Three Common Misconceptions About China - <AUTHOR> https://supchina.com/2018/06/25/kuora-three-common-misconceptions-about-china/ <comment><USER4> The misconception I carry is that the Rule of Law[0] doesn't hold the same weight as in America or Europe, due to extreme Selective Enforcement[1] - basically the person in power can arbitrarily apply the laws against those they personally dislike. This leads to the dependence on guanxi[2], where your families have been so close for generations that you're like siblings - <USER2> will arrest their own brother or sister? And people who can't leverage these guanxi relationships have barely more social leverage than a foreigner - <USER3> they diasporize.

And leveraging a Chinese person with few guanxi relationships is a common mistake of companies doing business in China.

[0][https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_law](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_law)

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

[2][https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanxi](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanxi)

<comment><USER5> How is this different from networking in the US? don't most American companies hire e.g. account managers or business development folks with long lists of industry (and in specific industries, government) contacts? Is it just the case that the implied "guanxi" relationship has to be deeper than the circumstances in which an American would say "I know a guy who"?

<comment><USER6> It's more a question of degree.

"I know a guy" might get you a job or back stage passes for a concert in the US.

"I know a guy" can get you off of vehicular homicide in China.

Granted, the US still has an occasional taste of the second, but it's far less common.

<comment><USER7> Being a relative of a cop in the jurisdiction in which you ran someone over will prevent you from ever being charged with it the US (they'll probably give you some slap on the wrist charge though).

Being good friends with the right folks at city hall will make sure your company wins the contract to do the landscaping at the city park.

Knowing the right people will generally get any permit you need expedited or at the very least it won't be delayed.

If special treatment is corruption then corruption is very much alive and well in the US. The difference is that the image of corruption is corruption is much less tolerable. If the details of the story of you running over someone makes the news or someone points out the conflict of interest of the person awarding the contract the corruption won't happen in that case. "I'm sorry I can't do that" is a much less common phrase than "I'll put in a good word for you".

Corruption in US (federal, state and local) is a lot like the restaurant that only cleans up its act for the health inspector. Government is the restaurant and publicity is the inspector. When there's a spotlight on the problem everyone plays by the rules. When nobody's looking it's business as usual.

Acts of obvious corruption (trading favors, bribes, etc) is rarer in the US than some other countries but leveraging relationships for special treatment is just as common as anywhere else, we just keep it under the table.

This isn't an attack on government but government is certainly not the consistent and impartial organization that some people seem to think it is (though I think that's a good goal to have).

Edit: I find it odd/interesting that whenever I say something that isn't positive about government it gets up-voted a couple times then down-voted a couple times. I really should write a script to track it because I have a hunch that the timing follows a particular pattern.

<comment><USER8> In my experience, it honestly isn't even close. Think about it this way:

In the US, you have an army of groups who will actively/passively work against a corrupt person: free media, lawyers, civilians with strong rights, judges, police, opposition politicians, civil liberties groups, government oversight committees, industry regulators, consumer groups, and generally speaking, a law-abiding and non-corrupt population.

In China, you have none of those.

However bad you think corruption in the US is (and I believe you when you say it's bad), it's degrees worse in China.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For the first part, I still think that Chinese culture is quite special with culture that passed on for that long.

As a normal Chinese with standard Chinese education till 10th grade (then move to a foreign country), I can understand fragments of writings carved in stones 1500 years ago in museums, which I felt quite amazing.

<comment><USER10> > As a normal Chinese with standard Chinese education till 10th grade (then > move to a foreign country), I can understand fragments of writings carved in > stones 1500 years ago in museums, which I felt quite amazing.

Is this unusual, though? Fairly certain most romance language speakers can understand at least some latin if they put their minds to it.

<comment><USER11> It pivots on what we mean by "understand fragments".

The average English speaker cannot make sense of Latin prose. Picking out a few words here and there, isn't the same thing.

"Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur."

All but 'Latine', and perhaps 'dictum', is gibberish to the average English speaker.

<comment><USER12> English is not a Romance language. It is Germanic.

<comment><USER13> Even Old English is pretty much unreadable by most speakers of Modern English. They still used runes rather than Latin letters 1500 years ago, but even transliterated you'd have a hell of a time.

First stanza of Beowulf in Old English, transliterated into Latin characters:

> Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum, þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon, hu ða æþelingas > ellen fremedon. Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum, monegum mægþum, > meodosetla ofteah, egsode eorlas. Syððan ærest wearð feasceaft funden, he > þæs frofre gebad,weox under wolcnum, weorðmyndum þah, oðþæt him æghwylc þara > ymbsittendra ofer hronrade hyran scolde, gomban gyldan. þæt wæs god cyning. > ðæm eafera wæs æfter cenned, geong in geardum, þone god sende folce to > frofre; fyrenðearfe ongeat þe hie ær drugon aldorlease lange hwile.

<comment><USER12> It seems painful. I feel that in Romance languages is easier to identify the roots.

Now that I think about it, I have never read Romance text written before the XIII century: Cantigas, Dante, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is it odd that I have never heard of any of these misconceptions?

Are these common for any "westerners" to have even considered?

<comment><USER15> If you have even a casual interest in China (say, read the international section of any major newspaper), you'll almost certainly run into them. Random samples from the New York Times:

" _China is home to the longest continuous civilization in world history_ "

[https://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/25/q-and-a- will...](https://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/25/q-and-a-william-c- kirby-on-can-china-lead/)

" _For three millennia, since 1000 B.C., the Chinese had been supremely confident that they were the center of civilization, the Middle Kingdom..._ "

[https://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/13/opinion/13iht- edgardner.1...](https://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/13/opinion/13iht- edgardner.1.13693509.html)

" _China insists it has no fights to pick. Its evolving foreign policy maxims -- principles of peaceful co-existence, peaceful orientation, peaceful rise, peaceful development -- have the same emphasis._ "

[https://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/weekinreview/the-two- face...](https://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/weekinreview/the-two-faces-of- rising-china.html)

<comment><USER4> Referring to a group of 1.4 billion people, the economy, the government, the economic pressures driving each of them, et cetera as a single entity can reveal a level of ignorance about these components of a society.

<comment><USER14> Doesn't that apply to every single modern country right now? Why do you think it's ignorant to view China the same as every other country?

<comment><USER4> The ignorant probably do view all countries through this same lens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think one piece of Chinese narrative history that's curious and possibly relevant is: the "line of civilization" bit.

The Anglo-American "history of civilization" traces itself back through British, Roman, Greek periods. It's self aggrandisement and bias, but it demonstrates how hard it is to have a totally nationally centered history of urbanism/civilization if you want to go back a few millenia.

From at least the early bronze age (5000 ybp), the other great urban eurasian- african cultures had a lot of contact. Hindu Valley, Hittite, Persian/Sumerian, Egyptian, Mesopotamian. Their "suburbs" stretched into Greece on the edge of Europe, half of Africa...

China had the silk road and were aware of these distant consumers, but civilisational rivalry isn't a big part of the story. The important rivalries are either internal or "barbarian" facing. Everything was invented in China. There is no Plato (for example) sharing knowlesged sourced from india.

China was always a great power, but they were never a world power (until now) because there wasn't a world, in a sense.

<comment><USER17> _Everything was invented in China. There is no Plato (for example) sharing knowlesged sourced from india._

Buddhism was _absolutely_ sourced from India, and had a profound impact on Chinese culture, spirituality, and political thought. The _Lieh tzu_ adopts a lot of Buddhist thought and adapts it into (already Confucian-influenced) Taoist thought.

<comment><USER16> Good point. I suppose my points are less valid, the closer to the present we get.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "the Xin dynasty, set up by a usurper named Wang Mang who might have made a decent emperor but had absolutely shit luck with natural catastrophes." I like the writing style...

</comment><comment><USER19> Somewhat off-topic but peripherally related to misconceptions about China: In the U.S. we are conditioned to think that Amazon is the most innovative/out- of-box-thinking retailer in the world. But there are some new ideas out of China in the retail and surveillance spaces that are pretty impressive/scary, beyond anything we've seen from Amazon so far. There's a bunch of articles/videos/images on this Twitter feed [1].

I like the idea of the compactible smart locker [2] though.

Also, the parking garage gate that scans your license plate [3] and automatically raises the barrier arm -- it sounds like an invasion of privacy except (1) apps like Spothero already know my license plate number; (2) license plates are visible publicly.

On that note, some misconceptions that we have about China's innovation mindset are addressed here [4].

[1] [https://twitter.com/conniechan](https://twitter.com/conniechan)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsuDDBcJ18c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsuDDBcJ18c)

[3] [https://twitter.com/conniechan/status/990730265239654406](https://twitter.com/conniechan/status/990730265239654406)

[4] [https://a16z.com/2016/02/16/mindsets-for-thinking-about- inno...](https://a16z.com/2016/02/16/mindsets-for-thinking-about-innovation- in-and-competition-from-china/)

<comment><USER20> That's not exactly a fair comparison. China is the largest country in the world. Amazon is just a company. There's plenty of innovation coming from drone delivery and checkout-free grocery stores.

<comment><USER19> China is a country that many of us believe is only capable of copying and not innovating, hence the misconception.

Size doesn't really come into it. If it did, we would expect similar outcomes with with other large countries like India (which is innovative in its own way, but not to the same extent), Indonesia (large market, but little visible innovation), etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The 2nd point is indeed a view I hold (held?). Interesting though I need more proof to change my knowledge.

