Pandoc - <AUTHOR> https://pandoc.org/ <comment><USER2> I do all of my academic writing in pandoc. As compared to LaTeX this means no boilerplate (yet you can still use full LaTeX syntax for equations and the like) and, if the publisher 'needs' a Word file, you are one click away from providing it. All with plain text files that you can put under version control, get meaningful diffs, etc. It's just great.

<comment><USER3> I've never understood the impetus for not using full LaTeX in an academic contex, given that the boiler plate is so minimal and presumably one has a built up a personal template over time.

For blog posts and notes I see the appeal, since the boilerplate can be a hindrance to spontaneous writing.

<comment><USER4> Latex can't produce web output, which is increasingly a target I want.

Also, Latex can't produce any output which is accessible to blind people (other than giving them the raw LaTeX). The PDFs latex produces are probably the least accessible format available (much worse than a word proeuced pdf, or some html). This matters to me, and should matter more to other people (in my opinion).

<comment><USER5> >Also, Latex can't produce any output which is accessible to blind people

This sounds like it should definitely be a target of a grant. I guess most government organisations around the world are using Word et al, which isn't too bad these days accessibility wise (AFAIK).

Can you provide a small example of a LateX document that produces an inaccessible PDF?

<comment><USER4> If you grab any academic paper (particularly two columns) there is a good chance getting the text out will be hard, and any part of the paper with maths or tables will be unusable. Sorry. I'm away from a computer now, to make a smaller example.

<comment><USER6> The paper "GADTs Meet Their Match" (first I had in my list) seems to work fine, but I don't know what it was generated with.

<comment><USER4> I'll pick on one of my own random papers:

[https://www.cs.york.ac.uk/aig/projects/implied/docs/cp03.pdf](https://www.cs.york.ac.uk/aig/projects/implied/docs/cp03.pdf)

Try extracting "Theorem 2" on page 5, or any text really. I just get random noise through either a PDF reader, or something like pdf2ascii / ps2ascii.

We just made this with standard latex.

<comment><USER7> That's interesting. Did you \usepackage[T1]{fontenc}?

<comment><USER4> Thanks paper is from 2003, so I'm not sure.

This is just an example. From experience, most PDFs at conferences and journals, generated from pdf, are not accessible to varying degrees.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Occasional pandoc contributor here, AMA :-)

Just a few links:

\- Where everything is documented: [http://pandoc.org/MANUAL.html](http://pandoc.org/MANUAL.html)

\- If you have questions or suggestions: [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/pandoc- discuss](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/pandoc-discuss)

\- Contributing to pandoc is also a great way to get your feet wet with Haskell. In my experience, very supportive community. See [http://pandoc.org/CONTRIBUTING.html](http://pandoc.org/CONTRIBUTING.html) and for good first issues: [https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+...](https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3A%22good+first+issue%22)

Finally, a great feature, that hasn't been mentioned here, is pandoc filters. Basically, pandoc provides a way for scripts (in any programming language) to hook into the transformation pipeline and modify the document AST (similar to the HTML DOM) in-between the reading and writing steps. See [http://pandoc.org/filters.html](http://pandoc.org/filters.html)

<comment><USER9> everytime I see a project using google groups, i think it is already dead. Gladly yours seems to be used quite often. At least you can search it even years later, compared to an irc or slack channel.

<comment><USER10> IRC channels and mailing list are excellent for informal questioning about a project. You can search for guidance, see if a feature would be well received, and receive a green light before starting to implement something.

Other day I thought about contributing to Yarn, the Javascript package manager, but the only way that I found to communicate with the developers were issues in GitHub. Since I didn't know if the feature I wanted would be well received, I just quit.

<comment><USER11> That seems a little bit extreme, why not just open the issue?

<comment><USER12> that issue becomes part of public history.

i'm not the parent, but that is the main reason i try to abstain from posting on public forums unless its under a pseudonym, which my github account isn't.

I'm not trying to say that my anonymity is guaranteed with irc, its just unlikely that future employers and similar link it to me.

<comment><USER13> Have a look at Firefox Multi-Account Containers. You can open a tab that has a different color, and it uses a different cookie database. Very useful, because you can create an extra Github account and quickly switch between those accounts.

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi- account...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account- containers/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My favorite pandoc hack is using it to convert word docs into markdown which can then be diffed similar to source code. Works great for legal redlining.

<comment><USER15> > legal redlining

Is this underlining, and not redlining as defined in financial services? (redlining: differential pricing based on demographic makeup of a zip code or neighborhood)

<comment><USER16> Attorneys and business folks use it to mean "marked up" - a redlined contract has additions in red, and removals in red with red lines through them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I use Pandoc to convert directories of Markdown files into static HTML websites.

Here's the build command for responsive.style[1]:

        pandoc $file -f markdown -t html5 -H templates/header-prod.html -B templates/nav.html -A templates/footer-prod.html -o (echo "../$file" | sed '$s/\.md$/.html/') -s  --data-dir=./ --highlight-style breezedark --variable=file:(echo "$file" | sed '$s/\.md$/.html/')

Works beautifully!

1: [https://github.com/tomhodgins/responsive.style/blob/master/s...](https://github.com/tomhodgins/responsive.style/blob/master/src/build- prod.sh)

<comment><USER18> I know Blot.im as one static site generator that uses it: [https://github.com/davidmerfield/Blot/blob/master/app/models...](https://github.com/davidmerfield/Blot/blob/master/app/models/entry/build/file/markdown/convert.js)

<comment><USER19> Hakyll is another: [https://jaspervdj.be/hakyll/](https://jaspervdj.be/hakyll/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Another happy Pandoc user here :)

I built a pipeline to convert a Markdown file to publishing-ready files for ebooks, Kindle and paperback for my novel; the whole thing is described here: [http://www.gabrielgambetta.com/tgl_open_source.html](http://www.gabrielgambetta.com/tgl_open_source.html)

My website itself is static, generated from a bunch of Markdown files, some HTML templates, and a bit of postprocessing. But most of the work is done by Pandoc.

<comment><USER21> Hey. Can you give us some more context of your novel writing in Markdown? I'd be interested in your process.

<comment><USER20> Sure. The technical side of things is explained here: [http://www.gabrielgambetta.com/tgl_open_source.html](http://www.gabrielgambetta.com/tgl_open_source.html) (same link as above). If you're more interested in the creative aspect, I wrote a bit here: [http://www.gabrielgambetta.com/tgl_swiss_trains.html](http://www.gabrielgambetta.com/tgl_swiss_trains.html). If you're interested in anything not covered there, feel free to ask, I'll be happy to share :)

<comment><USER22> "Soon the structure underlying The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons and The Lost Symbol was laying bare before my eyes. I could see why the stories worked.

I had reverse-engineered Dan Brown."

Could you talk a little more in depth about what Dan Brown's pattern/structure is?

<comment><USER20> I get that request a lot, so I'll have to write something about it :)

All I can offer right now is my raw notes, which are in Spanish. This is a structural analysis of Angels and Demons, The da Vinci Code, and The Lost Symbol: [https://imgur.com/bX6ByJA](https://imgur.com/bX6ByJA)

This is an one-page treatment of the three books, with the "blanks" filled appropriately for each: [https://imgur.com/LlDVUKn](https://imgur.com/LlDVUKn)

I doubt any of this is groundbreaking. Story structure is a widely studied topic (and one that I find fascinating). But it seems like Dan Brown uses a very well defined, customised version of this, that makes for engaging, fast- paced books.

I sort of proved (for myself, at least) that this works, by writing a novel whose structure was originally based on this pattern (although it later diverged a bit), and which causes the expected effect - a couple of readers have read it in a single sitting :)

<comment><USER23> Very interesting! Could you maybe provide those links in text form, so that we may run them through Google Translate? ;-)

<comment><USER20> English translation done!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The one thing it can't do is give HN posts descriptive titles.

<comment><USER25> Thanks, this made me chuckle. Its comments like these which make HN a bit more colorful :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Also, interesting point of trivia, the maintainer, John MacFarlane is a professor of logical philosophy at UC Berkeley.

</comment><comment><USER27> One nice trick that I use all the time is to convert html to md and back again in order to _clean_ it.

Anyway, pandoc is great.

<comment><USER28> Would that be a good way to sanitise user input? Like removing script tags etc...

<comment><USER27> It's usually not a good idea to "get creative" when it comes to security

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It appears that Pandoc generates PDF documents via LaTeX. One problem with this is that, as far as I can tell, LaTeX can't generate tagged PDFs. This is an accessibility problem. Granted, for documents that are heavy on math and/or graphics, the point is probably moot. But many technical documents that are distributed as PDFs would benefit from being tagged.

Luckily, LibreOffice can produce tagged PDFs. And unoconv is a convenient utility for doing this from the command line. So you can use pandoc to convert to a format that LibreOffice can consume, then issue a command like this:

        unoconv -f pdf -e UseTaggedPDF=true mydoc.odt

I've tried it, and it works.

<comment><USER30> Pandoc can convert into ConTeXt which can produce PDF/A (tagging included) easily. Why this can't be done in one command like with xelatex, wkhtml2pdf and what else is supported, I don't know. Many programs can be used to create PDFs but the quality of output isn't always the same.

<comment><USER8> > Why this can't be done in one command

ConTeXt is supported as well: `pandoc input.md -t context -o output.pdf`

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Pandoc's creator, John MacFarlane, is also the lead guy on CommonMark[1].

There are a small number of corner cases that need to be spec'd out before CommonMark can declare a v1.0 release[2]. If you have the skills for this kind of thing, please weigh in!

[1] [https://commonmark.org](https://commonmark.org)

[2] [https://talk.commonmark.org/t/issues-we-must-resolve- before-...](https://talk.commonmark.org/t/issues-we-must-resolve- before-1-0-release-8-remaining/1287?u=vas)

<comment><USER32> Please, please involve definition lists. They are useful. They were present on the first webpage[1].

