Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren (1931) - <AUTHOR> http://fermatslibrary.com/s/economic-possibilities-for-our-grandchildren <comment><USER2> Plain HTML version without popups.[1]

This is a famous paper by John Maynard Keynes. He saw that productivity was going to increase considerably over the next two generations, but really had no clue how that would play out. Now we're there, and it's not working out like anybody back then expected.

What Keynes missed was a consequence of a trend that could be seen back then - productivity increases are concentrated in certain areas, broadly, those involving "making stuff" \- manufacturing and agriculture. In Keynes's day, that was most of the work force. In the US today, 14% of the work force makes all the stuff. (Yes, imports. If the US made all its own stuff, that number would still be well under 20%).

As a result, most of the work force is in low-productivity jobs - leisure and hospitality, retail trade, and health care are the biggest categories. Because each worker in those areas produces little revenue, wages tend to be low there. With most workers in low wage, low productivity areas, wages overall are driven lower. Although manufacturing could afford to pay higher wages, they don't have to be that much higher. A new hire in an auto plant today gets about half, in real dollars, what a new hire got in 1975.

That's part of how we got to where we are today. This wasn't forseen by prominent economists.

[1] [https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/keynes/...](https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/keynes/1930/our- grandchildren.htm)

[2] [https://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_201.htm](https://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_201.htm)

<comment><USER3> > This is a famous paper by John Maynard Keynes

Indeed, and it was the starting point of the thought-provoking book _How much is Enough?_ [1, review in 2] by noted Keynes biographer Robert Skidelsky and his son Edward, in which they advocate for more leisure, of the enlightened sort, instead of more work. It's a good read, though short on actual solutions.

One concern both Keynes and the Skidelskys had is this:

> Yet there is no country and no people, I think, who can look forward to the > age of leisure and of abundance without a dread. For we have been trained > too long to strive and not to enjoy. It is a fearful problem for the > ordinary person, with no special talents, to occupy himself, especially if > he no longer has roots in the soil or in custom or in the beloved > conventions of a traditional society.

> To judge from the behaviour and the achievements of the wealthy classes > today in any quarter of the world, the outlook is very depressing!

(Keynes, 1930 (!))

Now, with the increase in inequality over the last two decades and stagnating real incomes for the bottom half, it looks like this problem will be confined to the "wealthy classes" a bit longer...

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Much_Is_Enough%3F_(book)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Much_Is_Enough%3F_\(book\))

[2] [http://www.economist.com/node/21559308](http://www.economist.com/node/21559308)

<comment><USER4> Income inequality has grown, but it is a common misconception that incomes have been stagnant. According to the St Louis Fed the issue has been:

>...Economists long have noted that focusing on AHE rather than total compensation yields an inaccurate picture of labor compensation due to the omission from AHE of employer-provided benefits.

[https://files.stlouisfed.org/files/htdocs/publications/es/07...](https://files.stlouisfed.org/files/htdocs/publications/es/07/ES0707.pdf)

The page has 2 charts showing the differences when you compare wages to total compensation.

<comment><USER3> Not sure that's really a relevant factor. A 2012 source I found said that from 1973 to 2011, productivity grew by 80%, but wages only 4%, and total compensation 10.7% - that's a bit more, but it's still much closer to wage growth than to productivity growth.

Annualised, that's productivity 1.55%, wage 0.1%, total comp 0.25%.

[http://www.epi.org/blog/real-hourly-wage-growth-last- generat...](http://www.epi.org/blog/real-hourly-wage-growth-last-generation/)

<comment><USER4> Those numbers conflict with the St Louis Fed, so not sure what to make of them. It is unfortunate that their source seems to be produced from the think tank itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _" If economists could manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent people, on a level with dentists, that would be splendid!"_

Agreed!

The primary problem is politicians use of and reliance on economists as if they are fortune tellers. The fact that there isn't an economic model in use which doesn't treat technology as an externality is to me the best sign of how far of from usefulness economy have become.

Of course there are areas where economy is good but it's not a science and it's use as a way to dictate politics is not founded in rationality.

<comment><USER6> Correct me if I'm wrong. There are certain areas where economics/human behavior that are well understood. Like how people behave in markets.

Macroeconomics isn't as well understood. However given the vast control the central bank has monetary policy seems to be quite effective.

Side note: I'd love to know what areas of economics, psychology and other soft sciences have predictive power, according to a consensus of experts.

Do we know things? What do we know? Let's find out!

Edit 2: HN confuses me. Downvotes for what?

<comment><USER7> Only in the last 20 years have economists begun to admit their traditional model of people in micro-economic markets, so-called "rational" actors, don't correspond to reality.

The amazing resistance of the field to such obvious claims (the more successful part of what's called behavioural economics) gives many of us looking in from the outside pause.

<comment><USER8> This is a common misconception. It is "traditional" macroeconomics (e.g. Keynes) did not engage with microeconomics at any point [1].

It was not until the 1970s and the Lucasian rationalist critique that microfoundations became an important inquiry. And that shift didn't occur because people were sentimentally attached to micro (if anything, they were attached to prevailing macro theories), it happened because Lucasian rationalism explained an empirical phenomenon (a shift in the Phillips curve) that was not explained by the other approaches. Since that time support for microfoundations has waxed and waned a few times, in response to several other empirical shifts.

In practice, economics is much like the other sciences, with a slightly wider diversity of thought. Like the other sciences, most people only understand a caricature of it that is given through the lens of politics. Unlike the other sciences, more people seem inclined to accept this caricature and criticize it on that basis, which is unfortunate.

[1] Everyone, but see [https://www.jstor.org/stable/2231707?seq=1#page_scan_tab_con...](https://www.jstor.org/stable/2231707?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents) for a plausibly-readable overview

<comment><USER9> The problem is that the notion that 'microfoundations' can be linked to the macro economy by searching for 'deep parameters' suffers from precisely the same critique.

It's even proved wrong within the body of theory that embraces it. The Sonnenschein-Mantel-Debreu theorem.

Economists then do a lot of hand waving and point to 'data', without acknowledging that the 'data' is collected from a system that has been under the influence of their ideas for over 40 years and therefore will, inevitably, be the right shape.

If you collect data from a man in a straitjacket, unsurprisingly it will look like a man in straitjacket. It can tell you nothing about ideas that involve removing the straitjacket.

Non-falsifiability of theorems is the hallmark of macroeconomics. Because it is an ideology dressed up as a science.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It seems that he has been generally correct about the economic problem gradually ending, though maybe inequality of distribution has been worse than he expected, so we are still somewhat distant from the real end. But if his picture is right, there should have been steady progress in the ability of the upper middle class to make better use of leisure time. Has there been? I have no clear sense of this.

<comment><USER11> You can watch a movie at 2am on your home theatre streamed from your personal computer in your couch in your own home. You can get one of a billion computerized entertainment products. You can get one of a billion billion _non_ computerized entertainment products, delivered to your home in two days. In a day. In an hour. By truck. By bike. By drone. You can fly in a plane to Jamaica Friday evening and be back by Monday morning, don't even need to take a vacation day.

We're in an age of unprecedented personal entertainment, and the upper middle classes are in an ideal position to take advantage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> E.F. Schumacher responds directly to this paper in Small is Beautiful (1972), here are some snippets from this chapter of his book. Note that some people _hate_ this book; read the amazon 1-star reviews for some scathing commentary.

TLDR: Western economics as Keynes suggests is an unbounded feedback loop; it generates income inequality which generates intolerable circumstances for poor people which leads to war.

\----

This proposition can be divided into three parts: First, that universal prosperity is possible; Second, that its attainment is possible on the basis of the materialist philosophy of "enrich yourselves"; Third, that this is the road to peace

Is there enough to go around? … What is "enough"? … Not the economist who pursues "economic growth" as the highest of all values, and therefore has no concept of "enough." There are poor societies which have too little; but where is the rich society which says: "Halt! We have enough"? There is none.

Economic growth has no discernable limit, must necessarily run into decisive bottlenecks when viewed from the point of view of the environmental sciences. An attitude to life which seeks fulfillment in the single-minded pursuit of wealth--in short, materialism--does not fit into this world, because it contains within itself no limiting principle, while the environment in which it is placed is strictly limited. … The developments of science and technology over the last hundred years have been such that the dangers have grown even faster than the opportunities.

Economic progress, [Keynes] counseled, is obtainable only if we employ those powerful human drives of selfishness, which religion and traditional wisdom universally call upon us to resist. The modern economy is propelled by a frenzy of greed and indulges in an orgy of envy, and these are not accidental features but the very causes of its expansionist success. The question is whether such causes can be effective for long or whether they carry within themselves the seeds of destruction. … It may look true in the short run and turn out to be false in the longer run.

I suggest the foundations of peace cannot be laid by universal prosperity, in the modern sense, because such prosperity, if attainable at all, is attainable only by cultivating such drives of human nature as greed and envy, which destroy intelligence, happiness, serenity, and thereby the peacefulness of man. … Their wealth depends on making inordinately large demands on limited world resources and thus puts them on an unavoidable collision course--not primarily with the poor (who are weak and defenseless) but with other rich people.

The cultivation and expansion of needs is the antithesis of wisdom. It is also the antithesis of freedom and peace. Every increase of needs tends to increase one's dependence on outside forces over which one cannot have control, and therefore increases existential fear. Only by a reduction of needs can one promote a genuine reduction in those tensions which are ultimate causes of strife and war.

