Theorems Are Forever: A Great One From 1492  - <AUTHOR> http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/theorems-are-forever-a-great-one-from-1492/ <comment><USER2> The title is wrong; this result is from 1942, not 1492.

<comment><AUTHOR> Correct. A later edit to the article didn't change the title but did add the edit _Make that 1942_ in blue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> (This is off-topic) The wp theme (Vigilance) used on this site fits exceptionally well with this type of content and makes the article very accessible and easy to read. The tex expressions graciously complement the 'georgia' font and give the page a high-quality textbook feel.

Well done Professor.

You've made your site a natural extension of your craft and produced a nice platform for CS instruction. Not easy.

Any truth to the rumor that the default font for all browsers at GT is 'georgia?'</comment>


The talented Mr Green: How FWD.us lost the tech moral high ground - <AUTHOR> http://pandodaily.com/2013/05/29/the-talented-mr-green-how-fwd-us-lost-new-york-elon-musk-and-the-tech-moral-high-ground/

<comment><USER2> FWD.us is about depressing wages and playing domestic labor against foreign sources, while treating H1-B employees like indentured servants. I'd rather compete on actual merits than the artificial ecology created by the H1-B system.

We already have O and L1 visas, but apparently those limited requirements are too much. I used to wonder about getting contacted by a recruiter wanting to know if I was interested in a 2 month contract on the other side of the country for peanuts when I obviously have a history and apparent preference for FTE. Then I wised up.

<comment><USER3> It's clear that a limiting factor on the growth of Silicon Valley is the availability of high-skill laborers. The labor shortage out here is insane. There are no unemployed competent computer programmers, and few unemployed _incompetent_ programmers. Those that have jobs receive new job offers _daily_. On the flip side, founders find it very hard to stand out amidst the deluge of job offers to attract workers to their companies.

More high-skill immigrants would probably lead to more available jobs for natives, as more companies could find the labor they need to grow.

A low-skill immigration increase isn't necessary, and may hurt the Americans without a college degree who are already suffering in this economy from high levels of unemployment. But it is likely the only way to get Democrats on board for high-skill immigration reform.

<comment><USER4> Skilled programmers being in demand and having options for employment for them sounds like a feature not a bug to me.

What is wrong with the guy who has spent years of his life honing is craft demanding a fat salary?

Programming seems to be one of the few professions where a junior employee is expected to turn up and be productive from day 1.

If the programmers available don't have the skills you need, invest in training them or mentoring them. Offer attractive wages and get applications from all over the country. Talk to the colleges about your requirements and see if they can work that into the curricular.

That eats into profits? Good, give the money to people with a higher propensity to consume and spread that love around.

<comment><USER3> It is to the point that companies with fat piles of money can't grow, because they can't find competent people to give the money to. Yes, they do send out linkedin emails and take recruiting trips all over the country.

<comment><USER5> Sure they could, they just need to give out more money than they are willing to.

There are some exceptions to this like a few people Google has famously granted money hats to (but even they were more on the management side than pure engineers), but start busting through the glass ceiling that sits at around $160k or so for experienced engineers and see if you can't hire some.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If I were Elon Musk, I'd abandon FWD.us too. Lots of people buy Tesla vehicles for environmental reasons, so funding ads touting policies that are perceived to be harmful to the environment would be a bad idea.

That doesn't mean the strategy is a bad one for FWD.us. Mark Begich will never oppose ANWR drilling. Lindsay Graham will never oppose the Keystone pipeline. The ads only serve as good PR for them to counter the bad PR they'll likely get for immigration reform.

The article cites Josh Miller's editorial that criticizes FWD.us. Here's another quote:

 _"...given that Mark Zuckerberg and the other technology pioneers who are behind FWD.us have risen to prominence by spearheading disruptive innovations, reverting to such traditional lobbying tactics seems like a missed opportunity for meaningful change. Technology companies live and die by how innovative their products are, our organizing and lobbying tactics should be no different."_

How is that not textbook naivete? It's not a logically sound argument at all.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm pretty sure that _skilled_ immigration is a net positive for the economy (even below-median coder H1B, as opposed to the many awesome H1B working at top companies).

But it seems a tautology that increasing skilled immigration quotas will depress my salary. If quotas are decreased, then the spots will be filled with only the best immigrants.

That said, most of my favorite technical peers are foreigners. So my ideal, selfish scenario would be for my company to have the ability to easily bring in H1B or similar, while our competitors can't :)

Minimum wage immigrant labor, on the other hand, absolutely must not lead to full welfare-state benefits (if I've not been mislead about the lifetime cost of Medicare), or the U.S. will be impoverished in the long haul.

It's unfortunate that the lobby for increasing H1B spots (which is probably a net positive for the whole U.S., in spite of my selfish doubts listed above) is politically allied with increasing unskilled immigration.

<comment><USER8> You are wrong. Data shows that hard working unskilled immigrants are net payers into the social system. And they are a big positive to the economy overall. America became the world's superpower on the back of unskilled immigrants.

<comment><USER3> It's not necessarily pubic programs that are the problem. Unemployment among low-skill workers is still high[1]. I don't see how increasing competition for unskilled jobs is good for those already struggling workers suffering from a low-skill labor glut. And intuitively I'd expect high-skilled workers to generate more complementary jobs than low-skilled ones.

Today's economy and the economy in 1920 or even 1960 don't much resemble each other. For starters, the costs of labor regulation and employer mandates sets a pretty high price floor on labor. That creates a much more difficult market for workers with relatively low marginal productivity to find work.

Also, the population has a far more top-heavy age distribution than it used to have. This country is going to need a _very_ productive labor force to maintain the welfare state at anything close to the current tax levels.

[1] <http://c4.nrostatic.com/sites/default/files/YL%20chart.jpg>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Slightly tangential, but, holy shit, that's not a blog post, that's gold.

I have to wonder though about the ROI. That's a hell of an article and could easily be in the New Yorker or Rolling Stone. Even if it gets 1M hits, it's unlikely that the ad revenue will be anything like what Rolling Stone gets, right?

If you had content that was this good, what would be your monetization strategy?

</comment><comment><USER10> Salon's take on billionaire lobbying : <http://www.salon.com/2013/05/16/billionaires_partner/>

"In April, Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg unveiled FWD.us, a quasi-dark- money outfit created to give Silicon Valley a greater political presence in Washington. It has already raised $25 million."

Sailor's take : [http://isteve.blogspot.com/2013/05/mark-zuckerbergs-save- bil...](http://isteve.blogspot.com/2013/05/mark-zuckerbergs-save-billionaires- fund.html)

"I mean, if America's tech billionaires and mere centimillionaires (hectomillionaires?) can't lower programmers' salaries immediately, what possible economic incentive will they have to continue to be rich? It's Econ 101, people!"

</comment><comment><USER11> The article title's reference to _The Talented Mr. Ripley_ is strangely apt, having read the plot summary.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Talented_Mr._Ripley>

</comment><comment><USER3> Most of the bad press seems to be FUD against Keystone XL which works because of the rich California liberals who don't care much about energy prices. Is the lesson that no Silicon Valley PAC can ever come close to a conservative cause?

<comment><USER12> I think the lesson is that, while you can have a bipartisan lobbying outfit, a bipartisan lobbying outfit that sweetens some of its membership with partisan campaigning against the views other members is going to land itself in trouble.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Commute List – Share your best commute routes to avoid traffic jams - <AUTHOR> https://commutelist.com <comment><USER2> Or just take the privacy hit and use Google maps. You'll get up to date traffic info. Spookily accurate in my experience.

