How to Read "Gilgamesh" - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/10/14/how-to-read-gilgamesh <comment><USER2> The Epic of Gilgamesh, in its tablet form, is both fragmentary and rather wooden in translation. It is very difficult to derive meaning from it when read in isolation: you practically have to be an Ancient Near Eastern scholar to fully grasp the context in which it was written and appreciate it.

Since most people don't have sufficient time on their hands to do that, I think the epic would greatly benefit from a rewrite into modern prose, not unlike the fantastic work that Neil Gaiman did not too long ago with his excellent _Norse Mythology_ novel.[0]

[0][https://www.amazon.com/Norse- Mythology/dp/B01M1DYSHD/](https://www.amazon.com/Norse- Mythology/dp/B01M1DYSHD/)

<comment><USER3> A mushy remixed translation already exists, by Stephen Mitchell. That being said, I was surprised by how many timeless themes are clearly present in the fragmentary scholarly translations available.

SPOILERS FOR THE OLDEST EXISTING LITERATURE: It's a story about a man trying to conquer monsters for the sake of timeless fame and glory, witnessing the death of his friend as a result of this quest, reflecting in his own mortality, trying to overcome death... and failing. There are other things going on with the story, the humor is repetitious and hard to embrace, and there are plenty of passages everyone is unsure about the meaning of, but this man-trying-to-overcome-mortality-and-failing theme is such a obviously human trope and it's clearly present in Gilgamesh. Compare and contrast to Ridley Scott's Prometheus.

<comment><USER4> > the humor is repetitious and hard to embrace

the world's oldest joke - a Sumerian rib-tickler dating back to 1,900 BC which goes: "Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap."

[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/01/oldest_joke/](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/01/oldest_joke/)

Explain ancient humor to me. I am all for embracing it.

<comment><USER5> The Greeks had some rather sarcastic humor in various plays. The Egyptians had no sense of humor, neither did the Romans. But the Sumerians are _funny_.

[http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section5/tr551.htm](http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section5/tr551.htm)

<comment><USER6> talking of greeks, it seems worth mentioning laconic humor. The "if"[0] thing is still funny after centuries, imo.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laconic_phrase#Uses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laconic_phrase#Uses)

<comment><USER5> "Nuts."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I first read about the Epic of Gilgamesh at the start of a history textbook, where it was told as the ultimate origin myth of our civilization, raging against the beast of nature itself to conquer it. Though, that seems less accurate from reading this account and the one on wikipedia.

But, Daniel Quinn's reading of the Fall of Man in Genesis[1] is an antithetical account of the same story. Man did not seek to overcome nature, rather Man was banished from the garden (nature) by his own temptation to seek the knowledge to take care of himself—thus becoming captured and tortured by this original sin, accumulating into agrarian-fueled violence and expansion. All now rationalized[2] by our proclaimed knowledge of Good and Evil.

My favorite part of this interpretation is that this story was not told by our ancestors, because if it was, they would've sanctified this knowledge-seeking as the Ascent of Man, not the Fall. So it's hypothesized that the story was told by the herders and hunter-gatherers trying to formulate a story to explain the violent and toilsome lifestyle of the agrarians.

Neat that there is also a mythic tree that Gilgamesh finds in the cave after hours of darkness. That he had returned to the garden somehow, and that he either wanted nothing to do with it or could find no answers there for him anymore.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishmael_(novel)#Reinterpretati...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishmael_\(novel\)#Reinterpretation_of_Biblical_myths)

[2] "The Creator? My mines run dry, my city withers, it must be fed. And what has he done? He cursed us to struggle by the sweat of our brow to survive. Damned if I don't do everything it takes to do just that. Damned if I don't take what I want." —Tubal-Cain in Aronofsky's Noah (2014)

</comment><comment><USER8> 'Gilgamesh, where are you hurrying to? You will never find the life for which you are looking. When the gods created man they alloted to him death, but life they retained in their own keeping. As for you, Gilgamesh, fill your belly with good things; day and night, night and day, dance and be merry, feast and rejoice. Let your clothes be fresh, bathe yourself in water, cherish the little child that holds your hand, and make your wife happy in your embrace; for this too is the lot of man.'

<comment><USER6> as good an advice now as it was thousands of years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have the same thoughts on Gilgamesh as I do on Shakespeare's works: don't read them, experience them.

With Shakespeare's works, they are _plays_. They are meant to be experienced in a playhouse, not read by high school students stumbling over the language. The beauty is in witnessing the interactions of the characters on stage, the patterns of their speech, the tone of the jokes, etc. that just don't really come across when you read the words on a page. Reading Shakespeare is kind of a disservice to the material.

Similarly, Gilgamesh is part of an ancient oral tradition of storytelling and was meant to be _told_ by actual storytellers, in language that would resonate with the listeners. Trying to read it today is kind of a perversion of the original intent. I'd love to listen to a modern translation actually told by a good storyteller - basically the way it was meant to be experienced.

<comment><USER10> The way Shakespeare is taught in schools is cargo cult art and literature, all the more shameful because the people inflicting it on the population are so self righteous in their ignorant arrogance as they ruin great art.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Maybe I'm over-projecting due to reading it in modern times, but the version of "Gilgamesh" seems to be from after the end of Uruk and more bleak than other ancient works.

It begins and ends (while Gilgamesh is talking to the boatman) extolling the and power and seeming eternal of both Uruk and Gilgamesh,

 _" Climb Uruk's wall and walk back and forth! Survey its foundations, examine the brickwork!...

"Who is there can rival his kingly standing, and say like Gilgamesh, 'It is I am the king'?"_

But despite his and the city's stature death eventually comes to both.

 _" The darkest day of mortal man has caught up with you, the solitary place of mortal man has caught up with you, the flood-wave that cannot be breasted has caught up with you, the battle that cannot be fled has caught up with you, the combat that cannot be matched has caught up with you, the fight that shows no pity has caught up with you!"_

To me it reads like trivializing the power and majesty of both Gilgamesh and Uruk and all mankind's achievements in the face of death.

<comment><USER12> They might seem dark but there's also wisdom in these words and Gilgamesh's ultimately futile, yet enlightening quest.

What's Gilgamesh's grandstanding attitude worth in the face of the inevitability of death?

<comment><USER13> That's a tad too nihilistic I think? Death is inevitable for even the most powerful person in the world, yet everyone still does their best and some are immortalized through their achievements. Gilgamesh's attitude is worth at least that much.

<comment><USER12> > That's a tad too nihilistic I think?

Not at all. At least not how I perceive it. I'd characterise it as existentialist rather than nihilistic thinking.

Knowing that death is inevitable for everyone, even god kings such as Gilgamesh, can serve is a constant reminder to try and create a legacy that transcends yourself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Here [0] is a 45-minute radio show/podcast in which a presenter and three academic experts discuss The Epic of Gilgamesh. It moves fast and covers a lot of ground.

(I recommend this series, In Our Time, whenever I can. Many jewels in the back catalogue.)

[0] [https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b080wbrq](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b080wbrq) — but also on iTunes, etc.

<comment><USER5> And here's a lecture by Andrew George, one of the translators mentioned:

[https://youtu.be/Rd7MrGy_tEg](https://youtu.be/Rd7MrGy_tEg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> So many blanket statements in this article it's hard to keep track. I love how the author makes it sound like everyone was completely stupid centuries before us:

> In 1859, Charles Darwin, in his "Origin of Species," put forth a theory > suggesting that human beings might be descended not from Adam and Eve but > from lower animals, things with fur. Not surprisingly, such ideas > encountered vigorous opposition. Many scientists and scholars redoubled > their efforts to find evidence of the truth of the Bible.

