In Syria, militias armed by the Pentagon fight those armed by the CIA - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-cia-pentagon-isis-20160327-story.html <comment><USER3> I wonder how much of the mess in the middle east is cause by the erratic western diplomacy and how much would have happened anyway.

Clearly the US invasion of Iraq, and the chaos that followed has been a catalyst for islamism in the region. The US+European backed revolution in Libya, Syria and Egypt only added to the chaos. It is tempting to think that had we just stayed away from all that, the region would be under the control of ruthless dictators but at least would be in peace, and islamists would be in jail. When we think that half of the population of Syria are now refugees, of which half had to emigrate, is overthrowing Al Assad really worth that, and is overthrowing Al Assad worth creating ISIS? I must say that for how much I dislike Putin, he has a point when he tells Western diplomacy: look at the mess in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and now you are telling me you want to invade another country in the middle east?

On the other side when we look at most of these conflicts, they are really ethnic conflicts. Sunnis vs Shia vs Kurds vs Alawites vs etc... Both Saddam Hussein and Qaddafi were old and were bound to die in the next 10-20 years (as of 2002). And the rise of Islamism is a global phenomenon that spans from Indonesia to Morocco, through Turkey or Pakistan, from the muslim suburbs of Paris and Brussels to the desert in Mali. Perhaps all of this would have happened anyway. Like it is foreseeable that when Saudi Arabia will run out of oil money, it will descent in a state of complete chaos.

I think of Islamism as a kind of a repeat of communism, it's an ideology which time has come, which will find a broad adhesion in the muslim world, and will likely disappear the same way communism did, through its own disastrous results when in power and inability to compete with the West, both economically and in term of values. The most anti-communist populations are the populations that have been ruled by communism (Eastern Europe).

As for ethnic conflicts, there are no good solutions. If two populations hate each others, grand speeches at the UN headquarters in NYC will not change anything. I'd be incline to think we should stay away from ethnic conflicts. We should keep in mind that whoever we decide to back in Syria, once that side wins, they will start a terrible ethnic cleansing. Do we really want to sponsor that?

<comment><USER4> I used to work in Middle East affairs.

There is a tendency for Westerners to overstate their own importance in the Middle East, which are also informed by inter-state, intra-state and extra- regional groups and actors that are neither European nor American.

The real regional meta-story that is playing out right now, in my opinion, is the inevitable collapse of the post-imperial order. It was caused not by any grand state actors (or by Twitter) but by a single Tunisian street vendor. He upended the unsustainable patterns of rule that have characterized the region since the withdrawal of the European powers after World War II. Nobody knows what comes next, and there is no good model, yet, of American statecraft to inform a regional posture.

The story made me shake my head, but not because of anything to do with of any sinister implications that it raised about the military-industrial complex, but because it looks like Keystone Kops. The Syrian civil war is a proxy conflict between the (Sunni) Gulf States and (Shia) Iranians with the Russians alongside the latter. It takes the form of members of ISIS killing Quds Force commanders, and it ignited without much help from the West. Which side would you pick?

<comment><USER5> All good points. 'The West' didn't instigate the uprisings in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Syria. They were started by local people for local reasons, often with westerners cheering on from the side lines or occasionally providing a bit of air support as in Libya, but mainly keeping out of it.

For goodness sake, we'd been trying to topple Gaddafi and the Syrian regime for half a century and getting exactly nowhere, then as you say one Tunisian street vendor makes a desperate gesture and in the chain reaction from that the whole region falls into chaos. That's history for you.

As for IS, the reason they're such a nuisance isn't so much due to the invasion of Iraq, it's due to the power vacuum in north western Iraq caused by the withdrawal of US forces in 2011. The fact is the surge worked, but all of that was willingly thrown away.

<comment><USER6> >They were started by local people for local reasons, often with westerners cheering on from the side lines or occasionally providing a bit of air support as in Libya, but mainly keeping out of it.

"A bit of air support" is a strange characterization for destroying the Libyan government's entire tank fleet in the middle of an Islamist uprising. "Mainly keeping out of it" is a strange characterization for supporting a coup in Egypt that toppled a democratically elected government. Also, we never, ever, ever, ever talk about Bahrain, where the US supplied arms through Saudi Arabia against the uprisings and: >By 2014, 5,000 Saudi and Emirati forces and almost 7000 American forces were positioned "less than 10 miles from the Pearl Roundabout, the center of the country's protest movement."

We have surrounded the middle east with armies for more than a generation and armed the worst governments in the area. "Mainly keeping out of it" is a gross mischaracterization of what we do there.

<comment><USER7> Only occasionally carpet bombing capitals in the area?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This war is a tragedy and an outrage, and its devastation of our World Heritage should make us all ashamed.

While politics is often seen as off-topic, this has applicable lessons to those of us building distributed systems.

1\. Any large enough system will eventually generate exceedingly surprising side-effects.

2\. Hot-patching routing of resources in response to run-time surprises (backpressure, etc) is essential for correction of error.

3\. Monitoring of resource allocation can help raise awareness and prevent problems before they get big enough to be a national newspaper headline.

Very few of us will work on systems that impact human life (manned space travel, driverless cars, etc) and it is a privilege to not have a day job building systems that have lethal failure modes.

<comment><USER9> > politics is often seen as off-topic

That attitude is a huge problem. _Everything_ is political, because politics is simply the way we solve problems, negotiate details, and make decisions in a society.

> lethal failure modes

Non-lethal failure modes can still be just as much of a problem, and small problems are _still problems_.

> Very few of us will work on systems that impact human life

 _Everybody_ that makes a product is impacting human life. You may not be making something with _immediately obvious_ lethal failure modes, but it still has an impact. At ever step in the building process decisions are made that affect people. Many of these are _probably_ small and inconsequential, but prediction is hard and sometimes supposedly-trivial things have large, widespread effects.

Hiding from politics and claiming that something is "apolitical" cedes the decisions to others, and technology is rapidly magnifying the impact even trivial things can have. So please, consider the surrounding politics before working on something, and at least try to consider the greater context of how people will be affected - both good and bad ways - by the work you do.

Why? Because there is "no neutral ground, in a burning world"[1].

\--

[1] Which is the title of Eleanor Saitta and Quinn Norton's 30C3 talk[2], which explains these ideas better than I can.

[2] [https://media.ccc.de/v/30C3_-_5491_-_en_- _saal_1_-_201312272...](https://media.ccc.de/v/30C3_-_5491_-_en_- _saal_1_-_201312272300_-_no_neutral_ground_in_a_burning_world_-_quinn_norton_- _eleanor_saitta) [http://opentranscripts.org/transcript/no-neutral-ground- burn...](http://opentranscripts.org/transcript/no-neutral-ground-burning- world/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This isn't quite true. The Pentagon's only supporting SDF fighters from the cantons of Jazera and Kobane. These guys were from Afrin, which is separated from the other two cantons by a pretty big strip of IS-controlled territory.

[http://warontherocks.com/2016/03/are-cia-backed-syrian- rebel...](http://warontherocks.com/2016/03/are-cia-backed-syrian-rebels- really-fighting-pentagon-backed-syrian-rebels/)

</comment><comment><USER11> This makes some amount of sense under a model of the US government as a collection of usually-feuding groups that have different constituencies and control different levers of power, often exporting their internal conflicts overseas.

[http://unqualified- reservations.blogspot.com/2007/08/secret-...](http://unqualified- reservations.blogspot.com/2007/08/secret-of-anti-americanism.html)

(The phrases to look at are "red empire" and "blue empire").

<comment><USER12> if you think that predisposed ideologies are conflicting cia and state department sponsorships categories, i have a militia in syria to sell you

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am from middle east and I am atheist (because so many people will accuse me of being Muslim).I want to touch on topic which is a little bit off topic. But for people who wants to see big picture it is essential.

I can only say one thing to your politician's : Get the fuck out of middle East.

There is one way to change middle East and it is to change culture by improving your own society.

When I read news about USA domestic issuse my mind blows up, how these fuckers (politicians) can bring us democracy?when they don't even care about their own people. Looks what's going on in Flint Michigan.

At the otherhand when people go and see what is going on in countries like Norway/Finland(which didn't invade any country in middle East in recent years.didn't intervene and overthrow government in middle East) then they really start to think there is something wrong about us culturally (middle East) and we should start to change , and bring to ourselves what these country's have already, like democracy, freedom of speech.(this is when real change start to happen, not when some moron like bush spend billions and billions without achieving single goal and for just making enemy's)

At the other hand by USA presense in middle East they (usa)are basically undermine our (liberal people in middle East) argument for common people in middle East.Believe it or not hardliners will say we are traitor and West's puppets, and believe me people believe it when West's does actually occupy or intervene in their country politics.

