Building static sites with Middleman - <AUTHOR> http://12devs.co.uk/articles/204/ <comment> alok-g >> Middleman is a static site generator using all the shortcuts and tools in modern web development. __Getting started __.

Most of the websites, including Middleman's home, for some reason jump too fast from defining what the project is to "getting started". There needs to be a link to more information about what the project is, tailored to people who are unfamiliar with the space, followed by more information defining what distinguishes the project/product from others in the same space. Once the reader understands what the project is and how it fits what she is trying to do, and why it is more suited to them than others, then comes the Getting Started aspect. If the reader needs to go though the "Getting Started" section and try the product out to figure how it would help them, then the product pitch has not been done right or at all.

In this blog, we see a mention of Jekyll, followed by no words about why someone should not just use Jekyll which is also stated to be the at the core of this movement.

While the answers may be obvious to some people, they are not obvious, and should always be explicitly stated.

The "hello, world" paradigm itself is often misused in my opinion. In a large number of cases, "hello, world" is not a demo program but rather a test to make sure installation went right. I would first like to see a demo of the key aspects of the product, explained on the website, before getting to the hello world.

Ah, it's Friday today. No seriously, the intention of my rant is to either have someone explain to me why product websites are so often like this or try to influence them to change.

</comment><comment><USER2> What is the advantage over using $your_favourite_webframework and wget -r?

I've been doing this for a while (deploying to S3) and the most annoying part is really to upload to S3...

<comment><USER3> We mostly use middleman for static sites and it works really well. Recently we built a "microsite" based off of an existing full rails app we had so we went the wget route. My experiences are:

\- Middleman dir structure is simpler for frontend devs to learn.

\- Don't need to switch between dev and prod environments to work on the site vs. build the final version. Switching between the two was pretty painful as our rails app used jruby and was pretty large so it took a minute or so to restart the server and re-compile all the assets if in prod. Plus need to remember to `rm -rf public/assets` after switching back to dev.

\- Wget doesn't run javascript so you might not get all assets. For example, we used a responsive image swapping technique like <img src=1px.gif data- desktop-url='xxx' data-mobile-url='yyy'>, which wget wouldn't know how to get those assets. So I ended up putting all such assets into a single dir and `mv`ing it into the build dir after the wget.

\- Wget doesn't pull down assets inside IE conditional comments (json2.js, ie.css). Perhaps it has an option to do that though.

I've used the s3_sync plugin for middleman which makes the upload part a breeze.

<comment><USER2> I see. I'm not using rails but the Play! framework / Scala, don't have the pain of switching.

However, I get your point about javascript/conditional comments... I had a sort of similar problem in that I had a couple of landing pages that don't have any incoming links from the main page. I just had the framework generate a sitemap for me and used that as a starting point for wget, but didn't upload the sitemap itself.

Thx for the tip regarding s3_sync!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Used Jekyll quite a bit. These days, I'm beginning to like Yeoman - [http://yeoman.io/](http://yeoman.io/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Good writeup, and I appreciate the section on deploying to heroku. Have used middleman before and had issues getting it running on Heroku.</comment>


CNN Ignoring "Up to 275 Military Personnel to Iraq" - <AUTHOR>

I know this kind of world-news content is usually outside the scope of HN, but I was hoping we could turn this into a meta-discussion of how ridiculous CNN really is. Over six hours ago, Obama announced that he would be deploying "up to 275 military personnel to Iraq." By all accounts, this should be breaking news, especially when it directly contradicts his statement from two days ago that he would not be putting "boots on the ground."
Multiple mainstream news outlets, including BBC [1], Reuters [2], The Guardian [3], and even Fox News [4] are featuring this story as frontpage, breaking news. And yet, on CNN, the story is nowhere to be found on the front page, neither in the U.S. edition [5] nor the International edition [6].
Does anyone else appreciate the absurdity of this? To me, it's a prime example of how mainstream media outlets like CNN, relied upon by many in the U.S., are no more than a mouthpiece -- or a muzzle -- for the administration. I have no doubt that CNN is withholding this story at the request of the White House, where I'm sure many bureaucrats are hoping they can tide over the mainstream American sheeple with stories of Tornadoes and Bush-bashing.
Millions of Americans rely on CNN as a source of their news. Is it any wonder that so many Americans are ill informed or lacking any substantial opinions of their own?
[1] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-27875053
[2] http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/16/us-iraq-security-usa-warpowers-idUSKBN0ER2XU20140616
[3] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/16/us-iran-talks-iraq-john-kerry
[4] http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/06/16/us-sending-275-troops-to-iraq/
[5] http://i.imgur.com/2pDmKhq.png
[6] http://i.imgur.com/2t8RKJT.png <comment><USER2> [http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2014/06/15/u-s- defen...](http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2014/06/15/u-s-defending- the-indefensible-in-iraq/?hpt=wo_r1)

<comment><AUTHOR> Interestingly their CNN breaking news twitter did report on the troops. But they have certainly not featured it on the front page. Maybe it's because it's early morning in US.</comment></comment>


Why astronomers (and other scientists) should program in Python - <AUTHOR> http://bellm.org/blog/2011/05/27/why-astronomers-should-program-in-python/

<comment><USER2> Actually most astronomers and physicists I know are already moving toward Python.

Coming from a mixed particle physics and astronomy experiment, almost all our tools are written in Python for researchers, but usually with ROOT (C++, <http://root.cern.ch/> ) underneath. ROOT is python friendly.

SciPy/NumPy, PyROOT, PyFITS are all unbeatable tools for anything in Physics or Astronomy as far as I'm concerned. Throw some knowledge of C in with that, and you can scale anything up to supercomputing clusters or back down to your laptop, and that's a very important, powerful thing for a scientist.

</comment><comment><USER3> In high energy physics we've recently completed a big transition from FORTRAN77 to C++. PAW and CERNLIB were standard in the 90's but now most major experiments use ROOT. You can use ROOT with Python but most people don't bother. Programming comes pretty naturally to most physicists and learning the details of the ROOT libraries and experiment specific libraries takes much more time than picking up C++. I've seen most grad students get comfortable with the basics of C++ in a couple of days while they typically struggle with the usage of the libraries for a number of months. The documentation is autogenerated from the code so in many cases you need to read through the library code to figure out how things work. In these situations it's very helpful to be as comfortable as possible in C++. The benefit of using Python instead of C++ would be fairly minimal in my opinion because so much of analysis work depends on understanding these libraries that are written in a lower level language out of necessity.

What occurred to me while reading this article though is that we should perhaps be using Python for our scripting needs. We have a number of scripts that we use regularly for querying databases and submitting jobs and most of them are written in Perl. I think that Python would be much easier to read and hack; especially because most of the physicists don't know Perl.

</comment><comment><USER4> Background: I've done a touch of IDL astronomy programming with Marc Buie. I haven't touched IDL or astronomy for about a year, though I am still in contact with a couple astronomers.

In my (anecdotal) experience, it seems that a number of astronomers would actually love to move to Python but I've only seen one actually make an effort to make the move. The primary reason cited has been that some particular library modules they use haven't been ported yet. Glancing around the links from the article, it definitely seems that the porting has come a long way, but that's not the same thing as completeness.

Now, obviously the best solution would be if these astronomers each took it upon themselves to translate their own necessary tools and contribute back to the Python community, but that's pretty unrealistic, I think. I write Python for at least a good 8-10 hours/day and my IDL was clean, tight, and well- documented and I'm still terrified of the thought of translating my project.

Of course, the other question I have (and would _love_ an answer to) is how well Python holds up performance-wise to well-crafted IDL astronomy code. We were working with a data set large enough that, even on a cluster, each step of the process took between several days and a couple weeks. If Python could improve that, it would have been amazing, but if it would only hurt then Python would basically be useless for that project.

</comment><comment><USER5> You know what's even easier to learn and more beginner friendly, has great debugging tools and is very powerful? MATLAB.

And most engineers/scientists use it. If you know MATLAB, I don't see why you would even bother going to figure out the dozens of Python libraries available.