Fundamentalists opposed Darwin but there was no position from the Church (officially) until 1950 or so. On top of that other scientists largely supported Darwin's central theme but debated the mechanisms of his theory. Yeah, not really what the author describes at all.

</comment><comment><USER16> Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash[0] offers some intriguing pointers on how to read Gilgamesh.

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

</comment><comment><USER17> There are quite a few graphic novel adaptions of Gilgamesh.

I particularly suggest a very recent one from Jens Harder[1]. The aesthetic he uses is that of bas-reliefs of the Mesopotamian area at the time when the original epos was created.

It's unfortunately only available in German (original) and French for the time being.

[1] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38741935-gilgamesh](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38741935-gilgamesh)

</comment><comment><USER5> Neglecting to mention that Gilgamesh didn't want to kill Humbaba, but Enkidu talked him into it. (Enkidu is the patron of poor decision making.) And after Dumuzi, I wouldn't marry Inanna either: [http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi- bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.1.4.1#](http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi- bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.1.4.1#)

Then there's the whole thing about Gilgamesh sending Enkidu into the afterworld after his lost toy or game.

</comment><comment><USER18> I have a Masters in Hebrew. Psalms and Proverbs is much the same way. Much of the meaning is implied and contextual for the the sake of the cadence in Hebrew. Translations don't represent the complex structure and word-play of the original even if the translations do make it sound like poetry.

</comment><comment><USER19> Beautiful read.

For my part I recommend to answer the title of the article with "while listening to "Nindinugga Nimshimshargal Enlillara" by Equimanthorn:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5egyvsfNJxc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5egyvsfNJxc)</comment>


The all new Muck Rack tracks what journalists are talking about on Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/media/2011/12/01/the-all-new-muck-rack-tracks-what-journalists-are-talking-about-on-twitter/

<comment><AUTHOR> They do their official launch party tonight with Tumblr!</comment>


Secret compartments - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/CIA_illusion/

<comment><USER2> Content aside, surely I'm not the only one annoyed by having to click 7 times to see the whole "article"?

<comment><USER3> You mean the 'business model' of "annoy the piss out of site visitors for sake of more ad views"?

Well, it's _one_ approach to trying to rescue the Boston Globe from death.

...one destined to lead to online (as well as on-paper) death - in my humble hope.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For those genuinely engaged in something covert, texts like this (or like this: [http://www.loompanics.com/Underground_Economy/underground_bo...](http://www.loompanics.com/Underground_Economy/underground_book4.htm)) are for learning what _not_ to do. Your enemy (whoever it may be) also knows how to read.

<comment><USER5> So once all subterfuges have been published, no subterfuges will work any more?

In a world with a finite number of spies, most spies are not being watched by other spies at most times. And spies assigned to watch a particular target spy are generally less highly trained than the target. Simple tricks to avoid attracting attention from casual observers are still useful.

<comment><USER4> > Simple tricks to avoid attracting attention from casual observers are still > useful.

Correct.

And methods such as molding cocaine into faux PVC pipes are not, precisely because they are interesting/memorable and end up documented in customs agents' handbooks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 I'd be curious to hear any real-life stories behind slide #3 ("Patterns in shoelaces can carry messages").

Do they mean _can_ as in theoretically? Because I could also theoretically carry a message based on myriad other things as well.

Seems like you'd have to get really, really close to a person to be able to read their shoelaces for the patterns in the second and third images.

<comment><USER6> They might just be patterns for predetermined messages. So they are probably very distinct patterns.

<comment><USER7> My shoelaces cross over each other four times in each shoe. Using the different directions of crossing, that's eight undetectable bits. You can do a lot with eight bits.

<comment><USER8> But read subltle differences in shoe-lace patterns after a glance and cross- reference with the list of meanings? Hard. They'd just look like a mess to me. I suspect that the most you can get out of it reliably is about 2 bits, so four signals, including one zero state meaning "no message".

<comment><USER6> That's what training is for. To the untrained eye it may seem hard to distinguish.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Anyone have any other cool James Bond tricks?

<comment><USER10> Spy on BBC was addicting to watch. Among other things you learn is that if someone is tailing you, there are two others tailing you (for redundancy).

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spy_(TV_series)>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Folding paper to make it smaller: is this really a magic trick? I mean I know it gets harder with every fold, but it's not really that cool.

<comment><USER11> I think the trick was folding it with one hand

<comment><USER6> Yea I noticed that, but still kind of trivial.

<comment><USER11> True, but it'd be a neat party trick, along similar lines to shuffling a deck of cards in one hand.

<comment><USER6> I suppose, but only if one does it really, really fast.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mechanizing git-bisect: Bug hunting for the Lazy - <AUTHOR> http://www.metaltoad.com/blog/mechanizing-git-bisect-bug-hunting-lazy

<comment><USER2> I know some large companies use git-bisect along with their unit testing framework to notify developers/reviewers if their commit caused some sort of test failure. I thought it was pretty neat, as git-bisect was new to me.</comment>


We're Still Building Disqus - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/disqus-words/we-re-still-building-disqus-72c4acd05c81

<comment><USER2> _Forums, or message boards, were a big part of why, growing up, the Internet was such a magical place to me. It was a place that existed next to the real world; one where I was able to be different versions of myself (depending on what I was into at the time) in a way that wasn't easy to do offline. I loved it._

If I understand Disqus correctly, it's a tool to take away the possibility to be different versions of themselves from today's teenagers. Mental flexibility of this guy...

</comment><comment><USER3> I admire the persistence and vision of the Disqus team. They are exactly what the internet needs.

I like the concept behind Disqus's new homepage. I also like many parts of its new aesthetics (colors, freshness). My critique (and trust me I know how hard web dev is) is that the new homepage is pretty visually overwhelming and yet bland. Its too much like Asana / an airplane cockpit.

I know Disqus has tons of features. I'm just not sure showing a new user all 10,000 of them when they first visit the site is what you want to be doing.</comment>


Show HN: A Chrome extension for getting to the HN thread for the current page - <AUTHOR> http://mfairley.com/hnd/ <comment><USER2> Also see: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hhedbplnihmkekhgma...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hhedbplnihmkekhgmaoikgfbkjjaocnl?hc=search&hcp=main)

<comment><AUTHOR> There are some security and privacy issues with that extension. It requires permission to run javascript in the context of every page, so the author could auto-update the plugin to inject malicious code in your banking session.

It also sends every url you visit to HNSearch, which a lot of people were unhappy with from a privacy perspective. My extension sends MD5(url), which makes it nearly impossible for me to track someones browsing behavior.

<comment><USER3> "My extension sends MD5(url), which makes it nearly impossible for me to track someones browsing behavior."

You're kidding, right? In order to tell if there is a HN thread about the page, you also MD5(url) all HN threads. If you find a match, you send the thread to the user. Therefore, you know the user is visiting the url the HN thread is about!

Let's not even talk about how cheap it is to test for MD5 collisions against popular urls, or the how easy it is to determine if the user has visited an arbitrary url.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> very nice. This is something I'm very interested in. I even wrote something like it which uses a bookmarklet, though I believe browser extensions are the way to go.

<http://omnigeist.com/> <https://github.com/mwhooker/omnigeist.js>

It was mostly a vehicle for me to learn coffeescript & node.js, so it's got some rough edges.</comment>


Ask HN: Where have the comments gone? - <AUTHOR>

I wanted to send this [1] discussion to a friend but saw that it has only 3 comments. I know that it had many before. Also, HN Search [2] says it has 229 comments. How can this happen?<p>[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8693932<p>[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?q=comments+gone#!/story/forever/0/Google%20can%20now%20tell%20you%20are%20not%20a%20robot%20with%20just%20one%20click! <comment><USER2> They were probably transferred to this discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8693767](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8693767)

<comment><USER3> You're right. We nearly always add a comment saying "Comments moved to X" in the duplicate thread, but neglected to this time. Sorry for the confusion.

