Indiana Purging Voters Using Software That's 99% Inaccurate - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedailybeast.com/lawsuit-indiana-purging-voters-using-software-thats-99-inaccurate <comment><USER2> Anyone with half a brain knows that these purges are designed to advantage a side not protect the system. I read an article the other day that stated that some America's voting system had essentially been compromised on many levels. It made me think about why so many of our polls have, in the last few years, been so off the mark. Now I'm beginning to think it's not because the polling models suddenly don't work. It is quite possibly something more nefarious than that.

<comment> brian-armstrong Yeah, I remember the outrage when the original Diebold hacking announcement was made in the Bush Jr era. The concerns in that were never addressed and doubtless things have simply since got worse.

If Google, Facebook et al wanted to make amends for biasing the election, they could bring some of their engineering prowess to bear on defeating systematic voting machine fraud.

<comment><USER3> > _Google, Facebook et al wanted to make amends for biasing the election_

I'm still surprised by the anger for this. For the purposes of the viewer, Google and Facebook are effectively media companies. By that measure, all media companies bias elections heavily during election cycles. This is done both with content and well as paid advertising.

But to "make amends" for something sounds as if their influence is either unprecedented or morally wrong. Perhaps the argument is that the bias from international influences was wrong. Something else entirely?

I suppose i fail to see where the real complaint here is. What behavior or lapse triggered these accusations?

<comment><USER4> There are some (poor, outdated, ineffective) checks and balances on the use of traditional media for political advertising. The new media successfully lobbied to be even excluded from those. Additionally, a lot of people who are not in this business were surprised about the extent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> De rigueur pointer to a discussion of the birthday paradox for those who don't understand why the combination of first name, last name, and birth date is an unavoidably flawed way of uniquely identifying individuals: [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bring-science- hom...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bring-science-home- probability-birthday-paradox/).

<comment><USER6> Personal anecdote: my parents used a pediatrician who identified minor patients by first + last + birth month. The office had to start using middle initial as well to disambiguate me from another patient.

<comment><USER7> Separate personal anecdote. My wife changed gynecologists after receiving a message on our answering machine with very sensitive and concerning medical data that was not for her.

She hadn't even seen the doctor in question for more than 9 months, had never had any indication of the problems in question (but had had tests done that could have identified such) and was generally thoroughly freaked out by this. Turns out the practice had another patient with the same name and was just a little sloppy about which person got called.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Lawsuit was filed shortly after SB 442 was passed (which is what allowed the process to begin): [http://www.naacp.org/latest/naacp-files-lawsuit-indiana- unla...](http://www.naacp.org/latest/naacp-files-lawsuit-indiana-unlawful- voter-purges/)

Sadly, it will have to work its way through the court while names continue to be purged.

<comment><USER9> Doesn't have to, the NAACP applied for an injunction that would stop the purges while the case is making its way through the court. It's basically the first step any time a law or something like this is challenged in the court.

Couldn't find any follow up articles from a (admittedly super cursory) search saying if it was granted though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is a crime. The power to unregister voters must be forcibly taken away from states; especially red states, since they are the only ones abusing this power.

It should require federal action, instead.

<comment><USER11> > _It should require federal action_

Shooting from the hip is a good way to trash a democracy. What you're proposing would allow a single, centralized actor to purge voters from the rolls. De-centralised systems will always have longer, more-idiotic tails. That's the tradeoff for their robust central tendencies.

<comment><USER12> Software means one idiot's algorithm can quickly become every idiot's algorithm.

That said, the urge to federalize everything is troublesome. Democrats want to protect Alabamians from Alabama, but who's gonna protect us when Alabama takes over the federal government?

De-centralization at the very least makes it easier to fix mistakes piecemeal, even if it doesn't prevent everybody from making the same mistake.

<comment><USER13> One benefit of the electoral college is that it compartmentalizes voter fraud to the state in which it happens. If I'm a corrupt election official in a state that is going to give a presidential candidate a large margin of victory, I have no incentive to risk being caught manipulating vote tallies (for president). If we ever switch to using the national popular vote instead, think we'd see lots of cases of local officials trying to 'save the country' by offsetting votes from other states that vote primarily for another candidate.

<comment><USER10> You are misusing the term "voter fraud" here. It doesn't mean what you think it means. "Voter fraud" refers only to intentional voting by people who don't have the right to vote, or who are voting more than once.

There basically is no such thing as "voter fraud"; there have only been a few handfuls of cases in the past two decades, out of billions of votes cast. So it's important not to play fast and loose with the use of this term. Republicans are using professional liars to allege that voter fraud is a real thing. It's not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> New York purged me back in 2010 and I was forced to vote provisional despite voting there consistently for many years. The fail extends all around.

<comment><USER7> And odds are high that your provisional ballot was simply tossed unless you contacted your county Board of Elections, probably with documentation to prove that you were allowed to vote and probably within just a few days after the election.

What happens with provisional ballots is very highly variable, but quite frequently ends up with them simply being tossed.

<comment><USER15> Are they tossed because of malicious intent, or because they can't change the outcome of the election?

For example, if the outcome of the election has Candidate X ahead of Y by D votes (D = X - Y) and there are less than D provisional ballots to count, is there a reason to count them?

(This being for a simple one-post election; if there are multiple posts where _proportion_ of votes allows for a seat being won/lost by a party, the formula would have to be different.)

<comment><USER7> > Are they tossed because of malicious intent, or because they can't change > the outcome of the election?

Highly variable, but I'm pretty sure it's a lot more to do with the laws of the states than with whether there are enough provisional votes to matter. In looking up some things for an earlier comment I saw one mention of persons casting a provisional ballot then having 3 days to bring proof of eligibility to the county Board of Elections and a separate mention (for another state) of the Board of Elections investigating provisional ballots and informing voters if their ballot was discarded instead.

I'd be surprised if anyplace had a law of "you don't have to count them if there aren't enough to change the outcome," but I've been surprised before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The headline is wrong. A 99% false positive rate does not mean the software is 99% inaccurate. That's a statistical fallacy.

<comment><USER17> It's one "kind" of inaccurate, if you will. They're just trying to simplify.

They also explain exactly what they mean in the caption under the title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I get the obvious point of the article; something is clearly fishy.

However, let's look at the numbers.

According to [https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/IN](https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/IN) , the population of Indiana is roughly 6.6 million. Roughly 85% are white ( so about 5.6 million people) and ~15% are non-white ( roughly 1 million people).

Now, the article says "50 percent of U.S. racial minorities share the same last names, as opposed to 30 percent of white Americans". So just using this as an issue, about 1.7 million whites and 0.5 million non-whites hit the first hurdle.

Honestly, if they really are using this against minorities, then they sure suck at it. They've already got MORE THAN 3 TIMES as many white folks as non- whites thru the first hurdle towards un-registering them!!

Serves them right if the article is anywhere close to being correct!

</comment><comment><USER19> Too add a data point, here is a list of the 10 most common <FirstName, LastName> pairs in the United States.

[https://blogs.ancestry.com/cm/calling-james-smith-10-most- co...](https://blogs.ancestry.com/cm/calling-james-smith-10-most-common-first- and-surname-combinations/)

I hesitate to guess ethnicity based on names, but I see mostly Caucasian and Latin names (Smith is represented heavily).

<comment><USER20> I think the goal is less to target racial groups directly, but rather to target those who are less likely to have the desire, the knowledge, or the resources to rectify the issue.

This tends to target the poorest Americans -- either those who can't afford to take time away from work to get the documents required to re-register or those who simply would give up after finding out they are not registered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Yay, more good news.

<comment><USER21> [sarcasm]

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The inaccuracy is a feature, not a bug.

<comment><USER23> Perhaps more specifically, it's its _intended_ feature, not some goofy side- effect. The whole game here is voter suppression, and this is just one of its many new implementations as heralded under this administration's plan. Can't beat them with Gerrymandering? Deregister people who will vote against you.

<comment><USER24> If that fails the next step is to launch lawsuits against the voting rights act, and if even that fails then you claim fraud and refuse to recognize the validity of the election, as the Republican Party in Georgia did.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> In the US, there's a lot of concern about making it easy for voters to register and stay registered, because in the past officials used this to disenfranchise blacks in the south and minority groups.

I think they are not paying enough attention to the risk of intentional voter fraud (by hostile outsiders) in the modern world. In the last election, Russian election manipulation became a big topic because they hacked e-mail servers and placed some fake news ads. Can you imagine what it would have done to the country if they had _actually placed fraudulent votes in key districts_? Would you have accepted Donald Trump as president if there had been serious questions about whether he'd been elected by fraudulent votes? This is not really that hard to imagine!

The system today is pretty vulnerable to manipulation by outsiders, and the discussion about voter disenfranchisement is keeping us from fixing that...

<comment><USER26> That's complete nonsense. The Supreme Court and several district courts have found states like North Carolina to be actively using purges and registration changes for the purpose of disenfranchising voters. Furthermore, if you want to protect the integrity of the vote, registration is the last logical place to start, as in person fraud is vanishingly rare. Only 2 people were charged with doing so in this past election, 2.

