Sinful QuickChecking in Ruby - <AUTHOR> http://www.metacircus.com/hacking/2009/04/10/look-ma-no-monads.html <comment><AUTHOR> Note that Rant's project name on github has changed; it is now <http://github.com/hayeah/rantly></comment>


SQL Injection in Plain English - <AUTHOR> https://www.tinfoilsecurity.com/blog/what-is-sql-injection

<comment><USER2> This is actually the first post in a series, where each post will explain a different vulnerability in plain english. Please suggest other vulnerability types that are hard to understand, and we will take that into account when writing the following posts. :)

</comment><comment><USER3> In Plain (but Technical) English. A good explanation for the tech-minded who might just need a push in the right direction to get the details.</comment>


Ryzom is free software What can we do from here? - <AUTHOR> http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/ryzom-free-software

<comment><USER2> Porting it to Mac and Linux would be a good start.

<comment><USER3> It seems they have already did something about Linux (at least for the core part):

<http://dev.ryzom.com/wiki/ryzom/BuildForLinux></comment></comment>


Ask HN: When will HN support hyperlinks in text descriptions? - <AUTHOR> Seems like such a simple thing to implement, comments already support hyperlinks but descriptions don't? Find myself copying and pasting unnecessarily to look at fellow hacker creations. <comment><USER2> HN users can reply to their own submissions with a link when commenting or a comment when linking. Im my experience, links in a comment tends to correlate with driveby posts. But when something is good, I will often pull the link out and post it as a comment.

Anyway, because meta-discussions tend to be uninteresting, feature requests tend to be best made using the contact link at the bottom of the page.

Good luck.</comment>


A computer built from NOR gates: inside the Apollo Guidance Computer - <AUTHOR> https://www.righto.com/2019/09/a-computer-built-from-nor-gates-inside.html <comment><USER2> If you like this kind of thing I suggest watching Ben Eater on YouTube or his website.

Ben explains and builds basic computers from components. It's more to see how things work like registers and memory addresses. It's a nice mix of electronics and computer science.

[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS0N5baNlQWJCUrhCEo8WlA](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS0N5baNlQWJCUrhCEo8WlA)

[https://eater.net/](https://eater.net/)

<comment><USER3> Ben is a godsend. I remember having my mind blown by his 8-bit microcomputer series after years of wondering "okay, I know how to program, and I know about assembly, but....what's after that?"

When I ended up taking a MIPS class not too long after, it felt more like a recap of Ben's material than anything new.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Back when I was a CPU logic designer, I worked on two machines that used ECL logic, where the basic building-block gate was a 4-input OR/NOR (the gate produced both phases at output). I recall that on one of these machines, each logic card was supplied with well over 100A on the -4.5 supply, we had a space budget of 98 cards. But the tough limit to hit was cooling. For the entire CPU we had only a single 20 BTU-ton water chiller, and had to sneak everything in under the cooling limit.

<comment><USER5> I was one generation behind you. We had actual flip/flops and even small ROMs, made from something called CTL (complementary transistor logic) which was similar to ECL in its voltage and power requirements. But did not require water cooling, just banks of large squirrel cage fans.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was impressed to learn that when Margaret Hamilton programmed this machine, she wrote an interpreter, and coded the mission logic in the interpreted language. So, in a sense, it really was microcoded; but the microcode was what looks like the real instruction set, and the instructions actually used lived in ROM.

The Xerox Alto, which was used for the original Smalltalk in 1972, also worked much this way: It had 16 program counters, one of which pointed to a program for interpreting Alto instructions. Other program counters were for refreshing the screen, operating the disk, driving the laser printer, and moving network packets. An interrupt just changed which program counter instructions came from.

The Smalltalk runtime was another interpreter, interpreted by Alto (interpreted) instructions. People complained about how slow Altos were, no surprise.

I might have misremembered some of the details above. Corrections welcome.

<comment><USER7> The Interpreter was written by Charley Muntz, not Margaret. Margaret wrote a large chunk of the DSKY display routines and a lot of the alarm/abort logic.

<comment><USER6> Thank you for the correction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Back in the 1990s, UC Berkeley's computer hardware quals exam used to require the test taker to design a microcoded RISC processor out of NAND gates, from the bottom up. It was kind of like Little Alchemy, once you created every kind of primitive gate you needed, you could assemble them to make larger and larger things. This included building latches, registers, static RAM, bottom to top. NOR is just NAND with 0's and 1's reversed.

<comment><USER9> NAND or NOR preference is due to the underlying transistor technology. NPN transistors (with electron majority carriers) tend to be stronger than PNP types (with hole majority carriers) at comparable sizes. In the beginning we had mostly bipolar processes, where we used NPN transistors in parallel to pull down the output and pull-ups were simply resistors. NOR gate was the natural configuration efficiency/cost wise. Later CMOS processes came along and we no longer use resistors for pull-ups (which tremendously reduces the quiescent current and makes CMOS perfect for digital logic). With CMOS it makes more sense to use the weaker PMOS (PNP) transistors in parallel for pull up and use the stronger NMOS (NPN) transistors in series for pull down and the natural configuration is the NAND gate.

<comment><USER10> Preference for NAND and negative logic (ie. active low) do not stem from early CMOS, but from TTL. TTL NAND is same structure as invertor, only with multiple emitters on the input transistor. And with TTL significant current flows only in the low state, typical TTL gate sees undriven input as logic 1.

By the way for CMOS, NOR is somewhat counter-intuitively still preferable as the two series connected PMOS pull-up transistors can be collapsed into one dual-gate PMOS, which leads to more desirable gate geometry.

This is the reason why CMOS CD4000 is NOR (and without looking it up I don't even know what is the P/N of 4000-series 2-input NAND), while TTL SN7400 is NAND.

On the other hand in modern CMOS processes and particularly in CMOS VLSI design this distinction is mostly moot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> NOR was used instead of NAND because the latter would've required a series connection of transistors, which changes the voltage levels needed and otherwise complicates the design.

</comment><comment><USER12> NOR gate logic, like NAND and NOT/AND/OR gate logic, are functionally- complete.

Combinational logic examples:

\- NOT gate -> N-input (N >= 1) NOR with all inputs tied together to the input

\- N-input OR gate -> N-input NOR gate with a NOT gate at the output

\- N-input AND gate -> N-input NOR gate with a NOT gate in front of each input

\- Bonus - sequential logic: S-R latch -> 2x 2-input NOR gates with one each of their inputs tied to the other gate's output

<comment><USER13> should be N >= 2 because you can't really have 1-input NOR gate...?

<comment><USER14> A 1-input NOR gate is more commonly known as a NOT gate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> [http://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/](http://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/) has simulation information and a physical project built with 74LS...

</comment><comment><USER16> Why three inputs?

<comment><USER17> Most certainly a compromise. More inputs amortizes more of the overhead (power pins, input pads etc), but too many wastes density.

