Private Universities in India provides you just a Degree- A student rant - <AUTHOR> http://nainomics.blogspot.com/2011/11/welcome-to-indias-higher-education.html

<comment><USER2> Hi I wanted to put this up:

I _was_ in a very very reputed AIEEE university in one of their fit for nothing dual degree programs. And trust me most assignments and project work comprise of plagiarized and glue code. It had more than 75 % compulsory attendance, after which grade drops happen.

There are some good students...some really good students... who do well in really getting at the essence of programming.But everyone else is lost.

You find disinterested people working on projects. And if you are in one dual degree program and work on other field's projects ( on our own ) you get letters from the dean and your department head reprimanding you to invest your time in your field. BTW, all these fields I am talking about are about simple and elegant software.

Result : I quit.

I am pursuing a B.Sc Degree in IT from SMU-DE. Yes it is not the same as from the above institution. But it lets me participate in community development better. It gives me time to participate in SPOJ, TopCoder, Directi's CodeChef.And it doesn't prevent me from participating in GSoC. It doesn't threaten me and stop me from attending NASA's Summer Internships. And most of all, I don't have to succumb to their policies.

I find solace from learning through MIT OpenCourseWare, Stanford's Online Classes in AI, ML and DB. My github and other projects feed my resume. Yes, there is a unrest at home about where I am headed. But I know where I am and where I am headed.

I was clear that this institution was not worth 1.5 lakh per annum from my parent's life savings. I quit, in my second year.

But trust me. If you move out, you will have to face _immense_ mental pressure from the family. And if you can work from your college, do so at all costs. Moving out will create new problems that you cannot predict now.

<comment><USER2> And btw, this is not the case with private universities alone. You find students with a very very small Body of Knowledge even in very reputed places. They were good with their High School Education, and not with undergraduate interests. Perhaps, this is because fear is a major incentive to pass. And they have no real good incentives to learn.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Been there, done that.

But if you're seriously considering dropping out, good luck with finding a job in the sort of competitive market you're in. With more than a thousand applications per job listing, the recruiters will first cut out the non- degreed/non-engineers. Then you're looking at a select few (like Zoho) who may take you in for a marked down pay which gets you no where.

Or you can try to make it on your own, put in several man hours of effort into an idea and push it to market. If you do manage to get a release out, know that your odds of success have improved from nothing to one in a hundred.

Or you could simply suck it up, maintain a minimal profile at college necessary to get your degree, and work the nights on getting a real education. Then you're in a (IMO) far better position, life-wise.

Stop cribbing about something you have little control over, and focus on doing what you can to improve things for yourself, and if you see fit, for others.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do and I've tried various methods to be more productive about my learning and projects. Still the college stuff really pisses me off.

<comment><USER4> I think frustration about college can be good as well. I have always used that frustration to put my time to better learning and projects. Each time you encounter those problems, think how can you make things better. Start making things better for yourself, like start your own group for similar minded folks in your college/school. Maybe you will arrive at solutions that may help build better educational resources for people who actually want to learn and not just clear exams.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I understand your frustration. I too graduated from such a private college with a CS degree in 2003. Here is why I think you should complete your degree:

\- You are being forced to study the core areas in CS. You will probably soon specialize in your work/research, so learn the core areas when you still have the time.

\- Unless you have already created exceptional products, regular employers will not consider you unless you have a degree; these employers are a good fallback if nothing else works. The degree is a baseline to avoid being filtered out.

\- If you want to go to graduate school to do research, either now or in the future, an undergraduate degree is essential.

\- Getting a B.Tech isn't hard. Put in the minimum effort if you want, but it isn't tough to pass, nor is it a time sink.

Yes, the teaching can be unimaginative, professors may strictly adhere to a syllabus, and the exams test rote memorization, but one can still be stimulated in this environment. I would unceasingly ask questions to fully understand algorithms being taught in class, often challenging professors (and finding holes in the thought process). The database class helped me understand normalization and other ideas of good DB design (and their rationale), which I used for my web projects. A queuing theory class helped me understand performance of a system I later built.

There is no doubt you need to go beyond just getting the degree. Do you have fantastic ideas for products? Maybe a bit of freelancing will help? I created websites for clients abroad while doing my undergrad (just get a low bandwidth internet connection from a mobile company for this). I interned with companies/organizations during the summer. For my final year project I wrote a simd+cluster version of a program that I ran on all the computers in the department's lab (and tripped the ups!). I also realized the importance of a degree and tried to stay close to the top of my graduating class.

The challenge is to stay motivated to get the degree, while also finding an outlet for your passion. Both can be done. Freelance during the semester working nights and weekends; work with a company during the summer; participate in CS competitions in your region; find a local conference in an area of interest and publish a paper (this isn't hard!). It's really up to you to get motivated and rise above the rest.

While I sometimes wish I had done my undergrad elsewhere, I was eventually able to work in an area of my interest. I went to graduate school abroad and am now working in a research department in industry doing what I love.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the motivation. Yes I'm working on some ideas with some friends and would soon release a web app. And i'm doing freelancing for my friends and relatives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> As Mark Twain said, never let your schooling interfere with your education.

Nor should you let your schooling make you cynical, or drain you of your love for learning, or kill your ambition. Because you will continue to encounter resistance in the form of people, culture, and institutions that seem to exist solely for perpetuating mediocrity and fake work. They may operate that way, but that doesn't mean everyone does.

Steve Jobs quotes are practically cliche now, but, stay hungry. That tenacity is what will make you if you channel it into creating something.

</comment><comment><USER7> Well my friend, here are a few things you should know: 1\. If you are interested in research, you should approach professors/find out what they are doing etc, even at the worst of schools, there is always someone doing something worthwhile. 2\. As it looks like you are already following hacker news, keeping up to the posts on the front page itself should give you a lot of ideas and things to tinker around with. 3\. Believe me, undergrad education is useless, everyone does it to get a degree. What really matters is the environment around. The people around you will help you learn more at school than the course itself does. 4\. Ask yourself these simple questions, if the answer is a "no", try working towards making it a "yes" : Do you have a GITHUB Account ? Have you tried getting your hands dirty with any OSS project ? (not necessarily code, configuration ? testing ?) Do you follow journals in your area of Interest ? Which courses do you love at school ? Have you supplemented the course with some extra reading ?

These are just a few questions that can get you started, for example, the course for algorithms/data structures at most schools in india sucks big time, why not follow it up with a reading of AOCP or the MIT algorithms book. And yes as someone already mentioned, concentrating on work rather than cribbing about the system will take you better places. BTW, I did my undergrad from a so called "reputed private university" in India too.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the encouraging words. Yeah I've a github account that i setup just some time back. Also doing some code- work and helping some friends on a small side project. I'm pretty much good at python and C language. Now I'm reading others code on github and learning from them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> My 2 cents of advice.

Do not drop out unless you are filthy rich. It doesn't work in an Indian environment where companies and jobs depend on what your under graduate college is and your qualification. Companies only visit BIG and reputed colleges and no matter how bad you are, you might be lucky in getting selected for the job. That is what you are paying for, its for that damn job and not for the research and education.

But I think you are going in the right direction. If I look back at myself 4 years ago, I am in the same position as yours. Its good that you are looking at the MIT and Stanford's courses. They help you a lot in learning new concepts. Also make yourself comfortable with programming. at the end of the day, it boils down to how good you can apply your concepts and code stuff. Find some interesting projects on Github. Fork it and work on it. you might not be successful at your first attempt. But you will learn a lot of things on your way. Involve yourself in various open source projects and hackers club in your local city and I'm sure you will be successfull.

</comment><comment><USER4> I understand your frustration like many others on this forum. I graduated more than a decade ago, when Web was still in its early stage(s). If I were going to an engg school today, I would have similar thoughts as you are having right now.

I will not advice you to drop-out or in other words, throw a degree out of the window. I think @doosra does mention that you can just do minimal in college to get a degree and I think you should do that.

There are open courses from some of the best universities around and especially now that Stanford has Spring courses online, free; there is no way you should give up.

Spend more time learning and doing. You just don't only have online courses to see but also, the time is ripe to build things. We have an awesome platform and some good problems to solve. Maybe students like you will come up with some, who knows.

Happy hacking!

</comment><comment><USER9> You say you have finished 3 semesters of your graduation. But I think 4,5,6 semesters are where you learn most of the core of CS, atleast as per Indian curriculum. Give yourself some time.

Start a CSE club at your college. Organise lectures with the help of your serniors. Or each one of you can start learning about a technology and start sharing it with each other in the meetups. Organise programming contests, organise hackathons. You can also try and collaborate with local LUGs and get lectures conducted. Your institute will slowly start seeming to be full of buzz where there is lot of knowledge flow. And then it will all seem great.