If we want to secure the machines, that is a totally different scenario, and unrelated to purging voter rolls.

<comment><USER27> It doesn't get charged often because there are parties that fight tooth and nail to prevent the implementation of processes that would allow the detection of ineligible voters voting.

It is shown in every election cycle that there are cases of voters voting who should not be because of their citizenship or felon status or voting in multiple districts.

When you say that only 2 have been charged, why is that relevant? What number of people would be disenfranchised if the voting system required photo ID? And I mean people who literally cannot get a photo ID at all, not someone who has to pay $10 or who has to spend a few hours once every four to six years getting their ID renewed.

<comment><USER11> > _It is shown in every election cycle that there are cases of voters voting > who should not be because of their citizenship or felon status or voting in > multiple districts._

Source? Because every [1] source [2] I find [3] says the opposite.

[1] [http://library.uwp.ac.id/digilib/files/disk1/13/\--publicadmi...](http://library.uwp.ac.id/digilib/files/disk1/13/--publicadmi-624-19-19.pdf)

[2] [http://open.mitchellhamline.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=...](http://open.mitchellhamline.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1237&context=wmlr)

[3] [http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/washington/12fraud.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/washington/12fraud.html)

<comment><USER27> Your own links say that it happens, but then hand wave it away as not significant.

Your [1]:

>However, in only 26 cases was there a conviction or a guilty plea by the citizen.

From your [2]:

>n the state of Washington, for example, six cases of double voting and nineteen instances of individuals voting in the name of the dead yielded twenty-five fraudulent votes

From your [3]:

>Although Republican activists have repeatedly said fraud is so widespread that it has corrupted the political process and, possibly, cost the party election victories, about 120 people have been charged and 86 convicted as of last year.

I'm not saying it's widespread, but I suspect that there have been local elections where the outcome was changed due to fraudulent votes. The question is do we care that each fraudulent vote voids the vote of a legitimate voter? And if something such as voter ID requirements were in place, would that have any value? Would requiring states to cross check their voter registration have any value?

As an aside, people seem to enjoy comparing the US to places like Canada and Germany on many different things, health care, progressive tax rates, commitment to green policies, immigration, etc. yet surprisingly no one ever says brings up voter ID, which both of those countries require.

<comment><USER28> Very few people object to the concept of voter ID. They object to its implementation in the US, which is virtually always done to disenfranchise legitimate voters.

The fight against voter ID laws is really a fight against voter laws accompanied by biased ID requirements and intentional difficulties foisted on the opposition voters.

<comment><USER29> How exactly can you have a citizen that is unable to get a government-issued ID? That is a failure of the government. They either have the documents and/or government records to prove that they are a citizen, or they're not a citizen.

A law requiring citizens to have IDs to vote is not the problem. The problem is the processes that aren't assisting citizens that struggle to get IDs.

<comment><USER28> You're treating it as two separate problems, but in reality they're intertwined.

In an ideal world, you create a voter ID policy in order to ensure the integrity of the vote. You figure out sensible policies to ensure that every eligible voter can vote, and enact them. Separately, you create an ID system that all citizens can use.

In reality, voter ID policies are often created with the intent of making it more difficult for certain groups to vote. They figure out policies to ensure that voters on the "right" side can vote, and voters on the "wrong" side can't. For example, they might accept a form of ID commonly held by one group, and not accept a different form of ID commonly held by the other group. Or they might restrict hours or shut down ID offices in areas populated by the "wrong" side to make it more difficult for them to obtain acceptable ID. Both of these have actually been done in various states.

Voter ID laws and making it more difficult for certain groups to obtain ID are two sides of the same coin here.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Buying marijuana domain names - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/28/us/28pot.html?_r=2&nl=&emc=a23

<comment><USER2> This sounded like a good idea until I saw the example domain names. Horrible- sounding and too long. I would bet on the hot domains to be brand-specific and not containing the word "marijuana".</comment>


Is Google Destroying Our Memory? - <AUTHOR> http://www.ua-magazine.com/is-google-destroying-our-memory/ <comment><USER2> The link to the paper seems to be dead, but I'm interested in reading more.

Personally, I have a poor memory and have made use of what the post calls "transactive memory" (great to have such a perfect name for it) to compensate for years. I've never felt like I was more reliant on Google than on, say, my mother or my friends.

But if you talk about the acquisition of knowledge rather than retention, Google is definitely a primary tool I'm very reliant on. There aren't many topics anymore that I started learning about by asking a friend or co-worker rather than gathering sources from Google first.

<comment><AUTHOR> Apologies. The link should be working properly now. Thanks for pointing that out. About the transactive memory, there is also a nice article, on scientific american magazine, about the topic: [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-internet- has-b...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-internet-has-become- the-external-hard-drive-for-our-memories/)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the further reading! I really appreciate it.</comment></comment></comment>


The Pixar Theory - <AUTHOR> http://jonnegroni.com/2013/07/11/the-pixar-theory/ <comment><USER2> Maybe such a thought-provoking Weltanschauung could be constructed across the Looney Tunes cartoons. The language of the environment Negroni picks up on here doesn't seem vastly different from the traditions of running/recurring gags in those toons. Animation of any dimension is labor intensive, and reusing pieces comes pretty naturally. So it's no surprise that, intentionally or not, these pieces can create metanarratives.

It's interesting to compare the dynamic between humans and animals. Humans, like Elmer Fudd or Yosemite Sam, are hunters or otherwise violent antagonists (of course there are animal hunters like Wiley E. Coyote), while the animals, like Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck, are the hunted, ever evading not only the hunters, but also, in the process able to elude constraints of space, time, technology, and gender (although not the omniscient brush of the animator, in those episodes where they tear down the "fourth wall").

Buy-n-Large is an interesting contrast to Acme. In Looney Tunes, if you need anything, from a hammer to a nuclear bomb, there's only one company you can get it from, Acme. Unlike Buy-n-Large's insidiously ubiquitous perfection, however, everything Acme makes is junk (consistent with Pre-Chicago School antitrust economics I suppose). It literally falls apart if it doesn't blow up in your face. But Acme did excel at documentation. Impressively huge blueprints and manuals always come in the box.

</comment><comment><USER3> And here I thought the wackiest theory about Pixar films was the suggestion that Cars is actually the sequel to Terminator taking place 1,000 years after Skynet won.</comment>


Wax cylinder recordings digitized - <AUTHOR> http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/index.php <comment><USER2> Those recordings aren't bad. The mechanical cylinder recording process was reasonably good, as was the duplication process; it was mechanical playback that introduced most of the distortion, because the playback mechanism was too massive to reproduce high frequencies well.

The Library of Congress has a machine which can read scratched and broken records, by optically scanning and building a 3D model of the surface.[1] But undamaged cylinders don't need it. They can be read out with a stereo cartridge and a suitable stylus.

Edison cylinders and records are vertically recorded; the groove bottoms go up and down, not left and right. Later records (RCA Victor, etc) were horizontally recorded. Stereo records are both; the groove format is called 45-45 Westrex, with two axes, both 45 degrees from vertical. This has the nice property that mono records played on stereo players, although one channel is phase-reversed.

If you want a cylinder phonograph, they're easily available on eBay for about $500.

[1] [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1185184...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11851842)

</comment><comment><USER3> A few hundred years ago someone threw out an Edison voice recorder. You would speak into it and it would record on the wax cylinders. I brought it home and looked up its value on the Internet. I was suprised this particular model was not bringing in much money. I didn't have much room, and my girlfriend at the time talked me into throwing it out.

Before I threw it out, I took the AC/DC motor out of the device. I just couldn't throw out that beautiful little motor. I now have that motor on my desk as a paper weight. People look at it, and ask why does it have a DC switch. I don't actaually know, but my thoughts were Edison was unsure of our electrical future?

<comment><USER4> Edison had strongly held views about the superiority of DC over AC : [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Currents](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Currents)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very interesting

I wonder if it would be possible to enhance the reproduction by compensating for things like frequency response, wow and flutter, and perform some kind of denoising (some have a periodic noise to it which I think may be attributed to scratches or damage to one side of the cylinder)

<comment><USER6> On the old version of their website you could download the raw rip, a cleaned up version, and the settings file for whatever software they used for the audio processing. You could download the original rip and the settings and adjust them to your own taste. I haven't looked to see why those other files are no longer available.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting. Checking the overview page [ [http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/overview.php](http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/overview.php) ] shows how they got the recordings.

At first, I though the recordings might have been based on the optical imaging technique outlined in this article [ [http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/june-2015/lhc- physic...](http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/june-2015/lhc-physicists- preserve-native-american-voices) ] but it is apparently been used for a separate effort to preserve native American recordings.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've tried to buy this domain a hundred times, but there's a guy who digitizes these here too, once a month: [http://www.tinfoil.com](http://www.tinfoil.com)

<comment><USER9> That design is a delightful blast from the past. tinfoil.com/tinfoil.htm especially triggers my nostalgia.

