Sneak peek of Macaw – a code-savvy web design tool [video] - <AUTHOR> http://macaw.co/peek/

<comment><USER2> Looks pretty good - I'm happy to see more web layout tools coming to market, since I'm responsible for Edit Room [1], my own vision of a flexible and responsive web design tool. Also curious about the pricing (obviously).

It's a big enough market that the more variety of tools that exist, the better, as designers can find the tool that they like the best, instead of the bad old days where it was Photoshop or Fireworks, and they both were crap for web design.

What's interesting is to compare and contrast the difference between a tool like this on the desktop, and tools like mine that are web-based (see easel, divshot, webflow, probably 1 or 2 more that I'm forgetting, etc...)

Being on the desktop gives them a bit more power and control over the user interface, as well as super-easy importing of external assets.

Being web-based allows me to do neat things like have live-updating preview links, so you can immediately see how the design works or breaks on a bunch of screens at once. Also importing HTML content from any URL, for doing quick responsive redesigns. I still have some work to do on the output CSS being more optimized, but for prototyping and being wildly creative in a flexible web canvas, you can't beat it.

[1] [http://edit-room.com](http://edit-room.com)

<comment><USER3> It look absolutely gorgeous, but when I get to the designer it simply won't let me create any layer, dragging doesn't seem to do anything.

Safari 6.0.5 (8536.30.1) on OSX 10.8.4. With Chrome I only get a "sorry there was an error" message.

<comment><USER2> Thanks very much! I'm sorry to hear you found a bug. I'll investigate and see if I can get a fix up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This looks great, but it has the same problem I have with every other web based design tool, it aspires to be a WYSIWYG editor.

I agree there is a need, but I think that need is exaggerated, writing html / css is pretty easy, its not fun but its generally nothing compared to the overall work, half the time you still have to do it manually anyway since it has to fit into frameworks etc.

I want something that lets me focus on the design aspect, it should have nice snap to grid features, ability to inspect and edit css, but it should also have a vector drawing tools, image manipulations. The current set of design tools have terrible support for most common web functionality, photoshop doesnt even have rounded borders, illustrator / fireworks / sketch / pixelmator all almost entirely ignore things that are important for designing for the web. However web based editors almost all lack any graphical and vector capabilities whatsoever.

I started on this and gave up a while ago, [http://upmock.com/](http://upmock.com/) and wrote about it [http://arandomurl.com/2012/10/15/upmock-is- dead.html](http://arandomurl.com/2012/10/15/upmock-is-dead.html). Currently the most promising so far has been SVG Edit, however it doesnt seem particularly active nor has there been a focus on producing web designs

<comment><USER5> _I agree there is a need, but I think that need is exaggerated_

Speak for yourself. As a code-savvy designer, who splits everyday designing on paper, in Photoshop/Illustrator and in the browser, I don't think I can overstate how woefully our professional tools for web design have actually kept up with web design.

 _photoshop doesnt even have rounded borders_

Sure it does—vector shapes + Stroke Layer Styles work great. Do you mean something else?

<comment><USER6> I feel like I should write a bot to say this on forums across the Internet.

Every time somebody complains how Photoshop doesn't have rounded corners, they mean it doesn't have _dynamic_ rounded corners. You can't change the roundedness in any remotely easy way after you draw the shape, and changing the dimensions of the shape distorts the corners.

They're just a huge pain to work with, when they need to be trivially easy for doing web design.

<comment><USER7> Photoshop CC supports dynamic rounded corners.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm really excited about this.

When tools break away from old ways of "doing things" you can end up with much more exciting stuff. I know that I fall into past behavior when pressed for time (which is every project ever) and if I had an easier way to experiment, I might try something different.

I'm hoping it has some idea of optimization though. He was dragging out individual icons for every social button and logo and whatever. It doesn't seem like sprite sheets are possible here but maybe? I don't imagine sass/less support here but that would be neat.

Finally, I'd love to see how they are building the app itself. Is this a Chrome embedded app?

<comment> az-combinator having every project pressing for time is a problem with project management and not the tools themselves. A little OT I know but something we usually take for granted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can it read existed html code and modify the design on top of it? Or does it uses it's own project metadata for design information?

</comment><comment><USER10> Went through the whole video, looks superbly promising even at it's beta stage. It is obvious the authors get best front-end development practices as well as design principles. Definitely will follow up.

</comment><comment><USER11> In the video how did he manage to leave that M icon at 79px and not change it to 80!!?

Something I did note was that the pre-used class names weren't auto-suggested; eg on the footer buttons. Sure that'll get fixed. Also perhaps value snapping to avoid values like "29.608938547486037%"?

Everything else looked pretty slick though.

Didn't see the GA code being added in the video. Also it seems like Typekit was integrated to get some of the typographical flexibility.

Generally though I really liked it; seems very promising.

<comment><USER12> I'm sure there's a name for it, but I fight quite hard to not necessarily round values to pleasing numbers. Sometimes that's just the right value.

<comment><USER11> The precision being used is far too high. Optional snapping to common values is probably a good idea too (eg 80px is a common button/logo/icon size).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This reminds me of Dreamweaver which makes me cautious having had to deal with the output of it for years...

<comment><USER14> There's a sample output on their page [1] which is very clean.

[1]: [http://macaw.co/peek/sample/](http://macaw.co/peek/sample/)

<comment><USER13> Dreamweaver's output was clean in the demos as well. It didn't stop a veritable rats nest of code appearing on anything marginally complicated.

It's not an easy problem to solve without human intelligence.

<comment> az-combinator It was also the developer's responsibility not to use DW in a way that would make it spit a mess of code. Just because you could embed a table inside a table of another table it mans you should.

<comment><USER11> With DW that was the only way to actualise certain designs though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Really, really nice job, congrats. All your hard work really shows. Looking forward to this.

</comment><comment><USER16> These tools always look like they'd be great, and always completely fail for an actual design workflow for anything outside of wireframing.

For a specific example as to why, look no further than the first 4 minutes where the creator "imports all these assets we made". Made where?!

My design team doesn't work like that. No design team does. They don't "make one thing over and then plug it in over here". They make everything together in one program. Because it's impossible to jump between two different apps when you're exploring a creative concept. You don't think to yourself, "OK, I'll need this icon and this icon and maybe a background image with these precise filters applied and it'll have a sidebar so I'll need a texture for that..."

You open Photoshop, or Illustrator, or Pixelmator and you start trying things until something you've tried looks good.

While it'd be great to see design tools that actually took the intricacies of HTML structure and CSS into account, tools like Macaw (and all the others I've seen) all fall down for real work.

</comment><comment><USER12> Looks brilliant for mockups and simple layouts! I'd love to see the output for a more complicated layout.

I'm definitely excited for this one.

</comment><comment><USER17> Echoing other comments below, here's my feedback:

Visually it looks awesome, but what it really comes down to is the quality of the code. Most WYSIWYG editors leave a lot to be desired.

Second, I am always wary of amazing tools with unknown pricepoints. I get that you're still early, but some semblance of cost structure would be great. Frankly, I don't know if you're going to charge $1500 or $5 a month or free. I just don't know, there's too many ways you could choose to market this, and that insecurity, that lack of knowledge makes me uncomfortable.

That being said, great job on the concept and I can't wait to see what it looks like when it goes live.

<comment><USER18> > Visually it looks awesome, but what it really comes down to is the quality > of the code. Most WYSIWYG editors leave a lot to be desired.

Did you see the code output at the end? It looked like pretty solid HTML and CSS to me. What was particularly interesting was the adhereance to OOCSS principles in the styles, but that could just be the result of good practices with the user.

<comment><USER19> It was a pretty simple "design", so yes, the markup should be reasonably clean.

For a real demonstration why not try something more "real-world"[1] and see how that turns out.

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

<comment><USER20> I don't think most people will design a cnn.com on a regular basis or from the ground up.

<comment><USER21> I have fairly standard clients and what I usually work on is closer to a CNN page than the page Macaw demoed. And more often than not, it's from scratch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> How do I use Macaw with Bootstrap/Foundation? Would I design the static website, then go in with my text editor and implement my front end framework of choice, or does Macaw have built-in support for front end frameworks?

