Megaupload Demands Return of Millions of Dollars From U.S. Govt. - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-demands-return-of-millions-of-dollars-from-u-s-govt-120531/ <comment><USER2> If this is the US's response to people relocating outside US borders for their business because of asinine US privacy and copyright-laws, I don't think it will play out to their advantage in the end.

The one lesson learned here from everyone involved is: Whatever you do, do _not_ involve US companies in your business.

<comment><USER3> Almost all Non-US banks have already learnt this lesson during the last years.

Try to get an account with a non-US bank or use a non-US financial service company if you're an US citizen / green card holder (or have been that until recently) - they will tell you "no thanks".

I've some time ago even seen Terms of Services on financial web sites that asked US citizens to leave because of the overstretched liabilities the US is one-sidedly trying to enforce outside their jurisdiction.

<comment><USER4> It depends on the size of your account, as to whether they say "no thanks" or not.

<comment><USER5> The bigger, the worse. More liability.

<comment><USER4> Not true. There isn't a major international bank that will turn away American billionaires. Large accounts are extremely lucrative, and far easier to manage because you can keep active watch on the account activities.

Far better to have one billion dollar account, than 1,000 million dollar accounts.

<comment><USER3> they will most certainly turn them away - they nevertheless might not turn away their offshore vehicles but this soon might be changing as well.

<comment><USER4> Apparently not. Our billionaires continue to offshore their cash to countries like Switzerland.

And the fact that our companies continue to do exactly the same thing, also proves this out. There's no major international bank that won't take on lucrative accounts with our mega corporations.

What you're talking about is wishful thinking at this point.

<comment><USER6> Effectively 'hiding' money offshore though opaque company ownership structures is possible when you have jurisdictions where even _asking_ who owns the company could result in jail-time (see 5.1b of the Caymans confidential relationship law [1]). When you don't know who owns what, it becomes difficult to selectively 'turn people away'.

[1] [http://www.cayman.gov.ky/pls/portal30/docs/FOLDER/SITE83/GAZ...](http://www.cayman.gov.ky/pls/portal30/docs/FOLDER/SITE83/GAZETTES/GS2009/GS332009.PDF)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is what happens when the US government does something blatantly immoral and illegal to the wrong guy.

Most of us bend and take it or get the fuck bombed out of us or end up in a bag.

Regardless of what Kim has supposedly done, it's nice to see someone standing up to them.

<comment><USER8> Even for the US government this seems like a real stretch though. I mean, what did they think was going to happen? There is ostensibly no case here. I would just love to know what their plan was and how they thought it'd lead to the end of Megaupload.

Anyway, as long as the US political system keeps pandering to the whim of Hollywood, the Internet will keep on knocking it out the park.

<comment><USER9> > I would just love to know what their plan was and how they thought it'd lead > to the end of Megaupload.

They arrest they guy, confiscate his property => Megaupload is down. Their job is done.

I am sure they probably sugar-coated it using some superficial motives about starving Hollywood actors and set designers. But in reality it is just pandering to the lobbyist pressure from Hollywood.

US Govt acting immorally and often illegally on behalf of giant corporations shouldn't be a surprise (see United Fruit company <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company>).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The US government knew they never had a solid case from the start. This whole situation was never going anywhere, it was created to disrupt traffic to Megaupload (and it did), only the exact opposite is now going to happen. Megaupload are going to get a heap of cash back, Dotcom is obviously angry and will no doubt force Megaupload back to the top of the file sharing food chain before too long.

The bottom line here is: the US turned what is a civil matter into a criminal one by dressing everything up in money laundering and conspiracy charges and it backfired. I'm no lawyer though.

</comment><comment><USER11> Can someone with any modicum of legal experience weigh in here?

I appreciate that all of these articles are undoubtedly bias in favour of Megaupload however a lot of the facts lead me to believe that it will be near impossible for them to lose. If megaupload do in fact win, surely that will have an immense impact globally? Is it possible to actually quantify the knock on effects of either outcome from a global perspective?

<comment><USER12> I don't claim to be a lawyer, but I have read up on this case, including the indictment. As always, if your interest in legal matters is anything but academic curiosity, consult a lawyer.

One thing that stands out to me is that most of this argument is against the idea that criminal infringement applies to secondary liability (i.e. faulting these guys for the infringement of others). One problem for them is that the indictment accuses some of them of direct infringement based on some of MU's emails. This can lead to trouble with the NET Act [1], which has the explicit criminal liability they need to extradite here. There are limits, though: they would need to be able to prove that enough infringement had happened to rise to a criminal level.

They also have criminal conspiracy charges in there, though I believe those to be predicated on proving some sort of criminal infringement. Note, however, that on the acts of direct infringement, it's possible for not everyone in the group to be involved. For example, one of the emails I remember about locating a pirate copy of some show was between a couple of employees. That wouldn't necessarily implicate Kim himself unless they could connect him to the act.

There was a lot of nonsense in the indictment, though, trying to make everything sound like it had a criminal motive. Some of the same allegations made in it could be repeated against sites like YouTube, for example. The indictment did, however, contain quite a few emails that made the Mega group look pretty bad. I believe their lawyers already addressed those, saying that their words were being twisted around.

Ultimately, I think this is going to be a fairly unpredictable case.

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NET_Act>

<comment><USER13> The problem with the actual charges, from what I read, is that the emails show that MegaUpload was trying to do the absolute minimum necceesary to comply with the DMCA. They were, in fact, not actually living up to everything that they had to do to under the DMCA and are thus guilty of copyright infringement under civil law, but the government decided to press criminal charges instead, and making a good faith effort to abide by the DMCA is enough to get out of those charges.

EDIT: A better explanation: [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/02/is- megaupload-a-l...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/02/is-megaupload-a- lot-less-guilty-than-you-think/)

<comment><USER14> > The problem with the actual charges, from what I read, is that the emails > show that MegaUpload was trying to do the absolute minimum necceesary to > comply with the DMCA

I'd change that to "trying to do the absolute minimum necessary to APPEAR to comply with the DMCA, if the request was from a party that had enough legal resources to make trouble".

If they had one copy of your file stored without authorization on their servers, but it was accessible through, say, 5 different URLs, their response to a DMCA takedown request was to make the specific URL you knew about invalid, but to leave the file up and leave the rest of the URLs working. That's why I say "appear" to comply.

When they were first shutdown, there were first person reports here on HN from small developers who had their takedown requests ignored, which is why I suspect that you had to be someone reasonably big for them to even bother to try to appear to comply.

<comment><USER15> This was arguably the right thing to do. Each url represented a different time someone had uploaded a binary identical copy of that file to the site. Each one might or might not be allowed by copyright.

Imagine we both rip a track from a fresh cd using the default encoding settings on some standard software. We get two bit-for-bit identical files. We both upload them to MegaUpload, you because you want to do something fair-use compliant while I want to share it with the world. You take your link and use it legally, I take mine and put it one some shady site. The RIAA finds mine, judges it to be in violation, asks MegaUpload to take it down. MegaUpload would be wrong to also take yours down because yours is there legally.

It's not that a certain set of bytes, all that a MegaUpload url represented, is illegal or illegal. It's whether the person who posted it had the right to do so. Copyright is tricky because it's metadata.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Torrent Freak always strikes me as very well written.. Is there a similarly well written source which supports the "other side" of the copyright story?

<comment><USER17> See <http://mpaa.org/blog> if you want "extreme" bias in the other direction.

<comment><USER18> They appear to be sticking with the "2.2 million American jobs" line even though the figures were shown to be inaccurate iirc. For me it really weakens their credibility the way they keep pretending like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Am I in the tiny minority here who thinks that what Megaupload was doing was illegal and should be prosecuted? Ok I get it, the US is trying to apply their laws onto the world and that is a big issue but this seems like the wrong case to get outraged over. Megaupload was built for the purpose of hosting/sharing copyrighted files. You know it and I know it.

<comment><USER20> I don't know how to convey the opposite opinion in a way you've likely not heard before. I'll go to extremes.

And a handgun is made to kill people. But we generally agree there's a limited context in which that is acceptable, so we allow it. If I want to store my files online, copywritten or not, there's nothing illegal about it.

<comment><USER21> How about: If I illegally photocopy a textbook at a printing shop, is the printing shop criminally culpable?

<comment><USER4> Legally, yes, sometimes the source of the copying is in fact criminally culpable (the print shop), but usually only if they understood what was going on.

If a print shop in Los Angeles were to serve a high volume of student customers, and the print shop knew they were breaking the law by making copies of textbooks and selling them, the print shop would have a massive liability over its head. It would require proving that the print shop knew what the students were doing.

<comment><USER22> "It would require proving that the print shop knew what the students were doing"

Exactly. It would require proving. The article is arguing that it did not happen

<comment><USER20> Yes, that's what's at trial here. But in the post I replied to, I was taking issue with the insinuation that "OF COURSE that's what was happening here!" As if to imply online storage with easy download is inherently about piracy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> If the money is returned, I hope Dotcom gets megaupload back in it's top file- sharing spot, and shoves it in the face of the US Govt. who have clearly fucked up big time.

It does seem as if the Govt. was desperate and, without any correct process or concrete evidence, scrambled to shutter the site and Dotcom as fast as they could. And now it will hopefully backfire, and the internet will rejoice.