Try and

<comment><USER4> In some cases, 'learning' CS has a different meaning in India. In fact, learning itself is a very different philosophy at this moment. Even in Engineering schools, learning is mostly bookish, rote and is all about clearing exams to get grades and degree(s).

So, it may happen that the OP might get interested in later semesters, I doubt it. I have been there more than a decade ago and I don't think a lot has changed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> As the author mentioned- the main problem is spoon feeding. This should be checked in early childhood and school education. Moreover a professor won't waste his time if students are not ready for learning.

<comment><AUTHOR> then why are professors taking full salaries. For sitting idle?? It is their duty to make interest of the students. If a student have chosen Computer course. This means at some level he likes it. Then a professor can make that student to think more about it and learn whys and whats of computers

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Been there my friend, I too passed out from a so called reputed private University.and too bad I came to know about hacker news only in the last year of my college :(

<comment><USER11> and add to it , My University restricted the internet Usage to 20 MBs,didn't had much money to afford my own internet connection :(.

<comment><AUTHOR> thats why I'm still there and pursuing my degree. They don't have restrictions on bandwidth or speed but for some time blocked some very useful sites.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> thats whats is happening to me also. Though we don't have attendance problem, but un-interesting teaching from professors have led to me not paying attention to me college academics and drama. do it your own. and best of luck!!!

</comment><comment><USER13> Are you talking about Amity University

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah i'm</comment></comment>


It's Time to Build for Good - <AUTHOR> https://palladiummag.com/2020/04/30/its-time-to-build-for-good/ <comment><USER2> This essay is full of wishful expressions, such as "stagnation is a choice", "if we want to", and "we must circumvent", followed by _exhortations_ to "regain the will" \-- to do this or that thing for the good of everyone. It all sounds very reasonable, very worthwhile, very moral. As Larry the Liquidator would say, "Amen!"[a]

Alas, I think the root of the problem is that companies and people have strong economic/competitive incentives NOT TO INVEST in the kind of expensive, robust (i.e., inefficient/redundant) socially beneficial infrastructure that everyone agrees is necessary but on which the payback is highly uncertain, highly diffuse, or might not be recouped until well after everyone alive today is dead.

No amount of exhortation will change _rational behavior_.

(Stronger, harsher mechanisms may be necessary.)

\--

[a] From the movie "Other People's Money:" When Larry the Liquidator attempts to take over a company, the CEO gives an inspiring speech to shareholders: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJRhrow3Jws](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJRhrow3Jws) \-- to which Larry responds: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62kxPyNZF3Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62kxPyNZF3Q)

<comment><USER3> > _No amount of exhortation will change rational behavior._

Short-term thinking*. Rational behavior would be setting aside personal risks and benefits to do what needs to be done.

<comment><USER4> That's not what "rational" means, in economic terms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Corruption, environmental reviews, and labor costs make most major projects in the US a failure.

San Francisco's subway extension.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Subway](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Subway)

3 years behind schedule, with work starting in 2012 and a cost of 1.6 billion dollars for 1.7 miles of rail.

The same story repeats itself all over the country. [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york- subway-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway- construction-costs.html) New York clocking in at 2.7 billion per mile for a 6 billion dollar extension.

<comment><USER6> Doing anything in san francisco underground is a huge PITA. By nature, this consumes a lot of money, time, and expense.

As soon as you start digging underground you find a whole litany of old pipes, wires, mains, etc that do not appear on any drawing. You're unsure if they're in use or not, and some of them are so old that just pulling the earth away from them causes them to fail.

There's more to it other than politics. These things are hard to do in established cities, especially at the shallow depths that muni operates at.

<comment><USER7> You compare america vs other even older cities in other developed european cities delivering new rail lines far faster and cheaper and those kinds of excuses just doesn't pass muster.

More context: [https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/01/why-its-so- ex...](https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/01/why-its-so-expensive-to- build-urban-rail-in-the-us/551408/)

<comment><USER6> they specifically call out san francisco's line as having reason to be expensive, but point taken—America has broader problems developing rapid transit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Corporate America stopped building nationality once it realised it could offshore to failing states with populations who's alternative to wage slavery was starvation.

If you want to build for good, we need alternatives such as worker owned business where insentives align with the interests of the communities they are from.

<comment><USER9> I genuinely want to believe that these are alternatives to the shotfalls of capitalism, but I find the evidence pretty sparse. When you say this, what is the best example you are thinking of that makes you believe it can work? I'm not asking you to do research for me, but I am curious if others have clear examples in mind when they suggest these.

<comment><USER10> An example for worker-owned might be Mondragon [1]. I don't know how well that works in different settings and how easy it is to replicate. I do know that cooperatives, even if not worker-owned but customer-owned do work quite well in Germany. They serve their customers, as their customers are also their members/owners, so their interests are aligned. They often also have social sub-goals (their primary goals being servicing their members).

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This sparked a couple thoughts:

1) I recently learned from a friend about Manly P. Hall's[1] 1928 book "The Secret Teachings of All Ages" which delves a bit into people like Ernest Holmes, Emma Curtis Hopkins about doing things around a framing of doing "for good".

2) Venkatesh Rao recently wrote[1] about Andreesen's "It's time to build" piece and tried to explain what he think it really meant as now being a time for a "Macro Rebuild" and foundational changes to happen after earlier phases of tool-making, alternative-building, and disruption.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manly_P._Hall](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manly_P._Hall)

[2] [https://breakingsmart.substack.com/p/how-what-and-where- to-b...](https://breakingsmart.substack.com/p/how-what-and-where-to-build)

</comment><comment><USER12> How do we do this in the face of systemic, subsidized discrimination against American industry?

The ePacket program forces the USPS to subsidize shipping from the PRC to the US. End this immediately and let's start analyzing the forces behind this abusive practice.

<comment><USER13> How many Americans are actually ordering stuff off Alibaba through ePacket? Is this actually having a major impact or is it just a very visible problematic practice?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Functional industry requires a great deal of implicit knowledge that is not > easily regained once traditions of manufacturing die out—like a master dying > before they can find an apprentice to teach.

The masters aren't dead yet and neither are their apprentices. There are still quite a few old timers around that have retreated or retired to running small shops doing a greatly scaled down version of their trade. We could get a lot of them back in business if we made them competitive with overseas manufacturing. The word tariff is suspiciously absent from this discussion though.

</comment><comment><USER4> "The only choice we seem able to make anymore is the choice not to make anything."

"American manufacturing output is larger than ever"

Which is it?

<comment><USER13> It is not quite larger than ever, but pretty close.

[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OUTMS](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OUTMS)

<comment><USER15> Is this just that thing where the performance of intel processors is computed as being exponentially higher than in the past, so the accounting is inflated accordingly?

<comment><USER16> No, we make more stuff than at almost any point.

We've lost zero manufacturing capability.

We just need a fraction of the people that used to be involved - they've been replaced by robots.

"The job at the plant" died, not the manufacturing sector.

<comment><USER17> Why can't I buy an American made toaster? This isn't a gotcha -- I actually tried a few weeks ago and all I found for my trouble was this website: [https://buyingamericanblog.com/2017/05/29/quest-for-made- in-...](https://buyingamericanblog.com/2017/05/29/quest-for-made-in-america- toaster/)

People with direct experience of the manufacturing sector in the US and abroad (including me) will certainly tell you that America's capabilities have deteriorated, at least relative to other countries. The machine tool industry is considered a good bellwether for industrial capacity and there's been some good research on this topic if you're interested: [http://www.bismarckanalysis.com/Machine_Tools_Case_Study.pdf](http://www.bismarckanalysis.com/Machine_Tools_Case_Study.pdf)

<comment><USER15> Why is this downvoted? Seems to present a cogent argument (whereas its parent is a mere assertion) and I'm interested to see any well-sourced rebuttals to it. Anecdotally, I have had a similar impression -- it seems to me like across a wide variety of product categories, it's rare if even possible to find American manufacturers. Go even to a high end department store selling upmarket goods and check where manufactured items are made; very few complex products seem to be in the US.

Edit -- by comparison, when I lived in Japan I found it extraordinarily easy to buy locally made products of all sorts; pots and pans, coffee mugs, water bottles, stationery, clothes, shoes, electronics, tools, injection molded plastic items, paper products, everything. Even in their equivalent of dollar stores. Sometimes they were a bit more expensive than those produced in China/Vietnam/Indonesia, but often they were price competitive. It was weird coming back to North America and adapting to not being able to find anything locally made.