<comment><USER23> This is more a css/html replacement tool, and should probably be thought of as such. Framework implementation is about code design and engineering, something you should take up on your own.

Regardless, it'd be nice to not have to write markup and css, to me a boring process; a product like this is long overdue. My question is how it fits in with workflow. Who owns this in a group setting; the designer? The front end dev? Do I have to design a page in photoshop before I try to build it in this (in the presentation, the graphics were all ready to go and layout, but it's never like that in real life). It just seems weird to have to go through the process of designing a page, and then designing it again.

<comment> az-combinator I would think it would be owned by the designer and would be used as a prototype tool (as others mentioned before). I would not use PS for anything else other than to create elements to support the design (crop images, special graphics) but other than that a tool like this would be great to get the project started on the right direction and test the functionality on different browsers without having to involved a dedicated dev into the mix.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Would be nice to load frameworks like bootstrap to generate bootstrap code.

</comment><comment><USER25> Wow....this looks awesome. This could definitely challenge the ubiquity of something like Bootstrap.

If you have something like this....why use Bootstrap?

Can't wait for you to release it.

<comment><USER26> I'm personally a little disappointed it doesn't use Bootstrap or Foundation. A lot of developers are already skilled with those frameworks, and as I'm sure modifications will have to be made to the code of any of the new responsive design tools, using a familiar framework would be a big help.

I also hope these new tools allow us to output templated html and css -- there's nothing clunkier than dropping html into a rails project (I know that webflow will be able to output jade templates).

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Watched the video. This looks amazing! I don't say that often.

Wow, fantastic job, the smart and pretty CSS/HTML output is the icing on the cake.

</comment><comment><USER28> Best attempt at this I've seen, looking forward to getting my hands on it.

It states in the video this is a native app, but written with HTML/CSS. Would be interested to know if this was written in node-webkit (like Light Table), or if not, what?

[1] [https://github.com/rogerwang/node- webkit](https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit)

</comment><comment><USER29> On price point, I'm guessing $79 basic, and $129 pro.

It's desktop, so unlikely to have a monthly model.

<comment><USER30> Seems a bit low for the price, but I think you're right about no monthly model. I could be wrong, but I don't believe it's possible to have subscription based software at this point in the Mac App Store, which is where they mentioned they'll be selling it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This looks really promising. Can't wait to try it out. This will be just available on Mac?

<comment><USER32> I hope not; It should be an easy task for them to port this to Linux and Windows (and even to publish on the various first-party software stores they come with), given that the app is evidently built using web technologies. Perhaps even something common like node-webkit.

<comment><USER33> yup that seems to be their plan.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> quite interested to see if it can really be used in production rather than just mock-ups. For example can you use the stylesheets from one page across a range of screens and still get the same level of clever optimisation.

<comment><USER22> I'm wondering the same too. At the moment this looks like a great static website design tool. It may allow me to provide rapid design for clients who want a simple blog.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'm astounded. Is this really a web-app. Did you roll your own client-side framework? My mind is blown. And there are rulers as well?! Where did you learn to code like this?

<comment><USER36> I believe it's a native app for Mac OS, not a web app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Looks really interesting for doing mockups that can be easily tweaks in the browser or add low level features by editing the code.

</comment><comment><USER38> I like it! Easily build a pretty page, drop in a 'lil angularJs app & go. Too bad I'm not a mac guy...

</comment><comment><USER39> seems like a good tool for prototyping

<comment><USER40> I thought the same thing, looks way better than Edge ever did.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Awesome! What's the price point?

</comment><comment> az-combinator Would it be wrong to use his video to create a web based competitor? Looks like it is possible.

<comment><USER36> Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> This one might actually be a tool I can use in my workflow. Can't wait to try it out.

</comment><comment><USER43> I was impressed by video of Macaw, but it not released yet and I need it under Linux. OMG

</comment><comment> deepak-iiitb Looks great for mock-ups. Feel would be a great tool for Product Managers too.

</comment><comment><USER44> Simply stunning! Great work. Looking forward to trying it out.

</comment><comment><USER45> This looks perfect the next time I need a static webpage...

<comment><USER12> This could definitely be a first step towards building a CMS template.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Looks good, it seems to get the markup right.

</comment><comment><USER47> Looks great - when is it out?</comment>


Show HN: Price Internet service for your business location - <AUTHOR> http://broadband.com

<comment><AUTHOR> To clarify, we price a given address through three carrier APIs: Qwest, XO, and Covad.

We hope to add more (Level 3, Verizon, etc) as we work out the kinks in talking to their APIs.

I'd love to get any feedback on the site: design, functionality, etc.

<comment><USER2> I think this is really cool. Nice work and I really like the site design. Clean and simple.</comment></comment>


Donald Knuth's list of programs to read and study - <AUTHOR> http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/programs.html

<comment><USER2> 1) Oh, I should read and study these

2) uhh... I'll bookmark this to look at later

3) [and I never open that webpage again]...

<comment><USER3> I am glad to know that I am not alone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder why he doesn't post formatted versions of these? Reading the raw CWEB source gets old fast.

</comment><comment><USER5> Love him returning -666 as his error code in one of those.

<comment><USER6> The number of the anti-Beast?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> ERECTION can be hard</comment>


How Connected Is Your Community to Everywhere Else in America? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/09/19/upshot/facebook-county-friendships.html <comment><USER2> So San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties are some of the most disconnected places in the United States?</comment>


Show HN: Pipelines – Language for scripting parrallel pipelines with Python - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/calebwin/pipelines <comment><USER2> This looks pretty interesting.

Just curious if you looked at Apache Airflow as the integration functionality and pipeline / DAG configuration approaches are similar and it's also done in Python.

[https://github.com/apache/airflow](https://github.com/apache/airflow)

The Nim language is new to me. What was the experience like implementing a framework in it?

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks interesting but I don't understand if the "x as x" is mandatory? Seems overly verbose if you don't want to import it with another name?

<comment><USER4> That is unnecessary, I don't understand why the Readme includes it. It does nothing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure I understand the wins of this over just using the standard multiprocessing module.

You can trivially define a worker pool or arbitrary size and pipe a stream of values through your function using multiple cores, avoiding GIL issues.

If you have something which scales to multiple machines just use celery or redis streams.

<comment><USER6> DASK

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice readme! It's so common for projects to forget to include an introductory blurb, it's great to see one that does not forget.

Small bug in the example code? I think this:

        return even % 2 == 0

Should be this:

        return number % 2 == 0

</comment><comment><USER8> I didn't understand one thing: is this implemented in Nim and run Python code? If yes, why don't run Pipelines in Nim too? Wouldn't this be faster?

<comment><USER9> Most programmers don't write in Nim. More programmers write in Python. I assume he's targeting the Python crowd.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> wait... `/>` and `|>` are python operators?

<comment><USER11> No. Those are Nim, or rather tokens that guides the Nim code to do the pipe thing.

The code splits the line in function names, args and those operators, to then orchestrate the pipeline flow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Should have named it Pypelines. But seriously though I am not sure what the benefits over multiprocessing are. It looks a little cryptic at first sight.

<comment><USER13> [https://github.com/gpcimino/pypelines](https://github.com/gpcimino/pypelines)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Looks very similar to R, dplyr and pipes.

<comment><USER15> More like magritter I thought. just wish everytime someone comes up with something new you have to install yet another package manager.</comment></comment>


A Year Later, Most Americans Think Snowden Did The Right Thing - <AUTHOR> http://www.darkreading.com/a-year-later-most-americans-think-snowden-did-the-right-thing/d/d-id/1269269?

<comment><USER2> _55% of employed Americans believe Snowden was right to expose PRISM_

A poll on "employed Americans" seems like a strange demographic to poll? I cannot think of why someone would chose such an odd demographic. I am looking forward to reading the questions.

<comment><USER3> 55% - that's frighteningly low, for a developed country.

<comment> mike-cardwell "55% of employed Americans" != "55% of Americans are employed"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I want this to be true, but that would be a massive reversal from this poll from January [http://www.cbsnews.com/news/poll-most-think-edward- snowden-s...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/poll-most-think-edward-snowden- should-stand-trial-in-us/) and other very similar polls around that time (even as late as April) ... [http://bit.ly/1jyVj6t](http://bit.ly/1jyVj6t) ... so I'll wait till the actual poll hits the presses before taking this seriously.

