Apple Unveils the Apple Watch Series 2 - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/07/apple-unveils-the-apple-watch-series-2/ <comment><USER2> While I love gadgets, the idea of wearing something on my wrist whose sole purpose is to interrupt me with notifications (most of which I would not want) and that offers an extremely bright display is pretty much the last gadget I'd want.

Even with the new color temperature adjustments on the iPhone, looking at the screen in the dark is quite unpleasant.

I would much prefer an e-ink smart watch.

<comment><USER3> You can customize the notifications. The biggest value I've found for the watch is that I take out my iPhone less, and actually spend less time looking at notifications.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. I find it useful to answer, and many times reject, phone calls.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> By adding GPS it seems like they're really doubling down on the ~1 day battery life, which is really annoying. And keep in mind it's not actually a full day if you _use_ the thing. For instance I was trying to compare a Fitbit Charge HR and the Apple Watch in terms of how they tracked my heart rate over a hike a couple months ago. It was an 8 mile loop with some good elevation gain -- took me maybe 4 hours. The Apple Watch died 3/4 of the way through the hike despite being fully charged that morning. The Charge HR has lasted 3 and 4 day trips to the Sierras with room to spare, and it's always capturing heart rate, whereas the Apple Watch is really only doing that when I tell it to.

<comment><USER6> That's awful. I'm a Charge HR owner and I was considering the Nike Apple Watch (it looks so cool!) but if what you say about the battery life is true than the Apple Watch is completely off the table.

<comment><USER5> So you _can_ wear it on a hike, you just can't record the whole exercise. The Apple Watch samples your heart rate every 5 minutes or so normally. If you start recording an exercise, it samples much more frequently and also seems to do more communication with your phone. The end result is that any exercise that lasts a long time (hours) will drain the battery fiercely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I bought an LG G Watch when they first launched 2+ years ago and used it for a year every day. I tried the Moto 360 (great looks, awful battery), and LG Urbane, and now I think I have come full circle. I'm using a Pebble Time daily, and waiting for my Pebble Time 2 to arrive.

The gadget appeal has worn off but I still enjoy the functional benefits which (to me) Pebble has hit the sweet spot. A vibe motor you can feel, 8-10 days of battery life, a screen that's good under all conditions (especially sunshine), water proof, tactile buttons to interact with it, great voice translation, not too bulky, etc. Sure it's not as fancy but it just does the critical things I want it to do. The Time 2 fixes a couple desires (heart rate and larger screen) and that should be about it. I think I've found the smart watch I am going to enjoy living with.

Edit: have to add that GPS would be nice too but I am willing to not have it for the battery life.

<comment><USER8> Has anyone developed GPS for the Pebble? A quick google search reveals this Kickstarter [1], but is anyone aware of something more mature or a future Pebble design which will include it.

I'm into trail running and backpacking so battery life and GPS are the two most important features to me.

[1] [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/655382546/pal-strap- gps...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/655382546/pal-strap-gps-and- extended-battery-strap-for-pebbl)

<comment><USER9> Pebble core comes to mind: [http://help.getpebble.com/customer/en/portal/articles/243992...](http://help.getpebble.com/customer/en/portal/articles/2439926-pebble- core?b_id=8309)

<comment><USER8> Nice, I didn't realize they were working on that--I'll have to do some feature comparisons, but this seems like it might be a better fit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Also a Pokemon Go app for it, which is probably going to blow the top off sales unless people start getting bored with the game any time soon. (Totally scientific analysis of my fellow light rail commuters suggests this is not likely!)

<comment><USER11> Peak Pokemon Go was back in mid July:

[https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=pokemon%20go](https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=pokemon%20go)

<comment><USER12> Hey, Apple missed peak U2 by 25 years. At least they're getting closer!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> But does the screen stay on?

I used to have one of the first-gen Android Wear watches, an LG one. I really liked how it acted as an extension of my phone, it was particularly useful for voice queries (Google still beats the pants off Siri), and directions. But the best feature was that even when sleeping, the LCD screen would still show the time in black-and-white and with the backlight off. It still lasted a full day.

Apple seems to have gone in a different direction, emphasizing the Watch as a fashionable fitness tracker. I don't care as much for the fitness tracking aspect: I'm not an athlete, and GPS tracking on my phone is usually enough to get a rough estimate of things I do. I also don't do workouts for the numbers, which Apple seems to be touting.

Overall, they seem to have prioritized many other energy-draining features over doing the most basic thing I expect from a wrist-mounted device: displaying information. I've had an Apple Watch for almost a year, and its finickiness about turning on or off the display is by far my biggest annoyance.

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't think the HN crowd is a fan of watches in general, and this doesnt seem like it will be the exception. The question is if in general people are going to buy this thing.

<comment><USER15> I don't know, I own 4 watches of varying functions/prices. Those who love horology treat it like car nuts -- it's less about practicality and advancements and more about the sentiment behind it. I'd take my 21 jewel seiko SKX007 over any smartwatch any day of the week. To me, and many other watch lovers, the Apple Watch really is just a watch by name only.

<comment><USER16> Welcome to being a weird niche market that nobody else cares about it. While you're here, try a fountain pen! They're great!

(no, really)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I know this is old hat, but I'm just not interested until they make one with a round face. And I say this as a very dedicated Apple-using person (three current Macs in front of me, iPhone 6S in my pocket, internet served over a Time Capsule, an iPad floating around here somewhere...)

<comment><USER18> How do you propose they do that without forcing every single app to be redesigned to work on a round screen rather than rectangular?

<comment><USER19> On Android smartwatches, you're expected to develop for both square and round screens: [https://developer.android.com/training/wearables/ui/layouts....](https://developer.android.com/training/wearables/ui/layouts.html)

It would certainly be additional work for developers, but there's precedent for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> When the Apple Watch was first announced, there were rumors of the watch being able to measure blood glucose. That was exciting news.

So it was disappointing to find out that this was not true. (while writing this comment, I dug around and it seems that there is now Glucowise that will supposedly ship this year).

I believe that Apple Watch has the potential to become a life changing device for many and I look forward to the day that bloodless blood sugar monitoring is a feature for the Watch.

<comment><USER21> The new rumor is that sensors like blood glucose and pulse Ox is going to be a separate device - so FDA regulations wouldn't impede the rollout of the core Apple Watch

<comment><USER20> Do you have a link to this?

<comment><USER22> [https://9to5mac.com/2016/08/09/apple-health-and-fitness- hard...](https://9to5mac.com/2016/08/09/apple-health-and-fitness-hardware/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've had a pebble (which was chewed up by my dog), fitbit (literally fell apart - fitbits have the worst quality IMO), and a microsoft band 2.

The Band 2 has most of these functions (except water proof - it's just water resistant), and while i enjoy it, i find the bulkiness and battery life (have to charge every day or every other day) tiring. I was hoping the apple watch would focus more on battery than adding new features like GPS, so if a Band 3 isn't released with a better battery i'll probably revert to a new pebble.

<comment><USER24> Fitbit Charge HR and previous had manufacturing quality issues. Blaze and Alta are "benefiting from lower warranty costs due to their inherent design and the improved manufacturing processes we have implemented this year. We expect this trend to also apply to other new products we will be introducing heading into the holidays"

[http://seekingalpha.com/article/3995113-fitbits-fit-ceo- jame...](http://seekingalpha.com/article/3995113-fitbits-fit-ceo-james- park-q2-2016-results-earnings-call-transcript?part=single)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Any word on battery life?

<comment><USER26> a watch that needs a battery? yawn.

E: I expected downvotes, but I'm actually kind of serious. It shouldn't be impossible to get a small but interesting amount of tech incorporated into an automatic watch.

<comment> k-mcgrady I didn't down vote you but this comment is like someone complaining that their iPhone only gets 36 hours battery life when their Nokia 3210 got them through a couple of weeks. I'm not sure if you've used an Apple Watch but battery life just isn't a concern at all. You take it off at night, put it on the magnetic charger next to your bed and put it back on in the morning. Unless you want sleep tracking there's no need to wear it at night and the battery easily gets through an entire day with 20-30% charge left. In other words there's a reason they didn't seem to even mention battery in this keynote - people have found it's not really an issue. Of course there are extreme use cases where it is (what if I go camping for a few days) but these hold true for an electronic device.

<comment><USER5> It really is an issue for me when it comes to anything fitness-related. Recording exercises drains it fast, and I am willing to bet that the GPS is the same story as heart rate -- it will probably sample every 5 minutes or so when you're not exercising and then bump up the frequency when you are. Which means it still can't be used to capture anything over a couple hours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I do wonder what the plan is for the big spenders with the gold phones?