A similar issues shows up in FPGA where four-input lookup tables (LUT4) were the sweet-spot for many generations but in the past few years LUT6 (and hybrids like the ALM ~ 2xLUT6) have taken over.</comment></comment>


Snitch ‐ the Camera That Flies (Literally) - <AUTHOR> http://snitchme.com <comment><USER2> it could be great to have a camera with no tripod and which one do not afraid to drop. Awesome!

<comment><AUTHOR> Agree! I love the idea of not having to control it like a bulky drone</comment></comment>


DormItem is for sale on eBay - <AUTHOR> http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=320120838968 <comment><USER2> 55,000 page views a month isn't really worth $50k, is it?

I'm curious, do such small sites usually get bought for the technology or the traffic?

<comment><USER3> Do they get bought at all? I doubt this one will get any bids at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Definitely have the technology....17 content partners and ability to integrate with Blackboard.

</comment><comment><USER5> What sort of price you hoping for (if not $50k)?

</comment><comment><USER6> Hm. I've never heard of it.</comment>


Chef CEO Defends Contract with ICE - <AUTHOR> https://blog.chef.io/2019/09/19/chefs-position-on-customer-engagement-in-the-public-and-private-sectors/ <comment><USER4> Terrible response, companies totally can pick and choose who they work with and who their customers are.

> I want to be clear that this decision is not about contract value — it is > about maintaining a consistent and fair business approach in these volatile > times.

Doublespeak for, this decision is 100% about contract value.

I am interested more in the former employee that removed the ruby gem though. Cool form of protest IMO.

<comment><USER5> exactly, especially when the sentence before it mentions he worked with their executive team to make the decision.

This is entirely about money.

> former employee that removed the ruby gem

I hadn't heard of this, do you have a link to that by chance?

<comment><USER4> Here is the developer's statement: [https://github.com/sethvargo/chef- sugar](https://github.com/sethvargo/chef-sugar)

Article: [https://www.zdnet.com/article/developer-takes-down-ruby- libr...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/developer-takes-down-ruby-library- after-he-finds-out-ice-was-using-it/)

Note this is the same developer who left Chef in 2014 because he received death threats from their open source community.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For the record (if it matters) I am very pro-immigration and pro-immigrant rights, but I don't think denying chef services to ICE will actually do anything - let me explain.

Lets look at this from another perspective (couldn't hurt, right?). I am a company that sells paper.

Some companies might use this paper for very bad things (printing out patents?).

Do I comb through all my clients and determine what they are using the paper for? Doesn't seem to make sense, and worse yet, it seems like an entirely subjective process. Who says which companies are "good" and which are "bad" ?

When I stop selling paper to an entity, they will just find another paper provider. I have not really done anything meaningful aside from signalled my intentions, which I could do more effectively in other ways (lobbying, etc).

<comment><USER7> Paper is an interchangeable commodity with many suppliers. Specific software products often are not.

Furthermore, there's a difference between "someone bought this commodity from a distributor" and "we have a contract specifically with this entity".

<comment><USER8> If every paper company got together and denied service to ICE, then ICE would be forced to limp along without paper. They wouldn't cease to operate - <USER2> if they wanted to, they couldn't; that's not up to them. They would just operate inefficiently. It would be frustrating to the DHS officers, but actively detrimental to the immigrants in their custody, slowing things down even more. Unless you actually believe that immigration law shouldn't exist or be enforced, you should be happy to work with ICE to help them process detainees as quickly and efficiently as possible.

<comment><USER7> "If we don't sell to XYZ someone else will" is not an argument to keep selling to XYZ, unless you already agree with (or are indifferent to) XYZ and their activities.

"XYZ is doing bad things but it'd be even worse if they did bad things less efficiently" is not an argument to keep selling to XYZ, unless you already agree with (or are indifferent to) XYZ and their activities.

Making an organization less efficient, or otherwise slowing an organization down, is not going to single-handedly stop it, but that doesn't make it pointless or counterproductive.

For the concrete example here, you haven't provided evidence that "less efficient" or "slower" applies only (or disproportionately) to activities that stop hurting people rather than activities that hurt people.

Also, you've created a false dichotomy, dismissing the existence of people who agree with portions of a branch of law but disagree with how that law is enforced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > to be clear: I also find policies such as separating families and detaining > children wrong and contrary to the best interests of our country.

"I simply have all the ability and none of the desire to do anything about it"

<comment><USER8> I can see where he's coming from: if he refuses to do business with ICE because he disagrees with something they're doing (whether he or they are actually wrong), he's implicitly endorsing every aspect of every customer he does choose to do business with.

<comment><USER10> Also committing to scrutinize the internal business practices of every future partner. It's easy enough to point at ICE and say that they're actions don't align with your values. But you're setting a precedent for your company - <USER3> that will be very hard to live up to down the road.

<comment><USER11> You don't see the divide between those who operate concentration camps, and those who do not?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm genuinely curious - what is the government supposed to do with illegal immigrants before they're sent back home (after asylum hearing). Are they supposed to be put up in apartments? Barracks? House per family?

I've heard that people disagree with the immigrants current treatment, but I expect there's a spectrum of accommodations which people would consider acceptable.

I haven't considered the logistics and legalities of housing adults with minors who may or not be their actual parents. Do they need to be separated? I suspect there's a complexity which I don't appreciate.

<comment><USER13> What typically happened in the past is that most migrants have family in the US. So they let them into the country while they're being processed. They are given a court date and can continue to live life here until that court date.

What probably happens often is that these folks don't show up to their court date, because they never planned to. By then they've already assimilated into the local economy with no papers.

Some middle ground seems in order here. So yeah I'd say we don't separate the families and find other ways to track them, either keeping them in a refugee camp (together) if the numbers are hard to manage, OR using some kind of technology to track them while you release them until their court dates.

The key here is that we are a civilized nation of laws, and it is simply cruel to separate families, especially when the kids have done nothing wrong but tag along with their parents. They're given essentially a life sentence through trauma that they may never shake. And that's just cruel and unusual punishment in any circumstance, let alone given to an innocent sort of accomplice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I am pro-ICE, pro-immigration, and anti-human-trafficking. Ice separates children from human traffickers and parents alike. Human traffickers bring children to the U.S. for sale by the tens of thousands every year. We should praise ICE for their commitment to protect children & their families who have traveled to America illegally. If they want to seek refuge, they should use our immigration system to seek refuge instead of sneaking into our country.

<comment><USER15> Praise, for putting people in camps with inadequate medical care and inhumane treatment? I'll pass on the praise,thanks

<comment><USER16> So isn't the solution to improve the medical care and treatment?

How is removing a library for a DevOps program going to do that? Isn't it just useless virtue signaling that won't actually have any effect?

<comment><USER17> Everyone has a right for what they believe. Removing a library does as much effect as someone protesting on the street with a sign holding what they believe.

Like that 13 year kid (can't rememer name) alone in front of parliament on school strike with a sign. Then more kids joined. Now entire cities are like Melbourne have massive protests for school strikes.