Never think that wars are irrational catastrophes: they happen when wrong ways of thinking and living bring about intolerable situations.

It is doubly chimerical to build peace on economic foundations which, in turn, rest on the systematic cultivation of greed and envy, the very forces which drive men into conflict.

<comment><USER13> Good to be reminded of that. I haven't read mine for years, time to take it off the shelf again.

I think that the point about selfishness and envy is spot on.

I'm convinced that one of the few things that were better in the past, well the bit that I inhabited in the 60s and 70s at least, was that people were not driven to the same degree by the need to acquire the latest gadget, and to excess in general.

Of course excess was there but in my experience in more episodic form, and therefore more sustainable and in fact more enjoyable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "If economists could manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent people, on a level with dentists, that would be splendid!"

Sadly this is still not the case. Macroeconomics in particular is still theory > scientific process.

And the frustrating thing about Keynes is that he failed to acknowledge the simple fact that Keynesian policy only works when _every country in the world is not practicing it_.

Microeconomics is where I think the real breakthroughs are happening.

Edit: Down-voted?

<comment><USER15> > Keynesian policy only works when every country in the world is not > practicing it.

Huh?

<comment><USER16> >> Keynesian policy only works when every country in the world is not practicing it.

>Huh?

When somebody big prints money, everybody print money.

<comment><USER15> And that means Keynsianism fails to work why exactly?

<comment><USER14> Government creep results in suboptimal outcomes for everyone, raising tensions and exacerbating economic books and busts. I point to Greenspan and the housing crisis. Maybe the U.S. shouldn't be subsidizing housing and student loans?

Additionally, currency and trade wars tend to become the violent kind.

You could argue that the real problem is that Keynesian backed governments never turn off the spigot, but why should they when the chosen stimulus policy neatly aligns with their own professional goals?

<comment><USER15> That sounds like "Keysian policy never works". dforrestwilson said "Keynesian policy only works when every country in the world is not practicing it" which sounds like a different claim entirely, so I'm confused.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Om Malik: Iminlikewithyou will be "as addictive and as powerful as Facebook" - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2007/03/28/iminlikewithyou/ <comment><USER2> I like it for two reasons:

1) It's completely fresh and original.

2) The submit buttons make a pleasing sound when you mouse over them.

I suspect the bidding system will result in lekking and other malsocialized behavior, but I could also see it driving up use. I'm really fascinated to see what happens though, and I can't wait to start playing with it (even though I already have a gf who I asked out on facebook).

</comment><comment><USER3> I really like this idea. I've had some girls that I'm friends with have some really bizarre experiences on dating sites. This one seems like a much safer route and doesn't require a long survey to match your compatibility. Seems fun also and not like the other sites where most people are looking for 'the one'. I wish them luck!

<comment><USER4> Yeah, the largest problems with dating sites today is the "creepy" guy issue, and the problem that marginally attractive girls are in the minority, and get literally bombarded by guys. Hopefully, this can eliminate these problems with the bidding system. Women are still typically the choosers in modern socity, and this lets them have more filtering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It doesn't matter how well you bid since love and attraction cannot be bought. Woman will pick who she finds attractive, not someone who outbids the other guy.

PS: Feminists will be all over this one.. I can just see it: "you mean, you're bidding on women?!"

<comment><USER6> Women can bid on men. Or women can bid on women. Or men can bid on men.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hello. I am Aur Saraf.

And I don't like this.

Why?

Because flirting is about communication. Perhaps it's the journalist's mistake, but it seems like communication plays secondary role here to a currency based trading system.

Is that a way to show value? "I answered more questions and logged in more, and I believe I'll win your heart, so here, I'm bidding 25 points on you, sweetie"? Even MORE competition? How objectified can a poor sweet lovely girl BE?

No.

I really don't think so.

I agree, dating sites suck. They are a badly implemented meat market.

I just think this amplifies the problems instead of fixing them.

The good dating site still isn't public.

We'll have to wait.

BTW an invite to prove me wring would be appreciated.

Aur

<comment><USER8> Do you think this is any better? :)

<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17723921>

<comment><USER9> An intelligence-based version of that site would be great.

You know, for geeks. You have to be smart enough to get in.

In fact, you can do it for a lot of criteria that people value in relationships.

<comment><USER7> It would be fun for a few moments (for boys), but that's it.

Geeks are people who tend to stay OUT of the really stupid ego matches, which is what it would become.

Geek girls I've talked to, like every other girl, naturally understand that a good relationship hasn't more to do with intelligence than beauty - both are factors that can add a bit, but insignificant compared, so only guys would be lured in.

And remember that the only way to "win" an intelligence competition is to not participate.

Yes, there are criteria that has value in relationships (contrast with "people value in relationships") that could hold such a site alive. But it is really hard to judge them.

The really good tests would create a situation where any high value bloke that applies would have girls chasing him on his application stage, before he's even in. That would have good sides and bad; in the long run, it would obsolete the site. If you can find such a test, though, you can make a lot of money out of site like this.

There still is a lot to say about communities that pick their members. Email me if you want to continue the discussion, I have one good idea that I'd happily share.

A "dating site for geeks", though, should be done completely differently. No competition, no pressure. No meat market. Just a nice, calm place to meet people, talk about actual subjects ("star wars is hot", not "you're s0 hut1!"). Modeled after geek conventions and get-togethers (D&D;, hacking weekend, ... Geeks use the same recipe for all). It would even succeed. I'm pretty sure something exists, though.

Aur Saraf

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I signed up and began playing with it a couple days ago. I love the look and character of the site. Everything about the presentation oozes charm.

<comment><USER10> Post some invite codes here for us, please.

<comment><USER6> I have a few invite codes available. They're email invites so post your email or send me an email about it (address is in profile).

<comment><USER11> I'd love one too if you still have any left you'd be willing to give out. (I'll throw it out there that I'm female, in case that makes it any more likely you'll give me one :-). I'm willing to bet most people here aren't.)

diviam at gmail

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> All they need to do now is get past the hurdle of locality. Okcupid and plentyoffish haven't even done that really, outside of california or really condensed areas. I'd be using it right now if it had more women in Vegas. Once that milestone is gone, amazing growth can begin.

Mr. Forman seemed like a nice guy when I met him at the startupschool reception. I wish them the best of luck.

</comment><comment><USER12> Couldnt they come up with a simpler/shorter name? I couldn't figure out the name while I was reading th OM article - it was only when I saw their website I realized the name was i'm in like with you!

Do not have an accoun yet - can't comment on the service. On the surface, looks like an interesting idea.

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't get it. Sign up, "bid" everything on one girl, if it doesn't work, close the account and repeat.

???

Easy to game, and I'm not sure why any woman would care two cents for some meaningless "bids" in contrast with _any_ real-world criteria.

</comment><comment><USER14> They said they're a yCombinator-funded startup, but they also said they're based out of New York. Does YC now have startups in other cities, or did they move to New York after the SFP/WFP program?

<comment><USER15> They were part of the 06 SFP in Boston and went back to NYC at the end of the summer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wow. Very innovative service. I don't have time for it though but then again that's what I said about facebook but I'm a facebook regular.

</comment><comment><USER17> The name is horribly long but so good I think it could really work. Hope they do well.

</comment><comment><USER18> Any more invitations available? Could you spare one for email@example.com?

</comment><comment><USER19> Anybody remember yesnomayb.com? They should join forces.

</comment><comment><USER20> It will be interesting to see who uses the site!

</comment><comment><USER21> hey i could use an invite too!....... firstname.lastname@example.com

thanks in advance if you are reading this :)</comment>


Ask HN: Where can one find legal information on beginning a startup? - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN! Love the site. Just curious where startup founders go to look for advice--beyond a sit down with a lawyer. <comment><USER2> Mark Suster has really great info on his blog - though it might be a little more geared towards startups seeking funding: <http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/>

A post here on HN from a month or so ago pointed to this blog for a number of great resources: [http://www.mattmazur.com/2010/12/17-startup-blogs-to-make- yo...](http://www.mattmazur.com/2010/12/17-startup-blogs-to-make-you-a-better- entrepreneur/)

Another: [http://tappen.posterous.com/nice-summary- stanleytang-256-mus...](http://tappen.posterous.com/nice-summary- stanleytang-256-must-read-conten)

Don't forget to keep reading this site - you'll learn much, just try to not get addicted to it!

Finally, start attending startup events - they come in many shapes and sizes and depending on your location you may have more or less to choose from. Checkout startupweekend.org to see if they have any events coming to a city near you.

</comment><comment><USER3> Check out: <http://www.startupcompanylawyer.com/>

There is obviously no replacement for situation specific legal advice from a real live lawyer.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you're in the US, your local Small Business Administration office puts on a variety of free and low cost classes/lectures on a variety of topics, including legal issues. They also have other valuable resources you can use when you have legal questions.

Forgot the link: <http://www.sba.gov/>

</comment><comment><USER5> You might want to read George Grellas who is also an HN'er as a baseline.