<comment><USER6> MATLAB is a bad choice for science. It is proprietary, making it difficult to share work among people who do not own a license, therefore making it more difficult to reproduce results.

Not to mention the fact that the MATLAB language is extremely awkward anytime you want to work with something that isn't a matrix.

<comment><USER7> GNU Octave [0] is mostly compatible with MATLAB. GPLed and implemented in Fortran and C++, it's pretty much hack-able to your needs.

 _> MATLAB language is extremely awkward anytime you want to work with something that isn't a matrix._

From my limited experience, that's true but rarely of relevance. You can, and want to, use matrix operations all the way. Less bugs (simplier code), faster execution.

[0] <http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/>

<comment><USER6> In my experience 90% of scientific data analysis work is: getting the data, cleaning it and transforming it into a form suitable for analysis. MATLAB fails miserably at these tasks.

<comment><USER7> _> 90% of scientific data analysis work is: (...) and transforming it into a form suitable for analysis._

Is that infinite recursion or endless loop? Or is there an end to it, caused by quantum nature of work -- at some point the 90% becomes an undivisible unit? ;-)

((terribly sorry, couldn't help it))

At any rate, that sounds like you want to feed the input through a pipe of simple, programmable textual filters -- cue sed, awk etc. And then pipe into standard input of something -- I know Octave has standard input, MATLAB I wouldn't be so sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I imagine any kind of number crunching would be done in a different language or use optimized libraries. I wonder how many numerical apps are moving from Fortran to modern C++, e.g. using templates for optimized number crunching.

<comment><USER9> I think that a lot of 'number crunching' scientific programs that evolved in the 1990's were written in Matlab. Most of them in the 1980's and earlier where in FORTRAN77. Where the comparison to python really gets interesting is the addition of the REPL, the (now mature) NumPy/SciPy libraries, tkinter (python Tk libraries), and a bunch of other common things that are causing many established scientists and engineers to ditch their Matlab licenses and move towards python.

This is more geared at the analyst level, which you could compare astronomers to, rather than the scientific programmer level (who have been writing C or C++ in the 1990s/2000s instead of Matlab). Python makes things neat because the same libraries (mentioned in the article) that the scientific programmers are using can now be used directly by the analysts/astronomers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Maybe finding those people and engaging them on a personal level would help more than submitting to HN.</comment>


How I made a 26.55% profit on Bitcoin and Ethereum in 26 days - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@duncanriley/how-i-made-26-55-profit-on-bitcoin-and-ethereum-in-26-days-a0f90d2536dd <comment><USER2> Buy and hold has already been the best strategy with bitcoin.</comment>


From visiting DJ to accused of aggravated homicide in Mexico - <AUTHOR> https://thump.vice.com/en_us/article/i-went-to-mexico-for-a-dj-gig-and-ended-up-in-jail-on-suspicion-of-murder <comment><AUTHOR> I found this quote to be quite interesting:

> _Here in the States, electronic music culture—the culture I had tried so > hard to be a part of—revolves so much around drugs. That 's fine, but > everyone's talking about no GMOs, all organic, free range, and they're still > gonna do a fuckin' rail of cocaine off the back of a toilet seat._

...mostly in that I think almost _any_ youth-dominant culture will embrace idealism and 'changing the world' publicly while partaking in hedonism privately/socially.</comment>


How to Create an In-Case-of-Emergency Everything Document (2011) - <AUTHOR> https://lifehacker.com/how-to-create-an-in-case-of-emergency-everything-docume-5817021 <comment><USER2> > Perhaps the easiest method for creating a centralized document or set of > files would be creating a Google Spreadsheet

Wow such bad advice. I don't want Big Brother G to have any insight into my private life. The advice about Truecrypt is redundant as TC was supposedly backdoored a few years back and users were told to avoid the latest version. Veracrypt[0] FTW.

[0] [https://www.veracrypt.fr/en/Home.html](https://www.veracrypt.fr/en/Home.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> For those looking for a dead man's switch, I've used [https://www.deadmansswitch.net/](https://www.deadmansswitch.net/) in the past successfully.</comment>


HTML/CSS is easy - <AUTHOR> http://www.drawar.com/posts/htmlcss-is-easy

<comment><AUTHOR> Some interesting comments there.. especially love this one: "HTML & CSS. Easy to learn. Difficult to master."</comment>


Facebook Planned to Spy on Android Phone Users, Internal Emails Reveal - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/ashk4n/status/1099117028026118144 <comment><USER3> How is Facebook not producing malware?

I struggle to see how they're legally different from malvertising: perhaps there's some vague terms about data or advertising (which also exists for malvertising! you agreed to the ads!) but at no point was there a "meeting of the minds" in which Facebook was authorized to bypass security mechanisms to exfiltrate data from the system.

I don't see how Facebook's behavior is anything but classic "hacking", and a willful abuse of the CFAA.

I think it's time we started addressing gigacriminals[0] like Zuckerberg: we need to stop pandering to people who commit millions of crimes a day, at "web scale", and just use force.

If Facebook doesn't want to get the memo that wanton criminality isn't okay, then it's time to use force to correct the behavior.

[0] I use gigacriminal in the technical sense: I believe Mark Zuckerberg, as the leader of an organization, has ordered over 1 billion criminal acts to be commmitted for his profit.

<comment><USER4> Send him to prison

<comment><USER5> Lock 'em up!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I know we have lots of FB employees at HN.

I would be genuinely curious to hear, via throwaway accounts if need be, about how FB staff rationalise things like this happening.

Do you shrug it off as not a big deal in the long run? As FB still doing a net amount of good versus what you perceive as isolated incidents like this? I'm just in good faith trying to figure out how people willingly work and continue to work for outfits that repeatedly engage in behaviour such as this. I know there are lots of speculative reasons we can put forward, but I think we have a great opportunity here in our community to have first-hand input.

<comment><USER7> I'm in a similar boat.

I worked with a group at Facebook, and I almost refused to take the project on. I'm the type that has deleted me Facebook and uses a blocker to stop their tracking, and when I showed up to work with the team, there were surprised that I didn't have an account.

From what I could tell, the teams are fairly isolated and thus don't see the forest for the trees. When someone points to an article like this, it seems that they just shrug it off and think the author probably got it wrong because it doesn't seem that way from the inside (again, they only work in isolated teams, but still think they have enough of an insider's perspective to discount it). Even huge companies we know now as bad had a ton of employees, like Enron.

I would really like the perspective of someone "on the inside". Facebook is one of the companies I trust the least with my data, yet they have so much talent that I can't help but wonder how they convinced them to work there (is it just the money?).

<comment><USER8> Not a employee, and I like my data to be safe and not exploited as much as anyone. But, let me try to take a swing at this.

First, obviously there is the money factor, you may choose to ignore it but it is a big factor for many.

Second, the tech is truly state of the art and it is good experience/skill to have/pickup.

Third, I'd say almost everyone passing judgement about people taking up such jobs also judge having such jobs on your resume as a positive. That drives one's value as a candidate up even post such a job. If people care so much why don't they provide an incentive, would you hire someone who turned down such a job compared to someone who gained experience in such a job? No one ever asked me - so which jobs offers did you discard and why, during any interview.

Fourth, almost every big company has its scandals, now how does one decide which ideal is worth giving up job offer for, is big financial ok? is big pharma ok? is big tech ok? is big anything ok? is working on open source in such a big something ok, say open source software others use at their jobs? is a start up using questionable practices to get to the next level ok? define what's ok according to you, and why do you expect that would be the same for everyone else.

<comment><USER9> Which technology at Facebook is state of the art?

I'd wager that for any area you pick - they probably have a lot of high-end technology relating to image/video storage, data replication, machine learning, and network-layer infrastructure - there are other more morally and ethically sound places where engineers could learn and apply that same knowledge.

We're already reaching the point where working for toxic companies is considered a negative during resume review; I won't provide any such examples here but the bay area tech scene is full of examples of environments where being a former employee at a company can at least warrant raised eyebrows.