<comment><USER5> It depends on the question asked... if you ask people whether he did the right thing by exposing the surveillance, 55% yes.

another poll in favor of snowden: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/01/edward-snowden- supp...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/01/edward-snowden- support_n_5071938.html)

if you ask them if he should stand trial, they also agree with that. tweaking the poll question can make a significant difference.

<comment><USER6> One could just pick defendants at random from the general population and get most Americans to vote for a trial. We are jealous, vindictive bastards.

<comment><USER7> Or a country that believes in the rule of law above other things.

You can simultaneously believe that what someone did was the right thing and think that they still need to stand trial. Now, believing those two and not thinking some sort of reform is necessary might be a harder position to hold.

<comment><USER8> If we're going to go by the rule of law, let's start with the offenders in this administration, the last administration, and in the intelligence and law enforcement community.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Eighty-two percent believe their personal information is still being > analyzed by the US government, and 81 percent believe their personal > information is being analyzed by corporations for business purposes.

I can't wrap my head around the other 20%, esp. in the latter statistic. What do they think the world looks like?

<comment><USER10> The wording mentions especially "their personal information". If you live without using much any internet site or service, no facebook, no twitter, etc, no smartphone either, you don't have anything to spy on. I don't know US statistics, but it seems possible that 10 to 20% of the population is living pretty much offline. So they can feel "safe".

However, they are still using a phone and pretty much all their call metadata are recorded at least...

<comment><USER11> You don't have anything to spy on, except your magazine subscriptions, credit card purchases, phone records, public library records, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> All that this Snowman did is that he confirmed that the API's really exist and that there were requests for weakening of the security protocols.

All in all, direct data access thru API's isn't a bad thing in general because it provides a fast response option but also we should have in mind the human factor error option and the misuse of the API's for the sake of personal interest and that should really make any citizen worried.

Did he endangered the security of the USA ? No. We all had assumptions about it before but they weren't yet confirmed.

Did the weakening of the security protocols endangered the USA/World economy and the security of the USA/World citizens? Absolutely YES. Anyone could reverse-engineer the weakened protocol.

All in all:

Did he did the right thing regarding his employer? No.

Did he did the right thing regarding the rest of us? Yes.

<comment><USER13> I would say the answer to both questions is yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Sadly, I dont think this the case. Most everyone I've spoken to about Snowden either didnt know who he was or was some what fine with being spied on the catch "terrorists."

I still dont believe the general public understands the gravity of the situation. Now the US is looking way worse than China. Most people still dont understand how tarnishing this is to our already horrible image abroad.

<comment><USER15> > Now the US is looking way worse than China.

Do you not see any irony in you being allowed to saythis online?

The US is bad, but it is hyperbole to suggest that the US is "way worse" than China. How many political dissidents does the US execute or imprison, for one example?

<comment><USER14> > _is looking_

I didnt say we were way worse than China I said we are looking way worse (this is in regards to spying not human rights, pollution or other issues). Its one thing to claim China is conducting corporate espionage abroad. But its also pretty bad to say we are indiscriminately spying on people in _entire_ countries. Literally the entire country.

<comment><USER16> And who's saying China isn't capable (and more likely doing) of the exact same thing? There are some absolutely brilliant hackers and tech workers who are born into PRC propaganda.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> With absolute neutrality towards the topic of the article, here are some warning flags for the data presented.

"Employed Americans" isn't a typical survey category, and the author makes no attempt at explaining why "Employed Americans" was a more relevant demographic to survey than all americans, all adults, all adults between ages of x and y, etc. Nor does the author present equivalent statistics for the more commonly surveyed demographics.

"Nearly one in two employed Americans" really just means almost 50%, and could be misleading on quick glance.

</comment><comment><USER18> Perhaps relevant: I was having coffee at a friend's house yesterday morning, and he was talking about Snowden. My friend has totally changed his mind, now thinking that Snowden did the right thing. I know this is just one data point but the flip in opinion surprised me.

</comment><comment><USER19> i was reminded of this video regarding polls. tldw: they are bullshit. [http://youtu.be/If9EWDB_zK4](http://youtu.be/If9EWDB_zK4)

</comment><comment><USER20> why do I feel this title implies that what "americans" think is inaccurate or wrong ?</comment>


Dear Subscriber: You are a participant in a mass disturbance. - <AUTHOR> http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/world/ukraine-introduces-draconian-new-laws-and-begins-monitoring-messaging-protesters-mobile-phones/story-fni0xs61-1226808357575

<comment><USER2> It's disturbing, indeed. Even moreso to consider, if the government puts a gun to the telecom's figurative head, they can find out:

* which people are in the vicinity

* which people "turned off" their phone near the vicinity

* which people removed their phone's battery near the vicinity

Depending on how paranoid / authoritarian, any of the above or all 3 could make for a good list of people to harass (and that's putting it nicely).</comment>


Content Went Viral in the 1800s, Too - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/2015/05/23/408996490/hot-content-went-viral-in-the-1800s-too

<comment><USER2> This is very interesting to me as an entrepreneur who thinks of why versus what.

The onset of 'exposure' due to instant connection and integration via connected devices has enabled society to have a peek into the social aspects of our behavior, savory or unsavory.

As kids, and when our parents were kids, very similar behaviors occurred as to what kids are doing today - in my opinion, the only difference is that we can now view what occurs today, whereas in the past it was word-of-mouth.

Humans be humans, regardless of the century.

</comment><comment><USER3> One thing I think that is good to keep in mind with regards to doing things in the past, is that if there was money to be made, people would find a way to get things done. Certainly in 2015 with computing it is far easier to flexibly accomplish a lot of things, but if your livelihood depends on getting something done, specialists in the past would find a way.

</comment><comment> anti-shill but back then it was called "mass hysteria."</comment>


IP address can now pin down your location to within a half mile - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/04/getting-warmer-an-ip-address-can-map-you-within-half-a-mile.ars

<comment><USER2> Old news is old. This was posted by Bruce Schneier not to long ago.

None the less, it doesn't surprise me a single that it got this far.</comment>


The Civil War After the Civil War - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2015/04/after_appomattox_by_gregory_downs_reviewed.single.html <comment><USER2> The U.S. experience with slavery and civil rights is pretty much why I don't believe in anarchist or anarcho-libertarian principles. People organized into institutions have a greater capacity for good than people left to their own devices. And sometimes those institutions have to drag people into the future by burning everything down and instilling virtue at the point of a bayonet. I sometimes think that if Congress hadn't pissed all over the Constitution's federalist design in the 1960's, we'd still have segregation today.

<comment><USER3> > I sometimes think that if Congress hadn't pissed all over the Constitution's > federalist design in the 1960's, we'd still have segregation today.

I don't, but only because, at best, I see the actions of Congress as a lagging indicator of societal will. That enough people in society demanded Congress act enough to force them into action enough to piss all over federalism is indicative that society had already come along and made its point. Had there not been enough people wanting it, Congress wouldn't have acted.

I mean, unless we take it as a given that the CRA's biggest aim (by the government) was really a ploy to grab additional power at the expense of the Commerce Clause.

<comment><USER4> Have you read about what desegregation of schools in Alabama was like? That certainly doesn't sound like a society that was ready for federal action. The National Guard was federalized and had to push aside the Governor and crowds of protesting white people.

<comment><USER3> I have. That some people clearly weren't ready for it doesn't mean that the majority of society wasn't.

That said, despite all the negative publicity, there were plenty of sympathizers in Alabama happily swimming against the tide in favor of desegregation.

<comment><USER4> What constitutes society though? The majority of the US as a whole? The majority of Alabama? The majority of the city of Tuscaloosa?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's hard to read an article on history when the first paragraph has a glaring falsehood:

>Most historians, though, acknowledge that the war's most ambitious aim—full equality for black citizens

Quote from Lincoln:

>If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.

<comment><AUTHOR> That quote is a bit misleading when taken out of context.

Early in the war, there were a lot of conservative Northern Democrats who felt that, while crushing the rebellion was a valid war aim, going beyond that to emancipation of the slaves was not. They felt that insisting on emancipation would poison any chance of ever reintegrating the South into the Union. Since Lincoln was the first President ever elected by the then-new Republican party, which had a strong pro-emancipation faction, these conservatives tended to view Lincoln as a potentially dangerous radical whose ideology could potentially sabotage the war effort.