<http://www.grellas.com/faq_business_startup.html></comment>


Remote VNC Connections via SSH - Make it easy for users - <AUTHOR> http://blubb.org/2009/2/24/remote-vnc-connections-how-to-help-users-and-save-your-nerves

<comment><USER2> I don't understand how this works. Any box that I ssh to with '-R' just listens on 'localhost'.</comment>


Avoid these common JavaScript mistakes - <AUTHOR> https://codeburst.io/avoid-these-common-javascript-mistakes-ec7fbb642e8b <comment><USER2> > 1\. Not Adding Semi-Colons

nice</comment>


An IRC Bot in Arm Assembler - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/wyc/armbot <comment><USER2> Assembly used to be all the rage. At Uni I couldn't afford a C compiler (and there were no free versions for my platform, RISC OS) so I ended up writing a whole IRC Client, GUI and scripting language all in ARM assembler.

A few tattered notes of it at: [http://xania.org/200711/irbasic](http://xania.org/200711/irbasic) but sadly most is lost to time.

<comment><USER3> I used to follow with joy of a kid that gets new toys, the release of each new processor and the new set of available opcodes.

Nowadays even C++ is simple, compared to mastering all the opcodes and their side effects in latest generation processors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4>
      socket_call: .long 281
      connect_call: .long 283

How does one get these numbers?

edit: [https://github.com/wyc/armbot/blob/master/connect.s#L55](https://github.com/wyc/armbot/blob/master/connect.s#L55)

<comment><USER5> Those are linux system call IDs: [http://lxr.free- electrons.com/source/arch/arm/include/uapi/a...](http://lxr.free- electrons.com/source/arch/arm/include/uapi/asm/unistd.h#L309)

<comment><USER4> Thanks! Reading through the linux source is always funny if nothing else:

/* syscall to call a syscall! _/ [http://lxr.free- electrons.com/source/arch/arm/include/uapi/a...](http://lxr.free- electrons.com/source/arch/arm/include/uapi/asm/unistd.h#L141)

/_ 222 for tux */ [http://lxr.free- electrons.com/source/arch/arm/include/uapi/a...](http://lxr.free- electrons.com/source/arch/arm/include/uapi/asm/unistd.h#L250)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can the mods change the title to ARM Assembly? Case matters, this has nothing to do with a body part.

</comment><comment><USER7> Last time I looked, the canonical manuals for the ARM architecture were quite expensive. If anyone has advice on piecing the basics together please let me know. I don't know much assembly, am currently playing with 6502 assembly, and have been writing a 32-bit VM just by working it out as I go.

I do have a set of reference manuals, opportunity purchase, for acorn-era ARM systems. What sort of consistency would I find between historic ARM instruction set and the latest 32 and 64 bit versions?

<comment><USER8> "ARM Architecture Reference Manual" yields quite a few hits for various ARM systems, including ARMv8; the Raspberry Pi's ARMv6 instruction set is also available.

One big change is that modern ARM processors tend to run mostly in Thumb (16-bit instruction) mode. It's faster, but you lose all the fun condition codes. High-performance code should take advantage of NEON.

If the above does not answer your question, please ask a more specific one. ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I see more good asm examples are being devoloped. This is a good, cool start for connecting to IRC, but it would be even more cool to see the bot do something beyond looking for a single line. What do you plan to do with it, if I might ask? Your motivation is listed as "lol" ...

<comment><AUTHOR> Support for modules written in C.

<comment><USER10> This is truly a arm asm gem :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I love that I'm seeing more of these little apps written in Assembly on HN.

One request though: would someone be so kind as to take the time to annotate them so noobs like me can know what's going on? I think these are great ways to learn Assembly--something I've wanted to do for awhile. I've long felt that understanding coding at that level would only strengthen my skills in higher- level languages.

</comment><comment><USER12> There seems to be a bug in the string compare function. If either string is empty the function return 0 meaning success.

</comment><comment><USER13> Question. Does this run in Linux on arm? Or does it run on the CPU (be it hardware or emulated)?

Bonus question: How can I answer that question for myself in the future when looking at similar source? Said differently: What am I looking at here? :)

<comment> vhost- Oh my god, it would be so cool if you could boot to this. Raspberry Pi irc bot. Literally.

<comment><USER10> He uses Linux sys calls, which means the kernel needs to be there (and a libc of some sorts)... but that's all that's needed. So, with the RPi, you could essentially "boot" this code with pretty much a bare-metal system otherwise.

<comment><USER14> Is Linux considered part of the machine itself now? Jesus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you think this is cool, go ahead and check out bfb, an IRC bot written in a derivative of Brainfuck.

[https://github.com/billiob/bfb](https://github.com/billiob/bfb)

<comment><USER10> The license the author of the BrainFuck example has chosen (or made up) actually is pretty restrictive, if not immature.

Software licensing is not a joke.

The author's account on Github seems to have many projects were a license has been either made up, or adapted. Perhaps out of lack of understanding current licensing and available licenses.

They could check this site out for some help: [https://tldrlegal.com/](https://tldrlegal.com/)

If the author intends to allow anyone to use the codebase for anything, they should choose an existing license that permits this... such as the MIT, Apache, BSD licenses, etc. Making one up is not an acceptable replacement and would not hold up in court should it ever come to that. "But judge, the author said I could do 'WHAT THE FUCK I WANT'!". :(

<comment><USER16> FAQ #7:

        >> Can't you change the wording? It's inappropriate / childish / not corporate-compliant.
        >
        > The WTFPL lets you relicense the work under any other license.

Also, see FAQ #6 and #8.

[0]: [http://www.wtfpl.net/faq/](http://www.wtfpl.net/faq/)

<comment><USER10> What stops me from re-licencing under my company's proprietary license, then suing the original author for copyright? (It appears this "license" allows implicit re-assignment of copyright).

Not to mention, this "license" was not written by a lawyer, but rather a software developer. I'm no lawyer, and I'm confident any license I can make up would be shredded by real lawyers.

Furthermore -- the codebase in question above, does not include the optional "No Warranty" clause, which means his software implicitly must be fit for use... and if it breaks something, he can be held liable.

While I agree with the spirit and intent of this license, it really isn't a real license and is easily mis-used by even those who do wish to treat it as real.

So, this license appears to be really a joke-license... not a serious one... and I still maintain the codebase's author should pick a real license if the intentions are to allow universal use.

<comment><USER17> Relicensing is a weird term and easily leads to confusion. I guess you can write your own terms and distribute copies under these new terms. But you cannot revoke the rights the original license has granted to people who have received the work under that license. Nor can you revoke the original author's exclusive rights. The license text (which is about _the copying and performing of the covered work_ ) does not grant you such powers.

<comment><USER18> A license is a permission granted by the author, and an extension of the authors wishes.

This is why relicensing as a term indeed leads to confusion. People think the license is inherently a part of the work, and thus can be as readily changed as the software source itself. It is however not part of the work, but part of the author. If you want to change the license, you need to get the author to change his mind.

Some licenses allow people to add new licenses on-top of existing licenses. That is not re-licensing, but simply the addition of more requirements. If you remove the original license, you loose the permission needed to use/copy the work created by the original author.

<comment><USER17> Thanks for expressing it so clearly. I'll quote you when the time comes.

The SFLC had a chance to set this straight in the aftermath of the inflammatory 2007 episode around the Atheros driver. Instead they dodged the entire relicensing question and released a set of guidelines which focus on where and how to preserve the copyright notice, and that rather seems to only have reinforced the idea that the permissive BSD style licenses are nothing more than a decorative text you must lug around. So we still have a huge number of people who think they can do anything (e.g. "relicense") as long as the decoration is kept in place. It really is a shame.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I love assembly, and ARM is pretty neat! Nice work man.</comment>


The $25B eigenvector (2006) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.rose-hulman.edu/~bryan/googleFinalVersionFixed.pdf <comment><USER2> An oldie but a goodie. IMHO, this paper, along with Larry and Sergei's original work[0], _should be_ part of every Linear Algebra course. Few things get students to pay attention like the mention of ungodly amounts of money!

[0] [http://ilpubs.stanford.edu:8090/422/1/1999-66.pdf](http://ilpubs.stanford.edu:8090/422/1/1999-66.pdf)

<comment><USER3> _Unasked for, arrogant rant:_

Do you mean in school or in university?

Because if somebody is taking linear algebra in university and still didn't understand that this is an extremely important topic, then he should maybe go back to school or take a gap year or something to improve his general education.

From a university lecture in linear algebra, I expect that it carries me through as many important topics as possible while giving me the tools to form a good formal and intuitive understanding.

The motivation part should be solved by that time.

<comment><USER4> Ya know, I get what you're saying and I am somewhat sympathetic to this position. But I think you're being a bit harsh. It's easy to talk about "understand(ing) that this is an extremely important topic" when you _already know_. But how many high-school kids really know anything about Linear Algebra or understand much at all about how/where it's used? Heck, rewind time a bit and ask if _you_ really understood that when you were first starting college. And if you did, realize that you are probably the exception.

 _From a university lecture in linear algebra, I expect that it carries me through as many important topics as possible while giving me the tools to form a good formal and intuitive understanding._

Sure and unless your goal is to do pure mathematics research, part of that is providing some motivation in terms of understanding applications. There's nothing wrong with a class on LA (or any other topic as far as that goes) spending some time motivating study of the topic by showing how it can be useful... even explaining how it might used to make millions or billions of dollars.

<comment><USER5> When I took math in college there was no motivating examples for nearly everything. I had to complete my CS courses to understand nearly a quarter of the actual applications of what I learned in my math class. The only reason that I even know more applications right now is the fact that I am trying to teach myself SMT solving and ML. Why can't we have a math book that has motivating examples applicable to everyone? Or if that is too hard then just one for Computer Science?

