Google launches Meet, an enterprise-friendly version of Hangouts - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/28/google-quietly-launches-meet-an-enterprise-friendly-version-of-hangouts/ <comment><USER2> If I was in charge of communication at an enterprise I would stay the hell away from this. Google has probably abandoned this project _already_. I'm being semi serious - based on their history it might never get an update, or be dropped in a matter of months.

I'm not sure how Google expects anyone to invest in any of their minor platforms when they're so unfocussed and so notorious for abandoning and shutting down their services. Haven't they launched something like an average one new chat app every two months over the last six?

Enterprise apps are the very type that need long term confidence the most. Why are we to expect this would be any different to the multitudes of platforms they've abandoned and fragmented already?

<comment><USER3> We have Google Hangouts equipment in all our meeting rooms at Square, and use them for many (most?) meetings. They generally work great.

<comment><USER4> What do you mean by hangouts equipment? (genuine question, I didn't know they had hardware)

Update: Never mind, I googled it :) very cool. So it's reliable? I'd love to suggest something like this for my organization. We waste the first 10 minutes of every. single. meeting. just getting situated. It's very frustrating.

<comment><USER5> I've had good experiences with the $1k Hangouts boxes [1][2]. At first they felt unnecessary vs just dedicating one person's laptop to a hangout in each meeting, but the 5-10 minutes here and there that they save, the professionalism they bring to team meetings, and the improved audio quality from the dedicated mic makes them worthwhile.

I think $1k is a bit steep for what they are hardware-wise, but they're still worth it.

[1]: [https://chromebusinessdevices.withgoogle.com/products/2911/a...](https://chromebusinessdevices.withgoogle.com/products/2911/acer- chromebox-for-meetings-dt-z0jaa-001-black)

[2]: [https://chromebusinessdevices.withgoogle.com/products/1706/a...](https://chromebusinessdevices.withgoogle.com/products/1706/asus- chromebox2-g015u-iron-grey)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In case anyone is having trouble keeping track of the state of Google's communication apps, I made a handy visual guide:

[http://imgur.com/a/BgAuc](http://imgur.com/a/BgAuc)

<comment><USER7> You missed Spaces (which was also recently discontinued).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> \- [https://meet.google.com/](https://meet.google.com/)

\- [https://hangouts.google.com/](https://hangouts.google.com/)

\- [https://duo.google.com/](https://duo.google.com/)

\- [https://allo.google.com/](https://allo.google.com/)

<comment><USER9> \- [https://voice.google.com/](https://voice.google.com/)

<comment><USER10> Android Messenger on android phones too lol

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> trying to go to meet.google.com yields:

        Your browser doesn't support Hangouts Meet

        To join this meeting, install the latest version of Google Chrome

Thank you, Google. I do have Chrome installed. I have other browsers installed. I also have my gym clothes at home, graduated sunglasses and contact lenses. But right now I am dressing casual, with regular glasses and using firefox. So you are out of luck.

Everything but "an enterprise-friendly version of Hangouts". Hangouts is multiplatform application that connects gmail addresses through chat. Meet is just a chrome app?

<comment><USER12> I wonder what so new technology they use that is bundled in the chrome that they need it that bad?!

<comment><USER13> The cynic in me things this is a case of "We use chrome so we developed for chrome - we'll fix other browsers later" (Yes I'm bitter about the state of the cross-browser development sometimes)

<comment><USER14> That's nowhere near as cynical as "the more things are exclusive to Chrome, the more market share Chrome gets through lock-in and so the more data we can harvest." Which is what I'd guess is the real reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> jon-wood Is there some sort of internal competition at Google where each team releases a chat service and they see what does best?

<comment><USER15> Yes, actually there is. Internal promotions at Alphabet are based on "launching". So these teams launch their products and then Google culls the ones that don't do well in the market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have a MacBook Air 2011 with Lion and Safari 6. Today Google released Meet and I can't even know what's that about, their web page won't even show me a welcome page showcasing the features with some cool pics or something, instead I get a blank page saying I am not welcome.

Sadly that same experience has been happening lately in every major website I visit, like Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, Medium. Sometimes I go to the Develop menu and change my user agent to Safari 7 and now they let me in, WTF? Am I welcome or not?

Some people would say I should upgrade my OS, and even if I would like to do that, my laptop only has 2GB RAM so it would be almost impossible to even open notepad without making it crawl to a halt, while right now from start up to the web it takes less than five seconds. So no, that's not an option, much less buying a new computer.

I am not saying the world should stop progress to accommodate our needs, or that everybody should feel compassionate for poor, insane and plain dumb people like me, I just say it is hard to accept that a perfectly fine computer no longer has access to the modern internet.

We're being phased out, and that's definitely a sad feeling.

<comment><USER17> Quit using an outdated safari and install a different browser? Your computer is fine.

<comment><USER18> How about Firefox 51.0.1? Oh. Nope, that's not supported either.

<comment><USER16> Firefox 48 says it can not update on my computer any longer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Because nothing says enterprise like a 2.6 MB photo of a lake.

<comment><USER20> My first instinct was to agree with you. I mean "enterprise"? But... Google Meet would likely be intended to enable remote work (possibly for an enterprise), in which case, why not work next to a beautiful lake?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> hangouts, voice, messages, allo, duo, meet

I'm curious to know the product thinking around so many chat apps. Does the success of snapchat mean that there are deeply segmented messaging verticals ?

<comment><USER22> There were also the chat integrations in Gmail, Docs and Google Plus. I think google is still trying to make something stick.

<comment><USER21> which is fine - but why not one product. does every feature need a new app/product?

<comment><USER23> Did anyone actually check if this isn't just the same codebase repeatedly released as differently-named products, in hope that eventually one sticks?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I still dont understand what Google was thinking when they killed Google Talk when there was no replacement in place. Gtalk was an excellent app. The desktop app for gtalk was very light.

</comment><comment><USER25> Must be in reply to Amazon's Chime: [https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats- new/2017/02/announcin...](https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats- new/2017/02/announcing-amazon-chime-frustration-free-online-meetings-with- exceptional-audio-and-video-quality/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Quite likely.

<comment><USER26> Sounds more like what's been tested by early adopters for the past six months: [https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2016/09/new-early- adopt...](https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2016/09/new-early-adopter- programs-team-drives.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I stopped using hangouts recently. Every link is wrapped in a Google redirect. It is a horrible user experience on mobile. If I click an app specific link a browser pops up, then the redirect happens and the app pops up. There is no way to disable these redirects.

</comment><comment><USER28> Can't we just all converge on one message platform, like we also did with good old telephony?

<comment><USER8> It's called XMPP but everyone hates it because it's based on XML and XML is not trendy.

<comment><USER28> HTML is based on XML, and most people seem to like it.

<comment><USER8> HTML is the largest trouble of modern IT industry. All technical progress is revolving around circumventing HTML. First came things like Rails where you build HTML with pieces of strings separated by special syntax and your real code is shielded from it. Fortunately, now this is almost solved by React, which builds HTML for you automatically from JSON-like structure of lists and associative arrays ("application state").

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> We are a Google Apps user, and since we went to a remote work system last year, we heavily depend on Google Hangouts. I've found it to be pretty terrible on a reliability, functional, and performance basis.

On the other hand, we also use Slack heavily and its video product has been getting better and better. It won't be long until we can use slack for all our video conferences and discard hangouts fully.

</comment><comment><USER30> _Where Hangouts is limited to 10 people, Meet says it supports high-def video meetings with up to 30 participants_

A bit of a tangent: What's the best solution for a voice and chat or video- optional conference with 80-100 participants? Mostly presentation style but need the ability to take some questions/discussion among participants. Bonus points for a good mobile client.

<comment><USER31> We use Vidyo: [https://www.vidyo.com/](https://www.vidyo.com/)

It has the ability to simultaneously screenshare (for a presentation) and have a webcam on. There's a group chat feature for questions, too. The room admin can mute participants if you want to hold "live" questions for the end.

I wasn't sure of the maximum number of participants but have routinely been in calls with dozens of people with good performance, including in meetings with folks from both US and Australia (and US/UK).

It's a bit hidden, but if you scroll to the bottom here under "2017 VidyoCloud Service Description," the PDF there says limits are 100 participants for the "Team Plan," and 200 for the "Enterprise Plan," with the ability to buy extensions up to 500: [https://www.vidyo.com/cloud-video-conferencing- service](https://www.vidyo.com/cloud-video-conferencing-service)

I haven't used the mobile client (iOS/Android) personally, but it's seemed to work decently well for my coworkers.

