The Anatomy of the Assignment Operator (1997) - <AUTHOR> http://www.icu-project.org/docs/papers/cpp_report/the_anatomy_of_the_assignment_operator.html <comment><USER2> Um, what's wrong with the simpler

        if (this == &that) return *this;
        TFoo tmp(that);
        swap(tmp);
        return *this;

(Assume swap does not throw, it's trivial to implement because swapping pointers wouldn't throw.) This way the constructor of tmp takes care of destroying partially-constructed objects and you don't need to do it by hand. It seems like the clean up code just repeats what the compiler would automatically generate for you in a constructor.

[This is from 1997, btw.]

<comment><USER3> Yes, the copy-and-swap idiom [1] is the classic "correct" (but somewhat unintuitive) answer to this problem. It was probably not widely known in 1997, though.

[1] [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3279543/what-is-the- copy-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3279543/what-is-the-copy-and- swap-idiom)

<comment><USER4> According to the article, correctly implementing copy assignment wasn't widely known either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's an oft-quoted fact that Rust is meant to take stuff that good C/C++ programmers already do and build it into the language. If you weren't convinced of this before reading this post, then pay close attention to how important the author considers pointer ownership to be.

</comment><comment><USER6> The first "correct" solution will leak memory if the call to TSuperFoo::operator= throws an exception.

</comment><comment><USER7> And this is why we use C++11 wherever we can.</comment>


The Tax-Cut Racket: GOP blackmail - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/17/opinion/17krugman.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss <comment><USER2> How do these guys get away with spouting this crap and get away with it. It is not as if all GOP voters are rich. I know several Republicans who are nowhere near the $250k wage bracket but still spout the tax cut for the top 3% bull$#. What is also lost in the noise level is that this is the original tax-cut by GWB that is expiring not a new Obama tax. In fact Obama is retaining the tax- cut for the bottom 97%. People are stupid, they don't read and formulate their own thinking anymore, they just listen and follow the advice of super rich radio talk show hosts.</comment>


OpenSSL Security Advisory - <AUTHOR> https://www.openssl.org/news/secadv_20140806.txt

<comment><USER2> [CVE-2014-3505] was reported to OpenSSL on 6th June 2014.

[CVE-2014-3506] was reported to OpenSSL on 6th June 2014.

[CVE-2014-3507] was reported to OpenSSL on 6th June 2014.

Holy crap. That's 3 bugs (out of 9) that waited _2 months_ before a fix was released, one of which (CVE-2014-3505) is a double-free crasher.

Here was me thinking/hoping that the devs had actually meant it when they said they were doing to get on top of this stuff after Heartbleed.

I guess not.

<comment><USER3> Do you want your money back?

<comment><USER2> I want people who aren't up to providing secure security software to say so and bow out, rather than giving their users a false sense of security, and giving other developers a reason for not wanting to create "unnecessary" forks and split mindshare/effort in the hopes that OpenSSL will be "good enough".

There's still not as much effort going into the alternatives as there could be, because people are still hoping that OpenSSL will get its act together, and that downstream devs won't have to start writing autotool magic and #ifdefs to deal with OpenSSL and LibReSSL and GnuTLS's OpenSSL wrapper and whatever other fork(s) their users might be using instead.

I think if OpenSSL got out of the way, we'd converge on a better replacement more quickly than we are doing now, and we'd all be more secure as a result.

<comment><USER4> Classic Dunning-Kruger effect. The OpenSSL people don't realize how incompetent they are.

<comment><USER5> One day there'll be a study on the types of people that cite the Dunning- Kruger effect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> From a notice sent by the OpenSSL team to internal groups:

"Since these security defects are considered as moderate severity or less no further details or patches will be made available in advance of the release..."

So waiting 2 months for something that is not critical is no reason to start acting like the sky is falling.

</comment><comment><USER7> God damn it not again. Bring on boringssl/libressl. Although they'll be full of holes as well probably, and as things stand there's a lot of people looking at openssl at the moment. So maybe better the devil you know

<comment><USER2> The forks might not be quite so full of holes.

The LibReSSL folks removed the whole SRP module from their tree recently[0] because an embargo that prevented them from releasing just a bugfix in what they thought was a reasonable timeframe. I'm guessing that was for either CVE-2014-5139 or CVE-2014-3512.

