How J.K. Rowling Plotted Harry Potter with a Hand-Drawn Spreadsheet - <AUTHOR> http://www.openculture.com/2014/07/j-k-rowling-plotted-harry-potter-with-a-hand-drawn-spreadsheet.html <comment><USER2> Famous Authors' Handwritten Outlines for Great Works of Literature

* James Salter's outline for Light Years

* J.K. Rowling's spreadsheet plan for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

* Joseph Heller's chart outline for Catch-22

* Henry Miller's manuscript plan for Tropic of Capricorn

* William Faulkner's outline for A Fable — written on his office walls.

* Sylvia Plath's outline for The Bell Jar

* Norman Mailer's character timeline for Harlot's Ghost.

* Part of Jennifer Egan's plan for her short story "Black Box."

* Gay Talese's outline for his classic profile "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold"

[http://flavorwire.com/391173/famous-authors-handwritten- outl...](http://flavorwire.com/391173/famous-authors-handwritten-outlines-for- great-works-of-literature)

Personally, I use Scrivener - [http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php](http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php)

<comment><USER3> Infamous Authors' Outlines for Great Works of Bad Literature

* Martin Amis' UML diagram for London Fields

* EL James' Balsamiq mockups for Fifty Shades Of Grey

* Dan Brown's PowerPoint decks for The Da Vinci Code

Couldn't resist ;)

Though clearly Balsamiq mockups are the odd one out since they are useful.

<comment><USER4> Actually, I really like Dan Brown's writing style. It really draws you in and is really effective. The only problem is that Brown has only written one book, really. All his novels have the same, highly specific format. It's only the details that are different. The plot exposition, the characters etc are all mostly the same.

<comment><USER5> Dan Brown's writing, at the sentence level, is infantile, and the dialogue is didactic and patronising. I will never read another of his books.

Pacing is what Brown is good at. He knows how to end chapters with cliff- hangers that make you want to keep on reading.

<comment><USER6> Totally agree but they are entertaining fast reads. Realistic dialog is always lacking in his novels.

<comment><USER7> Realistic dialog, characterisation, plot, etc, is lacking. Sure, I've read several, but they simultaneously annoy and entertain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> According to wikipedia (I know, I know) the definition of spreadsheet is:

"A spreadsheet is an interactive computer application program for organization, analysis and storage of data in tabular form." [1]

We drew grid charts in elementary school for a huge variety of reasons, but we never did them on a computer (because we didn't have computers back then. Spreadsheet software was (first) valuable as a calculation tool because it replaced tedious accounting "worksheets" (also noted by wikipedia) but now I'm curious what percentage of spreadsheets use the mathematic functions at all. Most of those I see around software development are simply ways to organize text.

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

<comment><USER9> From the same wikipedia article:

\</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>---

Paper spreadsheets

The word "spreadsheet" came from "spread" in its sense of a newspaper or magazine item (text and/or graphics) that covers two facing pages, extending across the center fold and treating the two pages as one large one. The compound word "spread-sheet" came to mean the format used to present book- keeping ledgers—with columns for categories of expenditures across the top, invoices listed down the left margin, and the amount of each payment in the cell where its row and column intersect—which were, traditionally, a "spread" across facing pages of a bound ledger (book for keeping accounting records) or on oversized sheets of paper (termed "analysis paper") ruled into rows and columns in that format and approximately twice as wide as ordinary paper

<comment><USER10> My father was a CPA and was trained to use spreadsheets for things like double-entry accounting.

The first time I ever saw a computer it was when he got a job where the accountants had computers [1] and he was so excited to show me a "computer- based spreadsheet" [2] and how it would do calculations automatically! Even with the computer doing the calculations, he still insisted on double-entry.

[1] I remember visiting a very large room with raised floors; raised so that the cooling system could do it's job properly. I believe he was actually using a DOS system, so my memory of the computers being like big lockers must be of tape-backups or something like that.

[2] i was a wee lad, but if memory serves, it was a predecessor to Lotus 1-2-3

<comment><USER11> Likely Visicalc [1]?

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This describe a process used by J.K. Rowling to write the 5th HP book. Am I the only one to think this is also the worse book in the series ?

<comment><USER13> Everything text is great if you listen to Stephen Frey reading it to you. But I personally think the "Goblin of Fire" (the 4th?) is the worst.

<comment><USER14> I have to wonder whether you either read some odd sort of knockoff of _Goblet of Fire_ or whether you just weren't paying attention... ;)

<comment><USER15> Who knows what the mysterious "Stephen Frey" is capable of?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Its well known that JK Rowling plotted broad outlines for all 7 HP books before she wrote the first one - I'd like to see her notes from that, if she has any.

</comment><comment><USER17> Good systems = good quality.

Compare this to anything in your business that is brittle, and see what benefit even a simple system can have on it.

<comment><USER18> It would be interesting to know about the systems that followed prolific, successful authors like Stephen King, Isaac Asimov or Agatha Christie...

<comment><USER19> In On Writing, by Stephen King, he goes into great detail about his writing process.

The upshot is that he's what some writers call a "Discovery Writer", he sits down at a blank page with an image, or rough idea, and just writes and sees what happen. (George RR Martin/Game of Thrones is also, believe it or not, a discovery writer).

I'm not familiar with Asimov's process, but based on Agatha Christie's genre, I'd be surprised if she didn't structure hers fairly heavily.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Looking at the sheet reminds me that the novels had a nice rigid timeframe to tell the stories in, and I imagine those constraints actually helped in the planning process.

</comment><comment><USER21> Man, I would LOVE to see George R.R. Martin's plot outline

<comment><USER22> It'd just look like a bunch of git branches ending: dead, dead, dead, dead, raped, dead, dead, dead, tortured, dead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> "Anyone who accuses someone of over plotting is a crappy no-name writer."

I LOL'd.</comment>


Show HN: Tufte's discrete sparklines using D3.js - <AUTHOR> http://dataviztalk.blogspot.com/2016/01/how-to-make-tuftes-discrete-sparklines.html <comment><USER2> Curious what the advantage is (in general) of sparklines over, say, a line of circles with filled in = win and empty = loss? you could use a red fill color for streaks of 4 or more. It seems to me a solution like that would have less clutter and better communicate the data...

<comment><USER3> A single line of circles allows for less information density. If you force it to have the same information density then you lose a lot of legibility. Secondly, it's possibly harder to see where outliers are. I find this especially true when the vast majority of the dataset is 0, and you're looking for the outlying 1s.

See this example I mocked up, where each line has the same number of data points: [http://i.imgur.com/xRoY41c.png](http://i.imgur.com/xRoY41c.png)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, that example illustrates the information density point very well!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What does the partial horizontal line indicate in Tufte's example?

<comment><USER5> Looking at the Bosox 2009 schedule, it looks like the horizontal line indicates home games.

<comment><USER6> Indeed. 2nd paragraph on the linked page:

"This example is from Tufte's site, and was made in collaboration with Adam Schwartz. The presence of a horizontal line represents a home game."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Would have been better had you used SVG.</comment>


Google Adds Humans to Review Apps, Launches Age Ratings - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/03/17/google-adds-humans-to-review-apps-launches-age-ratings/

<comment><AUTHOR> This really surprised me. As a developer, I loved being able to iterate new app versions in under a few hours - live to Google Play. In fact, it was a major factor in prioritizing Android over iOS. The Apple review process, in my opinion, is overly draconian.

I had expected Apple to become more like Google in their review process - <USER2> friendly to developers. But it seems the reverse has happened - and Google is becoming more like Apple.

This suggests two things: 1) there are just too many apps now and discovery is too hard (So Google is trying to put the brakes on the app flood through a review process); 2) there are too many bad actors - so all good actors are being screened extra carefully.</comment>


Electric rebirth of the VW microbus is powered by an ipad - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663335/vw-resurrects-its-hippie-microbus-with-an-electric-powerplant

<comment><USER2> All the car makers are looking to dig out some of their 'cult' cars and make a new version of it. Look at VW New Beetle, Mini, Fiat 500. Most of them achieve resemblance to their predecessors, but not the values.

But for me the presented VW Microbus in now way has the values of the predecessors like VW T1 to VW T3: There is no place to sleep, you have not the option for the tent-roof for 2 extra beds, even the doors are opening like in normal cars. This Microbus looks for me basically like a car for cities. Nothing about escaping the cities and be free to stop where you want in the nature.