Not sure of the cost of the different plans, but I've been quite satisfied with it as a full-time remote dev.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> If only Hangouts had a native client on Windows or Mac it would have been enough already. It works like a charm on iOS devices.

</comment><comment><USER33> Laser focus - that's what Google desperately needs. It's too bad when company releases multiple products competing with each other.

</comment><comment><USER34> > Google launches

Ctrl+W

<comment><USER23> Google launches a manned Mars mission.

(1.5 years later)

Google discontinues Mars Project; half a dozen users don't justify the costs of keeping the infrastructure up.

<comment><USER35> All Mars residents are given two weeks by Google to arrange their own transportation back to Earth, after which the water, food and breathable air infrastructure will be permanently shut down.

<comment><USER2> Google sunsets Waymo - passengers kicked out on freeway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> How about we get basics down first...like being able to send snippets/screenshots with hangouts.

</comment><comment><USER37> I said it when they released allo (or was duo?) but this one is going to be a huge success! /s

</comment><comment><USER38> Oh man, another Google product that does the exact same fucking thing another Google product does.

</comment><comment><USER39> If only Google launched a messaging service...</comment>


Palette - A Freeform Interface That Controls Any Software - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cchu/palette-a-freeform-interface-that-controls-any-sof <comment><USER2> These basically look like MIDI controllers in a kit. I love the modularity: being able to design your own _physical_ interface. I do a lot of computer- based music, and what really sets creativity in motion is the ability to control your software with physical input. For example, adjusting automation data or playing on drum pads really adds a human feel that is impossible to achieve with a mouse or keyboard.

But wow: Palette is expensive. $399 for 4 buttons, 5 pots, and 6 faders? For $59, you can get a very decent Korg Controller: [http://shop.korgusa.com/p/nanokontrol2-white](http://shop.korgusa.com/p/nanokontrol2-white)

The thing is, with MIDI, you can assign it _any_ way you want. It's just data sent to the computer. It usually controls virtual instruments, grooveboxes, drum kits, software UI... The only thing where Palette brings something new, is the desktop application where you can assign the controllers to a wider range of software. Unfortunately, it only supports the apps for which the desktop app is specifically developed for.

So, on the hardware side, Palette seems useless to me. But on the software side, having my MIDI controllers be able to control almost any software would be amazing.</comment>


How campaigns are using marketing, manipulation, and "psychographic targeting" - <AUTHOR> https://newrepublic.com/article/151548/political-campaigns-big-data-manipulate-elections-weaken-democracy <comment><AUTHOR> Original title: "How campaigns are using marketing, manipulation, and "psychographic targeting" to win elections—and weaken democracy" (36 characters too long)</comment>


Clear: A To-Do List App With A UI From The Future  - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcodesign.com/1668915/clear-for-iphone-a-to-do-list-app-with-a-ui-from-the-future

<comment><USER2> a few features of the UI are cool, especially the pinch open list to add a new item.</comment>


Red Hat tests giving software for free to startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-11-09/red-hat-assists-israeli-startups-to-increase-software-revenue.html

<comment><USER2> Microsoft has been doing this for awhile now.

see: webspark and bizspark programs. You can get all Microsoft software for free for 3 years.</comment>


Using Vim for C++ Development - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/p1v0t/42a34744b5e4f5980e5f4e1c980ec859 <comment><USER2> Before switching to CLion eventually, I've used my well curated VIM config[1] together with YouCompleteMe and several clang-based tools such as clang- format, clang-rename etc. for several years, working on smaller and large C/C++ codebases with reasonable success.

At some point in time I switched to a full-fledged IDE (CLion) because there are certain refactoring tasks which are probably still possible using this setup but I found them to be mentally too complex to deal with, especially when I am focusing on the task at hand at the same time.

[1] [https://github.com/NewProggie/Dev- Utils/blob/master/dotfiles...](https://github.com/NewProggie/Dev- Utils/blob/master/dotfiles/.vimrc)

<comment><USER3> +1 to CLion. Vim is great for what it is-- if I need to make a small edit or even work on C code it does the job well and is very fast and efficient. But at the end of the day it's not a full blown IDE and as such is missing a graphical debugger and profiler, good configuration for interactively running unit tests, and complex refactoring tools.

CLion is pretty much the best C++ IDE I've found by a mile. Eclipse is so slow and terrible I won't even consider it. Visual Studio is amazing but Windows only and _really_ heavyweight. VSCode, Atom, etc. aren't really "proper" IDEs. Then there's open source contenders like Jucipp which while very fast do lack a lot of the niceties of their paid competitors.

My only gripe with CLion is that it's CMake only. This limits its usefulness for Bazel or Autotools projects.

<comment><USER4> What are you missing in VSCode to make it a proper IDE?

<comment><USER5> VSCode gets the look right. Indeed, its look is fantastic. But it doesn't get the feel of vim right at all. My fingers speak vim and they know whether they're talking to vim or something hinky. So after a few days with VSC, I go back. Usually it has to do with ex mode which I power edit in a lot. But I do look at VSC every year or so and it gets better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yeah, lets take lightweight vim and add a node.js runtime and make a better ide.... _sigh_

At that point you might as well use QT Creator.

<comment><USER7> I personally prefer [https://github.com/dense- analysis/ale](https://github.com/dense-analysis/ale) plugin. It is in vimscript and supports almost everything (including clangd) out there: [https://github.com/dense- analysis/ale/blob/master/supported-...](https://github.com/dense- analysis/ale/blob/master/supported-tools.md)

<comment><USER8> Is there some feature that coc.vim has that ale does not? Can someone explain coc.vim's popularity to me?

I don't understand why coc.vim is so popular, when Ale is so performant and "debuggable" (i.e. produces useful performance traces).

[long-time ale user here, I don't use clangd but I do use python-language- server, which is similar]

<comment><USER9> Generally it's because Coc has completion, snippets, and pretty much everything from the regular VSCode version of the extension built-in, so Coc can replace multiple plugins, and it works very well.

<comment><USER8> Right, but Ale does this too (replace multiple plugins, supports completion, linting/formatting).

Is it that coc.vim doesn't make you install the binaries of the tools (i.e. go-pls, python-language-server, clangd)? If so, that would be enough to explain the popularity to me.

IMO, one could make the argument that it's somewhat antithetical to vim- culture, to not understand the non-vim binaries your editor is executing.

<comment><USER10> One thing I really like in coc is I can ask to describe a symbol and it'll tell me about it in a hover thing: [https://i.imgur.com/NrH0Wwz.png](https://i.imgur.com/NrH0Wwz.png)

Do agree that coc is probably the least 'vim-culture'-ey part of such a setup, but hey it does good things. :) I don't think you need to justify using Ale so hard and put coc down, could just use whichever you prefer personally.

<comment><USER8> Sorry if I came across that way. Agree people should use the things they prefer. :)

I'm trying to see if I'm missing something big/obvious, since coc.vim has been so popular recently.

<comment><USER10> No worries! And yeah I went through a phase a few months ago of trying out the completion packages again, it's worth just trying and seeing if you like it. Here's the relevant bits of my config if that helps: [https://gist.github.com/nikki93/6ea403d3e2cbff2b3d32d4528edf...](https://gist.github.com/nikki93/6ea403d3e2cbff2b3d32d4528edf5ee5)

coc.nvim has pretty much worked pretty well out of the box for many languages, and it works for me on macOS, Linux and Windows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> ainar-g You don't actually need NPM and CoC. I've been using pure-VimL vim-lsc[1] for a couple of years, and it's been serving me well. My config:

      let g:lsc_auto_map = {'Completion': 'omnifunc'}
      let g:lsc_enable_autocomplete = v:false
      let g:lsc_server_commands = {
      \  'c': {
      \    'command': 'clangd',
      \    'log_level': -1,
      \    'suppress_stderr': v:true,
      \  },
      \  'cpp': {
      \    'command': 'clangd',
      \    'log_level': -1,
      \    'suppress_stderr': v:true,
      \  },
      \}

This gives me code completion and other niceness.

With Vim 8.1, you don't even need a package manager, since there is one built in. Just clone the Git repo into your ~/.vim/pack/vim-lsc/start/vim-lsc/.

[1] [https://github.com/natebosch/vim-lsc](https://github.com/natebosch/vim- lsc)

</comment><comment><USER11> +1 for clangd (not to mention clang-tidy and clang-format). On Ubuntu 20.04 clang-10 is is in the standard repositories (I've heard it's well-supported on other distributions), and the setup is seamless.

clangd eats big-ass, hairy, template-heavy TUs for breakfast as concerns responsiveness, and I have yet to see it make a mistaken autocomplete suggestion or fail to find a declaration that I agreed with. It's easily the equal in precision of the Intellisense server that some of my colleagues use and doesn't bog down the same way. Even the method renaming is pretty solid.

