves all over language.

[1] [https://m.imgur.com/a/zrznb](https://m.imgur.com/a/zrznb)

<comment><USER5> Do you have a source on who made those? They're pretty fascinating and I'd love to learn more about how they were made.

<comment><USER4> Some redditor, apparently: [https://www.reddit.com/r/etymology/comments/1pxjuh/interesti...](https://www.reddit.com/r/etymology/comments/1pxjuh/interesting_european_etymology_maps/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Reminds me of this nice map of what tea is called across Europe: [https://jakubmarian.com/tea-in-european-languages- map/](https://jakubmarian.com/tea-in-european-languages-map/)

As a Swede, I can just add that the spelling come in quite many forms: te (official), té, the, thé, tea...

<comment><USER7> Completely missing out that "char" is used in English.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This reminded me of an article about how sea-faring cultures call it "tea", and land-trading cultures call it "cha".

[https://qz.com/1176962/map-how-the-word-tea-spread-over- land...](https://qz.com/1176962/map-how-the-word-tea-spread-over-land-and-sea- to-conquer-the-world/)

</comment><comment><USER9> In Polish language we use herbata word. It is a herb tea. Its unique for whole Europe. I think mostly because it was not popular in Poland for ages. People drinked here honey, milk, mead, beer. Compared to it tea was lame. People added wine, ice cream and other stuff to make it taste better.

Also, there were other brews, for example from mint before here. So herbata was not exciting in any way. But eventually it made it through and is now main beverage here with a distinct name across whole Europe.

<comment><USER10> > Its unique for whole Europe.

Almost. Unsurprisingly, given their history, the only word for tea in Lithuanian is the same - arbata - borrowed from Polish.

In Belarus they also use it in parallel with the Russian word (no idea which one is more common in daily usage).

<comment><USER9> Poland ans Lithuania was a union. Maybe it has something to do with it. We are like brothers and sisters

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There was an article that discussed this in the Summer 2019 edition of Lapham's Quarterly dedicated to 'Trade'.

[https://www.laphamsquarterly.org](https://www.laphamsquarterly.org)

</comment><comment><USER12> > English has all three forms: cha or char (both pronounced /ˈtʃɑː/), attested > from the late 16th century; tea, from the 17th; and chai, from the 20th.

I've never, ever encountered "cha" or "char" in my English speaking country (US) - is this something commonly encountered in England?

<comment><USER13> It's a 16th century word that is now extremely rare.

From the article, OED definition 3 for "char": [https://www.lexico.com/definition/char#h69854260165380](https://www.lexico.com/definition/char#h69854260165380)

The main article on tea in the history and origin section has some of the earliest attestations in English cited:

"The first record of tea in English came from a letter written by Richard Wickham, who ran an East India Company office in Japan, writing to a merchant in Macao requesting "the best sort of chaw" in 1615. Peter Mundy, a traveller and merchant who came across tea in Fujian in 1637, wrote, "chaa – only water with a kind of herb boyled in it ".[45][46]"

<comment><USER14> Macao was a portuguese colony and until today the regular word for tea in portuguese is chá,read cha in English. Just found out that tea in spanish is not chá, which is very interesting given the huge commonality in portuguese and Spanish. Also as per Wikipedia chá is mandar

Slightly connected: I Just recently learned frkm Wikipedia that the word coco/côco from the coconut fruit comes from a portuguese folklore figure that i never heard of. Which is weird because I am portuguese and my parents also never heard of any similar folklore. We have a an expression which translates to "break the coco laughing" which i always took to be related to the fruit and now I think it may be a remnant of the folklore figure that gave the name to the coconut fruit.