</comment><comment><USER3> You avoid traffic jams if you know some good commute routes _and keep them to yourself_.</comment>


Rails won - <AUTHOR> http://withoutane.com/rants/2009/03/rails-won <comment><USER3> The title will get votes, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of content in it. "Rails won". OK, why? What's good about it?

I wish the author at least postulated some reasons why Rails became popular:

* It launched before the other web frameworks of its nature (in fact, many were inspired by it).

* It hit API stability many years before Django did.

* It's a lot more flexible than most PHP frameworks.

* Ruby makes pretty, domain-specific languages easy.

* Rails, while allowing you to override defaults, doesn't ask you if you don't care.

* The features have kept coming in Rails with regular releases increasing its value. Many of the additions have come from real-world, high-value projects. That can't be said for many frameworks which were built as "we can make Rails in (Java|PHP|Python|etc.)".

Rails has hit a tipping point, but the interesting question is why. The author hasn't put anything forward there. In fact, the author has some downright weird statements. He can't find anything bad to say about Django? Rails just plain sucks? Yet Rails wins? Even some of the things he mentions - such as coupling data objects to the database - are done in Django (and most of these style frameworks) in a similar fashion. So, that sucks in Rails and doesn't in Django. Hmm.

It's a great attempt to create one of those articles people love to read that say, "this sucks, but it's still what you should be doing because it doesn't matter that it sucks".

<comment><USER4> I think the article reads much differently if you picture the author saying, "Rails won in this particular instance, for me/us." Perhaps that is not what the author intended, but that is how I read it. It's much less polarizing that way.

I do agree that it lacks substance.

<comment><USER5> I don't agree that it lacks substance, the conclusion, and also the conclusion that I have made according to rails is that it's "good enough" for almost any web project. It's safe to have it as a default choice. There's a good community, fantastic libraries, constant innovation, and people are really happy developing with it.

The notion that there's nothing wrong in choosing rails -- is now acceptable mainstream. Even the hard ass Java developers at my work can acknowedge that yes, it speeds up development to use a field tested full-stack framework instead of rolling your own framework for every project. (Only recently did we come to a truce, and now I can refrain for a while to try to push even wackier frameworks on them like some Clojure based ones, because Rails is good enough for me )

<comment><USER4> For the record, you're preaching to the choir. I'm a Ruby/Rails developer, and I'm quite happy about it.

I was only intending to comment that titling an article "Rails won" without qualification, or without clearly making a decisive argument, lacks substance, in my opinion. It's an anecdotal piece with which I sympathize, but that perhaps would have been better titled "Rails won again", which would elicit thoughts of Rails being chosen over other frameworks (and CMSs, in this case) in a particular project, as opposed to Rails winning some epic arms race.

I probably just should've kept the last line of that last comment to myself. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "> Rails is something people either love or hate with a passion

I'm just one data point, but I'm not particularly passionate about any particular framework."

I am not a passionate hater of Rails, but I have a mild distaste for it and prefer to use Django unless there is a compelling reason to go with Rails.

In the early days deploying Rails was a complicated process (I hear things are better now) and that certainly contributed to my turning away from it, but the deeper influence on me were the people who were evangelizing it to me.

I was working at ThoughtWorks at the time and I noticed that the people who were all ga ga about Rails (and later JRuby) were people who didn't have much technical "street smarts" and spent their careers riding the latest bandwagon and overselling its benefits.

The people I really admired were much more cautious and skeptical and rigorously logical and measurement centric.

I am not sure I am expressing this well, but the local rails _community_ turned me off it. The Django folks seemed much less fanboi - ish and more focussed on quietly getting stuff done.

On the one hand it doesn't make sense to abandon a piece of technology because it has an immature cultish community (or at least it felt like that to me. The _ruby_ community always seemed better to me than the rails community), but on the other hand, other things being equal, life is too short to spend with people you think aren't thinking straight.

These days I just use Django and am happy with my choice. Of course this is all very subjective and doesn't reflect on Rails technically. I am just reacting to "hate with a passion". I don't hate rails, but I would rather not work with it if possible.

<comment><USER7> "> I was working at ThoughtWorks at the time and I noticed that the people who were all ga ga about Rails (and later JRuby) were people who didn't have much technical "street smarts" and spent their careers riding the latest bandwagon and overselling its benefits."

">I am not sure I am expressing this well, but the local rails community turned me off it."

You expressed it quite well.

I want to say, however, that was a pretty exciting time for many developers who were stuck in the painful jobs with PHP or Java. At that time two of the companies I worked for willfully jettisoned years of infrastructure in PHP based off the work some of the younger devs (including me) had snuck in with Rails (and Ruby). And it was quality, fast work.

If you had experience with Rails, you could stick out your thumb and get a fast train from the midwest to the Valley and get paid crazy money, too, because for some reason the business guys _needed_ rails developers. The Rails conferences were a mix of pragmatic old school rubyists but also, many, many, young and talented devs, arrogant and quirky in the way young people are. Also there was a lot of free booze.

Of course, at the end of the day, we were all just software developers rallying around an slow language and imperfect framework, but it seemed like a lot of fun. I met some great people and worked hard and ended up the better for it.

<comment><USER8> > for some reason the business guys _needed_ rails developers

Not anymore?

<comment><USER9> Tough Economic Times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _"I finally gave up trying to get ruby talking to MySQL on my home windows box and just moved everything over to linux"_

I'm not a Windows fan by any stretch, but it seems like people put up with a lot of shit to use Rails; why would you choose a web framework which requires you to change your operating system? That's asinine. It seems these days when people say bugs and shortcomings "don't matter" they really mean "I haven't run into a situation where they've screwed me over yet or if I have I just let the framework win". It's a web framework, people; it should make easy/moderate things easier, not make hard things any harder, and get the hell out of your way. It should not make you change your life to use it.

<comment><USER11> _why would you choose a web framework which requires you to change your operating system? That's asinine._

Your desktop operating system != your server operating system.

There are no "windows web frameworks" and that's not a coincidence. If you're serious about bringing something online then your first step should be to learn the proper tools anyways.

Insisting on a windows-platform only because that happens to be your preferred desktop OS, now _that_ would be asinine.

<comment><USER10> There are no "linux web frameworks" either, aside from Rails I guess, because I don't know of any currently popular language other than Ruby that doesn't really work on Windows.

<comment><USER11> Most frameworks are obviously not bound to a particular OS but almost all of them are developed on a Unix and more or less assume a POSIX platform.

Yes, many do have a section in the docs for "Installation under windows" but that's normally intended for a development environment, at most and comes with many little strings attached such as "not tested on windows"-markers in the docs and raised eyebrows on the mailing list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think there is one clear field that Rails own: attracting the most of douchebags to its community.

True story: In a bar (John Collins)i n SF, few weeks ago, end up striking a conversation with somebody in a bathroom line.

Him: what do you do for work?

Me: I am an engineer. Software engineer.

Him: A Java guy!?! (with a lot of smugginess).

.... right now i am wondering if i have java printed on my front of something. wtf.

Me: umm... no. Java is only one of the languages I know. (I use it most in mobile dev). I also work on python and lua on the server side, and come C too. And you? (i was still surprised by his condescending tone).

Him: I am rails dev! Ruby on Rails (with even more smugginess, borderlining on arrogance).

.... few questions later, i realized this guy was a crock. Didn't know much about closures/blocks, how many databases can you use on rails at a time... etc.

imagine working with people like that. They setup rails, get a simple app going, and they feel they are in top of the world and better then you. If you know java, you are automatically assumed to be be an idiot, and if you don't use rails you must be a boring person.

I think the Rails Community is full of people that suffer from the Dunning- Kruger effect. A lot of newbies, who migrated from php, or would have started with php few years ago, have migrated to Ror.