[1]: [http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html](http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I wrote a little utility that uses Pandoc to read Markdown files like `man` pages in the terminal:

[https://github.com/ashton314/marked-man](https://github.com/ashton314/marked- man)

It's just a one-liner: `pandoc -s -t man "$1" | groff -T utf8 -man | $PAGER`

(That was basically stolen from an answer to one of my questions on Stack Overflow—thanks to those who answered! :)

<comment><USER34> In a similar vein, I use pandoc to convert markdown pages to man pages, and write new/add notes to manpages. I think it's definitely easier than actually writing groff files.

<comment><USER35> I find it easier to write man pages directly. Admittedly, I write mdoc (not the ancient "man" macros), which has been around only since the 80s. It's easier for me to remember the semantics ("Is this a flag/command/function?") than the correct traditional markup ("Should this be bold/italic/nothing?").

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Pandoc (or latex) + make + iNotifyWait work really well together for WYSIWYG like editing too:

      watch: $(ALL)
        while true; do \
        clear; \
        make $(WATCH); \
          inotifywait -qr -e close_write .; \
        done

"make watch WATCH=build" will now compile documents on every save. Works well for single documents, collections of documents or entire websites.

<comment><USER37> I've been using a JS script[1] to watch directories, but this seems neater. Would you mind sharing the whole makefile?

[1] [https://gist.github.com/timpulver/0d01285952b97deb70df6104cc...](https://gist.github.com/timpulver/0d01285952b97deb70df6104cc316a4b)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I sometimes use pandoc to clean up my markdown-formatted documents, especially given its abilities to "wrap" text and add indentation-style whitespace that makes plain-text documents look nearly suitable for publishing as-is (almost kinda like RFC docs but without header/footer cruft).

There are a few things (in latest version, 22.214.171.124) that don't really survive round-trip from markdown back to markdown:

\- reference-style links (e.g. `[foo][f]`). They are converted to inline links e.g. `[foo]([http://...)`](http://...\)`).

\- setext vs hashmark headers. `foo\n=====` will get converted to `# foo`.

\- markdown allows for forced-linebreak <br>s to be added with two trailing blank spaces at the end of a line. Pandoc escapes these with a trailing `\\` at the end of the line.

These are only occasional nuisances, but overall the documents (at least in my experience) are not butchered.

I also occasionally go from markdown to docx for the purposes of uploading to google-docs and copy/pasting large sections into other docs. This is the only markdown-to-google-docs workflow I've found that works to preserve formatting. It's never really butchered anything, except a few times the syntax- highlighting for code-blocks gets confused and keywords get the wrong colors.

<comment><USER39> IIRC, there are CLI flags for your first two points. I think the latter is something like —atx-headers.

You can choose whether reference links go at the end of the paragraph or the document.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I "love" how many comments are one person praising pandoc for helping them in some workflow, and then commenters ripping into them for not using some other tool. I wonder if there's a corollary to some internet rule that the more generally useful a tool is, the more detractors will push for other tools to be used? It would help explain why programming language discussions get so contentious.

Pandoc is seriously a great tool! I love the way it's designed and have found it useful off and on over the years. Truly marvelous for making information available in any needed format.

</comment><comment><USER41> I love pandoc. I've been using it intermittently for years to turn my Markdown and org-mode documents into other formats. Just wish it would take Asciidoc as an input format.

<comment><USER42> Asciidoctor and the other asciidoc tools do the job that I use pandoc for: tables, custom numbering, all the other markdown extensions that one needs to be able to create a highly structured document. With Asciidoc, you don't need md extensions. It's all in there.

<comment><USER41> Ya, I've been using Asciidoctor and Asciidoctor-pdf for long time. Those are some awesome tools, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Pandoc is great software for converting among file formats, such as text, markdown, HTML, PDF, etc.

Example:

        pandoc in.md -o out.html -V pagetitle="My Title" --to=html5 --template="my.html" --css "my.css"

The example converts a markdown file to HTML, using a given title, a template file, and a stylesheet file.

The pipeline is also well implemented with Haskell, which is good for writing your own fast functional transformations.

</comment><comment><USER44> I write fiction as a hobby, I do it in markdown and use Pandoc to turn it into epub files with a custom CSS. It works great. Thanks Pandoc!

<comment><USER45> Is the CSS derived from the markdown, or you supplement MD to HTML with custom CSS? Definitely curious to know!

<comment><USER46> I used a similar workflow. The CSS is for the EPUB and maps to the html elements supported. But if you get too fancy cross device support could get hairy.

See: [https://github.com/FriendsOfEpub/Blitz](https://github.com/FriendsOfEpub/Blitz)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I used pandoc to format my book [0]. Not everything worked perfectly, I'm pretty happy with how everything turned out (especially the print version).

It was a little work to set up the workflow with scripts etc, but being able to write the book in markdown and still having full control over the design was definitely worth it.

[0] sample here: [https://patricklouys.com/professional-php- sample.pdf](https://patricklouys.com/professional-php-sample.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER48> You can use the Haskell-based static site generator Hakyll with Pandoc to create the best best blogging experience imho.

An example of how easy this is and the styles I use for my personal blog: [https://curious.observer](https://curious.observer) [https://github.com/davnn/curiousobserver](https://github.com/davnn/curiousobserver)

</comment><comment><USER49> Maybe I used an older version but my attempts to use pandoc usually resulted in the document being butchered because the internal representation was not as expressive as the source or target formats.

</comment><comment><USER50> Pandoc is also a great educational Haskell project for those looking into how it all works.

</comment><comment><USER51> If you don't want to install Haskell and other dependencies, several folks have developed Docker images for using pandoc:

[https://users.soe.ucsc.edu/~ivo/_posts/2015-03-12-repeatable...](https://users.soe.ucsc.edu/~ivo/_posts/2015-03-12-repeatable- paper-generation-with-docker-and-pandoc.html)

[http://gbraad.nl/blog/document-generation-using-markdown- and...](http://gbraad.nl/blog/document-generation-using-markdown-and- pandoc.html)

[https://github.com/jagregory/pandoc- docker](https://github.com/jagregory/pandoc-docker)

<comment><USER52> You'd only need to install Haskell if you wanted to _build_ Pandoc. Pandoc the executable is a binary. I install it on Debian via: `apt install pandoc`.

<comment><USER8> although the version in the default repo is usually quite old. You can grab a binary from [https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/releases/latest](https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/releases/latest)

<comment><USER30> Bonus hint: If you somehow aren't able to upgrade the binary (enterprise...), using an up to date template helps a lot (at least for LaTeX).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Yet another pandoc user here. I built a blog engine using Pandoc as the core. Code available here : [https://github.com/subinsebastien/kyll](https://github.com/subinsebastien/kyll) And the website built using the blog engine is available here : [http://xtel.in/](http://xtel.in/)

</comment><comment><USER54> I tried to use pandoc a while ago to convert the latex-sources of arxiv.org documents to epub, since those are often much more comfortable to read on small devices than pdfs.

The problem I had was that latex was turned into images, but changing the font-size of the reader did not change the size of the images, making the text readable, but the maths barely readable.

This is something I would love to see happen though.

<comment><USER55> Take a look at arxiv vanity [https://www.arxiv-vanity.com/](https://www.arxiv- vanity.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> I like pandoc. I've been using Typora [1] for all of my writing, and it's decent, but a little slow.

What editor do HN folks use? I wonder if there's a leaner editor out there with an equally nice distraction-free editing interface. Thanks in advance!

[1] [https://typora.io/](https://typora.io/)

<comment><USER57> I've been really enjoying the Caret beta -- [https://caret.io/](https://caret.io/)

Not free, but a real pleasure to use.

<comment><USER58> I tried Caret and loved it but had to uninstall because of the huge font size on equation renders in a math-heavy document. Is there a way to fix that? I tried to look but they don't have much documentation yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Even though org-mode has its own exporters, Pandoc is great for the extra bibtex integration.

</comment><comment><USER5> The only problem I have with pandoc is I have to lug the entire GHC around with it.

<comment><USER60> That is not the case.

[https://pandoc.org/installing.html](https://pandoc.org/installing.html)

> We provide a binary package for amd64 architecture on the download page. > This provides both pandoc and pandoc-citeproc. The executables are > statically linked and have no dynamic dependencies or dependencies on > external data files.

<comment><USER61> There's an unofficial Arch package for it: [https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/pandoc- bin/](https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/pandoc-bin/)

I wish I'd known about this sooner. I don't spend much time with text documents outside the web, but when I do, pandoc handles the disparate formats admirably. The only inconvenience is when I update my system, there's guaranteed to be a huge pile of Haskell libraries to download.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> What don't I use it for?

\+ Static websites from any input to html

\+ Markdown & TeX & References to pdf for academia

\+ Generating manpages for new tools

\+ Generating ebooks

... Let's just say I get a bit lost when it isn't available.

<comment><USER63> > \+ Generating manpages for new tools

Do any of your tools use long options (prefixed with a double dash)? If so, make sure you disable the "smart" extension, otherwise you might end up with en dashes.

<comment><USER42> OP said he doesn't use pandoc for such things. It's a list of things that have better tooling.

<comment><USER62> I'm sorry if it came across that way. The list is what I use pandoc for. I use it for a lot, so much that I think I use it for every project.

<comment><USER64> I found it confusing too. You were supposed to use interrobangs (‽) instead of "?" :)

<comment><USER62> Would that not only be applicative if I were making an exclamation? Whilst instead, I was making a statement.

<comment><USER64> It sounded like a rhetorical question, and based on the context that you use it for a lot of things, I sensed a bit on excitement there too, and thus the exclamation.. like "Isn't that awesome‽".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> I love pandoc, but I'm very surprised that such an established tool has (at time of writing) 865 points and is #1 on HN.

I guess it's not as well-known as I thought.