The .ram format on other pages, however, does not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> These sound great. I've not heard any cylinder recordings before. I'll fish out some of the popular music of the time.

I like old recordings: a couple of sources...

Early classical recordings available with search function

[http://www.charm.rhul.ac.uk/sound/sound.html](http://www.charm.rhul.ac.uk/sound/sound.html)

The first few bars of this are wonderful...

[https://archive.org/details/rhapblue11924](https://archive.org/details/rhapblue11924)

<comment><USER11> Yeah, the sound quality is much better than I would expect...

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wanted to download all of the available recordings so I built a tool to do so:

[https://github.com/CraigAlbright/hotwaxresidue](https://github.com/CraigAlbright/hotwaxresidue)

</comment><comment><USER13> This is a great project and a fascinating archive to browse in.</comment>


Show HN: Nginx config tester - <AUTHOR> http://nginx.viraptor.info/ <comment><AUTHOR> I made this mostly for myself, because with large configs it's sometimes hard to figure out which server/location will be triggered. It can be tested by running nginx in debug mode, but that's tedious. Instead, this site parses the config and applies the same rules nginx would. (apart from nested locations at the moment)

Everything happens client-side, I don't need/want your data :)</comment>


South Carolina judges often lack formal training in the law - <AUTHOR> https://www.propublica.org/article/these-judges-can-have-less-training-than-barbers-but-still-decide-thousands-of-cases-each-year <comment><USER2> >Their ranks include a Greenville lawyer appointed to the bench after siphoning thousands of dollars from accounts he managed;

Yeah, OK, so they lead off with a guy who is actually a lawyer and did shady things.

I'll give another example: 3 (elected) judges with law degrees who got into a brawl involving pistols at a white castle: [https://www.npr.org/2019/11/14/779339897/3-indiana-judges- su...](https://www.npr.org/2019/11/14/779339897/3-indiana-judges-suspended- after-white-castle-brawl-that-left-2-of-them-wounded)

Here's another one: [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/29/pneumatic_judge/](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/29/pneumatic_judge/)

I don't care if a judge has a law degree. Most lawyers I've met in the US are functionally morons anyway. This is just dipshits with a certificate trying to protect their perquisites. I'd honestly rather a barber judge me in a trial than most lawyers, and anyone on here who is trying to make the law so godawful complex it needs an "expert" to interpret it, you're part of the problem.

While I'm dropping links:

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

<comment><USER3> i don't agree with everything you said, but i do find it peculiar that lawyers are paid to make things worse (that is, get in the middle of arguments and escalate them). the more they escalate, the more they get paid. it seems like the worst kind of misaligned incentive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Even to the Supreme court I thought the President could nominate anyone irrespective of their qualifications, no prior experience as a lawyer or a judge is mandated.

<comment><USER5> The problem here is less the lack of experience but rather that many of these judges are routinely violating the law and the Constitution. We cannot have a functional legal system if judges do not follow the law.

<comment><USER6> Judges interpret the law. The law and Constitution are not written in C (and even if they were, we all know that every compiler has "undefined behavior" that may need to be adjudicated) and we occasionally need a court system to resolve disputes and clarify legal ambiguities.

If the affected parties believe a judge made an incorrect decision, there exist procedures for appeal or even revisiting the question in a subsequent case.

If judges in a jurisdiction are elected, it is the responsibility of the electorate to make sure the judges they select are the most qualified (perhaps by studying previous decisions, academic publications, etc). Analogously, if judges are appointed by other elected officials, it is the responsibility of the electorate to select public servants who are good at appointing competent judges.

<comment><USER7> > Judges interpret the law.

That is possible only if you actually know the law. If you do not know it, you cant interpret it.

So yes, people are needed to interpret the law, but not really anyone. Kinda like we need programmers, but not really anyone.

<comment><USER6> It is possible for competent programmers to interpret a vaguely written specification in mutually incompatible ways.

<comment><USER8> Yes, although the judges in the OP do not sound analogous to competent programmers in this example. One would expect someone trained in software to interpret software, in the same way one would expect someone trained in law to interpret law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is probably why 2 separate judges upheld a cops decision to arrest me for using bad language while walking away from officer that had been harassing me as I was walking home from work.

The law in SC is literally that bad language on the public road is a crime. They ignored 2 pages of precedents.

<comment><USER10> _> The law in SC is literally that bad language on the public road is a crime. They ignored 2 pages of precedents._

Not clear what you mean here. If the law is "literally" that bad language on the road is a crime, doesn't that mean the 2 pages of precedents support it?

<comment><USER9> After being stopped for no reason several times and held while they take their time "running my license" AFTER they were done with the latest nonsense I said "am I free to go" , they said "yes" , I walked off. When about 15 feet away and walking away at a normal pace I said clearly and calmly "fuck off then" they arrested me for saying the word fuck.

Swearing on the public street is disorderly conduct in the state of South Carolina. The 2 pages of precedent is that you can't criminalize the word fuck due to the first ammendment rendering South Carolinas law invalid.

Courts have repeatedly found that you can't criminalize speech save for very narrow bounds. Using a bad word while leaving isn't "fighting words" by the legal definition.

A variety of cases have gone as high as the Supreme Court for example City of Houston v. Hill, 482 U.S. 451 (1987)

> the ordinance is not narrowly tailored to prohibit only disorderly conduct > or fighting words, but impermissibly provides police with unfettered > discretion to arrest individuals for words or conduct that are simply > annoying or offensive.

The constitution of the United States isn't a thing in SC unless you have money sufficient to appeal matters until you get out of the state.

Kind of like Texas prosecuting gay sex

Another case more recently

[https://littlevillagemag.com/federal-appeals-court-rules- say...](https://littlevillagemag.com/federal-appeals-court-rules-saying-fuck- you-to-the-police-is-free-speech/)

However this has been a settled matter for decades which police keep ignoring.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Are there many places that have elected judges?

Why not require law degrees? It's not like "elected" must mean "can't require qualifications"?

<comment><USER12> It's one of the stranger things about the US. Electing not just judges but also coroners and sheriffs and prosecutors.

<comment><USER13> To be fair, with coroners it's more out of necessity than anything. One of the counties next to mine has few coroners and it's something of a problem, as you can imagine. We recently had a friend die and the coroner's report is still not complete, three weeks later. We still don't know what the cause of death is, and as it's suspected to to be a suicide, it's not been a fun time waiting for the results to come out. An elected coroner could relieve the burden by preforming reports on 'mundane' deaths and leave the more complicated cases to more experienced people. Again, it's not a good solution by any means, but it's a better solution than the one they have currently.

<comment><USER14> But why elected rather than hired? It's supposed to be a mostly scientific job with no agenda.

<comment> t-writescode Prestige of being an elected office might draw more candidates to an otherwise undesirable job

<comment><USER15> I would argue that we'd be better off not electing the prestige seeking people. We want the best person for the job, not someone viewing high offices as a prize.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> How is this different than being judged by a drunk king based on his whims? It's not at all. So what happened to rule by law? How does such a system exist? How does it have supporters? This is perplexing. Sure justice is not valued at all in American culture but do south Carolinians not care at all about justice or having a civil society? It is beyond appalling to give stupid idiots (and there's no kinder way to describe someone with no legal training acting as a judge) power over others based on whatever they feel like doing since there is no legal framework in place.

In such a system where one randomly gets punished without any evidence of a crime being committed, why should one not turn around and assault or even kill the judge? After all in a society without laws, without morality, and without even common sense like south Carolina, that shouldn't even be a problem. It's just savages vs. savages once you get to this point. Why would anyone act ethically in such a horrific situation?

<comment><USER17> All of your questions can be answered by the fact that South Carolina today and historically has been an extremely authoritarian state.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is common in CA too, apparently.

When I was getting a divorce, a lawyer I consulted with gave me the background on the judge handling my case. Apparently she was appointed by the governor to appease a particular voting block and as thanks for her activism work for that group. She knew nothing about family law but was given the job regardless. That situation is apparently quite common in family court since there is a high turnover rate. Judges often have to spend months being taught by the lawyers on the cases they're overseeing.

Having your fate in the hands of these folks is absolutely terrifying.

<comment><USER19> When Governor Brown appointed Rose Bird to be _Chief Justice_ of the state Supreme Court, she had never been a judge at any level -- not even municipal, or traffic court.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've often wondered why they don't teach the law in grade school or high school, since it is (in theory) supposed to be known and followed by everyone. The best answer I have so far is that education is in the public sector too so it's subject to similar problems with lack of training and inflexibility.

</comment><comment><USER21> >Over the years, their numbers have included construction workers, insurance agents, pharmacists — even an underwear distributor.

Pharmacists are hardly uneducated buffoons. And, what are we to make of 'underwear distributor'? Is there a correlation between a business person's judgment and the items they sell? I doubt it.

I can guarantee that the blueprints a construction worker uses, the policies an insurance agent sells, and the manuals a pharmacist is versed in are all much more complex than the laws governing the cases that come before these low-level courts.