Right now in nearly every Math book that is bought by a College student or High School student has motivations in Phyaics. So a person could go through HS, get their Undergraduate degree in CS and then never figure out how math could be useful in their job at all. When students ask "when am I going to use this" you have already failed in teaching your students how to apply this.

Once they have reached this point either they will have a really bad impression of math and just give up OR they will believe whatever you say after words and get rewarded ten years down the line.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> s-c-h I am curious to know what major innovations in search engines happened since the page rank algorithm, or were there only incremental improvements?

Also is search considered a solved problem?

<comment><USER6> > Also is search considered a solved problem?

I certain wouldn't, since I still encounter things that I _know_ are on the internet but Google can't find. It's possible that the next advance won't be actually indexing the web but rather figuring out what the user _wants_ rather than what they _requested_.

<comment><USER7> Google does this to some extent. Recently I've found that Google uses my past queries to make cogent suggestions for my next search (essentially to predict what I want next based on prior info). Eg, if I've just searched for "sully", then a short time after type "t" into Google, the first suggestion is Tom Hanks. I've only noticed this in the last few months.

<comment><USER8> My favorite example of this is the Bullet physics library.

Google eventually learned to give me documentation in response to stuff like 'bullet collision', but for awhile it was big on youtube links and gun ranges.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Well...pretty much everything important turns out to be an eigenvector.

<comment><USER10> That has less to do with some mysterious fact about eigenvectors, and more to do with the fact that linear algebra is incredibly incredibly well studied and understood; with octopus arms sticking into every special case of applied mathematics imaginable. Give it a few decades and "everything" will be some other (today obscure) mathematical idea.

<comment><USER11> At least one part of the universe really does seem to prefer linear algebra: quantum mechanics. Every quantum state is a linear combination of eigenvectors, and that's unlikely to change within a few decades (it would be a revolution analogous to the discovery of quantum mechanics itself).

<comment><USER10> I would argue that the reason QM is expressed in linear algebra is also not a mysterious property of LA, but because that is what was part of the physicists curriculum when the field was developed.

<comment><USER11> Physicists would have preferred to do it with calculus -indeed, intro QM is usually taught with calculus, not with linear algebra. But you can't go very far without talking about operators and eigenstates. Linear algebra fits the underlying physical phenomenon. People have tried to develop nonlinear versions of quantum mechanics, with no success so far. In particular, if quantum mechanics was not exactly linear, then a quantum computer would be able to solve NP-complete problems in polynomial time!

To get an intuition of why quantum mechanics looks the way it does, Scott Aaronson is extremely helpful: [https://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec9.html](https://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec9.html)

<comment><USER12> I think the main reason for the initial focus on calculus in intro QM is more to do with making sure you have a solid grasp of the ugly, complicated, hard way of doing things before diving into the more elegant, easy way (once armed with an appreciation of all the whacky machinery under the simplified proverbial hood). I recall my intro classical mechanics had a similar approach on a few topics, and my professor explicitly said this was the reason for it. That and the elegant way is generally more abstract, and it's important to have the foundation the abstraction was built on first.

The link you posted looks interesting and fun to read, I'm looking forward to going through it after work. Thank you!

<comment><USER11> I'm not a fan of the teaching method where you do something the hard way first so you'll appreciate it, but I was a pretty lazy student so that's understandable. Maybe it works for most students.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sadly, this seems to be the last thing we've ever heard about the search algorithm of Google. It tells nothing about topics like modern natural language-processing (which defines a different, non-global, ordering of search results, based on the query). How much of the basic algorithm is still in effect?

<comment><USER14> From everything that is publically known, assume PageRank to still exist and be one tensor feature on the RankBrain algorithm.

[https://searchengineland.com/faq-all-about-the-new-google- ra...](https://searchengineland.com/faq-all-about-the-new-google-rankbrain- algorithm-234440)

Although there haven't been any major announcements, from daily anecdotal evidence I can confirm it's still a major factor to get you into the front pages.

I'd say the major changes since deprecating PageRank in practice are 1\. Much higher dependence on CTR and bounce rate once you start showing up in the SERPs 2\. Much higher influence of a notion of "trust" on links (not just the quantity, but mainly the quality counts now, too much quantity without quality can actually hurt) 3\. PageRank much more disconnected from domain level. A few years ago, you could rank with pretty much anything if your DomainPop was high enough. By now, Google got much smarter about different folders that don't have anything to do with what it's ranking your main site for and it's harder to get them ranking. On the bright side, they also got smarter about the negative SEO influence of subdomains or domain changeovers, which won't cost you as dearly.

So TL;DR: PageRank still exists, but it's been reduced to an input vector.

<comment><USER15> For example: "2 or 3 years ago links was 80-90% of what it took to get something ranked, Panda has changed that in an insane way. Here's the test example. Go to Google and search for 'best time to visit Tahiti'. You'll find my little site, VisualItineraries up there, #1 for that, ahead of TripAdvisor, Lonely Planet, USA Today, all these other sites. These other sites have between 10,000 and 250,000 domains linking to them. My site has under 100. I rank #1 for that. Now in case you think it's internal link, anchor text, or page title match. Here's the other proof. Do a google search for 'when should I go to French Polynesia'. The only word in that that matches the page title or any anchor text is the word 'to' \- (and it's a) stop word - that's not going to count. VisualItineraries.com is #1 for that too.

source: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RvRUt9ejkw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RvRUt9ejkw)

<comment><USER16> I've found this too. My tiny little site sits at number one (for most people in English) for most combinations of 'why was Margaret Thatcher hated?'

It out ranks national news papers and all sorts of huge sites, as it should really the info in the post is pretty comprehensive and sourced.

Somehow Google worked that out for itself based on way more than the old page rank back link weighted algorithm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The resources already linked from this thread are surely superior but, as a shameless plug, I wrote a blog article recently on this very topic as it was presented in my linear algebra course at CU Boulder: [https://thought.place/articles/2017/7/22/pagerank/](https://thought.place/articles/2017/7/22/pagerank/)

</comment><comment><USER18> Click bait title. You can say the same about sums and multiplication, they are at the basis of most trillion dollar technologies :P

<comment><USER19> This isn't about eigenvectors in general, it's about a single eigenvector that Google built. The title is accurate, their search product is giving you access to query the eigenvector

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This post has happened before, it'll happen again: [https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=rose- hulman.edu](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=rose-hulman.edu)

</comment><comment><USER21> This article is from 2006. It's interesting but I'd hazard a guess that it's hardly relevant to what Google is doing now.

<comment><USER22> Google has always spoken about adjustments to pagerank and they have been visible but I assume the core concept still applies. Maybe someone with more inside knowledge can comment?

<comment><USER6> Nice try, Bing.

But in all seriousness, Google is notoriously tight-lipped about how PageRank works, so I doubt we're going to get any more information than this. I'd love to proven wrong, though!</comment></comment></comment>


Room rental startup giving out free Polaroid for registering - <AUTHOR> http://roomcrunch.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Roomcrunch is a new LA based startup that creates travel connections based on similar interests. Hosts put up their rooms for rent, and guests rent them out. We launched very recently, and we're looking for all the help we can get! All that you have to do is register with a Facebook account on our site, and you will be automatically entered to win a new polaroid for the month of February, and a brand new PS4 for the month of March</comment>


Scaling Engineering Teams via Writing Things Down and Sharing – Aka RFCs - <AUTHOR> https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/scaling-engineering-teams-via-writing-things-down-rfcs/ <comment><USER2> This one of those things that sounds simple to do, but is rarely done. And there's lots of cultural forces that work against it.

I think it addresses a big problem with important tech decisions- how to weigh engineering value and focus energy on the technical merits, not on political buy-in.

I work within a decent size government org where leadership is almost exclusively non-tech (makes sense because we're not an org with a tech mission), and almost all tech management is program mgmt, business analysis, strategy. And the building is almost exclusively contractors.

This means to make a technical decision, it's hard to evaluate because the tech manager doesn't known whether MySQL or Postgres is better, and contractors have incentives to not invite review by other contractors and making it "good enough" for contract acceptance.

This means if a developer picks mysql, and the project manager is happy because it's projected to be delivered in time, then there's two big forces that don't want comment on design.

We just started to try a request for comment process, but the extra effort to review is challenging. I think that on the surface it's because letting large groups see your design before start introduces organizational risk.

And then a bit deeper is that it requires a greater level of technical depth in decision makers.

<comment><USER3> Many people call this "Enterprise architecture" and although painful tends to be worth doing.

You can think of it (simplified) as 4 steps: 1) figuring out and deciding which technologies to use for which domains and problems (these tend to be called capabilities) 2) getting rid of the ones you don't want to use 3a) enforcing use of existing, approved capabilities for new projects 3b) building out new capabilities

1) Tends to have the problem you pointed out: "it requires a greater level of technical depth in decision makers". Something that may work is to have some senior engineers in-house and embed them in the outsourced projects doing part of the real work. 2) This can be a multi-year program that needs to be separately funded. Think of it as enterprise-level technical debt. 3a) This can be the easiest part: your architecture should be part of the RFP process, with a well-defined escape hatch to 3b) 3b) Building out new capabilities needs to be i) funded separately but best ii) done as part of a real project. Otherwise you'll i) have crossed incentives with the projects as you pointed out, or ii) architecture astronauts.

HTH. There's plenty of literature on enterprise architecture, but there's no silver bullet, it's just hard work.