Scandals may occur; what matters is how the organization responds to them. And yes it's certainly acceptable to leave an organization if you're not happy with the way it has handled such situations.

The only point I find difficult to disagree with in your comment is the monetary motivation.

<comment><USER8> >Which technology at Facebook is state of the art?

Say data at scale, petabytes of data for example. I'd be curious to know if you can name all companies that have this scale of data and are morally acceptable to you. :) Google? Amazon?

> Scandals may occur; what matters is how the organization responds to them. > And yes it's certainly acceptable to leave an organization if you're not > happy with the way it has handled such situations.

While I can see your point of view, as an engineer you can find other opportunities that may not be as lucrative but are comparably still good. But, I also find it hard that its the engineers that get this judgement regularly on HN while you give users and shareholders a free pass. A scandal surfaces, repeatedly, users and shareholders don't care, nothing changes and for some reason that's ok while engineers are expected to be the moral compass. Wonder how many judging here use instagram/whatsapp/fb and/or own stock in such companies, perhaps even have family and friends that continue to use these services but somehow, I guess, its easier to judge strangers and expect them to behave a certain way instead.

<comment><USER9> For me personally, none of the 'really' major tech companies are; I don't desperately enough need to work on the very cutting edge to trade-off against morality. But I'm not innocent either, most actions have (ideally unintended, and later rectified) negative externalities.

It'd be an interesting discussion to have with someone who feels like they really _need_ to stay at the very peak of private data accumulation - <USER2> in my view those actions are potentially very detrimental to wider society, certainly depending on the culture. I'd extend more respect to Google than the others from what I've seen, although opinions may vary elsewhere.

Regarding scandals and reactions - users and shareholders can and do care, and they vote with their feet, or wallets, or ideally both.

The battlefield in these cases is over how much truth about the scandal and resolution are published. A good organization will generally tend towards more transparency in both, while perhaps keeping a few cards close so that they can react to any potential retaliation (such is the world of rapid fake news that we live in).

Edit: s/data accumulation/private data accumulation/

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Save a trip to Twitter. Here's the link to the story:

[https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252458208/Facebook- plann...](https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252458208/Facebook-planned-to- spy-on-Android-phone-users-internal-emails-reveal)

<comment><USER11> The twitter thread has a few of the source documents, and a few things not mentioned in the story, this particular e-mail seems... interesting: [https://twitter.com/ashk4n/status/1099146500725063680](https://twitter.com/ashk4n/status/1099146500725063680)

Also, that twitter user is a former senior leader at the FTC, and claims something here to be "textbook @ftc deception": [https://twitter.com/ashk4n/status/1099164648379580416](https://twitter.com/ashk4n/status/1099164648379580416)

<comment><USER12> Serious question -- how does Facebook keep getting hit with these 5+ year-old emails getting published? Did they not have any email retention policy?

Is the root cause that they migrated off of email and did all their sensitive discussions in "internal tools" with no actual data retention enforcement? If so, that seems quite ironic.

<comment><USER13> Many people keep copies of emails. Perhaps they feel compelled to make the information public, and maybe they felt more compelled once they received their RSUs and cashed them in.

"Most full-time employees receive RSUs (restricted stock units) which are shares that become sellable on a set schedule over four years. " [https://www.quora.com/Do-Facebook-employees-get-stock- option...](https://www.quora.com/Do-Facebook-employees-get-stock-options)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Where do fb recruit engineering talent ?

are we (engineers) really that indifferent to what organizations we support do ?

<comment><USER15> This is just an anecdote but being a PhD student at a well-known university in CS I often hear from undergrads (via teaching) what they think about companies/where they go for internships.

Observationally, ethics does not even enter the equation. Especially career- driven students from backgrounds where name-brand prestige is important just want such a name-brand on their CV.

Not that faculty are any better given how many academics effectively sign away their lab to FB through 'collaborations'. All they see is resources to use, name-brand recognition, a big personal pay-check, and publicity for their work.

What I find most mystifying is that this is a literal non-topic. At best someone may forward a blogpost about a security leak and make a snarky comment, but I have never witnessed any political discussion.

<comment><USER14> I have had a quick run of an analysis - Academically vs Self trained Computer Engineers among my peers.

From the small sample, it shows very strong correlation between working in ethically questionable organisations and finishing Academia.

Is the opposite for most of my Self trained peers.

<comment><USER16> Anecdotal evidence, but that has been my experience as well.

<comment><USER17> And mine as well, and anecdotal for sure. But, if there's something to it, I'm not sure how to account for it. Though one thing comes to mind.

Some time ago, a study was performed in my home country to look into possible correlations between academic performance and work performance among doctors. As it turned out, the best performing doctors were not those with top grades, at least not before entering medical school.

Those who did best had left high school with adequate grades, but not good enough to get into medical school. Rather, they had spent time and effort with supplementary studies to get their grades up to the level where they could apply for medical school.

The possible explanation that was presented was that some of those who had great grades straight out of school simply chose to become doctors because of the promise of prestige and remuneration. Those who didn't, but still fought their way into medical school, however, had a calling beyond money and status.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> >Facebook, which charged 30% service fees on the transactions, revealed in the internal email, "that an overwhelming majority of Apps using Facebook Payments to solicit funds are likely fraudulent."

No surprise here, again. Facebook launches a feature that allows criminal behavior, reaps the profits, and only tries to roll it back after they are under intense scrutiny.

There is an easy way to fix these repeated problems: Hire people who care about ethics. Of course, the fact that they don't shows that they are only looking for a rubber stamp.

What kind of "privacy" team do they have that approved all the garbage listed here?

</comment><comment><USER19> I work at one of Zuckerberg's charitable organizations, but I'm considering resigning because of this kind of thing. At some point it's not possible to separate the charity from the source of the money.

</comment><comment><USER20> I think Computer Science needs to come coupled with exposure to a philosophical ethics sub-curriculum. I run into too many intelligent people who haven't ever spared a thought toward how to recognize "what is right? What is wrong?"

Philosophy may not equip you with a concrete answer, but it definitely equips you with the machinery to look at something and recognize there's more to the question than some manager saying it's legit.

</comment><comment><USER21> Yeah, everyone hates Facebook, but is there anything new here? Targeted advertising based on location and relationship status? That's not a secret, that's one of the biggest selling point of their product. Can someone explain to me why should I be outraged?

</comment><comment><USER22> I've often argued that the basic "dumb fucks" sentiment from Mark Zuckerberg's university days has not changed within Facebook's leadership and frequently got push-back that Mark Zuckerberg has matured and is now a responsible steward of our data.

I feel vindicated by news like this. It's pretty clear that privacy overreach and violation at Facebook are not "accidents". It's standard operating procedure.</comment>


Programming Languages Personified - <AUTHOR> http://leftoversalad.com/c/015_programmingpeople/ <comment><USER2> Okay, this one is getting sent around the office. Great find thanks for sharing!</comment>


'Sweetie', a computer-generated girl, lures sex predators - <AUTHOR> http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11151608 <comment><USER2> Lawyers here in The Netherlands are saying that those sex predators cannot be prosecuted because no actual girl was harmed. Furthermore this could be seen as incitement, which lowers chances of prosecution even more.

So while this surely raises attention for the issue, I'm not at all sure if it's a lot more useful than that.

<comment><USER3> This is my concern, too: there was no crime outside of thoughtcrime, and I'd rather we didn't start prosecuting that. That these men _intended_ to engage in child exploitation doesn't alter the fact that they didn't.

<comment><USER4> At least existing American legal standards define "thought crime" literally. You can't be convicted of a crime merely based on your intentions, but if you take a "substantial step" (or something similar, depending on the jurisdiction) towards committing the crime, then it's no longer just "thoughts" and you can be convicted for an attempt. At least some of these men completed every step that was under their control: engage the girl and pay the money. That's an attempt, not just a thought crime. It's like lining up and firing a shot at what turns out to be a mannequin cleverly dressed as your ex- wife. Still attempted murder.