<comment><USER16> I work in defense. I've literally watched a team put together a factory line to build fighter jets fuselages. We can build whatever we want, and the numbers reflect this.

We don't build low margin anything because nobody would buy it if it costs more.

Japan is a good example - they setup all their car factories in the US in the South specifically to avoid union labor costs! Many Japanese cars, for our market, are made... Right here! Because the shipping and labor overhead would make them uncompetitive.

<comment><USER15> Are iphone margins low?

Fighter jets are almost a cost-is-no-object project, so to me at least, it isn't a good proxy for a country's manufacturing prowess.

Your ability to build something is measured by how cheaply you can build that thing. This means that if I can make something more cheaply than you can, I'm actually better at making it than you are, assuming the end product is the same. (You can also cheapen something by cutting corners on the design or materials, but then you're making a different thing).

<comment><USER16> Without an integrated supply chain? Yes.

Can we make an iPhone? Yeah, we design not only the chips here but the circuit boards. They're prototyped here!

Can we increase our margins by throwing the chemicals into the local river and having people manually stand there for 12 hour shifts breathing in toxic chemicals to manually polish them? Yup.

<comment><USER15> Having a sophisticated supply chain in place is a big part of manufacturing prowess!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> as a Yale alum, I like to play the drinking game "take a shot every time a Yalie uses the word 'qua'"

in all seriousness, decent take, but it doesn't seem to add that much to Andreesen's essay. e.g. the whole bit about how building a new world is inherently political... yes, in a more philosophical sense. But when Andreesen writes "we need to separate the imperative to build these things from ideology and politics. Both sides need to contribute to building," he clearly is referring to America's dysfunctional political climate, not "living together" / some conception you'd be considering in political philosophy.

fwiw, I do think Andreesen's essay could have more explicity (as Isaac's is) criticized out how creative/productive effort has been spent in recent times. I remember reading a quote about how crazy it is that the nation's (and globe's) top talent is being brought to Silicon Valley to, in large part, figure out how to more effectively addict young people to their apps (rather than, as it were, "build for good").

<comment><USER7> We chose silicon valley because we'd rather build than waste our time in tar pits that we are not very good at navigating and frankly find excruciating to navigate.

I think many of us would of loved to work in pure physics, mech eng spaceX type stuff too.

<comment><USER19> The problem with those other fields is they're about delayed gratification, which tech people are bad at. What you see as "wasting time" is just the normal development process for rockets, medical equipment etc.

<comment><USER7> The thing is, in the past, there weren't those wastes of time in those fields and they delivered. The sclerosis is recent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> And I thought that Marc Andreessen's original essay was light on substance...

</comment><comment><USER20> Decent enough problem analysis, but the solutions proposed seem to fall into either the "absolute fluff" category:

> Beauty is not simply some pleasant thing to be considered once we smash the > zoning codes. It is the aesthetic force necessary to reach deep into our > subconscious and activate our will to live in a new world (which, yes, > includes new zoning codes).

or the "proven to be insufficient" category: > Reconstructing the better part of an industrial society will take decades; and with our present white-collar workforce left utterly directionless, inflated by elite overproduction, and medicated at world-historic levels, sending a million students to Harvard will not, as Andreessen suggests, help spur technological progress. Rather, it is the regeneration of practically-grounded trade schools and state-backed coordination that is needed to retrain a productive workforce.

Trade schools are great and all - but retraining efforts consistently fail when the jobs do not line up with an individual's self-image. Truckers will not line up to be trained as CNAs, no matter how many training programs or jobs are offered and jobs are demanded. Likewise, most white collar workers will not line up to be factory workers.

The essential thing he's missing is that the reason many Americans didn't freak out when Bill Clinton signed the bills which caused these jobs to overseas is the first place - is because the reality of factory jobs is at odds with the American dream of self-determination. Many humans don't like being a cog in the machine, even if it's a steady income. Many children of these manufacturing workers saw the harmful side of those types of jobs, and instead opted for college or service-industry jobs where they focus on developing soft skills and relationships with people. Yes they want good jobs and to not get abused by the gig job industry, but many Americans don't want to go back to being treated as human machinery in factories either. The real thing Americans want is better opportunity to use those skills to start their own businesses, to put their skills and creativity to use. That's part of the reason craft brewing took off so intensely - it's one of the only fields that young people can still break into and differentiate themselves even with limited starting resources.

All that said, I do admit that I was surprised when I saw that the author is just an undergraduate. His naivete is a bit less concerning with that in mind.

</comment><comment><USER21> There isn't any thing pulling people together to build things. There's no shared desire between people to demand a thing.

</comment><comment><USER22> .. and there was a time to not build for good??

<comment><USER16> Make weapons. It's good for you, bad for somebody else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> probably out of topic and not too helpful, but lately I feel we spend so much time in intellectual discussion about other intellectual discussion that we kinda forget about the basics. what does people want and why don't we have it? maybe I'm just too tired today, but in my mind it's like nowadays debate about the world always ends up polluted by a never-ending collection of disconnected elements and a cloud of complexity that we can never manage to navigate with a clear sense of direction. To me Andreessen's essay sounded like just another political speech, and then this article diffuse echo around the former. Maybe I need some sleep.

</comment><comment><USER24> The author can start with himself by abstaining from this kind of wordy pontificating. Unfortunately as a political science and Chinese major, he's rendered himself incapable of answering the call for "bridges not bullsh_t."

</comment><comment><USER19> Everything up this point was building for bad in the attention economy. At least they admit it.

</comment><comment><USER25> At the start of the covid crisis we realized that we did not have enough local manufacturing capacity to make what we need and we still do not. We have the facilities just sitting idle. It's time to get to it. There is little or no leadership to make this happen. Leadership is where it starts.

</comment><comment><USER26> Been following this guy on Twitter for a while, he's great. I like him a lot because he's so eloquently defends beauty and humanism vs. what he calls "pod life"\- the Zoom/UberEats/WFH triumvirate- the airportification of our cities, the bleh futurism imagined by contemporary sci-fi.

<comment><USER13> > airportification of our cities

I Googled this phrase and your comment right at the top, so can you explain it further?

<comment><USER7> I think it's the bland sanitized global style that you see everywhere in in airport/mall combos around the world.

<comment> core-questions It's the new brutalism: cheap functional architecture with no nods to true beauty or mathematical form. It feels like a punishment to look at.

<comment><USER27> Brutalism is NOT just "cheap functional architecture with no nods to true beauty".

Yes, it is an extension of Bauhaus, with exposed fixtures and minimalist, functional designs. Yes, in the hands of a hack, this yields ugliness. Buildings like Habitat 67 in Montreal, Vancouver BC's central library, and UC San Diego's Giesel Library are works of art.

To say there was no thought of form or beauty is patently a calumny.

Strip-mall architecture is the fast food of architecture. Quick, cheap, and, at best, lacking in nutritional value.

<comment><USER28> So what are the flaws of brutalism? To look at the referenced examples, no storage space would be one. Confusing floorplan is another. Huge volumes spent on being brutal, but little attention to functional value?

<comment><USER27> I think the biggest flaw in brutalism is that it does not suffer hacks well. Badly done, it looks and performs worse than just about any other style of architecture. You get hideous boxes with conduit everywhere.

None of the brutalist buildings I've actually been in suffered from confusing floorplans or lack of storage. The tendency is more for big, striking open spaces and wide walkways.

In the Pacific Northwest there's a recent trend to build a lot of ugly boxy townhomes and small apartment buildings in a neo-brutalist style. One notable features of these buildings is big, smooth rectangular panels in their outer cladding. They often look like the builder just got a bunch of OSB sheets, painted them dark brown and tacked them up as siding. Add thoughtless placement of conduit and vents and the interaction between window locations and the lazy siding, and you have a sloppy mess of unintentional asymmetry and unevenness.

If you are going to have your conduit hanging out as an architectural feature, you have to _treat it like an architectural feature_ and think about how its placement and routing impacts visual balance and rhythm as well as the functional issues of delivering power, water, and ventilation. It's not just a license to nail something up and omit the trim.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> How hard is to have a web site viewable without javascript? I mean it is not a web site that has maps or some kind of desktop app type of feature. At least make it so it will be viewable without javascript.

<comment><USER13> I just flipped off my Javascript and it loaded fine. Are you sure that is the problem?

<comment><USER30> The head is bulky but the body is readable in curl | less.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> What's the point? There are no rewards for doing good just for the sake of doing good. Hopium is a great way to get people to do your bidding, but why should people work hard for nothing while someone else gets rich?</comment>


Nerd Fort - <AUTHOR> http://nerdfort.com/

<comment><USER2> I registered geekbeach.org (no site there) a few years back with the hope of one day doing this same thing in some random tropical setting.