At the war's opening Lincoln tended to agree with them. But a year of hard fighting that saw a string of Northern defeats changed his thinking. He began to feel that only by embracing a higher goal than political union could the North seize the moral high ground it would need to keep its people from giving up in frustration. So he slowly began to swing towards emancipation.

However, it was critical while he was making that swing that word of it not leak out, since if it was revealed prematurely, without the right buildup, it could shock the conservatives into bolting from the national unity coalition of Republicans and Democrats together that he had assembled at the start of the war. So even as he was drafting what became the Emancipation Proclamation, he was furiously insisting to anyone who asked that he intended nothing of the sort. (The quote you cited comes from an open letter Lincoln wrote during this period to a prominent conservative New York newspaper editor named Horace Greeley as part of this PR effort -- see [http://www.nytimes.com/1862/08/24/news/letter-president- linc...](http://www.nytimes.com/1862/08/24/news/letter-president-lincoln- reply-horace-greeley-slavery-union-restoration-union.html))

It worked, at least as well as it needed to work; while the conservatives never really trusted Lincoln, they couldn't ever pin him down on the slavery issue either. And by the time he revealed his shift, it was clear to everyone that the conservatives' dream that the South could be reconciled with sweet words and restraint was a fantasy -- the South was in earnest, they were playing for keeps, and the only way they would be brought back into the union was with fire and sword.

<comment><USER6> Ignoring the issue of slavery for a moment (which the North was not initially attempting to abolish), did they have any right to force the South to "be brought back into the union with fire and sword?"

Can lawfully elected governments not dissolve political bonds?

What makes a government not even 70 years old so important that cities must be razed and hundreds of thousands killed to preserve it? Was it even preserved when half the country was in a military dictatorship?

<comment><USER7> There is ultimately no law and no right between nations, except persuasion and force.

The moment the South separated, they willingly subjected themselves to that. If they wanted someone to step in and say, hey, you can't do that, then they should have remained a part of the system that provided exactly that.

You can't declare yourself a separate nation, then get upset when you're treated like it.

<comment><USER8> If you try to ground Southern secession in standard international law principles of self-determination and consider it at the state level you run into problems of both white franchise and....er another 3/5th of a problem rather quickly....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am skeptical that we can learn any practical lessons from the relative success of Reconstruction. There was a lot more in play there beyond military occupation. After the war, the South shared a massive porous border with the economically dominant progressive North. Furthermore, you had that progressive North participating in the democratic processes of the occupied South (as the article and apparently the book talk about). Nothing like any of that happens with modern US invasions and occupations.

<comment><USER10> >>Nothing like any of that happens with modern US invasions and occupations.

The post WWII occupations of Germany and Japan?

<comment><USER9> Germany perhaps, but not Japan. With Germany it is difficult to say since the post-war split of Germany is something that doesn't have a great analogue in Reconstruction. Japan did not have a porous border with the US, and although there was nevertheless a large amount of cultural exchange following the war, it was nothing compared to what occurred between the North and South in the US. Furthermore, while American individuals involved themselves with Japan's government following the war, that was not general American voting public doing it; it was only a handful of people. Having a MacArthur from the conquering nation and having to share a government with the conquering nation are rather dissimilar. The Japanese public were not voting for American leaders, and the American public were not voting for Japanese leaders. American and Japanese leaders were not regularly engaging in debate, nor were they forced to reconcile differences in their domestic policies.

However I would not consider either of those a _modern_ US invasion/occupation anyway. We don't really fight/invade/occupy like that anymore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Reconstruction kind of loses it's historical grit when we frame it solely as the battle for equality. I know modern historian have an obligation to hunt down, expose, and destroy the Neo-Confederates' lost cause mythos, but leaving out just how insane and chaotic that time was does the entire historical narrative an injustice.</comment>


Airbus beaten to first electric Channel flight - <AUTHOR> http://www.flyer.co.uk/aviation-news/newsfeed.php?artnum=2327

<comment><USER2> I find this an amusing story. Here is a nominally private company, Airbus, trying to squash legitimate aviation by a licensed plane/pilot, so that they can 'capture' a first and make a nice press release. I think there might be a movie plot in there somewhere.</comment>


What makes a website fast? - <AUTHOR> http://www.papaki.com/blog/index.php?p=2598

<comment><AUTHOR> Isn't this a great infographic?</comment>


Absorbed Music Visualizer, Take yourself on an incredible audio-visual journey - <AUTHOR> http://absorbedapp.com/ <comment><USER2> I can see this being used at parties

</comment><comment><USER3> Awesome demo video and app!</comment>


A simple anonymous wiki - <AUTHOR> http://anons.wiki/ <comment><USER2> I really like it. But why the line count?

<comment><AUTHOR> Just to know how big the content is. Or when the whole content is empty, line count : 1 would show up to say that it is indeed empty.

<comment><USER2> I see. But it seems rather unnecessary, specially given that it's only shown on the article itself. If it were displayed along search results or recent edits, I'd get it. But as it is it doesn't seem to do much.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Email me the app service - <AUTHOR> I noticed Dropbox has a cool "email me the link" button that lets users get an email with the app link. I can't seem to find a service that allows this. Any ideas on how to best implement this?<p>https://www.dropbox.com/android <comment><AUTHOR> I think I'll use something like -> [https://developers.google.com/apps- script/articles/sending_e...](https://developers.google.com/apps- script/articles/sending_emails)</comment>


Django Advent 1.2 - <AUTHOR> http://djangoadvent.com

<comment><USER2> Hi Idan. I an happy to see this online after you showed as a quick preview yesterday on Tel Aviv HN meetup. Keep up the good work.

</comment><comment><USER3> The site looks really professional and with nice touches, Idan. Jacob.

</comment><comment><USER4> looks like a well done site. i've bookmarked it!</comment>


European Leaders Reach Agreement to Resolve Greek Debt Crisis - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/14/world/europe/greece-debt-plan.html

<comment><USER2> Didn't I get it or does the article completely leave out what Greece and the EU agreed to? I, and that as a German, still think Greece needs to make some reforms but the payback part will slow down their whole economy and many people will suffer because of that. The pressure from Germany is to high especially if you think about the fact that Germany never payed all their dept (for example after WWII). Really strange that our minister of finance is so strict about it since he was the guy that back in the days received 100000 DM in an suit case and couln't remember from whom...

<comment><AUTHOR> The article was written in the early hours after the agreement, before full details were out. They did add the full text of the agreement. It is much harsher than almost everything that Greece previously rejected.</comment></comment>


Spamhaus under DDOS from AnonOps - <AUTHOR> http://seclists.org/nanog/2010/Dec/1077

<comment><USER2> _None of the people who contacted us realised that the "Wikileaks press release" published on wikileaks.info was not written by Wikileaks and not issued by Wikileaks - but by the person running the wikileaks.info site only - the very site we are warning about. The site data, disks, connections and visitor traffic, are all under the control of the Heihachi cybercrime gang. There are more than 40 criminal-run sites operating on the same IP address as wikileaks.info, including carder-elite.biz, h4ck3rz.biz, elite-crew.net, and bank phishes paypal-securitycenter.com and postbank-kontodirekt.com._

The drama never ends.

The way wikileaks mirrors work is that volunteers provide server space and access credentials, while wikileaks staff upload the content. The problem arises if that content is not digitally signed, or at least authenticated with a set of hashes (the webmasters may inject malware, or otherwise modify the content).

Still, until we see an official note on wikileaks.ch (or personal message from Assange) that wikileaks.info is a fraudulent impersonation, we should consider the content on the .info site in an official fashion.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting, I just looked into this the other day. [http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/wikileaksorg_is_back_up...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/wikileaksorg_is_back_up_but_is_it_wikileaks.php)

Just reached out to the owner of mirror.wikileaks.info

I think there's a lot of assumption going on here in terms of who is in charge of what and who's responsible...</comment>


All-Electric Ford Mustang Mach-E SUV - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedrive.com/news/31073/the-all-electric-2021-ford-mustang-mustang-mach-e-suv-is-here <comment><USER2> I'm mystified with the Mustang branding. There's 55 years of inertia behind that meaning a 2 door sports car.