<comment><USER3> What's the purpose of the law? Is it to give redress to victims and punish perpetrators, or is it to punish criminal intent -- that is, thought? Do we view criminal law as a way to enforce societal rules against harming others, or do we view it as a means of punishing people who harbour antisocial intentions?

I suspect the answer is "both", but I'm leery of using criminal law to enforce consensus views on how one should think. I'm far more comfortable with using the law to address actual harm than to punish the desire to cause harm or even an attempt to do so. I realize, however, that there are many cogent counter- examples: being convicted of drunk driving does not require you actually hurt someone, trying to buy drugs in a sting does not require there actually be drugs present, etc.

<comment><USER4> First, you have to keep separate three distinct things: 1) criminal intent; 2) actions to carry out that intent; 3) concrete injury to some victim.

"Thought crimes" refers to punishing people for (1) only. But just because (3) is lacking does not mean we're talking about "thought crimes" so long as (2) is present.

Second, the purpose of the criminal law is not to give redress to victims. That's the purpose of the civil law. The purpose of the criminal law is to punish those who are morally culpable and to create societal norms certain kinds of behavior. That is precisely why (3) is not necessary to prosecute a crime.

<comment><USER5> > The purpose of the criminal law is to punish those who are morally culpable > and to create societal norms certain kinds of behavior.

The purpose of any law should never be to punish the culpable. It may very well be reasonable to punish the culpable if it _results_ in normalizing societal norms by way of a threat deterrent ("if you do crime $x, you'll get locked up just like this bad boy here"), but simply punishing a criminal for the sake of punishing -- hurting, torturing, locking up -- is an idea that I don't think stands to any thoughtful, philosophically-informed scrutiny.

I think if we get over this type of thinking society will improve. Now and then whenever debate about capital punishment gets picked up, people point out something about the histories of serial killers: almost invariably they've had particularly shitty childhoods, they were born to drunkards and criminals themselves, they were abused -- sexually, physically, they grew up in cultural filth, they had virtually no access to opportunity. The thing is, thieves, sexual predators and other folk who do sometimes petty crime aren't greatly dissimilar in this respect, they've also been enraged to some point to lose a sense of control, to lose respect for themselves and others. So to reform society for lasting good, the idea of punishment -- that you should make someone suffer -- is totally wrong. Instead we should should have social programs that hook criminals up with psychologists and therapists, see what's wrong, what's bothering them, give them a dignified place to live, and let them heal and let them rejoin society when they're better.

After all, this strategy works and gives good results where it's been tried: [http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/09/why...](http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/09/why- scandinavian-prisons-are-superior/279949/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Articles like these always talk about how huge the child pornography business is, but the language always strikes me as similar to the scare stories from the 80s about satanist cults, etc.

I guess I could be wrong, I don't know if there are reliable sources for that kind of information

<comment><USER7> The reliable sources are the hundreds of thousands of images of child sexual abuse on the hard drives of people arrested and prosecuted for these offences. Checksums of these images are made and distributed (to help find other copies; to help filter these images) and some people attempt to identify the victim in order to arrest and prosecute the offender and to offer help to the victim.

Satanist cults were always wing-nuts and piss-poor media reporting. Unfortunately, there's some awful reporting about images of child sexual abuse, and the perpetrators of child abuse, and the victims of sexual abuse. (Demonising sexual abusers is not helpful.)

<comment><USER8> The article claimed it was a "Multi-billion dollar industry". I don't think there's any compelling evidence that this is true.

<comment><USER7> > I don't think there's any compelling evidence that this is true.

Have you looked for evidence, or is that a feeling that you have? I'm not snarking, just wondering.

I guess it depends how you count the money. There has been a decline in the use of credit cards to access images of child sexual abuse. Most images of child sexual abuse are free, or traded for other images. But commercial trading exists.

The best site for modern information is Europol [https://www.europol.europa.eu/sites/default/files/efc_strate...](https://www.europol.europa.eu/sites/default/files/efc_strategic_assessment_- _public_version.pdf)

You have people hosting images, and people paying for access to those images, and people paying to have those images made. You have people travelling to rape children. You have adults selling children into the sex trade. I dunno, that feels like it could be a couple of billion dollars.

Some offenders have millions of images in their collections.[1] In 2005 there were about a million images online.[2] About 50,000 images are added yearly.[3] Sometimes children are raped "on demand", with the video being streamed by the rapist to some one who has ordered and paid for that rape to happen on video, and who is directing the abuse.[4] Parents sell their children into the trade of images of child sexual abuse.[5]

Wired have some pricing information. [http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-10/16/child- abuse-i...](http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-10/16/child-abuse-images- entrepreneurs)

> [previous para talks about decline in use of credit cards, and rise of free > images of child sexual abuse] _New material has also become a currency in > itself, with value ascribed to the novelty of the images. So individual > video clips might cost as little as $10 (£6.20) each, with subscriptions for > $50 (£30) for three months. Although one video file of new material on > demand can cost as much as $1,200 (£748)._

[1] [http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/oct/05/sold- mum...](http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/oct/05/sold-mum-dad- images-child-abuse)

[2][3] [http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/home-affairs/what-we- do/policies/org...](http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/home-affairs/what-we- do/policies/organized-crime-and-human-trafficking/global-alliance-against- child-abuse/index_en.htm)

[4] [https://www.europol.europa.eu/content/new-cybercrime- report-...](https://www.europol.europa.eu/content/new-cybercrime-report- examines-disturbing-trends-commercial-online-child-sex-abuse)

[5] [http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/oct/05/sold- mum...](http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/oct/05/sold-mum-dad- images-child-abuse)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Finally the the Turing Test has been passed! This does not seem as impressive as when imagined decades ago. Fooling perverts, even to the point of sending money, seems to be much, much easier than creating more generally useful artificial intelligence. But I guess it is a step forward...

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

EDIT: As pointed out below only the video feed was artificial. The chat was with a live human. Impressive but very different than the classic Turing Test.

<comment><USER10> I thought that this was just a virtual face for a human researcher who was conducting the actual conversation - at least that was how the demonstration in the article was done. If they were entirely virtual I'm not sure they'd need 10 weeks to accumulate sufficient hits.

<comment><USER9> You are correct it was just a virtual video feed. I misread the article.

I wonder how successful they could be with current AI technology. It seems that in this narrow situation and very "motivated" opponent it could be very successful.

<comment><USER11> There's a Spanish initiative called Negobot that seems to rely on AI much more than Sweetie does — as its name suggests, it's a bot, not just a decoy. (Article in English: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/11/negobot- virtual-lol...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/11/negobot-virtual- lolita-game-theory_n_3579716.html) and paper: [http://www.esi.uem.es/~jmgomez/papers/cisis12.pdf](http://www.esi.uem.es/~jmgomez/papers/cisis12.pdf))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am glad that they said the current laws are enough. It always seems like people use these issues to get more power. I want to say something about how that probably works for their cause but I can only imagine most people[1] 'thinking of the children' and adding as many laws as they can.

[1]the public that elects officials

</comment><comment><USER10> This is the YouTube campaign page. Obviously NSFW in subject matter, though not explicit. [https://www.youtube.com/sweetie](https://www.youtube.com/sweetie)

One good thing is that they've started with the perception that pedophiliac behavior is a mental rather than solely moral problem. It's quite interesting, if you can put up with the awful 'dramatic' music.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is the future of law enforcement in this field, and possibly others. The marginal cost of setting up virtual honeypots is now so low that the obvious strategy is to simply swamp the market with them.

<comment><USER13> Brave new world. An online world full of agent provocateurs that detect all crimes before they are actually committed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> A grim as it sounds, I prefer to see online underage prostitution rather than real prostitution.

I don't know.

On one side, this behaviour is wrong and should stop. On the other, it let those young girl make money without the risk of getting sick, pregnant or abused. The worst that can happen is her getting scammed.