I wonder how many people (aside from me of course) would be happy to know about a spot on Nusa Lembongan with guaranteed fast internet, reliable power, a nice slice of white sand and a really nice reef break just outside the lagoon.

Would anybody here take the effort to weasel a working holiday to such a place? Any SV startups that would pick up the whole shop and set up on the beach for a month or so?

It's been raining here in the North of England for six months straight. If I get enough love for the idea here, I might just have to book a flight and start scouting locations.

<comment><USER3> Sounds awesome. I'm actually going to be in SE Asia for 5 months starting in 10 days (to start working on my own software product) so I'm already converted and can definitely see the value in this :-) Being surrounded with like-minded people in a coworking space on the beach in Indonesia to hack your next big thing? What else?

Also, for the visa thing, it's not really a problem unless people want to stay there very long. Speaking about Indonesia, they are now granting tourist visas for 2 months. Should be plenty enough!

<comment><USER4> Whoops, email bounced (update your profile), so I'll just post here for anyone else that gives a shit:

I've spent the last 2 years doing contract work for a few different startups while I've traveled, first in southern Brazil and now here in Thailand. I've spent a few weeks each in Saigon, Hong Kong, Singapore, Vientiane, and Phnom Penh, but I keep coming back to Chiang Mai as I think it has the best combination of low cost of living (it's absurdly cheap here), access to infrastructure, and tolerance of resident foreigners (notice I said "tolerance" and not "acceptance"; more on that later). Singapore and Hong Kong are far easier for a European or North American, but the cost of living is about 2-3 times what it is in Bangkok, which itself is easily twice as much as a smaller place like Chiang Mai.

My first few months here I kept wondering why nobody has set up startup incubators here. The cost of living is so low it's almost a joke, and the environment can be amazing if you know the right places to stay (and which places to avoid). Of course it would be beneficial to be in San Francisco and have coffee with 5 different VCs in the same day, if that's the route you are taking, but I personally prefer the idea of the lean, bootstrapped startup. So why would you cram 5 guys into a tiny apartment in San Francisco and eat ramen noodles 3 meals a day while you develop your prototype, when you could be eating in restaurants and living in a nice, furnished apartment with a view for less than half the price? How many single engineers would jump at the chance to spend 6 months hacking in Thailand? I know I certainly would (and I did!).

And now the downside: Asia is VERY, VERY different to any other place in the world. It sounds stupidly obvious, but the magnitude of the difference takes a few months to sink in. Thailand is full of some of the friendliest, most accommodating people in the world, but the culture just doesn't have a place for foreigners as anything other than tourists. I lived in a small village in the northeast for five months, and even though everyone there knew my name, they would only refer to me as "farang", or "foreigner". Could you imagine what kind of reaction you would get if you walked around New York saying to all the immigrants: "Hey, foreigner!" You would be labeled a bigot and ostracized, at best, and probably receive a well-deserved punch to the face. And if you ever have a girlfriend here, everyone will automatically assume she is a prostitute, which makes it really difficult to get a date with a nice girl, as you can imagine. Singapore and Hong Kong are a different story, as they have a much longer history of cultural and ethnic integration, but living there is just as expensive as any big city in the U.S., if not more so. I am making a lot of gross generalizations, and I should point out that I don't speak the language very well, but this has been my personal experience here. As always, YMMV.

Sorry for the rant. If anyone wants to contact me, my email is in my profile.

<comment><USER5> How do you find contract work? I'm on vacation in Australia for 3 months but would like to do some contract work to take care of expenses like buying a surfboard, tent, possibly a used car, etc.

<comment><USER4> All of my work has come from referrals from previous clients in the U.S., but after 2 years it is starting to dry up a bit. I need to get my blog up to date and start improving my network, but getting work abroad is the same as getting work at home: get on the phone and start calling everyone that you've ever worked with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's something like this in Brighton on the south coast of the UK called The Skiff.

Membership is £165/$264 a month. However this is the top rate, you can pay £25 a month for 'mates' membership, which means you aren't guaranteed a desk, but you can go there and find a place to sit wherever the hell you want, 2 days a week. It's an odd pricing structure but it must work for them because from what I've heard it's always busy.

<http://theskiff.org/pricing>

Never been there myself. We just have our own little office.

They host some sort of hacker drop-in-centre called "Build Brighton" down there at night time apparently, which I've been meaning to check out. Apparently they made a MIDI exercise bike once...

<http://buildbrighton.com>

<comment><USER6> One random memory from Build Brighton that just came back to me; when I was at uni we once went to a demo of live coding music[1] at a club, put on by the aforementioned hackerspace.

One of the 'acts' involved someone waving a chair at a laptop while wearing a gimp mask[2]. That person later turned out to be one of my lecturers who had been teaching us to write softsynths. Good times...

[1] <https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Live_coding>

[2] <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8221235.stm>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I saw the link to Office and Company in Pasadena. The rates are a bit steep for me at $325/month. I've also been to Blank Spaces in Santa Monica. Are there any folks out near Caltech that be interested in sharing a space or just working together? I usually work at home now and I wouldn't want to do co- working everyday of the week; I find I focus better outside an office environment. But I think spending a day or 2 every week with fellow developers and designers sounds fun and interesting. Ping me if you like the idea of part-time coworking.

<comment><USER8> Yes. I'm in Old Town Pasadena but it's hard to justify that rate. There's enough coffeeshops around here, and it's unclear whether the space has a "community" or if it's just freelancers.

What's your email? I'm interested in setting up some sort of part-time thing, especially if there's a few others around.

<comment><USER7> jch@whatcodecraves. I misspoke about Blank Space's location. Glad to hear that you guys are opening up in Santa Monica though. Ideally, I'd want to do something within walking or biking distance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Price is about 20% higher than the per-person cost of our first office in Chicago's Monadnock building, but our office didn't have the amenities. Is this roughly what co-working spaces cost nationwide?

<comment><USER10> The coworkspace I use in northern IL (not Chicago) costs $225/mo for full-time access.

<comment><USER9> Where is it?

<comment><USER10> Rawkspace in Rockford, IL. <http://www.workrawkspace.com>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Any photos?

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm not looking to appear picky, but please break out the contact info & the address. Right now, prospects are required to thoroughly read the text, even if they're sold and want to sign up right away.

HTH

<comment><USER13> I didn't read through. I live in Europe. I gave up after 2 sentences. Want to know what's in Europe? Plains and traditions.

Damn...

<comment><USER14> "Plains and traditions"? (I'm a USian.)

<comment><USER13> Plains with trees and rivers. Traditions with music played with 1000-year-old instruments and funny masks. That's what we have.

Netflix? Hulu? Tons of other interesting startups like this place? I'd pay them twice if I could get them here.

Even BBC is not broadcasted in my country, you see. (Ok, I'm not starving at least.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I need more information on the zombie apocalypse survivability.

Until I know that it's safer than my bomb shelter, I am not leaving.

</comment><comment><USER16> You need to link to some photos.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm moving from California (where I work mostly in-office) to Austin (where I will continue to work the same job, but 100% remote), and I have been looking for things like this in the Austin area.

<comment><USER18> <http://Conjunctured.com>. I'm a co-founder. 1st day is free! :)

<comment><USER19> Conjunctured already filled up their main space and since expanded to another location. The people I know there love it and many would give up their apartment before they gave up their co-working space.

This should definitely be your first stop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Fernando_Valley#Economy>

<comment><USER21> That's the first thing I thought: A Nerd Fort in Porn Valley?

<comment><USER22> Photos please...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is pretty cool as there isn't much like this in the SFV. It would be nice if there were some photos so we could see what it looks like. I've been to co- loft in Santa Monica a couple times and am hoping this is similar. It would be nice if they hosted some meet-ups like co-loft does as it would be a much closer place to nerd out for people that live closer to SFV.

</comment><comment><USER24> Similar concept with 2 locations in Toronto:

<http://socialinnovation.ca/>

</comment><comment><USER25> There's a couple of coworking places in the Golden Triangle in Ontario that come to mind:

\- <http://treehaus.ca> in Kitchener, I think they've been around a while;

\- <http://threefortynine.com>, a new space starting up in Guelph

</comment><comment><USER26> Nice branding and story, I like it. I think from a lot of co-working sites it's not clear what the vibe will be. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER27> I work out of <http://workbarboston.com> in downtown Boston right across the street from South Station. $275 per month for a desk, more for a private office, less for 8:30 to 5:30 access only.

</comment><comment><USER28> That is so what I'm looking for.

I've been thinking of renting out an office just so I have somewhere to go to and work in a daily routine.