Suppose developers of Google, Microsoft and Amazon all protest against ICE and refuse to work for a project their involved, it's a big signal.

But reality is money can buy most people's souls.

Kudos to the guy.

<comment><USER18> Greta Thunberg

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I am pro-immigration and wish for every immigrant to be given a good shot at great opportunities.

Chef did the right thing. It's not up to individual employees to sabotage company assets because of their own political viewpoints. I hope that employee is thrown in jail.

</comment><comment><USER20> This is a case that could set a precedent for other companies and is worth a good debate. I believe it comes down to values. Here's a simple example to explain.

Suppose I am a CEO of a consulting firm. I have a client who pays us a lot of money and have had a good relationship with for years. Now suppose I've hired and brought another person to meet this client for several months. The meetings seem to go well but (let's say 9 months later), Another employee brings to my attention that the client had been consistently harassing the person I hired to manage the account.

I now have two choices, re-assign the person I just hired or "fire" the client, permanently ending the relationship. What are the values of my company? That's the question that needs to be asked. What's the right thing to do?

If I choose to re-assign the person I hired, I would not be addressing the problem, not holding the client to the same bar I would have for my own employees. I'm telling the client and my employees that I value the contract more than them and more than the values of my company. The side effect is that it reinforces the bad behavior.

This is essentially what has occurred in this scenario. Except the harassment is not towards Chef's employees it's towards civilian children and their parents.

Having said that, companies don't always get it right the first time but it's our job to inform them of their error. Executive teams often are flooded pools of confirmation bias where dissent rarely occurs. I don't think "combing" is really necessary but like anything else, when the spotlight shows up. It's usually in the company's best interest to distance itself.

[edit: fix grammar]

</comment><comment><USER21> This whole thing has gone too far. By "thing," I mean that every action of every person, past or present, must inform all future interactions with any other person or entity. It's a problem caused by the information we have today (who would have known this in the past?) but the end result is that we as a people are more divided and isolated from all people other than those who share our worldview exactly.

</comment><comment><USER22> Well, this seems more effective than a toothless walkout at least. I'm not sure what to think of this really. Does the axed employee deserve praise? What legal ramifications will he/she be facing for the act?

</comment><comment><USER23> Seth Vargo works now at Google Cloud. Will he break it next? Is Google Cloud a risk for our company?

</comment><comment><USER23> Where is the limit? Linux is certainly used somewhere by criminal rings to sell drugs killing children. PHP is certainly used by criminal groups advertising escorts victim of human trafficking.

Are open source projects now at risk? Will phpmyadmin break because an antispecist contributor discovered that McDonalds is using this tool? Will ubuntu break because an anti-vaxxer contributor has discovered that GSK is using this os?

<comment><USER24> Or when some right-wing pastry cooker will discover than the wedding cake he's making will be used in a same-sex marriage ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is a very professional and tempered response supported by reason and sound company values. I applaud the CEO for not giving in to the mobs.

</comment><comment><USER26> Regarding the deleted Ruby gems:

I think it's unprofessional for developers to try and bring down production services just because they disagree with a company move. It's also a bit immature. The thing to do in this case is to quit. Down your tools and quit, but don't destroy the hard work of your teammates and betray the trust of all your investors and customers.

<comment><USER27> I think it's our moral imperative to prevent our work from being used for acts that betray our values. Take a second and remember that the gas chambers used by Hitler to inflict a genocide were designed by engineers. I think we all agree that those engineers should have sabotaged their own work to prevent harm coming to the victims of the Holocaust, and it's very surprising to me that you're defending _profits_ and _investors_ over moral values.

<comment><USER28> I'm not surprised. There are a _lot_ of techies who took Ayn Rand a little too seriously and think that profits are themselves a moral value, and that investors are somehow beyond reproach by virtue of their wealth.

I might paraphrase Rand to suit my purpose as the Devil quotes Scripture, but I have to say that for such an ardent atheist, Ayn Rand's worship of wealth and those who possess sounds a lot like prosperity gospel.

Then again, if you're trying to get a startup off the ground or hope to work for a rising startup, it probably isn't smart to bite the hand that might feed you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> > "I want to be clear that this decision is not about contract value — it is > about maintaining a consistent and fair business approach in these volatile > times. I do not believe that it is appropriate, practical, or within our > mission to examine specific government projects with the purpose of > selecting which U.S. agencies we should or should not do business."

So if this were 1940, and he lived in germany would he gladly continue doing business w/ the country knowing they're gassing jews?

I mean it's the government they always have our best interests in mind right? We should always support the government we live in no matter what right? Seriously? Without question?

This CEO is obtuse, and probably shouldn't be running a tech company.

</comment><comment><USER30> _Concentration camp, internment centre for political prisoners and members of national or minority groups who are confined for reasons of state security, exploitation, or punishment, usually by executive decree or military order. Persons are placed in such camps often on the basis of identification with a particular ethnic or political group rather than as individuals and without benefit either of indictment or fair trial. Concentration camps are to be distinguished from prisons interning persons lawfully convicted of civil crimes and from prisoner-of-war camps in which captured military personnel are held under the laws of war._

[https://www.britannica.com/topic/concentration- camp](https://www.britannica.com/topic/concentration-camp)

</comment><comment><USER11> [https://github.com/sethvargo/chef-sugar](https://github.com/sethvargo/chef- sugar)

<comment><USER31> If my Infrastructure code includes only chef recipes and chef objects, will this yank lead to breaking changes(even though we don't use chef sugar)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Gee, what about companies that supply things to Planned Parenthood?

There are a lot of people that think PP is immoral (especially given the origins in eugenics). Should employees of those companies rise up and try to harm their employers, too?

For the record, I am against such action. Firmly against. Politics is personal and should not extend beyond your personal rights.

</comment><comment><USER32> Good. Businesses passing judgment on their customers due to public pressure from vocal activists is not a good precedent.

<comment><USER15> You make it sound like this is some squeaky minority pressure group, as opposed to people making the bold claim that perhaps we should not be holding children apart from their parents in camps with despicable care standards including lack of basic medical care.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Good. Every company which refuses to work with ICE makes their job more difficult. That's not going to make ICE go away, it's just going to increase the likelihood that they make beaurocratic mistakes (e.g. detain US citizens), inappropriately secure their data, or a million other little operational failures.

</comment><comment><USER34> This is actually a tough thing to deal with for executives. I can see some black and white issues like providing software to the Chinese government or some other authoritarian regime like that. In the US where the government only lasts for 4 years would it be prudent to sever ties like that? Software and services contracts are meant to last longer than (hopefully). So the slot once gone is gone. Also, the same people who are with ICE procurement will be there after Trump leaves. Will they be willing to talk to them later on? Even if the government's agenda changed, chances are the personal agendas of the employees in ICE have not. So how should that impact the decision making? Would it not be better to provide funding to causes you (or the employees) believe in rather than severing ties with organizations when its within the US?