<comment><USER28> 3rd paragraph FTA:

> As for the really expensive Apple Watch Edition, it seems like Apple is > killing the product. The company probably wanted a flagship model to show > that it was serious about fashion. But now that the Galeries Lafayette, > Colette and Hermès sell the Apple Watch, Apple can focus on mass-market > watches.

<comment><USER27> I just gotta wonder what the reaction of all the celebs will be, as Apple tends to listen and covet them. I was expecting a special upgrade given the cost. I guess its another Mac anniversary edition.

<comment><USER29> How many units of Apple Watch Edition could have been sold -- I'd imagine it must be less than 10,000? Upgrading that amount of watches to the new motherboard (with the improved SOC) which fits in the same case doesn't seem like a major operation.

IIRC, those watches were sold with a private consultation at an Apple Store... So Apple could be privately inviting those buyers to get their watches upgraded, and it would give Apple an opportunity to connect with these high- spenders again and sell them some more stuff.

<comment><USER30> Probably less than 1,000. I expect quite a few were given away.

For the people who bought them, the price was likely pocket money to them, so they'll shrug and move on.

I'm surprised there was no effort to make the design sleeker. Visually Watch is a bit of a clunker, and not quite in keeping with the usual Apple aesthetic.

<comment><USER31> That's what I think, too.

I'd imagine that, if price were at all a factor, you didn't buy an Edition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The only feature I was waiting for is still missing: SIM card.

</comment><comment><USER33> I hope it's really much faster. I use 2FA often, but found that the time it took to process and give me a code was longer than the time it would take to unlock my phone and generate the code there.

</comment><comment><USER34> I'll buy one when it's solar powered like my current watch.

</comment><comment><USER35> Mark my words : Won't sell more than the first one.

</comment><comment><USER36> Still same unusable battery.

</comment><comment><USER37> By "swim up to 50 meters" does this mean you can only do a single lap of a swimming pool, or is this a measure of diving depth?

<comment><USER38> Diving depth, below that the pressure will force the water into the watch.

<comment><USER39> Diving depth - ish.

That 50m is _static_ pressure. Don't expect to actually dive to 50m and have your Apple Watch survive.

The reality of "50m waterproof" is that if you swim with it (pools, maybe a few meters below the surface), most of the time it'll be OK.

<comment><USER40> I've read that the depth thing is also double edged, in that some device aren't sealed enough at 0m and benefit from having a bit of pressure around to tighten things. So a 50m certified thing can leak in if washed under your bathroom tap.

ps: I'm really dubious about the post swim clean idea, I hope they took minerals and chemical floating (chlorine and whatnot) in their simulation, otherwise that speaker membrane will come with free sound effects over time.

<comment><USER41> >So a 50m certified thing can leak in if washed under your bathroom tap.

Perhaps for a very cheap watch, but if you're a diver you're not using a cheap 50m watch anyhow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Love the Freudian slip: "You'll be able to swipe on Pokéstops, see nearby Pokémon in a watch complication"

<comment><USER43> What's Freudian about that? Am I missing it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Just got the Gear S2. Apple needs to switch to OLED and add Always-On display before I go back. Twisting my wrist several times just to see the time was extremely annoying.

<comment><USER45> The Apple Watch does use OLED.

<comment><USER44> Well, no wonder why battery life isn't significantly better on the s2! I just love that feature.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> ________Apple vs Pebble __ __ __ __

Battery: 1 day vs 9 days

Price: $365 vs $169

Android Support: No vs Yes

[https://www.pebble.com/](https://www.pebble.com/)

Edit: Original comment below for nicky0

Charge my watch every night? No thank you, I'm buying a Pebble.

Pay $365 for a watch? No thank you, I'm buying a Pebble for $169.

Android support? Don't think so, I'm buying a Pebble.

[https://www.pebble.com/](https://www.pebble.com/)

<comment><USER47> Enjoy your pebble, dude.

Edit: You just completely edited your comment. The old one was more amusing.

<comment><USER46> I actually already have one, and I enjoy it.

<comment><USER47> I suspected as much :) They look cool.

I'm a Garmin guy.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why publishers are scared of ebooks — the standard reasons - <AUTHOR> http://jseliger.com/2011/03/10/why-publishers-are-scared-of-ebooks-the-standard-reasons-and-amanda-hocking-as-symbol/ <comment><USER2> They can be scared all they want, but between the iPad and Kindle, they are all I am buying now. I'm done with big, heavy, space-eating print media, just as I grew tired of collecting music on little silver discs.

A decade ago when I left home for college, my new apartment was filled with books, racks of CDs, and a big bulky computer. Now, _all_ of that stuff fits in my Timbuk2 bag.

</comment><comment><USER3> > _a lot of the raisons d'état of publishers goes away_

It's _raisons d'être_! Don't try to appear sophisticated if you're not.

<comment><AUTHOR> From the Oxford American Dictionary included in OS X:

raison d'état noun _( pl. raisons d'état_ a purely political reason for action on the part of a ruler or government, esp. where a departure from openness, justice, or honesty is involved.

<comment><USER3> _Raison d'état_ and _raison d'être_ both exist; they just don't mean the same thing (at all), and what the author meant was raison d'être.

Also:

1\. _raisons_ is plural, so they GO away and not GOES (except if you consider that the subject is "a lot", which may be grammatically correct but not semantically?)

2\. raisons d'état can't "go away" because they were never there; they are invoked as a (feeble) justification by the perpetrator of the action (they are kind of a lie).</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Let's compare Amazon wishlists to look for new books - <AUTHOR>

My wishlist is mostly books on marketing, history, rhetoric, business, and etc. It's also 199 books long (link in comments). There's probably some books in there that other people would really want but have never heard of.<p>So, I think it might be helpful to see what other people have found. <comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.amazon.com/Kevin- Barry/wishlist/EA95T62BSIYJ/ref...](https://www.amazon.com/Kevin- Barry/wishlist/EA95T62BSIYJ/ref=cm_pdp_wish_all_itms)</comment>


Sparse – a Semantic Parser for C - <AUTHOR> https://sparse.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Main_Page <comment><AUTHOR> Sparse: a look under the hood [https://lwn.net/Articles/689907/](https://lwn.net/Articles/689907/)</comment>


Reddit: a necessary change in policy - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/pmj7f/a_necessary_change_in_policy/ <comment><USER2> Here is the original thread that started it all, since the admins at reddit don't want to link to it: [http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=346...](http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3466025).

And the reddit response: [http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/duplicates/pmbyc/somethin...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/duplicates/pmbyc/somethingawfulcom_starts_campaign_to_label_reddit/).

<comment><USER3> There is a subreddit called "LegalTeens" that they find offensive??

<comment><USER4> How do you effectively determine if a teen in a picture is 18+ or not? Porn companies get legal documentation to prove it, but there's no such thing in a random jpeg.

Reddit is covering their legal asses, and I can perfectly understand that.

<comment><USER3> It's opening a big can of worms.

You cannot prove their age (I've seen 17 year-olds looking like they were 25) and you cannot prove they give their consent to have their seemingly private pic posted, but this can be said about almost any "mirror pic" or home pic. You also don't generally know when a picture has been publicly posted by the person in it, or not.

As soon as you put the burden of proof in the website, you start slipping into SOPA territory.

Not a good idea IMO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It will be interesting to see how far this goes, it's likely we'll look back on this as reddit's turning point - there is some really awful content on that site.

However it's ironic that people rush to defend linking to cam-of-new- hollywood-blockbuster.torrent as "just a link", declaring it can't be illegal because it's just _pointing_ to a file, it's not _hosting_ it and only a fool lawyer or judge nestled warmly in the pocket of the RIAA/MPAA could misunderstand this.

But when that link goes to 13yearoldinabikini.jpg, a collection of 1s and 0s on someone else's server, suddenly this Link is a tool of evil and not only must it be removed, but the community celebrates the censorship and nominates _more_ items for censorship.

<comment><USER6> Banning child porn is hardly the beginning of a slippery slope to the iron fist of reddit censorship.

Child porn is probably the one subject that is so indefensible that no one in their right mind would consider it a great loss that a major distribution channel for it was turned off.

Not that I believe for a second that the degenerates won't figure out some way to either skirt the rules or find another friendly site to aid and abet them.

It's a good first step, even if it was made under extreme duress.

<comment><USER7> There are people on Reddit trying to make the case that (based on a study from the University of Hawaii), access to child porn (or, more reasonably, artificial child porn like lolicon) can significantly reduce the rates of child sexual abuse:

[http://esciencenews.com/articles/2010/11/30/legalizing.child...](http://esciencenews.com/articles/2010/11/30/legalizing.child.pornography.linked.lower.rates.child.sex.abuse)

By the way, I'm not in any way supporting that opinion, just presenting the case that some people are making. I personally think there are probably better ways to combat child abuse than giving people lolicon.