For me at least it's a small but consistent productivity increase over any of the alternatives I'm aware of and fits into your existing emacs/vim/vscode workflow.

Would download for free again.

<comment><USER12> > It's easily the equal in precision of the Intellisense server that some of > my colleagues use and doesn't bog down the same way. Even the method > renaming is pretty solid.

> For me at least it's a small but consistent productivity increase over any > of the alternatives I'm aware of

Have you tried Eclipse CDT?

Since nobody mentions it, I guess I have to. It takes some time to set it up (system paths, etc.) but once you do, it makes browsing and refactoring code a breeze.

It works much faster than Intellisense and stuff like dependency trees (call hierarchy, etc.) are much easier to navigate.

I'm using it as my main editor since 2014 or so. Have tried various alternatives on all 3 platforms (Linux, macOS, Windows), but I always go back to it for C++ dev.

<comment><USER13> I was using CDT until WFH started in March. At the time Remote System Explorer appeared to be dead-ish so I went with VSCode. Eclipse CDT is extremely tedious to configure the include paths for because they all have to be entered one by one in a text box. VSCode has a remote system extension and include paths can be entered en masse into a JSON file. I've used both with embedded projects that involve cross compilers. VSCode doesn't know MIPS processors are a thing so some of my linux driver code has unwarranted squiggles. For Eclipse the same constructs are handled by the methods it uses for any code. Eclipse supports its superior features with a lot of reindexing. VSCode supports its features with glorified searches.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I can thoroughly recommend vim for C++ development that doesn't stretch over too many files and directories. Especially with custom include paths and a constantly changing bigger project, vim becomes almost unusable for me.

I can very much recommend QtCreator. I don't use Qt, but as an IDE it's very well made. The fact that it can also do Qt isn't even apparent when you use it on normal CMake projects and the like.

Extremely solid syntax highlighting is also important to me, which, in vim, is horribly difficult if not impossible. If I want something nested like `std::this_thread::get_id` to be highlighted properly, want macros to be a different color, want local scope variables to be a different style than class-scope or globals, vim is out of the question.

So yes, I can recomment vim for C++ development as long as you're not using a ton of libraries and are okay with most of your code being the exact same color.

<comment><USER15> I can also recommend QtCreator for C++ development! I regularly use it for my cross-platform open source projects (none of them are Qt based) and it works equally well on Windows, macOS and Linux.

<comment><USER16> Andreas Kling has used it to develop an entire operating system (Kernel to DE), so it can't be that bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Well, let me tell you how to do c++ programming with Vim. Get a Linux machine, replace the desktop with i3wm. Get a terminal emulator like urxvt and make it dark and semi transparent. Set a beautiful wallpaper. Install YouCompleteMe. Now you are in paradise :)

<comment><USER18> God how i3wm changed my life for the much, much better.

<comment><USER19> This may be considered blasphemy, but I continue to use i3-gaps on my 43" 4K monitor in 100% floating mode. It actually works quite well. Of course for my small displays I use tiling mode.

<comment><USER20> Imo if you're only floating, Openbox is even lighter than i3 and works great. Super configurable too- the config file is just XML. I really enjoyed my time on it but I like tiling too much. Window-snapping wasn't enough.

<comment><USER21> Ick.

I use xmonad, despite not knowing any Haskell. I basically just copy pasted little snippets from all over the place and changed random characters until it started working.

Pretty sure I still prefer this state of affairs to XML.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Semantic highlighting for C++ can be achieved in Vim using color_coded: [https://github.com/jeaye/color_coded](https://github.com/jeaye/color_coded)

It can make a huge difference in the highlighting of the source, compared to Vim's regex-based approach. The reasoning for wanting this is to be able to soak in more information about the source without needing more text; the color alone can convey a lot of useful info about the code.

<comment><USER23> Agreed about the usefulness of semantic highlighting. Also, [https://github.com/jackguo380/vim-lsp-cxx- highlight](https://github.com/jackguo380/vim-lsp-cxx-highlight) works really well with CoC and LanguageClient-neovim, and doesn't need to be compiled.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> For C, default vim comes with:

      (somewhat) intelligent complete (ccomplete)

      debugging (termdebug)

      jump to definition (ctags)

      reference finding (cscope)

      file explorer (netrw)

<comment><USER25> Oh yeah, for plain C, Vim is absolutely good enough. Virtual methods and templates drive the complexity of intellisense and refactoring up to 11. The absolute worst is when you're trying to call a method on a function argument of a templated type. The completer basically has to analyse every single callsite and present you with the intersection of all types that might be used.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> My alternative is to use the IDE with Vim keyboard bindings. Much nicer, full tooling support etc. I love vim keybindings but am fully ambivalent about everything else...

<comment><USER27> As it stands Evil is the only Vim keybindings add-on that actually feels like using Vim. Everything else will inevitably be missing a feature or not act in exactly the way you expect, leading to disappointment. That and you also lose out on Vim extensions.

<comment><USER28> Evil is very good, but moving to Emacs from vim was not quite the smooth 'just use evil and you get the best of vim with the power of Emacs' experience that people say, at least for me.

I found it needed some extra configuration before it felt like stock vim.

C-u isn't bound to "scroll up" by default with evil, for example. You have to (setq evil-want-C-u-scroll t). That took a while to figure out and I expected it to work that way by default.

Then you have to (setq evil-want-keybinding nil) and install evil-collection and evil-magit to be able to use vim movements in other Emacs buffers.

Or you have to learn Emacs shortcuts and just use vim for editing, but that feels awkward for a vim native.

As an Emacs newbie I still find it unsettling that documentation for packages and for Emacs itself all uses Emacs-style shortcuts. Of course it couldn't really be another way, but I either have to learn those or remap things to vim-style leader bindings. It makes vim usage in Emacs feel a little uncanny at times.

I could use a distro like Doom which has it all wired up for vimheads already, but then I'm learning someone else's shortcuts and system, which takes away from the point of Emacs a little for me (the idea that you make it your editor).

Maybe it gets easier with time. If any other vim users made the move to Emacs I'd love to hear some tips!

<comment><USER27> My advice at this point is something along the lines of "use Doom," because all that time you would normally put into wrangling evil into doing what you want it to would instead be offloaded onto another person who makes wrangling Emacs in general his hobby.

It's like the small things such as binding C-u to scroll up by default are taken care of for you out of the box. How many people who use Evil who are already familiar with Vim are going to _not_ end up setting that configuration option in plain Emacs at some point? (Maybe those who use page up and page down, but not even those commands do the same thing as C-u and C-d, at least in Evil.) Everyone else will have to add that line to their config, and that quickly gets unmaintainable if what you actually want to do is focus on work instead of building a proper Emacs framework. So it is set for you already.

Doom is basically that for Evil configuration and several thousand other things.

One downside is having to undo some of Doom's built-in things if they're annoying. One example of this is having to insist that it uses a specific set of completion handlers and not globally set a hardcoded list for every mode. Still, the amount of time you'd have to do this is less than the amount of time it takes to build 30% of Doom for just the features you want from scratch.

And yes, it is at times a sad feeling needing to fall back on someone else to do the hard work for you, but the realities of work and limited free time essentially dictated that decision for me.

<comment><USER28> Thank you, that's helpful, and I recognise a lot of the pain points and pluses there.

I started with Doom, loved it, but wanted to understand Emacs better so ended up writing my own config.

I now understand Emacs a _little_ more, I know what every line of my config is doing, and there isn't an extra layer of abstraction or opaque bash commands I have to periodically run. I also feel more comfortable that Emacs with a home- grown config will last me 10+ years. It's incredible what Henrik has achieved and the level of dedication and support is astounding, but I wonder how sustainable it is as the community inevitably grows.

Rolling my own setup has certainly made me appreciate Doom a whole lot more, though. And it's hard to shake the feeling that I could spend a year or two just hacking on Emacs to get half of what Doom offers.

It's like the trap of wanting to get into game programming and finding yourself writing a game engine instead of a game. (I picked up Emacs to learn Clojure and other Lisp dialects better.)

It's also a little silly to have an expectation that I need to understand everything that Doom does behind the scenes. I don't have that expectation with Emacs itself, or with IntelliJ or vim, or VS Code…

Maybe the answer is to just read the (smallish) Doom codebase to understand it better and contribute however I can, be it in Discord, with cash, or PRs. And get back to hacking instead of hacking Emacs…

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Stupid question: who controls the language server? If I have multiple projects or multiple branches of one project or even just multiple build folders for different configurations, how do I tell the language server what I am currently working on?