That does actually give me some confidence that some of the other non-OpenSSL dev teams might do measurably better.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8105373](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8105373)

<comment><USER7> Trouble is, so much has changed that they need a whole separate audit. And who knows what problems removing code introduces. But then again, they might not b worse, but they'll still need auditing to find out</comment></comment></comment>


Mozart's Infinite Riches - <AUTHOR> https://standpointmag.co.uk/issues/may-june-2020/mozarts-infinite-riches/ <comment><USER2> Not quite infinite, but consider that the K numbers go up to 626. If you disallow the misattributed pieces that's still around six hundred complete pieces of music, all written in long-hand, many fully orchestrated, some lasting hours, all written in the thirty years or so that Mozart was active, with many considered classics of their type.

Take off time for travel and other disruptions - of which there were many - and that's an insanely productive schedule.

</comment><comment><USER3> How do you get into classical music? I enjoy listening but I can't keep track of all the different pieces and the performers as they are often bizarrely named or have no consistency between composers.

<comment><USER4> Don't try too hard. Classical music is more varied in history and style than any other genre, so it cannot be considered a single kind of music. Just keep listening to different composers, different eras, to see what resonates with you. Even among professional classical musicians, there is strong preference for one period over another.

There is so much to explore between 1650 - present day, all "classical" and all entirely different.

If you want a geeky but artful introduction to Bach (the composer I dare say that really "started it all"), you could do far worse than this:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switched- On_Bach](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switched-On_Bach)

If you find anything you like there, go find it in its more authentic form and just keep peeling back the layers. :)

<comment><USER5> Not to be that guy, but Monteverdi, Schutz and Gabrieli, along with their ilk predate Bach by a century and kick off the Baroque period, and you've got the entire two centuries of the Renaissance period before that.

Bach is awesome, and the man had an awful lot to draw on for the emotion in his music, but he was a long way from kicking off the evolution from plainchant to Messiaen.

<comment><USER4> Well, I guess you are being that guy :) but Bach certainly went much further than nearly any composer in advancing the state of music harmony that allowed the explosion of the classical and romantic areas. Composers from Chopin to Mahler cited Bach as their main influence.

I was just offering an arbitrary line to represent "classical". Of course there's a lot of great music written in ancient Greece as well.

<comment><USER6> > Bach certainly went much further than nearly any composer in advancing the > state of music harmony

It's easy to have that impression because JS Bach (justifiably!) looms so enormously over music since then. But it wasn't so much that he advanced the state of harmony as that he was so encyclopedic and powerful in his ability to use the material of his age that he somewhat obscured his source material, rather the way Newton did in classical mechanics.

Then his sons basically created the classical style just to get out of his shadow. And for many years JS Bach was far less famous than his sons JC Bach and CPE Bach.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a righteous aside in TFA =>

One is reminded of the story which Cambridge mathematician G.H. Hardy told about his brilliant protegé Srinivasa Ramanujan: "I remember once going to see him when he was ill at Putney. I had ridden in taxi cab number 1729 and remarked that the number seemed to me rather a dull one, and that I hoped it was not an unfavourable omen. "No," he replied, "it is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways."

<comment><USER8> [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=ramanujan%201729&sort=byDate&type=comment)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Such an austere game! Noone should be allowed to play it until they've had time to be sure what they'd be giving up.

I could easily do without vocal music, anything baroque, and if I absolutely had to, anything with an orchestra in it ... if in return I had access to all the chamber music. (So many hidden treasures there!)

For someone else that might be the worst choice. But really they ought to know before playing any such game. ;-)

<comment><USER10> The game doesn't work much past the early 20th century, perhaps the last choice of a body of genre-specific works would be Shostavich and Bartok (I couldn't choose between their string quartets but would take Bartok's concertos over Shostavich any day). How would you genre-ize Cage or Xenakis or Reich (ok, maybe Reich) or Radigue? We'd get lost in their glorious obscure forms.

On Mozart, I agree with the article about the piano concertos. Having played K488 (#23) as teenager it never ceases to gives me goosebumps when I hear the second movement.

[https://youtu.be/9LqdfjZYEVE](https://youtu.be/9LqdfjZYEVE)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I enjoy Mozart's piano concerti, but I actually don't consider them to be "serious" music. IMHO, they're great music for background listening, but on repeated listening I find they are not as layered or deep as, say, Beethoven's late piano sonatas or Strauss' Vier Letzte Lieder

What I would be reluctant to give up are Mozart's operas, or his sacred music. I couldn't imagine never being able to listen to Dies Bildnis ist bezaubernd schön from Die Zauberflöte, or Ave Verum Corpus.