<comment><USER6> I understand that you are not supporting that opinion, but I would like to rebut anyway.

Whether it significantly reduces the rates of child sexual abuse is besides the point. If someone thinks it's okay for one child to be abused so another may or may not be abused later, they need to check into the nearest psychiatric ward immediately.

We are human beings, for fucks sake. We should be holding ourselves to a higher standard than that.

Someone should make a site to permanently enshrine all the bugfuck insanity these people are trying to use to defend the indefensible.

<comment><USER8> Not to mention the sinister side-effect of allowing CP to reduce abuse- last I heard, much of it is produced via children from second-world countries. So in the end, we internalize all the benefit within the USA, and externalize all the suffering to downtrodden nations and their children.

<comment><USER9> I see little reason why we couldn't ban CP which was produced with real children, but legalize CP which was not (e.g., cartoons, CGI, etc).

Note that /r/lolicon is one of the banned subreddits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is a little off topic, but speaking of child abuse, I was recently called to jury duty for a case of "first degree rape of a child under 12". This was not one of those edge cases where you've got a 12 year old with a boyfriend a few years older, just outside the legal age difference. No, this was a 40+ year old man having sex with a 6 year old girl. (My number was high enough in the jury pool that I didn't get anywhere near the jury box, but I found out later the defendant was easily convicted).

Here's what is interesting about this: in the last year, 3 other people from my area at work (about 10 people) have also been called to jury duty--and ALL of them were child sex cases. Two were also "first degree rape of a child under 12", and one just recalled that it was child molestation.

Two things astounded me about this.

1\. That there were so many child rape and molestation cases. I had never though of this area as some kind of hotbed of child sex (Western Washington, across Puget Sound from Seattle), but it seems kind of high to have all 4 people called to jury duty in my office in the last year be called for this kind of case.

2\. There was nothing in the news. The defendant in the case I was on had an unusual name. I googled for it, and the only things that show up about him are things like his entry in the county jail booking records:

[http://www.kitsapgov.com/sheriff/incustody/jailwebsecond.asp...](http://www.kitsapgov.com/sheriff/incustody/jailwebsecond.asp?charges=700067930)

and his upcoming court dates on the county court calendar. Not a single newspaper story of his arrest, or his conviction, or of his earlier trial that ended in a hung jury.

If a 40+ year old man raping a 6 year old girl is not newsworthy, that leaves me wondering what other horrible crimes go on around me that do not make the news.

<comment><USER11> It is interesting that yesterday I was reading an article that relates increase of child attraction to Internet Phonograph. [http://www.reuniting.info/wiring_sexual_tastes_to_hairless_g...](http://www.reuniting.info/wiring_sexual_tastes_to_hairless_genitals_oops)

TLDR: The market standard of waxed in phonograph movies , confuses the evolutionary trigger that protect adults having desires for females that are not sexually mature.

<comment><USER12> Virtually none of the crucial citations on that source seem very reputable; just lots of links to pop-psychology sources, and links to the authors' own books. Very sketchy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Update: alienth from reddit explains why and how they went about forming the new policy:

        As the post said, we follow NCMEC reporting procedures.
        However, addressing this type of content was taking up
        more and more of our limited time. Also, none of us
        were particularly keen on analyzing this content and
        trying to determine what was and was not illegal.

        Whenever flair-ups like the preteen mess occur, it adds
        a tonne of stress upon us. We've been pouring over
        these decisions all weekend. It became clear that
        unless we addressed this content with a new rule, we
        were going to continue to drown in the minutia of what
        is child pornography, and what is not.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/pmk22/admins...](http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/pmk22/admins_today_we_are_adding_another_rule_no/c3qk6s9?context=1)

</comment><comment><USER10> One thing that disappointed me in the discussion is how most was focused on whether or not the pictures in /r/preteen_girls were legal. Even if they were clearly legal, I think a strong case can be made for banning them for violating the privacy of the children in the photos.

Most of them seemed to be girls photographed at home, probably by family members. I suspect they were shared on the net with relatives, by people who did not know they were making them publicly available. There were also quite a few that seemed to be girls photographed in public who were not aware they were being photographed.

<comment><USER13> If the standard becomes to delete every picture containing people who haven't explicitly consented to that picture being posted in a public forum... well, that's a huge chunk of Reddit.

<comment><USER14> Good thing for them that's obviously not the standard.

<comment><USER13> I know, I was just pointing out a flaw in tzs's reasoning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Very interesting to watch what a coordinated attack can do to a website. Always sad to see when people rally behind better/stronger censorship. Companies should get attacked for taking freedoms away and not the other way around. If they had illegal content on their sites, than by all means report it etc. But I still believe that anything legal SHOULD be allowed.

On the other hand it might be more a personal thing against Reddit for freeriding/pretending ownership of ideas with might have originated in other places.

<comment><USER16> What concerns me here is that they made this change not because it was the right thing to do (if that were the case, this would've happened months ago, when the controversy initially surfaced). Instead, they did it after a concerted campaign by SA. Who's to say that SA couldn't/won't do the same to get other topics banned as well?

Of course, the nice thing about the internet is that we can route around these issues. The fact that the software powering Reddit is open source[0] only makes it easer.

0: <https://github.com/reddit/reddit/wiki>

<comment><USER17> Are you honestly trying to set up a slippery slope argument starting with child pornography?

There's a _significant_ difference between protected speech and illegal material. Reddit (finally) cracked down on illegal material. Let's talk when they crack down on legal speech.

<comment><USER16> You completely missed my point here. Reddit didn't crack down on the material because it was illegal, they cracked down on it _because SA decided to launch a campaign against it_. If the Reddit admins had been concerned about hosting illegal material, they would have banned all such material months ago, when Andersoon Cooper mentioned its presence on Reddit _on national TV_.

This sets a dangerous precedent - that anyone who wants to get any sort of material banned from Reddit just needs to whip up SA (or an internet forum of similar influence) into a frenzy. My concerns are largely orthogonal to the fact that the particular type of content against which SA launched a campaign today was child pornography.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, I think that's a strange view.

Reddit finally banned illegal child pornography because they were afraid of the media shitstorm that would arise from not cracking down on child pornography _the first time they knew about it_.

If SA "gets whipped up" about any other type of content that _isn't illegal_ , what's the harm?

Reddit admins were afraid for a good reason - any more attention to the fact that they knew about child pornography _and did nothing_ would be a big problem.

<comment><USER16> > Reddit finally banned illegal child pornography because they were afraid of > the media shitstorm that would arise from not cracking down on child > pornography the first time they knew about it.

No, they knew about it months ago, when they banned /r/jailbait in response to AC360 coverage. But that's all they did, despite being aware of the presence of numerous other subreddits offering similar fare.

> If SA "gets whipped up" about any other type of content that isn't illegal, > what's the harm?

The harm is that the Reddit admins banning this sort of material had nothing to do with the fact that it was illegal (they already knew that a long time ago, as I stated above). The sole reason seems to be that SA had launched a campaign against it. So if SA launches a similar campaign against something else that _isn't illegal_ , one can logically conclude that the Reddit admins would once again cave and ban that material as well.

> Reddit admins were afraid for a good reason - any more attention to the fact > that they knew about child pornography and did nothing would be a big > problem.

And here we get to the fundamental problem. As I stated in my initial post, this was a response to a potential PR shitstorm. It had nothing to do with purported illegality of the material, or it would've been banned a long time ago.

<comment><USER17> If SA gets angry at reddit about, say, atheism/libertarianism/whatthefuckeverism, and goes after reddit, how is there going to be a PR shitstorm?

Your premise is nonsensical. The PR shitstorm was brewing because reddit _continued_ to provide a safe haven for pedophiles to exchange child pornography _after CNN called them out on it_. What the fuck else is reddit doing right now that could lead to such a shitstorm? Assassinations? Human trafficking?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I am one who has pushed for removal of specific /r/ for some time. Specifically, /r/picsofdeadkids as well as most recently stating we should both delete /r/preteen_girls as well as the community to have ability to vote to close/delete /r/.

In the past, when I was against /r/picsofdeadkids - my comments were voted down with arguments of "I may not agree with what you say, but ill defend your right to say it"

I know it is a slippery slope, censorship, but I don't feel that standards == censorship. These people would be free to start whatever site/forum they like - but to argue that the platform that reddit provides should be wholly open to ANYTHING without standards is just plain stupid.

I am very pleased with such a direction. Again, if you're the sick POS that needs extremely fringe content - then go host it yourself.

Don't play victim that a public forum is actually telling you there is something WRONG with your interests - maybe its a freaking SIGN that people are offended by what you think normal.