</comment><comment><USER35> I took the liberty of invoking Godwin's Law and re-purposed this template, it should make you consider how weak this statement really is.

""" While I understand that many of you and many of our community members would prefer we had no business relationship with the Third Reich, I have made a principled decision, with the support of the IBM executive team, to work with the institutions of our government, regardless of whether or not we personally agree with their various policies. """

<comment><USER5> I believe you've hit the nail on the head with this.

This is the most accurate and succinct way to show how this looks.

<comment><USER33> Godwin's Law is supposed to demonstrate the reductive nature of comparing everything to Nazism, it's supposed to be a logical fallacy.

<comment><USER30> Mr. Godwin would like a word:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20170814022147/https://m.faceboo...](https://web.archive.org/web/20170814022147/https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10154965671861483&id=1)

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/12/14/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/12/14/sure- call-trump-a-nazi-just-make-sure-you-know-what-youre-talking-about/)

<comment><USER33> I don't think you can retroactively change the meaning of a point you made decades earlier.

<comment><USER30> Get back to me in a quarter century.

<comment><USER33> Fair enough -- and if I claim that my statement doesn't actually apply to specific future circumstances in a way that supports my current personal beliefs feel free to ignore me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Having read this, I think that Barry Crist's use of "my country's government, right or wrong" in defense of supporting Trump-era ICE's indefensible methods proves that an old adage still holds true.

"[false] Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel." \--Samuel Johnson, 1775

Barry Crist thinks he is doing the principled thing, but I see him for what he is: the most despicable of cowards, a man who has the power to help change the world for the better, but chooses instead to uphold a profitable status quo.

Any person of conscience working for Chef should resign in protest immediately.

<comment><USER36> That's not what he's saying at all. He's saying that Chef is in the business of providing devops software. They're not a government watchdog. They're not the ethics police. They're not political or social activist organization. I fail to see the problem. Finally, not selling chef to ICE won't change anything.

<comment><USER28> I bet that's the same sort of sophistry that allowed IBM's management to justify doing business with the Nazi regime.

I know what Crist is saying. And it smells like self-serving bullshit to me. He doesn't want to do the right thing as a human being and as an American citizen because it would cut into Chef's revenues and upset the company's shareholders and investors.

As far as I am concerned, this is unforgivable moral cowardice. As soon as I learned that Accenture was taking ICE blood money, I quit without notice and lived off my savings for three months until I could find another job at a company that didn't profit from human rights abuses at the hands of the Federal government.

I'm just a middle-aged college dropout who doesn't even make six figures, and I still managed to do the right thing as an American and a human being. What's this guy's excuse?

<comment><USER36> Pretty much every tech company, hundreds of consulting firms, dozens of construction firms, etc, etc do business with DoHS and ICE. These are huge organizations with thousands of employees that buy products and services from thousands of suppliers. Everything from software to sock. Are you gonna get angry with all of those companies too? And what about the DEA, FBI, NSA, CIA and DoD? They all do things that some Americans consider evil. And they all buy from the hundreds of tech firms big and small. Everyone from Amazon to Oracle. From HP to Cisco. It just seems mean and petty to pick on Chef to me.

<comment><USER28> > It just seems mean and petty to pick on Chef to me.

I'm picking on Chef because somebody ought to, and it might as well be me.

There isn't a word I could say that would actually harm Chef, so they do not need your concern.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Microreboot – A Technique for Cheap Recovery (2004) [pdf] - vezzy-fnord https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/osdi04/tech/full_papers/candea/candea.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> I like the csh/bash brace expansion for the byline email addresses:

> {candea,skawamo,fjk,gregjf,firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER2> Pretty common in CS papers. It sure beats fighting LaTeX trying to get N different author blocks to show up properly.</comment></comment>


The Most Dangerous Ideas in Science - dj-wonk http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2015/01/27/381809832/the-most-dangerous-ideas-in-science

<comment> dj-wonk > Sean Carroll, a highly respected and philosophically astute physicist, takes > a different approach from Dawid. For Carroll, it is the concept of > falsifiability, which was central to Karl Popper's famous philosophy of > science, that is too limited for the playing fields we now find ourselves > working on.

>> "Whether or not we can observe [extra dimensions or other universes] directly, the entities involved in these theories are either real or they are not. Refusing to contemplate their possible existence on the grounds of some a priori principle, even though they might play a crucial role in how the world works, is as non-scientific as it gets."

> Thus for Carroll, even if a theory predicts entities which can't be directly > observed, if there are indirect consequences of their existence we can > confirm, then that those theories (and those entities) must be included in > our considerations.

Sounds convincing to me. But, are there indirect consequences? That's the key, in my opinion.</comment>


Colorize Your CLI - <AUTHOR> https://danyspin97.org/blog/colorize-your-cli/ <comment><USER2> I feel like we need a complete rewrite of terminal emulators/bash/whatever. It should be super easy to make a CLI with nice colors, good loading icons, etc. without having to deal with all kinds of color codes and cursor movement. When I press "enter" while a script is showing some progress bar, or resize the terminal window, it should handle it nicely like every other application.

I use the command line whenever possible over a GUI application, but sometimes I wish it wasn't still stuck in the 80s. Keep the speed an simplicity (I don't want images or anything), but make it easy to make robust applications with a clean text based UI. I shouldn't still have ghosting in my Vim setup, it's 2020.

<comment><USER3> I kinda like using tooling with 40 years of refinement. Is it perfect? No. Do I need to resize a window with a progress bar? No. Would it be nice? Yeah, I guess. Am I underestimating the benefits? Almost certainly.

But what are the other sharp edges that come with the shiny new thing? Would it be an electron app? Yes, probably. Would it work? Maybe, in a couple years. There would be some major bugs first, and a lot of dead batteries.

I don't think new devs are specifically worse than old ones. I do think there is immense value in using something that has been actively improved for your (well, at least my) entire lifetime.

There are lessons buried in there we don't even begin to understand. Starting over means forgetting those lessons too.

The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence is what I am saying.

<comment><USER4> There still some pretty glaring issues, even after 40 years of refinement. Some I think could be iteratively fixed but not all of them (for example I believe #1 requires a significant breaking change to terminals).

1\. You can't have an interactive program in a pipeline. For example, you can't do `gpg --decrypt foo.txt.gpg | nano | gpg --encrypt` because keyboard input on the console is handled through stdin. You can work around this by using a graphical editor in the pipeline, but this should be possible entirely over the command line.

2\. You can't have hotkeys that are just modifier keys because the modifier keys only change the byte sent when pressing another key. So could couldn't have a hotkey "Shift" but you can have a hotkey "Shift-n".

3\. How do you tell the difference between an escape sequence and the escape key? Escape sequences start with exactly the same byte used by the escape key

4\. While we have escape sequences to move the cursor and detect the cursor location, in order to find dimensions of the terminal we have to resort to an ioctl.