I can't understand, what is hard to get? Get the fuck out of middle East.

Overthrowing Mossadegh(democratically elected).

Backing Saudi Arabia (one of the worst human rights record, maybe a little bit better than ISIS itself) for many years.

Backing Egyptian dictator (mobarak) for many years.

Backing Saddam against Iran , while Saddam did use chemical weapon.

Backing mujahedeen (basically Tliban) against Soviet Union.

And list goes on.

You cannot keep snake in your backyard and expect them to only bite your neighbor.

honestly asking ? What the fuck do you want from us?

<comment><USER14> I can follow lots of your arguments. And I do believe that a lot of interventions does in the end lead to disaster.

That one point of view. What would have happened on the other hand, if some countries did not intervene in Bosnia? Could we have watched one ethnic group genociding another? Should we have stood by the sidelines doing nothing?

I have no final opinion on my last point, as I as pacifist do not believe in military interventions at all. On the other hand I am a realist and have to calculate the possible costs for every alternative. And in some cases the costs of inaction might outweigh the cost intervention.

As said not really sure myself, still evaluating this thought.

And I also try to look at the reasons behind these actions. Why did some countries (US and others) do what they did, what was to gain, what to loose. What are the economic implications - and so on.

<comment><USER15> >What would have happened on the other hand, if some countries did not intervene in Bosnia?

Bosnian Serbs having their own country? Unfortunately for them Bosnia is ally with Turkey, a NATO member. So the intervention was on behalf of Bosnia. Nobody cares though when it is allies who commit the same atrocities - <USER2> Turkey does to Kurds and what Saudi Arabia does today in Yemen (for fun consider a story - "rebels oust government, and a neighbor supporting the ousted government intervenes military" \- in the last 2 years that happened in Ukraine/Russia and Yemen/Saudi Arabia - and compare which side Western countries have supported :).

<comment><USER13> Exactly.

Side note, [https://theintercept.com/](https://theintercept.com/)

One of the best sources for news.I have such respect for Greenwald, I would work for the guy for free. I think in this climate ,Greenwald and people like him are true hero's.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Syria really examplifies the terrible incoherent state of Western (American, secondly EU) foreign policy.

There is really a need for change; unfortunately it is a bit hard to see where that will be coming from at the moment.

<comment><USER17> For better or worse a Trump presidency would almost certainly be a fundamental rewrite of the way the U.S. government functions in the world.

<comment><USER18> The truth is no one knows what Trump will actually do. Trump can say whatever he wants during its campaign it doesn't matter. No one knows what he will do if he ever gets elected. All people know is that he is a business man with a big ego, he isn't even a conservative at all, he is the pure product of the New York upper class culture.

Hillary on the other is as hawkish as they come, this was demonstrated through her emails. She is a neo-con.

<comment><USER19> Isn't "when it comes to foreign policy" about the only way to be a neocon as opposed to just conservative? That was my impression at least.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's a very old strategy.

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

</comment><comment><USER21> When you trust George Friedman, and he should know better, then funding of both sides actually is a strategy not a mistake. People often think that there is moral involved in those decisions, but there isn't, not at all.

<comment><USER22> I assume, you are reffering to this:

[https://youtu.be/QeLu_yyz3tc](https://youtu.be/QeLu_yyz3tc)

Chilling insight into foreign policy of a superpower (an euphemism for "empire"). Not that he says something new (if you've read Carroll Quigley), but still... it's a fresh proof from the founder of the "Shadow CIA".

<comment><USER23> Friedman is a tool, and the email dumps exposed that. Better to read Kennan if you want insight into American imperialism.

<comment><USER21> Would you recommend a specific book?

<comment><USER23> His letters and telegrams on Korea from the 1950s as well as his late in life writings. I'm not sure if there's a book.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> They just want perpetual conflict. Because perpetual conflict means perpetual war, and perpetual war means cash supply for the military industrial complex.

<comment><USER25> I have problems believing that narrative. I think that it's too simplistic to forget strategic goals.

For instance, perpetual conflict also means that no strong power can appear in the area.

<comment><USER24> Before WW1, that was the Ottoman empire. The arab provinces of the empire were unhappy, and contacted the entente. The agreed to revolt against the turks in exchange for control over all that area. The arabs fought against the turks, with the help of the entente, however as soon as the war ended, the entente revealed their actual plan: the sykes-picot agreement. Basically they got backstabbed.

In this agreement they would divide the area, give it new names, put it under foreign control. Since then the area is a constant mess. By design.

Then every other year they finance some rebel group or army here and there so there's never peace.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Can't help but be reminded of this scene in Woody Allen's _Bananas_ : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2q-NL3R8wm0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2q-NL3R8wm0)

</comment><comment><USER27> This reads like out of one of Hideo Kojima's computer games, war as a "business model"?

"War has changed. It's no longer about nations, ideologies, or ethnicity.

It's an endless series of proxy battles fought by mercenaries and machines. War - and its consumption of life - has become a well-oiled machine. War has changed. ID-tagged soldiers carry ID-tagged weapons, use ID-tagged gear. Nanomachines inside their bodies enhance and regulate their abilities. Genetic control. Information control. Emotion control. Battlefiled control. Everything is monitored and kept under control.

War has changed. The age of deterrence has become the age of control, all in the name of averting catastrophe from weapons of mass destruction. And he who controls the battlefield, controls history. War has changed. When the battlefield is under total control, war becomes routine."

– Solid Snake, Metal Gear Solid 4

</comment><comment><USER28> Haven't the CIA (and DEA to some extent) always been operating in J. Edgar Hoover style crooked, hypocritical, mobster mode, under the belief that laws are for everyone else but them? They seem to follow long-term agendas with zero consideration for material, human, and societal losses.

</comment><comment><USER29> Destabilize another area, and you have a constant source of "world-news" to fearmonger with in order to take away the rights and enslave the population of your own country under the guise of democratic security.

</comment><comment><USER30> "We like war because we are good at it" \- Carlin

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9MnJqhcZvw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9MnJqhcZvw)

</comment><comment><USER30> Not something new. US backed Iraq in past, supplied emos, later fought against it.

US aided Mujahideen of Afghanistan in past later become Talibans. US aided Pakistan Army and Afghan government to fight against them.

Since it's Hackernews, the best analogy would be funding by VCs to different startups to compete with each other. Here CIA and Pentagon are VCs providing Emos to "Startups" to test their weapons for other wars.

</comment><comment><USER31> Why do the EU and US dislike Assad? He has been saying for years that the Free Syrian Army are a bunch of crazies who Barbecue heads etc. There could well be IS-ers among them. Why are we (EU/US) not working with the Russians and Assad? Remember that those chemical weapons, after a lot of accusations were fired by the rebels, not by Assad.

<comment><USER32> > Why do the EU and US dislike Assad?

It's a long and old (decades!) story, per US embassy cables published by WikiLeaks. The news story:

[http://www.activistpost.com/2015/09/julian-assange- reveals-a...](http://www.activistpost.com/2015/09/julian-assange-reveals- another-2006-western-plan-to-destroy-syria.html)

The US ambassador 2006 leaked cable itself:

[https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/06DAMASCUS5399_a.html](https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/06DAMASCUS5399_a.html)

So it's not by accident that Chelsea Manning was treated as he was for leaking these cables. And that Assange still can't leave the embassy in London.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> This article sure expects much from the intelligence community. I don't think anyone can claim to have "control" over groups so diverse and distanced from themselves.

</comment><comment><USER34> The only way to always win at war is to fight on both sides.

<comment><USER35> ... or not to play.

By contrast, Sun Zi's _The Art of War_ , being more a manual of practical statesmanship and less an ethical or philosophical sounding board, states that one should only go to war when in a position of strength and certain victory. Further, actual warfare is a last option: "the skillful leader subdues the enemy's troops without any fighting; he captures their cities without laying siege to them; he overthrows their kingdom without lengthy operations in the field."

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Divide and conquer.

</comment><comment><USER36> > "It is an enormous challenge," said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank), the top > Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, who described the clashes > between U.S.-supported groups as "a fairly new phenomenon."

> "It is part of the three-dimensional chess that is the Syrian battlefield," > he said.

Corrupt congressmen explaining the supreme unaccountability associated with this type of unofficial warfare as something too complex and mysterious for the average observer to comprehend should be classified as a radicalizer by the FBI.

<comment><USER37> Yeah that is a fairly standard PR technique. "We are dealing with something very new and very complex".