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coco_(folklore)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coco_\(folklore\))

<comment><USER15> I am from Brazil and while I never heard of Coco with that meaning, "Cuca" is a very known evil character from a very popular series of children's books called "Sítio do Picapau Amarelo"[1], and I would assume that its heavily influenced by the same legend, while in case of the books she is a witch and based more based on a dragon or an alligator than a bugbear. You can see it here from one of the several TV adaptation. [2]

Also, based on the series there is this popular music "A Cuca te pega", or in a free English translation: "The Cuca catch you". [3]

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%ADtio_do_Picapau_Amarel...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%ADtio_do_Picapau_Amarelo_\(fictional_farm\))

[2] [https://youtu.be/bIiujEcXcRw](https://youtu.be/bIiujEcXcRw)

[3] [https://youtu.be/y4YLN0ZQdyk](https://youtu.be/y4YLN0ZQdyk)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I came here hoping for this instead: [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the- tea](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-tea)

<comment><USER2> Not sure why you're getting downvoted, but here's an upvote to counter it!</comment></comment>


Why Isn't Open Source A Gateway For Coders Of Color? - peter-fogg http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/12/05/248791579/why-isnt-open-source-a-gateway-for-coders-of-color?sc=tw&cc=share <comment><AUTHOR> I agree there are systemic issues of racism keeping blacks and latinos away from open source, but those issues have nothing to do with open-source per se. The free time issue is a big one. Access to computers at home in early childhood is probably even bigger. Consider Bill Gates getting computer access as a 13 year old in 1968, this was an incredible leg up, something which gradually broadened but when I was a kid in the 80s I was still relatively privileged to have access. These days the financial barriers are extremely low as you can get started programming on the cheapest netbook, and free wi-fi abounds.

These days I think getting into open source is _great_ advice for minorities, and I think they will find it to be as close a meritocracy and "color-blind" environment as they will find in America today. That said, it is an inherently harsh environment to learn where there is a pretty low tolerance for beginners, and it could be quite discouraging for someone just getting their feet wet in programming. Also, if it's pitched heavily as a gateway to a lucrative career by parents and authorities a lot of people are going to be pushed into it who might not have the intrinsic interest to succeed in the pedantic world of telling a computer exactly what to do.

That said, one has to imagine that the number of blacks and latinos with a very strong potential to be good programmers is probably severely under- represented in industry as well as open source simply due to lack of early opportunity and privilege.

<comment><USER2> > _I agree there are systemic issues of racism keeping blacks and latinos away > from open source, but those issues have nothing to do with open-source per > se. The free time issue is a big one. Access to computers at home in early > childhood is probably even bigger._

You have been watching too much MSNBC. Young Blacks and Latinos watch 3-4 hours of television per day and play 2+ hours of video games. There goes your free time belief.

Access to computers and internet? Poor blacks compared to poor whites have the same resources to computers yet the poor whites become coders in the same percentages as the general population.

You are 0 for 2.

<comment><USER3> I am white, but my father watched TV most of his time and never worked on anything and growing up in such environment so did I. If you grow up in an short-term gratification environment it's much harder to stay with problems long enough to solve them and thus you end up giving up on many hobbies sooner. My father was probably just lazy or resigned due to constant worrying about economic situation but I can imagine that as an immigrant parent with lower job opportunities, language skills and no existing parents to support you, you're less likely to end up with a job you love and you worry about other things than hobbies in spare time. This affects the environment your kids grow up. I am not from US but I can imagine the parents of majority of those kids were in much different situation to others, because (I live abroad) I know that when I was in my home country I would aways had a place to go (my parents) and a support from them and thus more time to look out for a job I like and more support with the kids from them so I could raise kids in much different environment.

<comment><USER4> That may be so, but then it wouldn't be the fault of discrimination.

<comment><USER3> Sure, nor am I saying it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I disagree with racism being an issue keeping blacks & latinos from open source / free software development and I don't understand why people keep talking about barriers to software development. These days computers are ubiquitous (in the developed world at least). You can be poor but still afford a computer, and all the knowledge and tools you need are available for free. The only potential barriers I see is having the skills required to make useful contributions to an established project (something at the level of the existing developers) and free time.

About myself: I didn't go to a great school; Didn't have friends or classmates who were interested in computers or programming; Didn't have a role model to inspire or guide me; Never went to a workshop or joined a user group; Never attended a computer science class until I was in college.