But I guess today much is about perception.

<comment><AUTHOR> As someone who owned a '73 and lived the lifestyle that it allowed, I couldn't agree more.

It's sad that putting this project into the hands of someone who was looking to recreate that magic could have achieved something dramatic.

It's been a long standing wish of mine to see the original microbus concept modernized well, I'm almost hopeful to find an ambitious team to start a kickstarter for it.

<comment><USER2> I would love to see a "real" modern successor for the original VW Multivans in the spirit of T1 to T3 and I hope you will find funding. In my opinion, for it to become success it must be: (a) Affordable; (b) equipped to camp in the wild, while staying very basic (do not need airbags, and sophisticated electronics, it does not need to be fast); (c) very very reliable and very easy to fix and economic in consumption (why not lightweight solar panels on the roof and around to provide energy for the battery)

Anyway I am sure it could be a wild success.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It doesn't have to be counterculture anymore, because it (and others) already remade that culture into the one we have today. It makes sense that it's right at home in the new culture that it helped shape.</comment>


Is Google and Nest's Thread a ZigBee Killer? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nickhunn.com/is-google-and-nests-thread-a-zigbee-killer/

<comment><AUTHOR> Nick Hunn has been spot-on with his wireless analysis for years now.

He was writing about the advantages of Bluetooth Low Energy way back in 2010.</comment>


The Quickest Way to Understand VC - <AUTHOR> http://blog.yesgraph.com/understand-vc-powerlaws/ <comment><USER2> I had a very brief internship in college with a second tier VC that was affiliated with a well known sand hill firm. I was only there for a few months so I saw only a tiny peek at the industry, but it was enough to see through all the bullshit.

With the exception of a handful of partners at a handful of firms (nothing but respect for a16z here), they are all complete dunces, and they don't have the slightest clue what they are doing. This article is right that they are going for the biggest possible outcomes, but it misses out on the largest and most exploitable quirk of the VC industry: that they're all chickenshit. They wont invest unless someone else does, thereby validating their decision to invest.

The most effective cold pitch I've ever seen at our fund involved what was to me a completely obvious lie about outside interest. I met the guy after I left and he basically confirmed that he pulled the same stunt at all three of the firms that invested. He worked them in rotation, building actual interest off of what was initially fake interest. And it worked like a charm.

<comment><USER3> >complete dunces

You've probably got to be quite bright academically to get in but if you look at how their compensation works they mostly get a cushy job with a high salary paid for by a 2%/year or so charge on funds invested. Performance fees on exit are years away. So if they can say to investors "we're in all the hot starups like color.com" it works if the investors throw in billions even if the startups are disasters. So they may be dunces at understanding startups but are probably quite good at their core business of fund raising.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fundraising for funds is actually pretty hard. Founders that do it tell me it's harder than fundraising for your startup because LPs are stodgy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sometimes I hear: "VCs are so dumb! My startup is profitable, why won't they invest?!"

No, you just don't understand VCs.

VC is not for everyone btw -- profitable business are amazing.

<comment><USER4> > "They aren't looking for a guaranteed $1M, they want a _chance_ at $1B or > $100B. This is really weird, because software business that are profitable > might not be fundable."

Huh. Sounds like an inefficiency on the funding side. Or is it that these biz's profitability typically enable self-funding? Why does a profitable startup that doesn't have VC-style growth potential need funding?

<comment><USER5> Imagine your business was making a solid $1m/year in profit. But, if you had a one-time cash injection of $10m, there's a good chance you could expand to $5m/year in just 2 years. That's a risky but potentially profitable investment that is not interesting to big name VCs. It is an inefficiency on their part. But, their schedules are already overfull juggling the moonshots. I expect there are people working in that space, but they don't get a lot of press coverage.

<comment><AUTHOR> My point with the "involuntary" aspect is that if you had this thesis, you'd still get power law returns. I'm not sure this has been pushed as hard as it could be, but this is very consistent feedback from VCs.

And my personal experience of investing.

<comment><USER5> > you'd still get power law returns.

Yep. My scenario was told from the POV of an individual company. That's not a good way to explain the behavior of investors deciding between companies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> An immediate corollary: only pursue VC funding if you are either: a) rich, and you don't care about money, but you do care about making a dent in the world; or b) young, and you don't care (yet) about money, but you want a very slight chance of going into the big leagues. Being both rich and young also helps a lot.

</comment><comment><USER7> In my work I often use the Vapnik-Chervonenkis dimension. Whenever I see titles such as this, I hope for a moment for some interesting technical content, only to find that it is about a different VC :)

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

<comment><USER8> I gotta know where VC dimension is used in the real world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Anyone from the music or movie industry care to compare VC to your business? I figure most big studios are also operating under the power rule, but I haven't spent a lot of time researching it.

<comment><USER10> I come from the film and TV world. Pretty much the same way of thinking applies to projects in that space -- with a key difference being that the projects there are usually zero-sum. Only one TV network can win the bid on a hot property. So you end up with insane bidding wars on pitches, scripts, and projects that get hot.

Film is sometimes slightly different, in that two or more studios can co- finance a film and share in distribution profits (though this occurs through convoluted means, and for all intents and purposes, there is usually a clear winner among the herd).

Ultimately, however, the same power law usually applies. One hit is often said to cover the cost of 10 or more failures, and then some. (Of course, the converse is sometimes true: one massive failure can tank a studio's year, and occasionally even a studio.)

I'll tell you this much: Disney doesn't give half a shit about any and all box office failures in fiscal 2015 when "The Force Awakens" made $920M+ at the domestic box office, to say nothing of its billion+ more overseas and untold billions in merch. And on any given year, if it had the choice, it would much rather have one hypothetical "Force Awakens" and a handful of flops than, say, a better average return per movie without an outsized monster hit.

<comment><USER11> Confirmed. (I'm also from Film and Television.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Because most (if not all VC's) base their investment decisions on the power law, I'd argue most entrepreneurs (other than the ones looking to disrupt the world and all of God's creatures) would be better served by pursuing PE funding. This crowd has A. a longer term view and B. a bell curve of expectations on investment returns.

<comment><USER10> Or family offices, which are becoming increasingly popular sources of financing for startups who either don't want to go the VC route or don't feel they'd be a good fit at a given stage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jensen's_inequality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jensen's_inequality)

</comment><comment><USER14> Shorter: FOMO

</comment><comment><USER15> Off topic side note to mobile readers on Firefox on Android

If the social bar in the left bothers you, consider enabling the social third part filters in ublock Origin's dashboard by going to Firefox menu > addons >> ublock Origin >>> dashboard >>>> third party filters

</comment><comment><USER16> "They aren't looking for a guaranteed $1M, they want a _chance_ at $1B or $100B" \- in other words they are greedier than the greedy.

<comment><USER17> I don't know about that... When you're a VC, you're likely already financially stable. So you have more flexibility in having fun playing the game. Why fund a lightly-profitable boring company when you can have a seat at the table of a company moving or defining entire markets?

<comment><USER18> You should understand that VCs do not invest their own money but rather invest the money of "general partners" \-- universities, pension funds, wealthy families, etc. Those investors are sophisticated and have very large portfolios relative to the amount of money they have allocated to VC (as an asset class). To gain access to their money, the VC had to both put on a song- and-dance about how they were going to get returns which were uncorrelated with the larger market (and huge) and then execute a series of contracts which constrains the VC's ability to do anything outside of the investment strategy which they've agreed upon.

It's not just a matter of "swinging for the fences makes me feel more fulfilled." It is "I have promised Yale that I will swing for the fences or I'll receive a call from their attorney asking politely for their $20 million back, and that call will be polite exactly once."

