Ask HN: Planning to pursue physics degree without academic background - <AUTHOR> I don't have any higher education. My CS degree is half baked and I am 31. I was not in a great place in my early 20s (or anywhere throughout my 20s) to finish my degree, but always managed enough to work as a software developer. I am now moving onto high for my area paying job in consultancy in devops space, which I am stoked about, but...
I always had fascination with maths, but I was never good at it. I don't know how to study maths, or how to study at all. I know some algebra, a bit of limits but trying to tackle calculus left me frustrated.
I am really interested in physics, specifically thermodynamics and mechanical engineering.
I need some advice how to proceed.
I took some time to create a schedule around studying. I learned about study techniques (questioning, repetition, spacing, taking breaks, etc). I bought Spivak - Calculus (3rd edition) some time ago and moved my way through Foundations chapter a few years earlier, but exercises got really overwhelming pretty fast. I can do first few in every chapter, but struggle soon after. Is this normal for this book?
Now to complete my plan I have two things lacking:
- Mentor
- Study groups
While I can follow a textbook through a lot of grinding and suffering, but I feel like somebody with better understanding would be a great resource.
Same for study groups. If I am confused by an exercise, would be great to ask somebody who worked through it. I am lucky if Stackexchange has a similar question.
Now to be accepted to university, I will have to pass screening math test, which involves basic calculus, algebra, trig.
Which brings me to my original question: does it make sense to hop on a university program? That will get me to learning physics, provide support and have access to like-minded people. On the other hand, if I get good enough at maths to be able to pass the screening test, maybe I'll be able to move to physics by myself.
Does trying to find a tutor in my area make sense? Or online? Does anyone have experience with self-guided learning or with online tutor?
Any advice will be much appreciated! <comment><USER2> A physics education requires a lot of mathematics, or rather, a lot of certain types of mathematics. I think thermodynamics as covered in physics is more statistical mechanics.

You said you are interested in thermodynamics and mechanical engineering. How does that draw you to physics? I think mechanical engineering would be a better field.

My suggestion is to look for evening/night classes taught at (say) a local community college.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I should mention that my interest is in workings of everyday things: cars, engines, fridges, etc.

I assumed that most of these are some sort of combination of electrial, mechanical engineering and thermodynamics being a small part of it, but all of them requiring a subset of physics.

<comment><USER2> Your interests are much more aligned with engineering than with physics.

Pick a school and compare the physics program with the engineering ones to see which are more aligned with your interests.

I picked Iowa semi-arbitrarily. Here are recent undergraduate physics projects - [https://physics.uiowa.edu/undergraduate-program/recent- under...](https://physics.uiowa.edu/undergraduate-program/recent- undergraduate-research-projects-2016-17) . None of them deal with everyday things, that I could tell. Most deal with space science or astrophysics. (Other schools might be more focused on, say, solid state physics or particle physics.)

Then take a look at the mechanical engineering program, at [https://me.engineering.uiowa.edu/undergraduate- program](https://me.engineering.uiowa.edu/undergraduate-program) and the student outcomes at [https://me.engineering.uiowa.edu/about/mechanical- engineerin...](https://me.engineering.uiowa.edu/about/mechanical-engineering- program/student-outcomes) .

If there is a college nearby, visit and talk to an admissions councilor.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Tips for a paperless lifestyle? - <AUTHOR>

Looking for things like apps to upload scanned documents to (besides Evernote which lacks good Linux support), general workflow tips, apps for scanning receipts and possibly tracking expenses using them, etc.<p>Anyone have any tips or web apps you can recommend? <comment><USER2> If you're serious about this, get a Fuji ScanSnap scanner (I have the S1500). Scans about 15 double-sided pages per minute and converts to OCR'd PDFs.

Any new mail you receive, scan, shred (archive if important) and backup.

<comment><USER3> Seconded.

I have the S1300 - it's slower than the S1500, but about half the weight and you can power it off of your USB ports, so there's no need to lug around the adapter.

Great if you're scanning in multiple locations. I use mine both at home and in the office, and am delighted by the file cabinets I'm no longer steadily filling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You probably don't use Windows 7, but I scan everything into TIFFs, which gets dumped to my filesystem.

I then have an ifilter (a Windows search plugin for a file format) for TIFF OCR, so I can do text searches on the scanned documents, using the built-in Windows Search functionality of Windows 7. It works much the same as Spotlight on Mac OS X.

Normally, I leave these scanned files in the dump directory, because the current Windows 7 iteration of Windows Search is solid. But occasionally, I use the "Libraries" feature of Windows 7 to organize things when they need to be.

At some point, I need to insert "convert into PDF" into this process but I'm lazy, It Just Works(tm), and haven't run out of disk space yet. PDFs would be searchable, too.

I used to use Evernote, but it's too cumbersome. You could probably do something very similar in Linux.

I'm cheap, so I occasionally bring my stack of papers to be scanned into work, chuck them into the auto-feeder of my work's scanner, and press "Go".

If I wasn't cheap, I'd buy a Fujitsu SnapScan. They seem to be rock solid and I know several people who swear by them. I wouldn't bother with the cheap little units like Doxie, a digital camera might be cheaper, there.

</comment><comment><USER5> I would recommend using a credit card that lets you download your transactions for tracking expenses. Unless you really need the detail of the individual items from your purchases. I tried scanning all my reciepts and found it was a waste of time, now I just scan reciepts for things that were over ~$100 that I might need to return under warranty.

If you get a scanner make sure it has full-duplex (scans both sides of the paper), A document feeder and is network based (beware cheaper models where you still need a driver to make it work).

I have a Brother 8890DW, which has scan to email and (I believe) scan to ftp.

If you are low volume I would definitely look at the camera based scanning options, then you can just use your phone.

As for management I just have a directory full of pdf's which I can search in windows. Simple but effective.

</comment><comment><USER6> Bills - Make sure every bill you have is sent to you paperless. Some banks and other firms have to send you paper statements until you ask for it to be paperless.

Mail - Checkout Earth Class Mail which receives and scans your mail and even deposits checks for you.

Office drop or Shoeboxed - service that sends you an envelope every month for you to fill up. They scan and send you a PDF.

Regular writing - get an IPad and install Noteshelf, which let's you save everything as a searchable PDF.

</comment><comment><USER7> Get the Doxie scanner <http://getdoxie.com/> ! It is fast and small, and great for scanning a few documents every now and then. It comes with software that is nicely integrated with the most common cloud services etc.

For me, my "paper load" was not big enough to warrant a bigger purchase of a multiple-page scanner, so if you are still in the paper less minor leagues like me, it is a great choice.

<comment><USER8> As far as I know there's no Linux support for the Doxie, so you're out of luck there. The ScanSnaps, while being quite a bit more expensive and bigger do have a decent support.

If we're only talking about the odd invoice, any normal scanner would do, too. If you get one of those printer/scanner combinations, you'll also save some space.

Yes, the app situation for Linux isn't that good. The Evernote web app alone isn't as comfortable as a native application, and I haven't seen anything decent out of the open source sector.

I'd recommend going a bit more low-tech. Create a script that invokes the "scanimage" command with the desired parameters, then moves it to your "cloud" directory (Dropbox, Ubuntu One etc.). There, run OCR software over it, dumping the result in a file. If nothing major has changed, tesseract would be the free OCR software of choice.

For simplicity's sake, I'd recommend that the script automatically chooses the file name, you just add some "tags", e.g. if your script is called "scan_stuff", you'd invoke it as "scan_stuff amazon invoice", and the result would end up as "~/Dropbox/scans/2011-09-13-14-46-amazon-invoice.pdf", alongside a "2011-09-13-14-46-amazon-invoice.txt" file generated from that. This makes it easy enough to search by date or by a rather generic type.

The SANE scanimage command supports batch mode, even if you don't have an automatic feeder (--batch-prompt).