</comment><comment><USER66> i have been using catdoc and pdftotext to convert doc and pdf files, respectively. nice to see that there's an alternative that also includes a library, will be checking this out.

a couple questions i have, seems firstly that old school .doc files are not supported, docx yes. unfortunately i still get a lot of docs in .doc format which seems to be microsoft's proprietary format (docx seems to be more open).

my second question is whether or not there's a filter for golang, most of my development is in golang, so i either need to call your cli as a forked process or best to have a native library. i have never worked with haskell so not sure if i can import a haskell library from golang directly. i imagine there'd need to be a golang wrapper around the cli.

<comment><USER67> You could use Libreoffice's command line interface to convert from .doc to a more manageable format.

      lowriter --convert-to odt some-document.doc

odt is not the only supported target, but doc --libreoffice--> odt --pandoc--> plain seems to give better results than e.g. doc --libreoffice--> txt or doc --libreoffice--> docx --pandoc--> plain.

<comment><USER66> if that's the case, i'll stick with catdoc. my use case is to create a full text search index of the content, trading libre office cli for catdoc, i'd rather just stick with catdoc, but thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> As a guy attempting to transition from macOS to Linux:

Pages to anything else, please.

<comment><USER69> A quick Google suggests that the most straightforward way is to run an Automator script to convert everything to PDF using Pages itself.

<comment><USER68> Yeah. But then you can't edit it. Converting it to opendoc or something would be more useful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> Pandoc is great! I use pandoc for all kinds of formal writing (conversion to PDF via LaTeX). We also run pandoc in production to produce customer-facing PDFs.

</comment><comment><USER71> Is there an equivalent of this for spreadsheets?

<comment><USER51> The closest thing I'm aware of is the spreadsheet functionality in Emacs org- mode:

[https://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-spreadsheet- intro...](https://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-spreadsheet-intro.html)

[https://orgmode.org/manual/The- spreadsheet.html](https://orgmode.org/manual/The-spreadsheet.html)

<comment><USER71> Sorry, I'm a little confused... How would I use org mode to convert between different spreadsheet formats?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> frustratingly slow for word docs. antiword is better for those of you who wish to convert word docs en masse

</comment><comment><USER73> I have used pandoc with uikit to autoconvert my markdown pages to html. Works like a charm.

</comment><comment><USER74> Really one of the best tool! Simple to use and makes things done.

</comment><comment><USER75> Where is .djvu?

<comment><USER76> Do you need an option for that? You can convert to PDF and then `pdf2djvu` it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> updated and secure.

</comment><comment> another-cuppa I write any document that doesn't need extensive custom typesetting (which is 90% of stuff) in org-mode and then use pandoc to convert it to "normal people" formats at the end. I have made a basic template for MS Word that looks pretty good.

</comment><comment><USER78> I wish they'd fix the md to adoc table conversion issues. Apart from that I love it.

<comment><USER79> The core problem with Pandoc is that the internal document representation is limited to its particular flavor of Markdown. Any feature PD-MD doesn't support is ignored or loses semantics. You can see this in the poor ReST support (try converting captioned figures). It would be useful to rearchitect it with a Docbook-style semantics internally since they are more comprehensive than Markdown.

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> I know it's well intended and somewhat successful, but I can't help but thinking of xkcd.com/927

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

<comment><USER81> Although it does offer some useful extensions for Markdown, Pandoc doesn't attempt to establish new standards.

It's a conversion tool for existing formats.</comment></comment>


They're Made of Meat - <AUTHOR> http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html <comment><AUTHOR> I should have added a [1990] tag, but it won't let me now. If a mod could do that, that would be great thanks!

</comment><comment><USER2> I gets my soul everytime.</comment>


Biography of Hiroyuki Nishimura: The Father of 2channel - August-Garcia https://www.256kilobytes.com/content/show/4438/biography-of-hiroyuki-nishimura-the-father-of-2channel <comment><AUTHOR> "However, Nishimura became desensitized and increasingly apathetic toward the legal actions taken against him. Due to some of the more controversial activities and posts made by 2channel users, Nishimura was served with an impressive amount of lawsuits during his time as the site's administrator, and lost at least fifty of them by 2008, the charges ranging from libel, defamation, copyright violations, privacy, and personal injury."

Here's one example where Nishimura ignored court orders.

[Defendant Nishimura from 2channel dodges the authorities, refuses to pay damages or take down the libel.]

QUICK RECAP OF THE CASE: From early 2004 onwards, anonymous poster(s) began systematically copying and pasting statements on a Japanese Internet Bulletin Board System (BBS) called "2-Channel", Japan's most popular website, with around one million posts and 20 million hits per day. Said statements were about Plaintiff Arudou Debito, a human rights activist in Japan. Calling him inter alia a "White Supremacist", the posts, which were added to just about any BBS thread regarding foreigners in Japan, attributed to him by name several fabricated statements, such as "he said he supports massacres of Iraqis", "he said he supports discrimination against non-Whites", with the clear aim of impugning his character and damaging his credibility in his campaign for racial equality in Japan.

Repeated requests both by electronic and registered mail were made by Plaintiff and his lawyers to remove these materials from the online archive, but were completely ignored by the founder and administrator of 2-Channel, a Mr Nishimura Hiroyuki. The posts in question to this day have been left up to spread further across the Internet. After Plaintiff sued for defamation of character, Defendant ignored all court communiques, and never appeared in before the judge to offer any explanation or defense. On January 20, 2006, Hokkaido's Iwamizawa District Court ruled in favor of Plaintiff, awarding him 1,100,000 yen in damages for negligence in the face of libel, and ordered 2-Channel to remove all the libelous posts. However, Nishimura continued to ignore court orders, forcing Plaintiff's legal team to take further litigious steps to enforce the court decision.

Source: [http://www.debito.org/2channelsojou.html](http://www.debito.org/2channelsojou.html)

</comment><comment><USER2> I can't believe it has taken me until today to realize that shortening it 2chan is a kind of pun, the way you refer to somebody cute and familiar.

<comment><USER3> 2ch = 2channel (text board)

2chan = Futaba Channel (image board)

2ch != 2chan

<comment><USER2> I was just making an observation about the -chan variants.

I didn't mean to make the assertion that 2channel = 2chan.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> hiro please fix /tv/

<comment><USER5> Can he get Hotwheels out of Jim's basement first</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to balance multiple projects? - <AUTHOR>

Background:
I'm currently working on iOS projects and have one new app in the app store and three more 'definite' ones at idea/planning stage. I say definite as these are the ideas that I've vetted with my partner as worth some exploratory work. The app that's in the store has a timeline set up for adding several new features that have been planned and I'm also spending some time reaching out to reviewers, etc for marketing that product.
I'm also looking (not aggressively) for contracting work as I'd like to pick some up in the next month or two, but that's something I'll slot time for when the time comes.
My question:
I normally have a laser-like focus on projects and will work nearly non-stop until the next goal is reached (prototype, version 1, etc). But I've started to see myself bounce around between projects more that normal. I'm still working constantly, but I'm not really spending enough time with each project to make significant progress (or the level for progress that I'm used to).
I'm wondering if people here have proven tricks for working on multiple projects in parallel. Do you divide by days? Hours? Do you set smaller goals for each project and work serially through them? Don't fight things and just do whatever you feel like until you find a rhythm?
It's not a question of over-working as I do get out of the house on a somewhat regular basis for recreation - this isn't a procrastination or burnout question. Also, it's not a question for me of task management in the sense that I forget what's next. I know what's 'in the queue' at all times. I'm wondering what people have found most effective for moving several projects (in various stages) forward aggressively.
Thanks
Edit: typo <comment><USER3> I work a little different than most, as in I don't plan a set schedule in advance or according to a fixed routine. I look to reduce low-efficient workflow and seek to maximize optimal workflow taking intuitive, up to date cues from how I'm feeling & doing. Examples:

My approach involves compartmentalizing blocks of time through out the day and devoting blocks to separate projects. When I'm working on one project I don't worry about other projects because they have their own blocks. It helps to avoid nagging thoughts that are related to other projects/commitments while one is trying to tend to another. Those nagging thoughts are a major point of stress/distraction/lack of productivity so I make it a point to prevent and counteract them. Each dedicated block is like giving permission to tend to one area and one area only. This works as long as I am concrete/clear about it.

In between blocks I take advantage of mental reboots/refreshers by resting, exercising, eating, socializing etc. Nothing original about that, but it works. Especially if you stop working when you hit a roadblock, or find you're getting tired, switching to rest or to a different project helps is most likely much more efficient than struggling along. If I'm frustrated I know I'm not working optimally and that's a cue to either switch to resting or a different project.

I give way to flow, or being in a zone, because it's like to be the most rapid and effective way to get things realized. Whatever is psychologically easy/pleasant to do is probably going to be more effective use of time. Note that that has nothing to do with intellectual difficulty (working on a really hard problem can be fun etc). Of course this doesn't work all day everyday and for everything, but as a general guideline it makes a big difference - <USER2> least for me.

It's a bit like sailing, I know generally where I want to head, but I work with the wind and weather. It works nice if you have a lot of flexibility and freedom about how you manage your time.

</comment><comment><USER4> I can't personally say i have a proven approach, but my success with multiple projects has been due to this sort of impromptu guide:

Prioritize tasks based on a 'pressure' metric p, where p is roughly:

p = interestingness * complexity_of_task / (deadline - now)

Then split my time up (sometimes daily, sometimes a week) like

time_for_task1 = available_time * p1 / (p for all tasks)

Roughly, this means:

\- am more likely to do a task that is very interesting (either because of the hacks involved or the money!)