<comment><USER22> The point is pharmacists have 0 legal training.

No matter their expertise I wouldn't want the construction worker working as my pharmacist without any training.

Yet we're ok with giving essentially the entire power of the state to people with no training or experience in law.

<comment><USER23> > we're ok with giving essentially the entire power of the state to people > with no training or experience in law

Yes, that's what democracy is, for better or worse: the power of the state is ultimately vested in the people, regardless of training, background, gender, skin color, etc. etc. Restricting power to those who are trained in law, or any other narrowly defined group, is called oligarchy. It generally has good outcomes for the oligarchs and those who are close to them, not so much for everyone else.

<comment><USER24> This conversation is a perfect illustration of the difference between a significant part of US culture and that of many other western nations.

As a Canadian, even after living in the US for over a decade, I find your comment baffling. For better or worse, the law is a complex subject both in jurisprudence and process. If judges can be significantly less knowledgeable than the attorneys that appear before them then how can the law be applied equally?

The US Constitution guarantees equal protection under the law yet how can that be realized if there are no minimum standards that apply to judges?

Two things that I cannot understand about the US: the election of judges and outright politicization of the mechanics of voting.

<comment><USER23> Look, I don't disagree with you. I agree that electing judges is stupid. Nonetheless, for better or worse, this is the result of democracy.

Note that you could apply the exact same principle to argue that _legislators_ should be lawyers. After all, if you're not trained in the law, how can you possibly _write_ a law? Or understand the many subtle ramifications of the law that someone else wrote that you're voting on? And why stop at legislators? Why not accept, say, literacy tests? How can a citizen possibly make an informed choice at the ballot box if they can't read a newspaper?

The point I'm trying to make is not that electing judges is _good_ , only that it is, at least in the U.S., a direct consequence of democracy. You may decide that democracy is more trouble than it's worth, and cite this stupidity as evidence. But what you cannot do is say that electing judges is stupid and also that you believe in democracy, because in the U.S. the one has followed directly from the other.

<comment><USER17> How are you jumping from judges not having legal training, to Jim Crow literacy tests?

<comment><USER23> Jumping? I'm not jumping, I'm applying the _principle_ that people who have influence over the application of the law should have some training. If judges need special training, why not legislators? And if both judges and legislators need special training, why not citizens? Note that we already _do_ apply this principle to naturalized citizens! It is only people who acquired their citizenship by birth who never need to show any competence at anything in order to vote.

And note well: I am not _advocating_ literacy tests. I am only pointing out the logical consequences of adopting the principle that judges should have special training.

<comment><USER17> There is nothing "logical" about your extending the idea that judges should not have to have legal training before sentencing people to jail. Not to mention, legislators are kept in check by another branch of government which can strike down laws created by legislature. The indigent and commoners hauled before these magistrates are granted no such meaningful review.

<comment><USER23> Not so. Judges can be impeached by the legislature and recalled by the voters. And there are appeals.

BTW, one of the reasons things are the way they are is that the "indigent and commoners" don't necessarily believe they'll get a fairer shake from someone who has a JD from Harvard than someone who doesn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> You should see some of the elected judges here. PA.

Nothing more than a high school education.

</comment><comment><USER26> Title should be adjusted to "Some South Carolina Judges.."

<comment><USER27> No it shouldn't. Every state has elected judge positions, and they only require being able to win an election. In my home state of PA a local magistrate was caught by the FBI trying to fix cases of people who appealed her judgments, was removed from the bench for 6 months, and still ran for reelection unopposed. The people we let get elected to judicial positions is scary.

<comment><USER28> Judges shouldn't be elected at all, they should be appointed in a non partisan process, from a pool of experienced and respected lawyers.

<comment><USER29> That is by construction a partisan process, with the outcome matching politics of the median lawyer, instead of the median voter.

<comment><USER28> Partisanship is a state of mind moreso than a formal system. Judicial appointments in Canada are non partisan. The politicians who appoint them are operating under the principle of "who would be the best judge from among these candidates" rather than who is my closest ally.

Elected judges are entirely the opposite.

It sounds like the entire judicial branch of the United States has become politicized. That's really unfortunate. It's not the case in other countries.

<comment><USER29> That's a result of how the federal/state constitutions here work. Judges don't matter as much if Parliament is sovereign.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> > Over the years, their numbers have included construction workers, insurance > agents, pharmacists — even an underwear distributor.

This is ironic for a conservative state because it's indistinguishable to me from Soviet communism. I can't help but think about this scene from Chernobyl ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idb_qsAAe1c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idb_qsAAe1c)) which illustrates the true tragedy of this broken system. Emma Goldman wrote in "My Disillusionment in Russia" (1923):

> Bourgeois dictatorship is replaced by the "dictatorship of the proletariat" > — or by that of its "advance guard," the Communist Party. Lenin takes the > seat of the Romanovs, the Imperial Cabinet is rechristened Soviet of > People's Commissars, Trotsky is appointed Minister of War, and a labourer > becomes the Military Governor General of Moscow. That is, in essence, the > Bolshevik conception of revolution, as translated into actual practice.

<comment><USER31> > _it 's indistinguishable to me from Soviet communism_

Maybe it's time for you to read up on Soviet communism?

This is not how they killed 20m of their own citizens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Judges are "meant" to be representatives of the people, not clerics of the law who must undergo institutional evaluation and approval. That is why they are elected or appointed, as opposed to merited by some competitive process which sieves for competence. Still,

> To better understand this system, The Post and Courier and ProPublica > examined thousands of state records and compiled profiles of all 319 South > Carolina magistrates. A reporter also visited courtrooms and interviewed > legal experts, lawyers, lawmakers and defendants. Among the findings:

> Nearly three-quarters of the state's magistrates lack a legal degree and > couldn't represent someone in a court of law.

> A loophole in state law has allowed a quarter of South Carolina's > magistrates to remain on the bench after their terms expired, letting them > escape the scrutiny of a reappointment process. One controversial magistrate > continues to hold court two decades after her four-year term ended.

<comment><USER33> > Judges are "meant" to be representatives of the people

Isn't that what "representatives" are for?

<comment><USER32> Yes, and judges are either appointed by your representatives or elected directly. Does that smell like a process which coldly sieves for legal competency, or a proxy for the will and moral style of the people?

That is why I say based on the look and feel of western law, judges are proxies for the people, and not some paragon of legal competency.</comment></comment></comment>


Debug Legacy Code by Starting with a Unit Test - <AUTHOR> https://spin.atomicobject.com/2016/07/09/legacy-app-start-test/#.V4EXPDZhZVU.hackernews <comment><USER2> More valuable advice on dealing with legacy code can be found in Michael C Feathers, "Working Effectively With Legacy Code"</comment>


Formally Concerned (about curation) - <AUTHOR> http://mfa.designcrit.com/formally-concerned/

<comment><USER2> There's always ever a hand full of designers that manage to put themselves in a position where they are having fun appropriating technological change and shaping the visual language of our culture. Most designers just have to follow trends. But since, when looking at the past, you see the exciting stuff, you tend to forget it was probably dull and uninspired for the most part back then too!

<comment><USER2> Therefore, less sweeping generalisations and more specific analysis would be useful.

For example, I have have a bit of a problem with the use of the author's. 'we' «Instead of deep processes of discovery, we make minimalistic versions of movie posters» Well, i don't do that. I can't identify with this image of the designer, even if I know it works for some people as I see these blogs too.

Look at <http://www.manystuff.org/> and <http://dribbble.com/>

Both sites targeted to designers, but obviously not to the same people.

«I am worried that designers as a group are starting to have the wrong conversations with form.»

Designers as a group don't exist. So which kind designers are having what kind of relationship with form?

That we are surrounded by images made by other people shouldn't necessary be a problem: we learn through imitation. So what is different this time around?

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> I just don't understand how anyone can be reactionary about our contemporary world, without also seeing how much possibility all of this offers to re- imagine visual communication, how little of the potential of open source technology and methodology is yet being employed in design.

<comment><USER2> I get super a enthousiastic, when a well known designer like Jonathan Puckey works with Jürg Lehni to create a vector graphics platform for canvas and realises it has to be open source and community driven for it to work <http://paperjs.org/>

Or when people start to put typefaces on Github for collaborative development <https://github.com/klepas/open-baskerville> (disclaimer: i work on this project), or when Design collectives start to work with libre toolsets <http://osp.constantvzw.org/> (disclaimer: i work in this collective)

I just see a really interesting time where the world of software technology is opening up and becoming more accessible, and designers are finally in the position to appropriate and make their own all this technological change.</comment></comment>


Frequently Asked Watch Questions on Amazon Forum - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/forum/watches/ref=cm_cd_tfp_ef_tft_tp?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=Fx2L5KU4X1FHGX3&cdThread=Tx25M06QQ4MOO83 <comment><AUTHOR> Links mentioned in the first post don't work. Scroll down to see them :)</comment>


Show HN: Vivaldi programming language - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jeorgun/Vivaldi

<comment><AUTHOR> So this[1] post recently made its way across the HN front page, which I found serendipitous given my current side project. There's nothing terribly groundbreaking in my language— everything in it is basically taken from Ruby, Scheme, or Python— but I certainly learned a lot making it, and maybe some of y'all will find something of interest in it.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9040029](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9040029)

<comment><USER2> Got any recommendations for resources to get started creating one's own language?