Very difficult game indeed!</comment>


Bitcoin's Golden Future - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2017-09-06/seventy-eight-billion-reasons-why-bitcoin-s-the-new-gold <comment><USER2> Bitcoin and other crypto require a well functioning internet infrastructure, otherwise it's just data on a hard-drive.

Disconnect a country from the Internet (or filter the traffic) and you're forking the chain. Spend on both networks by buying other (unfiltered) crypto. There are states (even large ISPs) that can do that.

Also, the first thing to go in case of global conflict is the global Internet. Countries will try to damage opponent's internet links to gain strategic advantage.

Crypto currencies will be useless in this case, losing all of their value.

There's always the concern of a bug in the protocol, a solution to the hash function or plain old human stupidity that can crash the currency.

I guess my point is: be careful, this is still very much experimental, don't invest everything you have in them.

<comment><USER3> I think you have a valid point, but, ultimately aren't all or most trades digital today?

Are countries exchanging actual loads of gold and/or cash around? If the answer is no, then isn't it all just data on a hard-drive?

In that case damaging internet links will have the same effect all around, though information can probably still go in/out in different ways with some effort. Is there some aspect of crypto currency that makes it different (honest question)?

<comment><USER4> The difference IMO is that gold has intrinsic value by virtue of being rare and shiny. I guess the idea is that even if civilization collapses and we return to the stone age gold will still be valuable. Since the use of gold as currency can be traced back at least to 600BCE[1] there's a good reason to believe that.

Bitcoins however doesn't really have a intrinsic "rest" value. Anybody can (and many do) spawn a new blockchain out of thin air. Ironically Bitcoin is entirely about trust at the core. The trust that the other participants in the bitcoin economy won't lose faith in the currency and dump it. That trust is the only thing that gives the coin value.

[1] [http://rg.ancients.info/lion/article.html](http://rg.ancients.info/lion/article.html)

<comment><USER5> Similarly, national currencies have a value because governments collect taxes and pay for things using those currencies so there's a considerable inertial force encouraging their usage.

That doesn't mean that failure is impossible but it smooths out a lot of minor fluctuations whereas, as you pointed out, if a Bitcoin competitor took off tomorrow there's no pressure not to adopt it instead other than the sunk costs which a small percentage of the general population has.

<comment><USER6> I don't think it is that simple. Bitcoin has 3 main advantages that can't be easily taken away from it that make things harder for competitors:

1 - Distribution (Metcalfe's law):

Metcalfe's law states that the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system (n2).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law)

2- Schelling Point

Bitcoin is the natural Schelling point for those drawn to the advantages of cryptographic money.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focal_point_(game_theory)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focal_point_\(game_theory\))

3 - Most battle-tested codebase. No cryptocurrency has been successfully operating for as long.

<comment><USER5> That's arguing that the past will be like the future when things are still really early. Statistically almost nobody owns or uses Bitcoin, especially when you subtract the Bitcoin proponents who do most of their transactions using something like a credit card which actually uses local currency via Visa or where Bitcoin is converted into real currency immediately by the recipient, and who thus would have very little switching converting to something else.

Ask how long either #1 or 2 would hold true if, say, a couple of large banks, Visa/Mastercard, Apple and/or Google, etc. launched a currency accessible to their existing customer bases. I'd give that a couple of days before Bitcoin would be a rounding error in the daily transaction volume.

The big long-term reason I expect that to happen is the deflation model baked into Bitcoin: every player which didn't acquire a substantial holding years ago has a huge incentive to find an alternative which doesn't mean they're putting effort into making someone else rich. Right now there's very little mainstream demand for Bitcoin but if that change it's hard to believe the finance people wouldn't be obsessed with ways to capture that revenue going to a third-party.

<comment><USER6> Coinbase has 10 million users, most of whom are there for bitcoin.

<comment><USER5> How many of them are active? How many hold non-trivial balances? Most importantly, how many sales would legal merchants lose if those users jumped ship or lost interest?

Again, my point is simply that there's little holding anyone who hasn't made a huge investment specifically in Bitcoin. If you have $10 equivalent sitting in an account and CitiCoin™ launches next week with attractive terms and mainstream merchant acceptance, are you going to think twice about bailing? Alternately, if law enforcement cracks down on the money laundering, etc. and prices drop, how many people will lose interest if it won't make them rich?