\- am more likely to put emphasis on tasks nearing their deadline

\- am definitely the more complex a task is, the more time it ought to demand, so this increases or reduces pressure

But take note of the 'physics envy' syndrome! attempting to formulate everything can lead one into unnecessary error! So i tend to use this with a grain of salt, sometimes mere gut feelings are enough to decide what to do next.</comment>


Ask HN: how to overcome paralysis by analysis when coding? - <AUTHOR>

When I start a new project, I often times immediately start thinking about the details of implementation. "Where am I gonna put the DataBaseHandler? How should I use it? Should classes that want to use it extend from some Abstract superclass..? What level of abstraction am I going to use in my class that contains methods for sending requests and parsing data?"
I end up stalling for a long time because I want to code for extensibility and reusability. But I feel it almost impossible to get past thinking about how to implement perfectly.
And then, if I try to just say "screw it, just get it done!", I hit a brick wall pretty quickly because my code isn't organized, I mixed levels of abstractions, etc.
What are some techniques/methods you have for launching into a new project while also setting up a logical/modular structure that will scale well? <comment><USER2> I think you are analyzing too early. If this project is tackling a problem you haven't solved before, think of your first implementation as a prototype. You likely don't understand the problem until you have spent time solving it.

After you have something that works, you will have a good feeling for what you should've written the first time.

Personally, I don't abstract until I need it. Writing code because you "probably will need it later" can cause unnecessary work and be a distraction.

</comment><comment><USER3> Use a language like lisp, or something sufficiently flexible, so you don't have to make such decisions too early. With lisp, changing your design later(after you've learned more about your problem) is really easy. Something like java or C++, not so much.

Read this: <http://www.paulgraham.com/progbot.html></comment>


Android Market Publisher Console Now Comes With Stats - <AUTHOR> http://kerebus.com/2011/03/android-market-publisher-console-now-comes-with-stats/

<comment><AUTHOR> From the author of My Year as an Amateur Android Game Developer, which came across earlier today [1]. I was startled to see that over 40% of my users were Spanish-speaking (Spanish-speaking users make up only about 3% of all Android Market users). I added the Spanish translation more or less on a whim; I suppose it let me compete in a more narrow market.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2368077></comment>


Even Mark Zuckerberg puts tape over his webcam - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2016/06/21/mark-zuckerberg-webcam-cover <comment><USER2> I believe the simplest solution on Apple's side is to add a physical indicator of when the camera is on or off. It must not be software controlled, not even on system/FPGA level. Best if attached on power on/off. With a hysteresis so that even quick on/off will be noticed.

Edit to add: Here's what may happen if the indicator is software controlled: "iSeeYou: Disabling the MacBook Webcam Indicator LED" [https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/bitstream/handle/1774.2...](https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/bitstream/handle/1774.2/36569/camera.pdf)

<comment><USER3> The problem is, how do I the consumer _know_ that its not software controlled? I have to trust Apple or whoever that its not.

<comment><USER4> Indeed. I had a ThinkPad with a physical switch to turn wifi on and off. The OS got into a weird state one day (a driver or OS bug) and I was shocked to discover that wifi was working even though the switch was in the off position.

So even on a ThinkPad, these physical switches are fake, i.e., they are just software settings checked by the OS, and not a hardware override.

<comment><USER5> Which is why I was glad Lenovo made it possible for me to order my current laptop without a webcam at all. I can just plug one in if I need it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The main problem I see with this is that Mr. "The age of privacy is over" doesn't eat his own dogfood. But that's probably because his users are "Dumb fucks" (to quote him again).

</comment><comment><USER7> Who says that it is his laptop?

The "article" does not really add anything for the HN audience. So to save you a click, here is the image: [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ClfR1BDUsAEMBm2.jpg:orig](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ClfR1BDUsAEMBm2.jpg:orig)

</comment><comment><USER8> Wow - this is being flagged fast. Was near the top, now 2 minutes later, is down to 54 and dropping fast - wonder who is flagging this article?

<comment><USER9> It's a dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11949278](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11949278), and not a strong story for HN to begin with. That's why the discussion turned generic so quickly.

<comment><USER10> ( _Sigh_ ... accidental down vote. And I wasn't even trying to click a vote arrow.)

<comment><USER9> Unvote is coming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _" No, government spies probably don't care what you're saying or doing in front of your computer."_

This logic really annoys me. The implication is that it's not so bad that the govt. can violate privacy since most people have nothing to hide.

It's like saying censorship is not so bad since most people have nothing to say.

<comment><USER12> It is also sloppy thinking. Agencies like the NSA are bound by certain rules that prohibit targeting people for intelligence gathering. So the work around the law by gathering everything they can without targeting anyone in particular.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm guessing Zuckerberg can afford to spring for something more elegant: [http://eyebloc.com/](http://eyebloc.com/)

<comment><USER14> This looks even better: [https://soomz.io/](https://soomz.io/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> As Eric Schmidt has put it: "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."

So if you don't want people to know you put a tape over your webcam, maybe you shouldn't do it. ;-)

<comment><USER16> "You have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide" -

Most commonly attributed to Joseph Goebbels in 1933.

<comment><USER17> That is not the problem with the statement, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I realized that while my iPhone 4s used to fit into my shirt pocket (which was one of Steve Jobs' original design specifications), the 5s I now have is so large that the camera peaks out from my pocket. Plus there's a camera on either side, so if somebody did hack into it, they could at least see something other than the inside of my pocket.

Simple solution: I now put the phone in my picket upside down.

<comment><USER19> With the headphone jack on the bottom, this makes more sense anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's important to point out that Mark Zuckerberg has a much stronger interest in protecting his privacy than the average person. There is a legitimate expectation that an individual, entity or the government would try to hack his webcam or microphone.

This shouldn't justify the practice for average Internet users like you and me, though there's no harm in doing it if it makes you feel safe.

<comment><USER21> _This shouldn 't justify the practice for average Internet users like you and me, _

While it's true that most of us aren't at risk of a targeted attack from an unknown party as Zuckerberg is, we're all still under threat from huge sweeping scans of entire IP ranges, and some people are very much under threat of an attack from someone they're likely to know (eg a stalker). I don't think we should downplay the possibility of someone attacking your computer on the basis of not being a billionaire company founder; there are plenty of other reasons why people's computers are attacked.

 _though there 's no harm in doing it if it makes you feel safe._

Putting tape over a webcam makes you safe from people snooping on your webcam. It's not theatre, it's not perception; it's actual, real safety. This is a rare example of a simple security measure that doesn't rely on how the user feels.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I have found Micro Snitch to be very useful:

[https://obdev.at/products/microsnitch/index.html](https://obdev.at/products/microsnitch/index.html)

"This ultra-light menu bar application operates inconspicuously in the background. It monitors and reports any microphone and camera activity to help you figure out if someone's spying on you."

<comment><USER23> Is there any Microsoft equivalent. In before jokes about my privacy being long gone on win10.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> We need simple hardware switches for camera and microphone!

</comment><comment><USER25> I did this for a long time but stopped because I thought it looked too tin- foil-hat-like. After seeing Zuck do it, I think I'm going back.

But why the audio _jack_. I don't own a Mac. Do I understand correctly that he taped over a 3.5mm analog audio jack?

</comment><comment><USER5> This is totally normal and nothing new (like years). Companies of a certain breed who have product meetings for secret products routinely do this to the cameras and mics of the computers and phones of meeting attendees.

Blocking recording helps block leaks.

</comment><comment><USER26> I would feel a lot more comfortable with a cover for the webcam on my 2015 MBP, but the anti-reflective coating on the display is so famously, ludicrously sensitive and prone to delamination that I'm really reluctant to affix anything to the webcam/display. (This is less of a concern if you are Mark Zuckerberg.)

Any recommendations of a nice, soft-touch (perhaps silicone?) cover that can be left on while the machine is closed and won't damage the webcam lens or display surface?

<comment><USER27> Cut a piece of black cardboard, fold it in half and hang it over the camera.

Or this [https://ilovegreengrass.wordpress.com/2014/02/12/cover- the-c...](https://ilovegreengrass.wordpress.com/2014/02/12/cover-the-camera/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> So... is it possible to turn on a webcam without the light? (referring to macs)

I used to tape it, but stopped out of fear of looking stupid.

<comment><USER2> Apparently yes in some cases, iSeeYou: Disabling the MacBook Webcam Indicator LED [1]

[1] [https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/bitstream/handle/1774.2...](https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/bitstream/handle/1774.2/36569/camera.pdf)

<comment><USER29> That only works on pre 2008 Macs, I haven't seen any evidence about it being possible on later models.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My Logitech webcam has a built-in sliding mechanism to cover and uncover the camera lens. I doubt I would ever buy a webcam that does not have this. There should really be a blocking mechanism for laptop cameras as well.

</comment><comment><USER30> Painting the lens black would keep your laptop stylish.

</comment><comment><USER31> > but there's also tape covering the Apple laptop's dual microphones

OK, how would that disable the microphone? Or is he just using a dummy plug?

</comment><comment><USER32> Especially.

</comment><comment><USER33> corporate IT security policy?

<comment><AUTHOR> if yes, he is definitely following rules</comment></comment>


How Cities have been Shaped by Defense - <AUTHOR> http://munsonscity.com/2014/09/24/how-cities-have-been-shaped-by-defense/

<comment><USER2> Even though we may not build overt, physical defense mechanisms into our cities, our cities are still in many ways engineered for defense. Drones, SWAT, surveillance, checkpoints, security zones - all of these techniques are employed, from Baghdad to New York, to exert control. So while we don't build walls to keep people out anymore, we certainly still build defenses to protect us from the people already inside the city. What I disagree with the author on is scale - all of these countermeasures are still on a larger scale - it makes more sense for a city government to enact safeguards, than it does for individual buildings. There really hasn't been a disappearance of large, city- wide protection systems, you just can't see them as obviously.