I got fascinated by computers by reading about them in a newspaper when I was a kid, and had to go on a hunger strike every night until my father caved in and bought one for the house. By the time I was 15 I worked together with 4 guys to build a popular website and we developed a file editor together. We collaborated over IRC and what's interesting is that we knew nothing about each other except our nicknames and where we lived (This was before social networks became popular). Nothing else mattered except our mutual interest and skill.

Oh, and I'm not white.

<comment><USER6> >I don't understand why people keep talking about barriers to software development.

Because 'white guilt', and people need _something_ to post about in their tumblr blogs. ;)

I'd like to see some specific cases of racism in open source. I've been working professionally for 7 years, and I haven't seen a single case of racism anywhere in open source. I just can't imagine it; who would put themselves out there like that doing something terrible, and what community would allow that?

<comment><USER7> Earlier in the thread knowtheory describes a specific situation that happens over and over and over again.

<comment><USER6> Are you talking about: "It's a sad joke Rubyconf attendees yearly confuse @bryanl and @daksis with each other, but it's happened at every Rubyconf i've been too (which is granted 3 but it's there)."?

I don't think there's anything racist about that if it's an honest mistake the audience makes. Or did you mean to say the actual presenters announce them by the wrong name?

<comment><USER7> I'm curious, why would it be bad if the organizers of a conference made that mistake, but it's not bad if the attendees do?

And yes, he means that people walk up to Randall and say "oh hey, Brian!" and vice versa. Really, really often. Sometimes repeatedly. They're different heights, they don't even look like each other at all. They're just usually the only two black guys there. It happens at more than just Ruby conferences...

<comment><USER6> Because:

a) They have never met the speaker personally.

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

It has --nothing-- to do with being racist.

<comment><USER7> > a) They have never met the speaker personally.

Yes, this is "We met earlier in the day, I'm saying hello again." Or, like I said, a waiter that over the course of a multi-hour dinner and drinks, continually confuses the two. (EDIT: Whoops, when revising, I apparently deleted that story. I've seen this too.)

Furthermore, it doesn't happen with other people, at least not to the same degree. People even say "whoops, I confused you with the other black guy."

<comment><USER4> Still, it's not racism, just the way the human visual system works. What do you think is racist about it? "People don't even care enough to remember the name"? That is not what is going on at all. If they wouldn't care, why would they talk to them at all?

Who knows, perhaps they even have an advantage because people actually remember them. They only get their names mixed up sometimes - other people are simply forgotten completely. How often do you forget the name of people you have just been introduced to?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's not clear to me that there's overt racism in any FOSS communities (e.g. racial slurs on email lists, active rejection of visible minorities at conferences). Perhaps I miss that kind of thing because I'm white, but I've certainly never met any overt bigots. Or maybe the bigots save that kind of thing for one-on-one so as to have plausible deniability? (For what it's worth, no one confided in me, as a white man, assuming that I might share their racist attitudes.)

So if not overt, the racism must be passive and environmental. But the relative abundance of Asian (Indo/Pakistani and/or Oriental) members in IT and FOSS software suggest that there's not an obvious or passive "White Power" conspiracy going on there.

Economic issues, education, and free time make some sense as barriers, and these are disproportionately shared among the different races (in the USA at least).

<comment><USER7> If you type slurs into GitHub code search, you'll get over 10,000 results for many of them. Some of these are bad word filters, of course, but many are not.

<comment><USER9> Are any of them open source projects that anyone has ever heard of? I don't see any.

Edit: why did you delete the links to the searches? It looked like literally 99% bad word lists, and a couple of random repos that probably only the comiter cared about. One of them was a dump of metadata from pirated files off The Pirate Bay.

<comment><USER7> I deleted them because occasionally I've seen accounts get hellbanned for using slurs, even when simply discussing the words. Figured I'd play it safe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> How do you know what color other people on an open source project are? Is this a feature of GIT that I am not familiar with?

</comment><comment><USER11> Some good points made, but the part about many people in open source getting paid to do it is a stretch. Lots of google insiders have talked about the fall of 20% time (and most 20% time projects weren't open source), and few-to-no other companies offer this as a perk.

I'm all for increasing opportunities for underrepresented groups, but don't discount all the passionate, unpaid work people provide to the open source community!