The current way of merging threads is low-tech. We like to do things manually for a while, to get a sense of how best to automate them later. Eventually, though, merging threads will probably be a fully-baked feature of the site, because many users have asked for it.</comment></comment>


Dirty COW is a privilege escalation vulnerability in the Linux Kernel - <AUTHOR> http://dirtycow.ninja/ <comment><USER2> I like how "Am I affected by the bug?" part checks your user agent string for "Linux" and says "yes" or "no" accordingly.

As if I wasn't reading that page from a phone while running Linux on a server. Then again, the exploit didn't work for me on unpatched 3.4.112 kernel, so it might actually be correct.

<comment><USER3> I don't think it's checking is quite right. It says 'yes' when I'm viewing the page on a Windows phone!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> this has been posted here 4 times in the last 24h, and there is a better story with more information and discussion on the front page already.[0]

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12756006](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12756006)

</comment><comment><USER5> > Dirty COW

For a second that sounded like the group "Cult of the dead cow" and their showpiece trojan "Back Orifice", designed to popularize the insecurity of Windows 98.

</comment><comment><USER6> Wow, the t-shirt prices are outrageous. That seems like a lot of work to make a joke store.

</comment><comment><USER7> Bad choice of name; in English English at least, "dirty cow" is a misogynist slur.

<comment><USER8> I will second this. I agree that it's an unfortunate clash of colloquialisms between American and English English.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This has immature and false information.

Mostly, yes exploits in the wild have been detected in HTTP requests, and as the researcher assumes this exploit could have existed for a very long time.

And it's not a local privilege escalation only as the write up assumes, it was exploited remotely!

<comment><USER10> Can you show your sources? Others appear to disagree with you.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: MV* js framework for mobile web? - <AUTHOR>

can anyone suggest a good MV* framework they have used that has a small size and performs well on mobile browsers?  Ideally it would also work well with bootstrap or foundation 5 css.  I was looking at http://todomvc.com/ but there are just so many options. <comment><USER2> i like espresso.js, backbone is good also, mithril also looks good, as does flux/react apart from being a little confusing to beginners.</comment>


No Heroes Allowed - <AUTHOR> http://www.menloinnovations.com/freestuff/articles/heroicefforts.htm

<comment><USER2> "Heroics should describe soldiers, not software engineers."

Then again, I keep reading analogies comparing business to war, especially with startups. I hear how we are to release early and often, which means less testing.

Certainly, there are situations for the brutal speed of war tactics, and situations for the precision of brain surgery. Unfortuanately, I've been in situations where the wrong approach was taken for the situation given, and the results can be as effective as a grenade in an operating room or a sugeon in scrubs facing machine gun fire.

<comment><USER3> "I hear how we are to release early and often, which means less testing".

In the parlance of our times: You're doing it wrong.</comment></comment>


Trapping a Transcendental (take 2 - sorry) - <AUTHOR> http://www.penzba.co.uk/Writings/TrappingATranscendental.html?HN

<comment><AUTHOR> Continuing the series started in response to this: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1070604>

This was my first response: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1071734>

And this newest item lays the groundwork for talking about the questions raised here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1071748>

</comment><comment><USER2> I don't get why the interval is divided into three pieces. Wouldn't the same reasoning work if the interval were divided into just two pieces and you always select the sub-interval not containing the Nth algebraic number?

<comment><AUTHOR> The algebraic might be the mid-point, and hence, in some sense, in both. Note that I have included both endpoints of each division to avoid the problems that the infinite intersection of half-open intervals can create.

In fact I've recently thought that one could divide it into 5. Then you always discard the outer divisions, and choose one of the inner divisions that doesn't contain the algebraic you're avoiding. In this way the leftmost endpoints of the chosen intervals form a strictly increasing sequence that's bounded above, and the rightmost endpoints of the chosen intervals form a strictly decreasing bounded sequence. That helps you to see that you really want these things to have limits.

Does that help? If you ask more questions I can improve the article.

Thanks.</comment></comment>


NSA Head Openly Accuses Russia of Using Wikileaks to Get Trump Elected - <AUTHOR> http://theslot.jezebel.com/nsa-head-openly-accuses-russia-of-using-wikileaks-to-ge-1789051302 <comment><USER2> He said "a state actor". The United States is a state actor too.

</comment><comment><USER3> But Hillary herself blamed the loss on the head of the FBI.

So is it Russia or the FBI, or Russia and the FBI?</comment>


Show HN: Shareable reasons to upgrade to Python 3 - <AUTHOR> http://whypy3.com/ <comment><USER2> Aren't most of these also backportable to Python 2.7? Especially the libraries, where the reason seems to be, "we added a nifty little tool."

If so, then why the breaking language change? Why should I port my Python 2.7 code to Py3 for some libraries that I didn't feel like I was missing?

I'd suggest including more demos of how the backwards-incompatible changes made Python 3 better than 2.7.

<comment><USER3> Python 2 is dead, end of life coming soon, move on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You know, if Python 3 had been backwards compatible everyone would've been using it 10 years ago and you wouldn't need to waste time creating stuff like this. And more to the point, we wouldn't all have had to waste tends of thousands of hours of programmer time porting to Python 3.

<comment><USER5> I'd have been using Python 3 ten years ago if they put something semantically useful in like a switch/case statement.

<comment><USER6> FWIW, I worked on a switch/case for Python about ten years ago and abandoned the effort because it reached a dead-end.

Without the ability to mark variables as constants, a switch-case can't implement an efficient jump table. And without a jump table, a switch/case statement is merely syntactic sugar for an if/elif/elif chain.

<comment><USER7> I'd be happy with the syntactic sugar.

<comment><USER8> I don't see how it saves you that much of typing.

<comment><USER5> It's not about typing. It's about code legibility. With a series of if/elif's you have to mentally evaluate each condition to verify what's happening. If the use case really is switch/case, then a switch/case statement would allow the programmer to mentally evaluate only one condition and quickly glance at a list of possibilities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not very compelling at the moment considering how few examples there are. But fully explaining why Python 3 is worth it is at this point, actually quite hard. Things like better Unicode support, type annotation syntax, and removal of old school classes are some of my favorite reasons.

Also, when making kwarg only functions, you don't need to name the rest args parameter. You can do this:

        def a(a, b, *, options=None):

I think this case also enforces that you don't add any additional positional arguments that go unused.

<comment><USER10> Unicode support and new style classes were in Python 2.7.

Type annotations that don't do anything are one of the worse ideas I've ever seen in a programming language. Optional type annotations that are checked and used for optimization would be fine. But what's gone in is useless. Also, the syntax, which puts some type information in comments, is lame.

Python 3 isn't bad at this point. The first few years of Python 3 really sucked. The syntax was less compatible, and particularly hard on those who used Unicode in Python 2.7, because u'abc' was prohibited. "2to3" didn't work very well. Many, many libraries were not converted. The newer libraries for Python 3 were buggy due to being underutilized. Python 3 before Python 3.3 was quite bad.

Most of that's been fixed. The "six" module was a big help in porting. Eventually, "u'abc" was allowed. Most of the libraries were ported and available and debugged on both 2.7 and 3.x. But it took many years, and gratuitous incompatibilities made it harder than necessary. It's fitting punishment for Von Rossum that he's forced to maintain the Python 2.7 system at his day job at Dropbox.

<comment><USER11> > Unicode support and new style classes were in Python 2.7.

Unicode support is tremendously easier in Python 3. You don't have to deal with the confusing encode and decode stuff, and Python 3 strings have the right behavior in a lot of weird cases where Python 2.7 unicode objects do not.

Unicode support was my biggest reason for switching to Python 3, because I was dealing with natural language data with a lot of emojis and Python 2.7 was just an endless headache.