<comment><USER19> s/general partners/limited partners</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Yet Another Software Engineer; Help? - <AUTHOR> I'm writing this fully aware that I will not be getting any replies on this, and this like my other failures is going to stay at the bottom.
I graduated in Computers. In the course study we had C and C++ in the first year, and the Java for the next two years. So I would say in the least I coded in both the languages to certain extent and I liked it. Then after my graduation like all the my friends, I joined a Software Company. The first few months were hectic, I was trained again in Advanced Java and EJB. I thought I would work on Java in my next years, I couldn't have been more wrong.
If you ever worked for an Asian Multinational company, you really don't have a choice midst thousands of other Software Engineers. You are to go and work in the department they ask you to.  We in this group work at various tools like HP Operator Orchestrator, ServiceNow[1], Salesforce etc., meaning pre-packed and developed applications. We customize these Tools or applications as per the needs of the Customers. I was able to learn the tools easily because an expert in one of the tools, and worked on it for 3 years. In the mean time, I lost all my programming skills. I now don't have any programming skills what so ever.I can still write snippets of code, I can visualize and write algorithms in Javascript, but I really don't know any language. I tried to learn Python for a bit, and wasn't successful, I gave Go a shot and failed again. I'm at one stage of my life, where I really don't know what to do. I know one thing, I don't want to work on these "Tools" for the rest of my life. I want to learn and develop solid applications.
I know some of you are like me, what did you do (or) what method did you follow to go back to development after a stint of bad years?
I really don't have anybody to guide me. All the seniors I work with have no idea what Go is or what Git is. Help me please, before I completely give up.
Thank you, for reading.
[1] http://www.servicenow.com/ <comment><USER2> You should take a Java certification or something and find a job as a developer ASAP. There will be employers willing to invest on you during the relearning curve. If it ever happens again being assigned a non development position then its better to leave ASAP as opposed to waiting. Try to become a freelance to gain more control on your assignments, first locally then remote.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd take a step back and figure out how/why you "weren't successful" learning Python and "failed" with Go.

Becoming skilled takes deliberate practice. If you're not willing to put in the effort I wouldn't expect much in the way of positive results.

There has never been a better time to self-educate and participate. Pick a project, pick an ecosystem, and begin.

</comment><comment><USER4> The best way to get better at writing code [or prose] is to read and write more code [or prose]. Start a project, or two, or three, or twelve and write some code.

So what if you didn't learn Python and Go in a few hours? Try Lua or Boo or Rust or Scala or MUMPS or Smalltalk or Erlang next. Load up Node and write some JavaScript code. Download Eclipse and give Java a whirl.

Find something you like. Then worry about learning it. Because it will take ten years.

[http://norvig.com/21-days.html](http://norvig.com/21-days.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> You have a couple of options:

1) Find another job.

2) Try to introduce new technology at your workplace. Not a language like C++ but Frameworks that could be more productive for some projects, maybe some internal tools. E.g. Play Framework for web apps, Spark for data analysis, Docker for deployments, etc. Find a painful repetitive internal process and suggest building something to make it less painful.

3) Improve your programming skills outside the office by working on a side project or attending Meetups.

</comment><comment><USER6> "I was able to learn the tools easily because an expert in one of the tools, and worked on it for 3 years. In the mean time, I lost all my programming skills. I now don't have any programming skills what so ever."

If you are expecting to pick up a new language you cannot expect to code at the same speed as the programming language you have been working on for quite a while with. But that is not necessarily a bad thing.

C/C++ have huge changes in the language updates as well so it is not too suprising if you think you have unlearned some of them. In retrospect maybe you just learned some of the algorithms rather than just learning the languages themselves when doing the languages. To re-learn them i'd look at more used libraries for C++ like libmusl and be aware that real programming is not all about just algorithms.

Instead of picking a new programming language to learn maybe you should learn a bit more about the "ecosystems" of languages. While almost all programming languages are good at almost everything, there are a few special "sweetspots" of coding in specific languages.

Some example questions you should pay attention to: Why are some programming languages used more than others for specific situations? What is the difference between a scripting language and a normal functional programming language?

Some of those questions have somewhat obvious answers. Many of the languages now are specialized in a few things. Erlang is great for passing data around. Rust is good for recoverability with a server. Go is good for concurrency patterns (but fails on some degree where concurrency patterns are not just steady/simple). Ocaml is good for security based programming because it is a static language(one instruction/way of executing for most of the language) it is also used entirely by at least one company that operates in the space of trading. Python is good for computing with numbers because it automatically can handle large numbers and can be easily convereted to C/C++.

I'd suggest learning the ecosystem of what drives what in a specific category. For instance do you want to get into machine learning? reverse engineering? devops (automated deployment)? Picking some skillset that is out there already that is highly valued and then learning about programming languages by viewing what companies are doing is a good way to learn. You see business decisions that are made based on programming language, time, money constraints, and it's not all just about what they just had at the time for the bigger tech companies because if it sucked they re-coded it.

If you have any specific questions you can ask away below.

</comment><comment><USER7> I was exactly in your position (em: Exactly) 6 months before.

Like you, I graduated with Computer technology and was placed in an MNC. Same like you I worked with "Tools", not software, in my case it is Microsoft SCCM[1]. I was locked into this job for some financial dependencies and after some quick 3 years when I look back, I regretted all of my work experience. Not because it isn't worth, but it isn't what I wanted to be in my life. So, I decided that whatever I should do, I should, to become a software developer within 2014 end and I would say I accomplished it since, I am joining as an RoR developer in a month. (all within 6 months)

Some of the points,

1) I started from the deep basic level ultimately from HTML and CSS stuff. I didn't think myself as an CS grad, but a self-learning programmer and did whatever a self-learning programmer will do. I call myself that. For example, I was asked to prepare myself with JS and Coffeescript in the new job I am joining, so I started learning JS from yesterday. Even though I have learned and practiced it 4 months before, I started from the utter basics of it just to brush up my knowledge on it.[2]

2) You are right, even none of my colleagues are aware of Github, HN, Git or even Ruby as a programming language. I was one of them one year before. I didn't know any of the programming stuffs at all. All they / I had known is Technet, Sourceforge and most of the IT forums. So, don't expect any kind of assistance from them.

Glad you are from US which is going to help you a lot. Being from India I struggled a lot even to get answers for some of the tiny doubts. Sometimes, I had to work through night since in StackOverflow, questions will get answered much quicker in EST time. 4.30 PM IST to 3.00 AM IST was my regular learning hours. If I went to any meetups there will be no more than 10 people in it. I didn't had any mentors, but if you could, get one, it is going to leap you 10 steps each time.

Start from the basics (I mean really basics) and go by the path as any beginner programmer would do. Don't assume yourself as a programmer yet. Assume you didn't had any CS degree or whatsoever. Go to Meetups, read Blogs, If you really want to be a programmer, commit yourself 200% into it.

I am not going to comment on the programming languages, Books to study, or projects to do. If you really hook into it you ll get to know them naturally.

All the best.

[1] - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Center_Configuration_Man...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Center_Configuration_Manager)

[2] - [https://github.com/avinoth/LearningRepo- JS](https://github.com/avinoth/LearningRepo-JS)

</comment><comment><USER8> "I tried to learn Python for a bit, and wasn't successful"

Kindly define not being successful. If you mean you gave up, then next time don't. Also, quit your job if you have to.

</comment><comment><USER9> You will not miss to much if you don't know Go.

</comment><comment><USER10> Where are you?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm in the US, but I'm an immigrant working here.</comment></comment>


Obama Unaware as U.S. Spied on World Leaders: Officials - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/SB10001424052702304470504579162110180138036-lMyQjAxMTAzMDIwNzEyNDcyWj

<comment><AUTHOR> It is unclear how he is able to provide "assurances" to the public if he was supposedly "unaware" of such activities.

So either he knew and is now rapidly trying to backtrack/CYA or he has just been ignorantly making unqualified statements and being a chump.</comment>


Federal judge says no constitutional right to secret ballot in Boulder case - <AUTHOR> http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_21601455/federal-judge-says-no-constitutional-right-secret-ballot

<comment><USER2> In other nations paper ballots are routinely classed invalid if they have anything on it that isn't a simple "X" mark. The reasoning is that that would make the ballot paper identifiable.

A fancy mark: invalid. Rude words: invalid.

This is firmly in the bailiwick of the legislative power.</comment>


What to do with idle infrastructure? - <AUTHOR> What would you do with some infrastructure that is sitting idle that could be justifiable to your employer?
Aside from the 'mine coins' jokes, any interesting ideas on what you would do with 3000+ CPU cores, 10+ TB of ram? (and a ton of disk space)
Static analyzers? Dynamic? Profiling? Load testing? <comment><USER2> Does that infra spike in usage, or are you just vastly vastly over provisioned?

<comment><AUTHOR> Long story short no one is using it, basically vastly over provisioned.