My point is that Rails is just another framework in top of an scripting language which I don't prefer that much. While really nice for basic CRUD apps, as soon as you try to do anything advanced, it shows it's limitations right away. I tried to use Rails, but I have never been attracted to Ruby as primary language.

Then I started using django, but I dropped it soon after my dislike with the way meshes forms and models, and the sheer size of the framework.

I think the lesson I got out of it, is that more than often you just don't need a full blown framework. If you are doing anything highly specialized, a framework will get into your way. If you are doing anything very simple, a full blown framework is just an overkill.

Frameworks like Rails or Django are a perfect fit for most medium complexity type of CRUD apps. If you are doing anything else, better start looking somewhere else, and don't just buy the hype.

<comment><USER13> It is erroneous to judge the entire Rails community based on your experience with one person.

I used to have much of the same beliefs as you about Rails; Rails is not fit for highly specialized applications, a framework is overkill for very simple projects. It is only after I got further involved in understanding Rails that I understood that the framework is flexible enough to fit complex, simple and specialized apps alike. I challenge you to give me an example of a web application which is too advanced for RoR.

<comment><USER12> Sure: Example one: I have friends that works in one of the major social sites (not saying the name), and they tried ruby on rail, but failed to scale with it, both feature wise (modilarity), and sheer performance.

They tested side by side, and they had to add almost x2 the amount of servers for the same funcionality.

The mantra of Ror, is computers are cheap, developers/getting into marked is more important. When you are serving millions of users, that mantra quickly becomes expensive and hard to maintain.

They tried this in 2007, and still use ROR in limited capabilities (for some tools).

Example two: Encoding video for potentially hundreds type of formats, for thousands of users at the same time. This is on demand video serving to customers where they have to scale in a two dimensional way (both users, and video formats). Even not trendy among many people in here, Java has one of the best and most advanced multi threading capabilities out there, especially with Java 6. So, they stuck with java for this part of functionality, and actually using Ror only for the wap front end.

Example 3: Any custom search engine, api engine, anything that doesn't fit the CRUD mantra.

Sure you can modify Rails and get it to work for all the above examples, but it will be probably a poor fit for it. A different technology/framework, or just build your own web app without a full blown framework are better choices.

I hate it, when many people equate Web Apps with CRUD Apps, which I think it is a mistake.

<comment><USER14> We built a video transcoding platform in Rails - <http://zencoder.tv> and <http://flixcloud.com>. Of course, it would be stupid for us to try to actually do the encoding in Rails. That's what C is for. But Rails makes a nice lightweight queueing/management platform that can work alongside of other tools.

Each of your examples is a place where Rails isn't appropriate. But each example should be a multi-tier architecture, and Rails can happily cover one or more tier in each case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "of course they picked the most bone-headed, moronic conventions imaginable, like coupling data objects to the database"

Because creating every onject twice, once in the logicm, once in the DB, would be clever?

<comment><USER16> I don't get your point. In one case, the data object get's created from the description in the database, in the other case the database schema get's created from the description in the data object. Seems to me both times the same amount of creation is going on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I love Rails!

I have been programming my whole life - more than 20 years. Rails is the most amazing framework to work with. You can do nearly anything with it - <USER2> pretty quickly. And you can get a LOT done in just a few hours of work!

Besides all of this, though, Rails is what got me to learn and truly appreciate Ruby. And Rails would be nothing without Ruby. Rails is fantastic, but Sinatra, Merb, etc., are other options that I am exploring more and more depending on the needs of my project.

</comment><comment><USER18> As much as I appreciate the momentum behind Rails, I cannot stop reminding me that if I go with the herd and do whatever most people are doing I will have to find my competitive advantages in places other than technology.

And I think that would be a huge loss for me.

<comment><USER19> This seems to be a common thread for engineers building webapps.

Its not to say that you're incorrect, but if you're building a webapp that doesn't have huge special needs with regards to performance or some special technology sauce then your technology isn't a competitive advantage.

If you have something that can easily be built in Rails then I have a hard time thinking of a way to get a real competitive advantage working in something else. (On the flip side, Twitter was easily built in Rails and it was very much the wrong tool for them).

In fact working with well known, ubiquitous tools that get the job done well and fast is in itself an advantage. Being able to rev faster and easier then the shop down the block with their super cool custom built web framework that takes people 6 months to learn is an advantage.

Unless your technology IS your product, compete somewhere else.

<comment><USER18> It's not about doing stuff in platform A that can't be done in platform B. It's about delivering things faster than your competition, something that can't be done if you use the very same tools they use. You can, of course, be wrong and go with the wrong tool, but remember - it's a bet on a technology differential.

The Twitter problems stem not from the web framework they used but in flaws in the design of the data structures under it. When doing something like Twitter, one should never even consider using relational databases for more than a prototype.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I must be spending too much time on HN, I thought Rails had "won" since at least a year ago.

</comment><comment><USER21> the author nailed it here, "I noticed that I was actually getting a hell of a lot done in not much time at all."

<comment><USER22> That seems to be the essence of the piece and I'm happy for the author but why did this get posted here?

There's no content to it. He doesn't list the pros and cons, he doesn't really detail his thought process he basically just says "I chose Rails so it Won". It's basically a propaganda piece.

I don't fault the author. As a general "this is what's going on with me" post to an established audience it's fine. But I can't see why it's getting voted up on HN

<comment><USER23> Because rails is so 'hot' right now. Like git/charging customers/cloud/etc

<comment><USER24> I almost choked on my lunch when I read "charging customers" ha awesome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > Rails is something people either love or hate with a passion

I'm just one data point, but I'm not particularly passionate about any particular framework. I have used Django the most, and it gets the job done. Rails is a useful tool as well. I'm the kind of person who will write something in PHP if I need to. I know that there are advantages and disadvantages, but I usually don't worry too much about sticking to one side.

</comment><comment><USER26> "If you're building a business you want something approaching an industry standard, because the more people working on and with a technology, the more developers you have available to hire, and the more tools they have to help them work faster."

If you honestly care about that (which is BS btw) then Drupal, RoRails and Django are non-starters. You have one choice, Java.

Is RoR really all that used/popular (esp outside of startups)? I'm gainfully employed as a Django dev and my industry, news companies(oka newspapers), is dominated by Django. So, I'm probably sample biased. Still, I see lots of Django usage, I see Django jobs, I see Python being much bigger than Ruby.

</comment><comment><USER27> Maybe you haven't noticed it yet, but you're getting a lot done because of those "bone-headed, moronic conventions."

And it doesn't have to be a either/or situation with being a technology leader & using Rails.

It just frees you to focus on better, higher quality problems to solve.

Anyway, welcome to the Rails community.

</comment><comment><USER28> strange posting really ...saying very little and in a confusing way.

there's certainly little value in claiming one tool is better or worse. whatever works for you + each project is so different.

that said -- from a purely personal and subjective point of view -- rails feels to me like playing a beautifully crafted instrument. never had so much fun programming. there's a lot of accrued wisdom in that opinionation ... imho...and is evolving at a very rapid clip.

</comment><comment><USER29> The article sounds like... "Rails has too much momentum, so well go with the hurd."

In my own case were building something framework-like, so Id be fighting the code if I used another framework - its more like systems programming than app programming.

I might have used Ruby but I hear Kernighan & McCarthy turning in their graves whenever I type "end" where a bracket would do the job.

The first hack was in PHP, and now I need some syntax to manage the complexity, and a custom DSL, so...

plt Scheme won, in my case.

<comment><USER30> _I might have used Ruby but I hear Kernighan & McCarthy turning in their graves whenever I type "end" where a bracket would do the job._

Then don't type _end_ , type _}_ instead. Yes, it works.