<comment><USER12> It doesn't have to be explicit "use X% of your time to contribute to open source" to count as getting paid to do it.

When using OSS libraries on commercial products I've found the need to fix bugs or other problems and have sent pull requests with those changes afterwards. Granted not all clients approve this, but I wouldn't describe it as "few-to-no other companies" that allow it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Lack of time? Come on that's just a really lame excuse. It's hard but even with full school, full time work, part time startup, and two kids it's not that hard to find two three hours a week to do some os dev.

<comment><USER14> _Lack of time? Come on that 's just a really lame excuse. It's hard but even with full school, full time work, part time startup, and two kids it's not that hard to find two three hours a week to do some os dev._

When it comes to _teaching yourself_ to code, two to three hours per week is lame, what you learnt in one week is likely to have been forgotten by the next.

<comment><USER13> So yes, let's not do anything and blame stuff on some lame stuff like lack of time.

<comment><USER14> _So yes, let 's not do anything and blame stuff on some lame stuff like lack of time._

Hmm, no... let's not do anything until we can rationalise the problem. On average I spend around four to five hours a day teaching myself programming, that amount of time is the main reason I can learn it effectively. Along with the commitment of two part time jobs (one of them being voluntary), an accountancy course, searching for new jobs and the fact that I can't afford a car, I get about 4 - 5 hours sleep per day. No, that ain't no balance. If I had children to look after, I doubt I would be able to do it.

<comment><USER13> So you admit that somehow you're able to find few hours a day volunteer. While you may not have enough time to contribute to os projects at this moment, it's simply because you have different priorities,and prefer to spend that time doing other activities. "Lack of time" excuse is simply that - an excuse. Instead of saying "I lack time to contribute to do X", people should be saying - "I want to spend my time doing Y instead of X".

We all have a limited amount of time to spend on our hobbies, work and the family. We will never have enough time to do all that we would like to do - that is obvious.. B

<comment><USER14> _So you admit that somehow you 're able to find few hours a day volunteer._ This is a necessity, otherwise a potential employer will assume I'm lazy and apathetic.

 _While you may not have enough time to contribute to os projects at this moment, it 's simply because you have different priorities,and prefer to spend that time doing other activities._ It's not the time I lack, it is the expertise, which should improve with more practise. Preferences are different from priorities, my preference would be to write C code (and other languages) for most of the day. My priorities are to get a full time minimum wage job, since that is basically a realistic goal for me. One of the reasons I am doing an accountancy course is that I couldn't get sufficient funding for a course in computing, and this is because I cannot get a full time minimum wage job to pay for said computing course. Sound familiar? In CS this is related to bootstrapping.

Also, my paid job is working as a tree surgeon. One of the most dangerous jobs in the UK, as well as back breaking. I'm amazed I have enough energy to code when I get home.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> ...or coders with two X chromosomes?

Allegedly 1.5% of open source software contributors are female. So you are more likely to win the lottery than finding yourself working with a black woman on an open source project.

<comment><USER16> I would expect that the two aren't independent -- the proportion of black women to black men could well be very much higher than the proportion of white women to white men. The same qualities and situation that help a black man become a programmer despite the various forms of systemic bias would also be useful to a woman.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Relying on open source development to gain recognition and fame is like depending on unpaid internship to get your feet in the door.

<comment><USER18> It's a spectrum. Possible difference include copyright ownership of the work, applicability of the work directly to the business's goals, the reusability of the work as part of your portfolio...

...but if you're building something on a company's API to specifically get hired by them, it's effectively an unpaid internship, regardless of the license and the copyright.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I love all the commenters in uproar: this can't be racism!!! Notice that the word "racism" was used in the article 0 times.

>[Open source software] contribution takes time; I don't think anyone would contest that. Getting familiar with a project, finding out where you can fit into it, reading and responding to issues, testing and submitting patches, writing documentation. All of that requires a good deal of time.

>Marginalized people in tech — women, people of color, people with disabilities, LGBTQ people, and others — have less free time for a few major reasons: dependent care, domestic work and errands, and pay inequity.