<comment><USER3> It's no worse than a Porsche SUV.

<comment><USER2> At least they didn't call that a 911. Porsche does have a niche make, but this is reusing a model name.

<comment><USER4> Other manufacturers have done it, look at MINI.

That started off as a Morris Mini-Minor, turned into a Morris Mini/Austin Mini, then just a Mini, then Rover Mini, then BMW turned it into it's own brand, MINI.

Ford are presumably just taking the brand awareness of the Mustang to create a sub-brand of performance cars. Which makes sense as people all over the world are aware of the Mustang.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Maybe I'm an old fogey, but this car looks much more like "a traditional compact crossover SUV", and much less like a "traditional Mustang".

<comment><USER6> I was reminded of a 'shooting brake' ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting- brake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting-brake)), which added to the appeal for me personally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm torn. On one hand, I'd love reasonable competition to Tesla in this space, but I guess I assumed it would be at a much better price.

The other thing is, I don't think the average Ford buyer will purchase this. Simply put, if you're interested in an electric SUV, and have 45-60k you can part with, you'll buy the Tesla Y or maybe the Audi. Who wants to drop 60k on a crossover Ford SUV?

<comment><USER8> Explorer buyers put up the kind of money easily. Look at their higher trim level prices.

The reason they went with the Mustang brand here is to "macho" up the vehicle. Which most Ford buyers wouldn't otherwise touch.

Electric Crossover = hippie weak bullshit.

Electric Mustang Mach = Manly strong fast.

You think I'm joking.

<comment><USER7> Do people really pay that much for explorers? I kind of always assumed that was the sticker and a mixture of incentives and family discounts factored heavily. It's kind of like when people buy a Dodge or Chrysler, I just assume they get some sort of crazy deal because otherwise what's the point?

<comment><USER9> Have you ever heard of the Dodge Hellcats? They have a following and old muscle car fans would be swayed by a Mustang badge. They make a $100k Grand Cherokee Trackhawk that's double the price of my Trailhawk.

German cars are nice but there's no way I'm paying that much for parts and labor on top of the sticker. Not to mention they are making them much harder to work on. Remove the intake manifold to change the plugs or coil, why?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wish they kept it called a Mach-E, and maybe slipped in a pony somewhere as homage (on top of the obvious styling queues)

That being said, calling it a Mustang Mach-E is going to get the industry, and community, more abuzz than simply calling it a mustang inspired EV called the Mach-E.

I like it well enough, and I hope the electronics end up in a future Mustang coupe, like this bad boy: [https://www.autoblog.com/2019/11/06/ford-webasto- lithium-mus...](https://www.autoblog.com/2019/11/06/ford-webasto-lithium- mustang-ev-3-facts-sema/)

</comment><comment><USER6> This Top Gear short-take on the car was interesting for the details it covered: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QA- qgSB076c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QA-qgSB076c) . I watched the livestream - it was no Apple event but had some nice moments. I noticed the resemblance to the Tesla giant screen but I think they got some elements of the Mercedes with the assistant plus the physical dial on the screen seems like a big usability improvement.

<comment><USER11> There were many intentional references to Tesla during the unveiling event: [https://electrek.co/2019/11/17/exclusive-bill-ford-at-the- mu...](https://electrek.co/2019/11/17/exclusive-bill-ford-at-the-mustang-mach- e-scrum-acknowledges-being-on-teslas-turf/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> So the motor controller in an electric vehicle is basically spitting out sine waves at 200+ kW. It'd be cool if they could tune that to 120/240V 60Hz, bypass the motor, and add a connector that powers your house.

<comment><USER13> Nissan Leaf supports that.[0] Not sure if other cars do too.

[0] [https://www.nissan- global.com/EN/TECHNOLOGY/OVERVIEW/vehicle...](https://www.nissan- global.com/EN/TECHNOLOGY/OVERVIEW/vehicle_to_home.html)

<comment><USER12> It looks like Nissan is using the CHAdeMO port's DC pins in reverse, to power an external inverter. That's less fun than generating AC from a motor controller, but I guess it's sensible to keep the car's job as simple as possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's amazing how long it has taken car companies to copy the signature features of the Tesla: styling that doesn't scream "ev vehicle", over the air updates, long range and large touchscreens.

I am happy to see some real Tesla competition.

<comment><USER15> Huge touchscreens are a cheap way to avoid the expense of designing an ergonomic dashboard. Manufacturers don't care that they're a UX nightmare, ruin night vision, or take the driver's attention away from the road. They just care that they're cheap, and give salespeople a "feature" to point out.

<comment><USER16> With all the regulation around cars and driving already, I'd love to see regulation around controls. It makes 0 sense to me to ban cell phones because they are distracting, but then allow giant touch screens in the car with no analog dials/switches for common features.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is great news. If we are going to save the climate, it is absolutely essential that people move to ev's. The problem so far has been that the legacy car companies have not been producing ev's in a big way, much less working hard at selling them. And because of that, the public thinks that ev's are not good enough to buy.

Having one of the main American car companies producing and selling an ev will do a lot to help educate the public and help get the ev revolution off the ground.

</comment><comment><USER18> If you're going to use the Mustang brand, start the lineup with a $100K no holds barred sports roadster. Retro styled, if possible. Sure, you won't sell many, but you will establish yourself as not a joke in this space at least. Then go aggressively after the lower end of the market using the lower end "generic Ford" brand. Tesla did the right thing with their go to market strategy IMO. Ford could play a better version of it, because they have multiple entrenched brands. This is just baffling. 6 second 0-60 EV is like a fucking Soviet Lada when compared to other EVs, numbers like this should not be associated with the Mustang brand, especially at the price point they plan to sell this at.

<comment><USER10> They built this for SEMA. I don't doubt that they could sell a small production run of these for 100-200k range

[https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2019...](https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2019/11/05/webasto- ford-team-up-mustang-lithium-battery-electric-mustang-car-sema.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The interiors resemblance to Tesla is amazing (big layout oriented center screen). I wonder why the exterior has such a long hood when it is not needed to cover up an internal ICE engine.

<comment><USER20> A long hood is arguably one of the marks of a mustang, though I don't know if that played a role in their design process.

It certainly adds more crumple zone and frunk capacity though.

<comment><USER21> Yes, in the presentation they specifically mentioned that the hood was lengthened when the Mustang branding was decided on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It has been a long time since I've had feelings this difficult to sort out.

Can't wait for ATP to cover this in their aftershow.

</comment><comment><USER23> Ford's big chance to 'get it right' and join Tesla at the top of the aspirational ranks.

It better be reliable.

</comment><comment><USER24> Now this looks awesome coming from a stodgy US car maker .. some serious competition for Tesla.

</comment><comment><USER25> That giant screen... I'd love that.

</comment><comment><USER26> Ford has started making Teslas.

</comment><comment><USER27> WTF. Main feature of my mustang is all the analog controls and it not having a media system to hack into.

<comment><USER11> Not in recent years at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Only 9 years after the Model S and not as good.

Still, happy to see big players invest more in electric.

<comment><USER29> How can you possibly know? It's not out yet.</comment></comment>


When you network with people, what information do you exchange? - <AUTHOR>

I have a question, when you are at a networking event and you meet someone who you want to exchange information with, what do you exchange? Phone number, email? Do you add on facebook and linkedin? Follow on twitter? Anything else?<p>Oh and do you use bump? <comment><USER2> When I meet folks I'd like to get in touch with professionally, I generally give them my e-mail address and try to connect on LinkedIn after reminding them who the hell I am. Facebook is right out - to me, it just doesn't send the right message. I haven't got anything incriminating or otherwise inappropriate, but "friend" doesn't seem like the right label to apply to a job recruiter in a city I'm planning on moving to, for example.

I have no intentions of ever using Twitter, and I am actively trying to reach a point where I can function in the modern world without a phone number.

I have never heard of bump.</comment>


Memory Deduplication: The Curse that Keeps on Giving [video] - <AUTHOR> https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8022-memory_deduplication_the_curse_that_keeps_on_giving <comment><USER2> OK, so "containers" were invented so every program could have its own special set of operating system packages. This resulted in hugely bloated memory consumption, of course. Then each package could be run in its own virtual environment for isolation.