If you're going to try something and give up before learning syntax, that's great, but trying to speak authoritatively is misleading.

<comment><USER29> Well, I haven't seen a lot of ruby code that uses } instead of end, have you? So using }, although legal, might not be within standard ruby practice.

The fact that it _allows_ 'end' would be enough to turn me off :]

I guess 'end' wasn't the only reason - while I don't actively dislike Ruby, I just prefer scheme or the lisp family. Part of that is the logical consistency of the lisp languages, part of it is purely personal taste.

<comment><USER30> Standard Ruby style is to use { } when the code block is inline or a single liner, and do/end on multi-line blocks. This is only common style though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> _The Railiens make a big fuss about favoring convention over configuration, and of course they picked the most bone-headed, moronic conventions imaginable, like coupling data objects to the database, using pluralized table names_

He's entitled to his opinion, as is DHH. But for my money: why are Rails' conventions "moronic"? What the heck is wrong with coupling data objects to a db?? He'd prefer something more awkward and arcane?

<comment><USER32> Well, the specific example of using pluralised table names works in English, and completely unworks in many many other languages, for a start.

Hell, it doesn't even completely work in English, either. Not all English words are pluralised simply by adding a trailing 's'.

<comment><USER30> Which is why you can add inflections in Rails. It even comes with a reasonable set to cover the most common exceptions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Others that he didn't even mention:

* CakePHP (it's better than CI, Symfony and Zend)

* Catalyst

* ErlyWeb

I think it's particularly surprising that he left Catalyst out with the language's huge mindshare and the productive nature of the framework.

Drupal simply isn't in the same class as these. It's a CMF, not an application framework.</comment>


Qml.Net, a new approach for cross-platform .NET GUI development - <AUTHOR> https://www.pknopf.com/post/2018-08-06-a-new-approach-for-cross-platform-net-gui-development-introducing-qml-net/ <comment><USER2> Author here, I'm happy to answer any questions.

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool project! I'm much more familiar with WPF and Qt Widgets. Is one able to create native looking applications with Qml.Net as an alternative to WPF? I'm currently tied to Windows but would love to be able to support a native look and feel application on Linux and Mac as well.

<comment><USER2> > Is one able to create native looking applications with Qml.Net as an > alternative to WPF?

Yes. Develop once, deploy everywhere.</comment></comment>


Easy Facebook Scripting in Python - <AUTHOR> http://blog.carduner.net/2011/09/06/easy-facebook-scripting-in-python/

<comment><USER2> From the comments

> i would like to work in PHP command line code

Just, just no. PHP has many uses, but the command line isn't one of them.

Also I don't think pulling in a script over HTTP is such a great idea, I know it was done for simplicity but why not tell people to download the script first and save it alongside their main script, then just use an 'import filename'.

Now what _would_ be useful, and could probably justify pulling in a module from remote, is if it kept up with Facebook API changes.

</comment><comment><USER3> This, and previous FB APIs, seem to really be lacking. For a Python API, for instance, you shouldn't be calling generic 'graph' functions and then passing strings to tell it what to do. If you want to do that, you might as well just construct the URL yourself.

Python is powerful for hackers because of introspection. You can pull up a shell and all of the documentation is available with type() and dir() and iPython's tricks. An API that takes actions as strings fails for Python.

<comment><USER4> I completely agree. This micro api client is absolutely not for developing full fledged applications. I've played around with writing some heavier duty clients for other projects I've worked on that have lots of pythonic goodies in addition to more advanced things like automatic request batching and caching, but I'm still not satisfied with them enough to put it out there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love this kind of post. Copy 4 lines of code and you're hacking away. Great job.

</comment><comment><USER6> The way he imports the module is just crazy. Just download the file and import it normally.

<comment><USER4> Every step you add to the process cuts down on the number of people who are willing to try it out. Obviously once you determine whether it's useful to you or not, you can do the right thing and just download the file.

<comment><USER5> Completely agree. The easier it is for someone to cut and paste your code to try it out, the quicker folks will start building on top of it and drive adoption. Great job.</comment></comment></comment>


Feathers 2.0 – a minimalist real-time JavaScript framework - <AUTHOR> https://blog.feathersjs.com/introducing-feathers-2-0-aae8ae8e7920#.9cpsdv5hu <comment><USER2> > A minimalist real-time framework for tomorrow's apps

> Feathers has adapters for 15+ data sources and 4 different ORMs out of the > box. More than any other real-time framework!

Huh?

<comment><USER3> The trick is that there is no actual definition of minimal, so you can _always_ add it to your list of adjectives and sound more hip as a result. Another good one is "clean".

All my code is bloated and messy, tbh.

<comment><USER4> We try and help you keep it clean. Check out [https://github.com/feathersjs/feathers- chat](https://github.com/feathersjs/feathers-chat) to see what our idea of an app should look like. Obviously, different strokes for different folks, but that's the kind of code we like.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We have used Feathers to build [http://www.zeek.ai/](http://www.zeek.ai/) and have been really happy with it so far. The consistency between the client and server libraries makes developing with Feathers fast.

<comment><USER6> Despite reading that webpage I still have difficulty understanding what the actual product of zeek.ai is. Has it something to do with converting Twitter followers to customers?

<comment><USER7> I think it's automated following and message sending to Twitter users. Maybe...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> How does the realtime work when there are multiple node processes or servers? If my client is connected to server A and an update occurs on server B, will my client get the event on the web socket? If so, how does server A know about the event that occurred on server B?

<comment><AUTHOR> To handle the real-time event syncing we created [https://github.com/feathersjs/feathers- sync](https://github.com/feathersjs/feathers-sync). It uses a central Redis DB or a MongoDB tailable collection to to synchronize service events between different application instances. Another option is to use your websocket libraries' clustering library, for Socket.io for example there is [https://github.com/socketio/socket.io- redis](https://github.com/socketio/socket.io-redis).

This is a very good question. We're definitely planning on adding a section about performance and scaling to the documentation very soon.

<comment><USER4> I'll quickly add to what daffl said. That there is one more manual method outline here ([https://github.com/feathersjs/feathers/issues/265#issuecomme...](https://github.com/feathersjs/feathers/issues/265#issuecomment-197449569)) that doesn't require running another non-feathers server.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I started playing with this recently and so far I'm loving it. Here's a Vue.js component example I wrote that interacts (CRUD operations) with a Feathers message service over websockets: [https://gist.github.com/niallobrien/7eb51d17c977c46babb8](https://gist.github.com/niallobrien/7eb51d17c977c46babb8)

<comment><USER10> Just wondering, how are you using ES2015 imports in the browser? Does Feathers come with a built-in module loader parser, or is this a feature of using Vue, or are you doing some other magic?

<comment><AUTHOR> Feathers doesn't assume much on the client. You can use a module loader or the bundled Feathers client which works right out of the box. To be able to use ES imports in the browser I personally use [http://stealjs.com](http://stealjs.com)

<comment><USER4> Yup and I use Webpack. The beauty is you get to take your pick. The downer is it's not set up for you. Tradeoffs for now...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> From a glance what makes this appealing to me is the fact that there's less magic than with Meteor, which means I can use my own build process, and I can use any compile to js language.

<comment><USER12> +1. One of the main reasons why I'm considering this for future projects is how much easier it is to understand the magic components, support for many more databases out of the box, like MySQL, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Pretty interesting. A little overwhelmed with amount of choices. Also not sure what to think, I will have to do example app and see for myself. It does look very promising. I really like that it builds on the work of others instead of reinventing the wheel.