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> "If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the USA. They don't care." \--Nelson Mandela [http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/mehdi-hasan/nelson- mandela-i...](http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/mehdi-hasan/nelson-mandela-iraq- israel_b_4396638.html)

<comment><USER39> Thats rich coming from Mandela, a terrorist

<comment><USER38> A terrorist is a freedom fighter who is not on your side;

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Such an open evidence and yet no country accuses the US.

</comment><comment><USER41> Well, you gotta grow the next generation of terrorists, don't you?

</comment><comment><USER42> The word now is you can spend for sponsorship. Both CIA and Pentagon rebels. For $100 you get a shoulder patch, for $25 they'll put a logo on a boot. For $50 you get your internet startup company name on a hat. Heard ad space is going quick.

America, are we the greatest or what. USA rocks. :-)</comment>


Judge: FBI Can Hack Without Warrant Because Computers Get Hacked All the Time - <AUTHOR> https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160624/05351534808/judge-says-fbi-can-hack-computers-without-warrant-because-computer-users-get-hacked-all-time.shtml <comment><USER2> They hacked his computer. Causing modifications to it. How can they prove whatever they found was not planted there?

Usually computer forensics researchers, to have their evidence be admissible, use special devices that block write access to hard drives and such. Else it gets thrown out in court. Why is this different?

<comment><USER3> Because some animals are more equal than others.

<comment><USER4> Indeed. Positively Orwellian.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Okay, so the FBI can do whatever it wants, just like anyone else. When they get caught, they should go to jail, just like anyone else.

<comment><USER6> Separation of powers is starting to lose it's luster. Nothing unites people more than a common enemy, and when "we the people" start to turn against "the government", the body of people that compose the government will tend to stick together tighter and tighter, to defend against the threat. One way this happens is favoritism, to give greater and greater leeway with the law to "us" (and less and less leeway to "them").

The problem with the judicial branch is the complexity of law, which makes it very difficult to second-guess it's outcomes. Our society has seemingly accepted this as inevitable, but a) I don't think it is, and b) if this complexity isn't addressed, then we will continue to suffer systematic abuse that comes from giving bad actors so much surface area to abuse and hide within.

<comment><USER5> Agree completely.

Another related problem is that both parts of the judicial system (the agents looking for crimes, and the courts, and now also the prison/parole system) are all in bed with each other, when they should be balancing each other out.

Coupled with the fact that three letter agencies can get away with illegal activity themselves has really pushed over the boundaries of just government.

<comment><USER6> _> both parts of the judicial system (the agents looking for crimes, and the courts, and now also the prison/parole system) are all in bed with each other, when they should be balancing each other out._

Ha, this actually means that we should have a _self-similar_ separation of powers. I'm not sure that's what the framer's had in mind - I suspect they wanted the top-level powers to act coherently to balance each other out.

Partly, though, I think it's about a misunderstanding about the nature of the "justice system". The police are, essentially, an extension of the Executive. This is true because police are not just "reactive", they execute. In the same way, any part of the government that "does stuff" is part of the executive. The DMV is Executive. Only the court itself, and the judges and support staff in the court, are Judicial. The blurred line is the "district attorney", who is responsible both for prosecuting on behalf of the state, and defending the state from action.

Remarkably, the Executive has acquired a truly _enormous_ amount of special treatment under the law. First, because the law itself exempts Executive workers from a wide variety of the law, and second because of the way the system works, the way Justice moves cases toward conclusion, which is filled with conflicts of interest that erode the separation between Justice and Executive, specifically within local law enforcement.

Frankly, I really love the idea of self-similar separation of powers, even at the local level, where there is an _adversarial_ tone between the Justice, Executive, and Legislative branches! Justice should be incentivised to dig up dirt on the Executive; the Executive should pride itself on knowing (and following) the law exactly (not "getting the bad guys"). The Legislative, in the end, should work to maintain rules that are simple, easy to understand, and which above all, maintain the adversarial relationship between powers at every level, federal, state, and local.

This is also a good, strong foundation to discuss secrecy in government action - which is Executive action. What has happened with the introduction of the secret courts is the spreading of the secrecy between powers. This should be rejected for weakening the separation of powers, but also undermining the root of strength for each branch: validation by the people's opinion. The people cannot have an informed opinion if they do not know what their government is doing. (As a practical matter, this is non-trivial. The "Government's Understanding" of the world drives operations, which are often handed off to a team specializing in "doing stuff". So you have a large sea of (presumably fairly competent) analysts and operations staff working thousands, if not millions, of projects in every field in which the government interacts, which is essentially every field. It helps to start dividing the behavior into categories, which may or may not match up well with the USG org chart.)

Sigh. Maybe complexity itself limits the size of a legitimate democracy, because how can we be good citizens without understanding fully the doings of our government, and how can we know that even without secrecy in place?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If a security researcher finds and reports a flaw in a system, they can get in trouble for unauthorized access. This is dumb, since we _want_ flaws to be disclosed so they can be fixed. In a certain sense, systems that can be accessed, should be accessed.

The real problem isn't unauthorized access; it's what someone does with that access. Someone who gains access to information but does nothing with it hasn't really done anything wrong. The law should apply only when that access is used for harm (vandalism, corporate espionage, fraud, or whatever is relevant). Right now, the law penalizes the access itself, which is backwards.

If we apply this logic to the FBI, then sure, let them hack away. Without the due process of a warrant, however, none of the stolen information should be admissible in court. The problem isn't the hacking; it's making inappropriate use of stolen information.

<comment><USER8> Unfortunately, the inadmissibility of evidence due to being obtained without warrant seems to be eroding: [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/21/us/supreme- court-says-poli...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/21/us/supreme-court-says- police-may-use-evidence-found-after-illegal-stops.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This seems to be a running theme.

"Technically, we are required to get a warrant to peek anywhere you have a reasonable expectation of privacy. But, you should know by now that we are everywhere. Therefore, you should never reasonably expect privacy. Therefore, we don't need a warrant."

</comment><comment><USER10> But the computer hacking is illegal even if it's done all the time. That's like saying that the FBI can pirate any movie it wants because piracy happens all the time.

</comment><comment><USER11> So they can break into your house because it happens all the time.

<comment><USER12> Let's take it further - they can kill you because murder happens all the time.

The fallacy is strong with their reasoning...

<comment><USER13> Prohibitions on murder aren't predicated on an expectation of not being murdered. Entirely different dynamic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Does the FBI have special powers that allow it to violate habeas corpus? No? So this ruling then means to me, "Anyone Can Hack Without Warrant Because Computers Get Hacked All the Time". Let's begin everyone.

nmap fbi.gov

<comment><USER15> More like:

nmap -p 1-65535 -T4 -A -v 126.96.36.199/16

<comment><USER16> I would go even slower. Take your time. You have all night.

<comment><USER14> These are government contractors, you guys are working too hard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Unfortunately this decision is yet another reminder of how horribly our system of laws has broken down. The Constitutional rights of every American are trampled on by the government every day, aided and abetted by the courts, while the rich and powerful routinely ignore the law with impunity. Very apropos that the very embodiment of corruption, Hillary Clinton, is poised to take over leadership of this country.

<comment><USER18> Went through a fun exercise yesterday: walked through all the amendments to the Constitution (especially the Bill of Rights) and discussed how many of them are essentially moot now because of all the exceptions that have already been made over the years. Surprisingly few are still absolute rights.

<comment><USER19> You mean the second amendment? Because that one has been expanded in its interpretation. They skipped the whole part about "well regulated"

<comment><USER18> The well-regulated militia is in a separate clause. I interpret that to being the explanation for the actual statement, "the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Wow, this is the technical equivalent of "The FBI can pick the lock on your door and search your house without a warrant, because houses get broken into all the time"

</comment><comment><USER21> The FBI seems like the least careful of all the agencies penetrating computers. NSA > Secret Service > CIA > FBI

They're either messing up an investigation or destroying their public image.

1) Accidentally resetting the Bernadino terrorist's iCloud password

2) Withdrawing its demands from Apple after significant backlash

3) Asking for the ability to inspect browser history without a warrant

4) Modifying the computers they're "lawfully" allowed to breach - can we trust this evidence in court?

Wouldn't trust them with more authority that's for sure.

<comment><USER22> 0) Carnivore.

I imagine the NSA would have preferred that to have not happened. To anthropomorphize the FBI: it is like an officer of Planned Parenthood who frequently goes off message, talking about head measurements and quoting Margaret Sanger.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnivore_(software)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnivore_\(software\))

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> With this train of thought, then they shouldn't need a warrant to search your house because homes get broken into all the time.

</comment><comment> guard-of-terra One day those people will be old and vulnerable and frankly I don't understand what they're counting on by pissing us like this.

<comment><USER24> Probably because they'll be dead before young people age into a group large enough to do anything about it.