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://www.starforts.com/bourtange.html](http://www.starforts.com/bourtange.html)

[http://erfgoedstem.nl/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/naarden- ves...](http://erfgoedstem.nl/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/naarden-vesting.jpeg)

<comment><USER4> Very nice, but [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmanova](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmanova) beats both in the symmetry department (rounder than Naarden. Also note the symmetrical outgoing roads on the 17th century map)

<comment><USER3> Oh, that's beautiful, thank you. I really should go visit that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One of the best-preserved urban walls is in Tallinn, Estonia, in fact, the entire old section of Tallinn is really amazing... [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walls_of_Tallinn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walls_of_Tallinn)

</comment><comment><USER6> Not only can you see where the fortifications of Vienna were, you can even make out the rectangular structure of Vindobona, the old Roman military camp in the city's inner district:

[http://www.livius.org/place/vindobona- vienna/](http://www.livius.org/place/vindobona-vienna/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Chiang mai's old city [http://www.nikdaum.com/news/mai231.jpg](http://www.nikdaum.com/news/mai231.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER8> Url changed from [http://gizmodo.com/how-defense-has-shaped-our- cities-1674200...](http://gizmodo.com/how-defense-has-shaped-our- cities-1674200753), which points to this.</comment>


What are some good Linux friendly laptops? - <AUTHOR> I've been a macOS user for a longtime, but my most recent machine has left a bad taste in my mouth. Seriously considering going full linux on my next laptop. (Already I often just work in a Linux VM rather than fight with the weird errors that come from trying to install everything via brew into macOS directly)
Anyone have suggestions? I remember hearing when Lenovo took over Thinkpad quality went down, is that still the case?
I work in VMs a lot, so it needs to be powerful. I'd also like a removable battery, both so I can pack a second battery when traveling + one less point of failure so I can keep using the laptop longer.
(I tend to try to buy a fairly modern machine and drive it into the ground ala a Honda Civic you hold onto for 7+ years...) <comment><USER2> The Dell XPS range has always worked great with Linux, I've not tested the latest model but the previous model is flawless :) Plus you get a decent GPU in it!

<comment><AUTHOR> Several people have mentioned Dell XPS, seems like a solid.

I'm not super sold on Ubuntu, but I guess it's better to stick with what they ship it with (at first).

<comment><USER2> I have been using Linux since I was 14 and professionally since I was 18 - Ubuntu makes so many things simple nowadays. It is my preferred choice on both Server and Desktop - I would imagine if you are dealing with Legacy systems you might want specific stability and kernel versions but otherwise there are very few reasons to not give it serious consideration

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Avoid nvidia dgpu (especially 1050 series have a lot of problems in linux right now) and you are good.

I would suggest t480s of lenovo, dell latitude 7940 or the latest 15inches dell precision with just the igpu (I don't remember the correct codename)

Note that I suggest only laptops with easily accessible and replacable ram, ssd, wifi card and especially battery. T480s has actually one 8gb ram soldered and another dim up to 32gb (for a total of 40), but it' s still my preferred

In a month lenovo is gonna release a new t495 with the new ryzen3000 processor and vega gpu. If you can live without thunderbolt three, they should surpass by far performances and battery life of the intel version (but eait for a review)

<comment><USER4> > Avoid nvidia dgpu (especially 1050 series have a lot of problems in linux > right now) and you are good.

Is that specifically laptop version or desktop as well? We have several desktops at work running Ubuntu 18.04 with 1050 series and there are no problems whatsoever, more stable than my 1060 at home in fact.

<comment><USER3> I had problems only with the laptop version, and again it's because the shitty nvidia support for its optimus technology and the fact the drivers are still not good for the specific laptop dgpu under linux

Tbh it's workable, not like it totally fuckups your config, it's just a pita and often a single kernel or nvidia driver update breaks all the acpi config and you have to fix them again. I want a system that just works after installation or updates

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In general, I would recommend you look for something that has an Intel chipset and graphics card. Be careful with wireless cards. In general, only (some) Intel and Atheros have good quality drivers.

This rules out most machines, sadly. Some Thinkpads and some Dells will be suitable, though. And from time to time, excellent models from other brands. Like Xiaomi Mi Air 12.

There are other exotic options that also run really well on Linux, like some Rockchip ARM machines, but these are not powerful at all.

I would also look into cooling, as some machines are a disaster. Thinkpads and Dells tend to be OK, but some specific models have had issues.

</comment><comment><USER6> I was in exactly your situation -- longtime macOS user who wanted to migrate because of the decline in hardware quality. (And software quality, too.)

I looked around a lot and bought a System76 Darter running PopOS. The specs blow MBPs out of the water, and for much lower cost. After a couple of months, I'm very happy with it. The case and screen aren't quite as nice as a Mac, but they keyboard is fantastic, a little better than the best MBPs. The touchpad is pretty good, if too sensitive while I'm typing. PopOS is by far the best- looking Linux I've ever seen, and customization using Gnome extensions is very easy.

A friend got a Thinkpad for Linux, and while it looks very nice, I have no experience using it.

<comment><USER7> I got a System76 Serval for work, which could barely be called a laptop it's so huge but it is the only Linux laptop with dual GPUs and I needed that. It's pretty great.

A coworker got the Oryx though. I am pretty jealous. The construction is beautiful. Amazing keyboard, appropriate weight, normal charge adapter, and they offer an RTX GPU.

Overall, I'd say once S76 gets a trackpad comparable to apples, they'll take the whole pro market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Have had multiple Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon models and consider them to be the near perfect blend of weight, performance, and durability with Ubuntu 14.04 thru 19.04.

</comment><comment><USER9> Dell's XPS 13 (or XPS 15) is arguably the best laptop in general, but you can also get it pre-loaded with Linux. It's very Linux-friendly. I've also replaced macOS with Linux in the past with decent results.

I suggest going through Dell's official certified refurbished program, which can save you $1k+ and still get you a 12+ month warranty from Dell.

I did that 5 years ago, and I still use the same XPS 13 laptop today. It's not noticeably slow and is competitively light, with a 4k screen. I have the money to replace it, but just can't justify it when the laptop still works this well.

I strongly recommend a 4k screen, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool. One question: How is service handled?

I like that if my MBP has a warranty issue I can take it to the Apple Store. Are they good about sending shipping labels/shipping boxes?

<comment><USER10> Dell provides onsite service for many of its products. It's exactly as it sounds, a technician comes to your house/office, and fixes your laptop. I've even seen them switch out the logic board in one of them in under 15 minutes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh cool. Thanks, I was not aware of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've been running Fedora on a ThinkPad X1 Carbon since 2016 and have had no complaints. I think my next laptop will be a ThinkPad as well (though not the Carbon)

</comment><comment><USER12> asus vivobook s15 is awesome. very light weight laptop with high end spec. I am using it over a year without a single issue. dual boot with windows and linux. put both os and important work in ssd. new ubuntu/mint boots almost in 3-4 seconds.

also if you switch between OSs, make sure to shut down windows machines properly using something like 'shutdown /s /f /t 0'. During installation, you need to tweak some bios settings to stop windows hibernating.

in modern ultra-slim laptops, battery is soldered. If you want removable battery, size and weight will be increased. asus laptop builds are not completely sturdy. you need to be a little careful but overall it is indeed a very good machine in given price.

[https://www.asus.com/Laptops/ASUS- VivoBook-S15-S510UN/](https://www.asus.com/Laptops/ASUS-VivoBook-S15-S510UN/)

<comment><USER13> Can you tell me more about what you mean by shutting down windows properly and stopping windows hibernating?

I dual boot Windows and Linux on my personal laptop (Lenovo Ideapad) and I have hibernate/suspend issues on my Linux side in multiple distros (both Manjaro and Antergos). I haven't figured out why. I'm wondering if it's related to what you said.

<comment><USER12> [https://superuser.com/questions/1152001/shutdown- windows-10-...](https://superuser.com/questions/1152001/shutdown- windows-10-truly-for-a-dual-booting-system/1152002#1152002)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you care for privacy, I advise against Lenovo, as a personal opinion. Sorry I don't have much more to add to the conversation, other than trying to steer you clear of a company which has _repeatedly_ been caught with their hand in your data-cookie jar

[0][https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2427650/lenovo- get...](https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2427650/lenovo-gets-caught- with-its-software-fingers-in-the-privacy-drawer-again)

[1][https://news.bloomberglaw.com/privacy-and-data- security/leno...](https://news.bloomberglaw.com/privacy-and-data- security/lenovo-83m-spyware-class-action-settlement-gets-initial-ok)

[2][https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/security-failings- demonstrate-...](https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/security-failings-demonstrate- avoid-lenovo/)

[3][https://malwaretips.com/threads/lenovo-caught-pre- installing...](https://malwaretips.com/threads/lenovo-caught-pre-installing- spyware-on-its-laptops.86894/)

<comment><USER15> none of those things have anything to do with Linux. If you're installing Linux, you probably aren't using the included Windows installation which is where all that crapware was installed

<comment><USER16> No, but they _do_ have to do with giving money to Lenovo, a company which has shown they don't deserve your money.

<comment><USER14> Thank you, this was my point but apparently I didn't make it clear.

<comment><AUTHOR> My concern was more about general build quality, but I also think it's valid to not reward companies with my business if they do egregiously bad things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I have a Thinkpad L420 with 32gb of ram and an ssd. It is about 4 years old but it flies and it's the best Linux experience I have had to date. It's kept me happy and allowed me to use Linux as my primary OS for the first time in years.

</comment><comment><USER18> I got a thinkpad p52s a couple of months ago and everything has worked pretty well. I've tried a couple of different distros so far and no issues whatsoever.

</comment><comment><USER19> I've installed Linux on Sager/Clevo. Unfortunately, can't seem to buy them without Windows pre-installed.

There is System 7 with Linux native laptops.

<comment><USER20> My preferred place to buy sager is from xoticpc, default option for them is to ship without an os installed

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I have a Dell Inspiron 15 5000 series and its running flawlessly (tried with Fedora, Debian, openSUSE, and Arch)

</comment><comment><USER22> Any laptops with taller than 16:9 aspect ratio?