<comment><USER3> For the parsing aspects, reading about parser generators or the like would be super useful

<comment><USER4> I would not recommend using a parser generator tool to build a recognizer por any programming language,unless you design your language to be LL(1) or LL(k) witk a low value of k. Otherwise you are going to suffer a lot with parsing issues.

Parser generators usually have a very limited number of target languages, so you might find yourself stuck into a language you do not want to code in.

<comment><USER3> hmm, your results may vary (whitespace-sensitive languages, but that's tricky in pretty much any toolkit), but in my experience most DSLs that people want to write fit well within LL(k). Java works in it, after all.

I started out with Yacc, though, and that helped me out a lot more...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Interpreted language inspired by Python, Ruby, Lisp, and so forth

For a few seconds I wasn't sure if this was a pun with a reference to the Forth programming language, but it's not.

</comment><comment><USER6> There is another project called Vivaldi, a new web browser. It's been featured on HN a few times.

[https://vivaldi.com/](https://vivaldi.com/)

<comment><USER7> Well, Apple stole 'Swift' from a different language (was quickly changed to "parallel scripting language"):

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_(parallel_scripting_langu...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_\(parallel_scripting_language\))

He created something in an entirely different category. Both projects have similar chances to succeed. What is the problem?

<comment><USER8> People just like sharing that kind of thing. When I made this little page [http://chrisdone.com/z](http://chrisdone.com/z) because I couldn't be bothered thinking of a better name, there were dozens of people commenting and emailing me expressing concern that there is already a Z programming language and I should respect other authors etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I really wish Ruby had some kind of `var` or `let` syntax so it was a bit easier to determine when one was calling the method "foo=" or when one was assigning the local var "foo" to something. Having this would reduce the amount of `self`s in the code for class definitions.

<comment><USER8> Oh, that is evil.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looks like a fairly well put together language.

A few things that were not explained in the README:

Why did you decide to create your own programming language?

> every type in Vivaldi inherits from Object (which in turn inherits from... > itself)

What was the reason behind making Object inherit from itself?

What is the largest program currently written in Vivaldi?

edit: It looks like the first commit on github is 22 days ago, did you make the whole language in 22 days?

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. Mainly for fun! Languages are pretty complex, so I got to learn about number of things (e.g. recursive-descent parsing, closures, Ruby and Python internals) in making it, and it's pretty rewarding watching programs run successfully.

2\. Mainly that, because of the way objects are defined in the C++ (in value.h), it had to inherit from _some_ type. I could just fudge it and make it inherit from nil or something, but there isn't any particular downside to the current system, and it has the added benefit of ensuring that obj.type().parent() is always successful.

3\. Nothing much beyond a few test scripts (ProjectEuler solutions, etc) at the moment. Since there isn't a C API yet, it's pretty hard to make anything that requires networking, GUIs, etc., so adding that is near the top of my TODO list.

4\. I might have started a few days before the initial commit (I can't remember ATM), but more or less, yeah.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is there any build/install instructions? Want to play around :)

EDIT:

      git clone firstname.lastname@example.com:jeorgun/Vivaldi.git
      cd Vivaldi
      # if you don't have boost then run
      brew install boost
      mkdir build
      cd build
      cmake .. && make # cmake version 3 or greater is required

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, whoops— sorry about that! I added some instructions based on yours to the README; better?

Also, if you run in to any issues, feel free to let me know; I only have my MBP and an old Thinkpad T60 running Arch Linux to test on, so I could very well have unwittingly done something non-portable (I'm assuming that Windows support is a complete no-op, but I'd be happy to hear I'm wrong).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This looks really cool! Some random feedback. It's your baby, so feel free to ignore any and all of this you don't agree with.

First off, you did two things right that a lot of hobbyists (including myself, multiple times) do wrong right out of the gate:

1\. You wrote some nice, readable introductory docs.

2\. You didn't make the language syntactically weird for no good reasons. I can instantly read your code samples and understand them. Yay!

\---

There's a good chance you'll end up regretting making strings mutable. It means APIs that receive and store a string have to either copy the parameter (slow, easy to forget) or run the risk of having something that they would be unchanging change under them.

This is a problem with mutability in general, but I think strings hit the pain point most strongly since they're immutable in other languages.

\---

You have lots of methods that don't take arguments (size(), start(), end(), etc.). Some kind of getter syntax would be nice to lose the pointless "()".

\---

I like your range syntax. I'm using ".." and "..." (like Ruby) in a hobby language of mine[1], and it's definitely not intuitive to many users.

[1]: [https://github.com/munificent/wren](https://github.com/munificent/wren)

\---

Your mixture of ":" for functions and control flow but "do ... end" for blocks hurts my soul in some hard to define way. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with it, but I see ":" and expect Python-style indentation then see "end" and get all confused.

It might be nice to try to pick one or the other -- use indentation for blocks, or "end" for functions and control flow.

\---

I think you may eventually find the way "self" is dynamically bound to be an annoying frustration. What you have is semantically simple and follows JS and Lua.

But it trips people up when people want to do things like store a reference to a method in a callback and invoke it later. When that helps, you'll have forgotten the old "self" reference.

Of course, solving this is also fairly complex. It usually requires some kind of explicit function/method distinction (makes the language more complex) or an explicit way to close over "self" (easy for the user to forget).

\---

"All variables must be declared before use:"

Damn straight. Implicitly declaration gives me hives. :)

\---

I like your cond statement, though I've never personally dug the name "cond". The semantics are neat, though.

\---

You could get rid of "try" and just allow any block to have a catch clause. That's what Ruby does, and I've always found it elegant.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not at all— any feedback is appreciated :)

I'm beginning to have doubts about String mutability. Fortunately the only actually mutating method at the moment is append, which is redundant with add but for the mutability, so I might just tear that out.

Required parentheses on functions are pretty unfortunate. I'm mainly trying to avoid the situation in Ruby where trying to access functions as first-class objects requires all sorts of weird syntactic overhead. Possibly I could have some kind of prefix operator, so (say) &obj.method would return the function object, and obj.method would call it?

I agree about the ':' 'do/end' ugliness. Originally blocks were delimited by braces, but I think the Ruby-style delimiters look nicer. Frankly I'd prefer to get rid of the ':', but for single-expression functions that looks pretty awful. I could do Haskell-style '=' (Haskell of course being where the 'function-body-is-single-expression' thing came from), but

        fn foo(x) = do
          ...
        end

is also pretty weird-looking; kind of like Scala's function definitions, which I find really abrasive for reasons I can't fully explain.

Binding 'self' is also basically a compromise. Originally it was stored in the method, but that required copying each type's methods (and each parents' methods) into an object on instantiation, which was a pretty much unacceptable performance hit. My thinking is that, whenever you'd want to pass a method 'obj.method', it's equally possible to pass 'fn (x): obj.method(x)'.

I need to rework the 'try...catch' statements in any case; their current semantics are incredibly horrible (it wraps, then immediately calls, the try body in a temporary lambda). Maybe I will just incorporate them into blocks— thanks for the idea!

<comment><USER12> > Originally it was stored in the method, but that required copying each > type's methods (and each parents' methods) into an object on instantiation, > which was a pretty much unacceptable performance hit.

I think more a typical solution is to dynamically bind `self` like you do now on normal method calls. But when a reference to a method is stored, you bind `self` to the original receiver at that point in time.

Basically, you treat it like a closure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This looks like Ruby. Why not just use Ruby?</comment>


Product vs. Feature-Teams - <AUTHOR> https://svpg.com/product-vs-feature-teams/ <comment><USER2> > The most common in terms of sheer numbers are not really product teams at > all, they are delivery teams. Also referred to as "dev teams" or "scrum > teams" or "engineering teams" and if your company is running something like > SAFe, then unfortunately this is you. In this situation, there are some > number of developers, and a product owner. The product owner in this model > is what I refer to as a "backlog administrator." Someone does need to do > this administrative work, but this is all about delivering output, and it's > really very little to do with what I am concerned about in terms of the need > for true, consistent innovation on behalf of our customers. I've written > elsewhere about why this model is really just re-packaged waterfall, and is > not used at true tech product companies. So let's get that out of the way.

I hear you loud and clear. So true.</comment>


The Myth of the Genius Programmer [video] - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/events/io/2009/sessions/MythGeniusProgrammer.html <comment><USER2> This video was a big inspiration for me. I've always been the kind of person who would rather do my own thing for a few weeks and then say "Hey, look what I did!"

The end result of this was always something that nobody but me understood. It's useful to get feedback on your code as soon as possible, even if by no means other than just trying to explain it to someone else.