This might not be as automatic as some of the specialized solutions for Windows or Mac, but it does handle special cases a bit better. You can just have a parameter or separate script for that and don't have to mess with Preferences each time something slightly different comes in (e.g. color, higher dpi, different target directory…).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I saved a blog post a few months ago about this. <http://stevelosh.com/blog/2011/05/paper-free/>

I haven't made the jump myself yet, but the $218 result was:

        Doxie Scanner: $160
        JotNot: $7
        PDF OCR X: $30
        Hazel: $21
        Backblaze: $5 per month

</comment><comment><USER10> Fujitsu scansnap

</comment><comment><USER11> From my job: Paperless fax, so documents can be faxed directly to/from your computer.

From my life: Pay bills online, sign up for their paperless option, reduce the number of different bills you are getting overall. (Extremist tip: Living without a car outright eliminates a lot of paperwork in terms of insurance, car payments, tag and title...etc. Those don't replaced with a license to walk, registration to walk, etc. It's been a pleasant "bonus!")</comment>


Ask HN: Have you built internal CLI tools for your team? Has it payed off? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Good question!

I manage a few on premise servers, running docker containers, with ansible. I have some app version-specifc playbooks that I run when necessary (eg. a version that requires changes on the server) and a playbook.sh script to run such playbooks (that provides some default values, logging etc).

I've been thinking about adding a cli that would make it easier to prompt the user for values, and execute certain work flows depending on the values. I'm not sure if it's worth the effort though, and wonder if it's something that's easier done with ansible.

I wonder what other people have done in similar situations.

<comment><AUTHOR> We are a small team and we built ourselves a not so complicated CLI tool to ease inspecting and management of our infrastructure. It certainly boosted our productivity and made our lives much easier. I'm not sure whether the time spent developing this tool was worth it though. Since it's not just one time job but a continuous maintenance. On the other, we wouldn't go back to the old ways now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've done this for two of my previous teams. One team was appreciative and it saved us some time for elevation prep work.

I built something else that was also for elevation prep work for my second team. It saved some time and boredom by automating some reports running for 15-20 projects. They didn't care. That group was very concerned with status, conformity, and prestige as far as how you got rated. So for people like me, nothing was ever good enough.</comment>


How To Make Your Team's Code Better - <AUTHOR> http://www.brandonsavage.net/how-to-make-your-teams-code-better/

<comment><USER2> Speaking of reviewing code via GitHub pull requests, is it me or did they break ?w=0 recently?</comment>


Android Pay - <AUTHOR> http://www.android.com/pay/ <comment><USER2> Can or Does the same credit card reader machines accept both Apple Pay and Android Pay? Would be nice to know if they're working together to use the same protocol instead of trying to come up with yet another one.</comment>


The One Place in the US Google Earth Stopped Mapping - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/amp/en_us/article/gye79x/google-earth-stopped-mapping-this-military-installation <comment><USER2> > "So we are ending this piece by asking Google directly: why?"

Where by "directly" they mean, "indirectly in this article". Asking Google directly would actually involve contacting Google and getting an answer from a spokesperson. You'd think Vice would have the pull to get in touch with Google...</comment>


Doctorow's First Law - <AUTHOR> http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/columns-and-blogs/cory-doctorow/article/44012-doctorow-s-first-law.html

<comment><USER2> _"Any time someone puts a lock on something that belongs to you, and won't give you a key, they're not doing it for your benefit."_

Advice one would think would be common sense.

I agree that one should be willing to take a stance they are not willing to back down from. Most people buy into DRM and EULAs mainly because they don't care or notice. Creators it seems may buy into them because they think it's the only avenue or feel they have no power to bargain. Either way, creators and consumers do have all of the power and should recognize digital resellers for what they are: _middle-persons_. Their job is to facilitate transactions between two interested parties, not determine the terms of said transactions themselves. You can bargain with them and you don't have to back down: if they're worthy of your business they will consider your proposals.

</comment><comment><USER3> How difficult would it be to pass this law?

"It shall be unlawful to place any kind of access control or restriction on a copyrighted work without the permission of the copyright holder."

It will need some sort of exemption for personal use (like an encrypted hard disk).

<comment><USER4> I think it would be very difficult. Arguably, by controlling access to their network, Google is putting access control and restriction on all of the works in their web cache. Similarly, requiring a login on a server restricts access to the Oracle instance running on it.

<comment><USER5> These sorts of issues already exist in copyright law, and have been covered pretty well. It seems to me that this would essentially be an extension of the first sale doctrine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Now Cory just needs to write something I'd actually want to read. Hope his fiction isn't as preachy as his articles. Though this one wasn't as bad as he usually does.</comment>


WTF – A personal information dashboard for your terminal - <AUTHOR> https://wtfutil.com <comment><USER2> I've been wanting something sort of like this for my login screen. Little box for the login, of course and a whole bunch of scary-to-everyone-but-me looking output, like hollywood ([https://github.com/dustinkirkland/hollywood](https://github.com/dustinkirkland/hollywood)). +1 if I could use the terminal emulator of my choice so cool-retro-term ([https://github.com/Swordfish90/cool-retro- term](https://github.com/Swordfish90/cool-retro-term)) could make it look like the screen is about to melt.

<comment><USER3> The login screen is ultimately just a regular process. I haven't tried it but there is nothing against starting cool retro term and hollywood inside of it. The most difficult part is probably to make it display on the framebuffer. For the login itself you could then just reuse the decades old _login_ binary that provides the login prompt you see in text mode terminals, if you like. Shouldn't be too hard.

<comment><USER2> I did, naively, make an attempt once and it kinda sorta worked in a horrible "are you mad?" way with shell, ssh, xterm and Xephyr. It only worked with a couple of simple window managers and if you hit ^C at login prompt, it cooperatively dropped you to a prompt owned by root. Oops. Still, not bad for a relatively rapid prototype proof-of-concept.

<comment><USER3> When I looked at the Linux boot process the first time I thought this just kinda sorta works in a horrible "are you mad?" way*:-). Just short of three decades later the boot process didn't really change a lot but I don't have the same feeling about it. I just got used to it and in the end all that matters is that it works.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Neat. For people looking at alternatives for configurable dashboards i suggest sampler[0]. It has a weird license but free for personal use. You can report any output of a terminal command with a custom time rate. E.g. you can SSH and pipe HTOP of a remote system, query your local DB and do a timeseries etc. all in one place.

[0]: [https://github.com/sqshq/sampler](https://github.com/sqshq/sampler)

<comment><USER5> These are all great, but I'm curious if anyone can suggest browser alternatives (I've looked before w/o success) -- It would be awesome to have something like this open up on the home browser tab. Any suggestions?

<comment><USER6> I'm in the same camp as you are, a funny method that would "kinda work" would be to use something like [https://github.com/yudai/gotty](https://github.com/yudai/gotty) but I feel like that's a pretty hacky solution haha.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This looks pretty nice but without secret management it's not really that useful. Without that you can't share your configs or have your config in your dotfiles-repository.

That makes it really not that portable.

<comment><USER8> If you have thoughts on this, I'd love to hear your use-case. Issue #517 is specifically about this topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Honestly curious - why do people live mostly in their terminal? Is it a productivity thing?

<comment><USER10> In my experience, it is easier to automate a workflow using command line applications. The GUI versions of tools have to try and predict every possible workflow, while terminal applications can be easily combined in scripts.

That being said, there are definitely major productivity features to be had with GUIs, such as those with web browsers and IDEs.

<comment><USER9> what's an example of a workflow you've automated on a terminal?

<comment><USER11> -> download 1000 files using curl, then validate their checksum, then build stuff

-> take an almost-CSV report generated by one piece of software, remove a bunch of extra garbage at the top to turn it into an actual CSV file, then send the CSV file to data analysis pipeline.

-> join two CSV files selecting columns 2,3 from one file and 4,5 from the other file, keyed on column 1 from both files. like excel but for CSV files sized in hundreds of megabytes

-> take a bunch of CSV files and pump them into a rabbitmq queue

-> query whether a queue is empty. if so, start a new analysis job. if not, sleep another hour

-> grep for data in a directory to find specific files containing that data, then point those paths to another service

I can go on all day. CLI tools are far more wieldy than GUI tools IMO. CLI tools give me a generally-stable interface (or at the very least, a straightforward method of parsing and adapting to changes) and usually have _way_ better documentation than GUIs.