We can turn it off and not use it, or we can use it for something. We have some ideas but its not even scratching the surface of the total.</comment></comment>


Don't abandon the Europe that I fought for – and my comrades died for - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/15/dont-abandon-the-europe-that-i-fought-for-and-my-comrades-died-for <comment><USER2> I am not quite 96 yet, but what nonsense - the British fought for freedom, self determination and democracy and not to be governed by a European state. NATO has provided the only effective security not the EU. Only France and the UK spend enough on defence. The EU is a slow lumbering giant full of indecision and differences as weak as its weakest member state. It is blighted by the misguided goal of political union. The UK leaving the EU will ultimately give confidence to the other EU member states to recognise political union for the nonsense and danger that it is. The UK electing not to be governed by the EU will help the UK to be more confident, act more decisively and be more effective globally. And finally if the UK does leave it can stop whining about the EU, which will make everyone here a bit happier.</comment>


New app generating platform - <AUTHOR> http://launch.quipper.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Quipper's app generating platform will enable anyone to create mobile apps for distribution across the App Store and Android Market.</comment>


Ask HN: Would you consider this productive? - <AUTHOR>

It was just recently that I found about desktime.com. And I was wondering..
Would you consider spending time on HN, CouchSurfing or similar sites productive? I understand that from a boss's perspective, of course not! But, in the long run, and for your own personal growth, it of course is productive. You are learning something most of the time. May be something that one learns here won't be useful right now, but it does have some impact that changes how you act or think later when it comes to using it directly or indirectly.
So, I know that it doesn't counts much to be serious enough. But, would you mark HN or CouchSurfing or similar sites to be productive sites, for your own-self and your growth?
What similar productive/may-be-productive-later sites do you know? ;) <comment><USER2> The way I orient my use of Hacker News, is I read and then save all that sparks a curiosity or idea in my mind, then as other similar or related articles show up I group them into topics for rereading and researching with the goal of writing my own article about it--often by making connections bringing different ideas together.

</comment><comment><USER3> Quora would also be up that valley. Sort of productive.</comment>


Steve Wozniak Scammed Out of $70K in Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/would-you-believe-this-steve-wozniaks-bitcoins-actually-got-stolen/articleshow/63075377.cms <comment><USER2> _Somebody bought them from me online through a credit card and they cancelled the credit card payment. It was that easy! And it was from a stolen credit card number so you can never get it back_

This is more a flaw in the traditional banking/credit card system than a flaw in bitcoin. The same sort of fraud could happen with any unrecoverable purchase (e.g. restaurant, hotel, travel).</comment>


How I got sued by Facebook (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://petewarden.typepad.com/searchbrowser/2010/04/how-i-got-sued-by-facebook.html

<comment><USER2> "my lawyer advised me that it had never been tested in court, and the legal costs alone of being a test case would bankrupt me"

What's to stop two smaller companies making a "court case" where they sue each other for small bucks with the desired outcome (following robots.txt is a legal way to access a site with a crawler). This would then set a precedent that would benefit others as a whole.

<comment><USER3> Now that you mention it, what's stopping two such companies from manipulating the result of this landmark case ?

What's stopping Facebook from setting up a puppet company to sue to obtain their desired precedent ?

This seems like a huge hole in the "let's let the courts decide the law system".

<comment><USER4> judges are not even remotely amused by attempts to manipulate them, and if they discover it, i can't imagine things ending well for parties making such an attempt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Lawsuit nastiness aside, there's an interesting and important legal-technical question that this exposes: how should websites specify acceptable uses of crawled data and other fine-grained restrictions in a machine-readable form.

Motivated by this incident, I got together with Pete (the author/victim) to write a piece on "The Need to Reboot Robots.txt" [1] but it went nowhere.

Any suggestions on how to give our proposal legs would be much appreciated.

[1] [http://33bits.org/2010/12/05/web-crawlers-privacy-reboot- rob...](http://33bits.org/2010/12/05/web-crawlers-privacy-reboot-robots-txt/)

<comment><USER6> You can set the SyndicationRight directive for OpenSearch.

"Contains a value that indicates the degree to which the search results provided by this search engine can be queried, displayed, and redistributed."

The default is "open" meaning: \- The search client may request search results. \- The search client may display the search results to end users. \- The search client may send the search results to other search clients.

[http://www.opensearch.org/Specifications/OpenSearch/1.1#The_...](http://www.opensearch.org/Specifications/OpenSearch/1.1#The_.22SyndicationRight.22_element)

That would give you more fine-grained control over what search agents do with your data. I don't know how broad the support and adherence is to the OpenSearch spec (IMDB uses it).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if he asked EFF if they were willing to defend the case. The thing is it's probably never individually worth defending against these cases, but on a society level there'd be so much gain if someone had set a legal precedence for the validity of robots.txt.

<comment><USER8> They settled out of court:

> He was with the head of their security team, who I knew slightly because I'd > reported several security holes to Facebook over the years. The attorney > said that they were just about to sue me into oblivion, but in light of my > previous good relationship with their security team, they'd give me one > chance to stop the process. They asked and received a verbal assurance from > me that I wouldn't publish the data, and sent me on a letter to sign > confirming that.

The robots.txt part was just Facebook lawyers trying to grasp to a contract with them; the actual issue was that the EULA allows Facebook to make basic information available, but users do not expect such a database to be freely available. Although I personally regret there is so little done by the data team to help research, legal consequences were not worth the prank; what actually matters is usage, and Facebook clearly police the spirit of the platform rather then the law, even beyond their contract partner—see RapLeaf.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> A case before the Supreme Court of Canada right now [1] touches on a similar untested premise of the open web. At issue is whether a hyperlink constitutes a _citation_ or a _republication_ of that page.

In this case, the plaintiff is accusing the defendant of defamation for linking to web pages the plaintiff argues are defamatory. (Aside: compared to the US, defamation law in Canada is weighed much more strongly toward the plaintiff than the defendant.)

Lower courts have decided that simply linking to a defamatory web page does not constitute defamation, unless the link is provided for the purpose of endorsing the defamatory material, in which case it is the _endorsement_ of the link that constitutes defamation, and not the link itself.

The problem in Canada, as in the US, is that governments have not kept up with legislation governing the legality of various internet-specific activities, like hyperlinking and so on. That has left the courts to try and decide through precedent how to handle these conflicts.

[1] [http://www.scc-csc.gc.ca/case-dossier/cms-sgd/sum-som- eng.as...](http://www.scc-csc.gc.ca/case-dossier/cms-sgd/sum-som- eng.aspx?cas=33412)

</comment><comment><USER10> You might care to read the extensive discussion from when this was posted 11 months ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1243159>

</comment><comment><USER11> I've added a post-script to this story, updating with developments over the last year: [http://petewarden.typepad.com/searchbrowser/2011/03/facebook...](http://petewarden.typepad.com/searchbrowser/2011/03/facebook- isnt-so-evil.html) In particular, I know from my friends in the academic community that they're quietly putting together processes for working with researchers. That's a big step forward in my view, as long as they can safeguard privacy, there's a lot of potential for world-improving research.

</comment><comment><USER12> Great article. Is this the same person that Palantir mentioned as a potential source of Facebook information for social engineering attacks?

From the leaked HBGary emails:

"The Palantir employee noted that a researcher had used similar tools to violate Facebook's acceptable use policy on data scraping, 'resulting in a lawsuit when he crawled most of Facebook's social graph to build some statistics. I'd be worried about doing the same. (I'd ask him for his Facebook data—he's a fan of Palantir—but he's already deleted it.)'"

[http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/02/black-ops- ho...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/02/black-ops-how-hbgary- wrote-backdoors-and-rootkits-for-the-government.ars/4)

</comment><comment><USER13> I notice they have updated their robots.txt to only allow user agents they have approved.

<http://www.facebook.com/apps/site_scraping_tos.php>

<comment><USER14> I noticed that a while back when it had the effect of removing thefacebook.com from the Wayback Machine. There used to be some fascinating reading in their old TOS and Privacy Policy. Wish I'd kept a copy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> What would have happened if he had done it from a company based in the Seychelles for example? Would that be a way to protect against Facebook aggressively suing with no grounds?

<comment><USER3> My guess Facebook would still sure and obtain an injunction on the site being distributed in the US, probably shutting down access in the US.

<comment><USER15> But how can they do this if the dns server and server are not hosted in the US?

I've been wondering about this problem too recently when looking at some frivolous patent lawsuits... The problem is that for quite a few case even if the law is on the side of the startup, the cost of applying the law and winning the lawsuit are too high...