<comment><USER12> I actually argue that it's worse. In Python 3 you are FORCED to deal with unicode encoding; Python 3 does not react well with legacy data that should just be handled as is (without making things worse or incompatible).

The alternative is to use a byte array without an encoding, which would be OK if Python 3 made coercion between the two easy (and had the concept of a 'validated' unicode string; operations known to keep a unicode string valid could leave that set, otherwise it would be 'not validated' but you wouldn't /need/ to care).

<comment><USER13> Well, I spend most of my time dealing with internet and serial protocols, and the strict demarcation between unicode strings and byte strings is what keeps me sane. Explicit encode/decode calls are a feature, IMHO.

<comment><USER14> I wouldn't mind the strict demarcation if the internal format was UTF-8. Then a simple validate call on input would be all that was needed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It would be nice to have a little plain English description for each example as well. E.g. the suppress example[0] kind of does this with a comment, but the Enum example[1] isn't really clear about what advantage it creates over Python 2.

[0] [http://whypy3.com/#2](http://whypy3.com/#2)

[1] [http://whypy3.com/#8](http://whypy3.com/#8)

<comment><USER16> At the bottom there is a link to the inspiration for this project. It has a much better format. "You can already do this:" "Now you can do this:" which actually shows the differences. Really a simple explanation of what's happening and why it's useful and why it's better than py2 would be nice. Especially for newer programmers who are trying to figure out which version to start with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Those seem like excellent reasons, but I really don't like that they keep repeating after a while.

<comment><USER18> There's only 9 of them.

If you disable JS, they'll be shown all at once.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The very first one I was presented with was the following perversity:

        from pathlib import Path
        directory = Path("/etc")
        filepath = directory / "test_file.txt"

Overloading the addition operation for list concatenation: fine. Something something monads composition symbol. But the division operation?

[Apparently I don't know Windows very well, since I'm told the following sentences are wrong:] Anyway, I thought Python was meant to try and be cross- platform. On Windows, the forward slash is not a path separator.

<comment><USER20> We've got a C++ codebase with its own path class, which works this way. They also used unary operator* (dereference operator) in the string class to return a pointer to the underlying c-string. These are the "clever" kinds of things that the original devs used to get kind of sheepish about when I first brought them up.

<comment><USER21> At one time, operator overloading was encouraged. See for example, << in the cout command. Everyone was trying to think of new ways to use them.

<comment><USER20> Well, and it worked well enough, in the limited context of our software system. There were a few quirks like that, that everyone knew about. It was kind of funny how opinions changed in the years between when it was written and when I started working there, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I do every new Python project in Python 3 when I can. Unfortunately, there are still cases where I need to write a script to run on CentOS6 environments, and I can't install any dependencies :/.

<comment><USER23> I've always just bit the bullet and compiled Python 3 and installed it to ~/.local when I had to deal with such a system. It generally compiles without needing me to build any other dependencies. Unless I need sqlite, berkeley db, tk et al., that is...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> For those you are still wondering why you should use Python 3, you should know that most of the reasons given to you have been far from the best one.

The best reason to move to Python 3 is:

\-- It is just an easier language --

It's easier to write. It's easier to read. It's easier to maintain. It's easier to debug.

The problem is, there is no killer feature that shows that.

You only realize it when you wrote 10 projects in Python 2, and 10 in python 3, which I did.

What makes Python 3 easier is not "this one big thing", but a hundred of little things that cumulatively make your whole program just easier to <anything>.

Among the stuff:

\- A lot of mistakes you could make with Python 2 are impossible in Python 3. Stupid comparisons, bad import layouts, concatenation of string and bytes, overriding keywords, loading too many objects in memory...

\- Things are just less verbose. Automatic super(), no object inheritance, better unpacking, no from __future__ or encoding declaration, no longer generator aliases, f-strings, imports from codec...

\- The right thing to do is more obvious. Way less aliases for modules, methods and built-ins, the easiest way is usually the best way (f-strings, range(), etc), division is doing what people thinks...

\- The stdlib is way more consistent. Better naming, unicode/bytes in => unicode/bytes out, the __path__ protocol allow Path objects everywhere...

\- Python is globally easier to debug. The error messages are better, we have new tools to debug memory consumption, but all in all, because everything is easier, you just produce less bugs. And you can type check on big code bases if you wish to.

Each of those things are not revolutionary. But cumulatively they are adding up to a huge difference. Much like being in the sea doesn't feel that much different until you go out and gravity calls again. That's why it has been hard to sell.

That and the fact Python 3 has started to be usable only on 3.3, cool in 3.5 and to really, really rock in 3.6.

What's more, most of those things could NOT have been done without breaking compatibility. True, improving error messages could, but fixing unicode, comparison, verbosity, naming, etc. would have broke so many programs anyway. But yes, they could have been done more incrementally though.

However, I can't help but notice that a lot of people complaining are doing so for the sake of it. Without real knowledge about it.

Most porting take a few minutes to a few hours. Not kidding. I've been doing that a lot. It's way scarier in people's head.

In reality, it is not that much work. Very few people have such a big and complicated code base that it's hard to port. They do exist. And it's a real pain for them. But most people on this thread are not them.

Porting to Python 3 is most of the time really easy, and the gain , while not obvious at first, are actually quite enormous.

What's hard is to make this shitty mix of 2 + 3 compatible code base.

In all case, I'm quite glad a lot of people will wait until the last minute to migrate. I'm starting to position myself as a consultant export in 2 => 3 and I plan to make a lot of money with it in 2020.

</comment><comment><USER24>
        a, *rest, b = range(10)
        print(rest)  # prints [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]

In which context could this be useful?

<comment><USER25> When you want to quickly slice off the first and last elements of a list?

<comment><USER26> If it's a list (and not a generator like `range`), then `l[1:-1]` will do.

<comment><USER25> Of course.

Consider though:

a, b, c = (l[0], l[1:-1], l[-1]) is also feasible, but I think it adds a bit of overhead</comment></comment></comment></comment>


US sues Edward Snowden for failing to submit book to government for clearance - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/17/us-sues-edward-snowden-for-failing-to-submit-book-for-clearance.html <comment><USER2> the guy can already not come to US due to lots of things. what use is another lawsuit? i imagine if he'd ever show up they'd pretty much hang on public square him for what he did anyway? can someone tell me what they'd hope to achieve with another lawsuit?

<comment><USER3> The article says:

> "The United States is suing the publisher solely to ensure that no funds are > transferred to Snowden, or at his direction, while the court resolves the > United States' claims," the release said.</comment></comment>


U.S. accuses Chinese hackers of trying to steal coronavirus vaccine research - <AUTHOR> https://www.cyberscoop.com/coronavirus-vaccine-china-hacking-dhs-fbi/ <comment><AUTHOR> "The FBI is investigating the targeting and compromise of U.S. organizations conducting COVID-19-related research by [People's Republic of China]-affiliated cyber actors and non-traditional collectors," reads the statement [0] from DHS's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the FBI. "The potential theft of this information jeopardizes the delivery of secure, effective, and efficient treatment options."

[0] [https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/publications/Joint_...](https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/publications/Joint_FBI- CISA_PSA_PRC_Targeting_of_COVID-19_Research_Organizations_S508C.pdf.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER2> Of course they are. If they weren't it would be surprising. Question is what are we gonna do about it? Usually nothing.</comment>


China warns Google to obey rules even if it pulls out - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE62E11L20100316 <comment><USER2> Good luck with that.</comment>


Ask HN: Managing my own server. - <AUTHOR>

Recently got my own VPS from prgmr.com which offers a do-it-yourself sort of support package (great for a beginner who wants to learn more). I've gotten pretty far by using man and apropos. What's the most efficient way for me to learn to manage my own server? <comment><USER2> Make backups (for whatever definition of "backup" you need in your context) religiously, and store them somewhere that isn't your primary provider. Test your ability to construct a new running system (preferably on another VPS provider) from your backup. Do this regularly, not just once.