If I put the setup in my home directory, I am limited to a single setup (compiler, stdlib).

If I put it into the project directory, I am limited to a single build for, and potentially a single branch, and I will have multiple instances of the lsp running if I stop working on one project.

If I put it into the build for, which seems sensible, how does the editor decide which server to run or ask?

It seems to me that I _need_ some sort of project manager that acts like a lap proxy and then resolves these issues. Do I need to write one myself?

<comment><USER25> What I do currently is run an LS per repo with its configuration stored in the repo, so:

      + ~/repos/repoA
      | - CMakeLists.txt
      | - compile_commands.json -> ../../build/repoA_config1/compile_commands.json
      |
      + ~/build/repoA_config1
      | - CMakeCache.txt
      | - build.ninja
      | - compile_commands.json
      |
      + ~/build/repoA_config2
      | - CMakeCache.txt
      | - build.ninja
      | - compile_commands.json

etc. for repoB, C, ...

That said I'm thinking on flipping it around - keep the LS configuration in the build folder, and symlink the source folder in it. That way I can have several different configurations in effect at once and switch between them easily. Currently I have to change where compile_commands.json points to if I want to change YouCompleteMe's completions.

Your editor should manage the language server and you should just have to provide the configuration it expects in the directory you start it in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I use a similar approach and setting for c++, I purchased clion for two years and rarely used it, vim is just handy and light-weight, I will probably use clion when my project becomes huge, until then, vim is absolutely enough.

vim nowadays can find all the headers, do linter and auto-fix and auto completion, and when you're coding, you rarely need move the mouse at all, vim 8.2+ is itself a modern IDE inside a terminal, again, light and fast, I enjoy it.

</comment><comment><USER31> I tried this. It is basically a slightly improved VSCode at this point.

Basically, most the slowness/bulkiness of IDEs does not come from the text editing portion.

</comment><comment><USER32> What I really love about vim lately: Termdebug.

Its such a joy to have cscope bindings and gdb-based debugging direction within vim itself.

This has been a joy to re-discover after forgetting that vim has a great integrated debugger now. I keep forgetting it, but man has it been great to use lately.

</comment><comment><USER33> What's the advantage of using a LSP over, say, ctags and cscope ?

I currently am using that, along with the [https://github.com/stefandtw/quickfix- reflector.vim](https://github.com/stefandtw/quickfix-reflector.vim) for quick refactors, and it seems to work fairly well.

Is it because of method signatures or is there a killer feature that I'm unaware of ?

<comment><USER34> cscope looks like dead project with no support of the recent versions of C++(14/17/20)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I wish I could find (or create) a working LSP setup for the Java code base at work. It consists of multiple projects, tied together by a Gradle build script. IntelliJ just groks the build.gradle and Eclipse can also import it.

Is there an LSP server that can do something similar?

<comment><USER27> At one point I tried embedding a language server in a running IntelliJ process. It kind of worked, but a few problems led to me getting tired of maintaining it:

\- Constant API updates to IntelliJ internals requiring updates to the extension.

\- The need to run a full copy of IntelliJ in the background, and breakage in the copy leading to requiring a full restart.

\- A lot of concurrency problems I didn't understand because by necessity it required going deep into IntelliJ's codebase.

\- I was no longer using Java in my work environment or for personal projects, so I had no need to use IntelliJ.

But despite this, the repo stands as the most-starred one I have. People are still starring it even though I haven't made changes in over a year and a half!

[https://github.com/Ruin0x11/intellij-lsp- server](https://github.com/Ruin0x11/intellij-lsp-server)

So it sounds like this is a thing people would use, if someone wants to take up the maintenance burden.

<comment><USER25> IIRC, Vim has some kind of builtin support for Eclipse for Java development, have you tried that? I admit I haven't really looked into it, just seen it mentioned while reading the manual.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> With neovim 0.5, you can drop two dependencies,

Plug -> built-in vim packages CoC -> built-in LSP client

<comment><USER3> Do you get semantic highlighting though? That was one of the big reasons just using an LSP client wasn't enough.

<comment><USER36> For that I just installed vim-polyglot. Its a big ole collection of syntax and indent rules

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Has anyone used VsCode for C++/CMake development? What was your experience?

<comment><USER38> Works pretty well with the C++ extension and the cmake-tools extension. Though at some point I ended up just swapping to invoking CMake from the command line.

<comment><USER37> I haven't found a good CMake linter, do you use one?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I really like using TabNine for completion which does a sort of AI- autocomplete - the suggestions are usually more than just the next token, and sometimes are scarily good.

</comment><comment><USER25> My first advice for anyone who wants to use Vim for C++ development would be - don't. I've used exclusively Vim for over 10 years and it's too comfortable to switch to anything else, so I'm losing out on a lot of productivity, or at least that's what my colleagues, who have never used Vim, claim.

Pithy claims aside, it has been an interesting journey actually using Vim for producing C++ code for large projects. There's a strong DIY element and you end up with a setup that's much more customised than a vanilla IDE - on the one hand giving you a certain degree of comfort in your work, but on the other a lot of what you do is unportable to other people. The language server protocol has been a pretty good development, I'm keeping an eye on what comes out of those efforts, though I'm not using one personally right now.

My current setup consists mainly of exuberant-ctags for static indexing, YouCompleteMe for intellisense and simple navigation, rtags for rich search and light refactoring and fzf for searching. As to why I ended up settling on these plugins:

\- ctags:

Absolutely essential. Yes, a full semantic index straight from the compiler is better, but ctags is more than good enough for just telling you "where is this defined". When paired with fzf, you can type part of the tag, space, part of the directory and you'll get all tags in that directory. That's due to fzf doing super simple substring matching in the TAGS file's lines based on your query, there's nothing smart going on here. This tool is also very good when you are developing multiplatform software, because the compiler cannot see all places where a function or class is defined, since you have one definition per platform. Technically being able to query a plethora of language servers, one for each configuration, would be ideal, but we're not there yet, and such a setup sounds way too fragile for my taste.

\- YouCompleteMe:

Aside from C++, it provides amazing completion support for many other languages. It can even deal with java project files, if the readme is to be believed. Other than for C++, I mainly use it for python. It's also good in plaintext files for completing words and file paths. I really love its substring matcher, just type gTFBT to get "getTheFooBarThing". Downsides: 1. if your build system cannot produce a compile_commands.json file, you will need to write some python code to specify compilation flags; 2. compiles each file individually, so if some of your headers aren't freestanding, you'll get spurious errors when editing them.

\- rtags:

Basically a language server from before the LSP protocol existed. Mainly developed for Emacs, but the Vim integration is good enough. Continuously indexes your source based on a compile_commands.json file. It can show you who calls a function or uses a variable, class hierarchies, virtual method overloads and more. I've seen it get confused if you jump branches and require you to delete and recreate the index, but I haven't experienced that lately.

Apart from those I use a bunch of standard productivity plugins like unimpaired, surround, nerdtree, etc. etc. Vim 8's gdb integration has been very welcome, too. I struggled to find a good interface to gdb previously, as everything seems to want to be Visual Studio and give you a restricted clicky interface, whereas I just wanted the current vim buffer to be synchronised with the instruction pointer and to write gdb commands directly.

I don't feel like I'm substantially slower in Vim than my colleagues in other editors and IDEs. Colleagues across the company use Vim, Emacs, VSCode, QtCreator, and Code::Blocks. The Windows developers are all on Visual Studio naturally. I haven't noticed being slower than any of them. The above plugins are enough for the odd rename-refactor I have to do, and anything more substantial is so infrequent, that doing it manually doesn't really have an impact. Also, developing on Linux, I always feel like any graphical application will just disintegrate or cause an unrecoverable freeze in the graphics driver at any random keystroke.

Back in the day I had to make do with just ctags, cscope and debugging straight from the commandline, lol. I do believe that Stallman's refusal to allow easily plugging into GCC's AST, like one can just use clang for indexing, held back C++ development tools on the Linux platform significantly. Eclipse's CDT, KDevelop, Anjuta, Code::Blocks, NetBeans, etc. - they all suffered from having to write their own C++ indexers that were always inferior to getting semantic information straight from the compiler. I'm extremely grateful to the open-source community for the continuing work on development tools, and try to donate where I can. Watching the development tools landscape change over the years has been interesting - things don't so much improve, as they evolve chaotically with an overall trend towards improvement. Like anything else on this platform. So far many IDEs have come and gone, but Vim is eternal.

I will say that using Vim is entirely up to your taste, it doesn't seem to be substantially faster or slower than an IDE, so use what you like. It is much cheaper than Qt Creator or CLion (AFAIK for both you need a license to develop commercial software), so that might be a factor for you. Companies tend to have a big Windows development team, with a few Linux developers, so they buy bulk Visual Studio licenses and individual Linux IDE licenses, making the latter end up costing more per developer.