Working at home all the time is not as grand as some people might think it would be.

</comment><comment><USER29> Two words: Awesome design.

<comment><USER30> Agreed. To whomever drew the nerds in the cardboard boxes: I love that illustration. Nice work.

<comment><USER31> The artist goes by the name Goopymart: <http://goopymart.com/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi guys, Im not associated with nerd fort,so Im not able to provide any photos. Posted the link because I thought it would be useful to other hackers (and liked the design as well).

</comment><comment><USER32> Is this similar? <http://www.acceleratorcentre.com/about> Or is this for more mature startups?

<comment><USER25> The AC is more of an incubator - that is, they provide their residents with a lot of resources (business contacts, advisors, even training), whereas coworking places typically don't have the same connections.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I wish there were more options like this, and not just in US. Even if you are a freelance or a one man startup, working alone isn't always as good as it sounds.

</comment><comment><USER34> Nice! Something finally exists for those of us in So Cal!

<comment><USER35> The Valley is not SoCal. We have several spaces in SD.

<comment><USER34> Uhhh San Fernando Valley is a region of Southern California.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Fernando_Valley>

"The Valley" has different meanings to different folks.

<comment><USER35> Uhhh my point was that "The Valley" != "SoCal". Not that it isn't part of SoCal. It's obvious if you read my post properly. Thanks for trying anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The logo is by one of my fave internet artists - <http://goopymart.com/>

</comment><comment><USER37> Nice coworking space in Vancouver:

<http://bootup.ca/garage/>

</comment><comment><USER38> How does coworking work? Is that someplace where you could leave your desktop, or do people just bring laptops in?

</comment><comment><USER39> Im looking for Nerd Fort Oakland

</comment><comment><USER40> cool idea. fortunatley in some places you can get an entire private office with door for about double that. more space & quiet, less "co-" so not sure if clearly better or worse

</comment><comment><USER41> Any places like this in the portland area?

</comment><comment><USER42> Anything like that around Moscow?

</comment><comment><USER43> Love the name and logo.

</comment><comment><USER44> Photos please...</comment>


What I've learned from Sci-Fi movies - <AUTHOR> http://redgirlsays.com/blog/archives/322

<comment><USER2> From _Alien_ and a semi-infinite number of rip-offs: Never pick up an alien egg.

</comment><comment><USER3> I also find I get a lot of my inspiration from Sci-Fi movies.</comment>


Ask HN: Developer's e-commerce platform of choice? What works, what doesn't? - <AUTHOR>

Note: I am currently developing an e-commerce platform, so this is both helpful to me and good for discussion.
Ever since developing my first e-commerce site 10 years ago, it's been the focus of my attention and programming dreams (what, you don't dream about programming?)
As important as this category of software is to business, and the tremendous market value it can generate, there is nothing out there I would use. We all know of Paul Graham's success story with Viaweb, and we also know where it ended up (Yahoo).
Why hasn't there been more significant innovation in the e-commerce software space?
The "cream of the crop" that I would refer to for discussion is: Magento, Shopify, Spree, BigCommerce, Volusion. I do not actually use any of these, and have always preferred to develop our software from the ground up due to the rather inflexible nature of each of these solutions.
In your opinion, what is the best solution for web developers, other than "building it from scratch"? What features do you think are missing? What features do you think are well executed? <comment><USER2> I've enjoyed using BigCommerce... I was able to design a site that bore almost no resemblance to their default design. Most e-commerce systems start with a terrible interface and make you go through hell to improve it. BigCommerce certainly has its quirks but it's flexible.

I'm interested in learning more about what you're doing as well as any other useful voices/resources you have found in the e-commerce space. If you'd like to chat you can reach me at mhuebert / gmail.

</comment><comment><USER3> Most of my clients "need" a hosted solution and magento is good but usually overkill. I'm developing a simple framework to make turning out custom carts easier. So I Jess my favorite option falls under "build from scratch."</comment>


Stephen Hawking to retire as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics - <AUTHOR> http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hJbSz2lMqfs7CezExyLecYzDTW3g <comment><USER2> Anyone know how they fill the vacancy? Is it advertised just like any other professorship, or do they invite people?

Not, I should add, that I'm planning on applying.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is interesting, given the rumors that Hawking might be interested in a post at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo:

<http://www.thestar.com/News/Ontario/article/461065></comment>


Richard Stallman's Computer Setup - <AUTHOR> http://richard.stallman.usesthis.com/ <comment><USER2> Stallman reminds me more of Steve Jobs than anyone else does:

       - 70's wunderkind
       - simple, clear belief about what computing should be
       - realized his vision, creating permanent improvement enjoyed directly or indirectly by every computer user
       - uncompromising in his determination to control his environment

Personally I believe he has some major blind spots -- so did Jobs. The failure of this community to hold him in comparable regard is just that, a failure.

<comment><USER3> "70's wunderkind"

It's obvious he hasn't updated the technology in his house since the 70s. I still can't believe how he is browsing the web.

"simple, clear belief about what computing should be"

He pushes his own version of freedom upon the world at the expense of their freedom.

"uncompromising in his determination to control his environment"

Exactly. Personally, I'm glad he is becoming less and less relevant. Stallman is nothing more than a software dictator.

<comment><USER4> Could you explain how Stallman is a "software dictator", or how his own version of freedom comes at the "expense of their freedom"?

<comment><USER5> > Could you explain how Stallman is a "software dictator", or how his own > version of freedom comes at the "expense of their freedom"?

Richard Stallman believes in the freedom of software, not the freedom of individuals. The GPL ensures that _software_ is always free, by restricting what you as an individual can do with it. To him software being free in more important than a persons freedom. The BSD/MIT/ISC licenses give full freedom to people, including letting people make the software non-free, that is the freedom of choice.

I personally believe in the freedom of people. I believe people should be able to make their own choices, even if I disagree with them. That to me is true freedom. Richard Stallman believes that everyone should do things his way, that people should not be allowed to choose to do things differently. To me that is a form of fascism (<http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/fascism>).

<comment> muuh-gnu > Richard Stallman believes in the freedom of software, not the freedom of > individuals.

Stallman believes in freedom of indivisuals, _including_ the freedom of individuals down the stream. The BSD increases only your (egoistic) "freedom" to cut off other people from water supply, while decreasing everybody elses freedom to get to the water source, so it maximizes only one single peak of freedom, while everybody else loses. The GPL levels the access, it maximizes the total amount of freedom available in the ecosystem.

> That to me is true freedom.

According to that logic, a democracy is "unfree" because you are not allowed to turn it into a dictatorship, which is the "true freedom" then.

<comment><USER3> "Stallman believes in freedom of indivisuals, _including_ the freedom of individuals down the stream. The BSD increases only your (egoistic) "freedom" to cut off other people from water supply, while decreasing everybody elses freedom to get to the water source"

This isn't true. If I make changes to an app and don't release the changes, the only think you don't get is my changes. The water source is still available for all.

"so it maximizes only one single peak of freedom, while everybody else loses. The GPL levels the access, it maximizes the total amount of freedom available in the ecosystem."

If the GNU were truly free you wouldn't see so many GNU violators being taken to court. The GNU is about as free a s copyright. If you consider that freedom, then yes, it's free.

I would say just don't use GNU software if you don't believe in the licensing, but it's not that easy. The GNU is like a bomb about to explode. As a business owner, if one of your employees uses any GNU software in a commercial app and you have any sort of success, it could be the end of your business if you are forced to release the source. Why? Because someone can and will compile and release it for free, circumventing all of your commercial licensing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Well, not the best way to expand your horizon.

When he would use things like the iPad from time to time, he would understand that convenience is the biggest threat to open source. Nobody cares how free Stallman's device really is. When he would speak for better open source devices, he would actually make progress. Right now is Shuttleworth advancing the free software movement to be accessible for everyone.

Reminds me of these ultra leftists, who declare their own government and live without electricity and fresh water. What do they achieve in the big picture? They do this just to feel better themself.

Linus Torvalds is the man who made everything possible. Google/Facebook would never have existed with a Hurd kernel and Git is now the big accelerator of open source. Stallman started it, but what did he achieve significant in the last 20 years?

<comment><USER7> Google and Facebook would _never_ exist the way they do today without the free software movement. Both of them rely on a huge stack of open-source technology. Stallman's ideas are what makes it possible for a college kid to run a web startup today essentially for free.

<comment><USER8> I think sek's post was more along the lines of "but what has he done for me lately?"