A key point here: of the comparatively few merchants who accept BTC, how many do their business primarily in Bitcoin and don't quickly convert to something else? That's the only group with a significant commitment to continued use; everyone else can switch on a whim.

That's the difference between a pure fiat currency like Bitcoin and something backed by a national government. Bitcoin has no inherent value beyond voluntary group consensus, which means that a panic, messy fork, or disinterest has no natural floor on how far it can fall. In contrast, USD are backed by one of the major world economies, hundreds of millions of people need them to pay taxes, and billions of dollars are paid to government employees, contracts, benefits, etc. Again, that's not immunity from problems but it's a huge inertial weight moderating swings.

<comment><USER6> The backing and even the existence of the United States is also simply a matter of group consensus. It is turtles all the way down, my friend. We're just debating whose delusions are bigger and better.

<comment><USER5> Do you actually believe that false equivalence? It's like saying your two- person startup is basically the same as IBM because they're both companies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "There are two main reasons to doubt bitcoin's viability as an investment....Another is more philosophical: Digital currencies have no fundamental value, so have no place in a portfolio."

There is no such thing as an objective theory of value. ALL value is subjective (meaning each person values the same thing differently). The more you learn about what money is, the more you realize that there are qualities of money that make it valuable/appealing to be used AS money (e.g. fungibility, low to no inflation, difficult to counterfeit, scarce, easy to verify authenticity). This is why things like sand and hair make for poor money, and this is why the free market essentially chose gold as money before governments co-opted, confiscated, and controlled it. Gold would most likely be the primary money today if people had been free to transact using gold as money [0].

Governments stopped the use of gold as money because they can use fiat currencies to fund the operation of the government (by increasing the supply of fiat and buying their own debt with it), reducing the purchasing power of their own currency and acting as a tax on savers. Bitcoin is a serious threat to that because unlike gold, it is orders of magnitude more difficult for governments to confiscate and control.

[0] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_dollar_(private_curr...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_dollar_\(private_currency\))

EDIT: Spelling

<comment><USER8> I agree with you that there's no such thing as objective value. But my feeling is that there is still something important that differentiates "real" currencies (fiat or not) from bitcoin/gold/etc. Namely, there is a government backing the "real" currencies.

Dollars are "guaranteed" to have value because they are "legal tender," ie you can pay your taxes and buy things with them. As long as the US government has power, that will continue to be the case.

I can definitely see btc being a viable currency in situations where a government's power is limited but, for stable countries, it seems more like a commodity, and that's definitely (at least it seems to me) how people are treating it.

<comment><USER7> Have to pick a bone here: dollars do not have value because they are "legal tender" \-- see Zimbabwe hyperinflation [0]. Zimbabweans stopped valuing their national currency years before Zimbabwe recognized any other currencies as legal tender.

Dollars (and all fiat for that matter) have value because once upon a time paper money was tied to a specific weight of gold / silver stored in a bank vault. Over the past 100-ish years that link was slowly eroded until the point where there was no backing whatsoever. Inertia is the only thing keeping fiat currencies going, and it's not going to last forever now that alternatives (like cryptocurrency) exist and governments can't shut them down (like they did with the Liberty Dollar [1]).

After a couple more financial crises in the West and bank bailouts I suspect ALL governments will have limited power in this domain, people aren't going to let their savings be inflated into oblivion for the rest of eternity.

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

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_dollar_(private_curren...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_dollar_\(private_currency\))

<comment><USER8> The point that I meant to get across was that dollars have value as long as the government has power. You're right that it doesn't matter what the government says. Rather what matters is whether or not the government can back up what it says.

If you don't pay your taxes, you will be jailed. How do you pay your taxes? Well that's up the government, and they went with dollars.

I don't agree with your explanation of why dollars have value. You seem to have a bone to pick with every fiat currency, which I think is very silly.

<comment><USER7> Not sure why I'm getting downvotes on this, but you're right that I have an issue with every fiat currency, they're antithetical to a free society. No fiat currencies would exist in a world without coercion, people would not voluntarily use a currency which is debased every year by design.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Transaction time and energy inefficiency makes Bitcoin's future not so golden, imo.

<comment><USER10> Not only it's slow, but transaction fees are ridiculously high. $4.3 currently.