5\. Termcap. Because we can't assume some standard set of terminal features, and since my FreeBSD servers don't have a termcap file for alacritty, when I ssh into my FreeBSD servers my backspace key doesn't work (along with a lot of other things).

6\. This ones a bit optional, but it would be nice to have a standard protocol for telling the terminal to render an image.

7\. Abruptly killing a program that has put the terminal into raw mode leaves your terminal in raw mode.

What would I do to fix this:

1\. Move keyboard input to a different file handle than pipes. This would require software to be patched, or at least a compatibility layer written to merge the pipes for legacy software.

2\. Remap all the keyboard bytes. Every key press and every key up sends data to the keyboard input stream. Let the program maintain a keyup/keydown state map for handling modifier keys. This would require software to be patched or at least a compatibility layer written to remap the bytes.

3\. As part of the new encoding for #2, we should make a better encoding for input. The current system seems a lot more "grown" than designed. I'd love to see something similar to UTF-8 where we get to encode a variable-length integer with the benefits of indicating byte length in the first byte and being able to detect if we're in a continuation byte. We could even use UTF-8 verbatim for most of the keyboard input but we'd need a special section for escape sequences like moving the cursor. I don't know enough about unicode to know if theres a section we could use for that, but worst case scenario we could use the 5 and 6-byte length utf-8 sequences that never made it to the final utf-8 spec despite being possible in the encoding.

4\. As part of #3, add escape sequences to detect terminal dimensions.

5\. Establish a new minimum set of features that are assumed to work, incorporating all these refinements over the past 40 years.

6\. This could be part of the new encoding for #3

7\. Automatically revert terminal to its original non-raw-mode state at the end of a program.

Finally, I'd recommend this blog post to appreciate how much of a mess terminal programming is: [https://viewsourcecode.org/snaptoken/kilo/02.enteringRawMode...](https://viewsourcecode.org/snaptoken/kilo/02.enteringRawMode.html)

<comment><USER5> > since my FreeBSD servers don't have a termcap file for alacritty, when I ssh > into my FreeBSD servers my backspace key doesn't work (along with a lot of > other things).

A hack I've got in .zshrc for this problem:

      function ssh {
       if [[ "${TERM}" = alacritty ]]; then
        env TERM=xterm-256color /usr/bin/ssh "$@"
       else
        /usr/bin/ssh "$@"
       fi
      }

<comment><USER6> Installing the terminfo also works: [https://github.com/alacritty/alacritty/blob/master/INSTALL.m...](https://github.com/alacritty/alacritty/blob/master/INSTALL.md#terminfo)

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I create a .terminfo directory in my home folder on any box I ssh to and make sure it has the terminfo for the terminal I use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One of the biggest upgrades from using fish is syntax highlighting / autocompletion. You can get fish-style syntax highlighting and autocomplete in zsh (which has the advantage of being more interoperable with bash generally):

[zsh-syntax-highlighting]([https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-syntax- highlighting](https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-syntax-highlighting))

[zsh-autosuggestions]([https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh- autosuggestions](https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions))

Poster mentioned "modern alternatives exist" with good colorization options. Some of my favorite colorized feature-rich alternatives:

ls -> [exa]([https://github.com/ogham/exa](https://github.com/ogham/exa))

cat -> [bat]([https://github.com/sharkdp/bat](https://github.com/sharkdp/bat))

du -> [ncdu]([https://dev.yorhel.nl/ncdu](https://dev.yorhel.nl/ncdu))

diff -> [delta]([https://github.com/dandavison/delta](https://github.com/dandavison/delta))

In combination with all of the above, [fzf]([https://github.com/junegunn/fzf](https://github.com/junegunn/fzf)) suddenly becomes a syntax-highlighter preview-pane via leveraging bat (or delta, as the case may be).

<comment><AUTHOR> Poster here! ble.sh gives syntax highlighting for bash just like fish and zsh. I personally don't like zsh because it seems over engineered and fish have some design problems (I don't think they have yet fixed them).

The feature-rich alternatives you mentioned are exactly what I was thinking about (and using daily!).

<comment><USER8> There are a few things about zsh that "feel better" than bash (especially arrays), but given the ubiquity of bash, if I can get the same general quality-of-life upgrades that I experience from the zsh community add-ons, I may need to give ble.sh a go.

Edit: I gave ble.sh a try, and it is super-cool-magic, but does feel slow with quite noticeable input lag.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As developer I think we use too many colors everywhere. It is really necessary? Some terminals looks like a rainbow festival.

A color for the user, a different color for the hostname, another one for the git branch... It is a directory? Let's add a new color. I think is too much.

I like to use themes like minimal-theme [[https://github.com/anler/minimal- theme](https://github.com/anler/minimal-theme)]. My eyes appreciate it.

<comment><USER10> I agree. How about just reading the text? The human brain is excellent at quickly skimming through text and recognizing patterns. We don't need colors.

<comment><USER11> Differentiating by, and extracting meaning from, color is a very ancient and important part of our visual system and every day life. Why wouldn't you want to take advantage of it, living in a black and white world?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Somewhat related:

My friend is developing a colour palette based on Solarized:

[https://github.com/jan-warchol/selenized](https://github.com/jan- warchol/selenized)

but with more perceptual uniformity.

<comment><USER13> It looks like he's only doing the dark mode. I wonder what selenized-light would look like.

<comment><USER14> Take a look here: [https://github.com/jan-warchol/selenized/blob/master/the- val...](https://github.com/jan-warchol/selenized/blob/master/the-values.md)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The GitHub link to Generic Colouriser points to an outdated and unofficial fork. The canonical one is at [https://github.com/garabik/grc](https://github.com/garabik/grc).

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed, thanks you for pointing this out!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Colorful prompts remind me of my time playing MUDs. The better ones did a good job colorizing everything so you could navigate almost by color alone.

</comment><comment><USER17> I think in this day and age we should be making bigger jumps than wanting color in our CLI.

We should have more than one font, we should have pictures. We're visual creatures, us humans. I think something like Jupyter, with in-line images et al is the future, or should be, at least.

<comment><USER18> I strongly disagree. If we're going to use a TUI, it should embrace what it is. Turning it into a watered down GUI does not work to its strengths nor serve the needs of the users still working with it.

<comment><USER19> I dunno, Emacs works really well, and I line images and stuff is really nice. A good example of this is that you can have inline rendered LateX in your text buffer. And when you need to edit it, it turns about into texts.

Also inline graphs in org-mode is super nice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Also set `CLICOLOR=1`. See [https://bixense.com/clicolors/](https://bixense.com/clicolors/)

A fair number of tools support it.

</comment><comment><USER21> Instead of `ls` I use `lsd` [https://github.com/Peltoche/lsd](https://github.com/Peltoche/lsd).

<comment><USER22> How does this compare to exa?

[https://the.exa.website/](https://the.exa.website/)

<comment><USER21> `exa` provides more functionality but is also much slower.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I find myself wishing for a CLI "design system". For example, given a script that calls some APIs (reads and writes) and does a couple of calculations, what is the best way to use color and space to produce understandable and useful console output?