Right now, for every piece of open software that has enabled all kinds of world-changing good things, there's a dozen situations where open software is not a viable solution when compared to the closed alternatives for a wide variety of reasons, unless you're explicitly choosing to use only open software as a show of support for an ideological cause. What frustrates me about Stallman is that he spends his time lecturing people about why they're bad people for not using open software, instead of actively working to make open software a more appealing solution more of the time.

<comment><USER9> Have you ever listened to his talks? I have read a bunch of what he has written (mostly transcripts of talks) and did not get that impression. His main point is not that you are a "bad person" for using proprietary software-- rather, it's more like you are the _victim_. Now, he _does_ believe you should not use proprietary software, but because it's abusive and takes away your rights. Finally, I could see getting the impression that people _publishing_ proprietary software are "bad", but that's a different story altogether.

Also, we're mostly developers here. Barring a few fields (things like .NET and iOS), free software _is_ the best option for development. So while an artist using exclusively free software may be making a sacrifice, I have actually been _much_ more productive on Linux/Emacs than I ever was on OS X or Windows. It's really a win-win situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> You have to give the guy some credit; Stallman believes in the free software movement, fights for it, and refuses to compromise his rights or values.

<comment><USER11> Don't take this the wrong way but I personally feel that the GPL is not a free software license, I feel it's a community software license. BSD is a free software license, BSD code is truly yours, you want to create a proprietary fork you can do it, you want to create a GPLed fork you can do it, you want to expand the BSD code base you can do it. One thing I really love about BSD licensed code is that I feel like I own it, best of all this doesn't stop anyone else from feeling the same.

<comment><USER12> _> you want to create a proprietary fork you can do it_

Why should you be allowed to take away the Freedoms of others? The one thing the GPL restricts is your Freedom to restrict the Freedom of others. That's the foundation of copyleft: your rights stop where mine begin, and that includes being granted the four Freedoms of software as defined by the FSF.

In an ideal world, we would not need the GPL. Everyone would have realized already that it is in no one's prolonged interest to make proprietary software, and it would be frowned upon to do so. We would have implicit CC-BY (or -Zero) for everything and be done with it. No more copyright and licensing crap.

<comment><USER13> _> Why should you be allowed to take away the Freedoms of others?_

No one's freedom is being taken away when you create a proprietary fork. They are not forced to use your software, and the original is still intact. You do not automatically have a right to someone else's creation.

I don't mind paying for software, and I don't mind if they don't let me see their code the same way I don't mind when my local restaurant doesn't let me inspect their kitchen just because I want to.

<comment><USER12> _> No one's freedom is being taken away when you create a proprietary fork._

You're free to make forks for your own personal usage and never give anyone the source. You don't even have to tell anyone that you did.

As soon as you share that software with anyone and refuse to hand over the source, and deny the recipient the right to modify and/or redistribute your program, you _are_ taking away that person's Freedom.

 _> You do not automatically have a right to someone else's creation._

Then why do you insist on taking someone else's creation and basically make it your own by taking away the Freedoms granted to you by the original creator?

If find it highly unethical to want access to Free Software without having to actually contribute to it. It's demanding rights without wanting to have to deal with the responsibilities that come with those rights. It's selfish and greedy.

 _> I don't mind paying for software_

Except money's got nothing to do with Free Software. It's explicitly stated that you're allowed to charge for distributing copies. I'm sick and tired of this "argument". It pops up every time Free Software is discussed here and elsewhere, and the only thing it proves is that the person bringing it up has not understood what Free Software is about in the first place.

<comment><USER14> So let me see if I have this straight. If I write some code and do not give it to you or anyone else, I have not taken anyone's freedom away.

However, if I give you a binary of the code, but do not give you source, I have taken your freedom away?

For that to make sense, there must be something you could do before I gave you the binary that you can no longer do. Please name what that thing is.

<comment><USER15> In cases like this, I prefer to equate Stallman's idea of freedom to Illich's idea of conviviality--a convivial empowers the user, and gives her the ability to mold it and use it as she sees fit. If you just distribute only a binary, you aren't distributing a convivial tool. When we lose control of the tools we use, ultimately we lose some of our freedom.

<comment><USER16> But, no one is forcing you to take and use my tools. You can take it or leave it – that's your choice. I grabbed this open source code and made some changes to it. I can give (or sell) you my modifications if you want. If you don't want, then you can reverse-engineer my implementation and use that (just like what GNU/Linux guys did). I'm not taking your freedom away – I'm giving you a choice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> When this link appears on HN I make a quick diff on two things and none of them change: what Stallman uses and what the comments are (I can make a bet I'll see comments about his mail forwarded web pages). And there are also comments about how GPL is restrictive and BSD is not...

But hey - this guy has principles and sticks to his guns. I respect him for that and I don't give a dime if he uses a one inch display on a PC with 64K of RAM

</comment><comment><USER18> Sadly, this didn't actually provide the details of the most interesting bit of this setup: a separate system that receives URLs via email and emails back a text version of the webpage, which allows integrating browsing into an almost entirely offline batch-processing setup.

<comment><USER19> He probably e-mails his assistant to do it, just like he speaks out against cell phones but will just ask to borrow someone else's.

<http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/10/27/rms-cell-phones>

Edit: according to <http://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html> he does use normal web browsers from time to time and even has a Twitter account for posting comments on websites. For text articles, his script probably just runs something like "lynx -dump" on the URL and e-mails it back.

<comment><USER20> RMS said he would ask someone nearby for a phone, not necessarily a cell phone. Landline phones don't use software, they're a microphone connected to some wires. But you can't exactly carry one around with you.

Not sure why John Gruber cares about this, but...

<comment><USER21> These days, if you ask someone for a phone and you are more than a few feet away from a landline, you're asking for a cell phone. To say otherwise is being disingenuous.

To me, it demonstrates a far less altruistic motivations.

<comment><USER22> > To me, it demonstrates a far less altruistic motivations.

He does not have a problem with cell phones. He has a problem with the fact that if you use the same cell phone repeatably, you give up a large portion of your privacy though all the meta-information that can be collected.

To make a simple analogy: RMS's cell phones complaints are the same as his compaints about the CharlieCard system that lets you pay for rides in the MA public transit system.

If someone gets your card, they can find when and where you entered/exited trains. So RMS uses a card swap system where a pool of people exchange cards. This muddies the waters enough to make tracking your movements much harder.

<comment><USER21> What he's doing is leeching off of other peoples resources. A swap implies that he's letting other people use his phone, which he's not.

<comment><USER23> The GP said he's swapping the cards, not the phone use. He is using other peoples' resources without giving back with the phone use, I guess, but so what? I've let people borrow my phone before, and I don't really care if they've paid it back or not.

<comment><USER21> Don't blame me for his bad analogy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > _"Once or twice or maybe three times a day I connect and transfer mail in > and out. Before sending mail, I always review and revise the outgoing > messages. That gives me a chance to catch mistakes and faux pas."_

I consider that a practice worthy of adoption.

</comment><comment><USER25> The Lemote link was broken when I was reading the article. This may be the updated link?

[http://www.lemote.com/en/products/Notebook/2010/0310/112.htm...](http://www.lemote.com/en/products/Notebook/2010/0310/112.html)

<comment><USER26> I guess, that's the same one I came down here to post. Looks like it might be a pretty neat little machine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Some comments on the other posts here: I often find people to be most interesting and potentially valuable to communicate with when I don't totally agree with them. I don't agree with some of Richard's positions but acknowledge his huge contributions. I believe that he deserves some positive karma every time I use Emacs, gcc toolchain, various GNU utilities, and software and services built using GNU software (Google, Twitter, many libraries and applications, etc.) His knowledge, talent, and works are broad and deep in scope. It is interesting to hear so much dislike for the guy, but people have the rights to their opinions.

</comment><comment><USER28> This has been on here a couple of times already.

I respect his Setup, but i think if your not the founder of the Free Software Movement, this is a bit extreme ;)

<comment><USER29> That's what I thought, that it's been posted before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> 5 years back when Mr.Stallman worried about Privacy,Free Software I used to think he is nuts.. Now with SOPA/PIPA scenario its nuts to not listen him. So now i'm following his advice i will never move my data to Cloud.....

</comment><comment><USER31> Richard Stallman's Computer Setup _from 2 years ago_

<comment><USER32> And I bet he is still waiting to find a laptop that his free and open to replace is yulong

<comment><USER33> He won't have to wait long. Yeeloong have a quad-core Loongson-3A 13.3" laptop on the way.