</comment><comment><USER4> As an American citizen, I hope the rest of the world realizes that there are plenty of those of us here that are thankful when other countries' justice systems push back. We need a lot more of that, we need help to restrain our government and get it back to operating within a moral boundary. International push-back and isolation would help do that. I think the US Government's reach and power has mostly gone beyond the ability of Americans to restrict, and most Americans are willfully asleep at the wheel (thus our skyrocketing prescription drug abuse, Americans are numbing themselves). It might take a global concerted effort to lock the monster down (keeping in mind the monster has a $4 trillion budget, larger than the size of Germany's entire economy).

They might continue to still go all crazy police state on us anyway, but standing up to bullies is important.

<comment><USER24> You contradict yourself - you claim that the government is operating outside of a moral boundary and is beyond the ability of the citizenry to restrict, but you also claim that international push-back and isolation would help.

You're right that it's totally out of control - the rule of law is gone. You're wrong about the potential solutions.

The only nonviolent solution is to leave the country and avoid the jurisdictional reach. Take your ball and go somewhere that has the rule of law.

They _will_ continue to "go all crazy police state on us", and that is precisely why it's time to leave. It's impossible to make things better while being persecuted or beaten or censored or imprisoned without trial.

<comment><USER4> I don't think I contradicted myself at all.

I said _mostly_ operating outside the ability of Americans to restrict (some aspects do, some aspects don't). And I said I think it will help, if the globe pitched in to restrict the US Federal Govt. There's no contradiction there at all. The push-back by international powers would accomplish international restriction of the Feds that US citizens cannot short term (US citizens mostly have no influence over New Zealand justice, nor trade relations with Singapore, nor military relations with Japan, and so on and so forth).

It would take a very large cultural shift to get the US military out of Japan from our side (it would take more than just a new President). Japan, however, can and should kick the US military out tomorrow morning. Ditto Germany.

It's better if you stop thinking of America as a 'normal' nation, and start thinking of it as an international superpower that has 180 military bases around the globe, with its fingers in every pie.

Americans for example have zero influence or control over the Federal Reserve. You'd have to turn congress inside out to then get laws passed that reach to the Fed. Other nations can however change their relationship with the Fed and its banking arms.

American voters would have to reform the entire government top to bottom before they got to restricting CIA activities in Italy (for example). Italy however, can get started on that tomorrow morning.

The US Government is extremely large and powerful, and it has a superpower's reach globally. It makes perfect sense that it would help if the rest of the world pushed back against its international abuses.

Let me provide you an example: I can vote for a congressman, that single congressman cannot realistically stop the NSA at this point, the NSA has a budget equal to the budget of Greece. It would take a complete government overhaul to restructure the NSA, and that will take a long time. Other countries however, at their choosing, can immediately alter what they allow departments like the CIA or NSA to do in their jurisdiction (and or at least make the effort to push back).

The US Government is not one thing, it's a massive entity with many powerful heads that operate independent of each other.

<comment><USER25> > Japan, however, can and should kick the US military out tomorrow morning. > Ditto Germany

Citizens of other countries are similarly held hostage by their governments too (although some to a much lesser extent than the US). The US however has too much clout over other governments to allow what you state to happen.

<comment><USER26> Wow, once again I see people comparing America to second and third world countries. Yes, people in those countries have it worse than people in America.

People in first world countries are not "held hostage" by their governments.

Why, why, why would you compare America to Second and Third world countries instead of looking to the top of first world countries and striving to be better?

<comment><USER27> Mostly because the US is very very diverse. If I move two counties over, my life expectancy goes up 5 years. It's probably fair to say 1% of the US is third world. At the very least, Alabama's immigrant ghettos are concretely third world. [http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/456/r...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/456/reap-what-you-sow?act=1)

<comment><USER26> That doesn't mean you should compare the country to second and third world countries when analyzing if something needs improvement or not

That's like comparing America's murder rate to El Salvador and saying it's perfectly fine. Instead, it should be compared to first world countries, and it's soon very clear that it's not OK and is a serious problem for such a prosperous country.[1]

This kind of comparison leads to apathy.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate#2010s) (sort the list by "most recent", and have a look where the United States sits compared to the next first world country.

<comment><USER28> > That doesn't mean you should compare the country to second and third world > countries when analyzing if something needs improvement or not

He didn't say that the US didn't need improvement.

The US' diversity means that the comparison is complicated. In fact, when you compare the US apples and oranges to apples and oranges in other countries, you find that the US is doing reasonably well. You're seeing consequences of the fact that the apple countries don't have oranges.

We'd be happy to give some oranges to apple countries so they can show us how to do it correctly....

<comment><USER26> I understand it's a big, diverse place, but at what point is this thing "United" and at what point is it "divided"?

I mean, either it's United or it's not.

<comment><USER28> > I mean, either it's United or it's not.

Why do you think that that's true? I ask because it isn't in other circumstances (particle vs wave).

The world doesn't care whether it's convenient.

There are various connections, but geography is the only common one.

<comment><USER26> Because the whole founding principle of the country is " _One nation_ , under god, _indivisible_...".

It's supposed to be a singular entity where everyone is working towards the benefit of everyone, but that got lost somewhere along the way.

<comment><USER28> > Because the whole founding principle of the country is "One nation, under > god, indivisible...".

That's from the pledge of allegiance, which was written in 1892, long after the nation was founded. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pledge_of_Allegiance>

More important, you're confusing a goal with reality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I think part of the judgement involved in going after Kim was in trying to find someone who didn't fit a nice cuddly image that was easy to defend. What they didn't apparently factor in was that perhaps he might be bright and better than them at playing games.

</comment><comment><USER30> Looking back at some of the earlier HN conversations, when Megaupload was first shut down by the US, you can see those who made damning accusations and blind assumptions that Megaupload were guilty.

These people should be ashamed. They are part of the problem.

It's baffling they would be so opinionated and cocksure although they plainly didn't know the facts.

I'm curious why these HN readers told bald faced lies. What's in it for them? How many other discussions have they polluted with misinformation?

<comment><USER31> I'm pretty sure those people believed that Megaupload was guilty _prior_ to the indictments. E.g. if the US served copyright-infringement indictments against ThePirateBay and a bunch of HNers claimed that ThePirateBay was guilty, it would be a stretch to say that their opinions were solely based on the indictments...</comment></comment>


Mutually Assured Cyberdestruction? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/03/sunday-review/mutually-assured-cyberdestruction.html?hp

<comment><USER2> I read the first four paragraphs entirely before skimming the rest... American... Chinese... Warfare.

IMO this whole issue, the entirety of this issue, derives from Nationalism still being present with Global technology like the internet and other inter connected systems.

We have to seriously start asking ourselves whether we should continue acting like we`re any different from other human beings on this planet...

On another note, when can I join Starfleet? Seriously though, as a humanist- atheist, I'm worried about information saturation and geo-politics of the 21st century.</comment>


Google exposes security cameras - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/search?q=inurl%3A%22viewerframe%3Fmode%3Dmotion%22 <comment><USER2> The security cameras aren't exposed because of Google, but rather because of a website admin that didn't know what he was doing. Google's responsibly for this is akin to the responsibly a construction company has for building roads to an insecure bank. :-p

<comment><USER3> Lovely analogy. Is there a way of coming up with these, i've been trying to improve my ability to do so for a long time :P

They're such useful tools in arguments.

<comment><USER4> I like to use such analogies, but have actually found them very limited for persuasive purposes, or only very effective with certain kinds of abstract thinkers.

Of course, if you already agree with a speakers' point, the analogy makes sense and helps make the matter vivid.

But when a listener intuitively disagrees, the analogy can derail discussion. Even though in the spirit in which it was offered, it aligns one axis of the issue at hand, with one axis of the offered analogous situation, the listener instead may focus on -- and comment about -- every other dimension of the two things that are wildly different.

For some thinkers, all those other differences are easy to factor out -- of course they're different in those dimensions, and the wild variance only serves to highlight the similarity-in-one-dimension-of-interest. But for other fuzzier/holistic thinkers, every difference is a distraction to be considered separately, and the attempted analogy may harden them against your point.

Worst case is when some _other_ aspect of the analogy so dominates listeners' thought (or can be cynically flipped against you to imply you've said something you didn't mean). This is why Nazi analogies can be so conversationally-derailing -- whatever one small comparison was being intended, the response is "how dare you call [Bush|Obama|Teachers' Unions|Evangelicals|Mall Santas|etc] Nazis!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's a giraffe:

[http://188.8.131.52/ViewerFrame?Mode=Motion&Language=1](http://22.214.171.124/ViewerFrame?Mode=Motion&Language=1)

<comment><USER6> It brought back a little of that early-web, fish-cam thrill when I realized that I could actually control pan and tilt on that camera.

<comment><AUTHOR> Way back in the day of the first ptz webcams we were installing one in a zoo in Amersfoort, the Netherlands where an Elephant was about to give birth.

The webcast was tremendously popular, over half a million visitors over the course of a few days (at the time this was phenomenal), we set up relay stations just to be able to handle the bandwidth.

Being in a cage with a 6 metric tons pregnant elephant is quite an experience I can tell you :)

edit: here is a panda: <http://www.sandiegozoo.org/pandacam/index.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> <http://tlrobinson.net/bigbrother> [warning: very bandwidth + CPU intensive, but worth it]

A few weeks ago I scraped the results from one of these searches (using Yahoo BOSS). This page shows the live streams of a random subset of them. Scroll to see more.

<comment><USER8> Could you geolocate the IPs in the scrape and then overlay them on top of a Google Maps API? That'd be a bit more useful: security cameras in your neighborhood.