But most of the containers held the same operating system packages anyway. So memory de-deduplication was developed to reduce the bloat. Then flaws in memory de-duplication broke the isolation.

There's something very wrong with this attempt to fix the problem by adding more layers.

<comment><USER3> What happened to just using chroot(), namespaces, and copy-on-write?

<comment><USER4> I am watching it now but he's talking about VMs ("KVM") and not "containers".

As to why we're in this mess, this rather amusing talk by B. Cantrill discusses the history: [https://youtu.be/hgN8pCMLI2U](https://youtu.be/hgN8pCMLI2U)

(Linux) Containers are not VMs: [https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Linux_Containers](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Linux_Containers)

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the youtube link! Didn't see that one before.

Regarding the attacks and how they relate to containers. It's true that two of the attacks were targeting KVM/KSM i.e. VMs. But one attack was entirely inside a process and conceptually the problem also applies to containers.

[https://openvz.org/Comparison](https://openvz.org/Comparison)

I haven't yet looked at different container implementations but the row 'Page sharing' suggests that there might be some form of memory deduplication.

You could probably use KSM under Linux across containers by registering all memory to KSM through madvise() and MADV_MERGEABLE ([http://man7.org/linux/man- pages/man2/madvise.2.html](http://man7.org/linux/man- pages/man2/madvise.2.html)).

[https://openvz.org/KSM_(kernel_same- page_merging)](https://openvz.org/KSM_\(kernel_same-page_merging\))

<comment><USER4> > conceptually the problem also applies to containers.

Yep. c.f. BC's talk @ 34:21 "To improve storage efficiency"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The final conclusion the speaker comes to in this talk is that you should disable de-duplication. It doesn't seem like there are any ways of mitigating it suggested.

Essentially, the first method is a timing attack. If can tell if a crafted page is duplicated or not by the time it takes to modify the page.

Modifying a defuplicated page will take longer, because a new copy has to be created. The only way I can see around this is to introduce random delays into all page writes, this might be feasible I guess, if you only needed to delay a small percentage of writes. However it's likely the performance penalty would be unacceptable.

<comment><USER7> I guess something that could help would be for the deduplicator to be slightly more conservative. When doing a deduplication pass, if it finds a duplicate page, rather than merging them straight off, mark one of the pages as "reclaimable", but only _do_ that reclaim once the page is required for recycling. In the intervening time, the different users are still pointing at their private copies and no CoW has to take place if there is a modification (it is simply un-marked as a deduplication candidate). "Lazy" deduplication.

Then the attacker would _also_ have to force the system into enough memory pressure to be requesting to recycle these pages - something it may not be in the position to do if it is a guest with capped resources. The pages would also presumably be recycled in a less predictable order, making it harder to come up with simple a "wait 10 minutes" rule to ensure the recycling has taken place.

Now, I'm sure what I've described would not be particularly simple to implement, but that's another thing.

<comment><USER8> This also has performance implications since now you can't use the "reclaimable" memory for cache, etc.

<comment><USER7> Well, I'd say if the need arises to use it for cache, reclaim it and perform the dedup.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


To do better science, admit that you're not objective - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00669-2 <comment><USER3> Nah. Do your best to be objective. The work you accomplish while attempting objectivity will be better than the work you would have accomplished while attempting to account for your lack of objectivity.

No one is counting on your work being perfect. Science is a communal activity that self-corrects in the long-term.

To put it another way, here's Cormac McCarthy:

> You know, you always have this image of the perfect thing which you can > never achieve, but which you never stop trying to achieve. But I think ... > that's your signpost and your guide. You'll never get there, but without it > you won't get anywhere.

More from the article:

> As I found while writing my 2019 book Superior: The Return of Race Science, > geneticists today rightly treat eugenics as a laughable proposition...

If eugenics doesn't work then how come every single Border Collie is smarter than every single English Bulldog?

> ... and the concept of biological race — the belief that humans can be > subdivided into distinct groups with meaningful differences between them — > as easily debunked nonsense.

You can divide humans into whatever groups you like based on whichever criteria you like. The question is whether those groupings are _useful_ and sometimes...they are. Whether you call those groupings "races" or something else is a semantic argument.

<comment><USER4> "geneticists today rightly treat eugenics as a laughable proposition"? Really? This author is not qualified to speak for geneticists.

Dawkins: It's one thing to deplore eugenics on ideological, political, moral grounds. It's quite another to conclude that it wouldn't work in practice. Of course it would. It works for cows, horses, pigs, dogs & roses. Why on earth wouldn't it work for humans? Facts ignore ideology.

[https://mobile.twitter.com/richarddawkins/status/12289436869...](https://mobile.twitter.com/richarddawkins/status/1228943686953664512)

Crazy woke activitists like this author is not qualified to speak for science. They think if something is politically wrong must also be scientifically wrong. It is not.

<comment><USER5> Dawkins hasn't been relevant in the field of evolutionary biology for 15+ years and I don't know why people pay attention to whatever he says just because he built a brand about being an an edgy atheist.

There are literally dozens of arguments as to why 'eugenics' (beyond very basic hanging fruit like eliminating monogenic diseases etc.) wouldn't work and doesn't make sense to begin with and many of them have been spelled out in the tweet's replies and blog posts, I'll let you do your homework.

<comment><USER4> > beyond very basic hanging fruit like eliminating monogenic diseases etc.

So it does work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "When science is viewed in isolation from the past and politics, it's easier for those with bad intentions to revive dangerous and discredited ideas."

Shouldn't science always, without any exception, be viewed in isolation from the past and politics?

I feel like the only reason this idea that science shouldn't revolve solely around the practice of the scientific method, and the observation and application of the results of experimentation, is being entertained is because people are posting these viewpoints in high-profile places like Nature.

<comment><USER7> >Shouldn't science always, without any exception, be viewed in isolation from the past and politics?

Try telling that to Galileo.

<comment><USER5> FYI, Galileo was called out because his science was considered shoddy at the time, notably because of the poor quality of instruments that didn't take things like parallax into account. That he turned out to be right afterwards is more of a coincidence. Also, he called the Pope an idiot. The moral of the story isn't that truth prevails despite the evil church, it's that no one likes a contrarian smartass, especially when their arguments are wrong.

<comment><USER7> we've reached peak "well ackshually..."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This reminds me of a first year engineering philosophy course I took where the prof spent a good chunk of it trying to tell us there is no such thing as 100% objective research then proceeding to tell us that our grades were 100% objective after people complained about divergence between course averages according to teaching assistants. :'D

<comment><USER9> You clearly learned nothing in that class.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What does "better" mean? Is it science that produces results that you like? It is science that produces that produces useful technologies. Or is it science that produces models that reflect reality.

If you go by the first two definitions then brining politics is helpful. If you go by the third, then politics is decidedly unhelpful.

<comment><USER11> We talk a lot about bad science, so I would guess that the opposite of that is what the author may be talking about. Which is probably a good idea, since bad science sucks and it's getting more air time than it used to.

"Better" could probably even be quantified in a helpful way if desired.

Politics are just another human factor. Stimulus and response. Can also be quantified if addressed situationally. As a catch-all it's a low-leverage descriptor though.

I like that the author is at least talking about this. It could lead to a system-level improvement.

> models that reflect reality

Or models that elegantly allow for multiple perspectives while contributing to a desired outcome. Reality when held up as an accountability target opens up a bit of a can of worms, starting with the subjectivity question: Whose reality? Or which reality? Humans are remarkable in their ability to create, entertain, use, and appreciate even conflicting models of reality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Start with yourself perhaps. The pigeonholing of heritability studies with eugenicist policy is something laughable to everyone who isn't utterly beclouded by FUD. And great job avoiding to refer to Noah Carl by name, because just imagine someone googling for it and actually checking up on the description ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_Carl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_Carl) ).

<comment><USER13> > The pigeonholing of heritability studies with eugenicist policy

Where does the author do this?