</comment><comment><USER3> Synopsis for those without an hour to burn?

<comment><USER4> I don't have an hour to burn either, but I did find previous discussion here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=644007></comment></comment>


What If? Stemcell technology may make Artificial Gametogenesis possible - <AUTHOR> http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2008/415/2

<comment><AUTHOR> The implications of this really jumped out at me. There are the obvious benefits - infertile/homosexual couples would be able to reproduce. It would also make possible "perfect" contraception - safely sterilize yourself knowing you can still have children.

On the other hand, this would completely undermine maternity/paternity testing (and thereby associated laws?). Anyone could unwittingly sire someones offspring by shaking their hand (imagine what crazed fans would do with this).

Anyone else have thoughts on this? I suppose while the promise of stemcell technology was always obviously revolutionary to me, this "What If?" just made its disruptive potential clear.

*edit: re-maternity/paternity laws, i wonder what legal precedents are set by people contesting responsibility on the grounds of having an identical twin.</comment>


Introduction to Parallel Computing - n-s-f https://computing.llnl.gov/tutorials/parallel_comp/ <comment><AUTHOR> All the LLNL computing tutorials are great---they tend to be clearly written, with good examples, and cover a wide swath of use cases. The OpenMP [https://computing.llnl.gov/tutorials/openMP/](https://computing.llnl.gov/tutorials/openMP/) and MPI [https://computing.llnl.gov/tutorials/mpi/](https://computing.llnl.gov/tutorials/mpi/) are fantastic (when I google "mpi tutorial", the LLNL one is the top hit). Blaise is extremely knowledgable, but probably doesn't have time to respond to questions (unless you're a lab employee :P ).

<comment><USER2> Indeed, these tutorials were essentially my parallel processing class in college. We didn't have a mandatory textbook -- most of the content was in these tutorials.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was recently a postdoc at LLNL, and took a real-life 1-week in-person crash- course on pthreads, OpenMP and MPI from Blaise. Afterwards I really felt like I could get going.

I guess it is not SUPER surprising---LLNL and LANL are basically where high performance computing was invented, and they have a tradition of excellence. I have accounts at a few other supercomputing facilities, and none compare in expertise and professionalism to LLNL.</comment></comment></comment>


The class pay gap: why it pays to be privileged - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/feb/07/the-class-pay-gap-why-it-pays-to-be-privileged <comment><USER2> 100% accurate - it is hard to see the head start you have if it is never acknowledged.

Let's use that old adage about if you want to be a successful tech founder, drop out of Harvard.

Let's unpack this a little:

1\. Think about what you need to even get to Harvard (access to good schools, with well prepared teachers and the right curriculum)

2\. You have to actually know this "tech founder" job exists, is a career and how it is structured and the path to get there (assumes you know some other tech people or at least access to information about tech people)

3\. You need to have enough money or access to money to seed your idea and pay your expenses while you are building this idea (rich friends, rich family, inheritance, access to food and shelter - without a paycheck to fund it)

4\. Some connections or something to get in the door of an incubator, an angel investor or other person who help you get you the infrastructure you need to build your idea

And that is not even the part of having a good idea.

But most importantly you need enough support so if you fail, whether it is fast or slow, you can get back on your feet again. Less privileged folks don't have the opportunity to fail more than once typically. And that is really what holds you back - no access to be able to take a risk. If you need a paycheck to cover basic necessities, no way you will forgo that for something that may not work out at all.

 __apply the same logic when thinking about politics, museum curators and a host of other influential roles in our society

</comment><comment><USER3> A couple of comments:

First, this is about the UK, which is a more "class-based" society than the US. It probably also applies to the US, but perhaps a bit less.

Second, they note that an architecture firm didn't operate the same way, because results mattered, and customers could tell whether they were being snowed. Many of us here are in programming, which (at least much of the time) is a similar environment. We're fortunate to be able to escape this kind of stuff. However, we should be aware that it may be more prevalent in society as a whole than we see and experience.

<comment><USER2> Our class markers are a little different, but it works basically the same way. We may not use accents and clothing to designate poshness as often.

But we use stuff like hobbies and interests. Think about the nerd culture markers. We spent a really long time saying good programmers had to like certain video games, board games, books and movies.

<comment><USER3> Yes and no. Yes, those "culture markers" are there. But I don't like almost all of those markers, and nobody says I'm not a good programmer. They're _surprised_ that I don't like them, but they're not _judgmental_.

But maybe I'm just fortunate in working with decent people...</comment></comment></comment>


Why The Future Will Be Much Better Than You Think - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/briancaulfield/2012/01/26/abundance-why-the-future-will-be-much-better-than-you-think/

<comment><USER2> Yes, salient risks seem more threatening than they actually are, but for a similar reason, invisible risks are more threatening than they seem. Which is why the future does not look as bright as this article is claiming.

In the last year or so I have become interested in the study of existential risks -- low-probability events which could extinguish humanity as we know it. Things like catastrophic nuclear war, biotechnology or nanotechnology overrun, artificial intelligence overrun, supervolcano explosions and asteroid impacts. There are few people researching these things, despite the huge potential downside to not researching them, because the risks aren't things that our amygdala responds to.

If you're interested in this stuff, there's much work to be done - check out the Lifeboat Foundation, Singularity Institute and Future of Humanity Institute.</comment>


Heres why SF public schools are staying open despite calls from parents to close - <AUTHOR> https://www.sfchronicle.com/local-politics/article/Here-s-why-SF-schools-will-remain-open-despite-15123911.php <comment><AUTHOR> Alameda county schools are not going to close schools because it would contribute to the crisis.

[https://fusd- ca.schoolloop.com/pf4/cms2/news_themed_display?...](https://fusd- ca.schoolloop.com/pf4/cms2/news_themed_display?id=1579858471843) [..] "As we have shared since this crisis began, we are working with public health professionals who are the experts in protecting the community during viral outbreaks. They have consistently recommended against closing schools in part because that could actually contribute to the crisis."[..]

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> How is this possible to justify when literally the state is supposed to be in a state of emergency and everyone is to avoid congregating in groups?

Kids are literal Petri dishes and excellent vectors for virii.

Public schools are doing parenting jobs instead of education. If their job is to provide 'food, security and resources' what's the point if that means kids would become carries of illness?

It always ends up with money. Public schools were always about money money and. Ore money. It's a money pit where it's never enough. And now we know why. It's not for education, but for the care and feeding of public school coffers.

[.. ] "After careful consideration and hours of consultation" and despite calls from parents to shut down to prevent the spread of COVID-19, the 132 schools serving 56,000 students in the district will remain open, said San Francisco Unified School District Superintendent Vincent Matthews.

Even though the city has declared a public health emergency, schools are an essential service, providing meals, security and resources to children and families, Matthews said.

"Keeping schools open outweighs the benefits of citywide closure," he said. "Plans could change as the situation unfolds."

On Tuesday, the San Francisco Archdiocese announced it would close all of its 90 schools through March 25 after a Riordan High School student tested positive for the coronavirus.[..]

[..] San Francisco school officials shut down Lowell High School for several days after the parent of a student tested positive for COVID-19. The school reopened today, but it's unclear whether districts like San Francisco will be able to recoup state funding for the days a school is closed, if the closure was considered a precaution rather than the result of a declared epidemic. In Lowell's case, that would be a loss of nearly $200,000 each day the school was closed.[..]</comment>


Dropbox's upgrade, and a new hidden price, with no way to downgrade - <AUTHOR> https://www.dropbox.com/individual/plus/new?_tk=plus_anp&oref=e <comment><AUTHOR> I posted this because I just received an email from Dropbox that it will now be 119Euros (~135USD) instead of 99USD. And they give us more storage. Wow.

We are 2 friends and we both have had Dropbox Plus, each for 99USD. Each of us uses around 50-100GB of data. And now dropbox comes and forces us to both pay more, for space we don't use. And with "world-class sync technology".

And if we downgrade we need to move all those shared folders and data to a new place.

So disappointed.

<comment><USER2> Given that you are 2 friends, have you tried looking at options like Google One [1] or Office 365 [2] ? That way you don't have to modify your workflows too much.

O365 especially offers a lot more capabilities like online meetings , online versions of word,excel etc?

1 : [https://one.google.com/storage?i=m](https://one.google.com/storage?i=m) 2 : [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/office-365-business- essent...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/office-365-business- essentials/cfq7ttc0k59v?activetab=pivot%3aoverviewtab)

Edit: No affiliations to either of them. Was researching for my own needs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why hidden price? The E-Mail announcement was very clear about the price increase. The space increase is just PR. But that's ok, no? They can increase prices, and that's what this is.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hidden because their marketing page, that was featured in HN multiple times in the last few days, was just showing off the new features with no mention of a forced price increase. By forced, I mean there is no way for a user to downgrade. The only way is to go from 2TB to 2GB, which in my opinion is shady.

And then that email dropped which yes, it's clear, but definitely got more people annoyed it seems.. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20163389](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20163389)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I moved to self hosted Seafile (Great, works) when they limited to the number of concurrent clients you could use. I have 4 computers and a phone.