<comment><USER19> Many of the comments on the post are disgusting. People being downvoted for supporting the removal of subreddits such as r/beatingwomen and r/beatingtrannies under the guise of supporting free speech (which isn't really a viable point on a website).

<comment><USER12> > which isn't really a viable point on a website

It's a viable point on a website like reddit, which built its community on a no-censorship basis. They're free to do with their business as they like, but I'm free to feel betrayed when they do.

<comment><USER18> You feel betrayed when a site like reddit says that child porn is bad, but I'd be willing to bet everything that you have a facebook account which sells you, your likeness and your personal data and you couldn't give a shit when they alter their privacy policies.

<comment><USER12> >You feel betrayed when a site like reddit says that child porn is bad

No, I feel betrayed when reddit, a community that grew because it did not limit expression that was within the law, bans "suggestive or sexual content featuring minors", which is _way, way_ broader than child porn - an umbrella so broad that it even covers _news stories_ about sexual abuse.

>but I'd be willing to bet everything that you have a facebook account which sells you, your likeness and your personal data and you couldn't give a shit when they alter their privacy policies.

I do have a facebook account, and the fact that I _do_ give a shit about its privacy policies is why I basically use it when there's no other way to get in touch with someone. This is, of course, utterly irrelevant. Why are you even bringing it up?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> >Today we are adding another rule: No suggestive or sexual content featuring minors.

It's good to see that smut like _Romeo and Juliet_ is no longer welcome on reddit.

</comment><comment><USER20> Before you start heaping it on Reddit for "child porn", think about the prevalent sexualization of girls in the US society. I just saw the movie "Journey to Mysterious Island" with my son and the outfit that Vanessa Hudgens, who was playing a 16 year-old girl, had to endure during the whole movie was mind-boggling: Short-shorts and tank top strategically altered to tease with cleavage. There were many shots focusing on her thighs and breasts.

</comment><comment><USER21> This discussion of whether the content is legal or not isn't very constructive. Clearly Reddit has to ban illegal content. However, they also have to uphold community standards and enforce rules which keep more toxic parts of the community in line. Allowing pseudo-child porn creates a meeting place for pedophiles and that is likely not a liability that Reddit wants to take on.

<comment><USER13> Allowing /r/trees creates a meeting place for illegal drug users and that is likely not a liability that Reddit wants to take on. Indeed, quite similar to how people were accused of trading child porn on Reddit, people set up drug deals on Reddit.

etc etc etc. It's a slippery slope.

<comment><USER22> The difference is in the effort required to moderate the content. An /r/trees worst case scenario is two people meeting up to perform an illegal activity at a later point. An /r/jailbait worst case scenario is illegal material being indexed by the site.

Additionally, /r/trees isn't generating hundreds of flagged threads for review by the admins (who are then forced to spend man hours browsing pictures of under-aged girls).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> What alarms me about this is that Reddit has to worry about hazily-defined legal gray areas. One of the big goals of common law legal systems is to make the law and its interpretation as predictable as possible, so that people can go about their business without fear of arbitrary legal penalties. The common law may not always be just, but it should at least be consistent.

<comment><USER6> Child porn is not really a hazily defined legal gray area. The law is pretty concise on what constitutes child porn.

Possessing may be a bit murkier but only in the edge cases where the pictures were put there without the persons knowledge.

Reddit finally got shamed into taking the ultimately correct stance. Anything that vaguely smells of child porn is no longer allowed. There's no slippery slope here.

<comment><USER23> Not a gray area? The Reddit admins say otherwise, and presumably they would know what they've been dealing with:

> Beyond these clear cut cases, there is a huge area of legally grey content, > and our previous policy to deal with it on a case by case basis has become > unsustainable. We have changed our policy because interpreting the vague and > debated legal guidelines on a case by case basis has become a massive > distraction and risks reddit being pulled in to legal quagmire.

While we're at it, Neil Gaiman points out examples of several of those gray areas:

[http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/12/why-defend-freedom- of-...](http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/12/why-defend-freedom-of-icky- speech.html)

<comment><USER6> I think it's been pretty well demonstrated that the Reddit admins have their heads up their asses, at least when it comes to this issue. Just stating that the law has grey areas is not evidence that the law has grey areas. It has more to do with their deliberate obtuseness toward what the law actually says.

As far as I can tell, Neil Gaiman is a really talented writer. There's nothing in his background that indicates expertise in law. Beyond that, upon reading his post, he is clearly talking about government censorship in the context of literature and graphic novels depicting sex involving minors, not the distribution of actual pornography. At one point he even concedes that he has not even looked at the site in question and cannot make a judgement on it's contents.

Really, if you're going to post a link as support for your argument, read it first and make sure it supports your argument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> There were whole subreddits with questionable content? Damn, I'm surprised that they didn't take this move earlier.

<comment><AUTHOR> There have been for years, it wasn't until recently r/jailbait was removed. For the longest time the policy was anything legal is allowed.

<comment><USER25> > anything legal is allowed

And quite a lot that was, at the very best, ambiguous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> One of the remarkable things about this is that the campaign orchestrated by Something Awful users caused this happen in less than 4 hours. Even the CNN exposé took days.

<comment><USER27> It actually started a few days ago. The account creating the preteen girls subreddit and posting most of its content was 3 days old. It is very suspect and a plausible explanation is that someone from SA was running a smear campaign from the start.

<comment><AUTHOR> These sort of subreddits have existed for years, although it is most definitely the case that the actions of Something Awful caused them to be shut down, they did not create them. For example r/teen_girls has existed for 6 months.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I may have missed some of the context here, but it looks like SA was able to force a significant policy change at Reddit in _less than a single day_. I know there was a lot of lead up, but still, wow. They obviously take the "goons" quite seriously!

</comment><comment><USER29> I can relate to the decision Reddit made. Moderating the content on a forum is alot of work and it's frustrating. Eliminating the grey area is probably the safest move (on a legal stand point) although it will create many angry users that feel entitled. Expect mass bannings because users love to rebel then afterwards the inevitable "well you removed this but allow that" arguments.

</comment><comment><USER30> I honestly cannot believe this was not already a policy at reddit.

</comment><comment><USER31> Scumbag Reddit

Freaks out about anti-childporn laws

Bans pics of 18+ teenagers in bathing suits

</comment><comment><USER32> Funny that they knew the 3 day old subreddit before everyone else.

<comment><USER17> Subreddits focusing on jailbait have been on reddit for _a lot longer_ than 3 days.</comment></comment>


Learn new languages by watching movies on Netflix - <AUTHOR> I have built a chrome extension to help people getting translated subtitles from Netflix.
http://tranflix.net
feedbacks are welcome! <comment><USER2> Hehe.

This and reading english books improved my English quite a lot. I was really bad at it in school, worst in class in fact...

I hoped it would also improve my Japanese, but you need a rather big fondation of language basics before using such a learning method :\

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback, I think it is the same for me and English :)

May I ask you if you did try the extension? And if not, may you tell me why?</comment></comment>


Zirtual shuts down overnight with no warning to its employees - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/zirtual-suddenly-laid-off-400-employees-via-email-2015-8

<comment><USER2> Watched her on TWIST Friday and Jason Calacanis (who is an investor in her company) heaped praise on her for being an elite manager. Same guy who rips entrepreneurs he invests in waiting until the last minute to ask him for help when they get in trouble. According to news accounts she reached out to him 24 hours later ;<(

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10033517](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10033517)

</comment><comment><USER4> > Despite the lack of communication from leadership ...

Despite the lack of leadership ...

FTFY.</comment>


Saying Thanks: testing a new Reactions feature - <AUTHOR> https://stackoverflow.blog/2020/06/17/saying-thanks-testing-a-new-reactions-feature/ <comment><USER2> This is a pattern that is seen under every answer on Stackoverflow. I do wonder what the implications on upvote button would be and how a "Thanks" differentiates from upvoting an answer. I wonder if Stackoverflow and creators could benefit from a program like Github Sponsors. May the Web Monetisation API can help</comment>


Scaling ArangoDB to Gigabytes per Second on Mesosphere's DCOS – Mesosphere - <AUTHOR> <comment><AUTHOR> I still would be pretty interested to see how Couchbase would behave under the Mesos DCOS. There were any tests done?

</comment><comment><USER2> To submit a story link, the comment box must be empty.</comment>


GDNative – A scripting language module for Godot - <AUTHOR> https://godotengine.org/article/dlscript-here <comment><USER2> I wonder if next week's Ludum Dare would be a great time to test this engine out (with a few hours prep of course). The promise of C# has been keeping me away from trying it out, but it must be at least a year now since I've heard that C# support is coming.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is potentially a big win for me. I'm interested in Godot, but also wary of it because I didn't like the notion of a game-engine-specific language. I do like the idea of a MIT-licensed engine which works with <language of choice>, though.