<comment><USER25> Millenials officially became the largest living generation this year, all are over 18

<comment><USER24> Right, but they still need to vote as a somewhat cohesive group.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This like saying law enforcement can break into your home and do whatever they'd like without a warrant, because burglaries happen all the time

</comment><comment><USER26> I am not a lawyer, and my understanding of what I have read is constrained by the relative inexperience I bring to it. However, I would encourage anyone who felt strongly about this matter to read through the reasoning of the actual decision [1], rather than relying upon the characterization presented by the tech dirt article. The techdirt article somehow manages to fail to see an entire forest due to the presence of a singular tree. The judge in this instance presents a laundry list of overlapping of reasons for denying the defendant's motion.

The truth is that the FBI investigators did _not_ "hack without a warrant" in this instance, let alone without probable cause _in the specific case of this defendant_ , and by the presented evidence appears to have given ample diligence to observing that the triggering conditions of the warrant were applicable.

The defence is advancing a theory that has the transmission of the defendant's IP over HTTP rather than HTTPS as a central complaint, plus the possibility that the FBI malware could have been insecure so as allow a malicious third party to falsely implicate to defendant.

It is on this basis that they feel the source code of the malware should be entered into evidence. It is the opinion of the judge that the defence has failed to establish any basis under which he might be convinced that the facts "sufficiently advanced the quantum of evidence" (whatever that is, really) so that a examination of a theory advanced by the defence warrants treatment as a possibility rather than a speculative hypothesis. He reiterates many times that the defence has made no attempt to perform a forensic investigation of the defendant's computer or establish any reason external to speculation that might give credence to their theory. This appears to be a basic standard of admissibility.

This is the context in which the judge brings up the theory that there is not a reasonable expectation to privacy adherent to the use of an IP address, which I find to be completely amazing. I do not understand how he comes by that belief. But to say that the judge has "ruled" this to be the case, as the tech dirt article does, might put you at risk of asserting a fallacious belief that appeared to be factually ignorant.

I do not know if this assertion on the judge's part grants a greater legal factuality to the argument, absent as it may be, were it to be later cited by others. I hope not. However, I can say that the ruling that the judge has made by no means comes anywhere close to relying upon the truth of this in arriving at his decision to reject the motion of the defendant. He is not simply reporting sufficient reason to rule against the defendant's request; instead, it seems he has felt inspired to list every single way in which every aspect of the reasoning they present to justify such a motion is (in his view) thoroughly and utterly without merit.

[1] [https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2897490/Matish- Or...](https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2897490/Matish-Order.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER27> I'll wait until SCOTUS upholds this before I get too worried.

</comment><comment><USER28> FBI can rob you at gunpoint because people get robbed at gunpoint all the time.

<comment><USER29> They aren't robbing you. They are seizing property that they found and which you are making wild claims of ownership based on the idea that it was in a backpack on your back.

<comment><USER30> It's not a criminal matter.. it's "civil" asset forfeiture... although if you resist, it is a criminal matter. :-/</comment></comment></comment>


Oni – Modern Modal Editing - <AUTHOR> https://www.onivim.io/ <comment><USER2> I've been writing code for ten years, I've been fairly comfortable in vim at times, customizing it and navigating with the keyboard full time.

I find myself using the mouse all the time, and I don't understand this obsession with mouse-less text editing. The mouse lets me perform selections, and with some key-combos in sublime text sets me up for multiple cursor editing very nicely, in ways that would be much much more complex if I were trying to do them in vim.

I've always wanted to try out Acme, a mouse-first editor from plan nine, with all of this obsession with cutting the mouse out entirely, it feels like there is space for an editor to really consider what the mouse can be used for.

<comment><USER3> > I don't understand this obsession with mouse-less text editing

For your information: the issue with mouse-laden text editing is that you need two hands on the keyboard to type, so you are repeatedly moving a hand between the keyboard and the mouse. This takes time: in my experience enough time that it's often faster for me to use keyboard navigation _anyways_. Plus the constant wrist motion can be bad for RSI.

That said, if you can edit more efficiently with the mouse, and your wrists don't hurt, then go for it.

<comment><USER4> Mice are moved with the shoulder and elbow, not the wrist.

<comment><USER5> Don't they move the wrist that moves the hand/fingers which then move the mouse?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Well at least for me the best of Vim includes running my editor in a terminal, so I wouldn't quite say that Oni has the best of Vim.

<comment><USER7> You know, I've always been fascinated by this statement. _Why_ is it more comfortable for you to be in a terminal?

(For the record, I currently use Macvim but am deeply interested in Oni and other projects. I've been a vim user for many years now and consider myself reasonably proficient, although, you know, it's vim after all, there's always more to learn).

<comment><USER8> Because I already live in my terminal for everything else, and I'm constantly opening and closing my editor, and that's slower when it spawns a new window.

I recently installed a plugin that lets me open MacVim with a shortcut ([https://github.com/cknadler/vim-anywhere](https://github.com/cknadler/vim- anywhere)). Everytime I use it I remember why I avoid the GUI.

<comment><USER7> I don't really understand the "line in my terminal for everything else" reasoning, as I don't mind alt-tabbing.

But I _really_ don't understand the "constantly opening and closing my editor" thing. I'm usually working on one or two projects at a time at most, and just keep a window open to that project. This is pretty much how most people work. Why doesn't that work well?

I'm genuinely asking btw. I'm not sure _why_ loving vim is so correlated with working with your editor in such an unstandard way. (I mean, I'd guess it's the opposite - people like me come to vim for reasons having nothing to do with that, and try to use it like our old IDEs, whereas people who started off wanting to do everything in the terminal look for a solution and find that vim fits them. But that's just a guess).

<comment><USER8> Treating your shell as the environment and an editor as just one tool among many is a perfectly internally-consistent approach. Standard, even, considering how many of us do it. I don't claim it's the only workable way. Do us the same courtesy.

<comment><USER7> "I don't claim it's the only workable way. Do us the same courtesy."

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend. As I said - I'm genuinely curious as to what you feel makes this method better. I wouldn't be wasting my time asking if I didn't think there was a chance I might learn something that would make me change the way I work - that's how I picked up vim in the first place, not to mention every other improvement I've ever made in my life.

<comment><USER8> It's all good, just be careful with words like "standard" and phrases like "like most people". They can subconsciously hinder learning.

This is a subject that has been hashed to death online, especially in Vim vs Emacs discussions. Emacs behaves more like an IDE, as an environment rather than a tool. Vim is further along the tool side of the spectrum (though I sense Plan 9's Acme is even further along; Vim is actually pretty moderate, believe it or not). Gvim tries to bisect the difference, but I find it to be the worst of both worlds: not as nice an experience as say Idea or PyCharm, but also encouraging "bad habits" from the terminal point of view, such as using the mouse. Or navigating where you are in the system from within the editor rather than the shell.

I actually do use multiple windows and Alt-tab between them. It's just that most of them are terminal/shell/tmux windows. I do use other apps too (like a web browser). But for text processing and navigation the shell is what I like best.

Anecdotally Vim users seem more sensitive to even small latencies, and GUIs invariably seem to introduce lag. Though I'm finding that I'm more tolerant of lag in my non-shell windows. Using VimAnywhere has made that clear because it causes the "universes to collide".

This whole question is actually not that important, in my opinion. You were right above that it's mostly about what way you start out in. If you're reasonably effective with one set of tools, to try to switch is to bait big to catch small. There's far better uses of your time out there. Perhaps the only thing to learn is that there are many ways to skin the cat. There, now move on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Looks cool. They seem to say it's based on neovim, so it's actually an interface to the real thing, then. A shame their website is so cryptic and the link to their source control host is not easy to find.

<comment><USER10> There's a big github icon on the front page up to the right leading directly to their git repo...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Oni is really cool, but still early days. Since it's just a frontend for neovim it actually seems to use less ram than Atom and VSCode. But VSCode has a big head start and a team behind it optimizing stuff the best they can. I'd love to see where Oni find itself in a year or two as I do believe that it could outperform VSCode in the future. Both Oni and NeoVim got a long road ahead of work.

</comment><comment><USER11> I hate these posts, because Hacker News is incapable of talking about an Electron based project productively.

Yeah, it could be done more efficiently without a full blown browser engine, everyone knows that. But honestly, who doesn't already get that? It hasn't stopped me from using VS Code regularly, which is already more performant than IntelliJ imo, an app that doesn't use Electron.

Almost everything that can be said on this front has been said. Does it really need to be the top 3 comments every time?

<comment><USER12> I understand your frustration, but in a world with a dozen different languages to choose from for cross platform native desktop apps, there's very rarely a case to be made for electron even existing.