But first and third points are dispelled just by reading the Wikipedia article on China history.

</comment><comment><USER22> There are great TED talks (generally not a big fan because too sensational) to learn about China and Asia in general. For example this one: [https://www.ted.com/talks/martin_jacques_understanding_the_r...](https://www.ted.com/talks/martin_jacques_understanding_the_rise_of_china)

</comment><comment><USER23> This article reminds me of a line from Bojack Horseman: "Uh, this is _general_ knowledge?"

</comment><comment><USER24> I had the impression when going there- that many of the misconceptions where copy pasted from the Japanese stereo type of mid 80s fame.

At the southern coast, china actually has a Mediterranean, Italian/Cote d Azure flair- and the people seemed to have a similar relaxed attitude to live.

</comment><comment><USER25> If you haven't seen it, recommend watching 'The Emperor and The Assassin": [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor_and_the_Assassin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor_and_the_Assassin)

</comment><comment><USER26> Four current common misconceptions about China.

1.) China is a communist

China is now a dictatorship. China added term limit for its president in 1982, after mao's disastrous rule as a dictator. However, the parliament voted to remove the limit in may - giving xi jing ping 2958 votes and only 2 votes against 3 sustained - giving the president the ability to rule for life. xi jing ping has been adding his own thoughts into the constitution, making him as powerful as mao.

2.) China will overtake US as the most powerful country of the world

That might have been slightly remotely possible in 2008, when US suffered the great recession and the world saw China's economic growth faster than US. However, nowadays, with dollar still the hegemony, US has bounced back from the recession to have healthy jobs rate, gdp growth rate, investments rate, etc. Meantime, China's economy has stalled, its gdp lauded as fake, it suffered stock market crash, capital outflow, huge shadow debt, middle income trap, yuan depreciation, and foreign direct investments decline. With dictatorship came extreme censorship, concentration camps, social credit score, and public monitoring. Its per capita gdp has stalled at around $8000/year, nowhere near US's $56000/year.

3.) Chinese citizens have high savings rate

"what do we actually find when we look for the mythical Chinese saver in the real Chinese economy, rather than in the macroeconomic assumptions? Bank balances offset against enormous, rapidly rising, bad debts, a property bubble out of all contact with reality, a closed capital account to prevent money draining overseas while it still can, and an unregulated shadow banking sector where vast pools of notional value endlessly gyrate on air currents of uncertain origin"

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/douglasbulloch/2017/04/26/the-m...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/douglasbulloch/2017/04/26/the- myth-of-chinas-excess-savings-is-weighed-down-by-excessive-debt/#1aa15b40458a)

4.) China's peaceful rise

South China Sea, island building, arming the islands with military weapons, threatened invasion of Taiwan, harsh crackdown of democratic demonstrators in Hong Kong, concentration camps in XinJiang, controlling buddhism in Tibet, interference with Australian and New Zealand politics, strong handed approach to other countries airlines in changing the official names of Taiwan, one belt one road as a way to finance dictatorships around the world and also bankrupt countries and steal their vital ports and infrastructures.

<comment><USER27> With regards to your first point, that doesn't make China a dictatorship, although it could evolve that way. The US didn't have term limits for its President until 1951 (22nd amendment) and we were still democratic.

<comment><USER28> We didn't, because FDR was the first president to break the two-term precedent. Immediately thereafter (in constitutional terms) came the amendment to say that nobody could ever do that again.

China created their two-term limit rule (not just precedent, if I understand correctly) after the experience of Mao. Xi repealed it. That raises the kind of red flags that would be raised if Trump had the 22nd amendment repealed. It doesn't make a dictatorship, by itself, but it's a step along the road...

<comment><USER27> Sure, and that's a troubling change. But I would rather have debate involve facts rather than hyperbole and appeal to emotion. As far as I know China still has elections every 5 years. There are plenty of real facts about China that are concerning. Let's focus on those rather than invented ones.

<comment><USER28> Sure, they have elections. And the probability of Xi losing is exactly 0% - and not because the people love him so much. "Democracy without a choice" isn't democracy. It's a favorite trick of dictators to make themselves look like they are democratically elected.

Now, if I understand correctly, local elections in China are much more real elections. But for the national leadership? No.

<comment><USER27> I didn't claim China is a democracy. I said it's not a dictatorship. The elections for president are by senior party members, not like the local elections. It's a hierarchical system.

I'm not defending the Chinese system of government. I'm saying that criticisms of it should be accurate, and there are plenty of legitimate things to criticize. Calling it a dictatorship is an exaggeration, at least at this point in time.

<comment><USER28> It's... kind of a dictatorship? But not so much of a man. It's a dictatorship of the party. Does that count as a dictatorship? Maybe, depending on your definition...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Are you sure these are actually common?</comment>


Ask HN: What does the future of container-adjacent offerings look like? - <AUTHOR> There are tons of container-adjacent tools, services, and products, along with new ones being released almost daily. Just yesterday there was an announcement from AWS that it has a new Linux offering centered around containers. GitHub (Microsoft) just announced that it has a new container registry service.
It looks like this trend is going to continue for a while as providers converge on similar offerings - either baked in-house or using common components (e.g. K8s) - that are likely (hopefully!) based off of the same standards (e.g. OCI).
After this happens...What's next? How do companies differentiate their offerings in a future where they're providing the same tools? What do you expect they'll need to consider to remain relevant? What happens to vendors like Red Hat, VMware, and Rancher who offer solutions similar to the current cloud providers, but will presumably be offering commodities at that time? What does all this mean for the end customer? If you're in this industry, what does this mean for your future? <comment><USER2> Great question...

Amazon's offering wasn't really about containers, even though it was.

It was about maintaining the heterogeneity of their brand and offerings by requiring competitors to allocate resources to compete in a space that really didn't exist. It also provides AWS even more "stickyness" with their customers, giving those same customers LESS choice due to the scope of the offering which really can't be found anywhere else, for now.

It's happened before, many times, just with different scope.

Look at cloud. Before cloud, there was no AWS, no GCP, just virtual servers. Now everyone in the game is copying everyone else. The difference here is in the direction of scope. In the cloud scope, it's getting bigger. Adding container support to tradition EC2/VPS is just making cloud bigger and harder to compete with for new entrants.

The question is, was AWS container OS release a red herring, or a signal that Amazon has even more interest in binding customers to its platforms by offering AWS platform compatible layers and versions of existing tools.

Their OS already exists in Rancher and CoreOS. It's nothing new, except that it's designed to only work with AWS services.

No reason to assume it won't be the same on the container front.

What I would like to see is more network transparency, allowing locomotion of containers across the various cloud providers, but that would require the big players to work together to make their offerings compatible with each other's, and I don't see that happening any time soon.

It will be a 3rd party player who provides a cloud overlay across all the major cloud services, much like overlay networks subsume nodes, and that player will be acquired quickly because they present a threat to the heterogeneity and branding of the major players.

I don't see FaaS taking off as it's too atomic and 10x harder to maintain individual functions across the cloud than services as a whole, so I expect more brand-vertical offerings to be seen along with competition-stifling patents to keep the competitors from duplicating them.</comment>


MariaDB Cassandra Storage Engine - <AUTHOR> http://kb.askmonty.org/en/cassandra-storage-engine/

<comment><USER2> I like the idea but I am not familiar with dynamic columns in maria. Is it possible to query dynamic columns in a way that map to a column slicing operation in cassandra?</comment>


Michael Bloomberg Promises $500M to Help End Coal - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/06/climate/bloomberg-climate-pledge-coal.html <comment><USER2> Cheap natural gas is doing a great job ending coal without the need for big flashy investments

<comment><USER3> Not here in Australia unfortunately - the government and coal execs are all best mates.</comment></comment>


Twitter Deciding Whether Killing  '@' Symbol Will Bring Back 1 Billion  Users - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-axes-at-symbol-2014-3

<comment><USER2> I think they're going about this the wrong way.

The primary problem they should be trying to solve is that it's fairly tough for a new user to join the ecosystem, get his friends to follow him, etc.

It's difficult for a new content-creator to get started. Much harder than with Facebook, LinkedIn, and even Google+.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hashtags and @s are the features that make twitter such a valuable marketing tool. How do they plan to group the news and twitter trends?

</comment><comment><USER4> If Twitter kills @, #, rt, mt ... that will be huge.

</comment><comment><USER5> Good. Lumping together data and metadata has always been a bad idea.

I still say Twitter is a fad. Nothing it offers is a unique value proposition. If the right clique of celebrities moved on to some new, more fashionable network, that would be the end of Twitter.

<comment><USER6> Twitter itself may be a fad, but there's still a need for some kind of light- weight, small, broadcast mechanism.

If this had been done decades ago, we'd have an RFC and it would be a distributed protocol like email. Instead we have a single company dictating terms, for better or worse.

<comment><USER5> Maybe it's not too late? We need more protocols and fewer "platforms". Is anyone working on writing such a protocol?