I use Unity, and it's enjoyable to be able to use a widely-understood language, because of things like tooling, documentation, existing libraries. Obviously, Unity isn't perfect, particularly since being limited to .NET 2.0 often means being limited to libraries made for Unity or old versions of mainstream libraries.

Aside: Extending a game engine by linking in a shared library very much reminds me of making Quake 2 DLL mods.

</comment><comment><USER4> Honest question: why use Godot over something like Unity3D, which also has great 2D tools?

<comment><USER5> Speaking as someone with experience with Unity3D and not Godot:

Unity3D's design is not very good. It is a popular system, you can find a lot of hacks online for getting common things done, but overall the thing is a garbage heap of unorganized and poorly documented features.

The ability to work with source control is a joke. I'm sorry, you can't do professional grade software development without source control. You really shouldn't be doing hobby grade development without it either. But Unity makes you jump through several hoops to get source control working correctly and reliably.

They have an asset store that almost looks like a package manager, but isn't, leaving you to have to check all of your plugins into your repository rather than redeploy out of the central store.

Patch-point releases frequently introduce breaking changes. And their project format is locked to prevent you from opening a project that had just been _opened_ in a newer version than the one you have. Yes, opening a project in Unity writes changes to disk. Wouldn't be so bad of a problem if your project could easily and trivially be added to source control and you could just reset the changes, but see above.

It makes doing basic physics very easy to do, but the quality of the physics is not very good. Even their heavy number crunching "continuous dynamic" mode suffers from terrible warp-through problems.

It's still, after all this time, not available for working on Linux. You can build games that run on Linux, but you can't do the work on Linux.

The export to WebGL feature is another joke. An empty project ends up dumping around 50MB of code out. That's before you even get to any game code or assets. They compile your C# code to CIL with Mono, then that gets converted to C++ with IL2CPP, then that gets converted to ASM.js with Emscripten. It's an absurd Rube Goldberg machine of a process that it's no wonder people thing WebGL sucks, if all they have to go by is Unity projects.

It bombs you out to Visual Studio for editing code, but it's still not compatible with any version of .NET post 2.0. You can't import DLLs without hacking the *.csproj file by hand.

I'm sure I could come up with some more gripes if I thought about it for a while, but I don't want to be here all day.

<comment><USER6> Billion dollar games both 2d and 3d with exceptional quality disagree with you

<comment><USER5> Your argument is a gigantic logical fallacy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This seems like a great opportunity to try out Rust with these new bindings!

</comment><comment><USER8> The wait is over! (my deepest apologies)

</comment><comment> gm-conspiracy Any recommended tutorials or "cookbooks" to get a basic game written with Godot?

<comment><USER9> Game from scratch[0] has a good tutorial, between it and the official docs you can get a basic game up.

[0][http://www.gamefromscratch.com/page/Godot-Game-Engine- tutori...](http://www.gamefromscratch.com/page/Godot-Game-Engine-tutorial- series.aspx)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Off Topic: Is it just me or are the trolls out in force today? People in this thread shitting all over game development. Seriously, if you're just off work for the holiday weekend, go outside. Stop screwing up perfectly good HN discussions because your ego feels threatened.

</comment><comment><USER11> Imagine what the human-species could achieve if we used game-engine-developers for more productive stuff.

<comment><USER12> I am a game-engine-developer... without any work at the moment.

People just rarely want my skills, I work with C, C++, Lua, ASM, blazing-speed well built code that takes a long time to make.

People don't even ask me to do interviews, when I see all these posts on HN complaining of interviews I can't relate, I never get invited to them in first place, because I don't know React, Enterprise-Java, Electron and other whatever new very high-level tech designed to speed up dev (at cost of program speed for end user) that is popular.

<comment><USER13> There are plenty of jobs available for game engine developers, and low level engine programmers in general. If you'#re applying for jobs with React/Electron in the descriptions, you're not really applying for engine developer positions, though.

<comment><USER12> Where? Mind you, I don't live in a first world country... So it must be either remote, or allow relocation. (in my country at least ALL jobs are for React/Electron/Java... I applied to them because they are the only job listing that existed in first place, better to work on the 'wrong field' than to be hungry).

<comment><USER13> I don't know where youre located, but in many parts of the world there are low level c++ jobs available. The us and Europe are full of them, and every company I've spoken to has offered relocation.

There's a difference between people not wanting your skills, and people not wanting your skills where you're located, unfortunately.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Hong Kong's Private Tutors Are Millionaire Idols - <AUTHOR> http://world.time.com/2013/12/30/rich-and-famous-why-hong-kongs-private-tutors-are-millionaire-idols/

<comment><USER2> In some strange way, you can't really fault them for hacking the education system to gain an advantage.

But what's the point of wasting all this time and resources just to jump through hoops.</comment>


A re-introduction to JavaScript - MDC - <AUTHOR> https://developer.mozilla.org/en/a_re-introduction_to_javascript <comment><USER2> Cool, I wrote these notes up for a conference tutorial I gave a few years ago, glad to see they've taken on a useful life of their own.

<comment><USER3> after 3 years of javascripting it still good to get a refresh for the language's core elements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you can't do anything without a book (Like me), get "JavaScript: The Definitive Guide by David Flanagan"

I know you can print things out and bind them but it's just not the same.

<comment><USER5> Crockford's "Javascript: The Good Parts" (aka "the butterfly book") is a much quicker read, and will result in better code.

<comment><USER4> I disagree. Probably a good idea to get both though. "The Good Parts" is interesting, but doesn't have a complete language reference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Having almost no Javascript experience, I always thought the language looked messy but with this great introduction everything seems so clear.

I found an error:

      switch(1 + 3):
          case 2 + 2:
              yay();
              break;
          default:
              neverhappens();
      }

The ":" after the first line should be a "{".

<comment><USER7> MDC is a public wiki that anyone can edit. You can fix or change anything if you see fit (you don't need to fix it now, I fixed it).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This a good introduction, but Douglas Crockford's _A Survey of the JavaScript Programming Language_ [<http://javascript.crockford.com/survey.html>] is shorter _and_ more detailed — and a perfectly adequate introduction if you already know other programming languages.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> credits to boucher: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=601926>

</comment><comment><USER7> It seems that the wiki page doesn't say anything about the `delete` and `let` operators. Those are very useful operators that should be read about. (just search `delete` or `let` on MDC)

<comment><USER9> delete can be useful, but it's not nearly as useful as it sounds. delete's only purpose is to remove a property name from an object. that is the only advantage it has over just nulling out a reference directly, and in most cases, the two techniques can be used interchangeably with no negative side effects.

let is not useful to anyone doing browser based javascript work, because it doesn't work in any browser other than Firefox and derivatives. Getting a slightly different scope behavior is hardly worth throwing out 70-80% of potential users.

<comment><USER4> Wrong. It's amazing this myth still gets perpetuated. Setting something to null, or even undefined, does not delete it. That's a swift ticket to leaking memory. Use delete. It's what it's for.

      >>> var test={foo:123}
      >>> test.foo = undefined
      >>> for (var i in test) { console.log(i); }
      foo
      >>> delete test.foo
      true
      >>> for (var i in test) { console.log(i); }

<comment><USER9> No, setting a variable to undefined doesn't delete the object contained in that variable (and I never said it did). Neither does calling delete. Delete gets rid of the variable itself, not the object it contains, which is precisely what I did say.

JavaScript is a garbage collected language. As such, you, the developer, have no control over when an object can be ejected from memory. When a reference to your object no longer exists, it can be considered for collection. Until then, it can't.

In your example, the number object (123) is eligible for collection in both cases. The difference has nothing to do with 123, but instead relates to the test object.

In the first case, test will still have a foo property, which won't point to anything. In the second case, the property itself will be removed from the test object.

It's (most likely) true that leaving the foo property intact means using more memory than if you delete it, but the memory used is less than actual object, and whether or not this qualifies as a leak is debatable. Which leaves my original statement:

        delete's only purpose is to remove a property name from an object

This is particularly relevant when you iterate over the keys in an object for some reason. In the case of a global variable, this is just an implicit removal from the global/window object.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Also on HN, <http://javascript.infogami.com/Javascript_in_Ten_Minutes>, is another good article.</comment>


Tell HN: Writing helps - <AUTHOR>

I have been under constant pressure about a few things and that had me down from a few months, affecting my productivity, mood, appetite and lots more. Today, I just opened the notepad and started typing away what I felt. The idea to do so seemed a little funny at first as my thoughts were very clear in my mind and it was my helplessness to do anything that had got me down, but trust me, it helped tremendously. After so many days, I did some meaningful work, of course nothing compared to my peak days but it did break the "cant-do-anything" streak. I have also been feeling better overall after writing. Just thought would share this with you all. Happy holidays. <comment><USER2> Guaranteed Stress Reliever for Busy People.