16:9 is so short for a 13" and even a 15" is so much better at 16:10.

<comment><USER22> I feel like the Surface Pro packing is ideal, super light 2 in one, 3:2 aspect ratio. If only they made one larger than 12"

<comment><USER23> I've been running Fedora 29 on the Surface Pro 4 for a month or so now. I agree this form factor is almost perfect for a laptop. The screen and keyboard are great for coding.

I'm not sure if I'd recommend this as a primary work machine since you have to compile your own kernel to enable some of the features (touch screen, hibernation etc). Other than that it's been stable and better than I had anticipated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is such a frequent question, I'm surprised there isn't a wiki up for this.

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem is wikies are usually more like lists of laptops and their compatibility, but you could find something that's very compatible, search the model number, and it's 3 years out of date :/

It's great linux works on older machines but I like my Macbook pro. I don't feel a need to own a TV for netflix etc with a high res screen, and those savings let me go to more concerts/movies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Pelretty happy with my asus x-555q. Great specs for the price. Otherwise go thinkpad

</comment><comment><USER26> You could also consider looking into chromebooks with crostini depending on the kind of work you do in the linux environment. Its still in beta technically though so it might be a bit more green than you're after.

<comment><USER4> I have Pixel Slate (i7, 16 GB) with Crostini, specifically to run IntelliJ in case of an emergency. It does work, but needless to say it's not exactly blazing fast, also considering this is pretty much top of the line chromebook.

<comment><USER26> Sure. Like I said, it's a bit green still though I think it has a lot of potential. Also the speed should improve a lot soon as the flagship chromebooks should be getting GPU acceleration in crostini when version 75 hits stable. Currently we're on 73.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Take a look at Tuxedo computers from Germany

</comment><comment><USER27> Tuxedo computers from Germany

</comment><comment><USER28> Personally I think ThinkPads are still one of the best choices for Linux. Dell has some decent machines also. Here is some info from the ThinkPad thread on /g/ .

Don't buy anything OTHER THAN IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad T, X, and W/P Series if you want the Real Business Experience™! >Other business laptops are welcome in /tpg/ (Dell Latitude/Precision, HP EliteBook/ZBook).

Libreboot-compatible models:

>T60 (check lcd), X60(s/t.), X200(s/t. -s requires soldering), T400(s), T500, W500.

Modern models: >X220/X230 - 12", 768p, cheap and light

>T420/T430 - 14", 900p, socketed CPU, quadcore-compatible

>T520/T530, W520/W530 - 15", 1080p, desktop replacement

>T440s/T450s - best price/performance ultraportable

>T440p, T540p, W540/1 - last models with socketed processors

Upgraded models: >X210 - X200/X201, i7 8550U quadcore

>X62 - X61, i5 5250U

>T70 - T60, i7 7700HQ High-res IPS displays, USB 3.0, M.2 x4, mini-DP

[https://forum.51nb.com/forum.php?mod=forumdisplay&fid=117](https://forum.51nb.com/forum.php?mod=forumdisplay&fid=117) you can directly email the creator regarding purchases firstname.lastname@example.com

Why ThinkPad? >Used machines are plentiful and cheap >Excellent keyboards - tactile feel and quiet >Great durability: magnesium rollcage for structural integrity, high quality plastic body panels >Utilitarian design: indicator LEDs, 7 row keyboard layout on older models >Docking stations that easily turns your laptop into a desktop >Easy to repair (most models), upgrade & maintain thanks to readily available service manuals for every model, spare parts easy & cheap to obtain >The TrackPoint™, great for those who type a lot or hate people swiping their fingers all over a touchpad >Excellent GNU/Linux & *BSD support

Helpful links: >Buyers guide: [https://dankpads.com/tpg/](https://dankpads.com/tpg/)

>thinkpad-tech-tree.txt - a plaintext map of ThinkPad history: [https://github.com/Monkeyfume/thinkpad-tech- tree/blob/master...](https://github.com/Monkeyfume/thinkpad-tech- tree/blob/master/thinkpad-tech-tree.txt)

>ThinkWiki - info on ThinkPads & running GNU/Linux on them: [https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ThinkWiki](https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ThinkWiki)

>Coreboot compatibility list: [https://coreboot.org/status/board- status.html](https://coreboot.org/status/board-status.html)

>BIOS logo booru: [https://biosimage.booru.org](https://biosimage.booru.org)

<comment><USER29> i bought a second hand thinkpad T410 about 5 years ago for $280 . it is a fine development machine and i have not had any issues with linux compatibility.</comment></comment>


Is Sublime Text still a good choice for writing Python in 2016? - <AUTHOR> https://dbader.org/blog/sublime-text-for-python-development-2016-review <comment><USER2> Its still a awesome Editor. Guess most of _us_ moved to Atom meanwhile tho.

<comment><USER3> I don't think most, even of the hn crowd, moved to atom.

<comment><USER2> In my bubble most of the former Sublime users now use Atom. The majority (in my bubble) still uses Emacs or even Notepad. Also those who use Eclipse most likely will always use Eclipse.</comment></comment></comment>


ExtraSensory Dataset and ExtraSensory App - <AUTHOR> http://extrasensory.ucsd.edu <comment><AUTHOR> Behavioral Context Recognition: automatically recognizing a person's context (what she is doing? where she is? whom with? etc.) from sensors on every-day devices (smartphones, smartwatches).

The ExtraSensory Dataset contains data for more than 300k minutes, recorded by 60 people in-the-wild (while they engaged in their regular natural behavior in their natural environments - home, work, commuting...). It includes sensor- measurements and combinations of context-labels, describing the behavior of the people. It is publicly available for free at [http://extrasensory.ucsd.edu](http://extrasensory.ucsd.edu) .

The ExtraSensory App is the mobile application that was used to collect the dataset in-the-wild. It automatically records sensors on the phone and watch, and it has a flexible UI with many methods to self-report your behavior. You can also use the ExtraSensory App to run in the background of the phone and provide real-time context-recognition (the classifier on the server-side provides probabilities for 51 context-labels) - and you can integrate these recognized context with your own application. The ExtraSensory App is publicly available for free (full source code) at [http://extrasensory.ucsd.edu/ExtraSensoryApp](http://extrasensory.ucsd.edu/ExtraSensoryApp) .

Cheers, Yonatan Vaizman ([http://acsweb.ucsd.edu/~yvaizman](http://acsweb.ucsd.edu/~yvaizman)).</comment>


Modern Concepts for Notre-Dame's Reconstruction - <AUTHOR> https://mymodernmet.com/notre-dame-spire-concepts/ <comment><USER2> "Though acknowledging the difficulties of balancing the old and the new, most seem in agreement that the church needs to move forward with the times, just as it did when construction was necessary in the past."

Is there any crime against art and beauty that can't be laundered with "move forward with the times"?

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm fine with the spire redesigns, but why do all these have glass roofs‽ You're either going to be illuminating a stone vault, or you're going to be blowing out the rose window effect and turning the cathedral into a greenhouse.

If you have to be modern than plate the roof with recycled solar cells for that deep blue gem effect.

</comment><comment><USER4> Why do we need to reinvent Notre-Dame? Why not just rebuild it as it was, accurately matching the original design?

<comment><USER5> The spire was rebuilt in the 19th century because the old one had fallen apart. As far as I can tell from Wikipedia, it was a replica of the original one.

As for why people are talking about redesigning it? I think this is down to Europe's rejection of classical art and craftsmanship, whereas in the United States, imitating classical art remains popular. That's what American 2D animation studios such as Disney did, for example. The only art school in Italy that teaches Renaissance painting techniques was set up by Americans. Go figure.

To a European who views himself as a cosmopolitan with sophisticated tastes, creating such pastiches is seen as vulgar and even grotesque. The past must be rejected. Post-modernism, abstract art and oddly shaped buildings, is where it's at now.

I'm from Europe myself and I reject this bizarre way of thinking and admire the old masters. Judging by all the hideous architecture being created, however, I am swimming against the current.

<comment><USER5> TL;DR: Snobbery.

<comment><USER6> Personally I think there is nothing more snobbish than post-modern art. It is quite literally designed to insult, confuse, befuddle, and humiliate the observer. Not to say there aren't fabulous works of post modern art, usually the earlier works. But, sadly, I think most of it is genuinely horrible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That s no longer a gothic cathedral. And considering that it's not a public building like the reichstag, what's the point of doing that modernist crap in a museum that is famous for itself. Norman Foster is 83 years old, and i think his ideas have gotten old too, like this yawn-inducing greenhouse. At least it could be something novel.

<comment><USER8> > And considering that it's not a public building

It is, in fact, a public building of the French State.

<comment><USER7> Right, not a government building then. Its main use is being a tourist attraction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The notre dame belongs to a traditional institution. It should be reconstructed exactly the same as before, not by the modern aesthetics of people who don't even attend church.

</comment><comment><USER10> I keep trying to bet people $5 that the new design will be a revolutionary steel and glass penisoid.

No ones taking me up.</comment>


Equifax hackers demand $2.6m ransom - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2017/09/08/equifax-hackers-bitcoin-ransom.amp <comment><USER2> > That shade is a reference to the Equifax execs who sold around $1.8 mil in > company stock after Equifax discovered the breach — but before it alerted > the public.

According to CNBC, this is false information. The insiders who sold claimed to be unaware of the breach at the time of the sale and also the sale was scheduled beforehand.

<comment><USER3> Claims can be made and the apparent filing was never done for it to be scheduled.

There's no way a breach like that is discovered and the upper management/execs aren't notified.

They are going to try and push hard to get that narrative in people's heads. We'll know the truth when it gets investigated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Best pay up, Equifax. Even if it is a scam, $2.6m is a drop in the bucket of the total potential damage.