The problem is getting somebody to implement and support it. XMPP has suffered because companies refuse to federate, and keep trying to build in their own proprietary extensions.</comment></comment></comment>


Spotify gives up SF Mid-Market office – and tax breaks – amid safety concerns - <AUTHOR> https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Spotify-gives-up-SF-Mid-Market-office-and-tax-13450875.php <comment><USER2> > Employees who had moved from Sweden were unaccustomed to San Francisco's > homelessness crisis

"Eat your food because there are starving children in America"</comment>


Machine code monkey patching - <AUTHOR> http://www.yosefk.com/blog/machine-code-monkey-patching.html

<comment><USER2> There's no need to go through these steps if you're compiling the code yourself. If you want to override a library function like malloc, just define a function called malloc. Then make sure that the linker sees your function before the library function. For example, here I override pthread_create: [https://github.com/scotts/streamflow/blob/master/override.c#...](https://github.com/scotts/streamflow/blob/master/override.c#L66)

Note that I also figure out, at runtime, how to call the real version of pthread_create using the dlsym interface. I make sure that my pthread_create is the first one in the call chain by putting that object file before -lpthread when I link.

The LD_PRELOAD method is for when you _are not_ compiling the code yourself. That is, the function you want to hijack is in a binary, and you can't re- compile that binary. Then you compile a shared library with your function, and use LD_PRELOAD to force the runtime linker to load your library first.

</comment><comment><USER3> Monkey patching is pretty common for when you want to override or get on- change notifications for interfaces that don't support it.

For example, have header files for functions? Want to know when they're called? Monkey patch it in!

Also, from what I've heard monkey patching a function is calling adding a detour, and monkey patching a virtual function is called hooking. "Monkey patching" usually refers to injecting code into dynamic languages, not into compiled languages.

<comment><USER4> Indeed, detours/hooking is the correct terminology here. I've never heard anyone ever refer to this as monkey patching when it's done on with a compiled language.</comment></comment>


Show HN: YourGov.us – Find Your Representative - <AUTHOR> http://app.yourgov.us/find <comment><AUTHOR> Hey there,

Over the long weekend, I put together a small tool to help you find your representatives in Congress by your zip code.

Check it out!

It's built with Node, Bootstrap 4, some open data from GitHub, and some queries of the Sunlight Foundation API.

The goal is to help people engage more with the political process in the states. Additional feature requests are welcomed! Currently I'm considering adding in more local representatives (like State Senate or City Council).</comment>


Ask HN: Can we please start calling NoSQL PostSQL?  - <AUTHOR>

NoSQL sounds really negative, Post-SQL has a better ring do it.. or maybe DROPless? <comment><USER2> Since PostgreSQL is already a well known (relational) product, I don't think that PostSQL is viable terminology.

</comment><comment><USER3> NoSQL databases can have their own Structured Query Languages. What they lack are relational capabilities, so something like NoJoi might be better. :-)

</comment><comment><USER4> i'll take pre-sql for it, before i'll accept or use post-sql

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd rather DumbSQL and SmartSQL personally</comment>


FB's Former CTO Says It Would Take Two Years For ~250 People To Build A Clone - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/03/fyi-google-facebook%E2%80%99s-former-cto-says-it-would-take-two-years-for-250-people-to-build-a-clone/

<comment><USER2> If one applies Brooks Law then it could be said that a team of 20 Elite hackers could build it in half the time. Also if you consider how much infrastructure is already in place for G+ (Accounts, Advertising, Services as Google Docs, Picassa, etc.) (which is obviously topic of this article) and that beyond front-end most of the work that probably had to be done was building circles and integrating backend infrastructure.

Yes my analysis is silly - but not any sillier than that of the original author (Lets hope Google has 500 people working on it?).

But just to participate in senseless speculation I foresee that Google will release development API's by November 2011. And that by summer 2012 G+ will be completely integrated into whole Google ecosystem, offering services that will completely dwarf what FB has to offer.

Shameless Plug: <http://www.janezstupar.com/the-facebook-dilemma>

</comment><comment><USER3> 15 people + 1 year -- for a significantly better version

People always underestimate a good, small team with the right tools.

</comment><comment><USER4> You dont want build a clone anyway. What you want is a product that does something similar, while being more enjoyable to use.

</comment><comment><USER5> Eliminating half the dev hours for trial and error (churn)?! Do they realize that most of software development is not the actual coding time? Having an EXACT and detailed requirements and UI layout is way more than 50% of the work.

</comment><comment><USER6> Flagged, as per the guidelines: "Please submit the original source. If a blog post reports on something they found on another site, submit the latter."

This post adds nothing beyond the original thread on quora.

</comment><comment><USER7> Well, thats the honest and straightforward way of calculating, but from a competitor standpoint, you wouldn't want to match feature to feature and then try to compete. You'd attack by taking over the disgruntled users first, and Google has done that well with Circles, and Privacy. Google has its own issues with acting like a drunken sailer kicking off people at whim. But I doubt it'd take 2 years - if G+ managers to build engagement and retention, they are good to go - but honestly, thats a battle for Google.</comment>


Goodbye, Lua (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://realmensch.org/2016/05/28/goodbye-lua/ <comment><USER2> Hello Snabel? JavaScript is far from the answer to every question.

[https://github.com/andreas-gone- wild/snackis/blob/master/sna...](https://github.com/andreas-gone- wild/snackis/blob/master/snabel.md)</comment>


The Certified DBA - <AUTHOR> http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The-Certified-DBA.aspx

<comment><USER2> I'm certainly an idiot when it comes to corporate politics, so someone help me out here. Would it have been stupid politically to just show actual evidence that what this admin was asked to do was actually quite a bit slower and less optimal than what he actually did? Perhaps up the DBA's chain?

<comment><USER3> This is actually a key insight - you need to actually do a little bit of experimenting when you get into software performance.

Politically, you can run into weird "ownership" issues (eg, the DBA team handles system performance) and fighting the chain is soul-deadening. One of the reasons I considered actually getting one of the myriad DBA certifications is to add the heft of being able to say I had it to the PHBs when this type of thing comes up.

Thankfully, I held off and I think for the most part these certifications (although valuable when paired with demonstrable applied skills in real projects) have fallen out of favor lately. Certs are a particularly strange form of resume fodder - a few years ago they were pretty key in making it past the HR gauntlet. I imagine that for some techs (I'm looking at you, Oracle) they are still a defacto requirement.

<comment><USER4> "fighting the chain is soul-deadening"

...not to mention a career-limiting move. PHBs tend to not like it when people complain to them about their bad hiring decisions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is the type of article that really gets my adrenaline pumping. I find it so frustrating to read about these types of things, although the frustration for me is in the fact that people take one person and vastly over generalize to an entire class of people.

Yes, there are "Certified DBA's" who are morons. Guess what, there are System Admins that are morons, Programmers that are morons, Pilots that are morons, Doctors that are morons, etc, etc.

If his main takeaway from that situation was that "Certified DBA's" are morons and that system tuning is little more than hand waving and hot air, he failed to learn the real lesson.

The real lesson imo, is that in every field you have people that are morons, and you don't know if the person you are dealing with is a moron based on their credentials. You only know if someone is smart and gets things done through actual experience.

For what it's worth, performance recommendations of this sort are the easiest to expose because of the availability of quantitative performance measures.

<comment><USER4> I don't think this was meant to bash DBAs. Only "Certified DBAs" who think they're smart enough they don't have to listen to reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great story. I build a lot of Oracle clusters and have to deal with "certified DBAs" that have "opinions" based on experience back when 9GB hard drives were a large size.

Luckily, there are great tools out there like ORION (Oracle I/O Numbers Tool) that let me simulate an Oracle workload which give me real quantitative data that I can use to prove a particular configuration is non-optimal.

I've had to prove and disprove configurations before, and personally I think that if you're building any storage for database, you better benchmark it. Too many sysadmins just take the default settings on their storage and might only get 10% of the potential out of it.

I've seen a lot of systems that were setup in wtf ways. For example, having 4 HBAs in a system and all data is flowing down a single path, since the sysadmin never bothered to install multipath drivers or set path preference. This happens _all_ the time.

Check out my blog for some of my latest database storage benchmarking: <http://sanarchitect.blogspot.com></comment>


No-code founders are on the rise. Are they making money? - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiehackers.com/post/no-code-founders-are-on-the-rise-are-they-making-money-15da743dc3 <comment><USER2> I don't really understand what "no code" is. You can put up a storefront and conduct business without writing a line of code, simply by adding plug ins to Wordpress, calling out to stripe etc. The result is somewhat templatized and slightly generic looking but that's great: your value comes from the content, as the author correctly describes, and the visitor will presumably understand navigation etc.

This kind of process has decades of predecessors, from dbs like Delphi, Excel, to Emacs in the '70s to (so it was claimed at the time) FORTRAN.

Is "no code" meant to somehow imply something more?

<comment><USER3> From what I can tell yes. It's intended to imply something more.

See bubble for example - [https://bubble.io](https://bubble.io) . It's basically "visual" Rails. The intention is to allow users to build complex, interactive software visually, without having to write code.

Webflow has a ton of plugins that can get you something similar. You can have a user model (memberstack.io) with authentication and even the ability to create user specific content. I was able to create a fairly complex user dashboard that had real time charts pulled from an Airtable database that was synced automatically with user interaction using Zapier.

...but, here's the issue. You just can't do enough. I made it about a week before I abandon the idea and went back to Rails.

I'm still bullish on the idea of no code though. The tools are there. They just need more functionality.

<comment><USER4> > See bubble for example - [https://bubble.io](https://bubble.io) . It's > basically "visual" Rails. The intention is to allow users to build complex, > interactive software visually, without having to write code.