<comment><USER14> "As I found while writing my 2019 book Superior: The Return of Race Science, geneticists today rightly treat eugenics as a laughable proposition, and the concept of biological race — the belief that humans can be subdivided into distinct groups with meaningful differences between them — as easily debunked nonsens"

Many studies cluster people with different genetic histories into groups with meaningful differences. This is important (for example) when treating people with different genetic histories for disease. AFAICT the article's author gets genetic history and social race mixed up, which does nothing to help their article's point.

<comment><USER5> Race isn't well-defined. You can't just wave it away with "uhh some PCA/STRUCTURE plot yields clusters so race is real", that's not how popgen or phylogeny works. Nor can you get away with "butbut muh genetic diseases!" when these involve only a few genes that make up a tiny fraction of one's genome. Of course modern scientists in relevant fields know this, that's why race has been discontinued as a concept even though some people (old school doctors or taxonomists or pioneer fund recipients) haven't gotten, or perhaps don't want to get the memo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> While I think of article as basic common sense I can see how people generally fail at this. I used to be the A/B test engineer for Travelocity. Here are some of the motivations I have observed that introduce bias generally (not just in science):

Passive

* communication style

* a lack of self-reflection

* inadequate tests

* dishonesty (cognitive complexity)

Active

* prejudice

* dominance

* dishonesty (lying)

I often found that people are rarely introducing bias intentionally, though that does happen. The reasons people attempted to intentionally introduce bias was generally a way to improperly persuade people for a variety of unrelated motivations.

Bias can be as simple as confusion as to a goal, such as when a person states one thing but is actually hoping for something different. This is a disconnection between a person's goal and the terms with which they are willing or capable to express that goal. Reasons for that disconnect could be offense or cultural conventions. This is more easily observable in children who haven't yet mastered the communication skills to mask this confusion.

Sometimes bias creeps in because a person has a strong opinion of a subject and instead of attempting a proof to qualify or disqualify their position on the subject they will shift the evidence as necessary to manipulate an audience. This is common in politics, particularly when the audience themselves are preferentially biased to the emotionally loaded language they are hearing over any complete or partial evidence supporting that language. To some degree this sort of political manipulation is also most commonly unintentional, though it appears exceedingly intention coming from many career politicians.

Most frequently people introduce bias casually to achieve a form of social agreement, because facts and evidence are less important, to many people, than kindness and conformance. There is a sort security provided from achieving stronger social bonds even if that means shifting ground to conform to a different set of norms and values preferred by a group.

You wouldn't think any of this line of thinking would enter science or experimentation, especially when those conducting the experiments are experienced professionals, but it does. I have learned through other professional experiences that objectivity is a personality trait that can be tested for and measured. Objective personality types are rare. Everybody else needs defined boundaries and everybody needs some manner of peer review.

<comment><USER16> there.is.nothing.wrong.with.a.passive.communication.style

change my view

<comment><USER15> People are always communicating passively. A communications expert, which I am not, will tell you that less than 20% of communication is the words from the mouth even in a face to face oral conversation. Think of communication in 3 layers:

* the words

* the voice

* body language

Truth only occurs when those three layers are in agreement. This means people are frequently untruthful and generally unaware of just how obvious their lack of candor is to somebody who listens well. Since you are usually not in full cognitive control over your voice and body language, and sometimes even over your words, most of your communication will be passive regardless of your intentions and level of control. It takes a higher state of awareness to be a good liar and that can really age a person.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Subjectivity is not the core of the problem but the disregard of the importance of reason. It is the idea that a philosophical conclusion is the same as a political position and that any political thought itself is inherently justified which is false.

</comment><comment><USER18> I don't disagree with the article. But I have a long-standing problem with this post-modern representation of 'objectivity' as binary.

Yes, the tiniest bit of subjectivity makes something nonobjective. Okay, there is absolutely nothing objective. But things can be more objectively true than others. Science is more objective than theology. A spherical Earth more than a flat one.

Treating objectivity as binary, to constantly make the point that nothing is objective, invites the conclusion that everything is equally subjective. Which is nonsense. I'd like to see us move beyond this black and white model. Post- modernism made some good points (e.g. that those who claimed we could get to 100% objectivity were wrong). But being post-post-modern isn't the same as rejecting them all.

<comment><USER14> I think it's easier to just sort of think of this like probability and statistics.

I start with an assumption: the universe does exist, it's real, and humans can perceive the real universe, although likely with a bunch of filters and biases. Then I also assume that through careful work (identifying filters and biases, setting up good processes to avoid them) we can see the real universe in a truthful way (Plato's cave allegory, and Descartes' Great Deceiver are both interesting explorations into the limits of this idea).

I figure if either of those assumptions is violated (for example if there is some sort of Great Deceiver) we can't really supercede them.

Then, based on those assumptions, I mainly focus on empiricism combined with high quality experimental technique, and a relentless drive to reduce variables which don't contribute directly to the system under study. Think of Galileo's experiment dropping two balls of different mass. When he conducted it in air, if he had used a feather, many people would conclude that heavier objects fall faster. But if air effects are excluded (in vacuum), we can see that feathers fall at the same velocity as heavy balls. This requires some leaps of intuition and also some very careful experimental setup.

Once you've got to that point, you're well set up to start using the great tools of science: microscope, telescope, spectroscope, precision clock. Those immediately give you access to a whole collection of additional high quality data that is not directly available to our senses and intuition. They allow you to collect additional data, and help make confusing things like diseases and stars make a lot more sense (germ theory of disease, our sun is a star that is just very close, and our sun is composed of elements that exist on earth).

Much of what science then studies is as close to objective as we can realistically get- I don't worry too much that gravity, space, time, etc are significantly different from how we perceive them in 4d (it would be interesting if our mental filters really do warp the real universe in a way that we see a very false representation of it).

Once you've reached that point you can build satellites and reduce the likelihood a flat earth compared to a oblate spheroid model. But then it starts to get hard: you will discover relativity and quantum mechanics, both of which are _not_ intuitive and in fact completely counter all our normal expectations. yet they are key theories that help us make and improve technologies like GPS and transistors!

Right now some of the most interesting questions in science are about things we don't have any good experimental apparatus to probe. QM is a great example- we can do all sorts of amazing things with QM in the lab, but our brains can't wrap around the underlying physics at all. Is QM the theory wrong? Is there a better theory, one that's more intuitive and consistent with our daily lives? Probably not; as much as I like the idea of a deterministic universe, it's just an unlikely hypothesis to test.

I don't think post-modernism really was the origin of the idea that objectivity was an ideal, not a real. I think most empiricists have implicitly assumed that we have to work really hard to not fool ourselves.

I once saw an interesting talk, where the presenter didn't understand the difference between relativism and relativity. So they argued that their cosmology (native american) was just as valid as Einstein's theories. I can't really see that as true. I think under _any_ reasonable subjective determination, empirically determined theories of cosmology will do a better job of explaining the observed universe than a spiritually derived one.

I recently learned of a term, "scientism" (after being accused of it while arguing with a religion and philosophy professor who likes to mix buddhism and christianity).

<comment><USER19> Why do we give Descartes credit with his skepticism when he couldn't even be skeptical of his own conclusion, Cogito Ergo Sum. How do I know that I am thinking? I need something better for an ontological proof than "just assume it bro cus it appears to you"

I think that people assuming that the appearance of their thinking = thinking is one of the worst philosophical mistakes that one can make.

You quote Plato with the allegory of the cave. That allegory is him patting himself (and all other "Philosophers") on the back being like "well, if you use dialectics which involves a back and forth between smart people for the purpose of finding truth, than those who have been more rational and dialectical are objectively more fit to rule because the see reality for what it is". This is notably the first written, non-religious justification of authority and hierarchy on the grounds that "the stupid farmers should not rule because they are stupid and don't see reality for what it is"

Why should I assume that the appearance of rationality describes reality? Why should I assume that the laws of thought correspond to the material world? I'm tired of listening to folks tell me that we can metaphysical prove Aristotle's the physical existence of the laws of logic (law of identity, law of excluded middle, law of double negation elimination) when it's so bloody easy to find counterexamples. Here's an easy one: "This sentence is false"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Isn't this called second-order cybernetics ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second- order_cybernetics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-order_cybernetics))?

</comment><comment><USER21> [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1540-5](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1540-5)

</comment><comment><USER22> How can I trust such an admission of non-objectivity if the admission itself isn't scientifically verified or objective?