I'm not trying to prove your point by making the insufferable comment that you hate and already expect, so please understand I am genuinely interested:

Why would, or why should, a person interested in creating a cross platform desktop app, choose electron?

If it's just to use their favorite web components to design with, is that really a good enough reason? When GTK and Qt both provide js api capabilities, what else is there to gain?

Please understand, I'm not a web developer, I'm not familiar with most of it, but just the thought of 100+MB overhead for an app is completely unacceptable to me. But again, the benefit of using web tech is lost on me.

<comment><USER13> Apart from VSCode, I'm also not a fan of Electron - but I do understand why people use it.

> When GTK and Qt both provide js api capabilities, what else is there to > gain?

It's the HTML5. How would you write an xplat editor with GTK or QT? The obvious answer is to use Scintilla and after some Googling surrounding getting that right, you're successful! Now you want to start innovating the editor, with both the speed and bravery that the VSCode team do. Now you have problems.

As much as I despise HTML5, it does provide a canvas that behaves consistently across platforms (so long as your browser is consistent, which Electron is). I can't see why you'd use it for a music app or so forth, but rendering a text editor is a surprisingly difficult task - it does present genuine benefit in this field.

You could use OpenGL or Vulkan, but then you'd spend your life writing the UI framework and wouldn't have the xplat layer that NodeJS offers.

<comment><USER12> So what electron developers appreciate is an easily accessible markup+canvas?

Text editors are a great example, they're very difficult to get right.

I wonder why more desktop GUI platforms aren't equipped with something similar to html5->native markup.

Thanks for your comment, that clears up the question of appeal for me a bit. I can see how much frustration is saved in a project like vscode by using electron.

<comment><USER13> > html5->native markup.

I'm personally a bigger fan of XAML (done right, with MVVM) for that purpose, but it's unrealistic because XAML is dead. So ultimately I agree, there should be a browser of sorts for highly trusted apps. Electron is a runtime, it shouldn't be bundled with every app that uses it.

<comment><USER14> Maybe I should tell that to the guys that have paid my bills for the last 4 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Oni is Electron based. But since it uses neovim as its backend and a canvas based renderer the performance is actually very good.

<comment><USER16> There's a webgl renderer behind an experimental flag that is about 10x faster than the canvas renderer :)

<comment><USER15> Wow, that's awesome. Honestly vanilla vim is often not that performant due to limitations of how terminals work. I wouldn't be surprised if OpenGL onivim could outperform terminal vim in a lot of scenarios. How does it compare to gvim's performance?

<comment><USER16> I haven't compared it to gvim, but gvim seems like it would have the upper hand there since it is native. There's also the fact that no matter how fast the renderer is, it can never be faster than the neovim instance running under the hood. I do not have any detailed knowledge of the internals though, so I could be wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The best of Vim and any combination of other editors is still just Vim.

<comment><USER18> emacs viper mode you mean ;)

<comment><USER19> ESC^wcwevilESC:x

<comment><USER20> Goooooo, Spacemacs!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm very interested in the idea, but unfortunately it was way too laggy for me. Noticeable lag just moving the cursor around prevented me from taking a deeper look.

</comment><comment><USER22> I've used the 0.3.1 version. Waiting for the ability to open multiple projects at once before it becomes a daily driver. Thanks for all the great work :)

<comment><USER23> Thanks soperj for the kind words! Hope we can get that soon; that's a feature that would be useful for my workflow as well!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> EDIT: the title used to be "oni: better than vim, atom and VSCode".

It seems the title comes from the submitter here, rather than the web page.

I've looked at this, and as a VSCode user, it is not at all a useful replacement, it's barely usable for me. Also VSCode has a lots of useful plugins, which aren't support here.

I'm sure if I learnt all the vim shortcuts it would be great but then I'm using VSCode because I don't like vim.

<comment><USER25> This is exactly why I moved from Oni to VSCode with neovim embedded.

Oni was just way too slow and i couldn't use the plugins i needed from my previous vim setup. I switched to VSCode and now I get best of both worlds!

<comment><USER26> How do you embed neovim in VSCode?

<comment><USER27> The vim extension for VSCode can use neovim for Ex-commands, though that's still an 'experimental' feature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I like Oni but last time (a week ago) I tried it I went into the config file to change the colourscheme and the doc wasn't helpful at all. I think it somehow can take a vim config file but it wasn't really clear.

<comment><USER16> There's a decent wiki article on the configuration file: [https://github.com/onivim/oni/wiki/Configuration](https://github.com/onivim/oni/wiki/Configuration)

I use "oni.useDefaultConfig": false and "oni.loadInitVim": true and use it basically the same way I use terminal vim, but with language server autocomplete thrown in for free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I tried Oni, but it fundamentally doesn't understand buffers.

<comment><USER16> If you set the config option "tabs.mode": "tabs" it will behave like a normal vim.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Yeah you can go ahead and miss me with every single one of these vim-via- Electron monstrosities.

CLARIFICATION: For me the whole point of learning vim was that it's lightweight and ubiquitous. Stuff like this is 0 out of 2 on that front.

<comment><USER31> On that note, I'm still waiting on a lightweight vim clone with a sane plugin/command system.

I'm glad everyone likes vim as an editing style. I do to and would prefer to use vim, however I was able to get VS Code configured with plugins how I want to work in a matter of minutes, as opposed to wasting days upon days (over my life probably a solid month) trying to get a sane vim config that works with my languages and tools.

<comment><USER16> Have you tried spacevim? [https://spacevim.org/](https://spacevim.org/)</comment></comment></comment>


What the Rich Won't Tell You - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/08/opinion/sunday/what-the-rich-wont-tell-you.html <comment><USER2> I don't have anything against the wealthy, but it kind of irks me when people with inherited wealth try to maintain some illusion that they're financial geniuses.

Personally, I grew up thinking my grandfather was a great businessman but eventually realized he inherited everything from my grandmother's family.

<comment><USER3> And even if you did, how much of that is luck? Is an "investor" thousands of times more valuable to society than a janitor?

<comment><USER4> One could argue that an investor's job is distributing capital. Capital that provides the resources to employ tens, hundreds, or even thousands of people.

All a janitor does is keep a few offices clean. A task generally done by janitors because the people working in those offices implicitly consider cleaning to not be worth their time.

So ... yeah?

I for one would not have a day job and most of my sidehustle market without investors.

<comment><USER5> I think cleaners are extremely valuable to society. It's always puzzled me that we don't pay toilet-cleaners and binmen in proportion to how disgusting their job is. Nobody wants to do that kind of work, yet we all greatly value the cleanliness they provide us.

By contrast, and investor's job could be done by an algorithm.

<comment><USER6> Sanitary workers do get paid decently for unskilled workers.

People don't and shouldn't get paid based on some nebulous "how valuable their job is to society". That ignores supply and demand. The fact is we have more people that WANT to work as janitors than their are actual janitorial jobs, and so the wage gets driven. Whereas there are tons of people that need investors and can't find them (as anyone who gets even a modest windfall will quickly find out.)

Or in other words, remove a random janitor from the world and the job will quickly be filled and life will go on. Remove a random investor and entire businesses will disappear/not be founded and the world will be noticeably worse off.

<comment><USER5> If sanitary work stopped today, society would quickly disintegrate, whereas if investors stopped working today the world would be improved.

Isn't supply-and-demand nebulous ? It's humans who place values on goods and services, not some law of nature, and they do so according to the weather of their emotions.

<comment><USER6> >If sanitary work stopped today, society would quickly disintegrate, whereas if investors stopped working today the world would be improved.

Society wouldn't disintegrate without sanitary workers. It would get grosser, with people forced to do their own plumbing and dump their own trash. And even if all sanitary workers united and went on permanent strike, they could be quickly replaced within a few months. As I said, there's no shortage of people able and willing to do that job.

If investors all quit we'd be fucked. Maybe not overnight, but eventually. No new investments. No new businesses. No new jobs. The economy stops growing. People can't buy cars or homes because there is no one to lend them money. Businesses can't get loans to invest in new more efficient processes, or new factories, or whatever. And no one can just come in and replace them, because it requires a lot of money and risk tolerance among other things.

>Isn't supply-and-demand nebulous ? It's humans who place values on goods and services, not some law of nature

Not some law of nature, but economics. The prices of things are not arbitrary, they are set based on how strongly people value that thing divided by the supply. If you have a huge supply of people who can do a job, then the wage isn't going to be very high.

And this is a good thing. It creates incentives for people to take the jobs that are most demanded. There is a big demand for programmers and a short supply. If a sanitary worker can switch to programming, the economy would be a bit more efficient. At the moment we need slightly more programmers and slightly fewer sanitary workers. If everyone did this it would eventually equalize and they would pay the same.