<comment><USER2> Yes, I agree, and that's why I'm trying to take this approach.

Interestingly I work in a world where enterprise architecture means something completely different. PM me for more details.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This sounds like a description of a Design Document, which are very valuable when the problem space is well understood. It can serve as an alternative to sprints and sprint planning for a very small team, or when working with contractors.

When a problem is not as well understood, e.g. can't be solved just by engineering planning upfront and needs user input, I like Google's Design Sprints which uncover the critical features using a 1 week process.

With my experience leading engineering teams and growing startups, I agree completely that documentation is the #1 blocker in scaling engineering teams, all else being equal. If the design, planning, and execution process are well- documented then engineers can be onboarded as soon as they are hired without slowing down the team too much.

<comment><USER5> To me, a design document is something you write for yourself, once you've decided on the design; whereas an RFC is something you write for others, and others write for you, to _communicate_ a potential design when a final design hasn't yet been "selected."

It's effectively a way of brainstorming that doesn't get quashed by "that'll never work" half-way through the 1000-ft abstract, because all the details are already there on the page to prove it _will_ work. It's just a question of which of the proposed designs works _best_ (and then of attempting to maybe incorporate some of the alternatives' ideas into the winner, though not necessarily.)

Or, in short: it's a debate where everyone is doing an "argument by constructive proof" for their POV.

The cryptographic-primitive standardization "competitions" for things like SHA, are RFC processes under another name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The most successful company I ever worked for (late 90's, the founder was a billionaire for a few months after the IPO, 99.9% of HN readers use an evolution of what we built every day) had a policy of rejecting any proposal for a tech feature or significant improvement unless it was properly documented.

We had a collection of templates for the types of documents we used. I could create a feature proposal in an hour or two, and the template ensured that all first-round questions were answered out of the box, saving many hours of staff time.

The tech founders set this up and forced everyone else to use it and once we saw the value, peer pressure kept it going. It worked incredibly well.

We weren't writing RFCs, but we had a doc process that respected (and saved) everyone's time and attention. That helped us move fast together. It really worked.

<comment><USER7> _99.9% of HN readers use an evolution of what we built every day_

Electricity?

<comment><USER8> Browser? 0.1% use curl maybe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am sorry but I will be cynical here. Does the author know how many shit people give about clarifying and planning things these days? Let alone documenting. ZERO.

I worked in many companies scaling from small to huge and in-between and generally the process is the exact opposite. Small minded managers and insecure engineers want to build things as fast as possible thinking this will be their big chance to leave a mark in history. So they implement some crap (not uncommon to even see different teams building the same thing at the same time!!!) with the speed of light. Then 6 months later they keep patching bugs every week! If you ever mention them to slow down or try to find a working example before building or at least organize the work let's say by starting to explore the problem domain they would just bully you into oblivion...

Case in point: Facebook. 'Move Fast and Break Things'

One thing I learned is that being successful in an IT engineering company in the 21st century is let the idiots do their idiotic ways and concentrate on my work and if they propose stupid things than let be it. Politics are always stronger then engineering considerations.

Maybe Uber got it right from the beginning, I cannot confirm that claim. But I am very skeptical that any established organization would change in this direction proposed by the author.

<comment><USER10> As someone who runs a business with a co-founder, we both are constantly making trade offs. How do we move quickly while remaining stable? How do increase our featureset without getting over our skis? How do we grow our business quickly, but not take on the wrong customers?

Incentives can win, and should win, on both sides of the equation at different moments in time. The most mature organizations can feel the pain from one direction or another, and adjust accordingly.

<comment><USER11> Shortcuts are great when survival time is bought. This can turn into a self- defeating problem when there is extreme habituation to recurrently and disproportionately sacrificing effort, cost and/or burdens on others in future for the now such that the shortcut wastes vastly more net time and money than it could've ever saved. I've seen founders shoot themselves in both feet and unable to move fast, or anywhere, because they knowingly stuck themselves with keeping 50 plates spinning while trying to swim through quicksand... especially solitary founders because they lack the check and balance of a second or third founder to keep them honest with reality and on-track.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This isn't bad advice, but I would add to it. If you're a large organization and building in such a way that large groups need to understand the details of what you're doing, then you're doing it wrong.

 _Ideally speaking_ , implementations can be worked through with small groups. Only the interfaces need to be exposed and documented. Unless you're doing something beyond CRUD, drowning teams in unnecessary details often result in distraction.

The arguments against this I usually hear are about things like security audits, architecture reviews, and other internal processes designed to ensure engineering quality. However, I'd encourage these teams to also think like platforms that have machine interfaces. People make terrible APIs.

<comment><USER13> > This isn't bad advice, but I would add to it. If you're a large organization > and building in such a way that large groups need to understand the details > of what you're doing, then you're doing it wrong.

> Ideally speaking, implementations can be worked through with small groups. > Only the interfaces need to be exposed and documented. Unless you're doing > something beyond CRUD, drowning teams in unnecessary details often result in > distraction.

This is assuming that attrition is not a thing. The set of engineers that are on your team is likely smaller than the total number of engineers that will ever work on your project. When people want to know six months from now why you chose RabbitMQ over other tech at the time, having an RFC lets you point to an artifact versus conjecture on past motivations.

<comment><USER14> Do the reasons for the choice six months ago even matter today?

Today you have six months of history of it being a good choice or not. And six months of development assuming it was the choice, that may or may not apply to something else.

And the choices available today have likely changed from six months ago, too.

(I'm a little concerned about your team that has no connection to decisions from six months ago, but we can adjust the time frame and the rest still applies)

<comment><USER15> Of course they matter. Ideally the decision that was made 6 months ago under the conditions/restraints was the right one back then. Since then circumstances might have changed that would result in a different decision 6 months ago if you had known. Only if you have a record of some sort (ideally with background information and not just the time of the decision) people will be able to understand and re-evaluate the past.

Money and time was invested since then and the decision to keep the course or to change again should consider the history of the decision.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> One of the things I love about open source projects is they are almost forced to do this and it works great. Having designs written down and iterated on helps in planning and designing, and helps when its time to make changes. Being able to see why something was done and the arguments at the time can really help prevent people from making the same mistakes twice as they make revisions on a project.

</comment><comment><USER17> > Have a few, select people approve this plan before starting work.

How are these ppl selected.

This contradicts org structures where "architects" are supposed to give "guidance" and enforce a "uniform vision".

<comment><USER18> Your use of quotes suggests some grudge against architects. I am an architect and I consider my role as one to give guidance and enforce a uniform vision (although "enforce" sounds like I would actually have significant power over this chaos here). For example, last week I learned about situation which caused frustration to our developer for months already. After a few hours I confidently could give them guidance what they should do in the short-term, what will happen long-term and how we should handle it.

I agree that architects sometimes solve too general problems instead of addressing the immediate problem. I'm guilty of this myself. An architect has the responsibility to think further and wider than a developer while also being able to consider the details. I sometimes switch to the wrong gear.

Back to the actual topic: The relevant architect is just one of the select people to approve the plan.

I would love it if I would hear about new plans in written form. Unfortunately, it is usually in some meeting. This modus operandi forces me to sit in lots of meetings which are rarely relevant to me. Even worse, sometimes it is only through rumors which means lots of followup emails to clarify.

We actually do have a similar process to the one in the article, but without step 4 "Send this planning document out to all engineers". I suggested something like this a few times but most people complain that they get too much mail anyways. I also did mail to everybody a few times and it was helpful. So I fully agree with the article, but I lack to power to implement step 5 "Have everyone follow the above steps" so far.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> One twist on this concept that we've used effectively at Mavenlink is that there is no approval step.

RFCs function more as a communication and participation process before an effort starts, and approval just hasn't felt like a necessary part of that.

Our org is around 50 engineers and has a very collaborative culture already, and maybe approval would be necessary for other environments.

Another benefit from the RFC process in general is that it's very easy for technical leadership and management (as well as everyone at the company, really) to see all the technical efforts underway.

<comment><USER20> I guess it depends on what you consider approval. Are all comments being addressed before the RFC is worked on, and are all RFCs receiving regular comments?

In a small team with decent communication, RFCs can be prioritized somewhat easily. But they still should be tracked so that you can which are RFCs are being written, currently receiving/addressing comments, and which are being implemented by the team.

<comment><USER19> Great question!

There's no enforcement mechanism, but I can't think of any examples of comments not being addressed before being worked on. Also, so far all RFCs receive comments (between 5 and 50).

Tracking RFCs is a good point, and we do it by putting them in a git repo. The document itself is markdown, and comments happen on a pull request (which also helps with notifying the entire team).

So RFCs with an "open" PR are the ones currently soliciting feedback.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> On the previous Platform Team I worked in, we called these Tech Docs and used a template for anything moderate-sized or required new software/service selection or was judged to be complex.

In every case, we had one person responsible to putting together the doc, but the team or a subset of the team participated in brainstorming, whiteboarding, and submitting additional input prior to the first draft. The draft was shared and commented/ammended with a target finalize date by which time it had been signed off by identified key people as well as others who reviewed it.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm curious, does anyone know of documented cases where RFCs have been used in non-software related engineering environments? E.g. manufacturing, equipment design, chemical process design etc.