<comment><USER16> If your domain name is registered though a US company they may be able to seize it.

Also, if you have any assets in the US they can be seized.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> [2010]

I thought it sounded familiar.

<comment><USER18> Also, the title is misleading: he got threatened with legal action, not sued.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> So...anyone have a mirror of the data?

<comment><USER13> google for "fbnames".

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Reminds me how facebook was almost suing suicidemachine.org [1] just because they allowed people to commit online suicide from facebook (unfriend everyone and set random password).

For me, facebook is just another bigheaded company, that is trying to turn your social life into their product [2]. And that is not the place, where I want to hang out with friends online. (And I dont.)

[1] [http://suicidemachine.org/download/Web_2.0_Suicide_Machine.p...](http://suicidemachine.org/download/Web_2.0_Suicide_Machine.pdf)

[2] <http://twitter.com/#!/librarythingtim/status/13226541303>

</comment><comment><USER21> This was, in fact, tested (to a limited extent) in court about a decade ago. See _eBay v. Bidder's Edge_ , 100 F.Supp.2d 1058 (N.D. Cal. 2000).

Short story: Back in the days when there was actual competition in the online auction market (anyone remember Yahoo! Auctions?), Bidder's Edge was crawling eBay listings to index them for an auction search engine. (I worked for one of their competitors.) eBay sued on a trespass theory, and was granted a preliminary injunction because the judge held that eBay was likely to succeed on the merits of the claim.

Unfortunately, the trespass claim was never fully litigated; Bidder's Edge agreed to stop crawling after the PI was granted.

</comment><comment><USER22> Someone convince me what facebook said here was wrong. I don't think robots.txt gives you a license to do whatever you want with web content. If it did wouldn't robots.txt effectively put everything into the public domain?

<comment><USER23> Google can mine the data and do whatever they want (and I don't doubt for a second that they run analysis on it), but this guy can't?

Facebook wants to have their cake and eat it to. They want free Google publicity but god forbid some dude starts downloading pages for research. It's legal, but it's wrong.

<comment><USER22> I'm really only interested in the legal question. And I genuinely would like to be convinced that the legal system would allow scraping like this. I just don't see it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Well, you never got sued just threatened.

</comment><comment><USER25> As a founder of a new company and the son of a lawyer lawsuits are certainly something I think about. It seems all companies that become well known eventually face lawsuits. While it sucks and you never want to face one, many know it is a cost of doing business. You also find people who want to attack a company seeing a big dollar sign in front of them. Plus lawyers might earn hundreds of millions or dare I say billions if they win a case from a company like Facebook or Google.

<comment><USER26> When the Twitter strategy docs got leaked a while back, there was a specific section that dealt with potential lawsuits.

[http://techcrunch.com/2009/07/16/twitters-internal- strategy-...](http://techcrunch.com/2009/07/16/twitters-internal-strategy- laid-bare-to-be-the-pulse-of-the-planet/) (see Defensive Strategy section)

 _Legal

\- We will be sued for patent infringement, repeatedly and often

\- Should we get a great patent attorney to proactively go after these patents (We need to talk about this more, we are unsatisfied)_

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The world really could use better analytics tools for Facebook apps since the ones that Facebook provides are a little sorry in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER28> Sorry but I side with Facebook, a freely available public graph of millions of users could have been used for re-identification attacks.

Frankly you should never share your friends list publicly.

<comment><USER29> I'd bet money that a similar list is probably already floating around. Whether it's freely available or not may be up for interpretation.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Business that should not scale - <AUTHOR> Having visited a few commercial dog kennels it was refreshing to find some neighbors who dog sit semi-regularly as a side business. Are there certain businesses or industries best kept small or local? <comment><USER2> Anything in the "lifestyle business" category by definition doesn't scale past a certain point. Also, anything that requires a licensed individual (e.g. plumber, electrician). There could be an interesting business opportunity in Uber-izing networks of these small businesses. For example, I need a dog sitter last minute but I don't want to scour craigslist or have to remember which of my neighbors dog sits.

<comment><USER3> services like TaskRabbit etc. already provides this type of on-demand services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yes. Anything that does not benefit from either network effects or economies of scale should not scale.

Network effects - If I created the first telephone network, the first phone is basically a paperweight, but the more customers I convince to buy, the more useful each phone is to my other customers.

Economies of scale - Similarly, if I have a car company, the more I scale, the more efficient I can become (I can invest more in engineering and machinery).

</comment><comment><USER5> Think of trust proxies or an external dependant factor like geographies An example A paid Meetup group or a dating app for within a city. These work better at smaller scale than large.

The opportunity is where someone or something causes a change in the underlying restriction such that an infrastructure can be built at scale. So the answer to your question depends on time and tech

</comment><comment><USER6> Off topic, but rover.com is awesome for their network of part time sitters.</comment>


Ask HN: Startup not paying wages yet - <AUTHOR> I started a bit over one and a half months ago at a startup in Barcelona. The founder went off to get married, then was bought an unexpected honeymoon, so payment didn't happen at the start of the month as it was supposed to. Now we have been promised for the past two Fridays it would come, (he showed us a chain of emails explaining why the customer payment didn't go through yet). Now its Monday and no sign of payment yet. (He has been back from his honeymoon for a while now).<p>Has anyone been in a similar situation? How to handle it? <comment><USER2> Hold on, let me just check the smoke alarm... no, wait, the siren is going off _inside my head_.

If the company has the money to pay you, then this kind of incompetency is a massive warning signal. If the founder had his act together, he'd be telling you very day why you hadn't been paid and he'd be checking who needs immediate cash to cover something urgent. Chain of eMails explaining payment problems? Blah blah blah PAY ME WHAT YOU OWE ME. He knew payday was coming.

If the company doesn't have the money to pay you, then this kind of incompetency is a massive warning signal. If the founder had his act together, he'd have told everyone as early as possible the situation, and people who wanted to take the risk of going unpaid for a while would at least know what they're getting into.

There is no way to spin this that the founder isn't either dangerously incompetent or is just using you like a sucker.

Next job, please.

</comment><comment><USER3> While I do not know the law specifics of Spain, here in Portugal after 2 months of non payment you can demand the "cancellation" (not sure if it is the right word) of the contract, and leave the job, there may be more specifics into it and my advice would be to see what are your legal options.

I have been in a similar situation and my plan was always to wait for the 2 months and started searching for a new job, but they ended up paying everything at most with 2 weeks delay.

If you just started and there are delays like that, you dont trust the founder, etc, then leave it is better for you, I don't imagine myself being a startup founder and just leaving my workers in the dark just because I want to get married, I would find some time to make the proper arrangements for the wages, explain everything well and then get married.

<comment><USER4> The thought that an employee doesn't have the right to leave or employer doesn't have the right to fire any time just blows my mind.

<comment><USER3> What blows my mind is exactly the opposite, that for no reason I can be fired without any kind of warning or time to search for a new job, in portugal the employer can fire or I can leave, there is a 1month/2month warning depending on the case how long you have been on the company (up to 2 years/2 years or more respectively)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been in this situation. Games company. Promises of payment coming "any day now" from investors. Here's where our good ol' CEO is now: [http://www.thejournal.ie/interzone-marty-brickey-big- collisi...](http://www.thejournal.ie/interzone-marty-brickey-big-collision- digital-hub-dublin-missouri-australia-2358323-Oct2015/)

Run away.

</comment><comment><USER6> What is your pay cycle supposed to be? once a month, once a week or every two weeks?

No matter what you are owed money and they should be paying. Honestly you shouldn't have been hired if they didn't have the funds to support your salary/contract. I have sadly been in the shoes of being a founder and having to pay people a few days late and I scrambled and felt horrible that it happened. I also wound up making some tough decisions and cut head count to make sure it wouldn't happen again. Problem being clients don't always pay on time, or pay at all, so you have to be able to support the head count for at least some period of time to cover those times.

The founder may have good intentions, but honestly after 3 years, like others have said, these issues shouldn't happen so something else is up and you need to look for other work likely. Not sure what the rules are in Spain but in the US being late on a payroll if it hasn't yet reached the next pay period won't get you in much trouble (if any), but it is still bad business and a sign to you. And an employee could easily report you to wage and labor. I am not saying I'd cut and run for someone being a little late, but if I had other feelings things weren't right I'd bolt.