<comment><USER4> "marginalized" implies discrimination

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> In case anyone is wondering: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_of_color](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_of_color)

<comment><USER8> Not to be confused with code of color

[http://www.colorforth.com/](http://www.colorforth.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> _You can jump right in and start writing some code._

Will it be deployed? I don't imagine the pay-off to be immediate, or self- correcting (teaching/mentoring). I can't imagine how open source is somehow a teaching/development code base for beginners.

<comment><USER4> I've read somewhere that most open source contributors started their own projects, rather than joining existing ones.

<comment><USER14> Makes sense, reading someone else's code is generally harder than reading your own.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> V-2 "Marginalized people in tech — women, people of color, people with disabilities, LGBTQ people, and others — have less free time for a few major reasons: dependent care, domestic work and errands, and pay inequity."

Why do LGTBQ people spend more time on domestic work and errands?

</comment><comment><USER2> > _One of the spaces you might think would be a gateway for developers of > color to enter the industry is through open source software development. You > don 't have to know somebody or have a degree in software engineering or get > hired to participate in an open-source project. You can jump right in and > start writing some code._

This sounds like the author is resigned to the fact that colored people don't go to college. Is that the premise of this article? What about the tiny percentage of colored college students why have any interest in software development?

> _But in Haibel 's experience, the open-source world is even whiter and more > male than the world of proprietary software. "It's very clear that the open > source community is whiter than the software community as a whole," she > says._

Wait, this seems to imply that the fact that there aren't many women or colored coders is because the white men in charge refuse to hire them on this basis. This is in stark contrast to reality where the fact that is not mentioned here is that there is little or no interest to code from these groups.

> _There are larger societal factors that contribute to the whiteness of the > tech world, more broadly. Blacks and Latinos are more likely to attend > under-resourced schools, they 're underrepresented in math and science > fields at every level of higher education and increasingly so the higher > they go, and are less likely than whites to _

This is such garbage. Blacks and Latinos in the same schools and in the same socioeconomic status as their White, Asian and Indian counter parts become coders at the same rates. Why do journalists always try to make everything about race unfairness?

There is no story here. Blacks and Hispanics aren't coders very often because they don't have ambition to do that. Wither it be cultural or genetic is not exactly known but it is not because they are disadvantaged. what is all this crap about them contributing to open source?

Would we ever see an article about how Indians and Persians are overrepresented in gas station and liquor store ownership (a very lucrative career) and how white people should do x to catch up? White people don't aspire to do that, end of (non) story.

<comment><USER7> > colored people

Just for your own sake, in case you're not a native speaker: you shouldn't ever, ever say this. The words you use send social signals to others, and 'colored people' sounds really, really, really racist.

This is distinct from 'person of color,' which is not. Use it instead.

See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colored](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colored) vs [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_of_color](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_of_color)

<comment><USER22> Coloured is a normal saying in South Africa and isn't an absurd politically correct euphemism for black. Before accusing others of racism, check your cultural imperialism.

<comment><USER7> I specifically did not accuse them of racism, I said that it sends a certain signal, which is obviously scoped to cultures. HN is largely about California culture, so many readers will have a US-centric reading. Understanding what effect the words you use has on your audience is important.

You'll also note that the South Africa bit is specifically mentioned in the "people of color" link.

<comment><USER23> > I specifically did not accuse them of racism

You're sure you didn't do exactly that to an audience of about 12K followers on Twitter? [https://twitter.com/steveklabnik/status/409697629321195520](https://twitter.com/steveklabnik/status/409697629321195520)

<comment><USER7> I do not think they are racist. I think they said something that sounds like they're racist.

<comment><USER6> That is just so low and slimy of you. Yikes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "more than 8 in 10 open source developers are white"

According to Wikipedia 72% of the population of the USA are white, so maybe 8 in 10 is not really that much of an indication of discrimination or disadvantage. (72% boils down to "more than 7 in 10").

<comment><USER8> While OSS is not 'just' a US thing, it is probably heavily weighted toward US participation. Although India and China have huge populations of technically educated people, the language barrier is probably a factor there.

I would imagine that the region with next highest contribution is Europe, which comprehensive English teaching. (also: mostly white)</comment></comment>