<comment><USER39> > It is much cheaper than Qt Creator or CLion (AFAIK for both you need a > license to develop commercial software),

Qt Creator is GPLv3 ([https://github.com/qt-creator/qt- creator/blob/master/LICENSE...](https://github.com/qt-creator/qt- creator/blob/master/LICENSE.GPL3-EXCEPT)). You can do whatever you want with it.

<comment><USER25> Ah, I see. I last looked into using Qt Creator around 2015 and it seems this license change is from 2016. The company I worked for at that time said from their reading of the license we need a commercial license and asked if I could please pick something else. If I had just checked it out a year later, hah.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Is there a LSPs in a box somewhere yet?

<comment><USER41> Currently I think the coc.vim plugin is as close as you can get. It has installers for LSP servers and VSCode extensions.

You might also have good luck with a curated vim distribution such as SpaceVim[1], where everything should be pre-installed for you.

Later, NeoVim 0.5 is going to have LSP out of the box[2]. So things are very positive.

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

[2] [https://neovim.io/roadmap/](https://neovim.io/roadmap/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I didn't think setting up YCM was too bad. It also uses clangd as the completion engine for C++.

</comment><comment><USER43> Just no

</comment><comment><USER44> Closed the page when I saw cmake mentioned

<comment><USER11> What should we be using? I've had nothing but trouble with Bazel and Buck (I'm a Buck committer). autotools is notoriously painful. Hand-written makefiles can be nice for smaller projects but get cumbersome with bigger projects.

What am I missing?

<comment><USER45> For small personal projects I started using dds: [https://github.com/vector- of-bool/dds](https://github.com/vector-of-bool/dds)

It's still very very young and in development, so not ready for prime time, but it "just works" and doesn't make me feel stupide the way CMake does...

<comment><USER11> Thanks for the pointer, I'll take a look. CMake is definitely one of those tools where I look at the last project I was working on when I can to remember how to do stuff.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Sen. Manchin demands complete US ban on Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57619592-38/democratic-senator-demands-complete-u.s-ban-on-bitcoin/ <comment><USER2> This is a quote from the Manchin letter:

 _The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee issued a report just this month stating, "There is widespread concern about the Bitcoin system's possible impact on national currencies, its potential for criminal misuse, and the implications of its use for taxation."_

This is the (slightly expanded) quote from that report† (which is actually kind of interesting -- it's a survey of bitcoin regulation (or lack thereof) in a bunch of different countries).

 _There is widespread concern about the Bitcoin system's possible impact on national currencies, its potential for criminal misuse, and the implications of its use for taxation. Overall, the findings of this report reveal that the debate over how to deal with this new virtual currency is still in its infancy._

So, by omitting that sentence he totally misrepresents the position of the report authors. I generally think bitcoin is overhyped by most of its proponents, but this is a really silly response.

†[http://www.loc.gov/law/help/bitcoin- survey/2014-010233%20Com...](http://www.loc.gov/law/help/bitcoin- survey/2014-010233%20Compiled%20Report_.pdf)

<comment><USER3> The lack of regulation is worrying. That exchange that just flamed out is an example of what the entire financial system would be with no oversight.

<comment><USER4> Yes exactly. The exchange that just flamed out was incredibly poorly run, and deserved to go out of business. Now there is space in the market for more competent companies to take over the market share. I'd love to see the entire financial system operate under a meritocracy such as this.

<comment><USER5> Banks used to fail all of the time with depositors losing assets. This caused a lot of problems, so we enacted some regulation.

Now banks still fail (several weekly, without much notice), but depositors have mandated insurance.

Are you against that?

<comment><USER6> If depositors didn't have mandated insurance, they would pay more attention to the credit-worthiness of the bank they work with, and we might have avoided the 2008 debacle.

<comment><USER7> It seems that the health of the bank is something which is actively obfuscated. Saying "buyer beware" is like telling people that they should be responsible to make sure that the cars they buy are safe enough, or to make sure that the restaurants they eat at have clean enough standards in the kitchens. That's the entire point of regulatory inspections: No one can afford to be attentive to that level of detail or be an expert in everything.

<comment><USER6> I agree people cannot be attentive to everything.

HOWEVER, people can be a lot more attentive now then they could ten years ago (for example, online reviews of cars/restaurants/etc) and in ten years they will be able to be even more attentive.

If we do things that foster attentiveness, everyone will be better off.

<comment><USER8> > HOWEVER, people can be a lot more attentive now then they could ten years > ago (for example, online reviews of cars/restaurants/etc)

Its a good thing online reviews are reliable sources of information with transparent provenance that neither the company itself nor its competitors spend substantial efforts loading with false-flag propaganda.

Or, at least, that's a good thing in whatever alternate universe it is true in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The very fact that powerful people and corporations want to kill Bitcoin in the cradle is reason enough for me to support it.

Thank you, Senator Manchin, for reminding the world that this is a political struggle, not a get-rich-quick scheme.

<comment><USER10> I agree. It was already pretty obvious that Bitcoin and other such crypto- currencies are disruptive to central banks. But now the world's 3 largest powers wanting to ban it, is very similar to how the largest incumbents react to disruption - they try to fight against it as long as possible instead of adopting it. And they lose everytime.

<comment><USER11> > _But now the world 's 3 largest powers wanting to ban it, is very similar to > how the largest incumbents react to disruption - they try to fight against > it as long as possible instead of adopting it. And they lose everytime._

Actually they've managed to suppress tons of things.

In fact, there are tons of disruptions that never made it. Except if, in hindsight, one calls disruption only the things that actually won in the end (in which case it's a tautology -- of course all disruption wins in the end, if disruption is only what wins in the end).

So the "they lose everytime" is a little too optimistic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Democratic senator seeks to boost his visibility by taking an exaggerated stance on new and uncertain technologies.

<comment><USER13> He's desperately trying to pander to his constituents and stay in the news. This is merely his latest stunt.

Edit: not up for re-election.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, Sen. Manchin is not up for re-election in this election cycle. His term expires in January 2017, with an election in November 2016: [http://www.periodicalpress.senate.gov/reelection-2016/](http://www.periodicalpress.senate.gov/reelection-2016/)

Of course he's up for re-election in the sense that all congresscritters are up for re-election unless they declare otherwise. And I don't think anyone on HN would dispute "pandering" and "staying in the news!"

<comment><USER14> To whom is he pandering to?

<comment><USER15> The "silent majority".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> >Indeed, it has been banned in two different countries--Thailand and China

I'm so glad our representatives are looking at China for a model of how things should be. Hey, China is doing it, it must be OK.

You can make all sorts of arguments about banning BC, but don't use the fact that it's banned in oppressive countries as one of them and then expect me to respect your opinion.

<comment><USER17> He's later referring to them as "allies".

I hoped this is satire for a moment.

<comment><USER18> Good point!

You are not allowed to use twitter, facebook, and youtube in China either. So, just as our "allies", lets ban twitter, facebook, and youtube.

[http://www.greatfirewallofchina.org/](http://www.greatfirewallofchina.org/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The Federal reserve was created by senator Aldrich who's daughter was married to the banker Rockefeller. The Federal reserve is privately owned by the member banks themselves among others JP Morgan, City bank. 97% percent of the money in circulation is debt. 1971 Nixon decoupled the Dollar from the Gold standard, essentially creating a FIAT currency. During the 1990s Allan Greenspan chairman of the Federal reserve set the capital requirements for new loans to near zero in an effort to let the market regulate itself. With no Gold standard to limit the amount of debt it grows exponentially.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Federal_Reserve...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Federal_Reserve_System) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abby_Aldrich_Rockefeller](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abby_Aldrich_Rockefeller)

You can see the decoupling here GDP vs median income [http://lanekenworthy.net/2008/09/03/slow-income-growth- for-m...](http://lanekenworthy.net/2008/09/03/slow-income-growth-for-middle- america/)

Graph showing the middle classes loosing to the debt system [http://lanekenworthy.net/2008/03/09/the-best-inequality- grap...](http://lanekenworthy.net/2008/03/09/the-best-inequality-graph/)

An Investment Manager's View on the Top 1% [http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/investment_manage...](http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/investment_manager.html)

Hitting peak debt 2008 [http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/wp- content/uploads/2014/0...](http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/wp- content/uploads/2014/01/010814_0559_Secularstag4.png)

<comment><USER20> Pretty much everything here is wrong. The Fed is every bit a government agency as NASA.