Also, the fact you say "we have been promised" makes me thing there are multiple employees in this situation and likely means you are all out of luck and need to find new work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes there are a few of us. Got an interview lined up tomorrow morning. I was close to cancelling it a couple of weeks ago when they changed the time at the last minute.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The founder(singular?) started a company and then immediately got married? Both seem to be things you plan and you should not plan them remotely close together.

Are you an employee or freelancer and do you have shares? If you are an employee he has to pay immediately and I would enforce that now; as a freelancer I would discuss it with him and probably stop working depending on what he says.

<comment><AUTHOR> No the company is 3 years old. He just happened to get married the week after I started.

<comment><USER8> ok well I guess a company can still be a startup after 3 years, but I mean by then it should have its wages and payments under control. you should quit.

<comment><USER7> Agree here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Being a child at heart, I would probably stop working until payment, then leave once received.

</comment><comment><USER10> That sucks.

What it shows is that when you were hired, there were no funds to pay you. The fact that on payday the founder ways honeymooning doesn't change that. It just indicates that the founder didn't want to deal with not paying.

Reading further down, I saw that the company has been around for three years. At this point, inability to manage cash flow via sales, investment, and/or loans is clearly a red flag. Not following through on payment two weeks running and blaming customers seems symptomatic of leadership that is not inclined to make hard business decisions.

In the end, if there's no payment, it's not employment.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've been paid late before, by a day or two. It makes everyone feel a lack of competence.

I've also been paid early, again a day or two (mainly when payday comes on a weekend or public holiday). It makes everyone feel a sense of trust and value.

If the former, it seems like a basic lack of respect and empathy. I go foot over back to make sure my staff feel comfortable. This doesn't mean having food or massages as perks, it does mean at the least paying on time and replying (answers, not excuses) to concerns quickly.

</comment><comment><USER12> As everyone else said, this is a major red flag. You need to look for something else immediately. This person will use you as long as he can.

</comment><comment><USER13> Look up your country's relevant work laws. Then leave as law permits. Threaten with lawsuit due to non-payment on your way out.

Seeing how you are in Europe, you are most probably on probation for what, 2-3 months? I bet you are free to leave anyday until the probation period is up.

Know your rights.

</comment><comment><USER14> How to handle it? Stop doing work for them and start looking for another job.

</comment><comment><USER15> Q: "How to handle it?"

A: Make deliverables contingent upon timely payment. Start looking around for better alternatives to spend time wisely.

</comment><comment><USER16> Sounds like sheer incompetence. Dust off your CV and start applying elsewhere.

When startups fail, the commonest cause is f _cked founders. And your founder sounds f_ cked in spades.

<comment><USER17> escape from the situation ASAP</comment></comment>


Grep in java is funny with Grep4j - <AUTHOR> https://code.google.com/p/grep4j/

<comment><USER2> Can you please mention what you find funny with this ? It will take sometime to find the funnier text from the submitted link.</comment>


Is an Engineer an Artist? - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/is-an-engineer-an-artist <comment><USER2> I feel that most discussions about whether somebody/something qualifies as an artist or art end up being pretty meaningless because people don't have a clear notion of what "artist" or "art" mean.

Most notions of those terms seem to be based on a picture of exemplars or prototypes of those kinds of things, and most determinations of whether somebody/something is an artist/art seem to be based on intuitive similarity comparisons with those exemplars/prototypes.

[EDIT: just thinking out loud, "art" seems commonly, though implicitly, seen as having defining characteristics of ineffability and high cultural status, so people's views about whether X is art often really come down to whether they think it seems sufficiently ineffable and of sufficient cultural status, though they wouldn't say that's the basis for their view]

<comment><USER3> > pretty meaningless because people don't have a clear notion of what "artist" > or "art" mean

Maybe meaningless purely in terms of getting to a concrete answer, but IMO collaboratively grappling with and exploring our intuitive ideas is useful, especially when people have different starting perspectives. E.g. this entire thread.

The world is not math, we can't always build our definitions from axioms. Sometimes analogical reasoning is the most accessible way to explore a concept.

<comment><USER2> > but IMO collaboratively grappling with and exploring our intuitive ideas is > useful

I fully agree.

I'd like to see more discussion about what those terms mean when "is X art/an- artist" questions come up.

I do think, though, that the meaning of those terms is often not discussed -- or perhaps, not honestly discussed, in a way that isn't simply serving people's prior judgement on the question -- at the times those questions come up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> No. Engineers are house builders or railroad workers or car mechanics. Except they have deeper knowledge in their subject often to the point that nobody else can do sonething as well.

There is no "uniqueness" in engineering, there is only a balancing of time, money, reliability, reusability and other purely mathematical concepts. If something is unique then it is often better than alternatives or worse than alternatives. Engineering can be considered a sport much easier that an art.

Art can have seperate equivelents. Like a paintng of a beautiful landscape or a painting depicting pain. Both may have the same price but both are unique. Even two portraits of the same person will be different simply because two individuals did it or how style changes with time.

<comment><USER5> Looking at some code I see beauty, other code causes me pain.

<comment><USER4> That can arguably be attributed to experience and cleanliness.

If you walk into a garage it can be dirty, greasy and disorganized. It can also be labeled, clean and organized. Hardly considered art

<comment><USER6> Code or art?

[http://www.ioccc.org/2013/birken/birken.c](http://www.ioccc.org/2013/birken/birken.c)

<comment><USER4> Ok. Yes its asthetically pleasing. I feel comfortable looking at it. But...

its completely unreasable because all the variable names have been mangled and there is no whire space to organize the blocks. At this point it looks like a puzzle.

If you consider the algorithm an art, I disagree. Algorithms are either more efficient them their predecessors or are efficient for a niche.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This seems to be a recurring question among us "software engineers" in particular. I don't think the people who work on, say, aircraft parts today are much bothered by it.

In the Art World though it's been a raging argument for practically the whole of modernity: who's an artist and who isn't?

Marcel Duchamp proposed that anyone who says they're an artist is an artist, because intent is what makes something art. Likewise anything made as art, is art. (This says nothing about good, bad, or other judgements of the artwork or even the artist.)

Joseph Beuys proposed that every human being is by definition an artist, because the inherent creativity in all human thought and social activity is what makes the difference. He also thought of social systems as inherently artistic -- even your boring old office. Thus the artwork (or brick wall, insurance claim, whatever) can be a more or less interesting artefact but the art itself happens elsewhere.

The Duchampian idea is pretty radical in that it removes authority to confer artist-ness. This is similar in a way to how the software revolution has removed the authority to define an engineer.

The Beuysian idea is of course much more radical, because if you accept it then the question itself becomes nonsense.

I think it's worth noting here that the Art World, as embodied by galleries and museums and professorships and all the trappings of payment and recognition, has mostly come around to Duchamp's point of view about who and what is an artist or art; but demands for itself the power to decide who is a serious artist, and who is a good one. The rich seem to be cool with this; the poor maybe less so.

(I did read TFA/watch TFvideo, and I think the point would be the same but the attention different if Mr. Gallagher had said "poet" instead of "artist.")

</comment><comment><USER8> In college I did a double-major with of Studio Arts and Computer Science. To me engineering (particularly software engineering which is the kind I practice) is a craft, not an art. For something to qualify as art in my mind it must define and serve its own purpose.

Of course anything can be an artistic medium, a lot of the work in the demo scene or from _why I believe qualifies as art, but not the bulk of programming. I say the same thing for graphic design, or wood-working, or even photography.

It's by no means easy to draw this line. It's at the core of the concept of "selling out", and it's fraught on both sides. Many accusations of selling out are due to envy, many defenses of selling out are due to self-justification. Nevertheless, there is a core concept underneath it all that's important: art can derive a lot of meaning from being non-essential and non-utilitarian.

</comment><comment><USER9> Never really got why people debate questions this. It boils down to asking, "what are the definitions of the words 'engineer' and 'artist'?". And being that words are hopelessly overloaded, it's impossible to answer such questions without saying "Yes, if by 'engineer' you mean....".

The question to ask oneself is, what would be observably different about the world if engineers are artists, vs. if they aren't? Are we asking whether engineers should be eligible for the Turner Prize? Whether colleges should put an engineering professor on the Arts faculty? Or if there's no particular observable difference, then why not pick any old answer that pleases you?