Now you have a safety net, and you can go nuts with whatever hare-brained schemes you happen to find in a how-to. :) Both Slicehost and Linode have excellent libraries of articles for setting up typical services, although neither one give ongoing maintenance (backups, patching, monitoring, log reviews, etc) nearly enough attention.

If you really want a learning experience, find an old machine, and spend some time with "Linux From Scratch": <http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/> . You'll learn an enormous amount about how the whole system fits together by going through that exercise. (I did that with a few machines back in the day before there was something like LFS to point people to; having a roadmap like that would have sped the learning process up significantly.)

<comment><USER3> Make should you have a notebook (Notepad will do) ready before you login the first time. Record down every single step as you setup your box.

Review back the steps, optimized them if necessary. You will find them extremely handy the next time you setup a new box.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> When I got my first VPS, I read through the articles at Slicehost: <http://articles.slicehost.com/>

The walkthroughs cover a variety of distros including Ubuntu, Debian, and CentOS and can be quite useful regardless of where your VPS is hosted. The articles emphasize good security practices as well which can be helpful for a beginner to understand.

The other thing to do is dig into the docs for anything specific you plan to work on. I tend to look for tools with good documentation before getting started. I've always been impressed with Apache HTTP Server's documentation (<http://httpd.apache.org/>) and have learned a lot by referencing it when I've had issues.

Whenever you have questions, ask friendly geeks for help. I always do best with real-life assistance, but IRC is a good way to go as well.

<comment><USER5> Read on slicehost, ask questions on server fault -> repeat

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's a short checklist sorta thing in no particular order.

1\. Go get Nemeth's Linux Sysadmin Handbook. Read it and learn the tricks of the trade.

2\. I cannot stress this enough, get a desktop with the exact Linux distro you put up. You never know what you'll learn just working in it day by day.

3\. Pick up Sobell's book on the Linux shells. Running a VPS means learning the in's and out's of the shell.

4\. Learn about the Apache server if you are using it (or another web server), everything you can get your hands on. Get to know how and at what access level is it running. What its config files are, what tweak goes in it. If you're an avid reader, go get the Apache Cookbook.

5\. Make, make, make backups along checkpoints.

6\. Don't fear the IRC. Sometimes even just listening in on some channels like where Slicehost is discussed, you'll pick up a lot.

7\. Use 'info' where available. And read up on bugtraq if you have the time.

8\. Tweak/tune one thing at a time. Starting with the things you know best. Take a backup at each step.

</comment><comment><USER7> Sounds to me like you're already doing it.

The other thing you'll want to do is understand why things work, not just be a "configuration file programmer".

</comment><comment><USER8> The Linode Library is great: <http://library.linode.com/>

</comment><comment><USER9> Break stuff often. Be aware that prgmr's out of band management console is very spartan: if you break your system, using prgmr's console is analogous to loading a Live CD in a computer and attempting to recover the installation manually, so be aware of that.

This sounds borderline zealous, but I recommend installing Gentoo or Arch Linux as your first VPS system if you're just starting out on Linux; either that, or start off with NetBSD if you're willing to go down that route as well. The default install options for each of those distros/OS's are very minimal, and so you're forced to think about exactly what you need to install in order to get a working system.

I second bediger: be sure to investigate _why_ things work, and not _how_ to get it to work. The latter is very important for getting things done, but the former is what trains you in diagnosing obscure system issues.

</comment><comment><USER10> It helps to use one of the more flexible and less user-friendly Linux distros on an old desktop or in a VM. I kind of like ArchLinux.

The problem with Linux, though, is that there are several main families, and even distros in the same family don't really adhere to any specific standard. Some might use syslog, others syslog-ng. Some sendmail, others postfix. It's kind of a mess.

Familiarizing yourself with a few flavors (and maybe FreeBSD or OpenBSD for good measure) on a machine you force yourself to use on occasion, you will find your comfort level for basic UNIX power-user and sysadmin stuff will grow.

</comment><comment><USER11> First, learn how to reduce your attack surface. This article is a pretty good introduction:

<http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/hardening_linux>

<comment><USER12> Also, TCP/IP stack hardening [http://www.cromwell-intl.com/security/security- stack-hardeni...](http://www.cromwell-intl.com/security/security-stack- hardening.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Get cheap hardware and set up a Unix distro on it. Poke around and see how it works. You'll be better off with a distro that tries to use a relatively straightforward text-file-based configuration rather than a GUI/menu system. And when I say cheap hardware - the dusty, yellowing box in your friend/relative's closet with 200 mhz, 32 mb RAM, no video card, and a broken hard drive is very much an option. Unix was designed for far less, and flaky hardware will teach you about how to do real backups. :)

I really like OpenBSD (and the minimalism and _excellent_ documentation are real advantages for learning systems administration), but since you're using prgmr.com, you would probably be better off using a distro they provide* - Debian, perhaps. While there are probably faster ways to learn sysadmin skills, I learned what I know by just dealing with all the issues that have come up over a decade. (And sooner or later, knowing ed _will_ pay off.)

* Though I've found experience with BSD to transfer better to Unix-in-general than Linux. This is probably an even mix of cultural factors and history - BSD is pretty old-school.

</comment><comment><USER14> I first learned to manage a server using a Slicehost VPS. They have a good collection of tutorials at <http://articles.slicehost.com/>

A lot of it depends on what you are trying to 'serve' :)

EDIT: Make sure you spend some time reading about security issues (iptables and such). It's easy to miss, but certainly as important as any other sys- admin task

</comment><comment><USER15> Make sure you're also running Linux as your desktop machine. You'll be able to run almost exactly the same environment as your server, and it's a good way to be able to play around with all the different things available to you in that environment.

<comment><USER16> I'd suggest playing around in a VM instead; you don't want to hose your laptop.

<comment><USER17> Which VM software would you suggest? Let's say I'm on a Mac.

<comment><USER18> <http://virtualbox.org>

I wouldn't have recommend it about a year ago but nowadays it's caught up with others quite nicely feature wise, is very fast, supports snapshots and USB, and is completely free.

<comment><USER19> I second this! I wrote a post ( [http://goosey.posterous.com/the-good-news-is- you-dont-have-t...](http://goosey.posterous.com/the-good-news-is-you-dont- have-to-choose) ) recently about this development strategy. It has many advantages beyond the "you don't have to worry about hosing your laptop" one, for sure!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Above and beyond, install the same distro you are using on the server as your primary operating system at home. There is no better way to learn something than to surround yourself by it and work at it repeatedly. Linux on the desktop will get you comfortable enough on your server in a very quick way.

Oh, and above and beyond, don't even think about trying to mess with things that will require a reboot quite yet. Wait until you are much more capable. I've been using Linux for 15 years and OpenBSD for 8, and I still get cold palms when working remotely on my server if it requires a reboot!

</comment><comment><USER21> If you're a programmer I recommend you (try to) create your own console like Webmin. I learned everything I've ever needed to know about various mail servers, web servers, databases, various configuration files and system level stuff. You don't have to use it or go very far with the actual project in terms of polishing, but it makes for an excellent educational project.

</comment><comment><USER22> Get in there and do something with your VPS. You can always reset/reinstall. The process of following through and doing it - until it works as you originally envisioned is the best way to learn and improve. During the process understanding how things work and why is more important than finding that perfect configuration (see bediger's comment).

Now as soon as you have users or a business, etc... things change quickly. Your goal will change from learning to maintaining or stability. That's why multiple environments are so common. Most people in IT are not learning they are optimizing, maintaining and protecting. So you have to understand when viewing most comments and information on the internet that you have a different goal (learning) than most of the IT industry.