<comment><USER9> Many of these actions seem like something you'd just never do in GUI though? Except maybe some of the CSV stuff.

<comment><USER12> See, there is a reason don't do this in a GUI. For a short while it looked like Apple's Automator would get there. Maybe Microsoft can crack this in a couple of years if they go nuts with python as a GUI scripting language with native OLE support.

<comment><USER13> Powershell is already there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Nice. I might have to try use it.

I use tmux (wrapped in byobu) a lot and tend to end up with one screen (on each host I usual a fair amount) as a dashboard like this, manually constructed from many panes each running a tool like iftop, watching a log with "tail -f", or regularly running other checks via "watch", ...

<comment><USER15> Why do you use byobu? Just curious as I only use tmux.

<comment><USER14> Habit as much as anything else. I used byobu around screen for a time before switching to tmux. I've not looked into what tmux can do by itself, compared to screen, without byobu's additions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The list of modules ([https://wtfutil.com/modules/](https://wtfutil.com/modules/)) looks really quite impressive. I can imagine getting some good use out of this

</comment><comment><USER17> I would appreciate a list of requirements. Does it only work on mac? What kind of terminals can be used?

<comment><USER18> Also available as a Docker container: [https://hub.docker.com/r/wtfutil/wtf](https://hub.docker.com/r/wtfutil/wtf)

<comment><USER17> I do not really see the point of providing docker containers for tiny command line programs. I feel like an old curmudgeon that cannot make sense of the modern world; at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> You know. This _could_ be configured to be a, [really nice] poor man's Bloomberg Terminal.

Yikes! Hold my beer! This will take all weekend.

<comment><USER20> If you do configure some kind of Bloomberg Terminal, please share!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Google Apps/Calendar but no CalDAV for those of us who left the google mothership takes away a big reason I'd use this.

<comment><USER22> It's FOSS though, if devs swarm it with contributions anything is possible ;P

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Why are so many of these command-line tools/dashboards written in Go?

<comment><USER24> I haven't used Go much but I've gotten the impression that tooling is very good, it's easy to create a self-contained executable and startup time is low. All this while the language itself aims for simplicity and doesn't include a plethora of features rarely used or needed creating an almost python-like simplicity.

<comment><USER25> I can't be the only one. I just don't see a lack of features being a feature.

You can easily statically link most languages by passing switches to the linker.

Python like simplicity is a far stretch. Golang basically just C with co routines and some of the annoying syntax cleaned up.

<comment><USER26> Lack of features hasn't stopped C from being an extremely useful and prolific language.

Your last sentence, to me, reads as a pro rather than a con. C + coroutines - bad_syntax = Great language to me.

Mind you, I don't use Go in a professional setting, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This actually looks really useful if you have multiple screens. (I tend to type on my laptop connected to a monitor above it.) I keep concocting shell prompts that are more and more complicated (current git branch, IP, python virtualenv and so on and so on) -- this might just be the ticket to stop wasting time on that.

</comment><comment><USER28> My first impression was that it looks cool, but than I tried to think of a use case and failed. It still looks very cool, though. If I want to look anything up I just look it up, no need for something to run somewhere to occasionally glance on.

<comment><USER29> You're probably not the typical user. This comes in handy for someone who always has a bunch of data inflow like a sysadmin, devops, tools person, etc. Or just an overworked programmer.

<comment><USER28> No, sorry, I was unclear. I do see the need for a dashboard (at work), just not for monitoring the things this one offers. And for my private workstation, which I was thinking of when posting before, I don't see the need.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This pairs very neatly with cool-retro-term[1] :-)

[1]: [https://github.com/Swordfish90/cool-retro- term](https://github.com/Swordfish90/cool-retro-term)

<comment><USER31> Someone please install this and try it and take a screenshot. I just want to see it but don't want to do it myself haha

<comment><USER32> Here you are. This is the standard config file with Euro time removed and fewer US timezones represented. I've blocked out my IP info.

The terminal size in cool-retro-term is around 30x140-ish.

[https://imgur.com/yb0G39m](https://imgur.com/yb0G39m)

<comment><USER30> Did you anonymize the entire image? Because the text is not supposed to look like that (i.e. unreadable).

<comment><USER32> Interesting! If I have cool-retro-term on my external display (27" Thunderbolt display at 2560x1440), it's all messed up like that.

On my MacBook Pro's built-in display, it looks like this: [https://imgur.com/BbVcyA7](https://imgur.com/BbVcyA7)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Why does everyone feature a world clock in their information dashboards? Yes, it's a handy feature to have, and yes, it's easy to build, but very few people actually use them.

<comment><USER34> very useful for multi-time-zoned projects. Working with overseas times means you get good at mental translation but with daylight savings, people moving around, new people on the project, etc - it becomes very handy.

One of my favorite clock related features is in KMail where it says "Senders current time", which is often helpful as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Does it support the mouse? I didn't see any mention of it and I haven't tried it yet. If not then I think this would be unusable for me. I live inside the terminal and use Vim, tmux but once a TUI gets quite complicated (another example for me is wee-slack plugin for wee-chat or multiple accounts in mutt) I struggle a bit and find I'm faster in a GUI.

</comment><comment><USER36> This is really impressive. I'm currently developing a web-based personal dashboard [1] and I'm sure WTF will provide me a lot of inspiration here and there :)

[1] [https://github.com/darekkay/dashboard](https://github.com/darekkay/dashboard)

</comment><comment><USER37> I like this. Might actually use this as an always-on dashboard on one of my spare PCs. Probably could find a neat use for it.

</comment><comment><USER38> Does it run on Windows? I can't tell if the lack of Windows binaries is because the author didn't compile it/test it for the platform or because for some reason it won't run there.

For a desktop project, supporting the OS of 60+% of desktops would seem a boon to adoption (putting aside the politics and all).

<comment><USER8> Windows support is being tracked in issue #103 on GitHub. People have had success building from source. Automated Windows builds currently fail for reasons unknown.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> How does this compare with conky?

</comment><comment><USER40> Something very similar that I've used in the past [https://github.com/notwaldorf/tiny-care- terminal](https://github.com/notwaldorf/tiny-care-terminal)

</comment><comment><USER22> I'll definitely be trying this one out <3 Thanks for this work

</comment><comment><USER41> Reminds me of [https://getbitbar.com](https://getbitbar.com) to 'Put anything in your Mac OS X menu bar'

</comment><comment><USER42> This is great. Probably one of my favorite things shared on HN in a while. Great job!

</comment><comment><USER43> I am curious why the binary is so large? Almost 60Mb, bigger than Docker.

</comment><comment><USER44> This is super cool! Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER45> wow this little CLI made my day! just installed it and used sample.conf and it already looks great, will customize it later but this will be used often by me, as I live and breath with CLI daily

</comment><comment><USER46> Also an option: a real GUI

</comment><comment><USER47> It's odd that I can't find what "WTF" stands for, and if the F stands for the F-word, that's just pretty ghetto.

Aaaand confirmed on the glossary page. I mean couldn't it have been something clever like "Wednesday Thursday Friday" ?

</comment><comment><USER48> Only takes x11 color names and not hex? wtf.

<comment><USER8> The underlying libraries WTF is built upon use colour strings to define colours, so WTF does too.

But this is a cool idea. Issue #546 has been opened for this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Obviously written by someone who is not living on BSD, and doesn't know about wtf(1) :(

<comment><USER48> Good thing the binary is called wtfutil because of this very reason.

<comment><USER49> not what I was getting at. I'm aware it's wtfutil on the cmdline. I was rather sort of amused that, say, I write a 'least squares' utility, call it 'ls' and have it be invoked by calling 'lsutil'.

...anyways, moving on with my life...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> There's a detailed screenshot but I can't zoom to see the detail because the website designer has gone the extra mile to make it non-zoomable. Why do people do this?

<comment><USER51> I do not know but I encountered this more often than not. Direct links to images are a rare occurrence in my experience. I usually just right click on the image, then click on "Open Image in New Tab" which will get me what I want. Off-topic but: was it not Google that tried to work around this so one could not do even this in the search results?