Also, mentioning Meteor, totally not needed.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for that feedback! What are you finding overwhelming? We're always looking to improve.

<comment><USER13> It is cool that I can use 3 different engines to talk to sql db's, but maybe don't tell me that right away. I think it is more interesting that your architecture is so flexible and maybe show me how simple it is to get started.

<comment><USER4> Sounds good. Really appreciate that feedback. Seriously. I have felt a bit like we are throwing a lot at people at the beginning of the docs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The term "real-time" means that you can guarantee certain timing constraints. It can only work on a substrate (OS) that supports real-time processing. So I am sure that "real-time" is not what this package is offering.

<comment><USER15> Sorry to tell you this but the term now has a different meaning within the web development community.

If that bothers you then regain your composure by remembering that 'computer' once referred the operators of calculating machines - not the machines themselves:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer#Etymology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer#Etymology)

Language changes.

<comment><USER16> The parallel to "computers" does not fit in this case, because that change came to the entire world at the same time, via the same mechanism: computer -> electronic computer -> computer (when human computers became obsolete).

In this case, the existing meaning of "real time" is not obsolete, so the analogy does not work.

\---

Next, just because language inexorably changes over decades, generations, and centuries, does not mean that a subculture deciding to use an existing word in a different way is "The language changing."

It's just a subculture deciding to use a word in a different way. When they go forth and use that word outside of their niche, and there is confusion because they mean one thing and the rest of the world means another, the subculture does not get to shrug and say, "language changes."

When you use words, it is your responsibility to know your audience and use the words your audience understands, in the way that they understand it.

And so it is with technical terms that have established meanings in the computer science and programming community. By all means redefine what "class" or "type" or "realtime" means. Use your definitions within your subculture with abandon. But be aware that when straying outside of your community, it is _your_ responsibility to use terms that your audience understands, not your audience's responsibility to presume that all bets are off, and any word might mean anything.

\---

Finally, I question the tone of "sorry." Perhaps you didn't mean it that way, but it has an air of the arrogance of a pop culture programmer. "We're inventing new stuff here, no time for your old ideas, daddy."

<comment><USER17> Thank you for your response to andybak's childish comment. My sentiments exactly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What jumped out at me was that feathers can be added to an existing express.js application. That says a lot about feathers' modularity and design, definitely easing concerns about lock in or making the wrong choices at the beginning.

</comment><comment><USER19> > exposes both a RESTful and real-time API automatically through HTTP/HTTPS > and over websockets.

Why not both at once with HTML5 SSE?

<comment><USER20> I think SSE has two limitations that might not make it too useful for some scenarios:

\- Each SSE channel would require a separate TCP connection. And as the connections for a browser are limited, you can not support a lot of of different SSE channels. This is mainly a HTTP/1.1 problem, HTTP/2 fixes this. But as browser and server support for HTTP/2 is still limited you might not bet on it.

\- SSE can only send chunks of text in each notification, where the possible payload is additionally limited by the SSE encoding (you can't send text with \n\n in it). So if you need binary or abritrary (JSON?) text objects you would need some additional encoding. Like object -> json string -> byte-array representation -> base64 string. This works, but the overhead for your application (must do the encoding) and the browser (must to all the decoding _and_ look for the \n\n) is not ideal.

I'm currently experimenting with using HTTP/2 and fetch API with readable streams to stream arbitrary objects on a bigger number of parallel channels from server to client. This seems to work and looks quite promising for the future, but due to missing browser and partly also missing server support the solution is definitely in it's infancy.

So the current safe bet for enabling lots of notification channels or enabling realtime queries would still be websockets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I love feathers. Simple and easy to use. The concept of services and hooks is an awesome abstraction that strips out more code than it adds.

I just wish the authentication was a little more robust. I like that they realize stateless auth is the way to go but how about we get rid of those passwords too!

<comment><USER4> Glad you are liking it. Yes auth needs a bit more love. I'm working on it right now actually. It's getting close to a 1.0.

As far as passwords go, I assume you are referring to passwordless auth? We are working on that right now :). [https://github.com/feathersjs/feathers- authentication/issues...](https://github.com/feathersjs/feathers- authentication/issues/7)

<comment><USER21> I just saw! That is awesome. Keep up the great work!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> for those wondering the difference between this and Meteor. Here is the blurb Feather vs Meteor

[http://docs.feathersjs.com/why/vs/meteor.html](http://docs.feathersjs.com/why/vs/meteor.html)

<comment><USER12> The usage of NPM packages without needing to roll my own Meteor NPM bindings for each one is huge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> JWT support is awesome to see and makes transitions or parallel construction with something like Laravel sessions via JWT a possibility.

</comment><comment><USER23> Great Documentation, excited to try things out.

</comment><comment><USER24> Wanted to comment on how inviting the documentation makes this look. I'll give it a whirl.

<comment><USER4> Let us know how you fair and if you run into any issues. The best way is in slack.feathersjs.com.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Does Feathers support SAML authentication? I don't see it in the docs, but I figured I would ask. It says it's built on top of express, and express has SAML support... is it possible to leverage that?

<comment><USER4> We haven't tried it ourselves but Feathers just uses passport for auth underneath so any passport auth strategy will work. For SAML, to make it feel "Feathersy" might take a bit more work (ie. wrapping it up as a Service) but definitely open to creating an issue for it and for PRs. A quick and dirty way is to just use it Express style and call the official Feathers auth services from your own Express routes. Feathers really is just Express, so you can use any Express middleware like [https://github.com/bergie/passport- saml](https://github.com/bergie/passport-saml).

<comment><USER25> Excellent. That was my one barrier to giving it a try. If I make it far enough, I'll definitely send a PR.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Perhaps you could help me...I am currently looking for a framework to work with a Cordova project I've been hired to create.

Is there any reason why this wouldn't work with Cordova?

<comment><USER4> Nope, no reason at all. It will work just fine. Feathers is pure JS and doesn't have any hard external dependencies. On the client, it just handles the data layer and communication with the server.

<comment><USER26> Very good...thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The site is linking to expressjs.org instead of expressjs.com. Is this intentional?

<comment><USER4> Nope. Not intentional. Looks like we had the old URL. Thanks for pointing that out. I've updated the website and the docs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> what does it do?

</comment><comment><USER29> The title (which is not the title of the original article) makes it sound as if Meteor is not open source. Meteor is open source, and MIT-licensed at that.

<comment><USER4> Disclosure, I'm one of the creators of Feathers.

You are right Feathers is MIT and so is Meteor. They both do real-time, albeit a bit differently, so we like to consider Meteor an alternative to Feathers and vice-versa.

We are trying to be as transparent as possible and because we don't currently have any formal support from anyone except for the contributor's time and energy, we rely heavily on the community and need to remain as open as possible.

Personally, I think Meteor has done some amazing stuff and some not so amazing things. I respect a lot of what they have achieved but we are making a different attempt at similar problems. Nothing more to it than that really. We've tried to put up objective comparisons between Feathers and many of the real-time solutions out there [http://docs.feathersjs.com/why/vs/readme.html](http://docs.feathersjs.com/why/vs/readme.html). There is no silver bullet for all situations and all people.

<comment><USER30> Except, claiming you guys are "Real Time" just because you offer a basic websockets implementation and positioning your offering as anything that compares to Meteor is a sham. You don't have real time. You have web sockets that anyone can trivially hook up with NPM. You're undermining Meteor's exhaustive real time functionality when you say that. You are also tricking would-be users who don't know any better. They will show up using your framework, have extremely limited (basically non-existent) real-time functionality, and never know what they would have missed had they looked more into Meteor.

Meteor offers a slew of real time features, propagating real time observation of the database up the stack through your webservers to your views, all functioning seamlessly with feature-packed APIs to query your data and make sure everything is kept up to date.