</comment><comment><USER23> Wokeness has basically become a religion.

Wokeness begins, just like many religions, with an original, unforgivable sin. That ultimate trespass becomes the lens through which all of modern life is viewed, no matter how remote it sits in the past. Like a religion, wokeness can't help but try to insert its core values of humility and service of the Higher Purpose into everything, no matter how inappropriate. Its adherents are pushy about how they want you to think, and what they want you to value, because they believe there is a higher truth that pervades any worldly endeavor. It has certain non-negotiable tenets, which it refuses to compromise on despite the massive cognitive dissonance required to achieve such a stance amidst the avalanche of evidence against them. If scientific or practical empiricism seems to conflict with these pre-commitments, they will muddy the water and move the goalposts. And of course, woke disciples reserve the right to be massively offended if you blaspheme against one of these core principles. Wokeness is perfectly eager to put its hand out to the state to get a leg up on its authoritarian, missionary purpose. But they do this because, like any other religion, they know that this will be best for all of us in the end. And just like other religions, I imagine it finds comparisons of this sort to be absurd; of course all of _those_ religions are evil, they're the wrong ones!

Wokeness, just like a religion, gathered a following based on some fundamentally decent ideas that lie near its center. But they come packaged with a one-size-fits-all worldview that tries to bite off far, far more than it can chew. Just like a religion, it doesn't necessarily reflect overmuch about its practitioners that they have converted. That fact indicates at most a slight inclination towards credulity and collectivism, as opposed to individualism and free thinking. But just like religion, it could just as easily represent the bad luck of growing up in the wrong area, or with the wrong parents, or perhaps just bad enough circumstances to need that kind of structure and externally-sourced meaning.

It seems that the agenda to put the whole world off of religion has not been as successful as the average coastal intellectual might have thought. I can't help but wonder whether we will be subject to the same ebb and flow of authoritarianism that generations of Judeo-Christian and Islamic constituencies exercised in the past. The church bumping against truth is a story as old as time, but it seems like it's harder than we thought to really learn that lesson.

Here we have a classic piece of Woken apologia trying to square classic Woken ideals with the reality that there are groupings of genes amongst people. It wants to smuggle faulty, incomplete understanding of genetics to avoid the evidence written on the wall. It's not doing this for a nefarious purpose - the Woken believe that all men and women should be treated equally, which is a noble ideal. But the reason they think this is derived from a deeper truth, which is that all men and women are fundamentally born as the same creature, and then shaped purely by experience. They believe that because It Is Written. Because that is True, things get tricky when they try to square the Truth with the reality that there are non-trivial separations of historical development in the human genome, and those genetic lines end up looking different because of the forces that shaped them along their unique genetic history. Of course this is common sense - anybody can tell that there are distinct groupings of slightly-phenotypically-different people in the world, and the science confirms this intuitive fact. So the Woken need to muddy the water by reminding us the limits of our knowledge. What really counts as a race - <USER2> you count me all the races? What are the motivations of these so-called scientists trying to prop up the "theory" of race, a theory that need I remind you became intimately linked to the Nazis?

When you read something like this, try to picture a Creationist with the same general motives. The Creationist's letter wants to smuggle a faulty, incomplete understanding of biology to avoid the evidence written on the wall that evolution is real. It's not doing this for a nefarious purpose - Creationists believe that we should all love and respect our fellow man. But the reason they think this is derived from a deeper truth, which is that men and women are God's people, made in God's image, as documented in the Bible. They believe that because It Is Written. Because that is True, things get tricky when they try to square the Truth with the reality that the evidence for the nature of evolutionary history is written everywhere, and the fossil record plainly confirms this. Of course, this is common sense - anybody can see the inevitability of evolution once it's explained to them. So the Creationists need to muddy the water by reminding us of the limits of our knowledge. How many of these connecting fossils have we really found? What are the motivations of these so-called scientists trying to prop up the "theory" of evolution, a theory that need I remind you, was intimately linked with Social Darwinism?

</comment><comment><USER24> Well, we really have to scuttle the English language and Roman alphabet, for reasons that should require no explanation among the truly woke.

</comment><comment><USER14> This article contains an almost certainly incorrect assertion: "As I found while writing my 2019 book Superior: The Return of Race Science, geneticists today rightly treat eugenics as a laughable proposition, and the concept of biological race — the belief that humans can be subdivided into distinct groups with meaningful differences between them — as easily debunked nonsens"

Race (the social construct) is a proxy which only loosely correlates with genetic history. But, generally scientists believe that genetic history does allow for distinct groupings with meaningful differences. A simple example would be northern europeans with genetic differences that allow adults to drink lactose from animal milk without getting sick (an example of mutation natural selection).

It's not even controversial that higher skin melanin (associated with "black" or "dark" skin) is protective against higher solar radiation, again this is somethign that is part of genetic history, and also gets convolved with "race" frequently.

Nothing I said above is eugenics as practiced by Galton (whom we also have to thank for many important scientific contributions which last to today), or the scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Lab. They are cold, hard facts supported by immense data and are generally accepted within the field.

<comment><USER25> Yup. It's also pretty obvious that eugenics would work since it works just fine across plenty of other species (see dogs, cows, chickens, pigs, etc.).

This article is the identity politics monstrosity coming to take more control.

<comment><USER14> I wouldn't use the term "eugenics" for that; I'd use the term "breeding". Part of the problem is that the eugenicists got their scientific breeding ideas mixed up with their nonscientific racism ideas.

And I think suggesting that people do human breeding for desired traits would probably still be fairly unpopular.

<comment><USER26> > And I think suggesting that people do human breeding for desired traits > would probably still be fairly unpopular.

Not necessarily; Yao Ming seemed to be pretty popular.

<comment><USER14> That's... not really breeding in the scientific sense. Yes, having two tall parents means you're likely to be tall (height is highly heritable), but actual breeding would involve statistical populations, because nearly all traits of interest are non-mendelian, and come from effects from a wide range of genes. And also, it seems probably that you would also have to select against negative traits (for example, breeding very tall people -> all sorts of disorders).

<comment><USER26> > That's... not really breeding in the scientific sense.

...because? He comes from an intentional breeding program on the part of the Chinese government. What more do you want? There's a big difference between "what are we doing?" and "how much are we doing it?".</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Digitization Effort Is the Latest Plot Twist for Cuban Radio Soap Operas - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2019/05/18/719276682/massive-digitization-effort-is-the-latest-plot-twist-for-cuban-radio-soap-operas <comment><USER2> In Spain _radionovelas_ were wildly popular time ago. My grandma religiously listening to the daily chapter mixes with memories of The Beatles, _Build Me Up Buttercap_ or Sandy Shaw. There was a guy, Guillermo Sautier Casaseca, a difficult name to forget, that wrote tons of them.

I didn't think they were still a thing. In the eighties TV soap operas from Venezuela and Mexico were very popular. At college we got hooked to the Columbian _Caballo viejo_ that was absolutely hillarious, not sure if intentionally.

Now they come from Turkey.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been learning Spanish for a year now. Seems that audiobooks aren't that popular in Spanish. Apparently radionovelas were. Seems like a great way to keep learning.</comment>


Turkish police fire tear gas in worst protests in years - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/31/us-turkey-protests-idUSBRE94U0J920130531 <comment><USER2> <https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BLYSVLsCEAAn8-T.jpg:large>

<comment><USER3> Where have I seen that before... Oh yeah, [http://blogs.plos.org/speakeasyscience/files/2011/11/article...](http://blogs.plos.org/speakeasyscience/files/2011/11/article-2063706-0EDE282A00000578-562_634x4121.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> A couple more links for context: <http://occupygezipics.tumblr.com/>

[http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1ffo2c/the_islami...](http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1ffo2c/the_islamist_government_of_turkey_is_about_to/)

</comment><comment><USER4> <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5802761>

</comment><comment><USER5> Political outrage of the day that has no business being on Hacker News.

Flagged.

<comment><AUTHOR> An unstable Turkey won't help the stability of the region any. IMO, it's news. (and no, I didn't downvote you :). )

<comment><USER6> "It's news" isn't the criteria for posting things here. Read the guidelines: <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html></comment></comment></comment>