Though suppose this group does have the actual data and does get the ransom. What is to stop them from holding onto it to milk it for all it's worth?

<comment><USER2> Never pay ransoms. There is a great book "American Kingpin: The epic hunt for the criminal mastermind behind the silk road". In it, Ross Ulbricht said every time they paid hackers, they came back increasing the attacks and demands.

"If you give a mouse a cookie, he's going to ask for a glass of milk. When you give him the milk, he'll probably ask you for a straw. When he's finished, he'll ask you for a napkin."

<comment><USER5> Refuse to pay the ransom? The credit card numbers are still worth a lot. You're only reducing their payoffs a little bit.

If anything, posting the ransom increases the chances that the FBI can track them (since it's hosted on a Tor server)

<comment><USER6> The FBI's Tor exploit works on visitors to a Tor hidden service, but doesn't work to identify operators of a Tor hidden service. However it is very easy to misconfigure a Tor hidden service and have it leak identifying information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Paying out anonymous folks that demand ransom of copyable data is futile. There won't be incentive to not leverage the data even if the ransom were to be paid.

The reality is that BTC helps to facilitate various criminal behavior, some of which would not exist otherwise.

If 4100 were to break today, there would be greatly increased probability of accelerated downside. This is deserved since BTC is leveraged by criminals such as in this case. Don't be surprised if this ends up becoming the case as a form of public penalization of such criminal behavior.

<comment><USER8> Imo, assuming the hackers are acting logically, the payment of the random will be followed up by another request for more money or the sale of said data on the black market.

Since they are anonymous, there is no logical reason to keep their word. It's not like they have a reputation to keep up.

<comment><USER9> It's an asymmetrical game of tit-for-tat. If the hackers don't keep their word often enough the companies won't play the game again. Pay regardless of the hackers keeping their word and you make yourself vulnerable.</comment></comment></comment>


Hacker recruitment: When it is safe to have a hacker on your IT staff - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/it-managementstrategy/76318/hacker-recruitment-when-it-safe-have-a-hacker-your-it-staff <comment><USER2> Any hacker should be perfectly safe.

But I highly doubt they'd want to work for companies that did not know the difference between 'hacker' and 'cracker'.</comment>


Getting a .ca Domain is Bureaucratic, Baby  - <AUTHOR> http://www.markevanstech.com/2008/02/09/getting-a-ca-domain-is-bureaucratic-baby/ <comment><USER2> I got several letters from the "Domain Registry of Canada" and the unsolicited offers, coupled with the incredibly high price of the offers, coupled with the wording used (that sounded like I _HAD_ to deal with them, and fast) made me conclude that it was a clumsy scam.

I'm shocked to discover they supposedly have some kind of legitimity...

<comment><USER3> The best scams usually are--BBC television licensing comes to mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Getting a .ca in Canada is very easy and pain free (I buy them all the time). This post is inaccurate, at best. There is no bureaucracy involved in the process, unless you consider receiving an email to legitimize your registration a bureaucratic process. In fact, it's not different from any other registration method where you have to verify who you are, surprisingly, via email.

And the "Domain Registry of Canada" letters are a scam; it's painfully obvious that they are. BTW, the emails you get from the lawyers of dead generals in Africa are also a scam.</comment>


Dijkstra Archive (1930-2002) - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ <comment><USER2> A brilliant mind. His thoughts and ideas are extremely relevant to this day. In his letter 1304, Dijkstra said: "I would therefore like to posit that computing's central challenge, viz. "How not to make a mess of it", has not been met. On the contrary, most of our systems are much more complicated than can be considered healthy, and are too messy and chaotic to be used in comfort and confidence. The average customer of the computing industry has been served so poorly that he expects his system to crash all the time, and we witness a massive worldwide distribution of bug-ridden software for which we should be deeply ashamed."

</comment><comment><USER3> Over the course of a year I perused virtually all of the English language EWDs and read many in depth. They are extremely interesting. I especially like watching him develop his notation as he learns.

I also find the ones that are basically rants extremely entertaining. Others may not, but that's fine, skip them then.

And some are a mix, this one being a must-read: [https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EWD103...](https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EWD1036.html)

<comment><USER4> I find I appreciate EWDs even more in their original, handwritten form: [https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/ewd10xx/EWD1036.PDF](https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/ewd10xx/EWD1036.PDF)

<comment><USER5> That's remarkable and unique penmanship.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am a huge Dijkstra fanboy, but even he occasionally had lapses of judgement. E.g. he panned Dr. Margaret Hamilton's "Higher Order Software"[1] which I feel is a major innovation in developing correct software[3]. Using a HOS system normal people developed correct software rapidly. The system makes it impossible to create incorrect code. (Long story short: if you're typing text into an editor to make hopefully correct software you're doing it wrong. We're still playing catch-up decades later.)

Hamilton is the person who coined the term "software engineering"[2]

[1] 'Judging "HOS" from a distance' [https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/E...](https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/EWD852.html)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hamilton_(scientist)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hamilton_\(scientist\)) Wikipedia reads 'She is one of the people credited with coining the term "software engineering".' but doesn't link to anything referencing earlier uses of the term. Whatever.

[3] "System Design from Provably Correct Constructs: The Beginnings of True Software Engineering" by James Martin [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3575584-system-design- fr...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3575584-system-design-from- provably-correct-constructs) [https://archive.org/details/systemdesignfrom00mart](https://archive.org/details/systemdesignfrom00mart) Irritatingly enough, he is presenting Hamilton's work without mentioning her (expect of a few references in the back) but whatever.

<comment><USER7> What's the modern successor to hos?

<comment><USER6> Short answer: nothing. (Even Bret Victor's work doesn't begin to touch it. [http://worrydream.com/](http://worrydream.com/) Although he is well cool along other dimensions!)

For the flavor, imagine a type-safe LISP that one edits though something like Brad Templeton's Alice Pascal [https://www.templetons.com/brad/alice.html](https://www.templetons.com/brad/alice.html) or Emacs ParEdit [https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ParEdit](https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ParEdit) so that an incorrect program _cannot_ be described in the system. (You can make a program that doesn't do what you intended, but whatever it does it will do so correctly.)

For the underlying technology, I would recommend reading up on Conal Elliott's "Compiling to categories" [http://conal.net/papers/compiling-to- categories/](http://conal.net/papers/compiling-to-categories/) The connection won't be immediately clear. The connective is the Joy programming language:

[https://www.latrobe.edu.au/humanities/research/research- proj...](https://www.latrobe.edu.au/humanities/research/research- projects/past-projects/joy-programming-language)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joy_(programming_language)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joy_\(programming_language\))

[http://www.kevinalbrecht.com/code/joy- mirror/joy.html](http://www.kevinalbrecht.com/code/joy-mirror/joy.html)

[http://joypy.osdn.io/](http://joypy.osdn.io/) (full disclosure: this last one is my own project.)

The key is to see Joy (as opposed to, say, LISP) as the sort-of-AST that HOS is manipulating. If you restrict Joy to its type-safe subset and squint a little you have HOS. Then as a kind of bonus, Joy code turns out to be perfect for the "Compiling to categories" stuff (which is beyond HOS.)

For the UI, AFAIK Jonathan Edwards' Subtext [http://www.subtext- lang.org/](http://www.subtext-lang.org/) is the closest anyone's gotten.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can someone point to any specimens of source code in this archive?

<comment><USER9> [https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD01xx/E...](https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD01xx/EWD123.html)</comment></comment>


Systemd Rolls Out Its Own Mount Tool - <AUTHOR> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Systemd-Mount <comment><USER2> A four paragraph article on a Git push... wow... journalism these days.</comment>


Moz's $18 Million Venture Financing (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://moz.com/blog/mozs-18-million-venture-financing-our-story-metrics-and-future

<comment><USER2> The company name "Moz" is confusing and benefits from incidental association with Mozilla, especially considering that the "moz" in "SEOmoz" referenced Mozilla's DMOZ site.</comment>


Beyond Meat soars 163% in biggest-popping U.S. IPO since 2000 - <AUTHOR> https://www.marketwatch.com/story/beyond-meat-soars-163-in-biggest-popping-us-ipo-since-2000-2019-05-02 <comment><USER2> That's a pretty frothy number; the rest of the names on the list of biggest IPO pops all come from '99/'00.

I'd say "Good for them", but it's more accurate to say "Wow - their bankers left a lot of money on the table."

<comment><USER3> I would ask "why not say both?" but you just did.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Their product is pretty amazing, once it gets below the cost of cow ground beef it I think many will choose it over the cow, simply because it tastes close enough (I think it tastes better) and it is cheaper. The environmental, ethical and marginally improved health benefits of it (no cholesterol) are nice-to-haves for many and the true tipping point will be cost.

And there is a ton of room to bring the cost down, no way this stuff costs more than taking a bunch of plants and feeding them to cows vs just making it out of plants (peas) to begin with.

This is going to keep soaring, I say this as someone who has been buying it since it first came out. I have made many dishes where my carnivore friends just loved it, only reason they don't switch permanently is because of cost.

Buy this stock while it's cheap, I don't think it will go down.

<comment><USER5> Food is just not about taste, but health and nutrition as well. Have you actually critically looked into the health and nutritional impact of plant- based burgers?

<comment><USER4> Well, I don't consider either real meat or Beyond Meat to be healthy by any means. So I just consider it a more environmental and ethical alternative.

I have looked into the health impact of plant vs animal calories for many years of my life and am convinced a diet low in caloric intake from animal products (10% or less of total caloric intake) is quite correlative to long term health. I follow the work of Dr. Fuhrman who has sources for nearly all of his claims.

So besides cholesterol, plant protein vs animal protein has a big impact on health, in my research.

e.g. How many people go to the hospital or die everyday for protein deficiency vs protein abundance?

<comment><USER5> Try to look into the science. You may be surprised to discover that there is not _single_ RCT comparing a (fresh-)meat-based versus plant-based diet (eg: not mixing in sugar laden latte in the former).