Why the "hate" for code? I immediately understand the problems that typical programming languages have for people who are not trained in programming. But there exist good reasons why other approaches like "visual programming" have failed (except for some niches). So in my opinion the solution is not to "spread hate" against code for a "stupid" market pitch, but take the time to develop programming languages that are better suited to the needs of the customer.

<comment><USER5> I can think of a few. Most of these things could also be done with text-based code, but typically aren't when you're just starting out:

\- No set up issues (visual programming is cloud-based)

\- Less of a discoverability issue (visual programming shows a lot of things all at once)

\- A sense of familiarity (people have seen flow chart like things before)

\- It's easier to see the difference between arguments and parameters

Full disclosure: I have almost never seen visual programming languages, but I got the idea that there was no devil's advocate present within you. So here I am ;-) I find it quite easy to think from a beginner's perspective, because in some sense I can't fathom that I know what I know now since I never thought I'd ever know this much in my entire life (and I'm only 31, lol).

<comment><USER4> > \- No set up issues (visual programming is cloud-based)

Cloud-based has nothing to do with visual programming or no-code (you can also do cloud-based editing of conventional code if you desire). Counterexamples: LabVIEW, Simulink.

> \- Less of a discoverability issue (visual programming shows a lot of things > all at once)

Wasn't "shows a lot of things all at once" actually an argument (marketing pitch) why conventional programming language overwhelm many people who are not programmers, and visual programming languages are "thus" better because charts have a lot less "intellectual density" than computer code?!

> \- It's easier to see the difference between arguments and parameters

What is actually the difference?

<comment><USER5> I said

> Most of these things could also be done with text-based code, but typically > aren't when you're just starting out

This means that it all can be done, but isn't. Which means that it's a cultural issue, not a technical issue.

Also, I was under the impression that discussion was about mainstream programming languages and mainstream visual programming languages (of which you said there were none). Here's a workable definition of mainstream: the Stackoverflow top 10. It doesn't have LabVIEW and Simulink.

When you discount niches for visual programming, then you have to do it with text-based programming as well, otherwise the argument isn't fair. I presume that you know this. So I find it peculiar that you don't qualify why you're using languages that aren't (seemingly) remotely mainstream, or why you're not using mainstream examples.

> Wasn't "shows a lot of things all at once" actually an argument (marketing > pitch) why conventional programming language overwhelm many people who are > not programmers, and visual programming languages are "thus" better because > charts have a lot less "intellectual density" than computer code?!

I wouldn't know.

I'm quitting this discussion, the exclamation mark + question mark, "what is actually the difference?" There seems to be no wonder or curiosity from your side. Instead it seems purely adverserial.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This post makes no-code feel like an MLM. Half of the highlighted startups are no-code startups founded to teach about no-code.

<comment><USER7> This is the vibe I regularly get from Indie Hackers. So many start-ups exist to serve the start-up/SaaS industry. Every second day there's a "SaaS that helps you create a SaaS that sends Emails for SaaSes" start-up posted there.

<comment><USER8> During a gold rush, it's the tool makers who make all the money. -- Someone smarter than me.

Startups have been in a gold rush phase for a while. Making tools for startups was a good idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> No-code platforms have always been a great way to put a MVP together. MVPs help you vet the idea before pouring real dollars into it. They are not meant to be the foundation for the product itself; those thinking otherwise have a very expensive refactor ahead of them!

I hear MVP thrown around like candy in the consulting I do. I _wish_ they started with no code!

Didn't some now-unicorn start its life as an email distribution list or spreadsheet?

<comment><USER10> You might be thinking of Groupon, from memory their origin story involves emulating software functionality with spreadsheets/email lists/much manual grunt work.

<comment><USER11> Wait a minute, I thought software was the one emulating grunt worker functionality this whole time!

<comment><USER12> No, with the AI hype, emulating software with people is all the rage once again!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > No code

Sounds like a fancy (actually more like crappy) buzzword for using SaaS products as part of your website/business.

Source: reading [https://www.makerpad.co/stories/mitchell-wright-how- lambda-s...](https://www.makerpad.co/stories/mitchell-wright-how-lambda- school-grew-with-no-code-tools)

</comment><comment><USER14> The first real low-code solution was a spreadsheet. Spreadsheets were what drove businesses to buy PCs in the early 80s.

In the 90s, CASE (computer-automated software engineering) was a big thing. Powerbuilder was huge. Novell had one where you could draw a flowchart and fill in dialogs to make client-server apps... UI builders became common as language vendors added graphical IDEs to their game.

In the 00's we had a lot of visual development tools for websites. Dreamweaver, FrontPage, etc...

In the 10's we had Zapier, IFTT and Yahoo's pipes.

Lots of successful products and fortunes made with No Code and low code.

<comment><USER15> Love the historical context here...

"Lots of successful products and fortunes made with No Code and low code."

What are some examples?

<comment><USER16> Were all of the examples leading up to that sentence not enough for you, or did you perhaps skip to the end?

<comment><USER15> Was Powerbuilder, Dreamweaver, FrontPage, Zapier, IFTT and Yahoo's pipes made with no/low code?

<comment><USER17> They're used to make things with no code.

<comment><USER15> Yes and I am wondering per /indyike's statement "Lots of successful products and fortunes made with No Code and low code." \- what are some examples because the product names mentioned were not made with no/low code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> They'll find some success, the same way that visual editors for desktop applications, and visual editors for web pages, found some success. In the end, these tools all require you to drop the facade once you want to do something too advanced.

I personally don't see how these companies can be worth much. Just as with visual web editors, they started out charging a lot but over time the price floored out to zero. Now there are dozens of websites that give away their "no code" editors, with the hope that you'll pay them to host your site forever.

<comment><USER19> > I personally don't see how these companies can be worth much. Just as with > visual web editors, they started out charging a lot but over time the price > floored out to zero. Now there are dozens of websites that give away their > "no code" editors, with the hope that you'll pay them to host your site > forever.

I agree. It seems like almost every day a new no-code platform crops up. Eventually, competition should bring prices down and hurt margins, right? What's the economic moat here?

For example, do you want to build a website or app from a spreadsheet? There's plenty of options and they all look very similar.

I am more bullish on the no-code solutions that target a niche/vertical, like forms (typeform) or member sites (memberstack) because you can offer complementary services (like Shopify does for shopping) and the niche is understood well enough that you can get close to covering 100% of use cases.

I would guess that a horizontal no-code company would have a harder time maintaining a competitive advantage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The no-code solutions are enabling a digital sort of business that is distinct from their analog counterparts. Their examples - teaching, online job-board, courses for sale - are digital upgrades to teaching, newspaper classifieds, and books.

You can stitch together a useful business with these tools. But you won't build a pure software business. They are just entirely different things. Building the so-called "no-code" technology is the software play.

As an aside, "Plenty of Fish" 1.0 was built with an off-the-shelf website builder. You don't need to be a pro-coder to provide value.

<comment><USER21> > As an aside, "Plenty of Fish" 1.0 was built with an off-the-shelf website > builder.

From what I read about PoF, it was written in VB. For performance reasons, anything external was gradually rewritten inline.

> You don't need to be a pro-coder to provide value.

That definitely doesn't match the story of him spending months in his condo writing PoF.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> No-code is a funny term and I'm not sure what it means. I would understand if it was non-dev or something similar. But most "no-code" people I know who work on side projects can edit basic javascript/etc, but couldn't write much from scratch.

I'd imagine this group is the subset the author is looking at. If you want to look at people who actually can't code, they are likely non-technical, and not using a tool like zapier. They're startups probably look very different (consulting, etc).

<comment><USER23> > No-code is a funny term and I'm not sure what it means.

I think it used to be called visual programming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I find it odd that the article's topic is literally "the surge of people taking a shot at building a business with no code products", but the author then goes on to be really surprised that so many people in this group are trying to build a business compared with "developers in general".

Well if you interview developers who represent their startup product i guess you might end up with similar figures of "wants to be an entrepreneur"?

It's missing the point that devs might have a number of incentives in building tools outside of a business scope, but when someone sets out to build a product even when it's not their job & passion "anyway", it pretty damn sure aims to make money

</comment><comment><USER25> Most software engineering is yak shaving in the sense that your high level goal is some business domain feature like "process a payment" but you spend most of your time in far detached language and os primitives, fighting idiosyncrasies in some json parser or UI state update library that has nothing to do with processing payments. Geeks really dig this impedance mismatch because they get to do the "fun stuff" instead of the boring business domain stuff. But a lot of people care only about the business domain stuff and could care less about descending into the catacombs. There will always be a need for point and click application creation and the tendency to want to get rid of the geek middlemen.

</comment><comment><USER26> No-code = code from another person

<comment><USER27> You wish, usually you still end up programming the thing, just with worse tools.

<comment><USER28> > You wish, usually you still end up programming the thing, just with worse > tools.

This, exactly! I once was stuck under a manager that fully bought into the idea that BPMS systems would replace most enterprise development (or at least wanted me to think that way to work on his BPMS project). He said semi- technical BAs would be able to do all the work in the future, blah, blah, blah.

It wasn't true: we built what was asked for, but you had to be a developer to get within 10 feet of the thing. There were so many gotchas, and you had to code to implement anything that wasn't a toy. It was basically developed with shitty fake-Java and shitty fake-JSP with a lot of other shitty-fake technologies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The title is just extremely wrong and clickbait. There's no content or data about "rise". If anything, the default founder is no-code outside of SV. There's a sharp rise of coding-founders, just because basic coding is becoming "basic knowledge" and taught in highschools now. I won't click these clickbait indiehackers links again.