Almost all the most useful ideas that I learned about managing a server, I learned due to an experience. Opposed to just reading about it on serverfault or superuser :)

</comment><comment><USER23> The Ubuntu Server Guide is an awesome resource if you happen to be running Ubuntu on your server. It's got exactly the right recipes ready for cut 'n' paste.

<https://help.ubuntu.com/10.04/serverguide/C/index.html>

</comment><comment><USER24> I am also very interested in this. I need a JRuby hosting solution and there are not very many out there. Plus I would like to learn how to run my own server.

prgmr.com is out of space though. Does anyone know of anything else like this out there?

<comment><USER25> Getting a VPS is your best bet. Oddly, even though RAM is cheap these days, they are still stingy with it.

For learning, I'd start with the 256 or lowest RAM setup and plan to upgrade later if you get traffic.

Some of the most popular VPS hosts are linode and slicehost but there are many.

<comment><USER2> RAM being cheap is a relative thing.

It's cheap and easy to upgrade your laptop from 2GB to 4GB.

It can be expensive to upgrade your laptop from 4GB to 8GB, no matter how cheap the RAM itself is, because you might have to buy a new laptop to accomodate.

It's a much more expensive (and logistically difficult) task to roll out that kind of upgrade across a large hosting environment with hardware purchased over multiple deployments.

<comment><USER25> No doubt it's expensive, but it has been several years. A natural hardware refresh should have helped. Check out these guys getting it right:

[http://blog.linode.com/2010/06/16/linode-turns-7-big-ram- inc...](http://blog.linode.com/2010/06/16/linode-turns-7-big-ram-increase/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Here we go. 2nd one in 24 hours. please let's not let HN turn into Stack Overflow. :)

<comment><USER27> This would be flagged off-topic on Stack Overflow and migrated to Server Fault ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I don't have any specific advice for learning but if you're having some trouble researching a specific topic or you have a difficult question drop by #slicehost on irc.freenode.net and ask your question. Someone should be along within an hour, usually faster. (IRC can take some time to get answers, I drop by a few hours a day to read what's happened while I was busy with real life)

</comment><comment><USER29> Get some books on Unix admin. Nemeth et al's "Unix System Administration Handbook", and its Linux version are usually a good start. The most recent edition is coming out in 17 days: <http://amzn.com/0131480057>

You will also need a bunch of O'Reilly books.

</comment><comment><USER30> I run my servers on Linode. I've set up test servers on my desktop with virtualbox. I have a wiki in which I keep track over everything I do and how install/remove software. Read lot's of books and articles on the net. Get a ServerFault account to ask questions.

</comment><comment><USER31> Depends on what you want to do with it. It might be useful to install webmin or virtualmin. Both can help you do the things you already know more conveniently, and both can expose you to some configuration options you didn't know existed.

<comment><USER18> I've used virtualmin in the past, and while it might provide a certain level of convenience, resolving server related problems becomes, well, a problem. It pays to learn to do things the hard way when the inevitable server issues arise.

<comment><USER31> One of the things I like about virtualmin and usermin is that they do very little in terms of non-standard config file manipulation (relative to, say, plesk). Agreed that resolving problems from usermin can sometimes be problematic, it is convenient for a lot of things too.

Being able to use the proper tool (control panel or straight command line) is best. I'd found that using a tool to do X would let me then go look at the config files before and after X to see what/how the tool was doing - that was a great learning exercise for me. Might not be for others though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I second this... <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1482244>

also, google is your friend for knowing what but often not why.</comment>


Notice concerning .eu domains registered by UK residents - <AUTHOR> https://eurid.eu/en/register-a-eu-domain/brexit-notice/ <comment><USER2> Lesson learned: avoid ccTLDs. Reduce future risk by opting in for .com/.net/.org instead.

Imagine the thousands of people using firstname.lastname@example.com as a personal email address. Those domains will be made available for purchase soon thereafter:

> "Twelve months after the UK withdrawal, i.e. on 30 March 2020 00:00:00 CET, > all the affected domain names will be REVOKED, and will become AVAILABLE for > general registration. For security and stability reasons, the release of all > affected domain names will occur in batches from the time they become > available."

<comment><USER3> I work in this industry and this is good advice. gTLDs (especially the new gTLDs) provide way more protection to consumers. ccTLDs are essentially the wild west and the operators have little to no restrictions on what they can do, including taking away people's domain names.

<comment><USER4> The .eu rules aren't changing though, they are quite clear and have been since they started.

Brexit is all about a minority taking away other peoples rights. Blaming the EU for this is disingenuous at best

<comment><USER5> Minority?

<comment><USER4> 17/65ths and falling

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I suspect Estonia is going to get a lot more e-Residents if this happens.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Residency_of_Estonia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Residency_of_Estonia)

<comment><USER7> Registering a .eu domain even through an Estonian domain registrar (I use zone.ee) using an Estonian e-residency ID (which I have) still requires a presence in the EU[0] so this probably won't help UK residents.

0 - One of the proposals to expand the .eu domain is to permit any EU citizen living anywhere on the planet to register a .eu domain but it's not gone into effect yet.

<comment><USER8> Estonia's e-residency website lists several companies who can provide a legal, physical address in Estonia. Wouldn't that work for EU domain registration?

<comment><USER9> No, one would need to incorporate a company in Estonia

<comment><USER8> Yes, that's one of the features of e-residency. The same service providers offer both incorporation and a physical address.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This destroys confidence in the entire domain name system, for everyone, everywhere.

Sorry facebook but you can no longer have the facebook.com domain because blah blah blah reasons.

<comment><USER3> That's being a little bit hyperbolic. There's nothing new under the sun here as far as ccTLDs go. There's a long history of ccTLD operators taking away domains for reasons similar to this. It's what you're (knowingly or unknowingly) signing up for when you register a ccTLD domain name. And yeah, that applies to .io domains as well.

<comment><USER10> >> There's a long history of ccTLD operators taking away domains for reasons similar to this.

Any references for this? Not doubting but interested.

<comment><USER3> Here's one example:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.ly#Domain_hacks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.ly#Domain_hacks)

The punchline is that there's no restriction on what a ccTLD operator can do under their namespace. They aren't governed by ICANN regulations. It's common to restrict domains on ccTLDs to be related to entities doing business in that country, and to require verification of such upon registration (and take it away later if it's found to be in violation).

<comment><USER10> Well it's a pity. I guess ccTLD operators who want to continue to make monet need to behave in a way that gives as much confidence as possible.

<comment><USER3> In a lot of cases making money isn't their primary goal. Most ccTLDs are run by their respective governments, in which case the total revenue from domain sales is insignificant compared to the national budget. Or they're run by universities or other affiliated non-profits.

And even if they're behaving in a seemingly sane way now, they can always change policies down the line. With gTLDs there's real contractual protection; you have ownership rights of those domains that don't exist in the same sense for ccTLDs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Personally I feel this goes against the spirit of what .eu should stand for. Your government not having their shit together doesn't mean you can't identify as european. They should allow anyone on the continent to own a .eu domain.

<comment><USER12> > They should allow anyone on the continent to own a .eu domain.

Since when is the UK "on the continent"?

<comment><USER13> Ummm, since they invented the idea of continents, pretty much?

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

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent#/media/File:Continen...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent#/media/File:Continental_models- Australia.gif)

Which continent do you think the UK is on?

<comment><USER14> Depends on who you ask: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_Europe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_Europe)

A popular term in the UK is "continental Europe" or "the continent" for the mainland, whereas the islands are considered to not be "on the continent". Continents are basically a made up structure anyway, their definition is more by convention than geology.