<comment><USER52> Google removed that functionality because of a settlement with Getty.

<comment><USER53> That is awful and fundamentally flawed. If it's on my device, I can save it.

Edit: Come to think of it, if it's on my device, it's already saved in some way, shape and form. Clearly nobody technical at that company made that decision to sue Google.

What Google should of done is offered to advertise that an image is available to purchase...

<comment><USER14> _> awful and fundamentally flawed_

Unfortunately the law often does not make objective sense. And even when it seems to from your perspective, the way others interpret it does not.

 _> nobody technical at that company made that decision to sue_

Technical people can be arseholes too you know. Many patent trolls are technical people, not just legal eagles, for instance.

<comment><USER54> > Unfortunately the law often does not make objective sense.

This isn't about the law. It's unclear if the law would require something like this or not. Google decided not to find out by settling. The settlement terms were up to the two companies to decide and were not mandated by laws.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> How does it compare to tmux or GNU screen?

<comment><USER56> You could run it inside a tmux window.

<comment><USER57> Needs an emacs mode.

<comment><USER58> First thing I thought of was, can I run this in a shell inside emacs?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Prostitution and the internet - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21611074-how-new-technology-shaking-up-oldest-business-more-bang-your-buck <comment><USER2> This led me to do loads of Googling and stuff. I ended up spending ages reading this forum [http://www.saafe.info/main/index.php](http://www.saafe.info/main/index.php). Really interesting to get a totally genuine insider's perspective. Seems to me that most of these girls are at the higher "escort" end of the spectrum though as they are mostly charging more than the prices I found on AdultWork (which is kind of like Just Eat but for prostitution. Browse at your peril: [http://www.adultwork.com/](http://www.adultwork.com/)). Fascinating.

<comment><USER3> There's lots of online resources to find sex workers. What website you use, is probably determined by what country you're in. I've never heard of adultwork.com. There are even review sites where users can review - often in unnecessary & very creepy detail - their misadventures.

Twitter is also a very useful resource for sex workers and clients. It's a useful way for a worker to promote themselves and for potential clients to get a feel of the person before making a booking.

Even in a country where sex work is legal, I feel there is still quite a bit of opportunity to create a better online resource. Especially one that caters to the sex workers more. I feel a lot of websites are too client-centric and not as useful as they could be for client or worker.

<comment><USER4>
        > There are even review sites where users can review -
        > often in unnecessary & very creepy detail - their
        > misadventures

Do you find detailed reviews of stereos to be creepy? How about a detailed review of a guitar teacher's services? Why is the detail for sex work creepy?

<comment><USER3> A lot of men go into unnecessary graphic details most of which are not really useful and unnecessarily objectify the women they review. It would be like reviewing a guitar tutor by describing how they placed their fingers on the fret board or how they turned the pages of their song book.

<comment><USER5>
      "unnecessarily objectify the women they review"

I'm not commenting on whether or not the reviews are "creepy", but c'mon; these women objectify themselves for a living. Once you go down the road of selling your body I think you lose the right to complain about objectification. They are literally selling themselves as an object.

<comment><USER6> Well no, they are literally selling a service. If they were selling themselves as an object, the purchaser would actually own them.

<comment><USER5> Well, yes, they are selling their body for a short period of time, and the type of "service" they are selling is not irrelevant. If you want to play semantics then fine; they're _renting_ their body. It all amounts to the same thing and doesn't change my point. They are objectifying themselves, so I think we can cut the PC nonsense.

<comment><USER6> I don't disagree with the notion that they're objectifying themselves. I do still think your phrasing was inaccurate. Nothing political about it - it was plain incorrect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Slightly related: the adult business is being rejected by Google play and the app store. I think some big co should sell a modified android phone (like telcos do) with a preinstalled adult app store. Plus it could work for other adult materials such as strong-language comedies and such.

<comment><USER8> _> 'I think some big co should sell a modified android phone (like telcos do) with a preinstalled adult app store.'_

I expect that selling a porn phone would be like selling vibrators. If you really want to move the later you need to call it a neck massager.

I think plausible deniability / actual versatility is key in selling anything for which a big unstated selling point is enabling 'sex'.

Porn undoubtedly helped speed the adoption of VCRs and later Internet connected PCs, but they were sold as a way to watch Bambi with the family or for the kids to do homework.

<comment><USER9> I'd call it the phone for grownups, who don't need a nanny appstore or company deciding for them what they can or can't install.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm just imagining what an app/website would be like, _if_ prostitution was legal.

You would probably select hair color, bust, age, ethnicity, body type, and see recent test results for STI tests. Then you'd probably get an estimates time when they'd arrive to your place.

It would be extremely interesting to see anonymous user data from such a service.

<comment><USER11> Isn't prostitution legal in Germany? I wonder why it isn't happening there.

That said, I think the market for GFE and escorts is the future since legal prostitution means a general depression in prices so its no longer worth it to engage in what's actually a pretty physical activity.

<comment><USER12> From the article:

> FOR those seeking commercial sex in Berlin, Peppr, a new app, makes life > easy. Type in a location and up pops a list of the nearest prostitutes, > along with pictures, prices and physical particulars. Results can be > filtered, and users can arrange a session for a €5-10 ($6.50-13) booking > fee. It plans to expand to more cities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There's a dark half of this market that wasn't mentioned in the article-- as prostitution moves online, so does human trafficking. Here's a report on the topic: [http://technologyandtrafficking.usc.edu/report/](http://technologyandtrafficking.usc.edu/report/)

<comment><USER3> Which is why prostitution needs to be legalised and regulated and people need to stop stigmatising it. It becomes much less of a problem when the people involved know they have rights and can safely go to the authorities if they need help.

<comment><USER14> Prostitution is legal and regulated in The Netherlands. That doesn't seem to help with human trafficking. In fact, it's the top destination for human trafficking according to the UN ODC and it keeps rising. I am not sure, but have a strong feeling that's the case in the other countries where prostitution is legal and/or regulated.

Do you care to back up your claim with some evidence or at least shed some light how you came up with it in the first place?

<comment><USER15> (Some) people in the Netherlands have also been pushing hard to get prostitution marginalized again, largely under the banner of human trafficking.

Do you know for example that most human trafficking number includes every prostitute that has paid someone for assistance with moving to the Netherlands? Like finding a house, opening a bank account and things like that?

Human trafficking is to prostitution what child porn is to online privacy.

<comment><USER16> At least some of the UN's figures on human trafficking are based on the amount of news reports about it - which, given all the activist groups with good press contacts using it to argue that prostitution should be banned, is not a terribly accurate measure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Maybe we showcase our sideproject one day on hackernews. Created on a weekend last year... Created with Django

international sex database isexdb.com

[http://www.isexdb.com/](http://www.isexdb.com/)

[Sorry, throw away account, as you may imagine...]

</comment><comment><USER18> Women are not commodities and the only disruption we should think of in relation to prostitution is how to abolish it. I think anyone who benefits from prostitution should be regarded as a pimp, and that includes programmers who write code to make prostitution "available anytime, anywhere."

If you are serious about gender equality and about human rights, please stop for a minute and educate yourselves in relation to the following questions: * Can a teenager truly and freely choose prostitution? Does she have an alternative? Should we allow people to become slaves if they choose to? Should we allow the selling of human organs in the free market? * What are the mortality rates and health risks facing women and men in prostitution? Is it like any other occupation? Does it bear any similarity to a guitar teacher? * Cui bono? Who benefits from prostitution? * Are there any happy stories of people in prostitution? When they share their experiences, what do they tell? How does it feel like to be penetrated 12, 15, 20 times a day?