<comment><USER34> He could also get one of these:

[http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/spark-the-first- free-s...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/spark-the-first-free- software-linux-tablet-is-on-its-way/10255)

<comment><USER33> The device (ZT-180) is already out there and runs Android. Good luck to the devs trying to get kernel source from Zenithink though, not to mind hardware drivers. They've already said they've run into problems. The vast majority of Chinese tablet manufacturers do not honour the GPL and it's already killed one Linux tablet project, CordiaTab. In that case the Chinese company actually tried to extort money from the developers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> To understand Stallman, I highly recommend one read up on the history of Lisp Machines. Wikipedia's page is actually fairly decent: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_machines>

In particular, I think this passage give some key insight into how Stallman developed his philosophy:

> _Around this time Symbolics (Noftsker's company) began operations – it had > been hindered by Noftsker's promise to give Greenblatt a year's head start, > and by severe delays in procuring venture capital. Symbolics still had the > major advantage that while 3 or 4 of the AI Lab hackers had gone to work for > Greenblatt, a solid 14 other hackers had signed onto Symbolics. There were > two AI Lab people who did not get hired by either: Richard Stallman and > Marvin Minsky. Stallman, however, blamed Symbolics for the decline of the > hacker community that had centered around the AI lab. For two years, from > 1982 to the end of 1983, Stallman worked by himself to clone the output of > the Symbolics programmers, with the aim of preventing them from gaining a > monopoly on the lab's computers._

</comment><comment> why-el It's awesome how small this entry is compared to what other developers would describe as their setup.

<comment><USER32> He isn't a developer, he is a front man for a decades old movement.

<comment><USER36> How do you define "developer"? The man has certainly written his share of code, and has contributed it to the community. I don't know how he has made his living, over the years, but I bet he's been paid to develop at some point.

<comment><USER12> RMS makes his money by being paid for roughly half (iirc) of the talks and speeches he gives around the world. That has been his only source of income for years now.

<comment> why-el I am also not sure we should tie developer with money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Very narrow minded in my option. There's a reason why people prefer an iPad over a Lemote Yeelong. There is more to life than principles. I do respect his opinion but if he would like to continue to make a difference in the open software community he could stop spending so much time in email and concentrate on technology advancements and how to promote open source.

</comment><comment><USER38> I am curious to know what cloud services he uses if any. I'm researching alternatives to proprietary/hosted software for some of my important data so I can avoid the privacy and security issues. Some of the services I would like to replace are GMail/Calendar/Contacts, Lastpass, RescueTime. Any suggestions?

<comment><USER39> I don't think he uses any, particularly since he is only connected to the internet 2-3 times a day.

He uses Emacs for all his mail and, presumably, contact management. Last I knew, he was still using RMail, not even something newer like Gnus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Walking the talk is a big thing with RMS.

</comment><comment><USER41> Incidentally same computer I have.

Linux siguran 3.1.0-1-loongson-2f #1 Tue Jan 10 15:20:55 UTC 2012 mips64 GNU/Linux

It's fun for a hobby because it feels like the old days of Linux when you had to patch and compile a lot to get things running.

Of course my other computers are macs, this is just for the commute to work on some hobby stuff.

</comment><comment><USER42> Are there really no other fully free systems available on the market by now?

<comment><USER43> The bios seemed to be his only sticking point about not using other hardware. Maybe something like coreboot might fill that need now?

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Hey! That might be the set up I was looking for in order to hack on my clojure project during a 14 hours flight I will be taking in couple of months. At least it's not gonna take battery.

</comment><comment><USER45> Seeing larger developers using a really small computer with a really small screen is similar to seeing a basketball player driving a compact. It makes you wonder... Why?

</comment><comment><USER46> This is from Jan 23, 2010. It's probably not his current setup.

</comment><comment><USER47> Wonder if this netbook has open source hard disk firmware?

</comment><comment><USER48> I love that Sears was the most likely seller, when I did a product search for the Lemote Yeeloong.

</comment><comment><USER49> Stallman...the uncompromising philosopher! 'Gotta love 'em!

</comment><comment><USER50> It is a pretty crappy setup (just my humble opinion), but if he is happy with it...

</comment><comment><USER51> "Hey, I'm a geek; it's my _job_ to make things difficult for myself."

</comment><comment><USER52> Not a very appealing setup in 2012.

<comment><USER53> Not a very appealing setup, period.

<comment><USER54> Practically? No. From the ultra-geek perspective? Yes.

<comment><USER55> The real geeks I know what to get work done, not send email all day.

<comment><USER54> The real geeks I know would at least dream of building a computer of which they control all pieces of software. Maybe for the achievement only, but they at least dream of it.

I am pretty sure that RMS gets his work done as well, whatever that work is. I wouldn't suspect him to be _lazy_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> The saddest part of all this is that kids will read it and think "this is what 'sticking to my principles' is going to get me, so fuck it."

RMS used up his "I was there when" cred a long time ago. He's now the demented grandparent no one has the heart to tell to STFU when he yells at the TV. And yet simultaneously, one of the greats.

<comment><USER57> Show some respect son. Seriously.

<comment><USER56> I did. Seriously.</comment></comment></comment>


Could one build a social news site on top of Google Wave? - <AUTHOR>

If so, what would be some advantages to doing so? <comment><USER2> Yes, I think so. Wave gives you comments and even StackOverflow-style editing for free; perhaps this would let the developer concentrate on turning out more crackpot ideas per day.</comment>


Where are all the Raspberry Pi robots? - <AUTHOR> http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/136598180858/where-are-all-the-raspberry-pi-robots <comment><USER2> The problem is that the Pi 0 doesn't expose the CSI pins and you'd need an USB hub to attach a USB camera.</comment>


If Trump Is Impeached, It Might Be the End of America - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@IsaacSimpson/if-trump-is-impeached-it-might-be-the-end-of-america-b7a2243399b7#.lyvbho728 <comment><USER2> The linked article includes a remarkable 62 instances of "Trump" if the title and the word "Trumpian" are counted.

</comment><comment><USER3> more likely congress will stonewall him than impeach</comment>


Registration up 300% with Facebook's Registration Tool - <AUTHOR> http://marketaire.com/2010/12/23/facebook-registration-tool/ <comment><USER2> I've tried using it, but I couldn't find any way to validate the data against information on my own servers (ie for unique email address), so it felt like I was giving up some important functionality.

I was impressed with how straightforward it was to get running though.

<comment><USER3> The documentation says you can do async validation: [http://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/registration/adv...](http://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/registration/advanced)

<comment><USER2> Darn, now I look like quite the fool :)

I'm going to go ahead and pretend that wasn't there when I was trying it.

<comment><USER3> But now you can go ahead and use it so it's all good.

<comment><USER2> To be honest, I still don't like it. But now I'm limited to my aversion to depending on Facebook for making sign up possible.

<comment><USER4> With something like 1 in 3 North Americans who use Facebook, creating this ease of use can really make the difference between engagement and not.

It's definitely important to put the user first, especially if you're running a business and looking for conversions.

<comment><USER2> I always try to put the user, I never knowingly put my own agenda ahead of the user's needs.

I'm using the Facebook Login button rather than the registration form (I have a non-facebook registration process too), for a couple of reasons:

1\. It's faster for Facebook users. 2\. Assuming they actually read it, Facebook Login makes it clear to the user what level of access I'm getting. The Registration Plugin provides no indication what permissions they're handing over - it's more than the default access. The site is given an oauth token, but no indication what this token can do.

I could be completely missing the point of the Registration Plugin of course, but I spent a little while implementing it, then realised that I didn't need any of what it provided and just used the Login button.

<comment><USER4> Good points. I think the idea of setting up registration for another site on your own site is sort of defeating the purpose. I'm sure everyone browsing the web as heard of Facebook, do they have an account? Likely.

It'll be interesting to see how Twitter progresses as a connecting tool. Obviously Facebook is superior as far as numbers go, but I don't think we'll ever see one agreed upon way to connect users to sites. Facebook just seems to make the most sense at this point.

It would be nice to see some additional social aspects we could use to add to site engagement. Liking and tweeting is one thing, but what about onsite functionality? OneTrueFan is a digital check in - is that what's next?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "For example, FriendFeed beta tested the tool and their sign ups _by users with Facebook_ increased by 300%."

(Emphasis added.)

<comment><USER6> To be fair, did they know which users had Facebook but didn't sign up with it, or did they assume that only the people with Facebook signed up with it? That wording could mean that traditional sign ups stayed at the same number, while Facebook connects increased by 300%.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It would be nice to introduce a way to pull a user's data from Facebook and display content that's relevant to that user. I know there's the Facebook user activity widget, but I'm talking full displayed content.

Obviously this would be ideal to do on the fly.

</comment><comment><USER7> Hmm, doesn't seem to be working on chrome 8. For half a second there is empty space where, I guess, the form would show up but it disappears. I tested it on Firefox 3.6 and it works.