<comment><USER7> Interesting idea. I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader.

Here's the list of camera domains/IPs <http://tlrobinson.net/bigbrother/urls.txt> and the paths to the viewer page and MJPEG, respectively:

        a.href = baseURL + "ViewerFrame?Mode=Motion&Language=0";
        img.src = baseURL + "nphMotionJpeg?Resolution=160x120&Quality=Standard";

<comment><USER9> Dang, I didn't see your post, but it would have saved me a lot of work.

Just whipped this up last night... Here are all of the Webcams from a yahoo search up to 1000th result Geolocated:

<http://www.huyng.com/apps/geocams.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If anyone remembered _johnny i hack stuff_ from way back (mmm nostalgic) that popularized using google to find vulnerabilities such as this. The reincarnation of that site seems to be <http://www.hackersforcharity.org/ghdb/> (lists a wealth of google discoverable devices/services and other stuff)

<comment><USER11> Johnny popularized the phrase "google hacking". See his "No-Tech Hacking" session from DefCon 15: EPIC!

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CWrzVJYLWw>

<comment><USER7> He literally wrote the book: [http://books.google.com/books?id=XKgRELiphAcC&printsec=f...](http://books.google.com/books?id=XKgRELiphAcC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_navlinks_s#v=onepage&q=&f=false)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think the makers of these cameras should include a 'robots.txt' by default that stops crawlers (or more correctly asks them to stop) from indexing the cameras.

I highly doubt this is intended behaviour, some of these look like they were not meant to be exposed to the general public.

</comment><comment><USER12> Hah. I can't believe someone made an AdSense farm for these cams with this search term as the domain. It came up towards the bottom of the first results page for me.

[http://www.viewerframe-mode.com/inurl-viewerframe- mode=motio...](http://www.viewerframe-mode.com/inurl-viewerframe-mode=motion)

<comment><USER7> You can buy "Inurl Security Cameras"!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Man I remember doing this stuff /years/ ago. Can't remember where I learned about it... Maybe 2600? Lots of sweet cameras to look at in Japan. Of course back then I was using a dial-up connection so to be able to see more than a frame every few seconds is a welcome improvement.

Thanks for the nostalgia. :)

</comment><comment><USER14> Gee, Google even suggests related searches where you can find more cameras.

</comment><comment><USER15> Full-disclosure equals reduction in vulnerability here, in an odd way. Because of links about this all over the blogosphere, the google search results are now mostly cluttered with stories about it, instead of the actual pages. (Although you can still find them.)

</comment><comment> onreact-com The quality of the images is so bad with these I wonder what "security" at all they do provide.

Scientific surveillance studies have shown that CCTV has no positive effect on crime. Either the crime happens elsewhere or it happens anyways and just gets filmed.

The only thing that CCTV changed is that you have footage of masked burglars afterwards or you catch some people having sex in the act.

Statistics suggest that catching the criminals on tape does not mean more of them get arrested either so it's just about civil liberties being taken away.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm quite strongly against CCTV but the claim that they are not a deterrent is false.

3% of the crimes solved in areas where CCTV systems are set up were attributed to that. This is a pittance, but it is 3% more than would have been solved otherwise.

The real drawback of CCTV is the 'false positive' rate, and the fact that people that should not have access to the data (which was sort of the point of my posted link) are able to look over the shoulder of the people in control of the cameras. This is a serious invasion of privacy.</comment></comment>


Germans are getting over their cash addiction - rwx<comment> http://money.cnn.com/2018/02/14/news/economy/germany-cash-addiction/index.html </comment><comment><AUTHOR> I always thought it was more of an aversion towards credit/debit rather than an addiction to cash...</comment>


Why Our Children Don't Think There Are Moral Facts - grumpy-buffalo http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com//2015/03/02/why-our-children-dont-think-there-are-moral-facts/ <comment><AUTHOR> The article doesn't provide anything to back the claim that moral opinions may be universally, non-subjectively true. The cartoonist example is deeply flawed. We're outraged because this event violated our deepest beliefs and values we hold dear, not because it violated some universal eternal moral law. We also know that there were people that weren't saddened by this event too.

This is the problem I have with many philosophers. In the whole text you cannot find a single strong logical evidence. Everything is just an opinion.

It is impossible to prove that e.g. "stealing from others" is universally "bad". It may not be a beneficial strategy in a game theory, or maybe some statistical analysis can show societies are better off with this rule, or just that people sleep better knowing that others can't steal. But neither of this is universally true for humanity in general, and there are examples in game theory were cheating actually is a winning strategy.

<comment><USER2> The point of the article is not to prove that values are objective. Rather, the point is to undermine the fact/opinion distinction.

If moral sentiments were mere opinion, then there'd be no point to arguing over whether some action is right or wrong. When you tell me that you really like the taste of sushi, I don't argue with you - I just accept that that's your taste. But that we don't simply accept as 'taste' other's moral sentiments suggests that our own understanding of what is at stake is different.

<comment><USER3> People argue about tastes _all the time_. That tastes can't be argued over is what we tell ourselves, not what we actually do. Why else would we say "he has _bad taste_ "?

<comment><USER2> I use taste just because it's the most widely-accepted instance where subjectivism applies. But, certainly, a substantial minority will hold that for certain kinds of tastes, objectivism holds. If you think there _are_ meaningful disagreements about taste, that makes you an objectivist. In which case, you already agree that there are facts about these kinds of things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The ignorance is much easier to process upon learning that the author works at an episcopal church and is on the committee of two "Societies of Christian Philosophers".

[http://www.justinmcbrayer.com/#!leadership/c53p](http://www.justinmcbrayer.com/#!leadership/c53p)

<comment><USER5> Despite it being ad-hominem, I'll let it play because it helped stop my eyes from continuing to roll every time I replayed his arguments.

<comment><USER4> That was my only goal.

<comment><USER6> You'll love the article he linked to:

[http://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/education/item/372-mor...](http://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/education/item/372-moral- relativism-and-the-crisis-of-contemporary-education)

<comment><USER5> Hey! My eyes had just recovered! Stop that. To paraphrase, "In place of science, I present to you a digitally-leather-bound edition of the founding fathers (minus that Jefferson stuff about not being a Christian nation)! and a warning to not enter into serious argument with modern or post-modern thought and life. Best just to avoid winning that battle we always win (amongst ourselves) than to deal with the cognitive dissonance that we may all be desperately protecting the new version of that old Zeus stuff."

I sense a fear that many people don't know how to deal with the realization that their 5-8 year-olds, who have internalized "the golden rule" in a freedom-chasing culture, seem confused by their loving parents testing their openness to religious and/or social bigotry.

Where they see the loss of their sacred talisman, I see hope that our new generation is about to bring great levels of peace and joy to the world. I see the dawning of a bright future where people fluidly form communities instead of calcifying into tribes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not a single argument against moral relativism was put forth in this article. But they mentioned that there actually are moral facts ad nauseum without a reason.

"Furthermore, if proof is required for facts, then facts become person- relative. Something might be a fact for me if I can prove it but not a fact for you if you can't." Yes, yes, they are! Welcome to reality, a place where we can't even be sure it exists! I am proud of this educational system, teaching kids intellectual integrity and preventing them from accepting random statements as true facts just because someone repeats over and over again that they're true!

<comment><USER8> > I am proud of this educational system, teaching kids intellectual integrity > and preventing them from accepting random statements as true facts just > because someone repeats over and over again that they're true!

What about the teaching discussed in the article about there being no moral facts? Should kids accept this proposition just because the education system repeats it over and over again? The teaching itself is a statement with moral implications. Where is the proof for the statement itself?

> Welcome to reality, a place where we can't even be sure it exists!

This viewpoint also contains a truth claim. Taken to its logical conclusion, there would be no way to prove anything since it's all an illusion.

<comment><USER9> > Taken to its logical conclusion, there would be no way to prove anything > since it's all an illusion.

Yep. And then you can either get to the island of the cogito and find you can't get off, or you end up shrugging and going with Shaw's great line about how skepticism is "logically impeccable, but psychologically impossible".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

"So we can believe the big ones?"

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

"They're not the same at all!"

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"

MY POINT EXACTLY."

― GNU Terry Pratchett

<comment><USER11> Yeah, whenever I think too much about why we're here I discover that it's best not to think too much about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> When I was a boy, if you wanted to talk philosophy you reasoned from first principles.

Apparently now you can just take whatever half-baked ideas you already have in your head, hold them as the truth, and wantonly criticize anyone or any system that slights those beliefs.

Also, we had to walk up hill both ways to school in the snow. /s

Turns out that living in a pluralistic, modern society makes it really hard to reason about moral truths when claimed moral facts are so tightly coupled to cultural baggage. I argue that from a practical perspective, our best bet is moral consensus.

<comment><USER13> > I argue that from a practical perspective, our best bet is moral consensus.

I took that as the point of the piece -- that there is no moral consensus. That even unalienable truths like, "All men are created equal" are being labelled as opinions and lumped in the same category as one's favorite color or sports team.

<comment><USER14> I'd argue that "all men are created equal" is NOT an absolute moral truth, which is what I am sure you meant (unalienable means unable to be taken away). It's something I feel very strongly to be true, but it's something we have collectively agreed upon as a society. There are plenty of people who consider themselves to be moral people who don't feel that way.

<comment><USER13> > unalienable means unable to be taken away

Unalienable rights can be abused, but not taken away. If someone is murdered by a dictator for his opinions, that is wrong regardless of the legality of the action, the power imbalance in play, or the "personal morality" of the dictator. That is, the human right to life was violated.