</comment><comment><USER10> Is code art? Well certainly I've seen some good-looking, clever code before, but do my class names inspire the next engineer to change their lives? Probably not.

I think that's where these discussions really fall apart. Sure algorithms or equations or schematics could be very artistic. What "art" is is highly subjective, but you should never forget that art often inspires people and leads them to new places. Its not the only lens to view art, certainly, but its one I like to pull out when these discussions happen. After all, if we call everything art, then nothing is art.

</comment><comment><USER11> By itself, I would say engineering is not art. The tools of the engineering discipline can be used to create art, though. Video games, interactive displays, generative media, etc.--as outputs rather than processes--can definitely qualify as artistic in nature.

Using engineering skills and tools for artistic purpose is one of my biggest hobbies.

\- [http://lasers.io](http://lasers.io)

\- [http://jungle.horse](http://jungle.horse)

Please don't hammer the latter one too hard. It's Rust, but not load tested (also on a shared sever). I'm also working on an improved speech algorithm that I hope to finish this weekend. So yeah, please don't kill it or share beyond HN. (Comments and criticism welcome.)

</comment><comment><USER12> Is a barista who adds a clever design to the foam of your coffee an artist?

For most engineers, I think the answer is "no": we focus on functionality and efficiency and while some of that may go towards the happiness of the end- user, what we build is generally not consumed directly by that end-user but rather the byproduct.

But...there are cases where you observe a mechanism or piece of code that is not only efficient but _beautiful_ in its simplicity. Perhaps laymen don't appreciate it, but fellow engineers can.

I think that in such cases where the creator goes beyond "good enough" and makes an effort to elevate their creation to a point where peers can point to it and go "Yes! _That_ is how to do it!", engineering can be art.

<comment><USER4> The barista is in this case since she is allowed and chooses to add a personal touch. By not adding the personal touch its also a form of expression. Either way, the personal touch will have a direct effect on the enjoyability of the coffee.

Personal touches in programming are rare and often bad. Going past "good enough" is rarely considered art as its done for code cleanliness or efficiency.

I would never hire a programmer for funny comments. I might hire a battista for her art

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> An artist is a person who presents something by putting a frame around it. Not necessarily a literal frame, either. A definition so broad as to be applicable almost anywhere. So broad that is risks being all but meaningless.

But I think we can agree that an engineer has different goals than an artist even in the broadest definition of both.

An engineer is someone who uses well understood solutions and techniques to solving problems that involve the physical world. This is distinct from science, which tries to discover new ways to solve problems or learn new things about the physical world. Often you need to use engineering to do science. So often that the scientists spend a lot of time _waiting around for the engineers to move them along._ (See: LHC).

</comment><comment><USER14> Some engineers are artists, just as some members of any profession are artists. Those who are have a unique ability to use their craft to create something that goes beyond utility to touch people on an emotional level.

The vast majority of engineers, however, are definitely not artists.

</comment><comment><USER15> "Wilson seems to have thought the engineers of this accelerator, and the scientists using it to study nature, were like—or as important as—artists."

This implies, to me, that the author seems to have an almost-classist regard for artists (however he may define the term.) We certainly need visionaries in a variety of disciplines. Encouraging visionaries is one thing that "makes [our country] worth defending." Why unnecessarily burden visionaries with pigeonholes not of their choosing? Certainly enlighten them as to their available paths, their strengths ... but please don't discourage someone from being a visionary engineer by declaring that they'll never be as 'important' as an artist.

</comment><comment><USER16> Often art requires engineering (sculpture especially, but some computer games are essentially literary or art projects).

Should engineering require art? Maybe our built environment would be pleasanter if more of it did.

<comment><USER7> I like that idea.

As you probably know, in the art world there's a nontrivial business of fabricators. Consider a giant lamp-bear[0]. That's pretty hard to build: it has to not fall over and kill the students, it has to survive the winter, it has to be transportable from wherever you build it.

There's a whole cottage industry that just does things like that. (Not all of them large of course.)

Wouldn't it be cool if engineering projects called in a team of artists? Probably the closest anyone's come to that is having murals on public buildings.

[0]: [https://www.brown.edu/about/public- art/Fischer](https://www.brown.edu/about/public-art/Fischer)

<comment><USER17> Groups developing systems that interface with humans bring in artists (by various titles) all the time. In the programming world these are our UI/UX designers. In aircraft, it's the person or persons deciding on how the passenger cabin should look and feel. Same for other vehicles. For buildings, it may be the architect, but more likely a team working with them.

<comment><USER7> Yes but doesn't this just bring us back to the "are engineers artists" question?

UI/UX designers are not "artists" by conventional definition, and architects are in such a special zone of "engineering-plus" that some of us end up called Software Architects.

In other words: his exceptional aesthetic sense doesn't make Jony Ive an Artist except in a let's-decide-what-an-artist-is discussion. Which this is, of course. :-)

<comment><USER17> I was responding to your question here:

      Wouldn't it be cool if engineering projects called in a team of artists?

By saying it does happen. Could it happen more, sure, but it does happen quite often, and for more than just murals.

Regarding the general debate here of engineer vs artist, I gave up on it. We have to first agree on what is meant by "art". By some definitions, engineering is very clearly art. By others, it's very clearly not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> of course not, we make money.

<comment><USER6> This is the most compelling argument I've read in the whole thread as to why engineers are not artists

<comment><USER2> is someone disqualified if they make money?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> They are orthogonal. By definition art is useless. A 5km hanging bridge is a engineering wonder - link the right places on the earth it is economic engine of tremendous growth. Put it in the middle of the gobi desert - it is an art installation while still keeping the engineering wonder status.

</comment><comment><USER20> Is writing copy for the editorial page of a newspaper art? Seems to me a lot of the language that goes into programming serves more of a functional purpose vs. an aesthetic/artistic purpose.

I liked what dasil003 brought up about the demo scene; I agree with that sentiment.

</comment><comment><USER21> "It has nothing to do directly with defending our country _except to help make it worth defending_ "

That italic part added by the author changed the context in a very meaningful way. Before realizing that was added by author I became more inteeested in that conversation.

Such a wise and thought provoking addition to an otherwise disappointing conversation.

<comment><USER22> > That italic part added by the author changed the context in a very > meaningful way.

"Italics mine" means that the current author (in this case, Brian Gallagher) italicized a portion of the passage to emphasize it, it doesn't meant that they wrote the italicized text. That's still part of Robert Wilson's quote, he actually said that.

<comment><USER21> Oh great. In this case Im back at searching the rest of the conversation.

Thanks for the explanation.

<comment><USER22> No problem :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Engineering and Art are siblings on the path of knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER24> No, of course not. Anybody who thinks this probably misunderstands craft and art.

<comment><USER6> Really, because I feel like "craft" and "art" are highly subjective terms. How is the iterative process of creating perfect code any different from the iterative process of sculpting the perfect sculpture?

Haven't you ever looked at a code or software project and gotten that distinct feeling of awe that arises in you when you realize you are looking at something high quality, something that required real craftsmanship to make? That is art.

It most recently happened to me when I discovered Vue.js. As a diehard angular user, Vue was just so clean, so simple, so beautiful - a breath of fresh air in a warzone of competing monolithic javascript frameworks.

<comment><USER25> That's amazing craftmanship you're admiring.

Art has no function. Craft has function.

<comment><USER26> The primary function of art (it may have others, but this function is what defines it _as_ art) is to create a response in the person experiencing it; it is not without function.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> No, because we get money. Also artists spawn less fundamentalism terror and mostly work with there suboconcious.</comment>


Tell HN: Careful When Trying Google's Advanced Protection Program - <AUTHOR> I was looking at the Advanced Protection Program and apparently activated it but I didn't have the required security keys, so it wasn't fully active. However, this deactivated my existing 2FA on the account which seems like it really shouldn't happen until my APP enrollment was completed. <comment><USER2> Sounds like you followed steps wrong? What do you mean by 'didnt have the required security keys'?

I'm sorry but this is like saying I wiped my computer but didnt have backups so my data is gone.

<comment><USER3> That's how it works - you can enable advanced protection without actually having the keys set up yet. It is then automatically disabled (along with 2FA) 14 days later if you don't register the keys within the timeframe.

I agree that this sounds a bit backwards and easy to mess up, but I guess in an emergency situation it would be useful to protect your account while the U2F keys are still in the mail.