I wonder what % of their users need > 1tb...

<comment><USER5> Interesting. I've heard of NextCloud, but not Seafile. Wonder which is better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> They're a feature, not a company.</comment>


Tempo Calendar Acquired by Salesforce, Shutting Down - <AUTHOR> http://www.tempo.ai/

<comment><USER2> I'm actually really upset about this. This was one of my favorite apps. Now I have to find a good alternative.</comment>


Why is the spoken German in many US films and TV shows so inaccurate? - <AUTHOR> https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/75487/why-is-the-spoken-german-in-many-us-films-and-tv-shows-so-inaccurate <comment><USER2> It would be interesting to see if the inaccuracy of languages in US productions correlates with the number of speakers of them in the US. As suggested on the linked page, one explanation for the poor German is lack of sufficient German speakers to check it. This could be compared to see if the spoken Spanish is better and if more obscure languages are worse.

</comment><comment><USER3> Probably because it's there as "greek". Something people aren't supposed to understand --just a prop.

My favorite is one of the scenes in "Lost in Translation" where complex sets of instructions are distilled into a single sentence.</comment>


High costs and negative value of pair programming - <AUTHOR> http://namcookanalytics.com/high-costs-and-negative-value-of-pair-programming/

<comment> dj-wonk I don't mind a good critique of pair programming -- it deserves a hard look to think about its pros and cons -- but I do take issue with a paper written in this way.

I want to mention the opening line in the introduction: "The pair programming method could only exist in an industry that does not measure well and does not understand economics." This argument is speculative and unpersuasive.

Speaking of measurement, I take issue with this paper because it suggests that lines of code (LOC) is a good metric. The author demonstrates a lack of economic savvy by writing, "As can be seen from table 1 the economics of pair programming are severely negative." That table uses lines of code (LOC) as the key metric. There are so many problems with the choice of such a wrongheaded metric. First, writing better software often involves writing less code! Second, as a commenter points out, knowledge transfer is very important. Third, pair programming may build team cohesion.

Many industries use variations of pair programming, as the author recognizes. That said, I think the author fumbles in suggesting that quarterbacks trading time is similar to pairing. I wonder why the author didn't look at apprenticeships in manufacturing, where skills are demonstrated in a hands-on way.

Finally, as a model-builder myself, it pains me to see weak, flawed models baked into papers such as this. Take this section of text: "Table 1 is extracted from a pair-programming calculator developed by the author. It allows researchers to input a number of variables including staff compensation, application size in lines of code, and coding speeds for both pairs and individual programmers."

Such language, to me, makes it appear that the author is trying to make his claims seem "mechanical" \-- just the matter of turning a crank and running some calculations. Such a claim is silly and a sham, of course. The choice of what to measure and how to weigh it is central. This paper makes no serious attempt to promote such a discussion.

In summary, this paper did not make a serious attempt to understand the true (economic, yes!) value of pair programming, in my opinion. If I were to guess, the author may well have had his conclusion in mind before writing the paper or doing his research.

</comment><comment><USER2> This reads like it was written by someone with a management background, not a development one. No space given to future maintainability or bugs, only on raw productivity. When I saw that his entire analysis rested on LoC metrics, I could only shake my head. And his comparisons to other industries/activities were just laughable. Apparently pair programming is comparable to having two generals.

<comment><USER3> It's very, very hard to do objective research on this topic. There are tons of reasons that LoC isn't a great way to measure productivity, including the times when you refactor existing code such that you delete thousands of lines of code, and your "LoC output" is negative for a time period. The Tale of Two Programmers is the epitome of such tales, IMO. [1]

That said, _most of the time_ developers with roughly equal skill levels end up writing new code to implement new features. And LoC is about the best metric you can use. If you factor in expert developers writing fewer LoC to achieve the same goals, then the results of the paper are magnified, because if an expert's 1000 LoC is good for 2x the number of features as an average developer's 1000 LoC, but the number of bugs is comparable, then it's an _even greater_ advantage to use the expert.

>No space given to future maintainability or bugs, only on raw productivity.

They _do_ talk about bugs; they say in the summary:

"There are no significant quality benefits compared to a single programmer who uses static analysis and inspections."

And later on in the paper they compare delivered defects.

I'm easily in the "expert" end of the spectrum as a programmer; I've _never_ seen a benefit in pair programming that would justify two salaries. I'm sorry, and I'm sure I'll be slammed for this, but pair programming is a crutch to boost programmer productivity of average or below average developers. "Average" developers would have to make 1/3 or less of my salary to make it worthwhile, economically.

In my opinion pair programming's only valid use is in training a junior developer (or allowing two junior developers to support each other, though in the paper the bugs delivered were far worse from two junior developers than from a single expert developer -- but you can't always hire an expert developer).

Otherwise it's a waste of money. If you can pull it off as a developer in some big company that has lots of money, by all means, have a blast. I thought HN was more about bootstrapping and getting code working as quickly as possible, and pair programming is not the way to accomplish that.

[1] [http://mail.linux.ie/pipermail/social/1999-October/000483.ht...](http://mail.linux.ie/pipermail/social/1999-October/000483.html)

<comment> shawn-furyan The issue is less that LoC is universally a useless metric, and more that it's a metric whose nuances need to be accounted for carefully when used in analysis. The author gave no indication of such accounting, and so regardless of whether or not we would tend to agree with the conclusion, we should reject the analysis.

Really, the biggest problem is the presentation. The whole thing reads like a back of the envelope calculation turned blog post dressed up to look like an industry white paper. If this were just a blog post with a few more caveats thrown in, it wouldn't be nearly so bad.

<comment><USER3> It's still a Really Hard Problem.

How would you account for LoC nuances, exactly?

As I pointed out, the better the developer, the fewer LoC produced per "feature point" or however you want to measure it. So any analysis that doesn't take into account the nuances would be skewed against the expert developers.

This would mean that, if the study purported to prove that two average programmers were more productive than an expert, I would have to take the conclusion with a grain of salt (or reject the analysis).

But given that _despite_ the disadvantage, experts were _still_ shown to be more cost effective without pair programming? I don't see why we'd need to reject that conclusion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I found the article confusing because it begins by noting the deficiencies of studies on pair programming and then presenting data from... where exactly? I couldn't tell.

And then:

 _It is obvious from table 3 that the best economic results do not come from pair programming but rather from hiring and using expert single programmers._

Well... sure... of course, and good luck with that! Meanwhile, in the real world, while you're waiting for your expert programmers to submit their resumes to your company, pair programming is a great way to bring new/junior devs up to speed. In fact, I think that may be one of its greatest values.

If you have two roughly equally skilled devs, it's possible that you'd be better served by working individually combined with good code reviews, though I don't think the article made much a case for that.

<comment><USER5> "Table 1 is extracted from a pair-programming calculator developed by the author."

One could claim that the author made up numbers to support the author's argument.

And hasn't pair programming been around at least since the 90's? doesn't seem that new to me.

<comment><USER3> "Object Oriented" programming has been around since the '50s. [1]

"Functional Programming" has as well. [2]

And the "Waterfall" development model also has its roots in the 1950s. [3]

"Extreme Programming" (1996, and a book in 1999) [4] was the first popular methodology to advocate "100% pair programming" as a major component. (I've read the book: They say that you have to use _all_ of the practices, all the time, if you want "Extreme Programming" to work.)

Point is that, depending on how old you are, the late '90s can qualify as "recent."

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object- oriented_programming#Hi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object- oriented_programming#History)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_programming#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_programming#History)

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

[4] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_Programming#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_Programming#History)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Line of code per hour...wow.

I am actually a fan of pair programming, I have seen and experienced it work - in an environment where you are designing and developing new things day in, day out - pair programming or as I like to call it...collective collaboration - is invaluable - it prevents following rabbit holes and single point of failures - and solutions get developed, much, much faster.

Of course for this to work you need a smart team of engineers and scientists who respect each other, who are confident in their ability but also recognize that two heads are better than one.

Anecdote time: I was working on a project where for a while I was the sole scientist/engineer - I spent a fair bit of my time bouncing ideas off a system architect who worked closely with my team. In a few months I was assigned an engineer who's knowledge of hardware absolutely flawed me, together we were able to knock down feature requests so fast it we became quite renowned in our little org...we hardly ever stopped talking during the day (this pissed off a couple of people to no end...but "you can't argue with working code and happy users" as my manager used to say)...I left that job a few months ago to explore the world a bit more but when I left the team was much bigger but the philosophy remained the same - talk, argue, yell, laugh, cover whiteboards and interrupt and genius happens.

YMMV, I've met developers who's ego could not adjust to that model or who "couldn't work in noisy environments" and it wasn't for them..but I always tr to seek out a noisy, dynamic team, because they are usually doing awesome things and having fun :)

</comment><comment><USER7> Pairing benefits projects that still have uncertainty in design. Two people dealing with minutia just leaves one bouncing a ball off the wall while the other types.