<comment><USER21> Actually, I'm pretty sure the Fed is a privately-owned company, with preferred shareholders and everything. That's not to say the government isn't hugely influential on what it does, but that it's a completely separate entity.

Of course, I could be completely wrong. I'd actually be interested if someone had proof for either argument.

<comment><USER22> [http://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/about_12593.htm](http://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/about_12593.htm)

[http://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/about_12799.htm](http://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/about_12799.htm)

[http://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/about_14986.htm](http://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/about_14986.htm)

Seriously, if it involves the U.S. federal government, information about it will be easy to find. You don't need to guess or assume, just do a few simple searches.

edit: Well, not all of it, but the structure of the Fed isn't exactly a national secret.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I love his conflicting concerns: "I am most concerned that as Bitcoin is inevitably banned in other countries, Americans will be left holding the bag on a valueless currency"

Then later in the letter: "[Deflation] makes Bitcoin's value to the US economy suspect, if not outright detrimental".

So.. he's concerned that bitcoin is either extremely inflationary (going to zero) or extremely deflationary. But he's not sure which.

</comment><comment><USER24> His letter requesting the ban.

[http://www.manchin.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press- release...](http://www.manchin.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press- releases?ID=237cbd66-6a26-4870-9bcb-20177ae902b0)

<comment><USER25> Pure gold

> As of December 2013, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) shows 1.3% inflation, > while a recent media report indicated Bitcoin CPI has 98% deflation. In > other words, spending Bitcoin now will cost you many orders of wealth in the > future. This flaw makes Bitcoin's value to the U.S. economy suspect, if not > outright detrimental.

<comment><USER26> "If we don't ban deflationary assets, people won't be forced to use our shitty inflationary assets!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> In other news, Hollywood would still like for the Internet to be banned because it facilitates piracy.

</comment><comment><USER28> Sounds a like any other prohibition. Bitcoin seems like the tech equivalent of alcohol: easy to get involved with, really hard to keep track of/stop.

<comment><USER29> Even worse than an alcohol ban, as alcohol has a conspicuous 'meat space' presence and people who have recently participated in alcohol related activities are often rather easy to pick out.

His demands that regulators prevent Americans from being left 'holding the ball' if/when bitcoin collapses could reasonably be interpreted as a call for a ban on merely possessing bitcoins (not just transfering/selling/mining). If that were to happen _(which is unlikely, but seems to be what this asshat wants)_ , having a brainwallet could be considered a "thoughcrime" in the _literal, non-hyperbolic_ sense.

<comment><USER30> It gets absurd. "Owning bitcoin" is just linguistic sugar for having knowledge of a private key that corresponds to a public key that hashes to a bitcoin address that holds bitcoin. It's just a 256-bit number. In essense, every single private key represented on the blockchain becomes an illegal number ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number)), and not just illegal to publish, but illegal to store and even illegal to think about (aka know about).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Do you suppose the good Senator from West Virginia and member of the Senate banking committee got some help drafting that letter?

<comment><USER31> Spot on, I wonder if he's acting as a proxy on behalf of some bankers or his good friend Jay Rockefeller

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I find it incredible that the justification for action should be "a complete prohibition was appropriate because Thailand, China, and South Korea have already enacted severe restrictions or bans of their own." The American government has a document that outlines when it should take action and on what grounds. And that document makes no mention of consulting other countries or deferring to their sensibilities. It is outrageous that a senator thinks that that would be a valid starting point.

</comment><comment><USER11> > _A US senator is asking the federal government to take this remarkable step: > completely ban Bitcoin._

Well, not that remarkable. Tons of countries (including the US) have banned alternative currencies in the past (and present).

Essentially, a government can ban whatever it likes, even essential freedoms enjoyed by everybdy for millenia (like drinking alcohol during the prohibition).

<comment><USER8> > Tons of countries (including the US) have banned alternative currencies in > the past (and present).

In the US, its worth noting, this is an express (in Article I of the Constitution) power of the Federal government.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Probably worth mentioning that Manchin is one of the most conservative Democratic senators before people start flaming him as a liberal bent on destroying freedom.

<comment><USER34> Asking as a non-American, why would someone characterized as "liberal" do this? It seems to me like this is a very thoroughly conservative move and well in line with conservative and reactionary thinking.

Or have the definitions of the words _liberal_ and _conservative_ been swapped recently? A lot of the comments in this thread indicate that this may indeed be the case.

<comment><USER35> Indeed, US "liberal" and "conservative" have little to do with their other meanings. If you trace the history back on the terms you can find where they diverged, and there's some traces of connection, but for the most part you're better off taking them as "just variables" that happen to have leading names. I've also observed that the connection to their usage in other countries/polities are unreliable guides as well.

<comment><USER34> But the basis is still in there somewhere, right?

I mean, here in the EU being conservative means wanting to literally conserve established power structures, with a big emphasis on religious and social rigidity or even regression. It means having the desire to pass laws that benefit powerful centralized interests and marginalize minorities such as poor people or those deemed ethnically inferior. This is absolutely the direction where draconian and arcane laws come from.

Along those lines, I always took "liberal" to mean literally being of a laissez-faire attitude, being secular or at least open to science and advancement, big on personal freedoms and individuality but also often paired with an egalitarian desire for social justice.

I can't shake off the feeling that these words have been redefined in recent discourse in an attempt to prevent people from having a meaningful discussion about issues.

<comment><USER35> "But the basis is still in there somewhere, right?"

Only historically. US Liberalism, being the dominant political ideology in the US (despite its occasional protests to the contrary) is actually often quite conservative today, trying to preserve its changes from being undone (be that by literally being rolled back, or by being modified into something a liberal doesn't want). However noble or terrible that desire may be, it slots into the "conservative" side of the original meanings. US Conservatism is often about tearing those down and replacing it with something else, and while some of that may be modeled with a "return" to an older status quo (be it fictional or based in reality), a lot of it isn't; what's the historically "conservative" answer about internet issues, for instance? _Both_ ideologies are rather strong on the control and quick to reach for the stick of regulation when in power, albeit for different things, but at the moment it's Liberalism that I'd associate with a huge, huge belief in regulations, and while conservatism is not "laissez-faire", the laissez-faire amongst us generally end up on the conservative side when forced to choose sides on the grounds that conservatism in the US at least _tolerates_ the ideas of laissez-faire, whereas liberalism at this point openly mocks it.

<comment><USER34> Thanks for elaborating by the way, this explains a lot of the dissonance I (subjectively) see daily on HN.

However, this is not totally in sync with how those sides are presented to the public, or the international public in any case. When I turn on Fox News, for example, the ideas there are _absolutely_ what I would identify as conservative. Supporting legislative and social measures that disadvantage gay and poor people, for example. Espousing religion over science. How could such an agenda be considered liberal, especially since they themselves use the word "liberal" as a swear word? This looks perfectly conservative to me, and I'm still really confused because you described these people as functionally liberal.

> _what 's the historically "conservative" answer about internet issues, for > instance?_

I'm trying not to refer to American conservatism, but to the concept in its original meaning when I say this:

The internet is new and potentially dangerous to traditional values, so one would expect the attitude towards it to be very negative. That's the default conservative stance, right, to keep the social status quo or regress it where possible.

The internet is a relatively new phenomenon that threatens to change society, it's a level playing field where ordinary people get access to untold quantities of information practically without oversight. If I had to speculate on a default conservative stance to it, without any prior knowledge, I'd wager they'd be trying to outlaw the free aspects of the internet, ridicule its potential, and generally try to convert it so it can serve traditional power structures. And, now looking at what's happening in real life, that somewhat naive expectation turns out to be a pretty good description of what's actually going on.

> _the laissez-faire amongst us generally end up on the conservative side when > forced to choose sides on the grounds that conservatism in the US at least > tolerates the ideas of laissez-faire, whereas liberalism at this point > openly mocks it_

Can you give an example where that's happening? Looking in from the outside it seems that US conservatives are the driving force behind a lot of legislation with the explicit goal of limiting freedoms and social stability. Granted, both sides seem to agree on much of the more egregious stuff like mass surveillance and terrorism theater - but from where I stand at least I don't see liberals trying to legislate against gay people. It also looks to me like it's the American conservatives who are more in favor of expanding already sweeping police powers.

I mean, sure, in the end it doesn't matter that much to foreigners like me. But it's still puzzling.

<comment><USER35> "However, this is not totally in sync with how those sides are presented to the public, or the international public in any case."

The difference is that I look to actions, not words. There's no evidence based on _actions_ that US liberals have a problem with strong police powers; they _talk_ about how bad it is, but monotonically increase the powers, then use them. Conservatives in the US may occasionally grumble about gay people, but they take no action whatsoever to do anything about it, except in very small jurisdictions. The press plays these issues up because it helps the narrative, but they are not a significant force. There is absolutely 0 chance of any sort of "anti-gay" legislation passing through any element of our government right now, and this will most certainly include whoever is elected in a few years.