Write. Write down exactly what you are thinking. It will probably be hard at first, especially if you are not used to blogging, creating copy, or writing essays. That's okay: start by just taking a pen and putting words down on paper. Do not worry about grammar or structure. Switch from point to point as they come to you. The purpose is to get each idea down on paper. Structure can come later: read it again and rewrite it.

I have discovered, and I want to prove this but I do not yet know how, that when a person writes down an idea, the mind no longer stresses itself to remember that idea. This makes sense: why waste time and space indexing new information if it can just be looked up? Instead, your mind just remembers where to look.

Moreover, because they are out of your mind, these ideas will not rise to your conscious thoughts every few minutes to worry you. That project you have due next Monday won't stress you out every hour. Write it down. Write down everything you worry about that project. I might not finish in time. The package might never show up. Ken is so unreliable. Tim hasn't answered my email yet, should I email him? I haven't written the first page yet, but I have to write 20. Maybe I can write an outline first. Can I outsource this part?

Write it down, wr....

[http://www.jperla.com/blog/post/guaranteed-stress- reliever-f...](http://www.jperla.com/blog/post/guaranteed-stress-reliever-for- busy-people)

<comment><USER3> The idea that writing an idea down reduces stress is one of the cornerstones of Dave Allen's Getting Things Done. He calls the unwritten items that nag at you "open loops". One important follow-on idea that that the ideas must be written down in a "trusted system": if you aren't absolutely confident that you will be able to find it when you go looking (or, better, that it will be brought to your attention when needed whether or not you remember to look at that moment), you won't stop worrying.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's a legendary book for artists called The Artist's Way about getting back your creative mojo and one of the first things the author talks about is something called your daily pages.

<http://amzn.to/ieS49z>

She suggests starting every day writing 3 pages, by hand, totally freestyle stream of consciousness to help get stuff out of your head and get you back into the practice of daily creation. It's not about what you write, you probably will never revisit it, it's just about the impact it has on your bigger creative flow.

<comment><USER5> <http://750words.com>

I just found this last week... it's really helped me get some writing done, which is usually something I dread doing. You sign in and write. It saves your text and keeps record of how much you've written each day.

<comment><USER6> Seconded. 750words also has some moderately compelling game-like mechanics as well as some analytics like word clouds and timing statistics.

I had a really good streak going for a while, but a new job with an hour+ commute every morning killed it and I never went back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Read any writer's "On writing" book and they all talk about a mandatory amount of words they have to write on a daily basis. I just finished Jack London's and he had to write a 1,000 (polished)words a day. He struggled with it, but strangely, his creativity came from his routine.

I'd recommend Stephen King's "On Writing", Ray Bradbury "Zen and the Art of Writing", and "Ernest Hemingway on Writing". All have great insights into the joy and struggles of writing, but each on makes you want to be a great writer.

Best of luck keeping it up!

</comment><comment><USER8> I went through something like that some months ago. Then I discovered OhLife ( <http://ohlife.com/> ).

That's was the best I did, every night I write my feelings and forget then. It makes me feel better and less heavy.

<comment><USER9> Wow - this thing looks great. I wonder how they make profit, though, there's no ads and no paid versions?

<comment><USER10> The potential for pharma spam is HUGE.

1\. Detect keywords like Depression, Sad, Lonely

2\. Serve anti-depressant ads

3\. No ??? Just profit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've had a similar surge in clarity. I spend at least an hour each day writing. But, I recently started an experiment to spend another 15 minutes each day just thinking. I have pen and paper, but the goal isn't to write. It's to think. The pen and paper just capture a few notes. For more details, see [http://wayofthescholar.com/trial-2-day-1-reflecting- for-15-m...](http://wayofthescholar.com/trial-2-day-1-reflecting- for-15-minutes/) (I'll have an update coming out tomorrow).

The results have been great so far, and those 15 minutes are becoming the most productive part of my entire day. It seems like this time basically assigns problems to my brain, which it works on unconsciously while I'm walking home from the lab.

Because writing is thinking, writing is great. I wonder, though, are there other ways to think which are just as potent, or even more so?

</comment><comment><USER12> This is great advice & a wonderful way to "brain dump" those nagging thoughts out of your head.

Another writing tip: When you are really upset about something and want to rip someone a new one, write them an email but don't send it. Write what you want to say, get it out of your system, the thing is say whatever you want. Then walk away for 24 hours. If you find upon returning to the email the next day that you still want to say those things, fire away, but most times you'll have cooled down by then & be able to re-write a much better and less "venting" email. This has helped keep me from burning many bridges in moments of extreme frustration.

</comment><comment><USER13> I love writing. I love creative expression, writing down observations, focusing thoughts around an intent or story. Writing code just happens to be a form of writing that I can do for a living. You start with a draft or something already started and you shape it into something that people like to use. I love writing.

Be careful with a diary though. Especially if you tend to be self-critical. Your own worst critic. I had one for a few years in a low, workaholic phase of my life and I was depressed rereading it in moments. So many negative thoughts. Ouch. I prefer now to write positive stories. Highlight the positive, accept the negative.

</comment><comment><USER14> I find that this helps tremendously when I'm stuck in a decision. I open TextWrangler on my MacBook, and write about the various options, why I don't like them, and, if I'm really good, what the cost of not making a decision is, and what the simplest solution that could possibly work is.

[http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?DoTheSimplestThingThatCouldPossiblyWo...](http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?DoTheSimplestThingThatCouldPossiblyWork)

I often get stuck when I want to combine the best aspects of various possible solutions, but can't. The writing lays it out there and helps me get over my perfectionism.

</comment><comment><USER15> I was writing about 300 words nearly every morning starting in May but fell off the wagon this fall. Thanks for kicking my butt into action this morning.

Why wait for the New Year to resolve to write every day? Things that clear your mind and make you feel better shouldn't get pushed aside because of other life things (work, errands, whatever). That's been my problem, I admit.

And the best part of daily writing is you don't need to be a "Writer" to do it.

</comment><comment><USER16> I've experienced one major, extended depression in my life, about a decade ago. My daily outpouring of despair into a printed journal came to feel like a life line. By itself it wasn't enough to get me out, but it was enough to keep my head above water while I was going through it.

</comment><comment><USER17> Check out this todo-list called workflowy.com. I think it adds two things to the todo-list genre:

\- Allows infinite depth. This is possible in Word but not many other apps, however, I find my task-list to require atleast 4-5 levels of depth to model correctly \- Allows instant focus. I have a todo-list open right now that has 23 bullet items, it's nested 5 levels deep among a whole bunch of other items.

Writing is great (even though I do it very rarely) but a todo list (to me) is the absolute simplest way to model things that are "stuck" in my mind and preventing other top of the mind shower thinking.

</comment><comment><USER18> Congratulations, you've re-discovered blogging. ;P

In all seriousness, though, writing does help. The productivity block you're talking about was the reason I started blogging way back in the day. I don't write much personal stuff anymore because I don't need to, and when I do, it's an email to one or two people and that's it. As chrisaycock noted, sometimes all you need to do is observe your thoughts and feelings, and then they get out of your way, leaving you feeling less burdened.

<comment><USER19> Journaling existed a _long_ time before blogging. And for me at least, the old fashioned journaling, where you just write stream of consciousness stuff that you know will never be seen by anyone else, is a lot more liberating than blogging. Not only because you know that nobody else is going to ever see it, but also because of the writing technique usually recommended (just keep writing, don't edit, don't re-read, don't critique,etc).

I always found that blogging was just one more thing for my to procrastinate and end up _not_ doing. :-(

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Stream of consciousness helps you "get it out" where you can objectify it much easier and treat it like an external item. So, it's good that you are feeling better, but you will (at some point) want to pivot those subjects so you actually feel better _about them_. Otherwise they will just be skeletons in the closet.

Get it out, acknowledge you don't feel good, objectify the issue, then do your best to find the good aspects in those issues so they are no longer weights.

</comment><comment><USER21> I have also had the feeling recently that keeping a diary helps me accomplish the difficult (not playing video games) as well as deal with moods and life issues. It is nice to see this, as it is evidence that this effect may be valid.