<comment><USER13> Yeah - in this context it's a pretty poorly defined term... Particularly since the original comment could be read as either " anyone on the continent (that geographers call Europe) ..." or " anyone on 'the continent' (where you get continental breakfasts instead of full English breakfasts) ... "

I'd probably rather question whether the ".eu" tld means "Europe" (in which case there's a reasonable argument to be made that UK residents should be permitted to use it even post Brexit) or if it means "European Union" (which'd mean the UK voted to opt out of being able to use it).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Out of curiosity, how (if at all) is the address you give when registering an .eu domain verified? What's to stop people living in the UK from giving a spurious EU address?

</comment><comment><USER16> Domain squatting epidemic incoming.

</comment><comment><USER5> See you in hell Tusk :D

<comment><USER17> Context: [https://www.bbc.com/news/uk- politics-47143135](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-47143135)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> UK residents will also no longer be able to say they live in Europe. /s

Norway is still allowed to register EU domains. This seems spiteful.

<comment><USER19> > This seems spiteful.

Not at all. The statement is in fact explicit on the subject: "Subject to any transitional arrangement that may be contained in a possible withdrawal agreement..."

Norway has such an agreement with the EU. The UK is welcome to put such an agreement in place as well, but appears to be opting not to. Lacking any other agreement, after the exit date the UK will have, _at its own request_ , no legal ties to any EU institutions so why should this one be considered any different?

<comment><USER20> Yes at all. There's something unnerving about the way the remain side of the debate all engage in this mafia boss style of low key gas lighting. Let's just not acknowledge the fact that you cannot merely just have have certain things easily. Suddenly rules and technicalities become extremely important to the EU.

Something else it is reminiscent of is joining a cult such as scientology. All reassurances and promises on the way in ... but when you try to leave... So in some sense of course Norway has X and Y. They gained these things whilst increasing integration with the EU.

Yes I know. Leave voters are less educated and somewhat racist statistically.

<comment><USER21> Rules and technicalities are extremely important to the EU. The EU exists by virtue of a set of treaties between the member countries. Legally binding documents that require the EU to adhere to said rules and technicalities.

<comment><USER20> They allowed favored nations to flaunt fiscal rules for decades and cannot get their accounts signed off. Plus if some rule doesn't suit then it can get changed. It's not meaningless what you are saying but it's hardly the whole story. In this example (I don't even particularly care personally) they could easily grand father existing .eu domain holders. It would not threaten the existence of the EU to do that, or undermine the integrity of the institution. In fact it would reassure all other holders that they have bought into a stable system.

The general EU position on rules is also deeply undemocratic in the sense that the unlimited commitment was not properly communicated or admitted to at the time all this was put into place.

<comment><USER22> You know which country got most of the exceptions, right? The UK. They got a discount on their membership, they're not in Schengen, not in the Eurozone. They got nearly everything they wanted out of the EU.

<comment><USER20> No, schengen was another irreversible progression that we opted out of like the euro. The discount is because the rules so heavily favoured continental farmers. The UK was always the 2nd biggest net contributor after Germany (and top 5 per capita), but without the influence to match it. This is despite being told we are 20% less productive than the french ...

What we wanted out of the EU was a consensual free trade arrangement not to support an expansionistic political project that ultimately wants to disolve it's constituent nations.

<comment><USER22> What do you mean: "without the influence to match it"? The UK has always been incredibly influential in the EU. A lot of the things the EU implemented, were things the UK wanted.

<comment><USER20> Well that is subjective, but traditionally the leaders have been France and Germany and there has been an animus against the UK and its interests.

Then if you break it down, there is the question of eurosceptics. Where is their influence? Have they ever successfully reigned in the EU or got it to reverse anything? They are represented in the parliament but it is a toothless/show organisation.

<comment><USER22> Well, the EU was founded specifically around France and Germany. The UK did not want to join originally. They only joined later, and were for a long time considered the third most important and influential member, before Italy.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


WHO Deletes Misleading Tweet That Spread Paranoia About Covid-19 Reinfection - <AUTHOR> https://reason.com/2020/04/26/world-health-organization-tweet-coronavirus-covid-19-antibodies/ <comment><USER2> Sounds like the only misleading happening here was peoples understanding of how science works. Just because something is not confirmed doesn't mean it's not true.

Tweet reportedly said:

> There is currently no evidence that people who have recovered from #COVID19 > and have antibodies are protected from a second infection.

How can they then write that the tweet is misleading? Bloomberg News et al that reported "WHO Warns You May Catch Coronavirus More Than Once" and similar should be the ones shamed for misinformation here, not WHO.

<comment><USER3> I was under the (possibly mistaken) impression that having antibodies for a virus does in fact protect you from the virus. Like it's baked into the definition of "antibody". That's why it sounds a bit misleading to me.

But I have Biology 101 level of knowledge, so I'm curious to learn why it's not misleading.

<comment><USER4> It will protect for the exact strain of the virus and similar strains for some time. Probably the reports that people is reinfected a few weeks after they get cured are wrong. It is not clear how long will last the immunity.

For example the vaccine against tetanus must be taken again every 10 years, other vaccines protect you forever.

<comment><USER3> So yeah, the tweet is misleading..?

<comment><USER4> Disclaimer: I'm not a virologist and not even a medical doctor.

From a previous thread, I remember that someone said that with other coronavirus the protection last a few months. Let's hope that this strain produces a longer immunity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Experts need to stop beginning sentences with the phrase "there is no evidence that" to encourage or discourage behavior.

When you're dealing with a novel disease there's not much randomized controlled evidence of anything so the best you can do is guess how situations work.

Rather than saying "there's no evidence that" previous infection leads to immunity they could say "there are known diseases where recovery does not confer permanent immunity so don't rely on that when creating policy"

Rather than say "there's no evidence" that people have caught covid by touching their groceries and then touching their faces they could say "covid appears to spread by droplets and you should clean anything which might have come in contact with such droplets or wash your hands after every time you touch such things"

</comment><comment><USER6> The media's behaviour in all this has been a disgrace.

WHO should have known better and their lack of media awareness is a problem.

But we need to hold the media accountable. I in someways hope they never recover, they seem too broken.

This is also seen in world leaders from all countries saying something and the media putting it in headlines as a true statement. As thought the leader of X knows the expected death toll with accuracy?

This was also seen in the media not asking the most basic questions in January or February. They are supposed to be our 4th Estate

[edit] Honestly, Fox reported this current WHO snafu best just quickly looking at the 3 headlines from CNN, BBC, Fox -

[https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/25/us/who-immunity- antibodie...](https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/25/us/who-immunity-antibodies- covid-19/index.html) [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-52425825](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-52425825) [https://www.foxnews.com/health/coronavirus-immunity-not- assu...](https://www.foxnews.com/health/coronavirus-immunity-not-assured- after-infection-who-says-imperiling-passport-idea)

<comment><USER7> The New York Times (via Reuters) covered it correctly. [https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/04/25/world/americas/25...](https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/04/25/world/americas/25reuters- health-coronavirus-who.html)

The Washington Post also covered it correctly: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/04/25/coronavirus-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/04/25/coronavirus- latest-news/)

All three of your articles also reported it correctly.

Even the Bloomberg article was correct except for a single word ("finding"). This looks like a tempest in a teapot to me.

<comment><USER6> Those two headlines are not reported correctly.

I don't know if you are being obtuse or don't understand the issue.

We have know since last century Coronavirus's can reinfect you.

Since January we have discussed how long C19 might give immunity.

So for WHO/media to put out a headline like they have they must have collated or found new information that breaks us from our current beliefs.

They have not.

<comment><USER7> The two headlines are exactly what the WHO said, so of course they are reported correctly.

> So for WHO/media to put out a headline like they have they must have > collated or found new information that breaks us from our current beliefs.