> I'd argue that "all men are created equal" is NOT an absolute moral truth... > There are plenty of people who consider themselves to be moral people who > don't feel that way.

The 'absolute' isn't about unanimity. It's about truth regardless of disagreement. That's the way truth works. Some people think humans never visited the Moon. And they're wrong. As were the Boston bombers, as was Ariel Castro, as was Bernie Madoff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15>
      We then had this conversation:
      Me: "I believe that George Washington was the first  president. Is that a fact or an opinion?"
      Him: "It's a fact."
      Me: "But I believe it, and you said that what someone believes is an opinion."
      Him: "Yeah, but it's true."
      Me: "So it's both a fact and an opinion?"

At least his son is smarter than he is.

<comment><USER15> What I meant was, his son's blank stare is exactly my reaction as a 30 year old adult --- I can't comprehend how this guy doesn't comprehend how stupid his questions are.

<comment> grumpy-buffalo Could you please explain why you think this guy's questions are stupid? They seemed like good questions to me. His son's school's definitions of "fact" and "opinion" seem to not be mutually exclusive, which seems to contradict the implicit assumptions in the exercises assigned to the students.

<comment><USER16> I rather liked the article.

<comment><USER15> I found myself nodding in agreement with the school and it's separation of values/morality/opinion from facts/truth.

It's all just words, lines we use to divide, but they seem to be drawing nice solid lines --- whilst the parental unit that wrote the article seems remarkably confused about the factualness of his own beliefs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17>
        > Conversely, many of the things we once "proved" turned
        > out to be false. For example, many people once thought
        > that the earth was flat

Is this satire?

<comment><USER18> Didn't you know that the Earth was once _proven_ flat? /snark

I think it's an example of Poe's Law.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Moral 'facts' require a universal standard of morality. It's hard to come up with a truly universal standard. The best answer I've seen is: Man's life.

"Since reason is man's basic means of survival, that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; that which negates, opposes or destroys it is the evil." -Ayn Rand [1]

[1] [http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/morality.html](http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/morality.html)

<comment><USER3> That doesn't set a standard, it just moves the discussion to "what is proper to the life a rational being", which is still completely subjective.

<comment><USER19> It progresses the discussion to there, by being a first principle of morality. From there, with a definition of rationality, "what is proper to the life a rational being" can be answered. For example, death is not proper to the life a rational being. From that follows certain things to avoid. Using this logic, those things would be morally wrong.

<comment><USER3> _For example, death is not proper to the life a rational being._

Why not?

<comment><USER19> I didn't just assert that, it was based on the preceding logic. "Why not" is answered by what I proposed in my previous comment.

Not up for debating it with you further. With a name like icebraining, have you ever wondered if you're the baddy? [1]

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's amazing a professor of philosophy seems to understand this less than elementary school kids. There is a surprising shallowness to this article.

I left this article applauding the school and son, and questioning the author.

</comment><comment><USER21> The author declines to demonstrate to the reader that there are moral facts.

He attempted reductiones ad absurdum fall completely flat, e.g.,

> If it's not true that it's wrong to murder a cartoonist with whom one > disagrees, then how can we be outraged?

...As if nobody has ever been outraged on the basis of their opinions!

He also fails to even mention what a moral fact would consist of. He doesn't say whether he agrees with this definition:

> Fact: Something that is true about a subject and can be tested or proven.

But clearly if one takes this position, there are no moral facts. What would constitute moral proof?

My guess is that the author is crypto-monotheist. With a God around, you could say that a moral claim is God's will, and even if we can't prove it there is a fact of the matter. In a godless world, there is no basis on which a moral claim could be a fact.

<comment><USER3> Lots of people have claimed ungodly sources of moral objectivity/universalism (usually nature, or reason, or some such).

<comment><USER21> Okay but that's still, like, just their opinion man :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The OP's mistake is to characterize all "moral facts" as simple binary answers. Cheating = bad. Killing = wrong. Those are too simple. That they are labeled opinion does not imply that there aren't any not-simple moral facts.

"Cheating undermines meritocracies and is therefor frowned upon by those in control of such."

I'd say that qualifies as a moral fact and most all would call it an accurate description of a state of affairs, a fact.

"All men are created equal" is not a fact, or even an opinion imho. It is a hope, a dream of people trying to describe an ideal state of affairs. That it isn't a "fact" doesn't mean that it cannot be something to believe in and strive for.

<comment><USER3> _" Cheating undermines meritocracies and is therefor frowned upon by those in control of such."_

 _I 'd say that qualifies as a moral fact_

What makes that a _moral_ fact? What's the moral part?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> What is this reactionary garbage doing on HN?

This is a popular far right talking point, fear or "moral relativism" and the ridiculous assertion that millions of kids are being indoctrinated into it by public schools. It's horse shit.

</comment><comment><USER24> >Fact: Something that is true about a subject and can be tested or proven. Opinion: What someone thinks, feels, or believes. Hoping that this set of definitions was a one-off mistake ...

Two decades ago, when I was in elementary school, we were taught pretty much the exact same thing. If someone states something is a fact, demand proof. And for children, this is good enough. When they grow up to be pedantic associate professors of philisophy, they may feel free to expand on the above definitions.

</comment><comment><USER25> Sure, it's a mistake to treat facts and beliefs as disjoint. But moral relativism is the only honest position—we do not know what's morally right, nor do we know whether right things even exist, nor can we necessarily prove these things even though we believe them. So we pragmatically follow evidence and try to treat people decently in an ad-hoc fashion.

More to the point, if a teacher teaches kids any _specific_ absolute moral system, many of their parents will be upset with it. So the school system only allows teachers to teach what is essentially agnosticism—the absence of a moral position.

The examples from the article can all be dismissed by simple descriptivism:

> If it's not true that it's wrong to murder a cartoonist with whom one > disagrees, then how can we be outraged?

A person can be outraged for any reason they want. It happens that this kind of thing outrages a lot of people.

> If there are no truths about what is good or valuable or right, how can we > prosecute people for crimes against humanity?

We can, and do, do so arbitrarily. It happens that a lot of people agree on what "crimes against humanity" entail.

> If it's not true that all humans are created equal, then why vote for any > political system that doesn't benefit you over others?

Humans are occasionally altruistic for some reason.

Isn't it more interesting to investigate the reasons for why so many humans believe these things than to endlessly conduct the same debates about truth, provability, and knowledge?

</comment><comment><USER26> None of the examples come close to moral fact. (The author wasn't claiming they all were moral fact, but he suggests without being specific that at least some of them ought to be.)

— Copying homework assignments is wrong.

A situational ethic.

— Cursing in school is inappropriate behavior.

A situational ethic.

— All men are created equal.

Objectively false.

— It is worth sacrificing some personal liberties to protect our country from terrorism.

Too vague to be either fact or opinion.

— It is wrong for people under the age of 21 to drink alcohol.

A situational ethic.

— Vegetarians are healthier than people who eat meat.

Most likely false.

— Drug dealers belong in prison.

A situational ethic.

</comment><comment><USER27> From the article:

"Conversely, many of the things we once "proved" turned out to be false. For example, many people once thought that the earth was flat."

I don't think this is an example of something that was ever "proved".

Nevertheless, I feel like the author's grasping for straws in his unwillingness to admit that morality is subjective and situational. He's done nothing to prove that moral values can or should be considered "facts" instead of (or in addition to, as he's advocating) opinions.

</comment><comment><USER28> Are there moral facts?

<comment><USER29> Of course there are.

<comment><USER30> For example?

<comment><USER29> \- Efficiency is not just the means; it's the actual end.

\- The means justify the end.

\- Truth is all that matters. Therefore, to lie is morally bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> "It should not be a surprise that there is rampant cheating on college campuses: If we've taught our students for 12 years that there is no fact of the matter as to whether cheating is wrong, we can't very well blame them for doing so later on."

What if we say "cheating is not allowed". Can we blame them then?

</comment><comment><USER32> I suspect that, if asked to enumerate moral facts, the author would describe his opinions.

</comment><comment><USER5> The likelihood that human definition of life DOESN'T exist elsewhere in the universe is infinitesimally small. That's not make it a fact that life DOES exist. We just shouldn't be surprised when they arrive to probe the OP.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Alert: Public Schools Teach Nihilism!"

[http://iloveyoubutyouregoingtohell.org/tag/justin-p- mcbrayer...](http://iloveyoubutyouregoingtohell.org/tag/justin-p-mcbrayer/)

</comment><comment><USER26> "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." \- Philip K. Dick

Facts are observations that persist no matter how much you wish otherwise. - me, just now.

</comment><comment><USER33> There are facts. There are moral positions. What are moral facts?

<comment><USER34> The most plausible definition I can think of involves stating your metaethics (e.g. utilitarianism) and then showing evidence that there is a reliably- reached conclusion for a claim under those ethics.

Like, I don't know: "Under utilitarianism, if you are comparatively rich, it is wrong not to attempt to relieve the suffering of people in extreme poverty, because you can do so very cheaply in comparison to the happiness gain you could cause for other people as rich as you". I'd say that's a moral fact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This thread got bumped from #2 to #90 in less than 30 seconds. Good thing still up top is "Can Family Secrets Make You Sick? (npr.org)".