<comment><USER22> Yes, but they're called ISO, ANSI, DIN, etc. standards

<comment><USER15> I'm aware that these standards exist and are being used. My question was more on the engineering process that uses them. E.g. a Process design that is developed into Flow sheets , then PI&D until it is built. Developments of PFD and PI&D are covered in intentional standards and procedures. But the underlying knowledge on what and how it is designed is part of the process knowledge the engineering company has. My question was related to that knowledge and if there are examples of RFC being used out there. The RFC or equivalent would then discuss the reasons behind e.g. the selection of a specific pressure vessel head for a certain application. While there are many head options that are code or standard compliant the engineering company has reasons to chose one. The documentation of these reasons and the history behind it is what interest me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> What are the collaborative steps followed by other big companies to move fast - concept to seeing something in production?

<comment><USER24> Op of the post here. I've been talking to a few people at other large companies and here's the information I have. Most of this is anecdotal so treat it as such. Appreciate input or corrections from people working at the companies.

\- Facebook is the most lightweight on docs. Code is/was still king there and even planning docs might be written after the fact. The downsides I've heard is tech/architecture debt building up fast and lots of throwaway stuff built.

\- Amazon is quite rigid and requires a concise planning doc. Depending on the org you work, there might be a few levels of more formal approvals required.

\- Google has a process similar to that described in this post, with planning docs being circulated. Due to the large size of the company, docs are routed to specific committees within orgs who give feedback on them.

\- For smaller companies it will very much vary. Interesting that some do follow something similar, apparently Cockroachdb has a process close to this one: [https://twitter.com/vivekmenezes/status/1047827698956079104?...](https://twitter.com/vivekmenezes/status/1047827698956079104?s=21)

Note that the process I described works well when you have a clear idea of what you are building and have few dependencies. For prototyping or for large/complex projects, planning can get way too slow. That's when a "war room" with a small team building a prototype, skipping all the docs part, will work a lot faster. All bigger companies I know use this when a better fit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's fascinating to see people reinvent some form of ITIL and genuinely think they stumbled on some unique or new way of doing things.

<comment><USER26> Do you feel like the process described in this post is a facsimile of ITIL? Do you feel like ITIL is generally associated with repeated shipped product?

<comment><USER25> I can see my tone being snarky. Sorry for that. But yes, I can draw a ton of parallels between how the change management and RFC process (request for change in this case) is used by more traditional companies and the OP's post. ITIL is no holy grail, far from it, but some things invented in enterprise IT in the 1980's have a tendency to resurface in some guise or form years later.

<comment><USER8> Just googled ITIL, its an interesting word in Indonesia

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> They just re-invented the waterfall method.</comment>


We need both engineers and artists in programming - <AUTHOR> http://loudthinking.com/posts/42-we-need-both-engineers-and-artists-in-programming

<comment><USER2> Stop trying to compare it to engineering and fine art. Programming is a discipline that stand on its own and incorporate elements from other field.

<comment><USER3> _Stop trying to compare it to engineering and fine art._

Could you elaborate on how programming is different from engineering? I feel like if programming seems that different from an engineering discipline, you're probably doing it wrong.

<comment><USER4> Engineering is actually getting more like programming, with CAD and simulation testing taking the place of coding and testing. And some types of engineering (circuit design in VHDL/Verilog) _is_ programming.

I've never engineered, but from what I've gathered, the main difference is that in engineering, you have to be really careful about writing down a design, because once you design a car or an airplane or even a shoe, it takes a lot of human effort to build the actual car/airplane/shoe, and you really want to make sure it won't crash before you test it. It's costly to reiterate a design before release, if that iteration involves a full design-manufacture- test cycle. Whereas in programming, we can build the actual program whenever we want (compilers are fast and cheap) so we usually start from an initial design that's completely broken and incrementally refine it. Even the largest scale programming, done right, has a "nightly build", the engineering equivalent of changing your airplane design in the afternoon, manufacturing it at night, having a test pilot fly it in the morning, and discovering that afternoon why the test pilot and your new airplane are now in hundreds of pieces spattered across the Nevada desert.

<comment><USER3> I hear you, but to me that's a difference of scale, albeit one that allows you a greater tolerance for risk during the engineering process.

I wouldn't argue that chip design is not an engineering process because because the risk/build profile differs from that of a bridge, nor would I make a similar argument for bridges versus cars or dams or spaceships. To me, engineering is a really broad term that encompasses software just as easily as it does physical components.

<comment><USER5> It's a massive difference though. A single software project might go through a few thousand iterations of a complete build, test, development cycle. Some projects probably go through that a week. That's completely different to the average engineering project.

I hate being called a 'software engineer', as it's pretty much nothing like what I do. The only similarity is that we both "Build stuff".

<comment><USER3> _I hate being called a 'software engineer', as it's pretty much nothing like what I do._

Ironically, having studied several engineering disciplines, I feel precisely opposite of this. I _want_ people to understand that building reliable software is an engineering effort.

In my work, I try to balance competing forces and constraints to design reliable, elegant, modular, well-tested components at low cost. Just like practically every other kind of engineering I've ever seen.

<comment><USER4> And that's one way of doing it that resembles engineering.

Just as engineering can resemble programming, programming can resemble engineering. But trying to imitate what engineers do limits what you can do as a programmer. Programmers also work on multiple levels of abstraction in a way that I imagine to be somewhat different from engineers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you want someone "waxing lyrically about beautiful code and its sensibilities", get a poet-in-residence at your software company.

If you want art and engineering in programming, think of the way architects bring art to the world's most impressive buildings and bridges. It doesn't count if the bridge falls down.

Similarly, your program can't ignore "memory and runtime".

<comment><USER7> _If you want art and engineering in programming, think of the way architects bring art to the world's most impressive buildings and bridges. It doesn't count if the bridge falls down._

Interestingly, the architects have structural engineers and all sorts of other _engineering_ professionals to help them make sure the building, bridge or whatever will not fall down.

Perhaps that's the problem with software development. We still want the coolest fancy looking bridges that span miles, but we haven't quite figured out how to get the artist-programmers and the engineer-programmers working together.

<comment><USER8> "we haven't quite figured out how to get the artist-programmers and the engineer-programmers working together"

Pair programming.

Alternatively, I would say that we actually have. I believe that the Artist- programmer is most concerned with the expressiveness of the code, wheras the engineer-programmer is concerned with the efficiency and stability (of course there is overlap/cross-pollination.) The artist-programmers work at the problem domain level, and the engineer-programmers work at the systems/implementation level. Apache/MySQL/Sphinx written by engineer- programmers, Sinatra apps written by artist-programmers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> How are we exactly defining the term _artist_ here? This term varies so much in scope that it can quickly become misleading.

If I try to conceive of an _artistic_ programmer the first thing that comes to mind is not the language or the platform it's running on, but the result of the work. . .programming is just a means to an end like many of may already know.

It is projects like <http://processingjs.org/> and video-games like <http://tinyurl.com/sotc4ps2> that don't appear to solve anything in particular, but are merely an implementation of some [one's/one else's] artistic vision.

</comment><comment><USER10> He's right about there being two kinds of programmers, and we might as well use 'engineer' vs. 'artist' even though it's not entirely accurate.

However, _all_ programmers need to be professionals, at least if they have any intention of interacting with non-programmers.

</comment><comment><USER11> The title here is a little misleading - it sounds to me like the term 'artists' is being used to describe professionals who are simply more laid- back and friendly than the traditional uptight, nose-to-the-grindstone ideal of a working stiff.

</comment><comment><USER12> > People willing to trade the hard scientific measurements such as memory > footprint and runtime speed for something so ephemeral as programmer > happiness.

I'm sorry, but I just can't take this seriously. Runtime speed and memory footprint are not important anymore?

How will you justify to your customers why the software you just delivered takes several hours to perform simple operations? I'm sure they don't care about programmer happiness one single bit.

(I don't have anything against the guy who wrote this. I'm glad he found something he loves doing.)

<comment><USER13> No, what he's saying is that there is a tradeoff involved, and that for many things, it's better to optimize for programmer time/productivity, rather than for machine time. This has been true for 50 some odd years:

[http://journal.dedasys.com/2008/12/04/the-economics-of- progr...](http://journal.dedasys.com/2008/12/04/the-economics-of-programming- languages-in-the-1950s)

Clearly, that's not true in _all_ cases, and _some_ code has to be fast. However, it's often best to avoid premature optimization - write the code, explore the problem domain, and then speed up the bits that need it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I would change the phrasing - we need professionals in programming. People who approach their work with serious craftsmanship, own their work (both the good and the bad), and do the last 5% that distinguishes good stuff from the rest of the lot.

Do we always have time to do this? No. Is it always appropriate to do this? No. But when it is mission critical work, deliver the goods.

<comment><USER7> Perhaps it's because of the way you phrased it, but it appears to me that you completely missed the point of the article. It sounds like you're disagreeing with DHH but agreeing with Uncle Bob. Do you care to try rephrasing it again?

<comment><USER14> No, I think even though it was early in the morning I said what I wanted to say. We need professionals, not amateurs, in the programming biz. Whether they're professional engineers, artists or whatever, we need people who approach the problem seriously, do the best work they can and make sure to finish the odds and ends that make good code. There's far too much "slap it together" code dragging down both the user's experience and our collective reputation.

One can be a professional artist as well as a professional engineer. I prefer the former generating visualizations and the latter doing operating systems. But I really want the #!~!&@$~! to work.

<comment><USER7> Fine, if all you want is software that works, i'm sure you can find some bored engineers to write software that just works.