I go to shop and pay $0.5 for 2kg of potatoes (or a bottle of beer), and pay $4.3 fee, and wait 1 hour for confirmations?

<comment><USER11> If you make a consumer trade with Fidelity, the trading fee is $5.

For better or worse, Bitcoin has evolved into a financial-scale product, no longer something one would use to buy $0.50 of potatoes.

(P.S. $0.50 for 2kg of potatoes or a bottle of beer? both of those are a great deal)

<comment><USER10> I think future cryptocurrency will need to be very scalable, zero fees and instantaneous. At least capable of handling VISA traffic. Ideally something good enough for microtransactions, sending $0.001.

So far I've heard about IOTA and Lightning Network.

In Europe bank transfers are free. I often send $1 or $2 to roommate bank account for something from refrigerator. Also in shop I pay $2 with VISA card.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Bitcoin appears to be turning into a relatively standard commodity arbitrage market (in the real world sense of arbitrage not the academic sense). The article is right to compare to gold in this sense.

People seem to get caught up on the word "value" and then rush to defend Bitcoin's use cases and unique technology as making it valuable. I don't think it's a diss when people say Bitcoin has no fundamental value. A thing having use cases or unique properties is not what "value" means in an exchange market sense. "Fundamental value" is also known as "intrinsic value" and is based on the BUILT IN return potential of an asset. So stocks and bonds have an intrinsic value because they generate a return, based on dividends or interests rates they pay.

A thing is only worth what someone will give you for it. So EVERY value needs to be in terms of something else.

An ounce of Gold, 1 bitcoin, 1 US dollar, have NO intrinsic value because you can hold them forever and they will never pay you a dividend or make a coupon payment on their own. Gold has a few practical uses in jewelry and industry but that's not why it's important. Bitcoin and the dollar have ZERO "value" beyond being a place to store something else's value. Well back in the day a dollar in the bank might earn you a small interest rate but hello 21st century. Bitcoin doesn't even offer an interest rate. Gold is not a good long term investment. But Gold is good to have in case of emergency. I imagine bitcoin will be similar. Bitcoin and gold COST you money to own them. The people who make money off gold are the miners and then forever after the banks and security companies who store physical gold for you at great expense. Bitcoin should be similar in this sense as Bitcoin can create a spread income over the energy costs and the transaction fees it generates every 10 minutes.

My guess is since 90% of the bitcoins that will ever be mined will be mined within the next 2-3 years. And there will be lost coins. So maybe 15 million coins will be around long term and that number will slowly shrink. The fees will start to be more important.

I don't think Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme. Bitcoin has a ton of great uses and tech features. And most importantly it has signaling properties. While Bitcoin is unlikely to be the main digital currency people on a daily basis as the 1 MB limit does appear to cause issues. It would be very bad for all digital currencies if bitcoin went away.

</comment><comment><USER13> The big mystery to me is whether Bitcoin is the Myspace or Facebook of digital currency. Only time will tell.

<comment><USER14> This is a large concern for me. If cryptocurrencies begin to attract more users and widespread adoption, what is preventing a new coin that corrects Bitcoin's inefficiencies from ultimately gaining more users and superseding it? I would love to know your guy's thoughts.

<comment><USER15> There are plenty of coins already that are technically better than Bitcoin. It's just that Bitcoin has the network effect.

So perhaps one day a new coin will overtake Bitcoin, but my guess is that the coin will need a very distinct advanatge to gain traction.

<comment><USER16> _There are plenty of coins already that are technically better than Bitcoin._

Is there anything that fixes the wasteful mining process? To me that seems like a serious flaw in Bitcoin.

<comment><USER17> Iota uses a "tangle" instead of a block chain

<comment><USER16> Sounds interesting!

But a quick search sent me to [https://iota.org](https://iota.org), and oh my gosh, that website is impossible to use. Uninterruptable animations and completely broken scrolling. Oh well.

EDIT to add: suddenly I'm reminded of "For the love of God, please tell me what your company does" from the other day ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15170182](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15170182)). Probably the incomprehensible website means Iota is aimed at big businesses, not individuals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Did you mean: "Tulip's Golden Future" ?

<comment><USER19> Are you talking about the new ICO 2.lip ?

It's got one of the most exciting whitepapers I've read. Also has a great Board of Directors and some really great advisers behind it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> _" Digital currencies have no fundamental value"_

That argument never made any sense to me. What's the fundamental value of $1?