But don't get me wrong. Child abuse should NEVER be encouraged.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is a nice counterpoint to the article yesterday about a pentest team using a fake woman to spearphish their way into a US government agency that was posted here yesterday. [0]

[0]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6664572](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6664572)

</comment><comment><USER16> At a risk of being downvoted:

I am not sure "webcam sex" hurts anybody. The girl is not physically harmed in any way.

<comment><USER17> So, if you had a daughter, it would be ok if she made a little extra money on the side?

It's kind of strange that anyone would have to explain why this is a problem. Wonder what just happened to your Google, Facebook, and NSA social graph profile? :-)

<comment><USER18> (I imagine you mean "young daughter" \- this is about the problem that children under the age of consent are involved, not about women in general.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I never understood this kind of field work when officers propose using prostitution/drugs/you-name-it services. It looks like a crime promotion: person might hesitate and never do a bad thing in years or they might do, but officers do help in it.

It's almost like a prison for thoughtcrime. How do you know the crime would happen if the person weren't helped(sic!)

</comment><comment><USER20> So the Perverted Justice/To Catch a Predator folks are spared from Baumol's Cost Disease? (i.e. the problem in which your costs increase as fast as general economic growth because you have to use a real human on a mission- critical path)</comment>


Bruce Schneier: The iPhone Will Not be Safe From Malware - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/apple/2011/11/25/iphone-will-not-be-safe-from-malware-even-with-apple%e2%80%99s-rigid-policies-expert-says/ <comment><USER2> What is the context of this quote?

> _I don't believe the iPhone will be more secure because of Apple's rigid > policies for the app store._

I think it's pretty obvious that at this point in time the iPhone _is_ more secure because of Apple's rigid policies, so why would Bruce say something like this? Of course there are other attack vectors, but it's not as if Apple is just skipping through the marigolds with pigtails and a giant lollipop. What they are doing with sandboxing (and dogfooding it) on OS X is extremely security conscious, certainly on par with anything anyone else is doing in consumer device security.

Anyway, I blame the article author, because I'm sure Bruce has some interesting insight that is utterly impenetrable from a fluff piece like this.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here's the direct link to Schneier's posting:

[http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/11/android_malwar...](http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/11/android_malware.html)

And the question around Apple's policies is one of the questions in the comments.

</comment><comment><USER4> What's the justification? Loophole in Apple's policies? (it's not clear from the article)

<comment><USER5> My educated guess: "Time Bomb" style code - ie malicious code that activates after a certain date.

Objective-C supports dynamic method invocation, so it would be trivial to obfuscate calls to private APIs. Slip something like that into a decent app and you're set. Likely Apple's binary analysis wouldn't be good enough to catch all of this so with a little bit of guess and check it could be accomplished.

Something similar to this has been proven (attack vector was safari) and the security researcher ended up getting his developer account banned [1].

Add in the incentive of harvesting credit card information (future) and contacts (current), mix with a little bit of social sharing via twitter (@my_friend I found an awesome app that makes Justin Bieber fart sounds), and you've got yourself a semi-decent infection cycle.

[1]: [http://www.dailytech.com/Developer+Demonstrates+Serious+Secu...](http://www.dailytech.com/Developer+Demonstrates+Serious+Security+Breach+in+iOS+Apple+Bans+His+Account/article23216.htm)</comment></comment>


Why programmers work at night? - <AUTHOR> http://swizec.com/blog/why-programmers-work-at-night/swizec/3198

<comment><USER2> "Because being tired makes us better coders"

In my opinion this is completely wrong. In fact I believe that coding should immediately stop once we feel tired. The low quality of code produced when the programmer is tired can significantly affect the whole project some times resulting to very expensive reverse engineering.

The programmer should never exceed six to eight hours of coding and design combined.

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally agree with you on this. Perhaps, the writer meant in the same was as drugs has, allegedly, effect on creativity.</comment></comment>


Sequent raises $12 million from Russian and US funds for mobile wallet tech - <AUTHOR> http://www.ewdn.com/2013/07/11/californias-sequent-raises-12-million-from-russian-and-us-funds-for-mobile-wallet-tech/ <comment><USER2> I guess the name is already taken: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequent_Computer_Systems](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequent_Computer_Systems)</comment>


Observation of Dirac monopoles in a synthetic magnetic field - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v505/n7485/full/nature12954.html

<comment><USER2> The BBC coverage quotes a Lindsay LeBlanc, of the University of Alberta, "a physicist not involved in the study":

"Although these results offer only an analogy to a magnetic monopole, their compatibility with theory reinforces the expectation that this particle will be detected experimentally."

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science- environment-25946734](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25946734)

The overall phrasing seems to say that it's still just an analogue of a monopole, but that it's a far more useful analogue in a system that you could do meaningful experiments upon.

<comment><USER3> Physicists tend to be metaphysical sceptics on the whole, meaning that they arent really convinced that the implied objects (/particles/fields/etc.) of physical theories actually exist^. Merely that "something exists which makes the mathematics work". Seeing so many different kinds of math work for the same physical system tends to engender a kind of scepticism towards the "metaphysical power" of mathematics to imply anything ontologically particular about the world.

Now, when it comes to results like this, they are interesting because it doesnt really matter if there are magnetic monopoles if you "just wanted to use a magnetic monopole" \- you could create some in supfl. He.

The point is that whatever system enables the math to work is irrelevant to what ever uses theories will have for this math.

Of course it is still practically relevant, because a simple monopole experiment might be extremely expensive/difficult in Supfl. He.

NB^: Pop physicists who wax philosophical on TV shows tend to be sceptics but appear "hardcore realists" for TV.

<comment><USER4> > The point is that whatever system enables the math to work is irrelevant to > what ever uses theories will have for this math.

Additional explanation from someone who (also?) used to do research, with papers and all: we actually used objects we knew did not exist to do actual science. By "do not exist" I mean "they are make-believe theoretical objects that do not exist per se, but they are good _models_ for things that _do_ exist".

Science and engineering is full of these things. Holes in transistors: they don't exist, they're actually a certain type of _electron_ shifting their positions in a particular way, but the math would get a lot hairier (at no gain!) if you treated them as electrons. Electrical charges in classic electromagnetism aren't electrons at all -- they're small dots with charge on them, but the math would get a lot hairier (at no gain -- again!) if you didn't treat them like this.

Being able to model a phenomenon is very important, and being able to model it _simply_ is, for lack of a better word, God-given. Phenomenological models (i.e. models that model only the behaviour, not the inner working of a certain phenomenon) are as good as any other model, as long as you bear in mind that they are phenomenological: you can use them to reason about certain effects, but not necessarily about what causes them.

Before anyone jumps in to point out this is bullshit and that there's really more to life, I just want to remind everyone that we've been building buildings and bridges and shit based on a phenomenological model. Classical mechanics knows absolutely shit about how gravity works -- it just tells you useful stuff about what it does -- and I'll personally grab all the beer in the world for someone who finds an actual material point.

<comment><USER5> I guess an electron is "an actual point".

<comment><USER4> But it's not the only charge carrier. To put things in better context, classical electromagnetism actually _predates_ knowledge about the structure of atoms. The charges in its model are very much hypothetical particles, and that's why it only really works at macroscopic scales. Turns out that's actually enough for a lot of things :).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can anyone with a background in physics and/or interpreting _Nature_ publications comment on this? It appears to be a peer-reviewed publication, rather than something merely published.

My understanding of Dirac's monopole hypothesis implies that these results would be very significant for particle theory . . .

<comment><USER7> This isn't a newly discovered fundamental particle. This is a new form of behavior observed in ensembles of particles, in this case superfluid helium. This is an exciting new result in condensed matter physics, not particle physics. It's kind of surprising how much the mechanisms of particle physics (gauge fields and all that) carry over to describing the collective behavior of particles that's studied in condensed matter physics.

As to the sibling's comment from Lindsay LeBlanc, I don't believe that at all. While true magnetic monopoles are allowed by our theories, we just haven't seen any real evidence that they exist, and that's a bit strange. Personally, I don't believe they'll ever be observed.