</comment><comment><USER24> Really tempted to install starship but I also do a bunch of sensitive stuff with my terminal. Should I be worried about using this? I understand it's open source, yet still not confident.

<comment><AUTHOR> Keep in mind that having bash history is already a treat since `~/.bash_history` is readable by every program you run.

If you want to be 100% safe you could just monitor the process and see if it opens any internet connection but I am confident it is just a local program.

<comment><USER14> > treat

*threat

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I do like to have colorized output for my interactive CLI tools, but I will never understand a prompt other than "$" or "#".

Do people really need to continuously see all the noise like the host name, their username, the working directory, the date, or even their current branch?

Is hostname, whoami, pwd, date, git branch, and git status really to cumbersome? At least with hostname and branch I'm usually piping to pbcopy anyway.

FWIW, the -F option for ls is really nice too.

<comment><USER26> _Do people really need to continuously see all the noise like .... the working directory...?_

I can't imagine using a CLI prompt without knowing what directory I'm in. How would that even work?

<comment><USER25> I guess I usually know what directory I'm in and if I ever need a reminder I use pwd.

With at least 6 months of commands in ~/.bash_history

$ history | grep pwd | wc -l

          10

<comment><USER27> I usually have ~20 terminal windows open, some of which have sessions opened on 4 different machines. If the host name and current working directory are not in the prompt, I need to check both every time I switch windows. Otherwise there's no way I won't make a mistake and do some stuff in the wrong place or on the wrong server.

I can accept that my use case is not typical, but these things are actually useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Nice article, 'starship' is new to me, just tried out, a bit verbose and took too much line space for me. 'highlight' should be replaced by 'bat' these days. 'grc' is nice and I first time learned it here. After read it and tried out, I just added 'grc' to my tool kit(though ubuntu 18.04 misses /etc/profile.d/grc.bashrc and I had to download it from github)

<comment><USER29> Just looking at the homepage of starship, I don't really understand what benefits it has. It says fast but simply has a gif? I understand a bit more via the docs, but it's annoying the home page doesn't really show any benefits and just wants you to install it asap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Love starship. Fast, easily customizable, and best of all works on Windows as well as macOS/Linux. (Unsure about BSD, but I presume that as well)

</comment><comment><USER31> For Windows, one could use this small color utility I've made last year, ColorThis

[https://www.alexdragusin.com/#ColorThis](https://www.alexdragusin.com/#ColorThis)

</comment><comment><USER32> Colorizing is a red herring; it's akin to syntax highlighting: it's nice, but if you need it to determine important information then something's amiss.

I'd much prefer consistent and predictable information conveyance. Ie, I don't need Midnight Commander to be lit up like a christmas tree because I know immediately what information is displayed in its tables and panes.

<comment><USER33> > but if you need it to determine important information then something's > amiss.

Not untrue, but define "need"; as eg [0] points out, distinctive colors make it _much_ easier to notice things. (On the other hand, TFA seems to be advocating precisely the kind of syntax-based ice-cream-sprinkle-soup coloring that makes it _harder_ to notice things, so not exactly the most convincing presentation there.)

0: [https://buttondown.email/hillelwayne/archive/syntax- highligh...](https://buttondown.email/hillelwayne/archive/syntax-highlighting- is-a-waste-of-an-information/) 0 dicussed: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23902124](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23902124)

<comment><USER32> Colour is a bad tool, even if it is an effective tool; a not-insignificant portion of the population has difficulties with colour. Then there's that not all displays render the same, and not all editors colourize the same. Syntax and layout are superior.

<comment><USER33> I am _immensely_ opposed to the notion that something being difficult or even wholely unusable for a "not-insignificant portion of the population" makes it a bad tool, rather than merely a situational one to which alternatives are also necessary[0]. The same reasoning, applied to the not-insignificant portions of the population with more severe disabilities than color-blindness, would condemn very nearly every tool in the history of technological civilization.

0: And in this case - as you yourself have pointed out - happily available.

<comment><USER32> The necessary alternatives, in CLI, are consistent and human readable syntax in a consistent and pleasing layout; and those alternatives are generally either present or not.

Moreover, they're useful to anyone regardless of their ability, and consistent syntax is easier to automatically colourize. Starting with colourizing is backwards.

<comment><USER33> At what point did I suggest _starting_ with colorizing? I pointed out that[0] colorizing was sometimes so effective at drawing attention to important information that it was reasonable to describe it as needed, with the implication that coloring should be available _in addition_ to other information channels.

0: for some people, which I perhaps should have explicitly noted, but it really ought to go without saying that no tool is equally effective for everyone.

<comment><USER32> You didn't; and neither did I suggest that colorizing was ineffective. It's bad because when using other tools it's unnecessary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Microsoft's new Terminal is really customizable

[https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/windows- terminal-...](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/windows- terminal-1-0/)

<comment><USER35> Welcome to the 80s & 90s. :D

<comment><USER36> Better late than never. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> `diff --color=auto` is nice, but `vimdiff` is superior

<comment><USER38> There is also `colordiff` which works both as a standalone diff tool, but also as a colorizer filter for other diff tools. For example:

      diff -u a.txt b.txt | colordiff

<comment><USER39> Git ships with `diff-highlight` which is more than enough for me.

I use the following config.

        [core]
          pager = /usr/share/git-core/contrib/diff-highlight | less

        [color "diff-highlight"]
          oldNormal = red
          oldHighlight = 16 bold red
          newNormal = green
          newHighlight = 16 bold green</comment></comment></comment>


Flyway 4.1.0 released - <AUTHOR> https://flywaydb.org/blog/flyway-4.1.0 <comment><AUTHOR> Flyway creator here. Happy to answer any questions. Enjoy the release :-)

</comment><comment><USER2> We use flyway with a scala project at work and it does a great job!

It was working with ruby on rails that taught me one of the strongest reasons to use psql over over databases - transactional schema changes. If a migration fails I absolutely want the whole migration rolled back so that the schema can be fixed and tried again.

Which is why this paragraph is alarming:

"First Flyway now autodetects whether a non-transactional statement is present within a migration. If it is, then the whole migration is run without a transaction (and clearly labelled as such in the logs)."

Arguably, mostly devs working with psql dont know that its possible to create schema change commands that cannot be transactional, myself included. I imagine creating such a statement 'by accident' is exceedingly rare, but a default of allowMixedMigrations to false seems more sensible to be 'default safe'. I say 'safe' because a broken, half-executed migration can leave a real mess.

Thanks for your efforts and for the flyway project!

</comment><comment><USER3> Awesome work, Axel - Flyway is our absolute go-to tool for all migrations, very easy, straightforward and one of only two pieces of Java in our stack that's so good we let it stay :)

<comment><USER4> Don't leave us hanging! What's the other?