Meanwhile, the rest of us will continue to have fun with software that does amazing stuff and sometimes breaks.

There's a not-so-old saying: "Brilliant people are often hard to work with, but if I've got to choose between working with a brilliant person that is hard to work with, or a stupid person that is easy to work with, I'll always choose the former."

The same is true of software. When you're pushing the envelope, things break. Learn to live with it, or stop bothering with computers until those of us who are more passionate about doing extraordinary things have left the field. We should be done in about 50 years.

Note: this is not a defense of cowboy programming. It's a defense of genius cowboy programming. If someone like Linus Torvalds, as an amateur student programmer, wants to write something as awesome as Linux, who are you to suggest that he shouldn't?

<comment><USER14> You're (aggressively?) missing the point. If you're doing research, pushing the envelop, then by all means have a go! If, however, you're writing stuff to sell, that people will depend on, then do it well. Calling somebody a professional != calling them an engineer. Slowhand's certainly a professional guitar player, and I think there's general agreement he's not an engineer...

When Linus did his groundbreaking work, that was pure creativity. Redhat, however, better be a little more grounded.

<comment><USER7> So then we arrive at exactly the point that the article made: you need both.

You need the "artists", i.e. the extraordinary, unprofessional people who do something crazy that no professional would ever attempt, and come up with something that pushes the envelope in new and unexpected ways.

And you need the "engineers", the professionals who will convert that (or other things) into something steady, reliable, rock-solid.

I don't think that your rephrasing helped, personally. It made a point which was in agreement with the article look like it was a disagreement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> how can he suggest engineering and artistry are mutually exclusive..... some of the most beautiful code is engineered.</comment>


Show HN: A smart app to repair syntax errors in very large CSV files - <AUTHOR> http://www.csvstudio.com <comment><USER2> Now happy looking at big data, _almost_ fun to manage large CSV imports.

For streamlined ETL, looks promising

Hope you get somewhere with this!

</comment><comment><USER3> Great job Francois! Look forward to playing with it. :)</comment>


How do iPhone apps Instagram/Reeder/DailyBooth implement custom back buttons? - <AUTHOR> http://idevrecipes.com/2011/01/12/how-do-iphone-apps-instagramreederdailybooth-implement-custom-navigationbar-with-variable-width-back-buttons/

<comment><USER2> idevrecipes is turning into a pretty good resource. I hope he keeps it up.

</comment><comment><USER3> In Etude (etudeapp.com), I made a custom nav bar class and a custom back button control, and I just hijack -pushNavigationItem:animated: in the custom nav bar.

<comment><USER4> The way I do it is call [self.navigationItem setHidesBackButton:YES animated:NO]; then create a new UIBarButtonItem using -initWithCustomView: (passing in a UIButton subclass I wrote to render a back button) and set the left-side button of the navigation bar to this new button. To implement the "go back" behavior I just use the regular target-action functionality of my UIButton and manually call -popViewControllerAnimated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> For what it's worth, I really think it damages the ecosystem when apps fake standard SDK classes and make them do strange things, like what Instagr.am is doing. Those standard classes are there and have limitations for a reason.

I really don't like what instagr.am has done to the UINavigationBar and there's a lot of applications out there that tries to hijack known standards to make them crazy stuff.

<comment><USER6> I like to think that its a decision that self-moderates. If its an improvement, it contributes to the success of the app and it may persist. If not, it may contribute to the failure of the app and will eventually disappear. We're so early in the evolution of mobile/touch-based applications, and personally I welcome developers trying new things and stretching the boundaries to see where there's room for improvement.

<comment><USER5> I agree. It's just that for most cases, it's not a matter of improving. It's a matter of being stubborn about your own idea. Look at twitter's app for example, they keep their design very close to the standard UIKit's HIG while improving some aspects(pull to refresh is a great example)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The title is a tiny bit misleading. The one on the article is better.

I was confused at first because he's reinventing UINavigationBar, not custom back buttons - back buttons are occasionally part of that reinvention, however.</comment>


Super Mario Land 2 – Memory Exploration [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPzuYWbnln4 <comment><AUTHOR> I keep coming back to this example as something beautiful, surprising, and so meta/recursive.

Figuring out that you can edit the game's code and/or state by breaking out of the level and navigating to memory regions, and then interacting the the raw bytes as though they were blocks/pipes is completely fascinating.

And of course speedrunners have exploited this, literally walking Mario to the memory address with the "final credits ready?" flag, and setting it by interacting with the block.

And it means that a (good!) human can beat the whole game in 2m42.9s - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o55aSEnYCdE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o55aSEnYCdE)</comment>


OneDrive data automatically scanned for child porn - <AUTHOR> https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.lawblog.de%2Findex.php%2Farchives%2F2015%2F01%2F12%2Feine-datei%2F&edit-text=&act=url

<comment><USER3> This is not news or a secret: [http://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2011/05/19/500-million- frien...](http://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2011/05/19/500-million-friends- against-child-exploitation/)

You can learn more about the tech here: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhotoDNA](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhotoDNA)

</comment><comment><USER4> How exactly does a private company generate the hashs/"PhotoDNA" of all these child porn images? Are they granted some sort of kiddie-porn-license? More importantly, where do they get a hold of all of these images? Is there some sort of government database that they are given access to?

If such a database exists, could you imagine the public outrage that would result if someone hacked/leaked it? I bet there are a bunch of images that only a handful of people ever had access to documented by our government...

<comment><USER5> They don't need to hold the pictures anywhere to use the hash. 1. Police somehow finds child porn. 2. They generate the hash[1]. 3. They distribute the hash to large storage providers. 4. Storage providers compare the hash with the data they store. 5. Profit.

[1]:hash might not necessarily be something like MD5, it might be a more sophisticated photo fingerprint.

Edit: Anyway, I have no idea why is this on HN again, nth time. It's old news and also automated photo fingerprinting is not exactly a huge issue for cloud storages where you store unencrypted data on the first place. It's just another machine reading the bytes of your data, and those bytes have been read by many other machines as well. They don't even use this for advertising or something that could make you a product. They don't even check for pirated software or stuff like this, so this is not exactly groundbreaking news.

<comment><USER6> That leaves a question of collisions open. The chances are really low, but not zero - does a hash match automatically generate events that lead to your front door being kicked open and your pets shot, or is there an actual human that needs to open the file and verify that yeah, it is a child abuse image?

<comment> Paul-ish With any good hash function there is pretty much zero risk of this happening.

<comment><USER6> I'm not willing to ruin someone's life over the equivalent of winning a particularly bad lottery.

<comment><USER7> Your chances of having your life ruined by any other cause is at least 2^64 times more likely than because your uploaded cute_cat.jpg has the same hash as a flagged child_porn.jpg.

<comment><USER8> I'm assuming we're not talking about SHA1 hashes here (which would be trivial to get around), but image matching hashes (probably something like [http://phash.org/](http://phash.org/)) which are much more fuzzy. If that is the case then collisions will be far more common.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Google also scans gmail attachments for it as well. This has been known for a while and the subject of quite a few public court cases. I wouldn't be surprised if Dropbox did it as well. Along with things of national security interest.

When local police get a warrant to do a forensic search of computers the judge often requires that they search harddrives using known image/file hashes - <USER2> opposed to looking through each file by hand - in order to protect that persons constitutional right to privacy.

This right primarily applies to personal computers and doesn't exist (as clearly) as defined by law when the files are stored on a remote cloud service. Although whether cloud services have a similar high threshold of assumed privacy is a recurring debate in criminal law, as storing your whole life in cloud services is a relatively new phenomenon.

<comment><USER10> Is Google doing it as well supposed to make me feel better or worse? That kind of logic always bothers me, because it bypasses the arguments about whether it's good or wrong, and just says "well others are doing it, too - so it must be okay". It's like saying "well UK tortured as well, so why does it matter that US tortured?" I think you get my point.

I also doubt that if they get a warrant, they'll _only_ scan the drives for the hashes. That seems highly unlikely unless the FBI/prosecutors themselves specify in their request to the judge that they only want to do the hash scanning - but I don't see why they would want to limit themselves to that, when they know the judge is likely to give them full access to it, if they already have some evidence of "criminal activity", without which I assume they wouldn't even bother getting a warrant.

<comment><USER9> > That seems highly unlikely unless the FBI/prosecutors themselves specify in > their request to the judge that they only want to do the hash scanning

It depends on the case I guess. I heard this from a lawyer I know who has worked on CP cases. Judges always try to limit the privacy exposure in every warrant. By doing so the police can get access to warrants easier since it requires a lower threshold of probable cause than say searching an entire house.

Especially if the police found the person because they used a P2P site to download a particular file or had a hash in their email account. A minimal warrant to search for that hash is much easier to defend in court against arguments by the defense of constitutional privacy violations of a full data search.

The police have to do this minimization process in phone wiretaps as well. They aren't supposed to listen nor store the phone call unless the information is relevant to the case.

These limitations are clearly defined in warrants. It is up to the police and forensic experts to follow it of course. But I'd imagine in high profile cases the Judge/FBI wouldn't think twice about finding it appropriate to look at every file.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> 1\. Download illegal porn using Tor.

2\. Rename the file .DS_Store and copy to victim's cloud folder

3\. They go to jail and get killed by another inmate a year into their sentence. Justice prevails!