</comment><comment><USER35> I mean they are facts in that most everyone agrees on them, which is one usage of the word "fact". But they're not facts in the same way as "the sun will rise tomorrow" or "2 + 2 = 4" (which those statements themselves are two different types of fact also!).

<comment><USER20> The sun will rise tomorrow is an opinion/speculation. The sun rose today is a fact.

<comment><USER36> The sun rose today is a fact only if you can prove it. I think you're crazy everyone knows the sun just appeared out of nowhere.

PS: Your aunt Sally called, she misses you.

<comment><USER3> No, facts are facts even if no one can prove it. It's just that if you can't prove it, you can't know if a certain claim (like "the sun rose today") is actually a fact or not.

<comment><USER36> I'm having trouble with this.

Can you prove that what you said is a fact?

<comment><USER3> Nope.

<comment><USER37> I think what icebraining was trying to say is: A fact is not a opinion that is proven to be true. A fact is a opinion that is true and can be proven to be true even if we don't yet know how. In which case we simply don't yet know that said opinion is a fact.

I'm not sure if this definition is correct but I'm fairly certain this is what icebraining meant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> The author's position is as bad as what they're trying to criticize.</comment>


Lawrence Lessig: "We are the 99.95%" [video] - <AUTHOR> http://getdenso.com/videos/2929798-december-13-2011-lawrence-lessig-part-4

<comment><USER2> Lessig's thesis, if I'm not mistaken, is that only people who contribute money to politicians have access to them, and therefore only issues the contributors care about are dealt with.

He would like to limit the maximum amount an individual is able to contribute to a very low figure (something like $100 or less) in order to change who has or has not access.

As a French, I find this very naive. Our politicians and their campaigns are paid for by public money, and have been for over 20 years now. It doesn't make our politicians more willing to listen to ordinary people. French politicians invented -- and implemented! -- Hadopi, for instance.

Access is very important, yes, but it's an illusion to link access with just money. I would say access is 1/3 social circles (who politicians went to school with, who they're married to, etc.), 1/3 power (economic power such as who employs the most people, but also who can make the most noise (farmers!!!)) and 1/3 "cultural power" (stars and pseudo-stars politicians meet when they're invited on a TV show, etc.)

Just because one removes the access that money give, they won't miraculously make politicians unbiased. Humans are biased, not just politicians, and there's not much anyone can do about it.

What can be done is what the founders of the US have done: write a strong Constitution and a stronger Bill of Rights. Despite what everyone says and complains about, that has proven to work pretty well for the last 200 years.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, but do you have health care?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 2nd part (extended interview) is available at: [http://www.thedailyshow.com/extended- interviews/404264/playl...](http://www.thedailyshow.com/extended- interviews/404264/playlist_tds_extended_lawrence_lessig/404243) (with an ad)</comment>


Interactive Bay Area Rental Price Heatmap by Census Tract - <AUTHOR> http://kwelia.tumblr.com/post/37609046746/interactive-bay-area-rental-price-heatmap-by-census

<comment><AUTHOR> The previous iteration of this project was discussed here as well:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4830437></comment>


Docker Misconceptions - <AUTHOR> https://valdhaus.co/writings/docker-misconceptions/ <comment><USER2> It seems to me that a lot of the "Docker isn't good for production" stuff boils down to "Docker is a base layer that's not sufficient for production, and you need other tooling around it."

Like, if you're using Docker in conjunction with AWS's suite of tools (Elastic Beanstalk, CloudWatch, etc.), a lot of these concerns are taken care of, you know?

So Docker doesn't solve everything, but it can be part of the solution.

<comment><USER3> I totally agree.

Docker on ECS, with VPC for network and instance isolation, an ELB for load balancing and a Kinesis for log streaming is working extremely well.

Docker is feeling really great here as common tooling between a development system and production system.

Disclaimer: I'm working on a project, Convox, that automates setting up this type of system. [https://docs.convox.com/](https://docs.convox.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have this sinking feeling that a lot of what is happening with Docker as a specific tool is going to be replaced in 4 or 5 years with unikernels.

My hope is that the orchestration/scheduling tools (mesos, kubernetes, etc.) mature in such a way that the switch from Docker to unikernels is largely transparent to most people.

<comment><USER5> Why? unikernel is quite opinioned imo.

<comment><USER4> If you look at it from the perspective of the typical deployed application, say, with 4 or 5 VMs working together, it probably doesn't amount to much.

But if you are Google or Amazon, who have to build massive data centers to host thousands and thousands of those apps, along side much larger-scale applications, you could achieve much more significant density (and therefore reduced costs) if you were running unikernels as opposed to VMs. Perhaps passing some of that cost difference on to the customer for both competitive reasons and as an incentive for them to upgrade.

That said, even for a small-time app, consider the weight of trying to run a complicated micro-service-based system on a developer laptop. Having to orchestrate a bunch of VMs is an unmitigated disaster. Having to orchestrate a bunch of containers in one or more VMs is an improvement, but not much.

If you could instead run unikernels, there's considerably less overhead. Especially since the unikernels are typically able to run hosted inside a standard host-OS process.

Don't get me wrong, the world isn't really there. But when you consider a kubernetes cluster of docker containers that you never SSH into ... why bother with all those added layers of OS and runtime cruft?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Given the amount of money Docker, Inc. has raised (>50M, three series rounds, etc.), I somewhat cynically think that this buzz about Docker may just be the result of a lot of marketing money.

I'm not really comfortable with such widespread adoption of a tool that is primarily a VC baby--NPM is setting itself up to fail (I think) in a similar fashion.

I do hope I'm wrong.

</comment><comment><USER7> "Misconception: You should have only one process per Docker container!"

as soon as you start treating docker images as anything other that isolated statically compiled executables, you're not going to get the best out of docker.

if you are bundling inits, crons and companion apps into a single container then you need to stop, go back and either re-factor your code, or go to Full on VMs,

why?

because the networking is terrible. There are three great advantages to using real VMs over containers:

o Networking

o Isolation

o hot migration and resource allocation

Networking:

every instance of a service can have its own IP, and can be trivially tied to DNS automatically. scoped service discovery that's only sortof just possible now. however it uses immature tools with limited professional experience to back them up. DNS, DHCP with subdomains means images can be dropped in without any hard work

Isolation:

Its far harder to break out of a VM than it is a container. Especially if you are dealing with persistent storage and need to allow a container to write outside of its own chroot.

Hot migration:

This is killer. Hardware fails. having a cluster that automatically migrates around contention _and_ hardware failure, without the app having to worry is worth many thousands of man hours. Yes making your own clustering system is fun, but its really quite hard to do well. Why bother when the hypervisor can do it for you?

There are three things going for docker:

Configuration library:

There is a rich library of prebuilt images

Baked in fudges:

You can bake in your dirty hack into the container, so long as you script it into your build job, its repeatable.

Speed:

yes there is less overhead. but lets be honest, how often have you hit up against VM speed issues that were down to your machine using too much CPU/memory? (if you're on AWS, no, you've not. AWS is dogshit slow, and expensive.)

Everything else, like immutable builds, easy dev environments et al, can be achieved already, and without much work.

<comment><USER8> I think you're being overly dismissive when it comes to easy dev environments. I was recently fixing the reddit vagrant environment and it was absolutely excruciating:

\- Creating a scratch VM (not even provisioning) is a speed bump when you want to re-running scripts on a pristine environment to validate them. Starting a Docker image takes ~1s.

\- Provisioning is slow! Reddit suggests installing a plugin (vagrant-cachier) to keep you sane. I ended up downloading a plugin to take VirtualBox snapshots of my VM and even that was depressingly slow. Docker commit takes maybe 20s on a big layer.

\- VirtualBox shared folders are pretty bad, so apparently I should install vagrant-bindfs (and NFS packages). -v is effectively zero effort.

\- I had to keep on shutting down and starting up the VM to tweak memory settings - too big and my laptop died, too small and nothing would start. You get far more flexible controls in Docker.

I couldn't help but think all the way through that putting everything in a Docker container would just be a far nicer experience, even if it does violate the single process rule - for this use case, Docker solves some papercuts very effectively.

<comment><USER7> I hear ya, but there are tools for this sort of thing

\- snapshots, provision your VM once, snapshot it, power off.

\- clone a new machine from that snapshot (its still powered on, and do what you will with it)

Bonus points for attaching an ephemeral drive.

\- provisioning is slow, thats why you have hot spares to clone from/use directly.

To minimise hassle, I use the very same infrastructure that I deploy on in prod. This means that there is no difference between prod and dev.

I understand the need to run stuff on laptops, but for me, its really not worth it. Using the same systems and sized machines as in prod makes life so much simpler. Plus I can hand over a machine to another dev really simply.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This post is a year old. Many of it's points are still valid, but others are not. For example, orchestration has been simplified with hosted services like Tutum and Cloud66.

I do however agree that not everything is ready to be containerized, but we are starting to get close.

<comment><USER10> >orchestration has been simplified with hosted services like Tutum and Cloud66.

Ah, so you need to use proprietary SaaS in order to have decent orchestration? Not good news.

<comment><USER4> Also not true. Consider kubernetes and mesos. Both are open source.

<comment><USER10> Oh yeah, that's a good point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I didn't even notice this was posted a year ago until I got to the bottom (though I did feel some tools/ideas were left out which was explained by the date). That said by and large this is a really good resource and as someone who is going all-in with docker on a side project it was a very useful read!

</comment><comment><USER12> Interesting, while the OP says they like Docker, they pretty much recommend against using Docker for the things/purposes that most Docker hype recommends it for.