But I think you know this. Capitalizing on your juxtaposition next to Meteor only makes you look bad to someone that actually uses Meteor. You're trying to convince people who haven't used Meteor--and perhaps don't have much experience when it comes to real time--that Feathers is remotely close of an option if you have real time needs. It's not. And most likely a few months from now you will be using the open source--and decoupled from Meteor-- Reactive GraphQL (Apollo) project they are developing as the basis for your real time functionality. Only at that point will you be able to claim your real time--but that's beside the point.

You've been around for years, and now your framework is just "a few hundred lines of code"?? That's because you're likely taking the marketing value of having been in the game for a few years (though minimal value compared to claiming you come remotely close to competing with Meteor), and using the name "Feathers" to back your latest reincarnation where your mix-n-match a hodgepodge of NPM libraries that anyone can easily do. Sorry you had to throw away a bunch of code--I know how that goes--but call it what it is instead of all this dishonesty: your latest NPM boilerplate. The newer and humbler Meatier boilerplate offers more realtime than you do!: [https://github.com/mattkrick/meatier](https://github.com/mattkrick/meatier) . And its author doesn't attempt to presume it's anything more than a highly useful boilerplate.

THESE GUYS (FEATHERS) HAVE NO REAL-TIME OFFERING, EVERYONE. DON'T BE FOOLED. If Real Time is what you want, these guys are not it. I find The dishonesty of their marketing unappealing and I hope anyone reading this does too. They are capitalizing on the "Meteor" name and its deep association with "real time" functionality, when in fact they are nothing like it.

<comment><USER19> Ouch. Meteor's data syncing is great, but it's not a mandatory part of real time.

That said, from their web site:

> Feathers is completely open source and is community supported, whereas > Meteor, although open source, is venture backed and has raised $31.2 million > to date.

A license is either Open Source (it meets the OSD) or is not. There is no 'completely open source'. I think Meteor's overvalued too, but you're not 'more' OSS than Meteor is.

<comment><USER4> All of the docs are from [https://github.com/feathersjs/feathers- docs](https://github.com/feathersjs/feathers-docs) using the amazing Gitbook. We are totally open to PRs if there is something that is incorrect or could be worded better :-)

<comment><USER19> PR sent. [https://github.com/feathersjs/feathers- docs/pull/74](https://github.com/feathersjs/feathers-docs/pull/74)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why We're Raising the Signature Threshold for We the People - <AUTHOR> http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/01/15/why-we-re-raising-signature-threshold-we-people <comment><USER4> Wow, that infographic is misleading.

<http://cl.ly/image/2n1H2Q0z1919>

They quote that "162 responses" number right after saying "petitions must receive 100k signatures", when none of those responded to had to have received 100k signatures.

Additionally, 2.1 million signatures (responded to) divided by 162 petitions (responded to) is an average of 12,963 signatures per petition. The largest petition ever - obviously an outlier - received just over 300k. In fact, only _one_ petition ever has cracked the 100k mark: <https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petitions/popular/0/2/0>

Not only that, but the top three were related to an exceptionally charged issue that was sparked by an absolutely awful tragedy and then catalyzed by an awful group of people whose entire purpose in life is to cause controversy, which hints that outside of another elementary school rampage, nothing will gain the momentum necessary to meet this new threshold. I'd argue that the GMO petition is the first legitimate "issue" petition on that list, and it's nearly 40k signatures short of this new threshold.

This is more or less a guarantee that almost nothing else will reach the threshold necessary to receive a response.

<comment><USER5> There is one important number missing from the infographics in this blog post.

Difference Made: 0

<comment><USER6> Do you think it is better not to provide any website for registering opinions?

<comment><USER7> Of course. Without it people would be forced to contact their congressional reps, their senators, their local law makers, send letters directly to the president, and get involved with the media. All of which are precisely the sorts of ways you can actually effect change.

<comment><USER8> Indeed, I've always thought of them as a cunning way of soaking up some of the pressure.

The UK's version ( <http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/> ) goes a step further as you have to provide your name and a full address, so regularly signing petitions will be giving the Government a nice set of data to mine to provide a political profile based on views on certain issues...

The site says "This information will not be used for any purpose other than in relation to the e-petition." but that doesn't fill me with confidence that they can't do mining...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The founders of the United States knew that a representative democracy (what they termed a "republic") has some distinct advantages over direct democracy. This fact was discussed at length in the jointly authored Federalist Papers.

<http://thomas.loc.gov/home/histdox/fedpapers.html>

History shows that this fact is rediscovered in each new generation through hard experience, on a bipartisan basis.

<comment><USER10> But that doesn't mean republics can't have more direct democracy elements in them. For example I love the idea of citizens being able to create a referendum (in a certain state, I believe) in Germany. You still have a threshold, so people don't start creating one for all sorts of crazy ideas, but this is a great example of how citizens can help improve the laws in their countries. I think this referendum is usually added to the next election.

Such system obviously need to be fined-tuned to avoid having the population "abuse" them, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be pursued. I think they can be great additions to any democratic republic.

<comment><USER11> Another poster has said the same thing, but it's worth repeating: take a long hard look at California first. We have that here and it hasn't really worked out very well. It would be worth your while to visit CA in the month before an election, and look at the incredibly low quality of the political advocacy here (bullshit 30 second TV attack ads on every conceivable topic). The ballot pamphlet mailed to all California voters lays out the text of all proposed laws as well as arguments for and against, mentioning sponsor and source. Hardly anyone reads the whole ballot pamphlet.

<comment> barry-cotter California is much, much too big for direct democracy to have a Hope in hell of working. Representative democracy has enough problems running it. California is too big for it is not a killer argument against direct democracy.

<comment><USER11> Well it sort-of works, just not all that well. I don't buy the size argument because the same pros and cons exist at the municipal and county level - <USER2> stupid propositions do well, some smart ones do poorly, too few people are clear on exactly what they're voting for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm of the opinion that this is in direct response to how quickly 25,000 signatures were raised to fire Ortiz.

How would they like it if the citizens of the US took the same tact: "Hey Obama administration, I'd like to inform you that I am choosing a different tax bracket arbitrarily with the same level of authority as you show me respect as a citizen."

<comment><USER13> "This new threshold applies only to petitions created from this point forward and is not retroactively applied to ones that already exist."

So this will have no affect on the Ortiz petition.

<comment><USER14> effect

<comment><USER13> Thank you. Though, it won't cause them to speak their responses in a southern accent either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "We were really hoping that you'd voice your dissatisfaction with government in a very limited way and over trivial things. Now that you're calling us out on real issues, we're going to make it much, much harder!"

<comment><USER16> Yes. Now that we're giving official responses on building a death star, it's just gotten too real.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> What happened to cause that growth is that in mid/late November, the secession petitions went viral. This was a completely new audience of Red Staters and responsible for the hockey stick growth.

</comment><comment><USER18> Wow, that is a pretty stunning change. Granted it wasn't another 5x boost, is the "within 30 days" requirement also new or has that always been the case?

The only thing that would have made this change remotely reasonable if it included language that the administration would, in the presence of a 100K sigs in 30 days petition, _actually respond to the petitition._ But I noticed there wasn't any more commitment above "official response" for which "no comment" is sufficient apparently.

Reminds me of the Steve Martin spoof on DUI tests: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_183855...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_183855&feature=iv&src_vid=-0MXU3J6Qbs&v=unseSFWjuqs)

</comment><comment><USER19> I wish there was more resolution along the x-axis; I'd really when that inflection point occurred and what triggered it. There's exponential growth, and there's literal overnight success, and this appears to be the latter.