<comment><USER8> Site appears to be completely down at the moment - some sort of database error.

<comment><USER7> That was before the site went down. The site worked fine, the facebook form, didn't.</comment></comment></comment>


King, Supercell and EA are destroying gaming - <AUTHOR> http://osito.io/post/75469696160/king-supercell-and-ea-are-destroying-gaming <comment><USER2> "I honestly can't tell if people paying to play these games are that stupid or whether these games are gamified and broken in such intricate ways."

The answer is the mobile games are gamified to take advantage of stupid people.

If you hand out 100's of millions of devices to the general population (smart phones) that's a lot of stupid people to take advantage of.

<comment><AUTHOR> In other words, we are all doomed since the ratio of smart:stupid is not in our favour :)</comment></comment>


Need feedback on my startup website - <AUTHOR>

I am the creator of HueCubed, a flashcard and visual feedback engine. http://HueCubed.com is my parent website. The site name is completely ambiguous but I am using it as a launching pad to my product sites and to build a brand. I've since launched 2 product sites using the engine.  http://PMPrepFlashcards.com is a very niche market that services aspiring Project Management Professionals (PMPs). Just yesterday, I launched http://K12Flashcards.com to test the extremely broad market of K-12 students.
The question:  Is it more important to centralize content on the home site or should I be building content on each product site (besides the flashcard product).  I'm trying to see which site will get traction, before going all in.  Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. <comment><USER2> Clicks:

<http://HueCubed.com>

<http://PMPrepFlashcards.com>

<http://K12Flashcards.com></comment>


GTD sucks for creative work.  Here's an alternative system. - <AUTHOR> http://heydave.org/post/24286720323/gtd-sucks-for-creative-work-heres-an-alternative#disqus_thread

<comment><USER2> I tried quite a few taskmanagement approaches. Biggest problem i have is that more work is coming in than i can handle. The list gets longer and longer and finally i give it up. Maybe i need some automatic deletion :)

</comment><comment><USER3> dave has probably used GTD far longer than I, but I have to say I think having 50-100 projects going is pretty insane. I don't know any system that would help you there (other than maybe hiring a project manager and 5 assistants..). The author even admits that his "new" system consists of focusing on only 5 "projects" at once. I don't see this as a failure of GTD at all.

</comment><comment><USER4> Making ideas happen by Scott Belsky is another killer one.</comment>


Apple to automatically cram macOS Sierra into Macs – 'cos that worked for Win 10 - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/10/03/apple_automatic_installs_of_macos_sierra/ <comment><USER2> "to Mac owners who have the "automatic update" function enabled."

so not the same at all...

</comment><comment><USER3> This is not even like Windows 10 at all.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is a poor article....</comment>


Show HN: Manage Python Virtual Environment with a Makefile - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sio/Makefile.venv <comment><AUTHOR> Makefile.venv takes care of creating, updating and invoking Python virtual environment that you can use in your Makefiles. It will allow you to reduce venv related routines to almost zero!

</comment><comment><USER2> I'll try that.

I use python because is easy to make a script cross-platform and because python have "batteries included". I think it would be interesting to have a tool like this that depends only on python.</comment>


Chat logs show how 4chan users created GamerGate controversy - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/09/new-chat-logs-show-how-4chan-users-pushed-gamergate-into-the-national-spotlight/

<comment><USER2> since reddit obsesses about this stuff,

[http://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/2fn6vz/looks...](http://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/2fn6vz/looks_like_zoe_edited_those_irc_logs_a_little/)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/2fmybn/so_th...](http://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/2fmybn/so_the_new_punchline_is_omg_irc_conspiracy_group/)</comment>


Coronavirus pandemic pushes U.S. economy to worst-ever contraction - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/us-gdp-q2-coronavirus-contraction-worst-ever-ed533bbf-1113-47fa-aee2-6e66fb553977.html <comment><USER2> Already posted here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23997362](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23997362)

<comment><USER3> Well, it's another article on the same subject. Did we need another? _shrug_</comment></comment>


Founders Now Take the Money and Maintain Control - <AUTHOR> http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/04/07/founders-now-take-the-money-and-maintain-control/?hpw <comment><USER3> This is an important trend, and I think it's permanent, because it's not, like valuations, driven simply by this being a hot market. The smarter investors, like Sequoia and Accel, have realized that it actually works better to have founders in control. Or more precisely, that the biggest outcomes (which financially are the only ones that matter in the VC business) tend to come from founders remaining in control.

See number 4 here for more about this idea:

<http://paulgraham.com/bubble.html>

and this for the present state of things:

<http://paulgraham.com/control.html>

(The reference in the 2004 essay to 26 year olds who are ready to rule the world if they can find someone to handle the paperwork for them sounds like a reference to Zuckerberg, but it isn't. I don't think I'd heard of him then.)

<comment><USER4> This is very good to know! As a founder dealing with VCs I feel like a puppy that fell in a shark tank.

It would be enormously relieving to know before a meeting that they are a) not trying figure out how to boot me out of my own company, b) not going to force me to make decisions that might make a quick buck in the short run but hurt the company in the long run (if I'm in it for the long haul), and c) not going to structure the deal in a way that they get unfairly larger returns on their investment and leave me broke (reminds me of a line from the Kanye West song Gold Digger - "Win the Super bowl and drive off in a Hyundai". ;)

<comment><USER3> It depends on the VCs. So far only the top VCs have realized it's best to leave founders in control. Below the top 15 or so, their thinking is 5 years behind. Plus lower ranking VCs tend to be less scrupulous generally.

<comment><USER5> Why We Prefer Founding CEOs: <http://bhorowitz.com/2010/04/28/why-we-prefer- founding-ceos/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am curious to see their exit strategies.

Say what you will about Broadcast.com or Myspace, but their founders did quite well, giving up any delusion of building on online legacy through said domains.

Take the cash and move on.

Particularly with Groupon, I really don't understand how a global company can compete at a local level if a local 'Mom & Pop' groupon clone takes Groupon on. Are the economies of scale there? (Please note I am talking about smaller towns, not major cities like Manhattan, Chicago, etc.)

<comment><USER7> The daily deal space is technically simple and has low barriers to entry - <USER2> a WordPress account and MailChimp, and you're more than halfway there. However, driving traffic and sourcing deals is ridiculously capital intensive.

Local Groupon clones around the world have been doing more or less well depending on their country's access to capital -- if there's sufficient VC available, they can hold their own, but if not, they've been getting steamrolled when a Groupon or Living Social enters their country.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This seems to be true nearly only in Silicon Valley. Do these sorts of deals get done elsewhere?

</comment><comment><USER9> I guess what stuck out to me about this article is why would Google want to spend that much money on a social network that no one uses?</comment>


Show HN: Two ex-Googlers turn garbage men - <AUTHOR> http://getelxr.com

<comment><USER2> This would be _great_ for someone who is planning a move but doesn't want to take a lot of things with them. Sell as much as you can all in one go instead of parting it out on Craigslist or similar.

A shame it's only in the Bay area (for now, at least).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Chris! We indeed have a few users who mentioned a similar interest (sell in bulk before moving).

We can't go nation wide or global yet due to obvious scaling constraints, but we'll get there, stay tuned.

<comment><USER3> Hi Charles do you mind if I hunt you tmrw?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup go ahead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is definitely a gap that needs filled. When I moved from Austin to SF I ended up throwing out a bunch of stuff that I would have preferred to sell or donate but I just didn't have the time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool, let us know next time you move!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow, super handy</comment>


Ask HN: What's the deal with Angular 2.0? - <AUTHOR> As a front end developer, Angular 2.0 is not even on my mind anymore because they just keep delaying the release. I planned to learn it when it is released but chose React instead because learning Angular 1.x seemed kinda stupid considering they are doing an overhaul. At this point I feel like Angular is losing a ton of steam now, while React is gaining momentum with companies like Netflix using it for their frontend. I feel like React introduced a bunch of really great ideas for the web that Angular 2.0 is just playing catch up at this point. <comment><USER2> Angular 2.0 has no chance of displacing React. Everyone (perhaps even Google) knows that Angular is basically dead. Google would do well to admit this much and quit pouring resources into a framework that cannot win.

<comment><USER3> Well that is a bit exaggerated.</comment></comment>


Show HN: TextTeaser Chrome Extension – Summarize articles with a single click - <AUTHOR> http://www.textteaser.com/extension.html

<comment><USER2> Nice to see another text summarizer. Do you have any accuracy stats on which categories this is good?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. No accuracy stats though. It's optimized for news articles though. But right now, I'm expanding also into books.</comment></comment>