<comment><USER13> I think it's more the case that he recommends against it...unless you know what you're doing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> A lot of these articles are correct. I would agree that Docker probably isn't ready for production. But containers provide a TON of benefits, and you should absolutely be thinking about how to containerize your applications now. Just because it's not currently ready for production doesn't mean you shouldn't start getting ready to move to a container solution. The ecosystem will mature, companies will offer solutions for these problems, and it will eventually be ready for production. When it is ready, you should be too.

The big problem that Docker solves is the dependency problem. Specifically, it ties multiple levels of dependencies together with application code in a way that makes no assumptions about your environment and how well-maintained it is. It means that your CI system can test on the exact same versions of binaries -- and every dependency down to the kernel level -- that you will run on your production systems.

Many bigger companies will have multiple Yum/Apt/Maven/Git repositories, and with Docker, it doesn't matter. Whatever is built into the container is what gets run. Most importantly it puts control of those things into the hands of the development team, not the system administration team. It allows you to more cleanly separate your infrastructure ops from your application engineering/devops, which is the prime benefit IMO because those two groups have never worked together well.</comment>


Interactive Voronoi Diagram Generator with WebGL - <AUTHOR> http://alexbeutel.com/webgl/voronoi.html <comment><USER2> If all you need is an image of colored Voronoi regions (and no actual graph structures), there are faster algorithms, for example based on [http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/S62.12/docs/Meijster_distance...](http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/S62.12/docs/Meijster_distance.pdf) which run in O(width * height + number_of_points) instead of O(width * height + number_of_points * number_of_pixels_on_cone) as this GPU implementation does.

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool. I suggest having it generate a diagram as soon as the page loads, because when I saw the black canvas I assumed that there was a problem with the WebGL support in my browser.

</comment><comment><USER4> I made a similar thing couple of years ago [http://www.makeitgo.ws/experiments/voronoi_painter/](http://www.makeitgo.ws/experiments/voronoi_painter/)

(ignore the LAB color picker, no idea what I was thinking...)

</comment><comment><USER5> I made a similar thing but for 3D Voronoi diagrams [http://jimmyland.github.io/voro/](http://jimmyland.github.io/voro/)

</comment><comment><USER6> From the source:

> var height = coneRadius / Math.tan(45 * Math.PI / 180.0)

Doesn't that just divide coneRadius by 1? Is there something that I'm missing here?

</comment><comment><USER7> Pretty neat :)

But sometimes straight lines have some kind of angle introduced which shouldn't be there in a correct Voronoi tessellation.

For example: {"sites":[355,413,372,413],"queries":[]} should be a straight line, but has two angles. Have I missed something?

<comment><USER8> this is something to do with the "triangles/cone" tunable. Changing from the default 50 to 48, the vertical line becomes actually vertical.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just to be clear, I didn't make this myself, only found it and submitted.

</comment><comment><USER9> Pretty neat, but would be even nicer if display of the points could be turned off, so that you could see just the resulting shapes, especially with the motion feature.</comment>


What happens when you fire a pistol underwater - <AUTHOR> http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-cetera/what-happens-when-you-fire-a-pistol-underwater-20110820/

<comment><USER2> This is awesome. Especially the bit where they point out exactly why a modern semi-automatic is more efficient than an open-design revolver. (Hint: where does the gas go?)</comment>


Increasing my ignorance on Neural Science - <AUTHOR> http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2016/12/28/increasing-ignorance-neural-science/ <comment><USER2> "It's not that I know better than they do, just that it's clear they are wrong and actively glossing over huge bodies of ignorance to focus on the subjects they think they understand.", this is very common feeling one gets across many domains from contact with textbooks.</comment>


Extension of MIT License for SaaS? - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9387243/license-for-open-source-software-that-can-be-used-in-saas

<comment><AUTHOR> Basically I was thinking about adding this to MIT:

        If your version of the Software supports interaction with it remotely through a computer network, the above
        copyright notice and this permission notice shall be accessible to all users.

What I want to say is, that if the software is used in SaaS, then the copyright notice should be included in some about/legal/credits page/panel.

What do you think?

</comment><comment><USER2> Given the crowd on HN, I'd really love some feedback from people in the know on that. Please share what you know!</comment>


Alligator Eggs - <AUTHOR> http://worrydream.com/AlligatorEggs/ <comment><USER2> The funning this, I decided to do this for fun. I spent hours cutting out all of these things (I still have them). Again, it was just for fun as I was probably just listening to an audiobook or something (perhaps a little scotch thrown in there). But... after I did all that cutting did I actually read the post. There was no point! There was no game to play. Doh! I wasn't aware it was only a concept and was unfinished.

<comment><USER3> I read it wondering about the game dynamics. It felt like a trick to waste my time when it wasn't a game, just a lesson about something else.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This has been posted before, but HN has grown since then and it deserves a wider audience.

<comment><USER4> Previously: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=600736>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why would anyone go to so much trouble to make lambda calculus difficult?

<comment><USER6> I wonder if we can compare what happens over the long therm with people who intuitively understand math vs. people who learn to understand it with the help of metaphors such as above?

Are such un-abstractions helpful for teaching basic math knowledge? Advanced math skills? Both?

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure exactly how I feel about this...

I want think these things are great for a start, to reach that first epiphany which clicks a concept in place, but I'm thinking they should be applied selectively and discarded as soon as possible.

I base this pretty much entirely on my own frustrating experience being "taught" with methods that focused entirely on and metaphors and procedures for "how" of things, not the "why" which I believe is essential to any real understanding.

<comment><USER8> In my experience teaching science and math, I've found this sort of analogy to be of limitted utility. It is often possible to get a whole class on board with the story and understanding the "rules" and able to come to the right conclusions. They're thrilled. Then you try to bring up the more abstract version and connect it and you get blank stares. Some kids make the connection quickly, but they tend to be the ones that wouldn't have needed the story version in the first place.

I have found that people who understand a topic well often mistake frameworks of understanding that they come up with _after_ they understand for good ways to teach the concept to people who don't yet understand. It's like people think, "Oh I get it! Here's the big picture!" And they explain it that way. But the big picture they came up with was the result, not the cause, of their understanding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Add monkeys that throw eggs and you have a brainfuck interpreter.

</comment><comment><USER10> This reminds me of an afternoon I spent with my then-officemate Carl de Marcken at the MIT AI Lab, recasting Ackermann's function (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ackermann_function>) as a pyramid scheme for the weekly "Girl Scout Benefit / Graduate Student Beer" announcement ([http://projects.csail.mit.edu/gsb/old-archive/gsb- archive/gs...](http://projects.csail.mit.edu/gsb/old-archive/gsb- archive/gsb94-11nov18))

Re-reading it now, I'm struck by the fact that Larry Ellison _actually owns_ a Hawaiian island (though not Kauai). The system works!

</comment><comment><USER11> I thought it felt familiar when I was reading the rules of the game! :p

</comment><comment><USER12> Be right back, off to yoink this into a Tablet app ..

</comment><comment><USER13> Whoa, that post made the rounds of the functionalerati long before Bret became famous for his kill math and kill programming stuff.

<comment><USER14> I'm speechless. I realize how far I've been reading his articles without knowing it. Only since his reactive variable binding in js I've known his name though.</comment></comment>


iPhones may shut down in cold weather - <AUTHOR> https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201678 <comment><USER3> iPhones, Android phones, music players, and other electronic things, if the weather is cold enough. Are we just trying to find anything bad to say about Apple so we can say it? Why is this on the front page?

<comment><USER4> The instructions on this page offer " _Use iOS devices where the ambient temperature is between 0º and 35º C (32º to 95º F)._ "

Hopefully Apple is just being cautious and giving a range where they're confident no one will have problems. But if not, that's a pretty narrow range. I've had problems with music players and Android phones down at <5F, certainly, but <32F is the one part of this that looks like an Apple-specific issue.

<comment><USER5> I've never had a problem with my phone when it's been below freezing out.

<comment><USER6> This may be obvious, but when it's cold out, it helps to keep the phone in a warm pocket close to the body (e.g. on the inside of your coat) rather than a bag or so. I've never had any issues with iPhones that way; using it for more than a short period of time when it's very cold is unpleasant anyway, so it never gets the chance to cool down too much. (I can confirm this works even at -40°, although you've got to be very careful with charging cables at that sort of temperature. Don't try to bend them, they'll snap.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Everyone I've ever skied with knows this already...

Anecdotally, my phone (LG) doesn't whinge until it's at least -15C outside.

<comment> ng-user I've got an S8 and had no problems this winter using it while skiing.

The lowest temperature I was out in was -25C, I think keeping it on your body is the best way to combat the temperature issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd be surprised if all phones don't have thermal range protection. At the very least the battery almost certainly does, not having it would be dangerous. Going into a partially operating state and giving warnings rather than just cutting off the battery is actually a nice feature that I doubt many phones have.

</comment><comment><USER9> That's common knowledge here in Canada :)

<comment><USER10> How frequent is it? I've seen it happen to a couple of friends this year and the temperature was barely below 0 Celsius. It must be worse up there.

<comment><USER11> When it's -30, I don't even try to use my phone. I keep it in my pocket close to my body with the hopes that my body heat will keep it warm enough for it to work if I need it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is nothing new right? I learned the first day I went snowboarding with my iphone that it was useless to bring with me... at least without some thick rubber case.