Also, generic vague whining about the government only pretending to care.

<comment><USER20> I did a quick search and it looks like it might be election related: "... eight different petitions requesting secession following the outcome of the November presidential election. The petition for the state of North Carolina to secede from the union earned more 31,835 signatures, while South Carolina's had just over 26,000."

[http://www.wcnc.com/news/local/Official-White-House- response...](http://www.wcnc.com/news/local/Official-White-House-response-to- secession-petitions-186982251.html)

<comment><USER21> Which begs the question: why are people petitioning _the White House_ to have their states secede from the Union? That's just stupid on so many levels that I don't even know where to begin.

<comment><USER22> I read it as evidence of the erosion of state's rights. Perception is reality and those folks clearly thought they needed Daddy DC's permission.

We nationalize too many issues on which our nation is deeply divided. If, instead of bickering for years over an issue in Congress, we pushed those decisions back to the states, then local initiatives would be put into place. With time, the right solutions would naturally develop. Competition is king.

Of course, doing so takes strength and wisdom from our Congressmen to admit they could not come to a national compromise. Many will call it failure. Thus, it will not occur.

<comment><USER6> Of course the states do not need DC's permission to form the Confederacy... even grade schoolers know the Articles of Confederation provide the constitutional basis for secession. ;)

<comment><USER19> Not if you went to grade school in America!

/wishes I was joking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Because they'd like to be less responsive to citizen concerns?

10,000,000 / 25,000 = 400 responses/yr. I'd like to believe our government could deliver slightly more than one well-considered response per day.

<comment><USER24> what is the 25k here?

<comment><USER25> That is the old threshold for petitions.

Note that 400 is a strict overestimate if votes were evenly divided between petitions. But some petitions get 2x the vote total, and some don't reach the threshold. So the real number is significantly less. But the trend is clear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Thought I couldn't be less disappointed in the Obama administration but they don't cease to fail me.

I think the first new petition should be to require petitions to return to 25K threshold.

<comment><USER27> This (decision by the White House, not your idea) is ridiculous, I'll definitely sign a petition to bring it back down to 25,000. It took an average of 18 days for petitions to reach the 25,000 threshold before it spiked after the election (because of all the secession petitions and Newtown and joke petitions like the Death Star).

Now if a petition doesn't cross the 100,000 threshold in 30 days they ignore it. Assuming the the number of petition signings falls back closer to what it was before the election, it will take an average of about 60 days to reach the 100,000 threshold, meaning most petitions will be ignored.

<comment><USER11> Most petitions _should_ be ignored. It turns out that it's absurdly easy to gin up a 25,000-strong flash mob on the internet. I don't think things like secession petitions deserve a serious response. Things like petitions to deport some guy on CNN for expressing his low opinion of the second amendment are uncomfortable reminiscent of lynching.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Has anyone seen a good answer to one of these petitions? Or a policy change?

<comment><USER29> Yes I'd say about 20% of them get a well explained no, 20% get a yes based off something already happening, 10% get a yes on their own, 20% are things they can't comment on (active legal cases for instance), 20% get stupid responses, and 10% are really stupid petitions to begin with (like states leaving the union). More than anything I think the petitions let the administration know how to prioritize releases. It informs them what is 'hot'.

Some highlights:

Obama administration backs down on Marijuana Legalization: [https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/addressing- legaliz...](https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/addressing-legalization- marijuana)

Army Stops using monkeys (this actually happened in response to this petition as far as I can tell): [https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/army-no- longer-usi...](https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/army-no-longer-using- monkeys-part-training-aberdeen-proving-ground)

National Guard Joint Chief of Staff created: [https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/chief-national- gua...](https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/chief-national-guard-bureau- joins-joint-chiefs-staff)

This petition (and opinion polls probably) helped prompt the administration to appeal SOPA and PIPA: [https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/combating- online-p...](https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/combating-online- piracy-while-protecting-open-and-innovative-internet)

This petition (and some campaign promises) have slowly resulted in increased digitization, recently the house put much of their data up in XML: [https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/digitizing- federal...](https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/digitizing-federal- public-records)

This petition is well written if nothing else: [https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/doubling-and- tripl...](https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/doubling-and-tripling- what-we-can-accomplish-space)

These petitions happened at the same time as (though it's debatable if it resulted in) the president declaring he would not defend DOMA: [https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/greater- protection...](https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/greater-protections- same-sex-couples)

[https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/repealing- discrimi...](https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/repealing- discriminatory-defense-marriage-act)

This petition coincided with a policy change on student loan burden reduction: [https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/taking-action- redu...](https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/taking-action-reduce- burden-student-loan-debt)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Here is the reality. Serious concerns will get few votes. Things such as building a death star that are completely stupid and not serious get lots of votes.

So what this is really saying is, "We're going to raise the threshold so we won't have to waste effort replying to your death star petitions, and btw we don't give a fuck about the little man and never did. Fuck you. Case closed. Now if we can get the media to sponsor some petition we really care about like banning all assault weapons or raising the debt ceiling, then you can vote on that, and we'll be glad to tell you why you have a great idea."

<comment><USER31> The change in policy means that instead of needing 0.013% of the voting age population to sign your petition you need 0.052%.

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28+25%2C000+people+%2F...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28+25%2C000+people+%2F+%28population+of+the+Us+18-64%29%29+*+100)

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28+100%2C000+people+%2...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28+100%2C000+people+%2F+%28population+of+the+Us+18-64%29%29+*+100)

Please leave the hyperbole and fatalistic rhetoric on other sites.

<comment><USER32> Killed my other account last night as I swore again I'd stop posting to HN... that didn't work I suppose.

Do you not understand that raising the threshold 4x is going to reduce the chance of the little man getting his concern addressed by a factor of 4?

My point was that the petitions I've seen on that site getting to the top are too often just joke petitions, and yet there are many legitimate petitions that don't get enough votes to meet the thresholds but _should_ be addressed. Joke petitions have given them a reason to not address serious issues, and the more the threshold gets raised, the less of a chance that serious issues will get addressed.

If you seriously think that you can get 0.52% of the voting age population to sign an online petition, think about how much money and time both political parties had to spend just trying to get people to vote for president and how they were pouring millions into swaying 1% of the population. 0.013% vs. 0.52% is a HUGE difference even though it might not seem like it.

<comment><USER31> 0.052%

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The first thing I thought when I saw this post was that it was a response to the success of the Carmen Ortiz petition. I understand the change doesn't apply retroactively, but it would help future officials face less public scrutiny from these petitions.

The growth over the last two months were clearly due to the election and I doubt that that type of growth will continue. We will likely see a drop back down to previous levels, resulting in it being more difficult to achieve the requisite number of signatures overall.

<comment><USER34> This just means that petition drives will need to be more organized and focused. I think the Carmen Ortiz petition was somewhat of a fluke. You aren't going to find that confluence of anger, focus, and clarity of target very often. And we have yet to see if it will have any effect. The Ortiz petition is only effective because she is a political appointee who serves at the Presidents pleasure. And while most of the presidents cabinet falls into that category; it is extremely rare for one to do something that justifies the intense public anger that we've seen here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Wait, the most signatures _ever received_ on a petition is 300,000, and they're setting the threshold for a response to a petition at 1/3rd of that?

<comment><USER36> Once a petition crosses the threshold, people are far less likely to continue signing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Is Aaron Swartz-related petitions the main reason for the recent peak in the total users number or is it just the service getting popular these days? If it is aaronsw related then the acceleration should slightly decline after a few days, hopefully I'm not assuming wrong.