</comment><comment><USER22> write simple or complex depending in your mood, sometimes you'll find wonderful things in those words and letter that you have created and will heal some of your wounds or worries take it as a magnificent rest who can take you anywhere in the world or beyond it

</comment><comment><USER23> One thing that has always stopped me form writing a journal was the glaring fact that I was never going to get around to reading older entries, and therefore why was I keeping them around to be stumbled upon. I agree that venting your thoughts is generally helpful but my original point was recently validated when a family member was hospitalized and requested that their journals be destroyed immediately. I did so without peaking, but if I were to keep a journal I would have one rule: Burn after writing.

<comment><USER24> The exact opposite is also valid. Notable examples start with Anne Frank's diary right?

<comment><AUTHOR> Agree, I would actually want to revisit the experiences of the past, human memory is very tricky and it helps to have things written out to revisit how you felt about something.</comment></comment></comment>


Envoy, Ambassador and Istio: A Gzip Adventure - <AUTHOR> https://blog.florentdelannoy.com/blog/2019/envoy-ambassador-istio-gzip/ <comment><USER2> Interesting compromise from the github issue: "In other to reduce latency we decided to compress and flush on each data frame. The downside is that it degrades the compression ratio. The second option is to let gzip to compress until the buffer gets full. I think we could make it configurable."

</comment><comment><USER3> If I had to guess, it probably comes down to Go's gzip libraries being not as mature as the optimized to death C-based ones in nginx/apache.

<comment><USER4> Envoy, the L7 proxy on which Ambassador is based, is written in C++.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It would have been interesting to benchmark Akamai's compression as well, to see if they're using standard gzip or some special sauce.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey there, author here - good point, I'll add Akamai! Long story short: standard gzip results, in line with nginx / apache / gzip command-line.</comment></comment>


Ed Sheeran Is on Track for the No. 1 Concert Tour of All Time. Here's How - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/ed-sheeran-is-on-track-for-the-no-1-concert-tour-of-all-time-heres-how-11560936602?mod=rsswn <comment><USER2> He played the most shows, by a lot.

That's the bulk of it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Charging below market price and keeping the market from clearing by blocking secondary sales is a weird strategy. If you don't want to provide enough tickets to clear the market at your chosen price, and you don't want to raise your price, fine. But why is "luck" any better of determinant of which person gets the ticket than "had a higher willingness-to-pay"?

<comment><USER4> One possibility is that he wants to make sure that large numbers of not-as- wealthy fans think of him as their dude, and playing to audiences of rich people could tarnish his brand image. Or, he just thinks not rich people should be able to see his shows. Or, he doesn't like playing for an audience that feels entitled because they payed a lot, and he gets a better vibe in the audience if it's full of people who aren't wealthy-entitled-types. Or something else, but that's several possibilities.

Edit: I never heard of this guy before now, so I don't know if any of these guesses are the reality.

<comment><USER3> Rich people, i.e. people who can afford $200 for a ticket instead of $100?

I don't think the market clearing price is anywhere close to double the cost. The article implies they could easily get 10% more. That's not the difference between rich and not-rich.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not too far off and reminiscent of Louis CK cheap and straightforward business practices regarding tickets.</comment>


How I Mastered the NYT Crossword Puzzle in 31 Days - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-mission/how-i-mastered-the-saturday-nyt-crossword-puzzle-in-31-days-fe6a094edccd <comment><AUTHOR> I like the way the author used a Chrome extension, Python, and some ingenuity to accelerate his learning. I'm going to apply this method to another domain.</comment>


Tear Gas – Illegal in War but OK for Riot Control - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/08/14/tear-gas-is-a-chemical-weapon-banned-in-war-but-ferguson-police-shoot-it-at-protesters/ <comment><USER2> Its illegal in war because of a fear of miscalculation, not because of its effects: i.e. a soldier may call in a retaliatory strike proportional to chemical weapons because its difficult to tell the difference between tear gas and something more lethal in the heat of battle.

<comment><USER3> the OPCW claims the convention was formed due to rapid innovation in the chemical weapon section - leading to the realization that small countries could own an arsenal capable of producing doomsday without much material wealth. [0]

[0]: [http://www.opcw.org/news- publications/publications/history-o...](http://www.opcw.org/news- publications/publications/history-of-the-chemical-weapons-convention/)

<comment><USER4> That's not really accurate. They're banned because there is no net benefit if both sides have them, and they only serve to make wars more destructive. The exact same logic lead to parallel bans on exploding / poisoned / expanding / fragmenting ammunition and later land mines.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In war you have an alternative, though: Live ammunition. Soldiers don't _need_ tear gas, and if you took it away from cops eventually the live ammunition would come out.

</comment><comment><USER6> A really bad argument.

I thought all chemical weapons are out, just like all nukes are out.

Yes there exist nukes less destructive than conventional weapons but it's probably best to just have a blanket ban.

> "An infant exposed to CS in a house into which police had fired CS canisters > to subdue a mentally disturbed adult developed severe pneumonitis requiring > therapy with steroids, oxygen, antibiotics, and 29 days of hospitalization."

Baby got sick while being saved? from a mentally disturbed adult because they didn't put a bullet in the adults head as a matter of course.

Not a great argument either.

And if you dump enough tear gas in a truck full of adults you can asphyxiate them......

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Would allowing tear-gas and other "chemical weapons" in war break down what we consider war? Would it somehow lead to wars so brutal no one would want to wage them?

How desperate does a relatively sane country have to get before it deploys tactics we would currently reserve as "terrorism" and "weapons of mass destruction"?

</comment><comment><USER7> The article tapdanced around the reasoning because it sounds so awful, but torture of civilians is permitted and when the USA does it, its now the greatest most ethical thing evar (although years ago only the bad guys tortured people, at least officially, sometimes thats how you knew they were the bad guys...). And torture in general isn't legal under rules of war. So thats why, at least on paper, we treat enemy soldiers better than our own people.

<comment><USER8> I don't think there's a causal connection between torture policies and tear gas being allowed for crowd control, I think they are both linked to the same cause - that governments are more interested in protecting themselves than the populous, and are perfectly willing to look at their citizens as an enemy.

<comment><USER9> > _governments are more interested in protecting themselves than the populous_

Be careful using the plural there. The United States government is the only government from a Developed country that does this.

If you want to compare the United States to Developing and Undeveloped countries, go right ahead.

<comment><USER10> I'm sorry, it seems like you haven't been paying attention to the world stage. America's is definitely not the only government putting itself before its citizens. Look at Australia, Canada, the UK, and arguably, many of the TPP nations.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Local Variables - <AUTHOR> http://www.craftinginterpreters.com/local-variables.html <comment><USER3> For those wondering, it looks like this is the final version of the latest chapter of a book that's work in progress. Fresh out of the press, if you want.

[https://twitter.com/munificentbob/status/1109876226104057856](https://twitter.com/munificentbob/status/1109876226104057856)

</comment><comment><USER4> The chapter raises the question of the semantics of

        {
          var a = "outer";
          {
            var a = a;
          }
        }

and

        {
          var a = a;
        }

. Some programming languages have the idea of "let rec" versus "nonrecursive let." In Haskell, `let` is recursive, and because Haskell is lazy, `let a = a` is a nonterminating computation. In OCaml, `let` is non-recursive and `let rec` is recursive, and only certain recursive definitions are allowed. (You can do `let rec a = 0::a`, but not `let rec a = a`.)

Scheme has `let`, where none of the variables are in scope for any definition, `let*`, where each variable is in scope in the successive definitions, and `letrec`, where all of the variable are in scope for all definitions. According to [http://www.r6rs.org/final/r6rs.pdf](http://www.r6rs.org/final/r6rs.pdf), Scheme initializes letrec'd variables to a "black hole."

<comment><USER5> > and because Haskell is lazy, `let a = a` is a nonterminating computation

I am pretty sure that lazyness has nothing to do with this.

<comment><USER4> Maybe I worded that wrong. In OCaml and other strict languages, `let (rec) a = a` doesn't make sense, because `a` doesn't have a value when you are defining it to be itself. When I write `let a = a` in Haskell, what happens is that `a` is set to a thunk whose code pointer points to its own evaluation code. When the thunk gets forced, it tries to evaluate itself.

Doing my research, I was wrong about the "nonterminating computation" part; when the thunk gets forced, it gets marked as a "black hole," detecting the infinite recursion in this case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I thought the choice to implement locals and all of their semantics using just the main stack was both curious and surprising. (I'm most familiar with perl's implementation, which requires a bunch of stacks flying in for formation to implement it's complex scoping semantics.)

In the book, Bob says he designed the language such that it would be possible to use just one stack. What does that mean? It sounds very discouraging for newbies because it implies a lot of foresight or trial and error.

Overall, while this is among the most interesting subjects covered, I find the chapter a bit lacking in either one of two ways: either it is for beginners, and then the chapter feels very magical or is for intermediates and then a bit of extra verbiage on the design choices that led you there would be appropriate.