<comment><USER13> Yeah I went skiing with my new Pixel 2 last Christmas and couldn't get it to stay on long enough to record a video. Doesn't seem very deveice specific. My sister had better luck on her older iPhone, but on the coldest day neither of us could use our phones outside for very long.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Just as an addendum to this, I learned an expensive lesson about temperature changes in computers a few years ago.

I had a fancy Dell XPS gaming laptop and was at a LAN party with my friends, playing the latest and greatest. The computer was very hot to the touch. Well, it was time to pack up and leave, so I put my laptop in my flimsy backpack and took a 20min walk home in the freezing cold.

I get home and lo, the computer, ice cold to the touch, wouldn't boot. Took it to the shop and the tech said that a few of the components were cracked and i'd need to replace them or get a new laptop.

That's when it hit me; of _course_ when you take something very hot and put it in something very cold, it's going to break. Should've waited like 5 minutes instead of rushing out...

</comment><comment><USER15> If you lived in a cold temperature with an iPhone for long enough, you learn to keep it close to your body when wrapping up for the outdoors. Sure, you need to pull it out for some functions and that's awkward, but the gloves you are wearing get in the way of that too. These are general challenges of navigating the cold. I can see the irritation, but I'm in agreement with other Canadians here that this isn't really news :)

</comment><comment><USER16> I noticed last winter in Seoul. I could barely use my iPhone 6S Plus outside. I had to regularly walk in stores and blow on its back to warm it up. Super annoying when it turned off at the peak of a mountain and I couldn't turn it on until I was half-way down.

It doesn't tell you why it turns off either, I thought the battery was dead when it started regularly turning off around 20-40%

</comment><comment><USER17> Isn't this one of the primary reasons they were undervolting iphones? I thought this was already common knowledge.

<comment><USER18> It probably is, but a thing being common knowledge is not the same as apple confirming it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This has been happening already for at least the past 4 winters. This was pretty common knowledge, right?

</comment><comment><USER20> Also in hot weather. I don't _store_ my phone in my car, but I've brought it _into_ my car when my car is above 95F (say, when it's been parked and I get back to it) and had it shut down on me.

(I probably shouldn't have bought a black car - that doesn't help.)

</comment><comment><USER21> We had -20C the other day. My samsung S8 was perfectly fine while in my pocket. At one point i placed it on my outdoor table and within a minute it showed a warning and then closed down (correctly closing down - <USER2> dying/crashing).

</comment><comment><USER22> Not too surprising. Definitely happened to me on the summit of a 14er in the Colorado Rockies last year. I was glad I had my DSLR as well as my iPhone 7...the Canon had no problems (it was only about 30F).

</comment><comment><USER23> Same goes for Android. Got stuck hiking on a mountain once in windy 15F weather. Neither my friend's iPhone nor my Android would stay turned on for more than a minute.

</comment><comment><USER24> Of Course they do. My iPhoneX dies often these days to NYC weather. Was planning to go the Apple store to find out why.

</comment><comment><USER25> Since I started Wim Hof method, I'm more immune to cold than my HTCOne. ( I have an old phone, I know )

</comment><comment><USER26> I live in Canada, and this is not news.

</comment><comment><USER27> iPhone also turns off it gets too hot. I left my black iPhone in my car's cup holder once while the sun roof wasn't being blocked and I picked it up and after it cooled down a bit turned right back on.

</comment><comment><USER28> 12 °F / -11 °C.

On my bike.

Listening to Gorillaz on my Powerbeats 3.

They shut down after 5 minutes every time.

</comment><comment><USER29> My iPhone stopped doing this when I had the battery changed

</comment><comment><USER30> Designed by Apple in _California_.

<comment><USER31> California has snow.

<comment><USER20> Not the "California" that Apple means.</comment></comment></comment>


Using Katas to Improve Your Coding - <AUTHOR> http://blog.8thlight.com/chong-kim/2013/09/26/using-katas-to-improve.html <comment><USER2> Counterpoint - [http://simpleprogrammer.com/2013/08/26/dont-code- katas/](http://simpleprogrammer.com/2013/08/26/dont-code-katas/)

tl;dr: doing the same thing repetitively only improves your skill to a point after which you need to increase the difficulty of the task if you are to continue to improve.

<comment><USER3> The author tries really hard to suggest that when you work on a "code kata" you will not improve. But there is no drill instructor yelling: "GIVE ME 100 CRUD-WEB APPS, RIGHT NOW!"

"code kata" is just a fancy name for a computational problem that has limited scope but still provides lots of room for creativity.

Just like a the questions on [https://projecteuler.net/](https://projecteuler.net/) but with a lesser focus on number theory.

tl;dr: "code katas" were never intended to be mindlessly repeated but to deliberately think about what can be faster, better, more elegant, expressive (name you favorite)

see: [http://codekata.pragprog.com/codekata/2007/01/code_katahow_i...](http://codekata.pragprog.com/codekata/2007/01/code_katahow_it.html)

<comment><USER4> The exact same intention is in martial arts katas.

<comment><USER5> I believe martial katas were invented as a means for one teacher to teach lots and lots of students at the same time. Like a lot of things of oriental origin, they tend to get romanticized in the west.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This kata concept has an interesting dovetail to Jennifer DeWalt's 180 Websites in 180 Days project[1]: repeated skills practice within a set of constraints.

I _really_ like Chong Kim's idea of using Screenflow to capture these sessions and be able to review them later, played back at high speed. The opportunity to "look over my own shoulder" as I'm working a problem, to inspect my workflow in a manner detached from the moment, seems like an invaluable training tool. Video review has been used for athletes to improve their skills for ages now, and has become very accessible right along with smartphones. Applying those techniques to coding or other knowledge worker skills (work in Photoshop, etc?) is pretty darn interesting.

[1] Most recently on HN at: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6489468](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6489468)

</comment><comment><USER7> How has no one mentioned codewars yet? This is like the best code kata site on the web... [http://www.codewars.com](http://www.codewars.com)

<comment><USER8> I also recommend codewars, it's a very well executed gamification of short programming challenges. I've been regularly solving problems on it for over a month and it's been a lot of fun. I had only written a few dozen lines of Javascript before I started; since then I have become much more proficient.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I practice kata every day. I typically show up to work 20 - 30 minutes early and pick a problem to work on. I record my answer for later reflection. Sometimes I will repeat a solution I came to before, sometimes I will refine an old approach, and other times I will think of a new way to approach it. I keep all of my problems that I collect and the solutions I come up with in a git repository.

Sometimes I will call to mind an interesting solution I came up with. Having the repository is handy so that I can pull up the problem, the solution I am interested in and perhaps diff it against a previous, similar solution I had came up with before. I use this time to reflect on the changes I made, how it changes the characteristics of the algorithm (time, space, bounds, etc), and whether it states the intent with more clarity than before. I keep these reflections in a journal.

I know I've improved when I notice in my journals that my language changes dramatically from dense, technical language to simple, straight-forward language without losing any of the accumulated knowledge.

<comment><USER10> >I know I've improved when I notice in my journals that my language changes...

While what you're doing is admirable--I wish more developers did this--the central question is not whether you improved, but whether you improved more than if you'd done other work. For example, learning a new language, refactoring, etc.

<comment><USER9> I end up, "refactoring," by consequence of repetition I suppose. There are some days when I can't think of another way to write a _fibonacci_ function (a trivial example... without including obfuscated methods, there are only so many effective ways to implement a function that computes the n-th number of the sequence). On those days I may end up calling to mind a previous solution and simply, "refactor it."

I have conflicting feelings about learning new languages. I do it every now and again but for a craftsperson I don't feel that it is the ideal approach. As some monks I've heard say so it is with programming: _you can be fluent in many languages but master none_. Real mastery requires dedication and focus over time. But that's not the whole story, is it?

I've met too many developers who will put C on their resume under the assumption that they are capable of writing C programs. More often than not it's a bold-faced lie, but when it isn't I find they are certainly capable of writing a C program and getting something to compile. However there are very few who understand what sequence points are, that still treat the linker like black magic, and don't fully grasp how array and array pointer parameters are changed by the compiler.

The point I'm getting at is that C is generally one of many languages on a programmer's resume. And it's usually an after-thought. However if you really grill someone on the soup-to-nuts of just one of these languages you can find holes in their knowledge. They learn enough to get something useful done but they don't know enough to do truly masterful things with the language. I think about it like being a musician: you can learn enough about an instrument to join a jam but to push the boundaries you need to master one. And mastery is something I find thats consistent, dedicated practice.

As to how to measure whether I could have improved more if I had done something else other than master one thing... I think there's a lack of bounds there that should be determined by your goals. If your goal is to join a jam and play along then you want to learn as little as possible up front and as much as you can as you go along. I think this is the par for modern programmers these days. But if your goal is to push what's possible with a particular instrument then generalizing your knowledge is not nearly as effective as studying music with that instrument alone. Both are valid approaches and it's a matter of limiting the scope of possibilities based on what you want to achieve.

Though mastery tends towards an asymptotic function reaching, but never achieving, perfection.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The kitten experiment seems kind of horrifying, but it certainly conveys the point.

</comment><comment><USER12> I did something similar back in January 2012---I wrote the same program 30 different ways in four different languages ([http://boston.conman.org/2012/01/09.1](http://boston.conman.org/2012/01/09.1) is #1, just follow the links) and it was an interesting experience. Quite a few only differ in a few lines, or maybe cosmetically, but some versions forgo standard libraries, or read input in a radically different method, or explore different programming techniques.