<comment><USER38> I seriously doubt that Swartz-related petitions had anything to do with it. I agree with you that they will probably die down in a few days, but the story doesn't seem to have made it too far outside the tech industry.

I was quite surprised to hear a quick story on NRP about how his possible punishment may have been out of proportion. Has it even been covered during the major newscasts like NBC Nightly News, CBS News, Fox News, CNN, etc; at least for over 60 seconds?

I'd be willing to guess that even among those who watch a large amount of news, the average American didn't hear the story at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Congress should have a similar system, perhaps one for each representative and each senator. They could get a better sense for what the people they represent want. Rather now that's only done through e-mails (which probably never get read by the politicians themselves), phone calls (same thing, and a bit inefficient considering most people won't bother to call), and visiting in person (probably done by very few people).

They could even be done in a sort of Google Moderator/Reddit way, although perhaps more fine-tuned and with certain thresholds (but not too high, especially initially).

<comment><USER13> This would be great, though you would need some way to tie people's accounts to their residences, which would require them to work with boards of elections give out the elections with the voter registration receipts.

<comment><USER19> I fail to see a problem with voicing your opinion to an elected official, even if that person is not representing you. Especially when one state making a decision can set a precedent for others.

Although I do think that the votes should be tied to location, even if other locations are allowed in. I think a ZIP code is enough here; it's a letter, not a vote.

<comment><USER13> Why should a representative care about the opinions of people who aren't voting for her or contributing to her campaign? There are lots of opinionated people on the internet.

I simply picked the board of elections because they already are entrusted with the capacity to verify that a certain person lives in a certain ward or district. I suspect zip codes would not be fine-grained enough for local government fora, where this would be most useful.

<comment><USER19> They don't have to weight everything equally, but as I previously stated, politicians that actually want to do good and not just get re-elected (I hear some exist) might actually care about their precedent-setting decision and how it will impact non-residents.

<comment><USER13> I think there is certainly value in outside voices. Journalists and bloggers play that role now. I guess the issue I have is that any given district could get suddenly swamped by outsiders. Why not have it be the case that constituents would bring that voice in by linking to their post?

One idea that I have some sympathy toward is making the representatives responsible for moderating the fora as they see fit. They would then be judged at the ballot box if they pissed everyone off...or they would really skillful at creating false consensus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> This is a nice interactive visualization of the top 50 White House Petitions in tabular, map, and graph form. You can sort by most popular, greatest average signature gain, and male/female ratio.

<http://roadtolarissa.com/whitehouse/>

The top 5 have sharp spikes in Nov / Dec 2012. Here is some analysis of the Texas Secession Petition: <http://www.unc.edu/~ncaren/secessionists/daybyday.html> and

</comment><comment><USER40> You can raise limit all you want, you will not dodge issues we are interested in. Even if we have to make our website(s).

I've been thinking how to celebrate accomplishments of Aaron Swartz and I think being active on Demand Progress is a good way, for start. There are some other ideas, but ideas are easy to come by, I think joining and propping already working ideas is more important.

Just my 2c.

</comment><comment><USER41> I hate to be a cynic but the timing seems too coincidental with the death of Aaron and the petition to remove Carmen Ortiz from office. She was nominated to her position by the President, so there is an assumption (perhaps invalid) of close ties to the administration.

<comment><USER42> From the article:

"This new threshold applies only to petitions created from this point forward and is not retroactively applied to ones that already exist."

So the Ortiz petition will be unaffected.

<comment><USER43> It's the other way around. The change to the petition process was affected by the embarrassing pace of the Ortiz petition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Meaningless, insulting charade made more meaningless, insulting. Buzzfeed at 11.

</comment><comment><USER45> Why exactly _are_ they raising the signature threshold? It doesn't say.

<comment><USER46> It was explained the first time they raised the treshold [0]:

"The massive participation on We the People means that in the first week over 30 petitions reached 5,000 signatures, the initial threshold to generate an official response from the White House. At our first internal review meeting Friday, two things were clear:

(a) everyone is thrilled about this new challenge and excited to process the first batch, but

 _(b) this many petitions challenges our ability to offer timely and meaningful responses to petitions in the long term._

[...] This may not be the last time we change the thresholds, both in terms of signatures and amount of time."

So they're admitting that simply throwing more people at the problem won't work in the long run, since petitioners expect _meaningful_ responses from people who are knowledgeable. See Mythical Man-Month [1] and PG's decision to limit the size of the YC W13 class [2].

[0] [http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/10/03/good-problem- have-...](http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/10/03/good-problem-have-raising- signature-threshold-white-house-petitions)

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man- Month#The_myth...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man- Month#The_mythical_man-month)

[2] <http://ycombinator.com/w13smaller.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Why not make the threshold dynamic?

<comment><USER48> They could simply reply to the _x_ most-signed petitions every _y_ weeks.

<comment><USER49> This solution seems ideal. And if your petition gets screwed because it happens to be created at the same time as X other super popular ones you could always re-create it for the next cycle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Well, I find the timing suspicious.

I know that gun enthusiasts have been creating dozens of them as of late and as silly as some of them aree, they are meeting the 25,000 signature goal.

The "fire Carmen Ortiz" took less than three-days to reach fruition and now that the White house has devalued the 25,000 number, I hope the petition can reach 250,000 by it's end date to really send a message.

<comment><USER34> The Carmen Ortiz petition passed the threshold for an answer before the requirement was raised.

It's right now (early Wednesday morning pacific time) crawling up toward 35,000 at the current rate there's a good chance that it will cross the 100,000 mark before 11 February.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Btw, can anyone confirm, how safe is this, against automated clicks, and paid clicks?

<comment><USER51> Can people in say, Saudi Arabia, sign up and petition?

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> So, what happened some time around late November 2012?

EDIT: One possible answer here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5064211>

<comment><USER53> Westboro Baptist Church planned a protest of the Sandy Hook funerals. The petitions to denounce or strip the tax exempt status of the group got well over half a million signatures in December.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> What I want to know, are there any petitions at all to which the official response was essentially, "Hell, yes. Brilliant idea! We'll get right on it!".

</comment><comment><USER55> Not thrilled about the increase in the number of signatures required, but I do like that they are going to release an API for accessing the petitions.

</comment><comment><USER56> I think the sign-up only requires an email verification step, so it's not clear how many people have actually signed up.

</comment><comment><USER57> There's a hockey stick growth curve for you.

</comment><comment><USER58> Wasn't the whole thing set up so the government could spam the signers - <USER3> every other petition site?

<comment><USER19> I've received no emails as a result of signing any petition. I think this is just a much more direct way for the government to pretend it cares what we want while continuing to do whatever it pleases.

<comment><USER6> Do you really expect the White House to unilaterally implement policy on account of a few thousand 'online votes', a significant number of which might be dupes or astroturf? Congress remains the way legislation gets passed no matter how many feedback websites the executive makes.

<comment><USER19> No, of course not. But if they've created this platform to make our voices heard, I expect them to listen. Just like writing my elected officials, every White House petition I've signed has gotten me either no response or a tactfully-worded "fuck you, go away"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Does this even matter?

Aside from beer recipes & death stars, what success stories are there behind these petitions?

</comment><comment><USER60> tl;dr

Dear America, shut the fuck up.

</comment><comment><USER61> Seems strange that the White House would use github.com and not just host it themselves ...

</comment><comment><USER62> The Death Star petition and the Piers Morgan petition were the straws that broke the camel's back, according to a friend in the WH PR dept.

<comment><USER63> Really? Those seem like PR gimmes. You can't ask for better softballs.

<comment><USER64> I know, right? When else do you get to say "The Administration does not support blowing up planets"? I think that was my favorite piece of the whole Death Star thing.</comment></comment></comment>