<comment><USER7> While I agree with your generally well-written reply, one point of contention I have is that of prices being set by markets. We don't live in a laissez- faire market society. We live in a society with many government enforced monopolies that limit supply arbitrarily and which routinely changes rules that limit consumer rights without any real recourse due to the massive power imbalance of the wealthy versus those not wealthy. Taken as a whole our current economic system is little more than a way to protect those who already have the most protection in the system.

Second thought is in relation to economics. Economics is not some hard science where there can truly be said to be any kind of actual laws discovered. Supply and demand pricing isn't even a firm reality as marketing can vastly dictate market results. We really and truly are in the infancy of understanding economics as it ties so heavily into human psychology and unpredictable events.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Discussion two days ago; 43 comments:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15199197](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15199197)

</comment><comment><USER9> If you feel embarrassed that your maid will know you buy $6 bread, buy $3 bread and give your maid $3.

Instead, they peel the sticker off.

<comment><USER10> There's nothing wrong with buying $6 bread or having many cars or whatever. You don't need to flagellate yourself just because you have money. It's just life.

Even if we tear everything down and rebuilt from first principles, some would have more and others less. By six orders of magnitude. It's just inescapable. Even communist countries were like that.

The rich person hate is pretty dopey. There's a subreddit /r/LateStageCapitalism that actively breeds hate against rich people the same way /r/coontown bred hate against blacks. It's just somehow more socially acceptable to post online about killing rich people than minorities. There was literally a comment that was talking over the merits of stabbing Musk just for being a wealthy capitalist.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this comment other than to say it's a very strange time we live in. The whole "us vs them" mentality isn't healthy. There's no reason they should feel bad about buying $6 bread just because they can.

<comment><USER3> There is wrong. Read the article. Most of the people interviewed are said to have inherited wealth, in the millions of dollars. More wealth fell into their lap than the maid will ever earn in several lifetimes. This is deeply unfair. The economic system that promotes this is deeply unfair. Wealthy people benefit from a system that perpetuates their wealth. They actively influence decision making to favour themselves. They can buy power, influence, to a point 99% of the earth's population can. Notwithstanding your opinions on socialism (dirty word I know), Marxist class theory is real: the "owners" and the "workers" are as clear-cut social classes as the peasantry and nobility of yore.

Also, about that subreddit, I have never seen any post calling for "killing rich people" or any nonsense like that. It's just a place to post examples of capitalism gone awry. Perhaps it just touched a nerve?

<comment><USER11> You do realize that the concept of fairness is subjective and multidimensional, correct?

Who are you to decide what is or is not fair? Is it fair for me to build an empire and be barred from passing on what I've worked for to my children?

<comment><USER12> you must've picked the worst possible example.

 _You_ built an empire and you deserve recognition for that achievement, but what precisely did your child achieve?

Did you earn the right to determine ex nihilo who should benefit from your talent? Or did yoir chils by virtue of winning the fallopian race become the optimal manager for the fruit of your labour?

<comment><USER11> So what is the limit of what is acceptable to pass down to a child? Who decides?

<comment><USER12> Local jury of peers, taking into account community needs and individual factors?

Like if we want to go full hippy and consider the global situation on this, the reasonable argument here is that children are owed f-all after education and insertion into society. That's _fair_ , right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My dad is retired, I'm 20 years old, he's 49. I just say he's an investor. I used to explain to people how it was possible for him to be retired, without being a movie star or lottery winner with index funds, but they looked at me like I was selling a Ponzi scheme. I guess me making a throwaway for this says something.

<comment><USER14> Not a scheme at all. My parents lived comfortably off their investments after retirement. They had accumulated close to $2M. Combined income never topped $75,000 in their best years. How? They lived modestly, spent money judiciously, and always saved for tomorrow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> One thing that many wealthy have that I hope technology will allow more not- quite-wealthy people to have is someone to clean and cook meals on a daily basis.

I think that this may even be possible before we have truly general AIs. My own view is that the main thing holding this back is combining the latest advances in neural networks with some AGI concepts and then more biomimetic and performant artificial muscles and limbs. For one thing maybe activating like real muscles, a bit away from the joints, to provide more leverage versus motors in the joints. I don't know exactly but I think going more close to biologically inspired mobility for robots can reduce the gap between robots and animals in terms of dexterity and power-to-weight ratio etc which seems to really be lacking.

<comment><USER16> Cleaning and cooking builds character and allows time for reflection, in my opinion.

<comment><USER9> This is true for programmers and the like. But: Cleaning and cooking after cleaning and cooking at the Denny's all day? Not so much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This kinda reminds me of how my mother used to insist that we cleaned our rooms before the maid came because "What would she think of us?!".

<comment><USER18> i mean we had to do that too. (not maid but housekeeper) I always assumed it's because their job is vacuuming and cleaning surfaces, not cleaning up the kids mess off the floor

<comment><USER19> Exactly. How are they supposed to even know where all your stuff goes?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if we'd prefer a system where the majority of wealth after death goes back into a national trust and is immediately re-dispersed back and divided among all citizens...the national inheritance if you will.

Of course there would be implementation issues.

<comment><USER20> so families would be thrown out of their house when the primary caregiver dies?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Most rich people are rich because they are frugal, save money, and invest. The person this is about is the exception not the rule.

<comment><USER22> source on that?

<comment><USER21> [http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/stanley- millionaire.htm...](http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/stanley- millionaire.html?mcubz=0)

This article is about people with more than $1 million in assets (sample median of $1.6 million).

"About 80 percent of us are first-generation affluent."

" On average, we invest nearly 20 percent of our household realized income each year."

" Our household's total annual realized (taxable) income is $131,000"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Every child deserves start up money.</comment>


Things I Learnt the Hard Way (In 30 Years of Software Development) - <AUTHOR> https://blog.juliobiason.net/thoughts/things-i-learnt-the-hard-way/ <comment><USER2> Very good article, intuitively I'd say some overlap with "the pragmatic programmer".</comment>


How Netflix Reinvented HR (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2014/01/how-netflix-reinvented-hr

<comment><USER2> > One Netflix manager requested a PIP for a quality assurance engineer named > Maria, who had been hired to help develop our streaming service. The > technology was new, and it was evolving very quickly. Maria's job was to > find bugs. She was fast, intuitive, and hardworking. But in time we figured > out how to automate the QA tests. Maria didn't like automation and wasn't > particularly good at it. Her new boss (brought in to create a world-class > automation tools team) told me he wanted to start a PIP with her.

Sounds like there is a problem with the manager. They haven't trained Maria, nor did they motivate her enough to change. Did they even take the time to talk to the individual to sell them on the idea?

The only thing that I'm getting from this article is that only the most visible performing people should be considered to determine the outcome for everyone else. That sounds like they would be letting the bullies run the show.

Another thing to note:

Glassdoor facts:

(Recommend to friend, average rating, ceo approval)

Amazon: 63%, 3.4, 82%

Netflix: 64%, 3.6, 79%

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the Netflix way is to hire for skillset, not train if needs change, and layoff quickly with a good severance. They depend on other companies to train up their hires, and are willing to pay a premium for that.

It is the formalization of what many companies do--hire experienced employees who have made mistakes on someone else's dime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I love what Netflix are doing right now but I wouldn't ever work there. It sounds like the Hunger Games, with employees desperate to show they're "A" players.

I'd be terrified of having a couple of weeks as a "B+" player and being let go, then having to come up with a creative reason why I spent 4 months at Netflix when I went for my next interview.

The way they dealt with Laura also sounds like they were pretty disloyal to her. They want loyalty from their employees when it comes to "what's best for the company" but seem to give zero in return. How about training Laura up and helping her get her qualifications so she's then able to contribute as you'd like? easier to just show her the door.

This seems to do the rounds every few months as some sort of brag, but I think treating people like this is nothing to be proud about.

<comment><USER2> > This seems to do the rounds every few months as some sort of brag, but I > think treating people like this is nothing to be proud about.

What company are we talk about again? Was this the same company were were talking about in the last few days?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> >"So I sat down with Laura and explained the situation—and said that in light of her spectacular service, we would give her a spectacular severance package."

A whole lot about that article and this quote in particular smells like BS to me. Self serving patronising crap

<comment><USER2> The other thing that bothered me is that they took an individual who was hard working and loyal and just tossed her. Where is the offering to train her to what their needs have become? It sounded like that she did a great job of getting them where they are now, but yet they seem not to be concerned about that. Where is NetFlix investment towards the individual?

[Granted I realize that NetFlix doesn't exactly standout on that.. its just that they can easily transform a willing individual rather than just decide "nope we'd rather have someone else."]