</comment><comment><USER13> I use katas to learn new languages [1], but I never do a kata twice. Picking a problem and solving it with a new language is pretty interesting, especially when you try it with very different paradigms.

[1] [https://github.com/bfontaine/Katas](https://github.com/bfontaine/Katas)

</comment><comment><USER14> Just to throw a slightly dissenting perspective ... I don't know, I've been interested in the concept of katas in a sense. I've done them a few times, but I always seem to have another side project (or three) that I'd rather spend my extracurricular time on. I guess if you have nothing else to work on katas are fine, but otherwise, just pour your time into a side-project that you're passionate about :)

Of course, that's just my viewpoint ... I understand it won't work for everyone. So YMMV

</comment><comment><USER15> I've got a repo of some katas in Ruby on github: [http://github.com/mark/katas](http://github.com/mark/katas) ... they've definitely been useful for me to improve, and experiment with new ideas and new ways of solving the problem. I like problems which require a good mix of algorithms and "business logic".

</comment><comment><USER16> I do katas every week and think they are great for both reinforcing good practice and helping you get over rough patches in your understanding of a language.

That said there are quite a few katas out there that are either trivial or merely puzzles to solve. The former are great for beginners but pointless for anyone else. The latter are fine if you are doing them for the same reasons you would do a crossword puzzle but they are probably better avoided if your goals are more practically oriented. The hard part is wading through the chaff to get to the wheat.

</comment><comment><USER17> What sources do people like for finding problems?

I've been practicing on TalentBuddy and really like it. It nicely supports lots of languages, and you can check your solution against others.

www.talentbuddy.co/

</comment><comment><USER18> Any software like screenflow for windows?

<comment><USER19> Not necessarily like screenflow, but I have used Open Broadcaster ( [http://obsproject.com/](http://obsproject.com/) ) for this purpose. All it does is recover various screen buffers to an mp4, but that is more than sufficient for this purpose in my opinion. Plus it is OSS.

Great for streaming video games to Twitch.tv or its variants, as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I was a bit confused why it had to be under 15 minutes as I didn't know there was a limit, apparently you can increase it. [https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/71673?hl=en](https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/71673?hl=en)

<comment><USER21> It doesn't need to be long. In fact the point is that you don't need to solve the problem. You just get better at working on it. Short means you can do it often, and make it a habit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> That's a quite interesting concept, my way to do 'katas' is with projecteuler.net, now I'm getting some coding speed by reading a book about patterns or checking the wikipedia for software patterns. If you get to combine both, then sky is the limit!

<comment><USER23> PE has always struck me as more focused on math than programming. The easy problems handle brute force but the hard ones are generally bested by a mathematical understanding of the problem rather than programming prowess & algorithmic kung-fu. I've been meaning to check out Rosalind [1] to see if it opens up the door for more challenging programming or just shifts the problem domain to biology.

[1] [http://rosalind.info/](http://rosalind.info/)

<comment><USER24> If project euler seems too "mathy" try some problems from Top Coder or similar programming challenges. I find they're pretty fun, and can be a bit of a puzzle to work out what's the most efficient approach.

<comment><USER23> I'm not saying that it's "too "mathy"", just that it's commonly trotted out as a good resource to develop programming skills when, IMHO, it's better suited to honing mathematical reasoning. All the single page programs in the world aren't really going to help somebody become better at writing real programs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Repeating the task over and over again will reinforce good habits ( if you know the language well) and bad habits, if you are learning the language in the absence of a reference solution or someone more experienced to review your work.

<comment><USER26> A reference solution, "OK you did it - here's another way", would be super- useful for learning.

I know that I can complete most any kata, but I don't always know if I'm doing it the most efficient way under constraints of implementation time, memory or speed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> We have katas in karate, too.

<comment> daniel-cussen I think that's the origin of the word. It's a loanword from martial arts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Trigger alert: Experiments on animals

</comment><comment><USER29> Where does an employed programmer find time to do non-work-related katas and then review them and do them again? wow

<comment><USER30> The same place all employed people find time to do non-work related activities. Employed people play video games, watch TV, watch breaking bad, go to the gym, train for marathons, raise their kids, etc, etc. Your work is not an excuse for not being able to make time to do other things in your life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Where can I do some katas?

<comment><USER15> If you want Ruby, I've got a repo with some at [http://github.com/mark/katas](http://github.com/mark/katas)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Go Mr. Chong!

</comment><comment><USER33> How do you measure how good you are at coding? As a follow up question, if you can't measure it, how can you meaningfully improve?

<comment><USER6> > if you can't measure it, how can you meaningfully improve?

The idea that you _must_ have a quantitative measure to improve something is a bit overboard. Process analysis can teach you a lot about how you (or others) work, what the character of that work is, and suggest ways to improve it. For example, Kim's Screenflow session captures can be viewed as a kind of Contextual Interview[1] ... with himself! In that light, the primary goal could be viewed as one of discovery: "how do I work?" versus "how do I improve metric X in my work?" The initial Kata review may suggest metrics for improvement, but it's the continual process of open-minded review that will identify and suggest areas for improvement.

That said, Chong Kim does cite a key metric: time. So on that point, he's looking to optimize his efficiency with the tools. There's a lot to be said for just time efficiency; improving this can be a very liberating experience as a coder. Speaking from experience with contextual interviews done for others, it's often possible to _significantly_ improve workflow by just hitting the proverbial low hanging fruit.

That said, time isn't the be-all, end-all IMO. In the Katas, I'll argue for time as a model which provides structure to that more important inquiry I cited above: what is his working process and learning process for each new problem domain? How can those be improved?

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contextual_inquiry](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contextual_inquiry)</comment></comment>


Purely Functional 3D in Typed Racket [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3xdv4UP9-U&index=6&list=PLXr4KViVC0qI9t3lizitiFJ1cFIeN2Gdh <comment><AUTHOR> If you jump to 11:52, you'll see a neat demo that shows off the engine's performance: 70,000 spheres (ray traced on the card), 500 lights, at 60 frames per second. Great stuff!

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3xdv4UP9-U&t=11m52s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3xdv4UP9-U&t=11m52s)

The source code is available on GitHub:

[https://github.com/ntoronto/pict3d](https://github.com/ntoronto/pict3d)

<comment><USER2> Honestly, I'm not sure if I should be impressed with the demo they showed. I haven't given the code a read, so take this with a grain of salt, but I feel like the exact demo they showed off was mostly a graphics card demo. You can get most, if not all, of that scene rendered purely on the graphics card itself using fancy shaders without needing to hit the CPU very much. I feel like I would have been much more impressed if they had created something such as a level from Megaman (since they showed a sprite of Megaman near the start) that the presenter was able to play. I would consider it more impressive since it would have to spend more time in Racket dealing with physics, collision, AI, etc. instead of spending the majority of the time on the graphics card. Hopefully they'll be able to show off a demo like that soon (if one doesn't exist already) to really show off the capabilities of the engine inside Racket. Honestly though, the whole project is exciting for me since they're really just trying to explore new ways of writing games. I'm looking forward to what they do in the future.

<comment><USER3> It seems like the interesting thing is that it's a purely functional API. I don't thing they were trying to demonstrate that the language is fast.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly. The engine is able to make excellent use of the GPU while sporting a purely functional API in Racket, a dialect of Lisp.

<comment><USER4> Right. I don't remember whether I said it in the talk, but that demo saturates the AGP bus, meaning that the engine can extract and write scene data at about 1.5 to 2 GB/Sec.

It's possible to put a lot more static content in each frame by uploading the vertex data to the card just once. That feature is on my to-do list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's the whole playlist of the rest of the talk recordings from this year's RacketCon:

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXr4KViVC0qI9t3liziti...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXr4KViVC0qI9t3lizitiFJ1cFIeN2Gdh)

(Michael Fogus gave the keynote and there are other cool talks about games, grahics, and other stuff)

</comment><comment><USER6> The talk says it doesn't work on OS X because of which versions of OpenGL are supported. Neil, is that just because you don't know very well how to use the particular version OS X supports, or are there critical features of your Pict3D engine that won't work in OS X's version?

(I like to do all my for-fun projects in OS X.)

<comment><USER4> More precisely, the problem comes from how certain Linux libraries and OS X have responded to OpenGL's new profile system.

An OpenGL context is roughly a 3D drawing area and its associated behind-the- scenes data. Via changes to OpenGL version 3.0 through 3.2, it became possible to ask for specific _versions_ of OpenGL for each context. There are two kinds of contexts: "compatibility" contexts, which expose all OpenGL features up to the version obtained, and "core" contexts, which don't have deprecated features. For example, starting with 3.1, a core context won't draw quads - you have to split them into two triangles.

On Linux, Racket uses libgtkgl to get OpenGL contexts that are associated with GTK widgets. This library won't return anything but compatibility contexts, up to version 3.0.

On OS X, it's only possible to get an OpenGL 2.1 context or an OpenGL 3.2 or 3.3 _core_ context.

There are a few ways to fix this.

1\. The libgtkgl developers add support for core contexts and versions later than 3.0. I doubt this will happen. They're dragging their feet.

2\. OS X adds support for compatibility contexts. Again, not hopeful.

3\. We find some other way to get an OpenGL context on Linux that's associated with a GTK widget. There aren't many options.

4\. I develop using OpenGL 2.1. I lose a lot of shading language features that way, though, and probably a lot of performance.

5\. I develop multiple rendering paths. I hate this idea, but it may be what I have to do.</comment></comment>