</comment><comment><USER30> I recall some ads from the 1980s saying "No coding required - just use our scripting language!" It must have been a successful pitch, as the ads lasted for years.

</comment><comment><USER31> PG's Viaweb was a "no-code" startup for making web stores, that eventually became Yahoo Stores, before "no-code" was a thing, in the late 90s

</comment><comment><USER32> This is really interesting. Are there any good tutorials for someone starting out? I would be interested in playing around with it.

<comment><USER33> with that username you have to

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> A great example of the no-code system might be something like Power Automate/Power Apps/Power BI from Microsoft.

It's pretty painful to use when you want to do something simple in code like explode an array, take a few of the values from that and implode back into an array again.

Things like AWS Quicksight or Google Data Studio might be in the same sort of world too.

</comment><comment><USER35> There is something in-between where many engineers end up linking together a bunch PAAS and maybe a bit of front end to come up with a app or website.

In the old days you had to understand pointers and backups and efficient joins in your rdbms, the level of abstraction now is much higher.

</comment><comment><USER36> I feel someone should mention The Last One, from 1981, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_One_(software)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_One_\(software\))

<comment><USER37> Too complicated, needs another abstraction layer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> so, the big question for me is: these tools generally package a lot of functionality in their "no-code" wrappings, otherwise they would be near useless (for example see LabView and Co, which are painful to work in and interestingly seldom marketed as "no-code"...).

So what's technically the difference to a high-level API? History tells us (from Fortran to Emacs to TeX to R/Keras/...) that these tools generally last _a lot_ longer than any of the non-spreadsheet no-codes. While at the same time being much more flexible.

</comment><comment><USER39> So basically the "no-code" founders that are making money are the ones building "no-code" tools for people who can't code and those teaching people to start "no-code business."

I can't imagine you can build or even conceive a complex app without understanding the technicalities of how it all works. It seems to me majority of the no code tools are used for content websites with payments.

</comment><comment><USER40> Tons of people, the vast majority of entrepreneurs, make money without a single line of code ever being written at their business.

</comment><comment><USER41> Why though? 13 year-olds can learn CSS/HTML for their neopets, I get it's scary but this stuff isn't poison.

<comment><USER42> Which neopets site would you pay money for?

(Or, child labour laws aside, how many 13 year olds would you approach to build products for you?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I think the future will be in "low-code" rather than "no-code".

For example, Looker has LookerML which while it isn't full blown programming, it allows for a lot of customisation and far more complex use cases when compared with "no-code" alternatives like Tableau.

<comment><USER27> I will never get the rationale behind creating a new proprietary language solely to protect people from 'full blown' programming. Or, in some cases, being able to read/manipulate config files with standard tools.

<comment><USER44> Dark Lang is doing the same, we almost did, but are using Cuelang for our take on this now

<comment><USER27> Cuelang looks interesting, but also seems like a language with a _very_ specific use case.

I don't understand Dark Lang's reasoning for using a custom language when they could have made an IDE.

<comment><USER44> What very specific use case? I have found Cue to be versatile and usable anywhere yaml / json / config is used or needs to be validated. I'm mainly focused on code generation with Cue as the input. [https://github.com/hofstadter-io/hof](https://github.com/hofstadter-io/hof)

<comment><USER27> I'd consider a situation where you've got a human readable (?) data format that needs to be validated a rather specific niche for a domain specific language. All I'm aware of in that area is XSD and DTD for XML (and maybe some recent efforts to make schemas for JSON but those aren't too flexible).

I'm happy someone is trying to fill that niche though, I'll remember cue for when I run into such a scenario.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> > Just imagine the same being true for coders: that 7 out of every 10 > programmers you spotted at developer conferences or in the engineering > departments of larger companies were really only making ends meet while > starting their own businesses.

this is not a great comparison...

<comment><USER15> I read this part three times, I do not understand what the point is trying to make?

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Whether code or nocode, if your solution can solve a valuable problem, u can make money.

Nocode tools are just equipments like your screw driver, cutter, etc. This question is like asking whether a repairman can make money. Of course he can!

</comment><comment><USER47> Would you consider something like Collibra [https://www.collibra.com/](https://www.collibra.com/) to be no-code? They seem to be exploding at the moment.

How about SAP or Salesforce?

<comment><USER48> I can't tell from the front page but this appears to be a Business Intelligence tool?

<comment><USER47> A sort of "build your own metadata database with configurable workflows" tool focusing on data management, provenance, security, privacy etc.

Maybe I've gone too far there. Jira has configurable workflows too, and I guess no-one would argue that's a no-code tool.

SAP is probably a better example?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> in architecture it is grasshopper for rhino, in sound it is puredata or max/msp, in business SAP is pushing this since the 90s. with the idea to enable business to implement things w/o the need of developers: (1) brf+ to implement business logic, (2) the new integration product "cloud plattform integration" to integrate via flows (3) sap crm aet to create crud functionality. in some way it always fails. the best thing about having code is the versioning, the things you can automate.

</comment><comment><USER50> Betteridge's Law would have saved me some time. The answer is no, not really; the only company doing well according to the article is Lambda School, and as we've explored here before, their money-making schemes have nothing to do with no-code tools and everything to do with scamming students.

</comment><comment><USER51> Making ? Surely you meant raising.

</comment><comment><USER52> Grasshopper in Rhino3d is pretty rad. Visual coding of algorithmic designs.

[https://www.rhino3d.com/6/new/grasshopper](https://www.rhino3d.com/6/new/grasshopper)</comment>


Reading Between the iPhone OS 4.0 Lines - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/2010/04/reading_between_the_iphone_os_4_lines

<comment><USER2> Reading through this article, I thought to myself: When did Apple become such an angry, aggressive, and _negative_ company?

I remember an Apple where I felt a certain pride in owning their products because they were superior options for me. A company that was gaining marketshare and mindshare through excellent products that just blew away the competition.

This new Apple is spiteful and highly defensive. I'm embarrassed to be typing this on a Mac and to have had an iPhone (switched to a Nexus One recently). If Google's moral motto is "Don't be evil", it seems like Apple's is now "Fuck you. _punch_ ".

What the hell happened?

<comment><USER3> If you really think about it, Apple has always been like this. They want to control every aspect of their hardware and software. The pride you felt was the result of marketing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The big omission for me was not addressing the notification system. Its never scaled well past the original intent of missed calls / voicemails. A common problem I encounter is a screen full of notifications and the need to unlock the phone to do something. Once I do that they vanish. A Notifications app would be a quick and dirty fix. Just let me go back to them instead of hunting through different applications to figure out what I missed.

<comment><USER5> I think the idea is that once you've unlocked the phone the app icons tell you what items need attention.

<comment><USER6> Not to mention, you can't ignore a notification so you can look at it later... It's either view or dismiss.

<comment><USER7> They're only one rung above notepad.exe's "Search reached end of document | Ok" dialog, but only because for most of them hitting Ok takes you to the source of the notification.

They're a disaster compared to Apple's desktop HCI guidelines that insist on verbed dialogs and disdain "Cancel | Ok"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hmm, scaling back on innovation in the desktop OS is a bit unsettling.

The end of the desktop may be here in 5-10 years, but surely there are still interesting things left to do there?

Perhaps the ultimate simplification of computing (iPad and derivatives) is the only thing on Jobs' agenda now, innovation-wise.

<comment><USER7> I can't really think of any other foundational APIs that would be worth it for them to integrate into OS X at the expense of their infant mobile platforms that still have years of iteration and several more major releases before they're nearly as 'mature' as the platforms they're displacing.

OS X is incredibly mature now, while there are still warts (Spotlight is relational with fixed indexes, mobile.me sucks and isn't freemium, etc.), the iPhone OS has those warts too, it's more important to fix them there than on the desktop, and there's tons of incomplete/missing features on top of that that need iterating on.

I certainly wouldn't want to see the kinds of consumer-facing features they'd have to pull out of their ass to justify a 10.7 release in the next year or two.

<comment><USER9> I'm perfectly fine with future updates more along the Snow Leopard line than more normal updates with major features and UI changes. Add new goodies under the hood, make it faster and more secure, and charge me $29. Couldn't be happier.

<comment><USER7> The problem is that for outfits like them shipping _anything_ takes a huge amount of effort, and they're kind of short on under-the-hood goodies to add. They're also kind of constitutionally incapable of shipping security updates, though it's probably better overall that they don't do ubuntu's 10-updates- per-day regimen.

I'd rather they spent their efforts iterating on their mobile products. They have a ton of challenges still ahead of them there, like whatever they're going to try to replace the hierarchical filesystem UI with, synchronization, their mobile ads platform, fixing their notifications UI, integrating browser tabs into the app-switching UI (like WebOS and ChromeOS), etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As usual, John Gruber lacks some awareness of the history of the industry and the technical details. The multitasking in iPhone OS 4 is not just similar to Android but also to Symbian and perhaps even the Blackberry. It's a very standard technique that has been used in handheld devices for over a decade.