(I used to be a particle physicist, for what that's worth. Take my opinions at face value!)

<comment><USER8> I just came here to say pretty much exactly what you've already said (both paragraphs, in fact). So I'll just chime in (as a physics professor and string theorist) to endorse your take on the article.

This is a cool result, and it's neat to see a realization of the Dirac monopole in a thoroughly quantum field. But it's _not_ a detection of a Dirac monopole for the usual electromagnetic field (which would be an amazingly big deal, and which I think most people don't ever expect to see).

<comment><USER9> The existence of a magnetic monopole would make maxwell's equations so much prettier. Plus validate dirac's proof of why electric charge is quantized. Sigh...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There's an additional article in Nature that describes the research:

[http://www.nature.com/news/quantum-cloud-simulates- magnetic-...](http://www.nature.com/news/quantum-cloud-simulates-magnetic- monopole-1.14612)

No it's not a monopole, Div B is still zero everywhere. Yes it is interesting. :)

</comment><comment><USER11> Full article for anyone curious: [http://ge.tt/2O8mr1H1/v/0?c](http://ge.tt/2O8mr1H1/v/0?c)

<comment><USER11> (link seems not to work any longer, mirror: [http://bayfiles.net/file/15Fqf/KfQTOj/nature12954.pdf](http://bayfiles.net/file/15Fqf/KfQTOj/nature12954.pdf))</comment></comment>


MiniNodes: ARM/Linux hosting on dedicated hardware - <AUTHOR> http://www.mininodes.com <comment><USER2> Very nice. Some comments/questions, in no particular order - 1 - Price. 9.99 isn't breaking the bank, sure, but kimsufi has a better price for a much better processor and package. 2 - Any plans on 64 bit as it becomes available? 3 - More options for OS/custom OS installation. 4 - Bandwidth charges, port speed, etc not immediately easy to find. 5 - Would love to see these on backed storage.

<comment><USER3> @axaxs

We definitely plan on moving up to 64-bit once lower cost alternatives are released in to the channel. Right now AMD Opteron A57's run $2,999, so, they are not very cost effective.

OS choices are more limited in the ARM ecosystem, so we went for the two most popular choices (available) first: Ubuntu and Fedora.

And, Bandwidth for now is unmetered, and set to 100mbit port speed. Hope that helps!

<comment><USER2> Thanks for replying. The Opterons are the dev model, right? I can't see them selling retail for 3k. That said, it could be interesting for those who want to get a head start to use something like a shared A57, for the right price. Anyhow, what about storage? These things aren't running on cards are they?

<comment><USER3> Correct, the Opteron's are the Developer kit, and are A57's.

Storage on these nodes is handled via loading the OS on to the onboard flash, and then an add-on SD card for additional data storage if requested. The concept for miniNodes is based on development and testing of software on ARM platforms, so, the storage is minimum, sure, but we don't envision these nodes as data warehouses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting idea but $10/mo is more than twice what I pay for a full dual core server with 160GB of SSD cached RAID10 and 1GB of ram...

<comment><USER5> Wow, which vps?

<comment><USER2> Not directed at me but I will share my findings since I've been looking recently. Hope it may help.

You can get full dedicated, 100mbps atom boxes for < $10 at kimsufi.

As for vps, I've not found a deal yet that beats wable.com. $8 a month, tons of ip addresses, multiple deployments(ie can split resources into 3 vps instead of 1), and they are having some strange promotion where they give you extra. I have right now, 5 vcores, 6gb ram, and 80gb ssd for $8/mo. It is openvz, though, if that matters to you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does not sound very stable or reliable:

With the recent leak of an SDK for the Allwinner A80 ARM processor, it is now possible to build Linux for the Optimusboard. However, the SDK does not appear to be a final build, and has quite a few bugs that have to be squashed before the build will successfully complete.

From: [http://www.mininodes.com/how-to-build-linux-for-the- allwinne...](http://www.mininodes.com/how-to-build-linux-for-the- allwinner-a80-optimusboard/)

Hosting on Linux using a leaked sdk , not my sort of thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> They don't host on that. It's just a how to post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wow, this is pretty cool. I've looked at Raspberry Pi hosts before, and almost all of them require you to ship the hardware to them.

</comment><comment><USER3> @msh - We don't host live nodes on that SDK. That is only some documentation for the community. =)</comment>


How Zoom works [slides] - <AUTHOR> https://builtformars.co.uk/how-zoom-works/ <comment><USER3> This isn't "How Zoom works". It's a 72 slide deck of complaints about the Zoom UI.

</comment><comment><USER4> I was surprised they didn't mention that after clicking 'Leave Meeting', a popup comes up with a 'Leave Meeting' button in it, that actually leaves the meeting. This inevitably means in every single Zoom meeting that everyone says goodbye and then spends a few awkward seconds actually leaving the meeting.

<comment><USER5> Better than risk of accidentally dropping out of meetings abruptly. I see many people still manage to do this and it takes a couple minutes to get them back on. There's also the real fun one when the host ends meeting for all on accident. It's same IRL when every says bye then awkwardly gathers belongings and leaves a conf room in silence

<comment><USER6> An alternative design, which I would generally consider superior, is to make it easy to undo leaving a meeting. (This wouldn't work for the host under the current behaviour model, because the host leaving needs to either assign someone else to be host, or close the meeting for everyone. But you could do it this way for everyone else. Whether it would require waiting room approval again would be an interesting question, however. As usual, there are complexities to be considered.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A large part seems to be about the invite feature and UI, which is something that I never encountered because I wouldn't even think about inviting people from inside a video conference software. Passing links around in other channels seems far more useful to me, and is the only way I access or share meetings. And Skype, where you first have to find the people you want to talk with is much, much more annoying there than just sending or receiving a link via an established channel like email. Of course there are many different use cases, and mine isn't necessarily representative.

But in general the most important part of the user experience for video conferencing is the amount of errors or bad connections that happen. For example, I recently use Microsoft Teams, one person was sharing the screen to present something, and for some people the shared screen simply froze and didn't update anymore. That kind of thing is seriously annoying.

The UI doesn't seem too important to me in this case because I almost never use any of it. After connecting in general the only button I use are mute and share screen. Doesn't mean the UI can't be significantly improved, but for me it isn't the most important part of the experience for a video conferencing tool.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I would say that I don't think I've joined Zoom and used it that way, its almost always either a set scheduled meeting where there is a dedicated room, or just an always up room that you join at a given time for more ad-hoc meetings.

At least part of the issue will probably be the disconnect between that style of more "work" usage and the fact its become tool at the moment for families to connect. In that regard, going through the UI as shown may be more common, and does have some more issues, though its also maybe less of a focus for a more work-focused tool.

It does seem to be decent enough for the non-host at least, where if they just blindly press the blue button on entering they'll be in the call/waiting room, which is at least fairly frictionless from a non-host point of view, and for me the bigger concern. I can deal with the UI, I'm more worried about my Grandpa or something working it out if I was doing a family call.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> When everything is chromium there is no competitive advantage for any of these chat applications. For example, before, Skype used to be based on the Qt framework and it used less resources and actually had _more_ features - <USER2> universal push-to-talk and better integration into the OS.

Welcome to the future - lets Javascript all the things... [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SCfNhyIo_U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SCfNhyIo_U)

<comment><USER10> > used less resources and actually had more features

I remember the time when there was a native client for Skype on Linux. It probably used less resources, yes, but it was horribly lacking in features compared to Windows or MacOS native clients. Now that everything is javascript, Skype on Linux works great, apart from being a godawful resource hog. I found it really pleasant to use over the last several years. Video calls work great, screen sharing works great, even conference calls work, which they never before did on Linux. Couldn't be happier with the changes.

<comment><USER9> So why did they force everyone else to use the Javascript version instead of only Linux? Why didn't they just improve the Linux version.

I use Skype everyday for work and my quality of life is noticeably different in a bad way :(

Plus, my poor laptop is now forced to run Skype, Zoom, Slack, Google Docs, and Discord. Its turned into a cooktop...