Here are some links to abolitionists sites: [http://prostitutionresearch.com/](http://prostitutionresearch.com/) [http://www.veronicasvoice.org/](http://www.veronicasvoice.org/) [http://abolishprostitutionnow.wordpress.com/](http://abolishprostitutionnow.wordpress.com/) [http://www.antipornography.org/ex-porn-star-Vanessa- Belmond....](http://www.antipornography.org/ex-porn-star-Vanessa-Belmond.html) [http://www.enddemandillinois.org/](http://www.enddemandillinois.org/)

<comment><USER19> What an idiotic comment. I am so serious about gender rights that I have talked to an actual prostitute and treated with her as much respect as I would do to a mother, sister or friend. Especially in my country where the average people are so regressive that if they hear that a girl has kissed before marriage, they look down upon that girl. However, like a lot of professions, I think the best way to tackle prostitution is to legalize and regulate it. It's only in poor places where it is illegal that human trafficking is rampant, whereas it is very easy for some humans to take advantage of the situation. And yes, there are people who are in prostitution by choice. As long as it is regulated by the government (sorry American libertarians, the government actually has a lot of use in countries like mine, irrespective of what you like to think) with proper medical check-ups, strict laws against abuse, it is a very important part of civilization which should never be allowed to become "extinct". In fact, I would argue that prostitution is what keeps a natural lid on male aggression and violence and helps society in more ways than people give it credit for.

<comment><USER18> There is no need to argue about the issue of legalizing prostitution since it has been tested and failed to produce better conditions for the people in prostitution. Just look for reports on the results of legalization in Germany for example, where the legalization increased demand, expanded the "market," and increased human trafficking.

Regarding your conviction that it "keeps a natural lid on male aggression and violence." I would argue that it is completely false and degrade men, but if you insist I would urge you to volunteer to the joy division and keep the lid on male aggression and violence yourself before volunteering other people to do the nasty job.

<comment><USER20> Interesting about Germany and the increase in human trafficking. When they chose to legalize, I thought may be this is a good thing.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Asylum for Snowden won't stop Greenwald from publishing more leaks - <AUTHOR> http://rt.com/news/asylum-nsa-leaks-greenwald-037/

<comment><USER2> Obama's DoJ has just announced the new policies saying they won't consider journalists as "co-conspirators" of whistleblowers anymore (why was that ever the case?!).

How long do you think that will last if Greenwald will keep publishing ever more embarrassing leaks for the administration. Weeks?</comment>


Steve Jobs movie starring Ashton Kutcher to hit theaters in April - <AUTHOR> http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-73897616/ <comment><USER2> I wonder who will play Woz... or will it go that far back. Going to be tough to beat Pirates of Silicon Valley...

<comment><USER3> It says in the article that it's Josh Gad <http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1265802/>

<comment><USER4> Pic in costume: [http://laist.com/2012/06/12/new_photos_ashton_kutcher_as_ste...](http://laist.com/2012/06/12/new_photos_ashton_kutcher_as_steve.php#photo-1)

Vs. reality from 1975: <http://coe.berkeley.edu/forefront/fall2005/images/woz2.jpg>

Seems to be pretty close on the facial hair, but the actor is quite a bit more overweight than Woz.

That link also has pics of the guys playing John Sculley and Bill Gates, in costume.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is going to be terrible... Ashton was cast just because he kind of looks like a younger Jobs, not because he can act.

<comment><USER6> He can act. He's also pretty tech savvy. Don't be so critical without seeing ANYTHING relating to the movie besides a few articles - there's not even a trailer out yet.

<comment><USER5> I'm critical of Ashton, not the movie. He is a terrible actor. Terrible acting ruins movies. His tech savvy has no bearing on the movie. He isn't running apple, he is just playing Steve Jobs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if it'll be an honest account of Jobs' life or just the popular bits. There is a big difference between the man and the legend.

<comment><USER4> I would guess it will be 1971-1985. Meeting woz, founding Apple, creating the Mac, hiring Sculley, getting kicked out. Then a epilogue card at the end that gives the rest of the story. That early part has a lot more interesting details out there, compared to the later years which are still pretty secretive and we really only know about the public parts.</comment></comment>


The 187M Dollars Gmail Bug - <AUTHOR> https://thehftguy.com/2017/04/04/the-187-million-dollars-gmail-bug/ <comment><USER2> If you just put a unique subject each time - perhaps include a date or time stamp, this problem goes away.</comment>


Ask HN: Will there ever be fully decentralised YouTube? - <AUTHOR> I know there are DTube and Lbry.
but those are neither fully decentralized nor provide enough performance. <comment><USER2> Well, there's PeerTube, which is federated. I guess it's not decentralized, but there's no single central server, so it probably meets your requirements.

<comment><USER3> PeerTube is also special because it uses the activityPub format, so anyone on Mastodon or GNUsocial can follow somebody on PeerTube.

</comment></comment><comment> d--b Popcorntime in a way was a decentralized video service.

Performance would degrade for less popular videos.

<comment><USER4> It can be solved. For example: assign peers for videos with lower number of peers instead of assigning peers for currently watching video. Please correct me, if I'm wrong.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Adopt a cloud - <AUTHOR> http://www.adopt-a-cloud.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I created this little site based on an idea I found on Half bakery (<http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Adoptacloud_2eorg>).

It uses the Play framework and a mathematica script to detect the clouds.</comment>


Open Source Developers: Don't Block Organizations You Don't Like - <AUTHOR> https://www.techrepublic.com/article/open-source-developers-stop-blocking-organizations-you-dont-like/ <comment><USER2> The idea that one should be compelled or be obligated to support a group or organization that acts against one's morals is abhorrent.

I am sure that much of the open source developer community does not share the author's moral flexibility. Those that do can fill the void of products or services that conscientious objectors may no longer provide.

<comment><USER3> The author is not suggesting that developers outright support bad organizations:

> Of course, you can be an open source company and choose not to sell to an > organization you find objectionable. At various open source companies for > which I worked, we refused to do business with pornography or gambling > companies, for example. Chef, in like manner, could choose not to do > business with ICE. That said, at my open source companies, we could not > block those same organizations from using our open source software (and some > did), just as Chef couldn't block ICE from using its open source code.

If you put code into the world, you have to realize people you dislike are probably going to use it in some form. The alternative is keeping the code (and end product) closed and only giving it to people you vet.</comment></comment>


The argument against "downvote". A slight violation of the First Amendment - <AUTHOR> There has been several discussions lately about the quality of stories/comments on HN and several users are growing angry at certain stories ranking high on the front page.
Several users including PG have proposed to add "downvote" for stories, thus prevents news "lynching" Michael Arrington, Twitter etc... to go far up the hill.
Assuming a story or comment meets the YC standards (grammar, vocabulary...) and is not disrespectful to anyone or any group of people, I think "downvoting" is against evolution. It is a few step backwards for a community driven news portal.
I have witnessed several times users being downmoded simply because they did not agree with another user. Although they may give a valid reason, they are being prosecuted for having their own thoughts about a particular subject. This is bad to the point where if one cares for karma, which noone should, they may slightly alter their thoughts so they won't be condemned for thinking differently.
"Thinking differently". Now this is not to say that all users must have opposing views, but it is truly acceptable to have a different opinion, and noone should suffer the loss of karma points for having an opinion. This reminds me of Galileo's story.
I suggested yesterday that "silence is louder than downvoting" and that cost me 3 Karma points. Being  hit for speaking your mind is clearly a "violation of the first amendment". Now, how is this different from firing an employee who doesn't agree with a certain company policy. I am confident that if a user could see who downvotes his stories, there will be a lot less of that. If you are doing something you would not do if you knew your identity will be made public, then there is "integrity" in question here.
Downvote is a clear step backward. How can you evolve in an environment where you risk being prosecuted for speaking your mind? This concept sounds like Iraq under Saddam Hussein. If one does not agree with another, then one should simply reply and make his argument in a civilized manner. Words are your tools, and if ones need "immunitions" to get his point across then one needs to learn how to communicate. Only those who  cannot defend themselves using words, would use bullets.
I truly apologize if anyone feels offend as it is not the purpose of this article. Each and everyone is  free to speak his mind respectfully and elegantly without fear of retributions.
EDIT: The first amendment enforces the FREEDOM OF  SPEECH, which is disencouraged by Donwvotes. <comment><USER2> First, the first amendment has absolutely no relevance here, since it is a restriction being placed on government, not on individuals. There is a chronic habit to misinterpret this as "I can say what I want, wherever I want, whenever, however", which is an interesting __opinion __, but one with no correlation with the legal definition. The 1st isn't intended to--and doesn't --defend the imagined right to express your views on other people's servers.