Since US liberalism controls the US media, and broadly speaking fairly leftist elements control the international media as well, you do not tend to get a straight view of what conservatives are and are up to. Mind you, I'm not saying you're going to _like_ them if you really knew, but it's a very distorted view that you get. In particular, the media carefully seals away anything like a reasonable argument for their positions, and makes sure to play up only dumb ones. For that matter, it is true that it is also a distorted view of US liberalism that you get; you get a lot of the high rhetoric reported, but good luck hearing about their actual actions. (Seriously; watch the news. How much of it is dedicated to politicians just spewing their lines, and how much of it is dedicated to an in-depth report of what's actually happening in the field where the policies are being implemented? You may be shocked.)

Anyhow, yes, I am reporter on the field with my own slant, but one advantage of not really fitting onto the left/right Republican/Democrat axis is that I get a bit of a clearer view from not having a strong allegiance to either side and psychologically needing to defend "my team". US "Liberalism" and "Conservatism" have shifted a lot from the core meaning of the term. (Indeed, there's a thing called a "Classical Liberal", if you look it up, and that puts you _firmly_ on the US Conservative side. Should have used that example earlier.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I think the idea of banning it is stupid, but its interesting to read his letter. He doesn't seem to really be confused about what Bitcoin is or how it works, contrary to the common trope that the government only wants to ban things because it doesn't understand them.

</comment><comment><USER37> I going to assume anyone in power who wants to outright ban or heavily regulate crypto-currency is in the pocket of big banks.

Doesn't really fit for west virginia but they also have their share of turmoil with massively unsafe mining yet peak corporate profits.

<comment><USER38> Isn't it obvious? West-Virginia's well-funded coal mining lobby doesn't like the competition from Bitcoin mining and moves one of their pawns to block it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> You really can't blame him for trying. If crypto-currencies supplant state- based currencies, especially if one were to crop up that would be less traceable than bitcoin, whole swaths of governments around the world find themselves increasingly irrelevant and, quite probably, powerless to make themselves more relevant.

And if government can't figure out how much a person makes or what he's worth, I'm pretty sure that leads to something way less dreamy and awesome than it sounds...because, if not, I think they would've covered such a thing in my public school education.

</comment><comment><USER40> Online gambling is banned in the US. Would a Bitcoin ban really be out of character?

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, no. More like an attempt is inevitable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Good.

Honestly, in the eyes of the USFG, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are like a ticking time bomb. The longer it takes them to act, the value of BTC increases, and it becomes increasingly hard to do anything about it from a federal level since more and more people have real assets invested in these currencies.

The interesting bit is that the most cited complaint against BTC in the popular media is its use as a facilitator of illicit goods, which, due to bitcoin's design, is actually impossible to enforce. If you're already buying drugs and what else online, another law saying you can't use bitcoins aren't going to stop you (other than making it harder by shutting down popular services like Coinbase). The superficial reason for banning bitcoin (reducing illicit transactions) will likely fail completely.

Furthermore, even if all governments ban bitcoins, as long as people have access to encrypted storage / networking, it's unlikely that the value of BTC would drop to zero. It's still a pretty efficient way to handle illegal transactions.

<comment><USER42> You can't stop existing Bitcoin users from trading amongst themselves, but it can be made _very_ impractical to acquire Bitcoin with money.

The government can easily isolate Bitcoin exchanges (and any other entity it chooses) from the USD banking infrastructure. Put them on the OFAC list (or similar) and they won't be able to get bank accounts, accept wire/ACH transfers, work with credit cards, or use any other money transmitting service.

Transfers of paper cash in person would be the only option, and a campaign of well-publicized Bitcoin-for-cash sting operations could easily make this too risky for most people.

ASICs are, well, application-specific. It's not exactly easy to fabricate hardware in secret, and there are no excuses to hide behind when you've got a warehouse full of Bitcoin mining rigs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> It might be a stunt, but sophisticated investors that aren't tech savvy are scared to death of this pandering. Furthermore, it justifies so many people's public position on bitcoin. After all, if you say it enough it must be true.

How do I start a petition for his resignation - at least from the Senate banking committee? As far as stunts go, this one at least serves a meaningful cause.

<comment><USER43> Here we are, please sign and fight back!

[http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/we-demand-sen-manchins- im...](http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/we-demand-sen-manchins-immediate- resignation)

<comment><AUTHOR> Tweeted!

[https://twitter.com/declanm/status/438796925844717568](https://twitter.com/declanm/status/438796925844717568)

<comment><USER43> Sweet, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Strange, he's on the banking committee but not much banking money: [https://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N000...](https://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00032838)

</comment><comment><USER45> The gov't: one of the few places where 'disruptive' implies 'bad'.

<comment><USER46> Hmm. I think it's far from the only place. You might want to check a dictionary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> He wants to ban the use of a public ledger with private and public keys.

</comment><comment><USER48> This is the type of people that keep countries from innovation. I don't have bitcoins, but for what I know the Bitcoin value isn't high enough to cause problems to the U.S. economy.

</comment><comment><USER49> Serious problems with the following sentence:

      It also means that Bitcoin provides a unique digital
      fingerprint, which allows for anonymous and irreversible
      transactions.

      ...

      unique digital fingerprint >> anonymous and irreversible transactions

So, Mr. Senator, what your telling me is that unique, readily identifiable, globally visible objects represent the very apparatus that prevents identification? How, precisely does that work?

<comment><USER50> Because fingerprints have neve been used to identify anybody, and are also totally anonymous!

That's why the police never use them to solve crimes, of course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Just as a thought experiment: how would the US gov actually go about making it illegal to use Bitcoin, or "ban" it? You obviously can't shut down the protocol itself. Maybe you go after the exchanges and treat them as if they're the drug dealers, if you were to "treat Bitcoin as a crime" (and by that I mean making exchanges or possessing a wallet).

Any other ways hypothetically speaking?

<comment><USER52> My 'suggestion' \- the prostitution route: make the purchasing of bitcoin illegal, and make soliciting for such a sale illegal too.

<comment><USER17> People will use dogecoin then, so the law will probably refer to "cryptocurrency". Which will not be easy to define and will probably get other centralized currency schemes in trouble as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Best of luck with that stunt.

</comment><comment><USER54> This just tells me that some very importand and/or well-connected people lost significantly because of MtGox.

At this rate, maybe this prediction[1] will actually come to pass.

1\. [http://www.businessinsider.com/williams-bitcoin- meltdown-10-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/williams-bitcoin- meltdown-10-2013-12)

</comment><comment><USER55> I suspect a few in the BitCoin/tech community will lobby Manchin or other members of Congress the other way. There is enough financial interest in BitCoin now that it won't be easily outlawed.

Either way, Congress can't ban BitCoin but they can ban BitCoin exchanges and BitCoin payment processors. Good luck with that.

</comment><comment><USER56> As a native West Virginian, I can tell you what will happen if you call his office. In about 4-6 months, you'll get this letter:

[https://gist.github.com/dbb/5810717](https://gist.github.com/dbb/5810717)

</comment><comment><USER56> Some rather humorous responses on Twitter: [https://twitter.com/Sen_JoeManchin/status/438762073527705600](https://twitter.com/Sen_JoeManchin/status/438762073527705600)

</comment><comment><USER57> Ridiculous. The total value of all bitcoins at their peak price is not enough to harm the US economy. And if the non - inflationary constraints of the system are really so fatal then why bother calling for a ban?

</comment><comment><USER58> Dumb move on his part, he better hope the price tanks before he is up for reelection again or he is going to be sorry he alienated so many wealthy potential contributors.

</comment><comment><USER59> Sen. Manchin's main constituent is the coal industry. Crypto-currency mining uses a fair amount of electricity. I'd guess most cryto-currency enthusiasts are also "green" enthusiasts. Manchin may want to stop this: _" SolarCoin debuted last month and builds on the same technology as Bitcoin"_

[http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/02/21/3282131/solar- co...](http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/02/21/3282131/solar-coin-global- currency/#)

</comment><comment><USER60> For anyone who is wondering, I have heard from ABC and Forbes reporters that at least as of now, this ban would not apply to Dogecoin.

<comment><AUTHOR> But what's their source? Do they have that on-the-record from the good Sen. Manchin himself, or just an unnamed source speculating? Or their own speculation?