<comment><USER12> Prisons in my state separate criminals by a risk or violent threat level. A whole facility gets this level, so no one in prison A is a violent criminal. Violent criminals are all in another prison B in another county.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> With our (semi) benevolent corporate overlords in mind, are there any safe and cross platform ways to keep an encrypted container on these services?

I remember (but can't find for the life of me) an article somewhere that stated you don't want to put something like a Truecrypt volume on a service that does versioning, since the changes in the encrypted data each time you change something can be used to leak data.

<comment><USER5> If you store simple encrypted stuff at them, then it works fine. Using OneDrive, Google Drive or anything alike to store a large(-ish), often- changing volume in a way that it does not leak information does not make sense, because the performance would be horrible then.

If it does not change often, then it does not leak much information, naturally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Ohhh the irony:

[http://vimeo.com/49048679](http://vimeo.com/49048679)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scroogled](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scroogled)

</comment><comment><USER14> And who knows for what else...</comment>


Bank of England: economic textbooks are wrong - <AUTHOR> http://www.markpack.org.uk/49155/bank-of-england-economic-textbooks-are-wrong/ <comment><USER2> The link isn't working for me: Error establishing a database connection

<comment><AUTHOR> Just checked it, and it worked for me.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Get live news in a commandline - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/shivam043/instantnews <comment><USER2> Not exactly dying to hear about the latest Trump tweets while I'm coding.

<comment><AUTHOR> haha,still it keeps you updated</comment></comment>


Distributed system definition at DEC SRC bulletin board (1987) - <AUTHOR> https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/distributed-system.txt <comment> cbm-vic-20 Right around this time, the VMS side of the house was releasing VAXcluster, which was really quite robust, and ahead of its time. Lots of ideas that are now in systems like Kubernetes have very close parallels to VAXcluster systems: nodes that dynamically join the cluster, load failover to other nodes, shared resources like disk and security policies, asymmetric nodes etc.

[https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~levy/vaxclusters.pdf](https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~levy/vaxclusters.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER2> Not sure why this is being posted now. In the context of early collections of computers on a LAN, sometimes with a shared (flaky) file server, this comment makes sense, and was (kind of) funny.

However, it seems out-of-touch today, because of years of work in building _more_ reliable systems out of distributed components has made the internet and scalable internet services possible.

It is perhaps not without irony that one of the key idea drivers in this space was Lamport himself, with early papers on clocks and synchronization, and later work on Paxos, which is found at the heart of many of the most reliable systems in the world.

Perhaps we should call this a "Lamport's Irony"; when you complain about something (jokingly) and then spend your career fixing the problem you complained about.

<comment><USER3> I think this is worth looking at to see the history of why building distributed systems is hard.

Also this, "A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn't even know existed can render your own computer unusable." Is a good kind of funny explanation of what can go wrong.

Lamport obviously did spend his career fixing the problem and we owe a tremendous amount to him.</comment></comment>


Flying Cheap - <AUTHOR> http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/flyingcheap/

<comment><USER2> I watched this when it was on TV, and it was really interesting, but I couldn't help but keep thinking that even if a plane fell out of the sky every month, it would still be the safest way to travel by orders of magnitude. Though, I guess the point is that improving safety should still be a goal, even if you're the safest already.

<comment><USER3> I've idly wondered a couple of times if the industry would be better off from a PR POV if a plane went down every week. Right now a plane crash with fatalities is NEWS with capital letters. This would make it ho-hum.

Then again, if you're averaging one down a week, statistically you'll probably end up with a cluster of five or six+ planes going down within a day or two and suddenly it would be news again, regardless of whether it was actually statistically significant, so _shrug_

<comment><USER4> Wouldn't a zero-defects approach work better from a PR and a human perspective?

Part of the reason driving seems much safer to most people is that usually they have agency and are in control of the vehicle and can make their own decisions about weather conditions and likely traffic patterns. Whereas in a plane they are giving up control to someone unknown.

<comment><USER3> Human perspective, no question! But the PR goal is to "not have bad news in the news", basically. Zero crashes gets you there, but, regrettably, that's basically impossible. More crashes would make a mere crash "not news". But, like I said, probably wouldn't work anyhow. "An auto crash" isn't much news, but bad enough things still happen that they still show up on the evening news with some frequency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can someone provide a summary? At work on this Monday, and would like to know if I should watch it later when I'm home.

<comment><USER6> bigger, "reputable" commercial airlines contract out many of their flights to lower quality and/or less experienced, no-name service providers in order to save some $. this fact is hidden from the customer, as the ticket, plane, boarding gate, etc. are still branded with the big company's logo.

this is a problem, because while the big company has certain quality standards set, the smaller ones do not necessarily have to live up to those same standards. and they usually don't, which is why they're so much cheaper.</comment></comment>


Ten Years: Biggest Losers in Tech - <AUTHOR> http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/12/29/tenyears-biggest-losers-in-tech/ <comment><USER2> The list seems to be concentrated on the last few years. Readers on crunchgear already pointed out RAZR was probably the most successful phone of the decade and still ranks number 2 in the nielson survey. And B&M stores still account for 95% of total sales according to census data.

</comment><comment><USER3> AOL may be thought of as a loser, insofar as their business model no longer continues to be profitable. But they brought millions of people onto the Internet, myself included, and even if those users no longer use AOL, nothing can take that away. We'll always have Town Square 349.</comment>


Best Places to Launch a Business - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/fsb/0803/gallery.best_places_to_launch.fsb/index.html?cnn=yes

<comment><USER2> Eugene?! Hah! (With a picture of a Rodeo most likely in Springfield at the Filbert Festival). Eugene is a good place to start a business if you want to do alternative-eco-bio-friendly hemp clothing or something like that. But even in that case, you'll get someone loudly complaining about how you're not alternative-eco-bio friendly _enough_.

[http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/fsb/0803/gallery.best_pl...](http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/fsb/0803/gallery.best_places_to_launch.fsb/96.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> each place has some kind of tax benefit - it makes me wonder why Deleware is not included OR why most of the startup is incorporated in Delaware if it is not the top 10 place to start business??</comment>


Vim's 8th release teaches us something about the rush of software releases - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/24/boring_vim_beats_exciting_browsers/ <comment><USER2> Off topic: I had to use vim on remote machines that didn't have emacs. Then I discovered mg, a _tiny_ emacs clone that is even smaller than the original vi...

So ... thank you openbsd folks for including it in the base system.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not a fan of how he repeatedly compares VIM/Emacs to web browsers. Text editing will always be the same, you have one job: edit text.

The internet has been rapidly changing in comparison to text editing. New creations are made everyday that need to be loaded onto nearly every internet capable device including phones, tablets, TVs, and every other computer we use. Browsers need frequent updates to be able to compete as well as to adopt new technologies as they come out.</comment>


Nextdoor, a local social network, has launched in the UK - <AUTHOR> https://blog.nextdoor.com/2016/09/13/bringing-nextdoor-to-the-uk/ <comment><USER2> This is deceptive.

I entered my details and it said that neighbours were already using it and gave examples. Examples that are very like those on the local (closed) fb group for the area. So I signed up.

And now it says there is no-one using it, I'm the first and I need to recruit 9 more people to make the area 'live'.

This is one certain way for me to avoid your product forever because if I can't trust you now I can't trust you at all.</comment>


The privacy curve - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dilbert.com/post/123983117521/the-privacy-curve

<comment><USER2> "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear."

I'm getting sick of seeing this argument. How many times does it have to be rebuked?

Dear Scott Adams,

Please host an archive of any personal emails you may still have. I'm sure everyone would have a lot to learn about you by doing so. You have nothing to hide, right?

Oh... your argument was specifically "the government" and not "the people"? Do you mind telling me who (or what?) the government is made of?</comment>


Electron for the Mac App Store - <AUTHOR> http://www.saschawise.com/blog/2015/08/12/electron-for-the-mac-app-store.html <comment><USER2> Is there any reason why electron bundles an entire copy of Chromium when the system-bundled WebKit provides 98% of the exact same functionality? Using system WebKit instead would make the final binaries FAR smaller plus developers would be able to take advantage of all the energy efficiency goodness that Apple has baked in.

<comment><USER3> I guess because otherwise they would have to have a different code base for Windows, Linux and OSX. They are probably relying on Chromium to solve the multiplatform aspect of this.

<comment><USER4> And probably because it's more "stable" in the sense that the bundled chromium won't change independent of the rest of the software.

Plus storage is cheap and plentiful, and while webkit is pretty close to chromium, it's not identical and then they would need to support 2 separate "platforms", even if only for that 2% of differences.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So you are 16 year old, already two years on HN and have an app in the Mac App Store that Apple qualified as 'You must be at least 17 years old to download this app'.

Respect !!!

[0] RESTer - [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rester/id1013270103?ls=1&mt=...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rester/id1013270103?ls=1&mt=12)

<comment><USER6> Why does Apple impose that age limit? I clicked on the warning, but it redirected me to a generic ad for the Mac App Store.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> But... Why? This isn't explained at all in the article. Why would we need to run a 4 hour long build process? I could google it, sure. But the article should probably also mention that. Anyway, if anyone cares to enlighten me...

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not completely sure why the build time is so long, but I have a few guesses. I think that Chromium is compiling for many many different platforms when it builds which would explain the huge required space. In addition it is compiling all of its dependencies along with it, instead of linking them like so many other libraries do. And the 3rd thing is that my computer is not that fast.</comment></comment>