I suppose some jailbreaked iPhone users can comment on whether older iPhone's really can handle multitasking on 128MB of RAM. Considering that most devices have handled "true" multitasking with much less RAM than that over the years I'm not convinced it's truly a problem. They might not be able to hold as many apps in memory at once but that's what you get for having an older device. It'll be slower. But it should still be slightly faster than launching and closing every app all the time.

<comment><USER11> Unless I'm greatly mistaken (completely possible) symbian is a more traditional multi-tasking system. The UI and everything else was more or less kept in memory with the only caveat being that you had to learn to graciously deal with being shutdown as memory ran low.

I also think that the Apple system varies pretty significantly from Android. Android has the concept of 'bundles' and 'servers'. Bundles work similarly to what Apple is doing, but having servers (which multi-task in a more traditional model) enables more consistent background processing.

For instance, an alarm clock on Android is often implemented with the GUI 'bundle' on the front-end and a server on the back-end that manages the actual 'when should I sound the alarm?' part of the task.'

That's one thing that just isn't possible in the iPhone model.

<comment><USER10> I doesn't sound like there is any way for the iPhone OS to selectively unload parts of an app. So, just like Symbian (and every other platform), the entire app stays in memory. The big difference with the iPhone is that there isn't any background threading except when triggered directly by the OS for a specific purpose. That's a fairly minor difference but it would prevent poorly written apps from eating up too much battery life (or doing other nasty things in the background).

Having to graciously deal with being shutdown (and restore your state on relaunch) is pretty much the same model as the iPhone OS 4.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't get it. If apps can be paused in the background while remaining in RAM, why not swap them to the SSD when memory runs low? Why quit the app completely and expect the app to manage restore etc.? When the app restarts, it is obviously going to read from the SSD. So why not load the state too automatically? If paused apps still have open threads that called every now and then, I can understand. But it doesn't make sense for apps that don't. I would appreciate if anyone could explain this better.

<comment><USER10> When an app is swapped to disk, all it's code and data pages are stored. When it's resumed, the code and data pages are loaded back. This isn't so terribly different from relaunching the application (loading the code) and having the app restore it's state (loading the data). In fact, the app can even be more efficient in saving it's own state because it can discard anything it knows it doesn't need.

This sort of system doesn't work on a desktop because you can view/use more than one app at a time. However, it's more than reasonable on a system where you interact with apps one at a time.

This is pretty much how all mobile platforms have done it since forever.

<comment><USER13> A GC and framework designed around this serialization could be made to work, though, greatly reducing the burden on the programmer.

Of course since Apple has outlawed innovation in those areas targeting the iPhone, they may never find that out...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Much praise for the multitasking UI on iPhone OS4, but I still think that the cards metaphor of webOS is much better.

<comment><USER7> You're absolutely right, it's a shame that Palm is essentially dead walking. Google's ChromeOS will be picking up the torch of "everything's a tab" when it hopefully ships later this year.

Apple hasn't yet backed themselves into a corner where they can't rip it off, but to do it right would require them to not be their usual bossy selves.

In an ideal card-based iPhone world, apps would have the option of being document-centric and be able to register for URL-handlers and file-types (both just like on OS X). Unfortunately the new Apple would probably never let them become the default in place of built-in apps (no registering <http://>, no owning image/jpeg, etc.).

I think they'll have to do it eventually, but it might take a while. They might try to let the new multitasking API percolate in the wild first, and develop their replacement for the hierarchical filesystem UI and maybe OTA syncing in the meantime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The history repeats itself. =) The raise of linux was, in some extent, because "we hate MS" (because they are a monopoly, too rich, etc - does not matter). Now its Apple in focus and on the top, so it's time for Android (+1 for Google for a wise strategy to become a new RedHat of mobile segment) or even Maemo. It is also good news for Nokia with its N900 pilot project, but they are too slow and stuck with their crappy Symbian. NextStep was much wise investment. =)

btw, RIM acquired QNX. =)</comment>


Beautiful iPad code editor concept - <AUTHOR> http://dribbble.com/shots/15159-Oh-yes-working-on-a-text-editor-for-iPad

<comment><USER2> "concept"? What is new about this? You type in text and it shows up. OK, great.

What the iPad needs for programming is a touch-board for common constructs, because typing is going to be too tedious. Sort of like snippets, but some minimal set that gets you everything you need. Seems difficult, but it would be mildly neat.

Text editors that can't be customized suck, though, and Apple prohibits proper editor customizations. So my guess is that this won't be replacing a $200 netbook with Emacs anytime soon.

Oh, and after you type your code in, what's going to run your code for you?

<comment><USER3> Heroku needs to bring back its cloud-based code editor, stat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can someone explain why this is so beautiful or clever?

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess beauty is subjective.

<comment><USER5> Or perhaps beauty is hard to gauge when all you have is the corner of a mock- up/screenshot and a few comments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can someone explain why I'd ever want to write code on something without a keyboard when I could get a net book for so cheap? I'm baffled. There are a million great uses for the iPad form factor, but coding isn't one of them.

<comment><USER7> iPad (Keyboard) dock and/or Bluetooth Keyboard? If you're in to minimalism, a good ssh client and/or editor are all that are needed. Coda on the iPad would make my day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hmm... I'm pretty sure that's a fake screenshot (just a mockup). It has all of the same identical _invisible_ marks as Textmate in "Show Invisibles" mode.

<comment><USER9> Same colorscheme, too.

Granted, I have my vim configured to look almost like TextMate in just this way, so maybe he's just ripping off textmate… somehow I doubt it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't want a beautiful text editor, I want a beautiful terminal emulator and an ssh client. Inconsolata 24pt please.

<comment><USER11> I also wouldn't mind an app that's a virtual environment with bash, ssh, gIt, sqlite, django, a Safari tab, and Vim. If that existed I would buy an iPad tomorrow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It looks pretty (although blasdel's comment gives some reasons to take that with a grain of salt), and I'm all for being able to code everywhere and anywhere.

But.

1\. I can't open a terminal and run the script.

2\. No irb (or ipython or ghci or...) to test-run pieces of code.

3\. Until multi-tasking gets going, no music while coding.

I'm not sure it really counts as coding, if you can't run, test or put on some headphones.

<comment><USER13> "3. Until multi-tasking gets going, no music while coding."

The built in iPod app will, in fact, play music in the background while you do other things.

<comment><USER12> Thanks for the clarification. I thought you could only play music in the background while using other Apple apps (Safari, Mail, whatever). I'm glad to hear that I'm wrong.

<comment><USER13> A third party app (Pandora, for instance) _can_ stop the iPod if it wants to, but not all third party apps (Mint) do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> You do know that dribbble is an exclusive community for graphic designers to circle-jerk in?

This is almost definitely a photoshop mockup. I doubt it's any more 'under development' than the designs for console games done by twelve-year-old boys on forums everywhere.

<comment><USER15> It does look like a photoshop mockup, but the comments seem like he's been developing it, at least some.

how practical would it be to bring an ipad + keyboard? that's just like bringing a laptop. the one thing that would be cool (as mentioned later in the thread) is if the keyboard changed based on your language.

<comment><USER2> Except you can't actually try your code without a server to connect to, because Apple won't approve an app that can run code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> <https://squadedit.com/>

<comment><USER12> Thanks for this. For anyone else who didn't know it existed, the languages currently supported (for syntax highlighting and autoindenting) are PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python, XML, Lua, SparQL and plain text. Ruby seems to be high on their todo list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> A designer who can code Objective C/Cocoa? My guess is he's a programmer who designs.

chrisjdavis @tbdr Building it in Obj C so not using bespin, although it is cool. about 3 hours ago in reply to tbdr

</comment><comment><USER18> That's great news. For teaching programming classes a good code editor (with git functionality included!) and a (ssh) terminal - both with VGA/DVI output (for projection) would be great - currently I still have to use my MacBook Pro for everything, but when I can only use the iPad for presentations and code demos, that would be very nice.

</comment><comment><USER19> Man talk about the wrong tool for the job!!</comment>


Microsoft puts Slack on internal list of 'prohibited and discouraged' software - <AUTHOR> http://www.geekwire.com/2019/no-slack-microsoft-puts-rival-app-internal-list-prohibited-discouraged-software/ <comment><USER2> It is pretty annoying in a big company if every team uses totally different software to get their work done. It makes it a lot harder to build tools that help make your coworkers more productive. So it seems reasonable for companies to make decisions like "we use Box here, not Dropbox" and encourage employees to all go the same way.

Kind of like if a company ran 1000 MySQL instances and then a new engineer wanted to build a new service using Postgres because they were most familiar with it. Adding more different tools to the stack is technical debt.

</comment><comment><USER3> So they are hiding behind a "Slack does not offer enough security to protect our IP", which I don't completely by. But I'm surprised in the Nadalla Era that Microsoft would be taking this approach.

If the people in your company are using a competitors product, aren't you better off letting them do that to be most productive while at the same time learning why they are using those products in order to make your product better?

</comment><comment><USER4> Skype, skype for business, teams, yammer, outlook, kaizala, sharepoint and various integrations between them.

Banning slack makes sense, they shouldn't get to use it if they're going to force their mess on everyone else and pretend like it's just as good and easy to use.

</comment><comment><USER5> Totally click bait article with no source or trusted information.