Why would anyone stay if they knew this happened?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> [http://www.macfarlanlane.com.au/wp- content/uploads/2014/02/N...](http://www.macfarlanlane.com.au/wp- content/uploads/2014/02/Netflix-HR-HBR-Article.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER6> Oh dear... they're flaunting that they simply got rid of people who couldn't perform? People who had given their best efforts and made contributions no less...</comment>


The Pirate Bay Remains Mysteriously Inaccessible to Many - <AUTHOR> https://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-remains-mysteriously-inaccessible-to-many-181101/ <comment><USER2> I suspect in the near future people will resort to Tor or other decentralized networks since free speech havens appear to be dropping left and right. Next to be dropped are Voat, 4chan, 8ch, warez-bb, etc.</comment>


I took ads off my website in favor of Bitcoin donations - <AUTHOR> http://www.ionthesky.com/took-ads-website-12-days-ago-favor-bitcoin-donations-numbers-far/

<comment><USER2> Nice to get an update and I'm sure many will be watching this as thinking along the same lines.

Still early days, but does appear to be somewhat lacklustre in donations.

May be a case of offering banner ad's and the option to not have them if you donate and thus get the best of both worlds with the incentive to donate giving a clear result/return over the warm fuzzy feeling.

I will be interested in how it goes after 40 days and with that catch the monethly pay-day cycle of the audience as like many, it is a factor.

Personaly I do not have any bitcoins nor ever had a paypal account, and with that I've always mindful of banner ads and do make the effort to click and explore the adverts on sites. Well elast the non introsive ones that do not splurge you with video's and audio, but thats just my personal taste on a low bandwith network connection.

I do hope that the site gets that balance right without jepodising revenue/running costs. Brave move and have to respect that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, I appreciate the kind words. And yes, I know the audience is very small right now but I believe in time that will change. I'm not sure if I've "jumped the gun" and acted too quickly, but this experiment is worth the effort and time to see if it will actually work.

I'm excited to see what happens in the next 10 days, let alone 40 days.

The reason why I've opted for showing no banner ads is because I don't think that the sharing of information should be diluted with outside influences. I have made plenty of money with banner ads in the past and I know with the right audience and the right amount of traffic you can make a killing. But, that's why I'm doing this site. I'm doing it for my love of science and the cosmos.

Thanks again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> So it seems that the business model being evaluated here is to replace ads by bitcoin donation buttons, and then promote the fact that you've done that to pro-bitcoin audiences in the hopes that they donate.

That's fine, but the conclusions won't generalize to blogs in general.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with you. Blogs and news sites have to find the right revenue stream for their audience. Mine might be donations. It might also be banner ads. I'm not exactly sure yet, so that's why I'm doing this experiment.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What would you use to build a small biz banking app? - <AUTHOR> I've been poking around to see what other investment platforms use. Finding Marqeta, Dwolla, SynapseFi, etc. Does anyone have experience or insight into what platform/bank offers the best SDK for account creation, transactions(ach, wire, check), compliance (AML/background checks).<p>Hopefully, something that abstracts all the regulatory, compliance concerns in the United States. <comment><USER2> If you're UK based, it's definitely worth looking at Teller ([https://teller.io/developer](https://teller.io/developer)) IMHO they're quite a good example of what a banking API should look like.</comment>


Windows 8 is available for purchase now - <AUTHOR> http://windows.com/buy

<comment><USER2> From what it seems, I cannot download Windows 8 on my Mac for running in Bootcamp or VMWare. I have to download it using an executable from Microsoft that only runs on Windows. This doesn't make sense to me.

Why can't I just buy and download? Why not make it simple and easy for people to access it?

<comment><USER3> They're only selling upgrades for the Pro edition on their website for the time being. So if you already have Windows 7 Pro or Ultimate running in Bootcamp or VMWare, that's where you should be running the upgrade executable.

If you're running Windows 7 Home or Home Premium, or don't already have a copy of Windows 7 at all, then what they're selling on their website isn't for you. You'll need to pick it up from a 3rd-party retailer for now. The fine print does suggest that they'll start selling all editions on their website in February. (Maybe they had some sort of agreement with retailers or OEMs?)

In shopping around, I've seen the System Builder edition from a local big box retailer for as little as $80.

<comment><USER4> Actually the Win8 Pro upgrade is for all edition of Win7.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I did the Windows 8 Pro upgrade from Windows 7 Home Premium.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I find this discouraging:

 _To install Windows 8 Pro, customers must be running Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista, or Windows 7. If you would like to upgrade from Windows 8 to Windows 8 Pro, click here._

What if I want to install Windows 8 in a VM ? Do I need to install an older version of Windows first ?

<comment><USER7> After you download the upgrade assistant helper and Windows 8 Pro, there's an option to create a .ISO for a clean install.

<comment><USER8> Which means you need an older Windows OS installed first, because Upgrade Assistant only runs on Windows, right?

<comment><USER3> Yup. But what they're selling on their website is only an upgrade version. So it's a pretty reasonable restriction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> At least as far as the en-US an en-GB versions are concerned for a European like me. I can't check what other countries they work for, so report back if your country/language is not supported.

</comment><comment><USER9> I only use Windows to play games on steam. Would it make sense for me to upgrade?

</comment><comment><USER10> Yep, was able to buy upgrade version from evaluation version of Windows 7.

</comment><comment><USER11> Keep in mind that this is essentially an "upgrade" version. You can't do a clean install with this version. You'll pay $40 only to upgrade it from Windows 7.

</comment><comment><USER12> Its on sale for $39.99. Just checked the Apple store and Mountain Lion is $19.99. Way to go MS.

<comment><USER13> This again? OSX versions are more incremental - part way between what MS would call a new OS, or a new Service Pack. MS don't charge anything for Service Packs.

Apple also have lower margins on their OS because it's built into the cost of their hardware.

<comment><USER12> Justify it any way you want to but MS is getting out competed in almost every area and that is just one more example. Apple gets a small sum every year form their customers and MS pisses theirs off with $140 price tags every 5 years.

<comment><USER3> Apple gets a small sum every year from those of us who bother to upgrade. But every few years they get much more than $140 out of us in the form of the purchase of a much higher-margin computer for which they don't have to split the profits with anybody else.

Also, let's compare apples to apples (ahaha). Apple only retails their OS in an upgrade so we can really only compare upgrade pricing. Apple charges about $20 for an upgrade every year, which averages out to $20/year. Windows 8 upgrades are selling for $40 right now, and the last version of Windows came out about 3 years ago. $40 / 3 = $13.33.

Now I absolutely agree with your assertion that $20 is a fairly small sum. But I'm not sure I agree that $13 is a price gouge by comparison.

(Spoken as a Mac and VMWare Fusion user.)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google open sources library to generate CLIs - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/google/python-fire <comment><USER2> 3 years ago - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13793549](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13793549)

</comment><comment><USER3> Neat! It can even generate bash & fish completion scripts for your python code.</comment>


India Launches Project to ID 1.2B People - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704652104575493490951809322 <comment><USER2> I can't imagine Indian citizens doesn't have unique ID. Eyes open wide.</comment>


The hot YouTube chick that Coors doesn't want you to see - <AUTHOR> http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/5/the_hot_youtube_chick_that_coors_doesnt_want_you_to_see

<comment><USER2> Moderators, please delete. HN is not Digg or Reddit.

<comment><USER3> fromedome appears to just be linkspamming alleyinsider. He has yet to make a single comment here.

So, good job turning HN into your own personal linkfarm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sooo what's the story here? Big corporation hires progressive ad agency which in turn makes a racy ad that gets pulled when the corp doesn't like the product

...am I missing something? Oh that's right they mentioned YouTube.

<comment><USER5> Cynic's interpretation: big corporation hires progressive ad agency which creates "controversy" by pulling its own ad for being too "racy".

<comment><USER6> That sounds like cleverness or original thinking. We're talking about an _ad agency_ here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> She wasn't even hot. :(</comment>


Ask HN: Best (Home) Office Desk? - <AUTHOR>

I'm on the market to replace my home office (I work full time from home) Ikea Galant (which has served me admirably, admittedly - especially with the right legs and a nice cable management system).
Something that can easily "support" lots of leg room underneath... a desk phone, pens, some writing space, 2 27" displays, (iMac and Thunderbolt Display), some room to place a laptop... so, "expansive" (but not crazy-so).
I'd like something good quality. Old wood / texture would be really nice, or a very modern style (somewhat contradictory, I just happen to like both styles).
Also, any thoughts on a good desk chair?
This is what I had:
- https://whatimg.com/viewer.php?file=Rk8suJ.jpg
- https://whatimg.com/viewer.php?file=mISJVr.jpg
- https://whatimg.com/viewer.php?file=rdhPMY.jpg
And now: https://whatimg.com/i/biYYMQ.jpg - forgive the mess. <comment><USER2> I'm a big fan of Herman Miller tables (I use an Everywhere table [0] at home). They have a very modern, sleek aesthetic, come in all kinds of sizes and heights, and are EXTREMELY stable. I hate tables that jostle around when you touch them.