Next, your real life examples are a bit sensationalist. The difference is that Saddam was killing people for expressing opinions, whereas we want to downvote poorly expressed and undefended opinions. A more apt comparison would be the university setting, where challenging opinions will be accepted on the merits of their presenter's ability to defend them. The same applies to Galileo, who was persecuted for his theories (not, note opinions). I believe that we'd be overjoyed to have a Galileo posting here, since he would link to his mathematics and let us examine the feasibility of his theories for ourselves.

Finally, to address the meat of your argument against downvoting, I think you have misdiagnosed why people are downvoted. I rarely see people downvoted for their opinions, but frequently see people downvoted for failing to __effectively defend or explain their opinions __. Since we are trying to foster discussion, the actual opinion is usually less important than explaining how they have arrived at their opinion, and why their opinion is viable. Simply expressing an opinion is noise in a conversation often boils down to noise, and opinions on their own won't feed the starving mind: the meat of the argument lies in explaining opinions.

Thus, I believe that the downvote allows the community to exert a stronger preference for comments that add value. If you want to avoid being downvoted, express you opinion _and then defend it_.

<comment><USER3> "Simply expressing an opinion is noise in a conversation often boils down to noise, and opinions on their own won't feed the starving mind: the meat of the argument lies in explaining opinions." - <USER2>

To play devil's advocate here (because I happen to agree with your comment on the whole), the argument could be made that a downvote (without attribution or explanation) is just this sort of noise.

<comment><USER4> Very low amplitude noise. I'd rather folks downvote than spout nonsense just to say something in opposition.

<comment><USER5> If all they have is nonsense, then they shouldn't be able to downvote, right? What is the argument here, I don't want other people to see it but I can't say why?

<comment><USER4> _If all they have is nonsense, then they shouldn't be able to downvote, right?_

If all they have is nonsense, then they shouldn't be able to post a comment, right?

The question isn't, "Should someone be allowed to be stupid." It's "Should we give them an outlet for their disagreement that causes less disruption to the conversation?"

We can't solve stupidity. But, we can make it have less impact. I don't know that downvotes help prevent stupidity, or help reduce the impact of stupidity...but I think it does.

Of course, you're assuming that the post being downvoted or commented on has merit by virtue of someone having taken time to write it. I'm assuming that everybody (including me) says stupid stuff all the time, and a downvote is a low-friction, low-amplitude means of saying "I think this is stupid". It doesn't censor anyone, and it doesn't prevent people from having a discourse with that person if they think it's worth their time.

That's all I'm saying. (Though I could be having a stupid moment right now.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This post and conversation is embarrassing. With sophomoric ramblings like this at the top of HN, I wouldn't introduce this community to colleagues.

<comment><USER7> Honestly, this post is exactly why we need downvotes (and I'm surprised it's been upvoted so much). I agree that the threadstarter is wrong, but explaining your viewpoint and why you think he's wrong contributes far more to the discussion than unnecessary personal attacks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "silence is louder than downvoting"

Your entire quote, a response to my earlier comment, in context, was:

"Well said edw519. Silence is louder than Downvoting."

Oddly, I was, and still am, not sure what you meant. This was one of those comments that can mean 2 very different things, depending on the interpretation of the reader.

On one hand, it sounds like agreement, with a semi-profound simile attached.

On the other hand, it sounds like mocking, perhaps with a little attitude.

Do you see how it could be interpreted either way, depending possibly on the mood of the reader?

You've just entered territory where we've all been. When we can't see your eyes and body language, hear your tonality, and have never met you, all we have is the words on the page. They have to stand on their own. So they did. And the community responded.

At one point, I resorted to using tags like <sarcasm> and </sarcasm> because I had to; no matter how "smart" my readers were, the words alone didn't have the power to stand on their own. I had to give them a little help.

Exactly what did you mean? Just tell us, openly and honestly, and let us surprise you with our open response. For a community that puts a premium on the clever smarta$$ retort, we still value sincerity above all.

So instead of worrying about the rules of the game, why not just explain what you meant and let the chips fall where they may. In a forum like this, that's pretty much the best any of us can do.

<comment><AUTHOR> "I almost never downvote....The only time I downvote is if something is extremely inappropriate, .....I never downvote when I disagree....If I disagree, I reply with my disagreement.....Not much to learn from downvotes.......".

You explained why you believe downvotes are not the best option in your book. That is what I agreed with.

I apologize for going further and adding "Silence is louder than downvoting" as it may imply you said so.

"Exactly what did you mean? Just tell us, openly and honestly, and let us surprise you with our open response. For a community that puts a premium on the clever smarta$$ retort, we still value sincerity above all."

I have always been open, and honest, and sincere. And being open and sincere and honest has cost me a few karma points and so will they again when I hit "reply". I respect each and everyone here.

"So instead of worrying about the rules of the game, why not just explain what you meant and let the chips fall where they may. In a forum like this, that's pretty much the best any of us can do."

I take it you thought I was being sarcastic. I agreed with you and I failed to explain why I did. Again I have been participating "in a forum like this" for a few days and I respect anyone here and I would not undermine anyone's comment or post.

EDIT: I apologize if some users (Thaumaturgy...)have a hard time understand my writing. Indeed English is not my first nor second language, but I am trying my best to improve my communication skills. Thank you.

<comment><USER8> +1

I'm not sure why you got downvoted.

Then again, I _never_ really understand other people's voting. That's just the way it goes.

Your English is fine. Keep on posting!

<comment><USER9> I would assume it is karma bombing in lieu of being able to downvote the dreaded first-amendment post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Unless the US government has taken over Hacker News, the first amendment is not relevant.

<comment><USER11> His reference to the First Amendment is clearly allegorical - is that not obvious?

<comment><USER10> From his edit, it is clear that it is not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Bravo, this is the best argument in favour of downvotes (or, indeed, fonwvotes) I've seen so far.

</comment><comment><USER13> Regarding stories, I think off-topic ones should be downvoted/deleted. Off- topic being defined as "Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." Having this text or a link to the guidelines on the submit page would probably be nice. (see <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>)

Regarding comments, there are also some guidelines and not following those guidelines clearly deserve a downvote. I personally think that downvotes shouldn't be used to "say that you disagree". I prefer that it be used to filter out useless comments.

</comment><comment><USER14> "I am confident that if a user could see who downvotes his stories, there will be a lot less of that. If you are doing something you would not do if you knew your identity will be made public, then there is "integrity" in question here."

This, to me, is the most interest assertion in his whole prognosis. How _would_ people use downvote if they knew all could see who had done it?

<comment><USER15> It seems that downvotes would definitely decrease - I would bet that a large portion of them would not have been made in public. If nothing else it might increase the number of replies to a post - It would be slightly embarrassing to see your name as one of the downvoters if you didn't also reply to the post.

Enabling downvotes on submissions could also be interesting - maybe to downvote a submission you have to comment about it or about why you downvoted it. Revealing voting could add an additional feature to the site - if we see that someone who likes the same stuff voted something up, then we'll probably read it.

<comment><USER14> I think the general attitude here, is to provide the functionality to a) disagree and to b) bury bad content.

In those separate issues, transparency becomes an issue, particularly with the downvote. I'm definitely in favor of promoting transparency in order to disagree or bury bad content.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wow, I'm speechless. You need to get some sense of scale, buddy.

<comment><USER17> You aren't speechless. Accuracy, please ;p

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm going to assume that English isn't your first language, and not address the language of your post.

The ability to downmod a submission meets a practical need on sites like this one. As it stands now, without the ability to downmod a submission, it's fairly easy for a small group of people to dictate what does and does not show up on the front page. Your submission, for example, is currently in the number 2 position, with just 9 votes (slow day).

The ability to downmod allows the community as a whole to say, "this is not the sort of article we want on this site."

The way downmodding is used, the particulars of how it's set up, depends on the site and the community. I don't think there's as much danger of people downmodding something simply because they don't want anybody "speaking their mind"; I think this whole thread is proof positive of that, where nobody agrees with you and yet a number of people are spending time discussing it.