People assign value to all things based on how desirable they are (the demand). There are rare exceptions, like when a government ties their national currency to something like the dollar, but that immediately creates a black market, where it trades for its real value, and because of that, the government exchange only works one way (to buy or to sell). See Bolivar as a current example.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash The fundamental value of $1 is the full faith and credit of the United States Government and the economy of America.

The fundamental value of cryptocurrencies is a shared agreement of value amongst investors.

I imagine some snotty 14-year old would argue that there is no fundamental distinction between the two but that's not being economically serious.

<comment><USER20> I'd argue more, according to your definitions, the "fundamental value" of the dollar (which you conveniently didn't specify) relies on violence (as in, pay up of guys with guns will put you in prison). Whereas the fundamental value of Bitcoin is determined by the free market.

It's quite clear to me which one is a more moral system.

Again, based on your own definitions.

<comment><USER21> The property rights to your belongings are also fundamentally reliant on the government's promise to use violence to enforce those rights. Concluding that it is therefore immoral is too simplistic. You have to take into account the full consequences of not enforcing those rights, and then determine whether society as a whole is better off or worse off.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


YouTube to stop 30-second unskippable ads - <AUTHOR> http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/youtube-stop-30-second-unskippable-ads/1424541 <comment><USER2> Worse is when ad technology is prioritized and is set up more stably/reliably than the content itself. It's one thing to sit through an ad before _successfully_ watching something but quite another to put up with that and then see some obscure error code instead of the content you "paid" for with your ad eyeballs. I've had things fail 2 or 3 times, each time replaying the same ENTIRE ad without a hitch but then failing to deliver.

This is why people cry no tears when ad companies complain. If you want to stick crap in my way, the experience had better be flawless.

<comment><USER3> This is one thing that youtube does really well though - on some other sketchy video player you never know whether the video will play even if the ad will (the worst is when don't let you know you're geo-blocked until after playing their ad) but on youtube the video always plays just as well as the ads for me.

<comment><USER4> I've experienced the advertisement playing flawlessly followed by severe buffering for the real video.

<comment><USER3> It happens, but I've also experienced the stream playing flawlessly for the first 30s and then severe buffering for the remainder of the video, or the ad buffering and the video not. Network conditions change and buffering happens, but i haven't seen a consistent trend where the content is worse than the ad, like i have on so many other video players.

<comment><USER5> I am on a network with absolutely terrible latency. 500ms at its best and almost 7 sec at its worst. You tube videos will actually load and buffer... his "unskippable ad", will not.

Sometimes I have to wait 5 minutes to get through a 30 second commercial.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Ads shorter than 30-seconds, including the 20-second spots, can be made > unskippable.

uBlock Origin will continue to serve me well.

<comment><USER7> Look, bandwidth costs money. If you don't want to see ads, just subscribe to Youtube red.

Don't be an asshole.

<comment><USER8> Look, my time is valuable. I decide what media to play based on my preferences. If I don't want to see ads, why would I instruct my browser to play them?

If giving out free videos isn't a sustainable business model, change your business model.

No amount of shame will ever be effective in getting me to turn off my adblocker. Sorry if this offends you.

<comment><USER9> For being such a bunch of stingy capitalists, it's always surprising to see people defend businesses without viable models.

If hosting content online for free isn't working for you, maybe that's not a commercial space worth occupying. Not everything deserves to be paid for, "selfish" or not. Users, aka "the market," will decide if your product is usable despite the income generating parts.

Marginally related, if your business isn't profitable enough to pay your employees a livable wage, then maybe your business isn't actually profitable enough to, well, be "in business."

<comment><USER10> Dunno, what doesn't seem "viable" is serving ads that can be trivially blocked.

We haven't even reached the real arms race yet, and people are already talking like adblockers won.

Let's pick this convo back up at least when ad networks like Adsense let you proxy through your server, ending an entire class of adblocking at once. And that's not the end of the low-hanging fruit.

<comment><USER11> Adblockers have blocked first-party ads forever. They just use other methods to recognize them, rather than the origin URL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Youtube resorting to interruption ads in the first place was equivalent to Tesla deciding to ship each car with a small internal combustion engine bolted on.

Considering the strides Amazon and Netflix have made with original content, I think Youtube should be viewed as having missed the boat in a pretty big way. All of the promising platform innovations that seemed worth waiting for now seem to have been put on hold in favor of prioritizing Google's ad revenue maximization.