<comment><USER10> > Why didn't they just improve the Linux version.

You know, write once, run everywhere. It's programmer's dream :-)

<comment><USER9> Write once, run _poorly_ everywhere. It's a _lazy_ programmer's dream ; )

[https://medium.com/commitlog/electron-is- cancer-b066108e6c32](https://medium.com/commitlog/electron-is- cancer-b066108e6c32)

<comment><USER11> It really has to be laziness since the Qt framework is widely supported on Linux.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Spot on. I really wonder if all those people claiming "Zoom just works, unlike x" have really believed that the first time joining a meeting, or if they're just used to its weird UX quirks.

<comment><USER13> The real innovation Zoom brought to the table (IMHO) was not requiring you to make an account to join a call.

Inconsequential within a company where everyone already has a <whatever> account - but critical if it's a one-off or rare call - such as a vendor talking to a customer, a hiring manager inviting someone to interview, or a doctor calling a patient.

<comment><USER14> this, and the easy install process. it almost feels like installing malware.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Zoom has great video and audio. I think good echo cancellation, video that copes well with the network, lower latencies - we don't experience that directly but the after effect is you feel subjectively better about the experience.

I think picking each part of the UX apart is secondary to making the key feature work well.

<comment><USER16> Absolutely. The other big innovation is you can see who's making a noise in the call in the list of participants and mute them.

The UX is terrible, and totally not their strong point. When you install it should have a test my audio and video thing, and set use computer audio as the default meaning you never have to see the "join with computer audio" thing ever again.

Joining with a phone is useful for people without a computer, but the main UI doesn't need to mention it, the details are in the invitations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I find the metaphor of a "call" in Skype or Google Meet easier to use for chats with relatives than the metaphor of a "meeting". The latter one works great in a business setting, when you "schedule a meeting" and post its details to Slack, or email them, or stick them in a calendar; but when you want an immediate one-on-one chat, it's so much easier to "call" a person.

Zoom weirds me out in that in order to chat with someone you need to "create a meeting", then copy the meeting url/id, and send it via a different channel to the person you want to chat with.

<comment><USER17> That's not entirely true. Zoom does have tabs called 'Chat' and 'Contacts' where you can find all your contacts & initiate a 'Call' with them without ever having to share a URL / ID

<comment><USER18> Discoverability is everything!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I really don't like the Mute/Unmute button in Zoom. It shows a button showing a crossed out mic with "Unmute" below it. And the other state for this button is a mic with "Mute" below it. The button's icon and text are always opposite of each other. It is so confusing. I always have to think twice before clicking it.

<comment><USER20> I spend a lot of time on calls, but it's always felt clear to me.

The icon is the state and the text is the action that will happen if you click it.

<comment><USER19> But that's not how buttons work usually. Look at the reload button in Chrome. The icon shows you what will happen if you click it. The tooltip text also shows you what will happen if you click it. The text and icon are never opposite. At least I cannot think of another app that does this.

<comment><USER20> I happen to be standing in front of my coffee maker waiting for it to finish. It has a lit green LED (indicating it's brewing) and a button under it labeled "Off". Same conflict, but perfectly clear IMO.

<comment><USER14> except an LED is either on or off, but a UI button is always "on"

<comment><USER20> That one happens to be, but if the LED went green/red rather than green/off, I think it would be just as clear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Great-great analysis! We need more of those exposing apparent lack of understanding of basic principles of usability by designers of many modern products. My instinct is to tell them, "Read The Design of Everyday Things at least, please!"

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Ironically, I found this style of presentation difficult/annoying to navigate through

<comment><AUTHOR> Doh—the irony. What'd you prefer?

<comment><USER22> I stopped halfway through your presentation, even though I am a Zoom-objector so I thought I would be the perfect audience for this kind of content. Here's a recent hackernews-frontpage blog post which relied heavily on images, but I found it less onerous to read:

It's the old fashioned way I'm afraid (longform single page, vertical scrolling, visible proportional scrollbar), perhaps I'm just old.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23551983](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23551983)

[https://tonsky.me/blog/monitors/](https://tonsky.me/blog/monitors/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, this is a great blog. Certainly some things that are easier to read about that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Heh, I expected it to dive into the fact that Skype also had some troubles with claiming E2E without actually implementing it, if I remember correctly. However, seeing a detailed takedown of poor design is always fun. I tend to overlook these things as a user or at least I'm unable to put into words why the design frustrates me, this is helpful.

<comment><AUTHOR> "I'm unable to put into words why the design frustrates me" is the best summary of 99.9% of users.

<comment><USER24> And the remaining 0.1% actually read some UX design textbooks from the 90's:

1\. Incomprehensible icons

2\. No use of color to indicate the most likely new action

3\. Weird and inconsistent transitions and dialogs

4\. Many different fonts, font-sizes and text decorations.

5\. Flat design makes it difficult to know what to click on.

The list goes on, and on, and on. It seems the team did no UX testing at all.

<comment><USER25> i always thought its common sense until i realized its not.

We just switched to a new ticketing system, now the description field is 2 rows high.

2 rows! for a fucking issue description field -_-

<comment><AUTHOR> "i always thought it's common sense until i realized it's not."

^ 90% of CEOs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Modern Browser have already build in, p2p, encrypted video chat functionality.

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/WebRTC_API/...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/WebRTC_API/Signaling_and_video_calling)

I played around with it years ago, and it worked quite good and should have improved a lot since then, so why has no one come up with a solid solution, that does not require us to route our video calls through china, or microsoft servers?

I suppose the devil is, like always, in the details. So what am I missing?

Probably, that webrtc via p2p is hard to do for more than 2 people? But someone should have at least tried it?

<comment> Lex-2008 Yes. From my experience (as a user), webrtc is good for up to 4 people, and is rarely supported for more than 8. Reason is that few laptops can cope with many more incoming and outgoing videostreams in parallel.

Also, when in our company we tried using webrtc for standups, we often faced issues when participant A couldn't hear participant B, but participant C could hear them both. All that with video working in all directions. Or sometimes we had this issue with video.

Another reason why standalone applications like Skype and Zoom (which is known for trying to install its client too much) might be better than webrtc is that they might have better noise-cancelling algorithms than browsers.

Also, point of usability - compared to browser, standalone apps don't have permission dialogs ("do you want to allow this website to access your camera"?) and might be smarter with choosing correct microphone by default - this might be important for non-techy users who don't understand why system suggests them to choose from two microphones when there's only one plugged into the computer.

<comment><USER27> It really depends on your configuration (server-side configuration also plays an important role). Jitsi has an excellent webrtc server-side SFU (Selective Forwarding Unit) which does a seamless job at redirecting multi-layer VP8/H264 streams to the most appropriate user.

Each jitsi browser instance tells webrtc to encode and send multiple spatial layers of the same video stream (at different qualities), allowing users (and the SFU) to automatically choose which one to receive, according to bandwidth and network congestion.

The result is a seamless experience that just works, even with 16+ people (we've been doing jitsi conferences nearly every working day since April at our dance school, it works like a charm and is easily customizable).

Other solutions also use custom additional WASM modules for echo cancelation and noise suppression in webrtc; and jitsi has an excellent dropdown UI with previews for choosing audio/video sources (and sinks!).

<comment> Lex-2008 Oh, nice! I actually didn't try jitsi and just assumed it had same issues as other webrtc apps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> What are some open source skype alternatives? The ones I have used all require central server. I would like to see something which is more p2p with super nodes.

<comment><USER29> [https://jitsi.org/jitsi-meet/](https://jitsi.org/jitsi-meet/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Very well done, and very thoroughly delves into my own initial "WTF?" reaction to using Zoom for the first time (and second and third times).

Although I think the title is misleading. I was expecting something more technical, as most "how X works" articles and videos tend to be.

"Zoom's UI is bad" would be more descriptive. Even "How Zoom doesn't work" would be more accurate to the content.

</comment><comment><USER31> I'll never look at Zoom the same way again.