Also, I figure there's a good chance that there're enough smart people involved here that somebody can figure out how to make downmodding work well.

Based on what you wrote, I would've guessed you for a troll, but you've been around on here for over a year and have around 900 karma. So maybe not.

</comment><comment><USER5> EDIT: This was a very poor post, but I think there's enough in there to discuss (aside from the awful first amendment stuff and the rhetorical rambling that went on -- please, learn to structure your arguments!)

I'd like to bring up one interesting point: Karma shouldn't matter -- yet the entire site is built on karma: who has more can downmod comments, top posters are regularly identified, all sorts of fun articles come out about how karma relates to posting style, etc.

You can't have a karma system and then say "but it doesn't mean something" Surely it's not the end-all or the greatest thing ever created, but the entire reason karma works is that it has some value to the users.

So however the discussion proceeds, can we please get beyond this "but karma shouldn't matter when you post" That's like saying it's okay to lose a couple of points in tennis if you're having a good time. It's a true statement, but it does not describe how one plays tennis. (instead it describes how having fun is more important than the rules, which is true of all sorts of things) If we're going to discuss one particular rule/moderation system, then such comments are unhelpful, imo.

</comment><comment><USER19> Sigh I miss the days when Hacker News was YCNews and all we ever talked about was how to start a business and what programming languages we love to hate.

</comment><comment><USER20> > I think "downvoting" is against evolution

As a side note, evolution requires killing the weak.

When people say they want HN to go back to the Start-up News days, or Reddit to go back to the Lisp days, they are saying that they don't want the site to evolve, they want it to stay the same. But they do evolve, the strongest ideas are those that reproduce in the most minds - those which are the lowest common denominator.

</comment><comment><USER21> Even though the 1st amendment (or any amendment for that) has no bearing on HN, I agree with the spirit of your idea. I remember a month back, someone said something that I found funny (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=193369>) ... and I put a LOL on it and I lost karma points for it. Seemed nuts to me.

<comment><USER22> I think downvoting on an "lol"-type comment is appropriate. Making that sort of comment adds nothing valuable to the conversation and actually detracts from the comments by adding unnecessary clutter. Whenever you want to "lol" a comment, just upvote it.

<comment><USER21> lol - I couldn't resist :-P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The first amendment does not enforce "freedom of speech" as you imply it. It limits congress from passing laws that limit your freedom of speech, i.e. what you say is none of the government's business. That doesn't mean squat elsewhere, you have no rights of "free speech" in privately owned places. If I don't like what you say I can kick you out of my house, my bar, or off my website.

</comment><comment><USER24> I had an idea about this, you could require a reason when downvoting.

It might make people less likely to downvote stuff unless they have a good reason. It might also help explain to the original poster why they are being downvoted.

I'm not really sure what the implications of this would be though. Perhaps it might make it harder to get rid of obvious trolls and spam.

</comment><comment><USER25> "against evolution"

What? Protecting a story from the social equivalent of ecological pressure would actually be the opposite of what you suggest.

"violation of the first amendment"

No it isn't. Karma isn't in the constitution. No one is deleting your story. No one is forcing you to be silent.

"How can you evolve in an environment where you risk being prosecuted for speaking your mind? This concept sounds like Iraq under Saddam Hussein."

I believe you mean "persecuted". I don't think getting downmodded counts as persecution unless you live an incredibly easy and insulated life. Talk to Tibetan monks or any number of religious or ethnic groups around the world today who have been hunted, imprisoned or killed to get some perspective. Saddam? Um, no, if this was like that you'd have been killed for your perspective. This is NOTHING like that. Period.

</comment><comment><USER26> I miss PG. The mods need to get back so they mark deads.

</comment><comment><USER27> This is private property. You have no rights here other than those granted by the hosts. Start your own site if you have a problem with it.

</comment><comment><USER28> I think the solution is really simple. Add down voting and make all kinds of points invisible - or atleast individual karma.

</comment><comment><USER29> I agree with your point (we shouldn't have down votes), but not your reasons for it. As others have said, the first amendment doesn't really apply here.

The real problem with down votes, imo, is that it effectively gives everyone two votes on a story. First you get your one point for submitting it or voting it up, then you can get an additional point (relatively) by voting down everything else on the new page. Now, not everyone will do this, but some people will, which negatively affects the karma of everyone who submits stories, providing a disincentive for anything that one isn't sure is going to be immediately popular. This leads to a decline in the overall quality of stories. The sad truth is, when you take someone's name and put a number next to it, there's some people that will just lose their minds trying to get that number as high as possible. (Not to mention monetary incentives for marketing firms, as has happened on Digg and probably reddit, too. Maybe that's not as much of a concern for Hacker News, since the audience has been kept relatively small)

My solution, when I see a story I don't like on the front page, is to go to the new page and vote up every story I DO like.

<comment><USER18> Your problem with downvotes has little to do with the idea of them, and more to do with the implementation.

It's not hard to implement downvoting in a way that doesn't have the problems you described.

Also, I would assume that people ordinarily do upvote the submissions they like. The only way you could be describing anything different is if you meant that you upvote everything that you don't dislike, which I think runs completely counter to the idea of upvoting.

<comment><USER29> So, do you have an example of an implementation that doesn't have this problem or are you just assuming one exists? If there is one, it must be a well kept secret, because there hasn't yet been a social news site that's adopted it.

One I've considered is to temporarily suspend down voting after submitting a story. But this has some unintended consequences in that it unfairly penalizes the people who submit heavily, who provide a lot of value to the site.

Your assumption that people ordinarily upvote submissions they like isn't necessarily valid. I usually read the site pretty passively, and only upvote things I think are really spectacular. It doesn't mean I don't like the other things I read, just that they didn't really blow me away.

"counter to the idea of upvoting" is a pretty vague phrase. Counter to your idea maybe, my criteria for upvoting fits my idea of upvoting just fine. Not everyone thinks of a vote the same way, as another story on the front page right now points out, this is one of the problems with a site like this.

<comment><USER18> | So, do you have an example of an implementation that doesn't have this problem or are you just assuming one exists?

Neither! I'm assuming one _can_ exist. I think I have an idea on how to make it work; I just don't have a forum to test it on, yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'd say a good solution for articles, is to give people a downvote on articles when they reach a certain level of karma.

As far as comments go, I think it's a far more complex debate, but I think the current system there works quite well.

</comment><comment><USER31> If anything, not being able to express your disagreement or displeasure towards a comment should be considered a violation of the First Amendment.

Also, telling someone that their comment is idiotic by way of reply or down arrow is far from persecution. It's almost as if in your ideal world, everyone's comments would be accepted and passed on with glee, without any sort of counterbalance. If that's the case, the Earth would still be the center of the universe.

And... no one is preventing you from using the service following a down vote, it's your choice. Had your internet connection been cut off and your computer seized following a submission of a less popular or less agreed upon comment, your argument would hold some validity.

</comment><comment><USER32> How I love US law as an argument in ethic discourses..

(Though I generally agree with rokhayakebe.)

</comment><comment><USER33> _This reminds me of Galileo's story._

Or possibly the Spanish Inquisition.

:/

</comment><comment><USER34> All I can say is, congrats, PG, for making a place on the net important enough for people to invoke the first amendment.

</comment><comment><USER35> I don't know what to say other than that I was thoroughly disencouraged after reading this post.

</comment><comment><USER36> Dude,

1.) Perspective. This isn't the same at all as saddam and has nothing to do with the first amendment.

2.) This casual usage of the concept of lynching bothers me. A lot. I would probably fire someone who threw it around casually like this, on the spot. Go have a conversation about it with people from the communities that actually dealt with lynching, and read a damn history book or two. Would you say Microsoft 'holocausted' a company they bought out or drove out of business? Fuck no. Don't say 'lynching' in such a casual way. It trivializes decades of horrible abuse towards an entire race of people and creates an environment where a lot of people feel subliminal racism. You might not know anyone to point out to you just how grating things like this sound to people, or perpetuates racism, so let me.