<comment><USER3> ElasticSearch - definitively the least bad large scale full-text search server out there...

(BTW: Flyway FINALLY supports non-transactional PostgreSQL migrations now, been waiting for that for ages!)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> one of the things i hate most about my job is db migration, didn't know this existed, gonna give it a try

<comment><USER6> I was in the same boat with a little home-grown thing that worked.... ok. Then a coworker showed me FlyWay. It's great.</comment></comment>


A Technical Introduction to Reinforcement Learning - <AUTHOR> https://www.notion.so/idavidrein/A-Technical-Introduction-to-Reinforcement-Learning-90e4b5a21c9344c38b44890f4c8622a9 <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN, I wrote an intro to reinforcement learning (RL) tutorial that tries to balance technical depth and high-level breadth. I hope this can be a useful intro to the field for people who are interested in RL, but don't want to read tons of papers that assume lots of experience with the basic ideas. I've also tried to position this to outline the methods and style of the field, so you can use your excitement/interest from this post to help gauge whether or not you want to explore RL more deeply. At the end of the post I've curated and described some of the best online (and free) resources you can explore if you want to learn more.

I hope people find this useful, and I'd also appreciate feedback and constructive criticism on the writing style, content, organization, etc.

Thanks!</comment>


NSA: Our systems are so complex we can't stop them from deleting data - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/06/09/nsa-our-systems-are-so-complex-we-cant-stop-them-from-deleting-data-wanted-for-lawsuit/?tid=rssfeed <comment><USER2> It's like a doctor saying that he can't stop my kidneys from spontaneously dissolving within my body because human anatomy is "too complex".

I wouldn't be nearly as averse to mass surveillance if the folks conducting it and holding my personal data didn't have the mental capacity of a goddamn pineapple.

</comment><comment><USER3> See also: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7872554](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7872554)

</comment><comment><USER4> Isn't this basically the same argument Facebook, Google, et al. use when you ask to be completely purged from their systems?</comment>


I'm 17 years old and I created a website to help you find necessities - <AUTHOR> http://coronafinds.com <comment><USER2> Missing an alcohol section. Suggest, seeing how necessary it is, a subdomain alcohol.coronafinds.com

Also, "Organic Bamboo Toilet Paper" Is that as horrific as it sounds...</comment>


Ask HN: Alternative Platforms for Developer Work? - <AUTHOR> Excluding app stores or freelance/contracting marketplaces, are there any other platforms for developers/technical people to build "one-off" applications or prototypes for pay?<p>Billing would ideally not be hourly but a flat rate for the entire project by a certain deadline. <comment><USER2> I have been approached on Linkedin.com twice I often got work through upwork.com before COVID-19, but now not so much</comment>


Show HN: Jerbs – Browse GitHub Jobs on an interactive map - <AUTHOR> http://jerbs.breh.xyz/ <comment><USER2> I understand that you are using localStorage to reduce the number of requests to the GitHub Job board [1] (they probably has a rate limit) but for people with cookies/localStorage/sessionStorage disabled by default we just see a blank page. Can you at least wrap the code under the comment "// User" with a try/catch and display an alert explaining the visitors to enable localStorage in order to interact with the website? Otherwise this will be seen as another broken site to me, thanks.

[1] [https://jobs.github.com/positions.json](https://jobs.github.com/positions.json)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback! I took out the use of localStorage for now, because it didn't really have any benefit. I also tested using the '\--disable-local- storage' option, and it seemed to be working fine. Let me know if it doesn't for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Strange behaviour: Job offers with location "Anywhere" map to my own location.

It was quite surprising to discover I was working at GitHub and we were hiring for five positions.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very funny! For now, yes, job offers with location "Anywhere" will be put at your location. I'll think of a way to make this more clear to users if I can!</comment></comment>


Children's Imagined Robotos - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/events/1642902212629057/ <comment><AUTHOR> A good reason to be in Boston this week.</comment>


The Cult of Vice - <AUTHOR> http://www.cjr.org/analysis/the_cult_of_vice.php <comment><USER2> > But editorial standards change when your aim is not to be an entertainment > company, but a trusted source of news.

This amazes me: what makes them think that they _aren 't_ a trusted source of news for their audience?

> With expansion comes a sense of responsibility," he told me recently in one > of Vice's glass-walled conference rooms. "As time goes on I don't think that > being silly, being stupid, is cool anymore. When you look at the planet, at > the state that it's in, it demands attention. It demands scrutiny. And it > demands a certain level of seriousness."

Could it be that it's exactly the lack of seriousness of Vice's reporting up to this point that has made people trust them? Reality _isn 't_ always serious, and when it is, sometimes the only way to deal with it is to laugh at it, or to admit that it's strange.

In short, this looks like yet another company getting big and then changing everything that made them successful. It's not necessarily going to hurt their bottom line, but it's an example of why companies getting big is bad for consumers.

<comment><USER3> > This amazes me: what makes them think that they aren't a trusted source of > news for their audience?

High-quality, prestigious yellow journalism. Remember the _Maine!_

<comment><USER2> "Yellow journalism" means it's sensationalized or exaggerated, but I think most of Vice's stuff wasn't; they simply reported on sensational topics, and people assumed they were exaggerated because the topics are seemingly larger- than-life to an audience unfamiliar with them.

Of course, they weren't perfect, but when they did sensationalize or exaggerate, I think it was a bit more harmless than most news sources. Everyone is doing it to sell ad space, but Vice tended to sensationalize stories that were weird rather than stories that created fear or outrage-- their sensationalism was less politicized.

EDIT: To be clear, I'm talking about Vice a while back, not Vice now. The changes mentioned in the article are already apparent in some of what Vice is doing these days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> 'Vice has described its salaries as "competitive with comparable emerging media companies," but many employees seem to be here for the work and the culture, not the money.

"There's a sense that you're lucky to be there," said one former employee. "What you don't get paid for in cash is made up in the cool factor, and maybe getting into their parties."

"It's like a cult," said another ex-employee.'

When an employer makes it clear that you're lucky to work for them, and when you're getting paid in cool factor instead of cash, you probably are working for a corporate cult.

<comment><USER5> > When an employer makes it clear that you're lucky to work for them, and when > you're getting paid in cool factor instead of cash, you probably are working > for a corporate cult.

Or a startup

<comment><USER6> Or a game studio.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Where Vice started and where it is now is certainly a sign of the times, I'll say that.

</comment><comment><USER8> Perhaps this is now old, but everytime Vice is brought up all I can think of is this piece with David Carr from Page One (2011) - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLmkec_4Rfo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLmkec_4Rfo)

<comment><USER9> It has one of the best insults I've ever heard, hence its popularity. "Just cuz you put on a fucking safari helmet and look at some poop..."

But to dismiss what they've done with this video being posted every time does everyone a disservice. But yeah, good for a laugh. Not to be overly high and mighty about it but I'd really prefer to do my funny pics/videos on reddit.