See Troy Hunt's recent article about this: [https://www.troyhunt.com/beyond- passwords-2fa-u2f-and-google...](https://www.troyhunt.com/beyond- passwords-2fa-u2f-and-google-advanced-protection/)

The key bit from the article related to OP's post is:

> Clicking the "enrol" button, it's now on (and I also get an email confirming > this), but the keys themselves have yet to be enrolled

<comment><AUTHOR> My existing 2FA was disabled _immediately_ not 14 days later.</comment></comment></comment>


Singapore's Big Brother fights against coronavirus - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/singapore-coronavirus-big-brother-bd7cec2b-eb47-4b49-a337-f4f4ecff57f2.html <comment><USER2> This capability is compelling from a public-health standpoint but has serious privacy implications. It looks like every phone shares a unique id, but encrypts it in a frequently rotating way, using a public key provided by a government authority.

This raises a few questions for me: \- Is an entirely decentralized solution to this problem possible? \- Aside from placing trust in the government, are the privacy protections adequate?</comment>


Some WeWork Staff Planned Their Lives Around a Stock Deal That Just Collapsed - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-03/some-wework-staff-planned-their-lives-around-a-stock-deal-that-just-collapsed <comment><USER2> I would feel worse for these people, but there's a lot of small business people who have worked a lot harder and a lot more years than WeWork staff whose formerly viable businesses are going to get nuked by all of this.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you own stock that you can't sell, you probably should value it accordingly.

</comment><comment><USER4> Adam Neumann walked away with a _huge_ pile of cash. Instead of whining about SoftBank, WeWork employees should direct their anger at Neumann and go after him for a share of his fortune.

<comment><USER3> SoftBank made their offers and backed away and played no small part in that pile of cash.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> don't count your eggs before they hatch.</comment>


Tiki Hangover: Unearthing the False Idols of America's South Seas Fantasy - <AUTHOR> http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/tiki-hangover/

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting excerpt:

Kirsten: Yeah, I think it's so interesting how the hippie children looked down on previous generations that grew up between the World Wars, even though the fantasies of those previous generations also had elements of proto-hippie culture. Both the pre-Tiki and the Tiki generations had this fantasy of free love and living the leisure life. Their children made it much more a reality, yet they didn't realize that their parents had the same kind of dreams.

The bohemian aspect, in terms of style and decor, was clearly part of the beachcomber look—the guy in tattered clothes who built his shack from found objects and natural materials like bamboo and driftwood. It became this escapist thing for urbanites to go to these places and feel bohemian for a while. If you look at 1930s photos of restaurants like Trader Vic's in Oakland or Don the Beachcomber in Los Angeles, these places were full of jetsam and flotsam that didn't exist in the normal, mid-century home at the time.

</comment><comment><USER2> I never realized that this had such a deep history. I thought it was just an aesthetic cribbed from island cultures. I did not know there was such a concept as "Tiki Lifestyle", and how it originated as a counterculture in America. Very interesting.

</comment><comment><USER3> The Tahitian Village subdivision in Bastrop(!), TX.

[http://www.tahitianvillage.com/index.html](http://www.tahitianvillage.com/index.html)

Admittedly, the only real remainder of the Tiki lifestyle are street names and the styling of the HOA building.</comment>


Ask HN: managing subdomains cookbook - <AUTHOR>

We have seen webapps like weebly/syanthasite. They allow you to create the webpages and assign you subdomain Lets say http://morbidkk.weebly.com If you buy your domain they modify DNS settings to point to your pages on its host. As a example http://www.morbidkk.com fetches contents from http://morbidkk.weebly.com
If I have webapp which allows people let design and deploy their travelogue websites; how subdomains are assigned and even new domain redirect(CNAME/redirect) happens. I need to understand this automation.
Lot of people here might have already done this and can laugh out over this question.I am looking for smart way to do this.
Any pointers? <comment><USER2> Pointer: google for subdomain rewrite

If you are using apache, and mod_rewrite, you can set up rewrite rules for subdomains.

<http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum92/4640.htm> suggests rewrite rules to redirect a subdomain to a page/app on the main domain.

Then, use a domain wild card to point everything to your main www.example.com host (create an A record (HOST) to point * to your IP address).

Now, all example.com subdomains (hosts) will go to the A record IP address, which will be redirected to the program/pages/urls you expect.

Next, have the customer modify their DNS to point to your IP address. If you want, you can do the request yourself to their current ISP, to update the domain's DNS, if they're keeping their email with the ISP. If they don't, and you're controlling their email, too, go with Google's hosted email.

Now, this unknown domain is coming to your IP address. If you're using apache, set up the domain to go to the redirected domain. Easy way to do that is to set up a server alias, or have a virtual host that answers for everything:

<VirtualHost *:80> </VirtualHost>

One way to do it, at least.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wildcard DNS entry. Create an entry for *.example.com that points to your service and let the code figure it out.

<comment><AUTHOR> I checked your site. My friend is looking something like yours for Chess tournaments.

Now back to my question. how about user's own domain?

Do they need to set it up or it can be configured on our end?

Google creates such entries if you register a domain through their google app account. How can that be done?

<comment><USER3> We have a table with custom domains in it, so when a request comes in, we check that table first, then the subdomains.

We're currently setting up DNS manually because we don't have that many people using their own domains, but we could easily automate it if it ever became burdensome. We give users the choice to let us host their DNS (and then help them update the nameservers on the domain) or just tell them what IP they need to point their domain to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Are you asking how <http://www.morbidkk.com> points to <http://morbidkk.weebly.com> ?

There are a couple of ways you can achieve this,

I use CNAMEs, this would be done by someone who controls the source domain's DNS, morbidkk.com in the above case.

The other way is to create a direct DNS A record which is not so flexible and probably not possible in this specific scenario since we are talking sub- domains, which are typically created as vhosts.

I actually don't understand your travelogue websites question?? Can you please elaborate?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have done it. That is not my question. Lets say I have a webapp travelR.com and you create your pages senthil.travelR.com and you also buy domain senthil.com.

How can I automate senthil.com 's pointing to senthil.travelR.com programatically.

Earlier answer mentioning myDNS helps. up voted

<comment><USER5> There's two parts to the question.

1\. How does senthil.com get to my server 2\. How does my server know what to do with senthil.com

1\. Can only be done by the domain owner. You need to instruct them to either: a) Point the domain to your nameservers (in which case you'll need to configure a DNS server, in this case the myDNS suggestion is a good one). or

b) Have the domain owner setup an A record, pointing to our servers IP address (I assume you already have a dedicated IP - you'll need one).

Question 2, how does your server know what to do with it's traffic?

Well HTTP includes a HOST Header, which represent the hostname the user types into their URL bar.

You'll need to look for this, and direct them to the appropriate mini-site.

One way, as someone pointed out, is using Apache. So, you could either write out apache conf files and trigger reloads, or write some code in your app that looks at this header.

Hope this helps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [http://www.intridea.com/2008/6/23/subdomainfu-a-new-way- to-t...](http://www.intridea.com/2008/6/23/subdomainfu-a-new-way-to-tame-the- subdomain)

</comment><comment><USER7> have not run not such a site myself, so take this with a grain of salt. I assume that most use a database-backed DNS server like MyDNS, so adding/removing/etc subdomains is a simple db call.

</comment><comment><USER8> Your examples lend themselves to confusing answers, so I am changing the examples to use my own examples, which are of course totally clear and correct.

Here's how the record in your zone file should look:

foo IN CNAME lalala.bigpipe.com.

The above (from foo all the way to .com.) should all be on one line. Note the . at the end is required.

Now let's say this is the zone file on your web site, googoogaga.com. Now after this record takes effect, people can point to:

<http://foo.googoogaga.com/>

and they will get files from lalala.bigpipe.com, but their browser address bar will continue to show them foo.googoogaga.com. Nice, huh?

You do not need to have access to the zone file on bigpipe.com; you only need to have access to put your content files you are serving onto lalala.bigpipe.com. Well, that is, unless you are using their content files.</comment>


A review of the new Raspberry Pi B+ - <AUTHOR> http://www.linuxvoice.com/raspberry-pi-model-b/

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here. I've got the new hardware on my desk, so let me know if you've got any questions about it.

<comment><USER2> A bit late, but I'd love to know about the ethernet port - is it still connected via usb? Can you max it out?

Great site by the way.</comment></comment>