Personally I'm happy that I had never bought into the whole anti-meat propaganda: [http://www.diagnosisdiet.com/food/meats/](http://www.diagnosisdiet.com/food/meats/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> We just had our first Beyond Burgers tonight. Tasty, easier to clean up from than frying beef burgers. I am not sure how healthy they really are, but as a once or twice a week treat, they add variety to a vegetarian diet.

</comment><comment><USER7> Is it just me, or does anyone else reviewing that list think they're not exactly in great company..?

(Love their product, though.)

<comment><USER8> Popping IPOs is usually a sign that we're in a stock market bubble. That is why it is so unnerving to look at that list.</comment></comment>


Internet for All - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@vignanv8/internet-for-all-2a7316d2283a <comment><USER2> There's something I've been wondering lately. The concept of modern 'social' internet, to me, seems to presume that the majority of the users share at least some core liberal values of acceptance of a diverse set of ideas, and respect for other individuals, as they are, and assumes that the society is at least reasonably peaceful and stable.

What happens when the internet comprises mostly of individuals whose don't share those views? What when/if, for example, a vast majority of internet users believes that women shouldn't have sexual choices, that gays are abhorrent? As someone from South Asia, I like to imagine the internet of the Future when most of the internet users are those men who seem to have a pathological hate/fear of women and values seen as 'liberal'/'western'. Men are already aggressively violent against women when they are openly identified. I wonder how the dynamics change when they could get anonymous.

Even further, what if a large population of internet users deeply detests any other populations, and wants them dead.

I was watching the trailer for this new documentary on the genocide in Cambodia(?), and how people live in peace with their children's murderers as neighbors. With a constant barrage of reminders of terrible events from the internet, and the mutual massaging of strong emotions [REMEMBER what they did to our parents/kids! NEVER FORGET!, etc], I wonder if on the whole, the internet will make things a lot worse in a lot of places/the internet as a whole will significantly change form.

You could argue that the same could be said for any communication media. I remember reading about the role that Rwandan FM stations played in the Genocide: they would keep aflame the fires that were burning out, and constantly supply fodder for death and hate. Apparently it was only after the stations were closed that things began to get slightly under control (?). With the possibility of blimp-powered and satellite internet, the kind of communication that cannot be disrupted at all, I wonder how things would be.

I like to imagine a scene of outright violence and civil war -- say race riots and race-based violence in the US. Would the easy availability of the internet help or hinder peacekeeping efforts?

What would be the right response in such situations?

<comment><USER3> How many Chinese people do you come across on the internet right now? How many Japanese? How many Russian?

Nations on the internet are segregated by language. Learning the language of a country (or a few countries) usually means that you learn about their culture as well, so communicating won't be such a big shock.

<comment><USER4> > How many Chinese people do you come across on the internet right now? How > many Japanese? How many Russian?

> Nations on the internet are segregated by language.

This is true as far as it goes, but I don't really run into British, Australian, or even Canadian people either. Language may not be the primary factor.

<comment><USER5> > I don't really run into British, Australian, or even Canadian people either

How do you know you don't? It's not like we (I'm British) type with an accent.

<comment><USER4> You can type with an accent. Brits have various vocabulary, spelling, and idiom differences that might give them away (although to be fair, I probably wouldn't recognize a specifically British idiom if I saw it).

There are two points here: (1), I don't interact with very many people on the internet. I certainly don't use it to meet new people. And (2), I don't look for content aimed at (e.g.) an English audience. I read a large number of different bloggers, but it seems to have worked out that they're American. (John Derbyshire is English, but has lived in the US for years, and as far as I know has no intention to leave. Does he count?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is the first time I've heard about the SpaceX, OneWeb and Yakiny low orbit small satellite constellation projects. It says they could allow for viable low latency, high bandwidth satellite internet.

It sounds to me like the coverage of such constellations would allow for a satilite phone to actually deliver on the promise of working anywhere around the globe.

<comment><USER7> Iridium works anywhere on earth, it's just expensive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Earth has ~7 billion people, and ~3 billion IPv4 addresses. Unless we can finish this slow-as-molasses transition to IPv6, what we're really talking about is "HTTP clients for all, Internet for those in the right place with enough money."

</comment><comment><USER9> There are 96 cell phone subscriptions per 100 people in the world. Most of those have at least some minimal Internet capability. It's just that not all can view cat videos yet.

<comment><USER4> How many of those cell phone subscriptions share the same person?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Great read! Subreddit dedicated to this topic: [https://www.reddit.com/r/globalinternet](https://www.reddit.com/r/globalinternet)</comment>


Rapid prototyping techniques / testing without building - <AUTHOR> https://www.coursera.org/course/hci

<comment><AUTHOR> very useful class from Staford CS, that is what Lean methodology is missing - How to build MVP</comment>


Found: A Colossal Statue of Ramses II Hiding Under a Cairo Street - <AUTHOR> http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/ramses-ii-statue-found-cairo <comment><USER2> I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear:

'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings.

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

<comment><USER3> A photo of the scene this poem describes:

[https://images.rapgenius.com/64983b09fb243b2e65d57134773315d...](https://images.rapgenius.com/64983b09fb243b2e65d57134773315db.450x281x1.jpg)

<comment><USER4> I'm not a sculptor but I'm pretty sure those legs never carried that massive head. In fact I can tell by the pixels etc. etc.

Wikipedia has a different story, where he was inspired by the news of the imminent arrival of this (without seeing it): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias#/media/File:Statue_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias#/media/File:Statue_of_Ramesses_II_at_the_British_Museum.jpg)

<comment><USER3> The legs probably came from a sitting statue like this:

[https://english-303-final.wikispaces.com/Historical+Content+...](https://english-303-final.wikispaces.com/Historical+Content+%26+Historical+Context+in+Ozymandias)

While it is true that Shelley was motivated to write the poem by the imminent arrival in London of the Younger Memnon statue, the scene that the poem describes is not consistent with that particular statue (which consists of an upper torso) rather than a separate head and trunkless legs located in its original desert setting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "think it depicts Ramses II, Ozyamandias, the Great Ancestor—one of Egypt's most famous and celebrated pharaohs."

I was wondering if the Shelley Poem about Ozymandias was about this guy [1]. Except the sonnet talks about finding the civilization remains in the desert vs under a road.

...And on the pedestal these words appear: 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away

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

<comment><USER6> You don't need to wonder. Ramses II is who Percy Shelley based his poem on.

<comment><USER5> Thanks.

I had to memorize that poem in grade school. Now I know it wasn't just a fictional character. I always liked that one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I went to Egypt in 2015 its sad that the country is suffering due to instability region. Was sad because for a large part of the country(especially south of Cairo) the soul source of income was tourism which was dwindling.

I also learnt that when the Temple of Luxor was excavated a lot of people were upset because they were evicted from where they lived. Such discoveries can upset people's livelihood. So, I sort of hope they don't find a temple there...:)

<comment><USER8> The country is also suffering because of its state, whose ongoing policies (unlike it's recent history) is not a function of regional events.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It makes you wonder what else is buried beneath the streets of cities built on top of ancient ruins. Cairo, Alexandria, Rome, Mexico City, Athens. Cool stuff, if you ask me.

<comment><USER10> If you ask contemporary Romans, for a lot of people it's just a huge hassle. It slows down economic activity of all sorts - every time you dig, stuff comes up, work is stopped, and lengthy procedures are started to assess what's there etc etc... This, of course, if you are honest and have time to spare. Less scrupulous individuals will simply loot what they can and keep digging, or even smash everything to bits before anyone can notice.

Rome has one of the most underdeveloped subways among major capitals, simply because digging anything is very difficult: as the article mentions, soil is quite peculiar over there, and technically it's a city built over several _hills_. Add the archeological element, and you might as well give up.

<comment><USER11> > Less scrupulous individuals will simply loot what they can and keep digging, > or even smash everything to bits before anyone can notice.

Crikey, I have heard countless stories from farmers, old construction workers and so on of coming across burial sites, ancient tools or dinosaur bones, where they have just covered the stuff up, buried it further down another hole or even destroyed it just because they had no care or knowledge of that stuff.

Some of the stories are pretty interesting (like caves with paintings of mega- fauna or sites of ancient fish farming), but some are also horrifying (One old bloke found a giant bone on his property while clearing scrub, he burnt it).

<comment><USER12> My home town was an important Etruscan city, and still has a huge necropolis.

One of my grand-uncles told me that when he was a kid (early 20th century) when they found ancient vases they used them for sling practice, it was only later that people realized they had any value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is way cool, and will undoubtedly make for a great exhibit. But an important find? Unlikely. We know a _lot_ about Rameses 2, we've even got a fair few giant statues of him (even bigger than this one).

<comment><USER14> I think its in their interest to hype up every discovery to boost tourism which has taken a hit past couple of years. You are right, I've read around 5 articles about this today but not a single one mentins what makes this find particularly remarkable.

<comment><USER15> Even violent authoritarian dictatorships need some foreign income from time to time...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I appreciate that Atlas Obscura delivers truly interesting topical content almost entirely without affect or hyperbole.

The contrast against much of the writing found online in the past few years is striking—and refreshing.

</comment><comment><USER17> Pretty cool. I feel like it needs more than 2 pictures about the find, though.

<comment><USER4> Here's a few dozen: [http://www.gettyimages.se/search/events/700018243?assettype=...](http://www.gettyimages.se/search/events/700018243?assettype=image&excludenudity=false&family=editorial&sort=best&phrase=#license)

<comment><USER17> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> In pop culture, you might recall that Ozymandias was the name of the S05 finale of Breaking Bad (spoiler ahead).

It too, shows the decline of Walter's empire, and in the final scenes, he falls down on his side in the desert in a scene like the one in the poem ("The lone and level sands stretch far away").</comment>