It was frustrating before. But now I know all of these UX faux pas...

Thanks BuiltForMars for taking away my blissful ignorance.

</comment><comment><USER32> The only UX that matters in video conferencing software is connection UX, which is where Zoom excels.

<comment><USER33> Does it though? I've found that Jitsi Meet makes it pretty easy join by just clicking an URI. No apps to install, just clicking a link.

Zoom on the other hand pesters me endlessly into installing their software, making it unnecessarily difficult to just join by browser.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Rumor was always that Skype used to have E2E, then Microsoft bought it for a susprising amount of money and as first action removed server-side encryption... And therefore of course the rumor/assumption thay the NSA or similar was in the back funding the deal.

<comment><USER35> AFAIK it wasn't about E2E encryption, but P2P calls, and mega-peers which would serve as ad-hoc "servers" for coordination of other clients. That was dropped when Microsoft bought Skype and instead switched it to using central servers. However, I notice these days that calls are P2P, meaning I see in my PC's connections the IP of the person I'm talking to, so not sure what's going on there...

<comment><USER36> My guess is that the signaling servers are centralized. You need those for connection establishment between two peers. Once they 'know' each other, they may aswell talk to each other directly. Routing _all_ calls through central servers would yield an enormous bill every month. On the other hand, it is sometimes necessary as direct communication between peers may not be possible (NAT, firewalling). IIRC, a central server is also required for multi-party calls.

<comment><USER35> Yes, signaling is definitely centralized, before it was done by mega-peers. P2P contact does work behind NAT if it's a cone NAT. Symmetric NAT would require that the signaling server assign a forwarding server to handle data from and to each peer. In general CGNAT applications with cone NAT, UDP hole punching can be used to communicate between peers, organized by the signaling server.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> My main complaints are two:

\- It takes 4-5 clicks to create a meeting and share the URL, which is what I want to do most of the time, multiple times a day. I end up preferring Skype (when with only 1-2 other people) just because of the hassle of "Creating a meeting".

\- The UI randomly moves around: the chat button and the chat, for example, are in a place when Zoom is in window mode, in a different place when Zoom is fullscreen, and yet another place when I'm sharing the screen. If I have to teach, I prepare the various zoom windows (chat, participants, videos) in a certain configuration. As soon as I start sharing screen everything changes. It goes fullscreen whenever it likes, and all that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, really annoying ^^

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> > Which does nothing unless you already have Zoom installed

At least on desktop, even though the help text explicitly says "If you have Zoom Client installed", you can actually click the Launch Meeting button/link to reveal a hidden option for joining the meeting without actually installing (which requires an additional click). I imagine this never shows up if you actually install; they're just trying to get people to install unnecessarily.

</comment><comment><USER39> Irrelevant title but the UX analysis is on spot. It is a shame that many companies will spend millions on infrastructure and programming but don't pay for a decent UX team - or just do not bother implementing good UX. (Microsoft is the most striking example.)

</comment><comment><USER40> Am I the only one to avoid Zoom for all the strange things reported these past few months ?

</comment><comment><USER41> I came away from that somewhat nonplussed.

Think I've maybe used Zoom 3 times, but even I was mentally shouting answers to the rhetorical questions. "Well it does that because.." or "Well if it didn't do that, then users would.." etc

<comment><AUTHOR> If I could refund you your time, I would.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I agree with many of the observations in the deck, but how would you go about prioritizing the most impactful improvements? Is there a best in class method of quantifying how UX hurdles?

</comment><comment><USER43> Again, what about Zoom's remote control feature (or annotate/whiteboard)? Is any competitor doing that?

<comment><USER44> The remote control and whiteboard in Microsoft Teams are better in my experience.

In fact, Teams seems to have better (although still not good) UX and connection reliability as well, at least for corporate meetings. There's generally no P2P possible from behind "enterprise" security gear or VPNs, so Zoom suffers a bit falling back while Teams blissfully just works via TCP/443 or a browser.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Tweet that article mentioning the Zoom founder @ericsyuan and @zoom_us

</comment><comment><USER46> Title is "How Zoom works".

It's a good article with valid points but nothing about Skype.

The editorialized title "Turns out Zoom isn't all that different to Skype after all" has no appreciation for how hostile Skype's technology has become in the past 10 years. It went from nicely working Qt program that worked well on OSX, Linux, and Windows to Electron beast that maybe works on Windows, could possibly be mining bitcoins on OS X (judging by how much it spins up the fans), and I think it stopped working on Linux altogether, replaced by a web client.

<comment><USER47> Skype is dead in the water, has been suffering for years since the push to Teams started. Teams behaves a lot more stable in an enterprise environment, whether that is by design or neglect I'm not sure.

<comment><USER48> Teams is still woeful in both performance and features. Whilst you can easily drown in noise on slack, you are deafened by silence on teams. It is _so_ difficult to discover channels and topics on Teams compared to slack, that I'm not sure there is a way to do it without being explicitly invited by an existing team member.

If you are using the mobile app then just lol. You'll always be seen as "away" even if actively engaging in discussions, and you'll be thinking you're caught in a time-trap with regards to accuracy of statuses and messages.

And my final rant is the pathetic conflation of "team" and "channel" nomenclature. The fuck is wrong with just calling them channels?

<comment><USER46> Teams is also pretty snappy for the first month or so. But once you use it for about 8 months, it's just so painfully slow; it will take multiple seconds to switch channel. I suspect it's because they use sqlite under the hood for storing messages and have some bad queries or bad indexes.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The long goodbye to C - <AUTHOR> http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=7711 <comment><AUTHOR> > Learning Python in 1997 was quite the watershed event for me. It was > wonderful – like having the Lisp of my earliest years back, but with good > libraries! And a full POSIX binding! And an object system that didn't suck!

… I don't think ESR gets CLOS. It's an object system which doesn't suck, and is far more capable than Python's.

<comment><USER2> Looking at the timeline, I'd be surprised if Lisp referred to 'Common Lisp' and not something earlier in the family.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is a dupe to the already full fledged discussion [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15670423](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15670423)

<comment><AUTHOR> That second discussion was posted after my version …

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> No systems programming successor to C other than Go?

Why not a subset of C++, akin to the convention-based subset of C adopted for the Linux kernel? ESR doesn't say, at least not here.</comment>


Music Hijacks Our Perception of Time (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/9/time/how-music-hijacks-our-perception-of-time <comment><USER2> _Similarly, consumers spend 38 percent more time in the grocery store when the background music is slow._

and 90 percent less if it's "80s Sad Hits", like it usually is.

</comment><comment><USER3> Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7166908](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7166908)

<comment><USER4> There's a time joke in here somewhere, I just can't quite nail it down...

<comment><USER5> What did the clock say to the metronome?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As /r/showerthoughts once put it:

Art is how we decorate space, music is how we decorate time.

</comment><comment><USER7> Interesting article, although I'd argue that Performers have _far_ more influence on time perception than Composers.

</comment><comment><USER8> And I'm very grateful for that!</comment>


Skype ads in rotation have been compromised - <AUTHOR> http://community.skype.com/t5/Security-Privacy-Trust-and/Skype-ads-in-rotation-have-been-compromised-and-contain-Malware/td-p/2894251

<comment><USER2> If you haven't already, add

      127.0.0.1 rad.msn.com

to your hosts file.</comment>


Come on, Microsoft Is it that hard to update Windows 10 right? - <AUTHOR> https://www.computerworld.com/article/3532092/come-on-microsoft-is-it-really-that-hard-to-update-windows-10-right.html <comment><USER2> "Right" can have different definitions. For the end users, it should mean a secure and reliable platform. For the intelligence community (not just the US), it might mean some easily exploitable back doors that provide a foothold for exfiltration activities.

What makes this latest SMB problem even more interesting is that it is apparently new to Windows, being present in 10, but not in the previous versions.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, the newest SMB hole, besides being serious as a heart attack, is just odd. I mean, it's not like the it's anything hidden deep in the code. It's a freaking buffer overflow!</comment></comment>