</comment><comment><USER5> I just looked at [1] which compares the productivity of a pair of programmers to that of two individual programmers. The paper claims an increase of 15% in _man-hours_ while the author of this piece is claiming that a pair of programmers is 15% slower than a single programmer!

(Note: I've never used pair-programming and don't really care one way or the other. But this analysis seems terrible to me.)

[1] The Costs and Benefits of Pair Programming [http://collaboration.csc.ncsu.edu/laurie/Papers/XPSardinia.P...](http://collaboration.csc.ncsu.edu/laurie/Papers/XPSardinia.PDF)

</comment><comment><USER8> I find that pairing more during a kick-off / design phase of a project has been beneficial to my team, but I don't think pairing yields many benefits once design goals have been well-defined.

<comment><USER9> Isn't it more efficient to actually do the design before you start coding?

<comment><USER10> You must be new here.

<comment><USER9> Not entirely sure what you're implying here. Are you saying that a lot of people on HN are bad programmers or something? I'm certainly not a new programmer if that's what you mean, and I know a thing or two about rapid development of high quality code (having done it for about 30 years).

<comment><USER11> Would you recommend any books? That would help me a lot at this point. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I read this and it's still unclear to me whether the author conducted any experiments involving pair programming. If he did, why hasn't he described them in detail? If he didn't, where did his data come from?

I guess he didn't, and where the data comes from is "a pair-programming calculator developed by the author"—in other words, software he wrote that gives whatever he decided the answers should be, and whose code he isn't (at least in this piece) publishing.

</comment><comment><USER13> Problems: 1. He quantifies productivity in lines of code. 2. By doing so, he only considers the development but not the maintenance cost of software. 3. He is not even internally consistent. He states pair programmers are 15% slower than individual programmers but then lists then as only creating 75% of the LOC an individual programmer does. 4. He pulled that number out of nowhere to begin with. The only referenced papers are his own. 5. The numbers given for errors are equally bogus. 6. At no point does he define his different tiers of programmer(novice, average, expert). 7. It would seem he assumes the same wage for all three tiers, which is completely unrealistic. 8. Point 7 being the case, the conclusion of the entire paper is that the best thing to do is hire a bunch of expert programmer to replace your average ones while paying them the same wage. Even thinking that you can identify with a high level of certainty who truly great programmers are is a rather lofty goal, and pg has an article or two talking about how difficult it can be. Add to that the fact that even google has come out recently and said that their methods of interviewing programmers has largely failed to identify those that would be successful at their company.

</comment><comment><USER14> The two comments by Gerald Weinberg (at the very bottom of the page) make a good case for the advantages of pair programming.

<comment><USER15> I wonder if that's the same Gerald Weinberg I'm thinking of-([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Weinberg](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Weinberg)). I've read a few of his books. I am inclined to think 'yes'.

<comment><USER14> I'm pretty sure that you're right, and this is _the_ Gerald Weinberg. (Or at least they both have "M" as their middle initials.) He's written quite a bit on programmer productivity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A analysis done on based on LOC is purely laughable. I have done pair programming lot of times and some benefits are

1) For building a complex system in a short time you have to take lot of critical decisions under pressure implication of which will be felt even after the product is shipped. During pair programming your partner can stop you from making many such decision which actually saves LOT of lines of bad code. That is why this study is totally worthless

2) Pair programming is perhaps the best way to give training to someone new to the system. It is much more beneficial than the best of documents. It is like roaming around the city with a experienced guide than reading from a book

3) if you do pair programming with lots of experienced programmer you will actually learn to see things in s different perspective. You will start doing things in a different way.

</comment><comment><USER17> Inspections are mentioned a lot. This is not a word I hear a lot of developers use, so I'm guessing this article is not written by one.

The cost of these has been completely externalized. Does the 85% reduction in defects come from a casual code review? Or are 3 senior developers doing Fagan inspections?

When an inspection reveals bugs, do we take into account the increased time to fix the bug because developers are informed about them after having forgotten some context?

Is static analysis incompatible with pairing?

Where does the 1.5 vs 1.6 defect rate come from? What about the rest of the numbers?

If a pair produces less LoC than someone soloing, couldn't this actually be a good thing? I know that the most productive coders I work with actually tend to delete more lines of code than they introduce.

</comment><comment><USER18> I think the best way to compare individual programmer vs pair programmers is to look at it this way:

When you work yourself on implementing something, how will compare these two:

YOU (60% of your capacity) vs YOU (>90% of your capacity)

My philosophy is that pair programming is just like individual programming but just increase the output efficiency of one of the member in the pair by 30% or so (if the pair is a good pair). Thats it.

An individual programmer at his >90% capacity will outweigh (in terms of output/cost) two programmers at 60% capacity.

So, if you have to pair them to get a single programmer with 90% capacity, do it.

</comment><comment><USER19> I don't think pair programming can be quantified. This article doesn't take into account the learning that happens while pair programming. The examples given of when pair programming does and doesn't work are irrelevant.

<comment><USER20> I agree.

This fails to account for: 1) The cost to train a novice developer & 2) The value if having two people equally acquainted with a code base (thereby reducing dependency on a particular employee)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Summary: 2 independent developers write more lines of code combined then 2 working as a pair. Thus pair programming is bad. How quaint.

<comment><USER22> ... not exactly. he also examines the number of defects turned in by different pairs of programmers compared with single ones, and examines some of the financial cost of pair programming. Its a better read than you make it out to be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> "Pair programming is a new method", I could only get so far...

[http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=913816...](http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=913816&url=%2Fiel5%2F7294%2F19720%2F00913816)

<comment><USER23> Date of Conference: 2001

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Does anyone honestly believe that a metric based on 'Lines of Code' has any validity at all?

<comment><USER25> I sure hope not, but have seen plenty of managers use it. I would guess refactoring would be really bad for those people. The author would probably think this guy is a horrible employee [http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story...](http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Negative_2000_Lines_Of_Code.txt&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date&detail=medium&search=lines)

Is there an engineering profession where using more raw material to get some function is actually a good thing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This comment thread sums it up very well:

[http://namcookanalytics.com/high-costs-and-negative-value- of...](http://namcookanalytics.com/high-costs-and-negative-value-of-pair- programming/#comment-4)

</comment><comment><USER27> "New"!? It's been around for at least 15 years!

</comment><comment><USER28> Thanks for posting this article, it's good to see someone try to quantify the benefits of a technique that divides the industry.

</comment><comment><USER29> the only thing that sucks more than pair programming is bullshit research papers penned by condescending egotists.

</comment><comment><USER30> Experimental results or GTFO.

</comment><comment><USER31> very polemic.

</comment><comment><USER32> Clearly measuring productivity in lines of code is the correct way to determine whether goals are achieved on schedule.

<comment><USER9> Clearly a lot of HNers aren't very proficient at reading.</comment></comment>


This year's Nobel Prize winners gather for a talk [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCeZxhHIbkU <comment><USER2> I didn't like the host or the questions at all. I feel as if had they just put all the scientists in a room and speak about whatever they felt like talking about, it would have been richer, more human, and more enlightening

<comment><USER3> Couldn't agree more, by the end it was readily apparent that the host was on a strict time schedule and was required to talk with each Nobel laureate about their specific work.

A real loss considering that some of the conversations were just heading somewhere interesting before they got cut off.

<comment><USER4> As far as I can tell, this was aired by Swedish TV as "Snillen spekulerar" (they have been doing a programme like this every year since approximately the dawn of TV time), and by the BBC as "Nobel Minds". So, it has to fit into a TV schedule slot, and be appropriate for a general audience, not just science nerds.

BBC: [https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/n3ct5g1c](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/n3ct5g1c) SvT: [https://www.svtplay.se/video/20431599/nobel/nobel-2018-snill...](https://www.svtplay.se/video/20431599/nobel/nobel-2018-snillen- spekulerar-avsnitt-1)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, the original title of the post included Nobel Minds 2018, but it was modified to emphasize the description. I discovered the Nobel Minds series a few years ago. I think last year's was better, but I agree, the episodes can be hit or miss. They should let Joe Rogan do the interviews -- he's been interviewing a bunch of leading scientists of late (Sir Roger Penrose a couple weeks ago) -- Rogan's our modern day Charlie Rose -- he let's them talk and it evolves into interesting conversations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I found this video very strange, it looks heavily cut, with an odd conversation that comes across as a bit awkward and forced

</comment><comment><USER6> As a professional interviewer and reporter, I agree that the production values and the questions were poor. But as a form of marketing and a way to connect to the Nobel "minds" through the web, it's not a bad first step to a more richer program.</comment>


Sales prove elusive: Emeryville gourmet chocolate company has a rough go of it (pay-per-click) - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/05/20/BUGSIPTC891.DTL&type=tech <comment><USER2> Where is the best place to learn about pay-per-click advertisement? For retail startups the practice seems essential.

</comment><comment><USER3> Charles is great stuff. Buy some for a special lady in your life. Even the box is made of chocolate.</comment>