<comment><USER8> I really wasn't trying to dismiss what the have been evolving into, rather to voice my own problems seeing past the Vice that was presented in Page One.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Isn't Vice's show on HBO just Unreported World with no women, anorexic men, and sarcasm?

The last season even repeated the exact same story with the same correspondent and the same _title_ for the Egyptian Tomb Raiders segment ( [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KmPQEtnqqI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KmPQEtnqqI) ).

</comment><comment><USER11> i occasionally read local vice articles (not u.s. - they obviously employ writers in lots of countries) and most of them are unbearable trash.

then, suddenly, a gem appears. the vice munchies take on weightlifter morghan kings diet is one of the better introduction to weightlifting in general.

(in case anyone's interested: [http://munchies.vice.com/videos/fuel-the-diet- of-champion-we...](http://munchies.vice.com/videos/fuel-the-diet-of-champion- weightlifter-morghan-king) )

</comment><comment><USER12> Relevant older, harsher piece

[http://www.thebaffler.com/salvos/the-vertically- integrated-r...](http://www.thebaffler.com/salvos/the-vertically-integrated- rape-joke)

<comment><USER13> I'm sure the author in your link had some good points, but they may have been overshadowed by all of the article's vitriol.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> the interview with the hell-banned founder (Gavin McInnes):

[http://canadalandshow.com/podcasts/vice-oral- history](http://canadalandshow.com/podcasts/vice-oral-history)

<comment><USER15> Just an FYI, before you listen to what he spews: McInnes is a white nationalist, homophobe, transphobe and misogynist. This mediamatters post summarizes some of the outrageous things he's said or done: [http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/06/05/meet-the-hipster- rac...](http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/06/05/meet-the-hipster-racist-fox- news-guest-attackin/199617)

You can understand why Vice would want to erase this dude from their history. I don't think they should be allowed to shrug it off, but I'm also glad that they try.

<comment><USER16> I remain unconvinced that he's not simply a troll playing a very long con. When I read him as such, I have found him very enjoyable, but as of late, overexposure is really causing the joke to wear thin.

<comment><USER15> I don't find it funny, and I bet that most people in the groups that he's "trolling" (exercising hate speech toward) don't either.

<comment><USER17> you mean hes exercising freedom of speech? Regardless of views, he has that right.

<comment><USER18> Man...I'm really, really sick of this lame, lame, _lame_ defense of lousy behavior. Freedom of speech doesn't mean that anybody _other than the government_ has to have anything to do with you and doesn't apply to anybody here in their personal judgments of somebody who's choosing to act shitty.

And maybe it's just me, but it strikes me that, when the best defense or excuse that you can trot out is that _hey, it 's actually going to get you arrested to do it_, the moral argument is not exactly strong.

<comment><USER19> > Freedom of speech doesn't mean that anybody other than the government has to > have anything to do with you and doesn't apply to anybody here in their > personal judgments of somebody who's choosing to act shitty.

Man... I'm really sick of this lame, lame, _lame_ misunderstanding of free speech. The first amendment of the US Bill of Rights is a legal embodiment (among many others throughout history) of the ideal of free speech, _but that 's not where it ends_. Attempts to shame (or otherwise coerce) unpopular speakers into silence is still a violation of that ideal.

<comment><USER18> You are wrong both in the textual sense and the historical sense of it. "Freedom of speech" has _never_ in the history of the United States been anything but a governmental restriction; it has never been a moral calling for the citizenry. Nor should it be: while there is a compelling argument for the government's agnosticism with regards to the viewpoints of the citizenry, there is no serious or compelling argument for the citizenry's agnosticism with regards to the viewpoints of each other.

Shame is a tool for fixing shitlords or, if they are unfixable, rendering them powerless. It's a good tool. It gets a bad rap when the powerful are powerful no longer, but--strangely enough--never does when the powerful _are_ powerful.

<comment><USER19> Sounds like you need to do a bit more reading on the subject.

> "If you believe in freedom of speech, you believe in freedom of speech for > views you don't like. Stalin and Hitler, for example, were dictators in > favor of freedom of speech for views they liked only. If you're in favor of > freedom of speech, that means you're in favor of freedom of speech precisely > for views you despise." - _Noam Chomsky in Manufacturing Consent_

But of course, you probably already do understand this and are just willfully ignorant.

> Shame is a tool for fixing shitlords or, if they are unfixable, rendering > them powerless.

This has told me pretty much everything I need to know about your viewpoint. You're a bully and you relish silencing opinions you don't agree with, while thinking you hold some kind of moral high ground. Whatever gets you through the day, I guess.

<comment><USER20> >Sounds like you need to do a bit more reading on the subject.

I feel like you're making unsupported claims. I can think if two instances where you are correct:

1\. "Equal time" laws, which are so specific and narrow in their scope to the point of being almost meaningless in a fractured media landscape.

2\. Slander and Libel laws which protect people from being personally attacked when the claims are untrue. These laws do not apply to true claims, nor do they apply to criticism of opinions and they are very loose in the instance of public figures.

Neither one of these apply in this situation. I am perfectly within my rights to say "That opinion is wrong." and criticize it. Indeed, one could argue that's the very point of free speech, to encourage public discourse and argument.

<comment><USER18> I think you're missing his point. He's attempting to staple a moral argument to the citizenry--that it's not merely the government that must ensure freedom of speech, it's that _we as citizens_ must accept and tolerate shitty speech. Which has no significant historical basis--Noam Chomsky is a guy and I don't have to agree with him, even when he's not being misquoted--but is alarmingly popular in certain dank corners of the internet.

More specifically, this notion is the origin of redpill horseshit--itself fallout from the fundamental disaster of my generation: the belief that we _deserve to be loved_ , that people who don't love and adore us are _wrong_. From that tragic misapprehension rises this back-assward idea of acceptance- for-everything-under-the-sun, which you will note is employed almost strictly by people who have lost positions of social power but still cling to the ideologies of superiority that put them there.

One must deserve to be loved, and that requires work and effort. It is not, to crib a phrase from a friend, an existential entitlement.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Exercise advice on food labels could help to tackle the obesity crisis - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/dec/10/exercise-advice-on-food-labels-could-help-to-tackle-the-obesity-crisis <comment><USER2> Why not teach this at school instead? It's simple math, physics, and biology, but the amount of people I've run into that just don't know how it works is ridiculous. Being able to read the calorie part of a nutrition label seems like it would be more useful than knowing world geography.</comment>


Why unicorns can raise $1B but can't figure out diversity and inclusion - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/23/why-unicorns-can-raise-1-billion-but-cant-figure-out-diversity-and-inclusion/ <comment><USER2> Because raising money is their main goal -- diversity and inclusion are not part of it at all (when they don't actively hurt, e.g. if most good programmers are white+male in your area (which statistically is all too probable, if not for anything else, because those are that had the money and where encouraged more to be programmers in the 90s and 00s when they were growing up), and you need to get an equal number of token women+minority programmers just for diversity's sake).</comment>