<comment><AUTHOR> Update: [http://www.dailydot.com/politics/senator-joe-manchin- bitcoin...](http://www.dailydot.com/politics/senator-joe-manchin-bitcoin- litecoin-dogecoin-ban/)

Manchin would have similar complaints about any such anonymous form of online payment. "It's the anonymous, unregulated nature of it," that Manchin finds a problem, the staffer said.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> The important thing here is to remember that anybody who disagrees with you is a fascist, out to destroy America and freedom. There's no possibility that this is a well-intentioned effort, rather than bank-funded malice. Furthermore, it's all the other party's fault. This guy's actually a closet republican / a perfect example of how extreme liberal democrats have become.

waterlesscloud posted a link to the letter. Read it, then (if you have a real opinion past "government = evil" or some equally inane platitude) contact your senator.

Some thoughts on the content (from someone not particularly optimistic about bitcoin, but somewhat more optimistic about cryptocurrencies in general): Manchin does not actually explain how the use of bitcoin harms anyone who does not deliberately buy-in. The theory that it harms the economy in general simply by being volatile strikes me as silly, given that it represents a vanishingly small fraction of our economy (which, as I understand it, is part of the reason it's so volatile, meaning that as its share increases, volatility goes down).

<comment><USER62> Rather than conjuring up this strawman, maybe you should just reply to the one single comment that even comes close to the stance you are describing.

<comment><USER29> Can't rake in the karma without toplevel posts making broad and vague complaints about unspecified comments.

It's a common pattern both here and on reddit (because top-level meta- commments _really are_ effective for farming karma), and it should really be against the guidelines. Best case scenario: the complaint is 100% valid and on target, but because it is a top level comment and correct it will rise to the top of the discussion while the offending comments will be downvoted and buried at the bottom. Refutations for shitposts should be buried with the shitposts^, visible to those who decide to read the shitposts but out of the way for everyone else. We don't need all discussions "bookended" by shitposts and comments refuting shitposts.

 _^ Not buried by being downvoted of course (accurate refutations of shitposts should generally be upvoted), but rather buried by merely being the child comment of a downvoted post._

<comment><USER63> If users vote these up, doesn't it meant that they want to read comments like that? Rules are nice, but you can't beat democracy.

<comment><USER64> I think part of the problem is an upvoted reply post doesn't filter to the top of the page, it's tied to the rank of its parent. A +10 reply post, replying to a -3 top-level post, will be seen by no one, despite being highly valued by the 10 people who did see it. A -5 reply post to a +6 top-level post will still be in reasonable scrolling range.

Top-level posts have a major visibility advantage over reply posts, and thus have a karma advantage.

I wonder if weighting a top-level post's score by the score of its children would help alleviate this. On one hand, there could be more rewards for trolling, since a troll that attracts popular refutations will be visible. On the other hand, a civil post that is both upvoted itself, and invites interesting upvoted discussion, will outrank the troll post.

<comment><USER29> Maybe we should negatively weight "awarded karma" by the height a comment is on the page.

A 100 point comment that is two or three screens down and buried in a nest of mediocre comments is almost certainly better than a 100 point top level comment at the top of a discussion. The later is a much more difficult and impressive feat.

Comments would have the same point values, but the value that is added to the user's karma score would be weighted. Getting lots of points would still make you feel good about your comment, but it would neutralize more ...strategic karma farming.

<comment><USER65> Few people will agree with me and they're never going to implement it, but I think comments shouldn't carry karma. It just encourages too much pettiness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Oh no, a letter has been sent!

</comment><comment><USER67> Dear Secretary Lew, Chairwoman Yellen, Commissioner Curry, Acting Chairman Wetjen, Chairman Gruenberg, Chairwoman White:

I write today to express my concerns about the US Dollar. This cash currency is currently unregulated and has allowed users to participate in illicit activity, while also being highly unstable and disruptive to our economy. For the reasons outlined below, I urge regulators to take appropriate action to limit the abilities of this highly unstable currency.

By way of background, the US Dollar is a crypto-currency that has gained notoriety in recent months due to its rising exchange value and relation to illegal transactions. Each the US Dollar is defined by a public address and a private key, thus the US Dollar is not only a token of value but also a method for transferring that value. It also means that the US Dollar provides a unique digital fingerprint, which allows for anonymous and irreversible transactions.

The very features that make the US Dollar attractive to some also attract criminals who are able to disguise their actions from law enforcement. Due to the US Dollar's anonymity, the cash market has been extremely susceptible to hackers and scam artists stealing millions from the US Dollars users. Anonymity combined with the US Dollar's ability to finalize transactions quickly, makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to reverse fraudulent transactions.

The US Dollar has also become a haven for individuals to buy black market items. Individuals are able to anonymously purchase items such as drugs and weapons illegally. I have already written to regulators once on the now-closed Silkroad, which operated for years in supplying drugs and other black market items to criminals, thanks in large part to the creation of the US Dollar.

That is why more than a handful of countries, and their banking systems, have cautioned against the use of the US Dollar. Indeed, it has been banned in two different countries--Thailand and China--and South Korea stated that it will not recognize the US Dollar as a legitimate currency. Several other countries, including the European Union, have issued warnings to the US Dollar users as their respective governments consider options for regulating or banning its use entirely. While it is disappointing that the world leader and epicenter of the banking industry will only follow suit instead of making policy, it is high time that the United States heed our allies' warnings. I am most concerned that as the US Dollar is inevitably banned in other countries, Americans will be left holding the bag on a valueless currency.

Our foreign counterparts have already understood the wide range of problems even with the US Dollar's legitimate uses - from its significant price fluctuations to its deflationary nature. Just last week, the US Dollar prices plunged after the currency's major exchange, Mt. Gox, experienced technical issues. Two days ago, this exchange took its website down and is no longer even accessible. This was not a unique event; news of plummeting or skyrocketing the US Dollar prices is almost a weekly occurrence. In addition, its deflationary trends ensure that only speculators, such as so-called "the US Dollar miners," will benefit from possessing the cash currency. There is no doubt average American consumers stand to lose by transacting in the US Dollar. As of December 2013, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) shows 1. % inflation, while a recent media report indicated the US Dollar CPI has 98% deflation. In other words, spending the US Dollar now will cost you many orders of wealth in the future. This flaw makes the US Dollar's value to the U.S. economy suspect, if not outright detrimental.

The clear ends of the US Dollar for either transacting in illegal goods and services or speculative gambling make me weary of its use. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee issued a report just this month stating, "There is widespread concern about the the US Dollar system's possible impact on national currencies, its potential for criminal misuse, and the implications of its use for taxation. Before the U.S. gets too far behind the curve on this important topic, I urge the regulators to work together, act quickly, and prohibit this dangerous currency from harming hard-working Americans.

Sincerely,

U.S. Joe Manchin III

United States Senator

</comment><comment><USER68> o lawd</comment>


DotScale, the tech conference to supersize your apps in Paris, June 7 - <AUTHOR> http://dotscale.eu/?hn

<comment><USER2> Sounds like an interesting conference. Sadly, I'm still hoping to manage to get a WWDC ticket and it may just be during the same timeframe.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the rumors say June 10-14 for WWDC so you should be fine :)

<comment><USER2> Conference Marathon :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> That's quite the line-up, and for what looks like a very sensible ticket price.

I'd definitely want to go there, if I had the chance and means.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot ! ;-)

What is preventing you to come? Distance?

<comment><USER3> I live in Europe, but airfare and hotel would bump the cost of admission up too much.

I currently don't work at a tech company, so the salary there - or employer- paid expense - would definitely improve my chances. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Can't do much about the travel but I can definitely give you a discounted ticket and I'm sure you could find someone in the local community to couchsurf!

<comment><USER3> That's really kind, but I'll try to catch you guys next time instead. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Amazing lineup, I can't wait to see Salomon of dotCloud on stage.</comment>


Administrative Control in the Shipyard (1973) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~trygver/1973/iccas/1973-08-ICCAS.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Abstract:

> The organisation of a yard may be strongly influenced by the information > system it takes into use. The converse should also be true: Systems > development should be subordinated the desired evolution of the > organisation. The principle of Communicating Data Processes is introduced as > a tool for building information systems that are easily moulded for fitting > an existing organisation and for adaption to its continuous development. A > description of the principle is given, as well as an outline of a new system > designed for testing it out in practical shipbuilding.

Discovered via [http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~trygver/themes/mvc/mvc- index.html](http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~trygver/themes/mvc/mvc-index.html)</comment>


"Anonymous" Hackergroup set to Destroy Fox News Website - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/26/anonymous-threatens-fox-news_n_1032701.html

<comment><AUTHOR> First the attack against sites with childporn: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3143789>

And now this is happening. Is this good or bad?</comment>