The biggest of these are "autoplay" and the silly way that it chooses content to play next.

There seems to be some notion that consumers want to sit in front of youtube and gaze at it while it plays some bizarre mix of low quality user generated content and videos that consumers have watched before, while interspersing annoying ads that encourage the user to tap/click to dismiss the ad.

It's hard to imagine an experience that creates more annoyance. It's as if a fly is released into the room at the start of each video that lands on your ear, and you must either put up with it or exert effort to get rid of it.

Regular TV commercials should be viewed simply as a result a near monopoly for years, with viewers having no choice but to suffer through ads, and advertisers having no choice but to overpay for them.

I actively avoid watching youtube for these reasons, and consider it (as a product) a lot like SourceForge -- someone just trying to milk every ad dollar possible with no concern for the quality of the experience.

I hope this article means that there has been an inflection point and YouTube cannot continue to increase revenue by emulating the dated paradigm of broadacast TV.

Facebook, it seems, has already eaten Google's lunch on live video.

</comment><comment><USER13> I haven't watched such ad in a long time apart from TV which does not have uBlock available.

I would sign up for youtube red but alas, tis not available to hostile foreign countries such as Canada

I wonder if they are doing this because youtube red is killing it....can't beat netflix in terms of contents but if they gave you access to entire Play movies and tv shows then that would be a game changer...I don't even watch Amazon Prime shows apart from The Grand Tour and Man. I'm quite fond of Netflix's UX and UI.

</comment><comment><USER14> This article made me realize how heavily I rely on uBlock Origin. I haven't thought about youtube ads in a long time.

<comment><USER15> I kind of wish there was a way to unblock specific YouTube users from uBlock. I have a handful of entertainers that I like enough to intentionally support them by watching ads, yet I've found no simple way to do that without manually disabling uBlock for a specific video and re-enabling it afterwards.

<comment><USER16> Why not get red? It comes with free music streaming and eliminates all ads. It's not much at all.

<comment><USER15> I don't like the fact that YouTube requires red to play music with the screen off. I don't want to support YouTube and make them think that's alright.

<comment><USER16> Uhh... That seems pretty silly actually.

<comment><USER15> I think it's silly to withhold a feature that is easy to implement and makes the user experience better, but to each their own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> You know, I really wish I could buy Youtube Red for my friends more easily. It drives me up the wall when one of them is watching youtube and some obnoxious ad plays at 2x the volume of anything else they've been doing. I already pay for Youtube Red myself primarily because I hate video / audio advertising with a passion, but I can't control what anyone else in the room does with their money I guess.

Advertising is the sole reason I stopped watching television. It's unbelievably distracting when I enter someone else's house and they have their TV playing all the time. How do you not get sucked in? I guess I was desensitized to it earlier in life, but now I'll gladly pay subscription fees to distance myself from that racket.

<comment><USER18> I have literally never heard of Youtube Red before reading this commend. Granted, I live in Ireland, where it's seemingly unavailable but... why isn't this promoted more widely?

<comment><USER19> You seem to have answered your own question, but you live in Ireland, where it's unavailable: if you live in a place where it is available, it is difficult to not know about it, because YouTube tries to up-sell you on it with house ads.

<comment><USER18> Perhaps, but I get very little of my knowledge from ads, and probably most of it from non-Irish media, blogs, and similar sources, hence my surprise.

This is the first time I've seen the service mentioned on HN, which seems surprising in itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> YouTube ads wouldn't bug me nearly as much if there was some more variety. I must have seen the same stupid MileIQ ad a thousand times by now. Surely they have more content available than this?

<comment><USER21> That's the hulu strategy. Wear you down with such low quality, repetitive ads you'll beg for the adfree upgrade.

<comment><USER22> That's the hulu strategy. Wear you down with such low quality, repetitive ads you'll...stop using their service.

FTFY!

<comment><USER23> Yup, just felt like cable again. Cancelled and have not looked back. Their 'network' programming is forgettable and mostly filler.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm so glad I have youtube red through my google music subscription, unskippable 30 second ads sound just dreadful.

<comment><USER25> My favorite subscription above netflixs and Amazon Prime. It kills me to think that most people have this all backwards. They think content creators get less with YouTube Red and is bad for all creators. If people only understood how little per view they are paid for. Also people are just married to their Spotify playlist and can't get out to see that Google Play Music is a fabulous service. I have the family plan for my older kids and wife but YouTube Red is the best deal.