Herman Miller is known for really expensive chairs, but a lot of his stuff is competitively priced with Sears et. al. and much higher quality in my opinion.

Warning: you need an electric drill for assembly since the screw holes are not pre-drilled.

[0]: [http://www.smartfurniture.com/products/Rectangular- Everywher...](http://www.smartfurniture.com/products/Rectangular-Everywhere- Table.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> If you are ok with assembling your own, I highly recommend this desk [0]. I bought it myself recently after doing a lot of research and really happy with it. I also need extra leg room and it really fit my need. It is L-Shaped with plenty of space for everything you mentioned. The wood is solid and sturdy and not some cheap material. It is not very difficult to assemble as well even though you might want 2 people to finally mount the middle portion.

[0] [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001UHM6VS/](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001UHM6VS/)

<comment><AUTHOR> That doesn't look too bad, though I would be wondering about the corner riser being able to fit the two 27" monitors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My buddy and I bought these metal desks from IKEA [http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/40115532/](http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/40115532/) matching legs are there somewhere. Two of them in an L configuration does work.

<comment><USER5> I have 2 similar Ikea desks in a L shape, though it was something like $20 for the table top and 4 legs since the tabletop is pressboard. Ikea has a more expensive height adjustable leg for $15 a piece, which I would recommend over the fixed height legs so you can make the desk the right height rather than try to adjust everything around the desk (chair, footrest, etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Personally, I prefer multiple pieces instead of one big table. I just use a simple $69 IKEA white table top with 4 straight circular metal posts. But if I want to expand, I will buy another one and put next to existing one.</comment>


Remote Possibilities A Remote Control Golf Ball. Sort Of. - <AUTHOR> http://www.urbandaddy.com/ntl/gear/15114/Sphero_A_Remote_Control_Golf_Ball_Sort_Of_National_NTL_Product

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolute necessity!</comment>


Ask YC: How to get your startup noticed by non-techies - <AUTHOR> How would you go about getting your startup noticed by non-geeks? It's all very well appearing on TechCrunch and ReadWriteWeb, but what if this isn't the target audience? <comment><USER2> Setup a Google BLog Alert with the keywords/phrases that relate to your product. Every time someone talks about it,contact that person and tell them what you think of their article (be honest) and shamelessly plugin your application. They expect that and they need the stories.

Affiliate marketing. I can never promote this enough. Sign up for PepperJam, Commission Juntion or Sharesale and pay only when you make a sale. Or pay for sign ups.

If your product may interest businesses, then cold call. Or warm call (email then call). Even if your product is free, you can find a few enterprises that may benefit from using it. Call the top dogs, decision makers and tell them how your "new blog/app" is the ISHT and they oughta to stop working and check it out.

Be agressive. Passively.Luck is a "myth" for most people. If someone says no that means "not right now". Keep pushing every other week.

Repeat. If something works, repeat it. Exhaust it.

Try and try more. There is no set way to market or sell. Try everything you can. The beauty of emails or phone calls is that you can be anything you want and anything the other guy/gal wants. "Be water", Be a chameleon.

EDIT: IF you could be more specific about what you do, you could get better advices from readers.

</comment><comment><USER3> Get it noticed by techies.

Non-geeks find out about technical stuff via their geeky friends and relatives. Firefox is the perfect example.

The only counter examples I can think of are things like Facebook. However, even here, there is no harm in going after techies, unless your product is one of the few that they won't like.

<comment><USER4> This is not exactly bad advice, but it's not a good solution either.

Techies live in a bubble. Let's be frank - most people don't have a clue what IE is, let alone Firefox. Using early adopters as a gateway to a larger market only makes sense if those early adopters are a subset of such a market.

What if you're selling to say: law offices? Doctors? Accountants? HR Directors? None of these markets fit the geek->masses model. You'll fail miserably if you don't target these niches where they already live.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is the hard part.

I would look at advertising agencies, they do this stuff for a living. Look at how they sell detergent and cars. It's very lowest-common-denominator stuff, but that's what works. Unfortunately the stuff they do tends to be quite expensive, but learn from what they do.

If you don't have money I would suggest reading up on marketing psychology, there are a lot of tricks, and try out different ad platforms on the Internet monitoring your return on investment through funnels, click-throughs, etc. to find out what works.

Create different ads, viral videos, games, silly websites, and whatever else you can think of. Don't be afraid of "punch the monkey" and "you have just won" ads - they work or they wouldn't be there. You don't have to tell us here on HN you made them ;-)

And don't sell on technological merit, nobody besides techies care about that. Sell on emotion.

</comment><comment><USER6> considering finding a niche group that you can really saturate with marketing in multiple forms (flyers, bookmarks, display ads, PR in industry magazines, etc.), and who then might talk about your product.

but if its a tech product targeted at an audience you can't reach online, be prepared for very low conversion rates from offline forms of marketing.

</comment><comment><USER7> Make your product stand out so that it spreads via word-of-mouth. I know it's an overused catch phrase, but if you're good enough that people want to tell others about what you've done unbidden, then you've got it made.

Just keep focusing your efforts on your product. Make it shine. Make every single part of it wonderful. People will talk about it. That's what happened with Facebook: I remember getting an account when high schoolers were first allowed, and feeling the need to tell all my friends. It had such a wonderful interface. Most of my friends did the same.

</comment><comment><USER8> The trick is to give people something they want to tell their friends about. The more viral, the better. It might start with a few geeks but once it's got out to non-geeks it'll spread.

Obviously viral will only help you if you have something worth sticking around for. Otherwise you'll just drum up a huge bandwidth spike and nothing to show for it.

Facebook app was the perfect example of getting it right. While it was still novel (rather than annoying) the ability to invite people to use apps (and Facebook) was interesting enough to a lot of people they did share it.

</comment><comment><USER9> Flash it everywhere you go. Word-of-mouth. Literally I mean word-of-'MOUTH'. There isn't any better way.

But I've also noticed that non-geeks tend to signup for a lot of junk stuff out of curiosity. Ex: I get mails from a dozen new social networks everyday saying that my friend has signed up and is waiting for me to get on the site (sick).

And forwarded mails(read junk. most are so) are a better examples.

And they won't return anymore if it isn't a good site.

So it should be easy to get people(non-geeks) but if they like it they will surely go on with your site. I teach a lot of old guys around me(includes my father) about how they can use simple tricks to use the internet better. And it goes on spreading among people in their age group and friends circle. And it does so because it isn't boring. If I taught my dad how to get a Merb app running then he would probably be thinking about the next month finances or the flavor for tomorrow morning's coffee.

</comment><comment><USER10> A good Google ranking can't be understated. That is driven partially by blog exposure. I am #1 on "Free Intranet" and "Free Extranet". That probably drives half the signups each day. The rest comes from a low budget Google Adwords campaign and a low budget Adbrite.com campaign. As for other search engines it is like they don't exist.

</comment><comment><USER11> Permission Marketing <http://www.sethgodin.com/permission/>

<comment><USER12> Seth is that you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Send a basic press release to the local newspapers and TV stations in your city (and surrounding cities). These people actually need material. We got a write-up/picture in the local paper once and I was shocked at how many people recognized us over the next several months.

</comment><comment><USER14> What worked for us was to get in their face as content, not as advertising. If possible, develop an API that puts your content or functionality in and on the outlets your non-techies frequent.

</comment><comment><USER15> would techies have any interest in your startup? what's nice about this segment is that they are relatively easy to reach and are very interested in seeing what's out there. in most product lifecycle, you're going to have innovators and early adopters before you have a large audience. the trick is to figure out who your initial audience is going to be, engage them, and provide methods for them to spread the word.

if you are willing to post more about your startup, i might be able to give you some more targeted ideas.

</comment><comment><USER16> Be simple/focused, easy to understand, and obvious after the fact (inspiring the wow why didnt I think of that syndrome).

And include a refer feature that is non-ridiculous.

<comment><USER16> BTW, whether you should care that your startup is noticed by non techies is totally dependent upon your industry and model. Especially if you are B2B... this may not be important.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Posting on HN and asking advice is a great first step.

</comment><comment><USER18> guerilla marketing is a pretty interesting book..in summary it says try a whole bunch of things for many months and track what works</comment>