Nitpick: I would totally have stopped low and done the -1 initialization trick as well. But yuck. ;)

<comment><USER7> The constraint on the language for this to work well is fairly natural and is actually described in the article: the language should follow lexical scoping.

Unfortunately, since some dynamic languages do not respect lexical scoping, programmers in these languages tends to think of local variables and scoping as something very complicated. It doesn't need to be.

<comment><USER8> You can have plain lexical scoping but still be unable to use a simple stack in all cases, due to closures.

The author describes this additional constraint that they have on top of lexical scoping.

> We have to be OK with only allocating new locals on the top of the stack, > and we have to accept that we can only discard a local when nothing is above > it on the stack.

<comment><USER7> Well, there are lot's of well known compiler techniques to handle closures in that context. It's a little bit out of scope of the article, but it's not very complicated either.

<comment><USER8> I know that but you said the constraint needed was lexical scoping - <USER2> constraint is insufficient and you need additional constraints on the language design.

<comment><USER9> If you're happy for the compiler to copy variables out of the closed-over scope when returning the closure, this can still be handled with a single stack. That's what C++ lambdas do: "Closures" in C++ are locally-allocated structures that hold used variables as local (stack-allocated) member variables. Creating a closure copies closed-over variables (or pointers/references to them). Returning a closure from a function returns a logical copy (which can be optimised away) of the structure.

(Don't get me wrong, this obviously still implies additional constraints, but it gets fairly close to universal closures.)

<comment><USER8> I don't really understand that point of view - you can use a single stack as long as you actually use the heap in addition to a single stack?

<comment><USER10> C++ closures do not, by themselves, use the heap. Every closure in C++ gets translated by the compiler to a unique type that contains either copies of or references to the objects being closed over. If you choose to use copies, then whether or not anything is allocated on the heap depends on the copy constructor; if you use references then there is no copying, but it's up to you to ensure lifetime.

<comment><USER11> This is roughly how Java works with anonymous types closing over variables also. That's why the variables must be declared `final`. It just copies the local values over into the anonymous type and calls it a day. Of course, since the only thing allocated on the stack are primitives and pointers, and everything on the heap is subject to garbage collection, this is a pretty straight-forward operation.

I don't know if lambdas work the same way. I know in some ways they work like anonymous types, and not in others.

<comment><USER12> yes, it works the same way with lambdas, the lambda proxy (the class that implements the functional interface) contains the copy of the local values.

Here is the code that generate the constructor of a lambda proxy [http://hg.openjdk.java.net/jdk/jdk/file/3cabb47758c9/src/jav...](http://hg.openjdk.java.net/jdk/jdk/file/3cabb47758c9/src/java.base/share/classes/java/lang/invoke/InnerClassLambdaMetafactory.java#l356)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Been following this book for a bit but I can't quite find a good way to learn from it. Should I first read each chapter and create my own language? implement his language using language other than Java? Type by hand his source code following along and trying to comprehend the details?

<comment><USER14> > Type by hand his source code following along and trying to comprehend the > details?

Isn't that the only way to learn from any programming book ? At least that's what I have always done. I am curious as to what other way people learn.

<comment><USER15> I've found that it's easy to zone out if I'm just typing exactly what's on the page in front of me. Following along but in a different language can keep you more engaged and think more about what's going on.

<comment><USER13> It also becomes a bit of a battle against the desire of copying/pasting the code (It's even more tempting since it's an e-book with the code already formatted), not to mention that some parts are tedious to type like enumerators with many string elements

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I found the page layout extremely well-suited to grokking the content better. The right "sidebar" (in quotes because it's not a dedicated column, just emulated using CSS positioning) containing notes for the text & code along with figures worked great. I may have to look into recreating this kind of layout for my blog or other documentation.</comment>


Employee dies at Facebook's Silicon Valley headquarters in apparent suicide - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/one-person-dead-by-suicide-at-facebook-office-building-2019-9 <comment><USER2> I don't mean to make light of this very sad situation, but I misparsed the first word in the headline as "Everyone" and pictured a Zuckerberg-themed Heavens Gate/Jonestown sort of situation. Momentarily struck me as a radically-unexpected plot twist until I caught my error.

</comment><comment><USER3> The article cites two sources (Menlo Park Police Department and Facebook) and neither have been quoted to say that the incident was a suicide. I'm not doubting that detail -- just curious to know what the source of this information is.

<comment><USER4> Rumour from employees that are still alive and don't want to be cited.</comment></comment>


Kindle Convert - <AUTHOR> http://www.brouhaha.io/kindle-convert/

<comment><USER2> Reading up on the kindle paperwhite, I find this statement confusing:

> Unlike a backlit tablet display, Kindle Paperwhite guides light towards the > surface of the e-ink display from above so that the light never shines > directly towards your eyes.

The light will still end up "shining directly towards my eyes". That's the whole point of it. Is this just a marketing twist on lighting an e-ink panel, or does it have a real benefit over backlight?

Side note: I'm converting away from Kindle after being disappointed by sloppy conversion from paper to kindle. Like: they won't convert a picture necessary for the text (and it's up to me to realize that there should have been a picture there), or they'll mess up chapter navigation tags, or text will be self-referential to the medium (like referencing the number of words on the current page). It's painfully clear that there is a very minimal editorial process to kindle books, if any at all.

<comment><USER3> >That's the whole point of it. Is this just a marketing twist on lighting an e-ink panel, or does it have a real benefit over backlight?

Probably a marketing twist, but it is a very diffuse, even and non noticeable backlight.

I use my kindle for probably 2 hours a day, it is just awesome.

Also I've found pdf's quite readable on the device (why use kindle formats) - just set the orientation to landscape and knock yourself out with - [http://gen.lib.rus.ec/](http://gen.lib.rus.ec/)

<comment><USER4> I saw a link here just the last few days (or perhaps Gizmodo, looking now) that showed vastly improved PDF conversion - will edit/share when I find it again.

Edit: PDF4Kindle: [http://lifehacker.com/pdf4kindle-converts-pdf-files-to- nativ...](http://lifehacker.com/pdf4kindle-converts-pdf-files-to-native- kindle-books-762908817)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I also converted. Plus, much better for me than the amazon ecosystem, there is calibre with all its automatic creation of news source documents and format conversions that usually just work. I wish they would just make the actual readers more bulletproof since I seem to break one on an annual basis but at today's cost I'll deal with it.

</comment><comment><USER6> I was also skeptical of ebooks until I got my hands on a Paperwhite. It's not going to replace my library, but having dozens of great books to choose from while away from my shelves, plus a comfortable reading experience in essentially any environment is more than enough to make me a convert.

<comment><USER4> The Paperwhite has revitalized my love of reading, lost since childhood. Absolutely. I buy a couple of books a week now. I had the original Kindle 3G, but the Paperwhite is fantastic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> A very important corollary note: You can often ship books via media mail at the post office for incredibly cheap. All my college textbooks cost < 30$ to ship.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I shipped my box of books that was about 50 pounds for a little over $30. However, owning less and having more portability were my main motivating favorites for not just shipping all of them.</comment></comment>


Some love for C - <AUTHOR> http://imgur.com/rFvBsWC <comment><AUTHOR> Was working on a project in language Y when it started to frustrate me so I decided to switch to C.

One of the things I love about it is the way structs work; I thought I'd share that ! ^^ I haven't written any code in quite some time and this was done by glancing at man pages so it might have mistakes or some general uglies :) Also my first time posting so if the url was wrong try [http://imgur.com/rFvBsWC](http://imgur.com/rFvBsWC)</comment>


37 Signal's moment of remorse or slap in the face? - <AUTHOR> http://mattreport.com/2011/05/37-signals-selling-sortfolio/

<comment><USER2> This reminds me of the Groupon lesson: Just because a company offers a service is no reason to believe that service is right for you.

In this case, people paid $99/mo without seeing results... Probably before they even tried the free version.

The article assumes that people were complaining about lack of results. I also assume that people were asking for their money back.

Those people got what they paid for. What they didn't get was what they assumed: Results.

Marketing isn't magic, despite how it looks. You can't just throw money at it and get results. It has to be tailored to your business and/or product.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed. Thanks for your response!</comment></comment>


Octopart API integration via DataNitro - <AUTHOR> http://octopart.com/blog/archives/2013/7/octopart-in-excel

<comment><USER2> This reads more like an ad for DataNitro, instead of a cool way to get part information. Couldn't the same API be used with a different process?

<comment><USER3> I think the point is to get the data into Excel. You can use the API wherever you like, but how are you going to get it into a live spreadsheet? (Writing to a CSV and importing the result isn't the same thing.)</comment></comment>