I can confirm that this is not true at all and one of the big team in Microsoft completely use slack even today and will be using going forward without any change.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is a bad headline. Slack Enterprise is not prohibited.</comment>


Show HN: Kontain.me – Serve container images built on-demand - <AUTHOR> https://kontain.me <comment><AUTHOR> I made this as a fun project to play with the container registry API, CNCF buildpacks and Google Cloud Run. It's a silly hack, don't depend on it for anything real.

Some fun things to try:

        docker pull random.kontain.me/random:5x100000
        docker pull buildpack.kontain.me/buildpack/sample-java-app:master</comment>


How Erlang Makes Event-Driven Code Easy - <AUTHOR> http://needlesslymessianic.com/2010/01/15/how-erlang-makes-evented-code-easy

<comment><USER2> I've been deep in this world for the past few weeks, as I've spent my spare time more-or-less implementing an event system for Ruby... partly because Thin doesn't work on JRuby, and partly because EventMachine is almost totally undocumented. And it doesn't play too well with other multithreaded code on the same VM.

The performance of the Rack bit is on a par with Thin, even without an optimized request or response parser, and I've got about 1/6 the code of just EventMachine alone. But I digress.

While I've come up with a few solutions to the 'breaking code into little chunks' problem, nothing really beats having event-driven I/O built into the runtime, and nothing has driven that point home better than implementing an event system

And yeah, I'll be open-sourcing it in the near future... want to mop up some of the internals a bit, add MRI support, and finish stealing every spec and unit test that I can from other Rack webservers.

<comment><USER2> Part of me really wants to just write a Ruby-like language that has Erlang- like concurrency features, but that's a project for later.

<comment><USER3> There already is a project, Reia <http://wiki.reia- lang.org/wiki/Reia_Programming_Language>, which implements a Ruby like language on the Erlang VM.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How easily could russian hackers manipulate a U.S. election? - <AUTHOR> What would they have to achieve this technically? <comment><USER2> Well if you could change the source code on the voting machine it's something as simple as you show the Voter their choice to confirm on the frontend but the backend has been manipulated to always vote for someone else instead. The voter would never know their choice was altered. An example is as simple as the following:

def selectCandidate(voter_id, choice):

        if choice == 1:
           return {"Voter":voter_id, "Displaychoice": "Candidate 1", "Choice": "Candidate 1"}

        if choice == 2:
           return return {"Voter":voter_id, "Displaychoice": "Candidate 2", "Choice": "Candidate 1"}

        if choice == 3:
           return return {"Voter":voter_id, "Displaychoice": "Candidate 3", "Choice": "Candidate 1"}

        raise Exception("Should never happen :-p")

</comment><comment><USER3> Why the heck are you worrying about Russians? Don't you realize it's just a media thing to point, the finger at someone to be worried about?

Elections are not a democratic process in any of the big nations. Why do you think every president in America are basically related and family?

<comment><USER4> Seems more likely that if your father was president he could groom you and guide you to the path towards being president, similarly to how if your parents went to an ivy league, they'd know what's required to get into an ivy league or at least be a strong candidate, I don't think it's some sort of conspiracy as your post suggests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm more worried about the Lesters.

[https://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_...](https://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_the_republic_we_must_reclaim/up- next)</comment>


Linda Sandvik Resigns As Director Of Code Club - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/drtortoise/5dc254c614d6b6a19116 <comment><USER2> I probably don't agree with Sandvik about Google's complicity, but that doesn't matter. Silencing her to accommodate a company sponsor is both unethical and counterproductive.

There are forms of criticism that are intrinsically not compatible with being a director. If Sandvik was criticizing Google's participation with "Code Club" or making claims directly relevant to the project, that would be germane to the board. But that's not what happened here.

Silencing project members also doesn't help Google. Instead, it contributes to a perception that any support Google has comes from the barrel of a financial gun.

If Sandvik was given an ultimatum to stop criticizing Google to avoid annoying a sponsor, that was a terrible mistake on the part of the project. They should do what they can to correct it.

<comment><USER3> It doesn't matter that what she says is a lie?

It's interesting how you twist yourself into a pretzel (you "probably", maybe, a little bit, think that what she says about the sponsor is a lie) to end up with the conclusion that her actions are somehow justified and the board is committing some terrible crime of censorship.

The validity of her complains is very much the core of the issue.

She only gave one example (that Google is "involved in corporate mass surveillance") and presumably that is in context of NSA spying and the consensus around that is that it's a lie.

At her level badmouthing a partner is grossly nonprofessional. Spreading vicious lies - that's a no brainer reason to fire her.

Also, let's not be naive about the context of her complaints. When she says "when someone asks me..." she (or the board) doesn't mean "my college friend at a dinner party" but "a member of the press".

And given the state of journalism, "the member of the press" is not interested in Linda's perspective on Google's spying because she has literally nothing new to add.

In that context the only value for the press is to reduce her views to a click-baiting headline of "Code Club board member accuses sponsor Google of mass surveillance" which would damage Google precisely because they were nice enough to sponsor Code Club.

If she complained about AT&T (which actually did illegally spy on Americans in massive constitutional violation, for which they received a retroactive immunity), there would be no story because AT&T is not a Code Club sponsor or Linda doesn't feel like complaining about AT&T.

I'm not privy to the details but the simplest interpretation of what we know is that she was hell bent on spouting nonsense of the "Google mass surveillance" kind to the press and the board was very justified in worrying about a press creating a mountain out of a molehill to the point they felt they had to intervene.

So far there is 0 evidence that Linda had some novel complaints that are serious enough to risk damaging an organization that helps kids learn to code. So far all I see a selfish, self-righteous individual.

<comment><USER4>
       > It doesn't matter that what she says is a lie?

That statement makes it sound like you have additional information about this situation. If that is the case would you care to share it?

I have observed that there are at least two weighting components to an opinion, the person and the person's position. The same opinion uttered by a programmer at corporation X has different weight than when it is uttered by the CEO of the corporation. I have also observed that it can constrain the ability of highly opinionated people to achieve positions of higher authority.

So without an understanding of what the statements were, and what her basis was for making those statements, and even the context in which the statements were made. It is not possible to judge the appropriateness of her actions.

That said, I have spoken to many managers who have been chastised at some point in their career for expressing negative opinions about entities that were important to the organization (sponsors, customers, investors, Etc.) How folks internalize that feedback varies from individual to individual.

<comment><USER5> > That statement makes it sound like you have additional information about > this situation. If that is the case would you care to share it?

With no additional information available, it is not logical to jump to extreme conclusions, in either direction. If anything, you should assume they don't rather than they do (you know, the entire not-guilty until proven thing)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm conflicted. I respect someone for standing up for what they believe in (freedom to express their views) but this also seems like one of those "pick your battles" situations. Google like it or not are a key sponsor of Code Club. They do some good and some evil, but they're a key sponsor, and as the director you need to put the organisation ahead of your personal issues/complaints.

The complaints might be entirely valid (and they likely are), but when you're in that kind of position you might not have the luxury of expressing valid complains about the people who literally pay the bills.

So I guess my thought is: Maybe this is best for all parties. Code Club gets to continue, Linda Sandvik will be able to express herself openly, and Google will be able to continue to be a Code Club sponsor without conflict.

It is just unfortunate that these personal complaints couldn't be put to the side for the betterment of the organisation as a whole.

<comment><USER7> Why do you take it as implicitly acceptable that Google should expect silence about their bad actions simply because they sponsor the club? Is Google sponsoring the club to support teaching kids to code, or to buy some ideological allies in the tech ideas sphere? If the second, why should we accept such a thing?

<comment><USER8> From Google's perspective, why would I want to sponsor a group that thinks I am evil (and spreading this opinion around)?

If I was sponsoring a company/group (IE: paying them money) and they said anything negative about me, I would drop them in a second.

If they really don't like Google, they can deny their money and press as a result of the sponsorship.

They didn't and then the director thought it was okay to spread her negative opinion around. You don't get it both ways. She was obviously not on board with the rest of the company and now has to deal with the consequences.

It seems many people commenting here want to be able to express any opinion (bad or good) without any consequences. The world doesn't work this way.

<comment><USER9> It's true that the world doesn't work that way, in the sense of natural law: it is neither inevitable nor predictable that one will be able to express any opinion without consequences, and as you note, were _you_ Google, one would not be able to express a negative opinion of Google without there being any negative consequences. I have to concede this point because your own opinion on the matter might well go into a (newly opened) file marked "things I don't like about paulhaggis" that could hypothetically affect our future business transactions, as individuals; people have opinions about each others opinions, and form inferences about the other person based on those opinions.

However, there's a larger transaction going on here, in the sense of the opinions about opinion sharing that are simultaneously shared when we voice and respond to each other's opinions, and this transaction has a scope in which Google's corporate motto, "don't be evil", has some meaning. (I'm not asserting that Google will follow it, just that it has meaning.)

I'm going to use the game theory ideas of "cooperation" and "defection" because most people who read HN are familiar with them. There is indeed a body of opinion which holds that, in a cooperative system, the value for all cooperators of the open development and sharing of information -- even opinions; even distasteful opinions -- greatly outweighs any harm any one cooperator should fear from that information, unless that entity is actually a defector.

Google wishes to do good things to (a) invest in its own future, and (b) gain moral standing as an entity, which it (rightly in my opinion) correlates with brand effect and future market share. It has very little to fear from the opinions of any one individual, barring some vast personal influence in Washington or on Wall Street. I find it unlikely that Google -- in any decision-taking sense -- actually intends to silence the speech of critical individuals, simply because the signalling of opinion that that would entail -- the opinion about opinion sharing -- would be a self-inflicted harm that would far outweigh any possible benefit.