The statement comes in the context of member states implementing immunity passport programs, not in the context of having new information, which is neither stated nor implied.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When the British government was choosing to go down the herd immunity path, it was the WHO that warned against that approach. It is not as if the WHO has no value.

</comment><comment><USER7> Funnily enough, the geniuses at Reason made the same mistake in [https://reason.com/2020/04/25/no-poison-control-calls- arent-...](https://reason.com/2020/04/25/no-poison-control-calls-arent- suddenly-spiking-after-trumps-disinfectant-comments/). There is no data on poison control calls after March, which means there is no evidence that poison control calls have spiked since Trump's press conference. That doesn't mean that poison control calls haven't spiked since the press conference.</comment>


Ask HN: Taking breaks to help you think? - <AUTHOR> Hi,
I regularly take smoke breaks while I'm working on whatever project I'm working on, & I find that it very much helps me think- & provides the time I need away from the project at hand to clarify my thoughts, gain insight & remember stuff I should take care of. Sometimes I find myself so eager to work on stuff that comes to mind that I only smoke a half a smoke, & get back to my desk to do what came to mind immediately.
It's kindof like 'shower thoughts', but on a regular basis. Where things just 'come to me' & I'll have a solution to something. The frequency that this happens is remarkable.
Other times, I'll take a break when my cat jumps up to visit me at my desk, but I find that to be less productive than having a smoke. Not as much mind wandering happens in this case for some reason.
Do you take breaks & have a similar experience?
-c <comment><USER2> The thing is from smoking, as i understand it, you have a short boost in your brain efficiency while smoking. But in reality you also have a decrease of the same before you get to your smoke.

I am in the same boat and think it helps me. I am just not sure if it helps because of my addiction or because it really helps a bit.

That said, standing up and thinking something different for a minute is always a good idea. I sometimes do tea breaks as well.</comment>


Tier 2 Sponsors (UK) for Software Engineers? - <AUTHOR> Hello! Although I did my postgraduate degree in the UK, I was forced to leave soon after because I could not arrange a position wherein the employer was able to sponsor me for a Tier 2 visa.
I am now much further along in my career, and believe I possess a skillset which might motivate an employer to go through the trouble of visa sponsorship. So, I'm now looking to relocate to the UK (London, preferably).
So, the question - does anyone know of employers who are capable of Tier 2 sponsorship, and are actively looking for engineers?
Although I don't really want to post all my information here, my user name is indeed my (full) real name.
Any information is helpful! I have found these opportunities to be quite rare. <comment><USER2> Most of the top tech companies do provide sponsorship for visa. Google, Facebook, etc</comment>


IP is available for takeover/transfer - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardianwatch.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Live stream video IP was developed and deployed for public safety as an m911 app www.GuardianWatch.com. Founder is looking to exit, transfer, build a new management team.</comment>


Ask HN: How can I enjoy a regular job after running a startup? - <AUTHOR> I helped found and ran a startup for over four years and left when it was no longer possible to sustain it. Afterwards I got a really nice job at a  big company where many people would love to work. But not me, I hated it. It was very hard for me fit in that corporate life and ended up leaving after a year.
One month ago, I started another job at a FAANG style company which is much smaller and much more "startup like" but even that seems unappealing and not very engaging to me. I'm already thinking about quitting.
I know that all of this may sound entitled,self-centered etc. but I hate myself, I've been depressed for over a year and just want to stop feeling this way and be happy and proud about my job. How can I achieve it? <comment><USER2> I've been in and out of startups, and in between major companies like McKinsey and IBM. I had a manager at McKinsey who was the most calm, collected, and balanced person I have ever met in the corporate world.

I asked her what her secret was, and she said: "Prior to this I ran a startup." She went into more detail: (1) the corporate world is political and can be painful, but this can be appreciated -- the problems are very different and you almost never have to worry about your pay check at least, (2) most corporations have great resources and networks for learning new skills and meeting people -- this is really great.

Tim Ferris also made a comment once about something related -- ambition and life intensity is like working out... You need months/years that are intense, and ones that are rest periods to recover.

Maybe this is your rest period? Maybe it's a time to take a step back?

This is also a fantastic book on taking a step back: [https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B004ZY23TS/ref=dp-kindle- redirect?_...](https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B004ZY23TS/ref=dp-kindle- redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1)

I hope that helps...

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't consider this to sound or be entitled or self-centered, the difference between being a founder and an employee is immense. There is definitely no reason here to hate yourself or where you are, just need to take a step back and think it over and find a plan that makes sense for you. Depression is real, don't ignore it or let it define you.

My 20+ year career has been a bit unorthodox in that I started in family businesses, moved on to Fortune 10, then to small business and then into startups starting as employee then founder and now back to employee.

Before I became an employee after having my own startups I had to figure out what I wanted to do, and where I was mentally. I had exited reasonably successfully from two of the few startups I had in the past 10 years, so it was mainly about what do I want to do next. For me, I saw being an employee as a bit of a break, although knowing me I know it won't last. Something that is more obvious to me today, after having been an employee again for almost 4 years now, is that being an employee can be just as hard as being a founder, just in different ways.

In the end, there are people that just are not cut out to be good employees, but make great founders (and vice-versa). If that's you then great, just set yourself up and get to it. If you are neither a good/great founder and struggling at being a decent employee then most likely you need some self reflection and reasonable expectation setting. I have run into a number of people that sucked as employees, thought they would be good as founders and bombed there too only to blame everything but the facts. But even for those people there are solutions, they just have to recognize the issue and start working on it (easier said than done of course).

I don't 100% believe in the "find your passion and you'll find happiness forever" stuff. But I do believe if you dislike what you are doing for enough days in a row you need to find a solution and make some changes. In some cases that solution might take 3-6 months more of grinding it out to set yourself up, but that is being a responsible adult. Not saying you aren't, just sharing that we all go through it and it does suck (and can be depressing), but I just see it as no one is immune from being human.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm the same way. I ran a company for 5 years, left, and had to get a job. I was depressed and hated it for awhile and quit a few jobs along the way.

I'm a remote contractor now and much happier. I can make my own schedule and have enough time to work on my next company.</comment>


What is more important to keyboard? Themes or usability? - <AUTHOR>

When iOS8 got released, there are lots of keyboard coming out. Among the most popular keyboards, some of them are focusing on usabilities(swiftkey, swype), some of them are focusing on color beautiful themes(coolkey, kiwi) but with crappy user experience. My question is which are more important  to the end user? And if we make a keyboard which should go first priority-wise. When I started OneKeyboard https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/onekeyboard/id893897829?ls=1&mt=8, I tried to make it with better user experience but my gut instinct told me I should focus on themes and visual stuff that attract more users. <comment><USER2> Themes are nice, but completely worthless to me as a user if the keyboard doesn't work well. I don't even care about how they make the keyboard work (they can hide all their magic algorithms and settings, etc. I don't want to tweak stuff, I just want it to work), I just want the damn keyboard to function properly. Nothing ruins a phone for me faster than a keyboard I hate. And honestly, I've tried a lot of different keyboard apps on my Android phones and none of them (even the highly rated ones) are very good. They do a poor job of word prediction and auto correct, stutter, lag, and just generally piss me off. Keyboards on my Galaxy Note I used to have made me so mad I almost wanted to destroy the phone.

Ultimately, if I like the keyboard THEN I'll be interested in themes for it. But if the keyboard pisses me off then I'll go looking for something else.

All in all, I really wish that we could have Blackberry-quality physical keyboards on Android and iPhones because these touch keyboards are way harder to use productively than something with real keys.

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah, I agree with you. How do you think about those popular keyboard apps with good themes but useless? Those are in top now, do you think they will be gone after some time?</comment></comment>