3.) Your concept of evolution is very narrow and, well, unevolved. Evolution just deals with how a system responds to it's environment. No restriction will stop evolution, it will just evolve around whatever change happens. Digg evolved to blow goats, it's still evolution.

4.) Stop identifying with your ideas so much. Who cares if people downvote your ideas. Either they are wrong, or you are. You can learn something either way. Maybe what you learn makes you think the community is wrong, or that you are wrong, or that you could just write better. It's not a really a judgement on you.

<comment><USER31> And of course, people should also refrain from saying 'I just baked a pizza' to a Jew, 'My dad is going to whip my ass' to a black person, and 'I bombed that test' to a relative of a fallen soldier.

Sure, lynch can be used offensively, but then you'd have to look at it contextually.

No dictionary returned a result for 'to Holocaust,' either.

<comment><USER36> I think the word "lynching" cannot casually be used non offensively by a community of mostly white people.

There is no context where a community of white people casually joking about lynching isn't going to cause minorities to feel subliminal racism. It's way different then casually saying you baked a pizza to a jewish person.

<comment><USER18> | ...by a community of mostly white people.

That is, by definition, a racist sentiment. I know that you won't see it that way, but it's still worth pointing out anyway.

What a person does or does not take offense to is entirely up to them. I happen to think that it's reasonable to consider both the context and the intent of what's said, but some folks just like to get wound up about things.

<comment><USER36> No. It's a sentiment about demographics that relates to race. If you don't see a difference between that and being racist, I don't really know what to say to you.

There are lots and lots of people alive in their 40s and 50s who survived or had family lynched. There are lots of people in their 20s and 30s who's childhood (like what side of town they could go to and what girls or boys they could date) was deeply affected by aftershocks from this.

It's not so much about taking offensive as not triggering something that is still salient in a lot of people we should want to feel comfortable here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> "The first amendment enforces the FREEDOM OF SPEECH, which is disencouraged by Donwvotes."

While I understand your point, the first amendment applies to Congress making laws. Not privately run forums.

</comment><comment><USER38> I discourage downvotes on articles..the main reason being that digg allows downvotes on articles and look where its gotten them?</comment>


The brain's 7D sandcastles could be the key to consciousness - <AUTHOR> https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23531450-200-the-brains-7d-sandcastles-could-be-the-key-to-consciousness/ <comment><USER2> The article is behind the paywall.

<comment><USER3> And what a paywall. $49.99 USD for a ___month_ __of access?

<comment><USER4> How is this voted upto front page, I bet a very small subset have access.

I can't find another source easily</comment></comment></comment>


Launched today and on track to be Australia's largest tech Kickstarter campaign - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gofar/gofar-make-your-car-the-smartest-car-on-the-street?ref=nav_search

<comment><USER2> Really smart product. Can;t wait!

</comment><comment><USER3> Awesome!</comment>


Linus blocks system d maintainer from further kernel commits - <AUTHOR> https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/4/2/420

<comment><USER2> If this is representative of the behaviour of systemd developers, some linux distributions have some good times ahead.

<comment><USER3> It's not. Usually they are much worse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's sad if this affects kdbus. How else can you deal with attitude problems of this magnitude though?

<comment><USER5> On the one hand it is sad to see that such an apparently simple[1] bug report turn into a pissing contest of sorts. In this specific case, there is an obvious wrong side (systemd) and an obvious right. However it appears like egos have taken over technical merits in this discussion.

On the other hand though, I am glad every time something like this happens because it just reaffirms my belief that Open Source is not just a good 'philosophy' but a good engineering practice. Where technical considerations outweigh personal quirks ...for the most part. I say for the most part because, the role of the maintainer obviously matters a whole lot. In this specific case, Linus has yet again proved that he cares a lot (more than most, read gnome developers) about being consistent. Not having regressions is relatively higher than not breaking user space, which by itself is an important goal.

\--

[1] simple from a perspective of coder who definitely is not a kernel or systemd developer and is making an educated guess about the complexity of the bug in question

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'll link to my other comment on this; I'm not impressed by either side at the moment:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7522776](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7522776)</comment>


An Artificially Created Universe: The Electronic Computer Project at IAS (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://www.ias.edu/ideas/2012/george-dyson-ecp <comment><USER2> I am Von Nuemann's shadow, I will not let him down!

These projects are dedicated to his memory: [https://github.com/churchofthought/ScatterLife](https://github.com/churchofthought/ScatterLife)

Currently working on Life V2, a cellular automata based reproduction of General Relativity. Life V2 is being done in WebGL using a single Fragment Shader with ARB_shader_image_load_store in the most performant way possible.

</comment><comment><USER3> Are there any good books, historical or technical, that go into detail about the foundational relationships between higher order, theoretical mathematics and real world applications in things like computers? Like as was covered in this article.

<comment><USER4> This article is an excerpt from the book Turing's Cathedral, which, coincidentally, I'm currently reading. Sometimes I wish it went into a little more technical detail (and I think it's a little too charitable toward von Nuemann and the IAS) but it's still a worthwhile read and I think covers that era much more completely and with more depth than other works. Anyway if you like that article, the book is equally fascinating throughout.

<comment><USER5> I'm reading "Memories That Shaped an Industry" at the moment.

It's less charitable towards Von Neumann.

<comment><USER6> For searchability later: Emerson W. Pugh, MIT Press</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN:What's one API that you wish existed which doesn't exist now? - <AUTHOR>

If as a hacker you had to make a wish for any one non-existing API, what would that be? What would it do and how will you use it? <comment><USER2> A way to obtain a summary of any article on the web. A browser plugin will display it once on the page at top left, or else mousing over any link with an adjacent dot or altered colour will pop it up too. I have an idea to build such a site (and have given it much thought)... but no one's been able to pull it off as yet.

</comment><comment><USER3> unified ncurses - native app - html5 framework.

I have some UIs which I end up writing in ncurses and then have to go back and rewrite as a native app or a web app. Ideally there'd be a way to write one version, lets say in python, with widgets that are translated to html form elements or windows/osx text boxes or ncurses text fields ...</comment>


How we use keyword tools for market research - <AUTHOR> http://blog.launchbit.com/best-practices-for-keyword-searches

<comment><AUTHOR> I wrote this for first-time entrepreneurs, so a lot of people on this list may not find these tools to be new. But, I thought it was worth sharing how we think about using them, especially when so many people are overly crazy about using them for SEO/SEM.</comment>


Ask HN: How to get started on creating a streaming service? - <AUTHOR> Hi all, Ive been looking around for a technical explanation of how video streaming works and cant really come up with anything. If anyone has any links or sources that can help id appreciate it.<p>Thanks <comment><USER2> If your content isn't particularly controversial and you care more about the business and product side of things rather than boring engineering then just go with Cloudflare Stream (or similar products like Mux or Bitmovin, plenty of choices out there). For real-time, WebRTC is quite popular (and there are also infrastructure providers like Daily.co). The engineering of video streaming is not particularly fun or interesting. You will be operating at a low-level with respect to both networking and video codecs. Focus on your product, you can roll something custom when you have revenue. Video compression algorithms advances are powered by the lost hopes and dreams of CS PhD students. Do not waste your time on it if you have a product to sell and a business to run.

<comment><USER3> Jumping on the thread here, but do you happen to have a larger list of (non- branded) video hosting/streaming services?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you are looking for a self-hosted solution, check out Streama [0] and Jellyfin [1]. I have Jellyfin running in a box at home for personal videos, and it works pretty well with very low maintenance.

[0] [https://github.com/streamaserver/streama](https://github.com/streamaserver/streama)

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

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't know much about the space other than RTMP being a popular format. The source of youtube-dl might be an interesting place to start: [https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube- dl/blob/master/youtube_d...](https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube- dl/blob/master/youtube_dl/downloader/rtmp.py)

If you're thinking of creating a streaming business, you better have a good business model because it's notoriously hard to create a streaming business that brings in enough revenue to cover bandwidth costs.

<comment><USER6> RTMP is a mostly dead streaming format for live content....

<comment><USER5> Thanks, what are the newer formats?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> [https://github.com/nareix/joy4/](https://github.com/nareix/joy4/)</comment>