(It is possible, of course, that there are people at Google who share your analysis of the situation and have acted independently to express displeasure to the board.)

What the board has revealed about itself is a collective opinion which agrees with your own. The board either feels that they should promote Google in exchange for its funding, or that "the world doesn't work that way", and that they should be concerns about retaliation against Code Club by Google in response to the director's opinions. The board feels that Google will publicly defect from the system of open information cooperation, and they themselves are willing to (quietly) defect from that system in order to prevent Google's public defection.

This brings the Code Club board of directors into conflict, in general, with everyone who relies upon a cooperative system of the open and free sharing of opinions, and that is why they face retaliation for their actions.

So, that is why you might want to sponsor a group that thinks you are evil and is spreading that opinion around: because you wish to establish that you are not evil, by supporting their actions despite their words, and that they are therefore wrong.

[ed: grammar]

<comment><USER10> If she thinks Google is so evil she shouldn't (indirectly) work for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The Code Club board just taught their students a very important life lesson about what happens when you stand up for whats right.

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure I understand what the life lesson is.

In my mind, the battle with the board should be "either we drop the evildoing sponsors or I quit", not "I want evildoing sponsors' money but I still want to retain the right to criticize them or I quit".

<comment><USER13> I was on the board of my own company, along with my partner, and an outsider. I learned the role of a board is to represent the interests of the shareholders. If the company CEO is publically undermining the company's partners, which may threaten the company's finances, the board MUST deal with the CEO. Telling the CEO to knock it off or resign was the correct approach in my decision. The CEO's role does not allow for speaking personal opinions that conflict with the company's overall health.

I Code Club's board for taking a stand, and respect her for resigning.

<comment><USER11> Its a volunteer organization if I am not mistaken. Do they have a board?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What is actually bad about Google's "corporate mass surveillance"?

It sure sounds scary, but when I actually try to think about what it is actually bad about it, I can't really think of any.

Every single user Google got, they signed up voluntarily. Google never forced anyone to sign up for their services.

Google attempts to learn about its users just like every other companies. It's just that Google does it so much better than others. Do you get the label "corporate mass surveillance", when the company becomes so good learning about its users?

<comment><USER15> Informed Consent.

When I started using Google services many years ago, it definitely didn't occur to me they could basically track you across half the web. And you don't really get much of a choice in the matter. You can actively try to avoid Google sites and they're probably not missing out on a ton.

But more importantly, my grandmother certainly doesn't have any idea what they're doing.

And to be honest, I'm not much better off. So hard to consent to something if I'm not even sure what all they're gathering, and what they're doing with it.

<comment><USER16> >But more importantly, my grandmother certainly doesn't have any idea what they're doing.

Great point. Users are strongly encouraged to create a Google account when they setup a new Android device, and I suspect a significant portion have little-to-no idea about how their data is used.

<comment><USER17> I believe you are supposed to read and agree the terms of an agreement when doing that. 99.9% of the people dont even read the TOS.Who is to blame ? the user or the corporation ? I think both parties own a bit of the problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > "I do not want to get into the specifics of any particular corporation. > Nonetheless, it's worth restating that the Code Club board believe X are a > tremendous partner. As a member of the board I am completely aligned with > that view."

> I'm not comfortable with lying and so it is in my best interest to resign.

I'm not sure what part of that statement would be a lie?

<comment><USER19> I'd think it would be this part:

"As a member of the board I am completely aligned with that view."

If she were asked to stop at "the board believe X are a tremendous partner", then as a member of the board, she'd be implying the last sentence, but not actually saying it. (I couldn't comment on whether or not she'd be fine with the implication either.)

<comment><USER20> Serious question: Are all members of a company's board typically expected unanimously agree ("align") with everything the company they direct does?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> If I had a sponsor and an employee was criticizing the decision to say something to that employee would be based on how the criticism was done. If the person mentioned that they just didn't like Google's surveillance program then I would let it go. But if they ran around yelling about Google is evil because of said programs then we would have to have a talk.

If I am running a small company and your personal opinions are costing me money it would be crazy for me to keep you on. Not saying that is what happened here but that is more of a response from some of the comments I have read.

<comment><USER22> Code Club is a not-for-profit organisation, and Linda was a founder. It may cost them money, but don't the aims of the organisation come into it?

<comment><USER10> Just because they are not-for-profit doesn't mean that they don't need money to keep running their business. It also doesn't mean that nobody get's paid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Good job Linda! These type of decisions are hard to make and too many people are too selfish, scared, ... to make them.

</comment><comment><USER24> There used to be a proverb about this sort of thing. Something about being careful when eating finger foods.

</comment><comment><USER25> Not adding much to the conversation, but good on you, Linda. Money isn't the only thing that matters.

</comment><comment><USER26> Here's a thought. If you think google is evil because of surveillance should you not only refuse to use gmail (and other google products) but also refuse to send email to gmail addresses, because you don't want to support them?

<comment><USER27> This is a pretty real, concrete concern.

[http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/google-has-most-of-my-email- bec...](http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/google-has-most-of-my-email-because-it- has-all-of-yours)

(By the way, you can have this concern without thinking that Google is "evil": for example, you might think that it's risky to have so much e-mail in one centralized place and want Internet services to be redecentralized.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Never forget: the mass media you read every day also has sponsors. NPR has sponsors.

<comment><USER29> That's true, but the hope is these media outlets have the ability/integrity to be critical of their sponsors when it is time to report the news.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> When Google tracking its [voluntary] users's activities on the internet becomes human rights violations, the internet's social justice outrage machine has jumped the shark.

Bad-mouthing your sponsors is pretty universally considered a business faux pas. I don't see how it's either unusual or unethical to keep your opinions to yourself when the funding for your organization is on the line. That said, there's nothing wrong with caring about free speech more than teaching children to code. People are entitled to their priorities, after all.

</comment><comment><USER7> Linda Sandvik sounds like a fundamentally good person, and the other members of the Code Club board bad ones. Good on her. They will be harmed by her absence, and they deserve that.

The belief that sponsorship can buy silence is disgusting and immoral. Sponsorship should convey absolutely nothing aside from receiving credit for assisting with the sponsored organizations goals.

<comment><USER31> I think you're reaching a bit there. It sounds like this was a conflict with the board's practices more than anything, and this problem could have manifested itself in numerous ways other than sponsorship alignment..

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Are there a lot of companies/organizations out there that would be comfortable with employees (or directors) publicly criticizing the organization or its partners? Outside of journalists (who should expect/demand this sort of freedom of expression), I suspect the answer is no. It's not clear to me that Code Club's request was unreasonable.

</comment><comment><USER33> > either I have to stop saying negative things about Code Club sponsors, or > resign as a director.

sponsor is basically indirect employer. Don't bite the hand feeding you, it is just unethical. Publicly saying bad things about your employer is a bad thing. Resign and, only after that, say whatever you want as long as you don't violate the non-disclosures you may had signed.</comment>


Popular images from Instagram everytime you open a new tab - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/instagram-new-tab/mefnmmclgdhnmciegnfjcmdocgkeaplb#

<comment> V-2 Hm, I don't use Instagram, but even on the screenshots, most of these "popular images" aren't something that I'd like to pop out at me. A guy with a puppy... a duckface selfie... cheesy motivational quote... a TMZ cover page (???)... a collage of basketball player snapshots (not even doing anything impressive)...

<comment><USER2> You might be more interested in this: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/more- interestingne...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/more- interestingness/ngddmdmkjnnefgggjnnnepijkcighifa)

Shows you images from Flickr deemed interesting.

<comment><USER3> I use this: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/earth-view-from- go...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/earth-view-from-google- ma/bhloflhklmhfpedakmangadcdofhnnoh) (Google Earth images on new tab)

<comment> V-2 That's a cool one, definitely

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> When I open a new tab, it's because I already have something in mind. I don't need to be distracted from that. I changed my "new tab" view to a blank page. Much better.

</comment><comment><USER5> Cool idea but will this actually be good in practice. When I go on Instagram a huge number of the popular images are NSFW with partial nudity or other things I wouldn't like to see every time I open a new tab

<comment><AUTHOR> Right, I will check if Instagram has some NSFW filter on its API. Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would use it but then I couldn't make $0.10 donations to the impoverished every time I open a new tab: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tab- for-a-cause/gi...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tab-for-a- cause/gibkoahgjfhphbmeiphbcnhehbfdlcgo?hl=en)

</comment><comment><USER7> Do I need another distraction from work?

<comment><USER8> do i need another distraction before Hacker News?!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I recently quit instagram, I was getting a TON of spam --- people I didn't know making comments on my photos, mentioning me as if they knew me, inviting me to events, to visit webpages, recommending products, etc etc. It was v. creepy

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm thinking if someone can program a chrome extension for websites/system/network monitoring dashboard by opening a new tab will be wonderful.

</comment><comment><USER11> This looks cool, but I don't see this overtaking Panda right now :).

<comment><USER2> Panda?

<comment><USER12> He was probably referring to [https://usepanda.com/](https://usepanda.com/)

<comment><USER13> Why do all those sites allow Panda to "frame" them?

<comment><USER12> Panda is a chrome extension, and is not using iframes or custom stylesheets. It probably uses official APIs wherever available.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>