EDIT: Mobile Benefits for YouTube Red

\- Playback with the screen turned off

\- Download videos

\- YouTube Music No Ads

-YouTube Gaming

<comment><USER26> I would love to see some stats or analysis from a YouTube content creator about views from Red subscribers. Has anyone put out anything like that?

<comment><USER25> 20 times higher payout per viewer.

""I can now clearly determine how much Red views are worth vs normal views. If I did my math correctly, since Red started, a Red view is on average worth 20x that of a normal ad view. This calculation is based on taking the total revenue the channel has generated via Red and dividing it by the total number of Red views since Red was first launched, then multiplying that number by 1000 to find the effective CPM of Red."

[http://lipanitechnologies.com/2017/01/03/youtube-red- helping...](http://lipanitechnologies.com/2017/01/03/youtube-red-helping- content-creators-earn-money/)

<comment><USER27> I couldn't stay on that page for more than a few seconds before the insane, random animation background made me physically recoil.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Too late, I've already given up on watching anything on YouTube unless I'm desperate. Yeah, I know there's YouTube Red. But at $120/year, well, that's a Netflix-level subscription, and I don't get even a tenth of the value I get out of Netflix from YouTube.

</comment><comment><USER29> The funniest thing about their ads is watching my daughter learn to tap the button again and again until they are gone.

It's hard to imagine how Google or TV will convince the world to accept let alone _want_ their ads for much longer when a generation is growing up with ad blocking and Netflix.

</comment><comment><USER30> I wonder how long it will take before there's an actual YouTube competitor (and yea, that's not Vimeo or Vidme). Something quick and easy like imgur for video would be fantastic. That being said, this is an interesting move. Is YouTube profitable yet?

<comment><USER24> >Is YouTube profitable yet?

IIRC it has been for years.

<comment><USER31> I've only seen info on it not being profitable assuming you actually account for its actual bandwidth, etc. Do you know where you may have seen it's profitable?

<comment><USER24> Looks like I was kinda wrong.

[http://www.investors.com/news/technology/youtube- valuation-s...](http://www.investors.com/news/technology/youtube-valuation- soaring-profits-blurry-as-facebook-amazon-loom/)

> But is YouTube profitable? Google has never said. Nor does it disclose > viewership data or other financial metrics beyond a few broad statements.

> "There's substantial uncertainty, particularly over the profit levels at > YouTube, whether it's break-even or if they're doing modest operating > margins," RBC Capital analyst Mark Mahaney told IBD. "They have a lot of > content royalty costs, massive bandwidth costs, storage costs, processing > costs.

<comment><USER31> Yeah interesting but we will likely never get anything close to a number.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I doubt we can get a glimpse into the data. I'm speculating here - but it is likely that the overall attention span is too short, and those who pay for long unskippable ads are not getting their moneys worth, hence the change.

</comment><comment><USER33> They would have been more tolerable if there were more variety to the ads. For the last few days every YouTube video I've watched has been prefixed with the same unskippable ad, a 30-second spot for Lucky Charms cereal that wants so badly for you to think it's an episode of _Adventure Time_ that you can smell the flop sweat from across the room.

If you're going to force me to watch the same ad over and over, at _least_ make it an ad that doesn't make me want to claw my eyeballs out with a rusty razor blade.

</comment><comment><USER34> In other news, campaignlive.co.uk still has full-screen pop-up ads.

I think a good place for ads would be at the end of the video. I know many people will say that then many ads would never be seen. But I think you should consider the emotion associated with your product when your ad is at the beginning:

If I click on a funny 1-minute cat video, a front-loaded ad first of all makes Youtube act like it's broken. I clicked a link to play a certain video, and it didn't play. Instead something else played. For a brief moment, there is a feeling of brokenness. Then there is a feeling of frustration: you tried to accomplish something, and you were blocked (though temporarily).

The second reason it is so irritating is that it seldom has something to do with you: it's advertising something you don't want. It's like someone who strikes up a conversation with you about something that they find interesting, but they didn't bother to consider whether it interests you. (Google's AdSense doesn't seem to work well in Youtube.)

The third reason it is so irritating is a sense of proportion. An hour-long documentary could do with a 30-second commercial. A 30-second Youtube video seems overburdeded with even a 5-second ad.

If you put your ad at the end, I am in a good mood, because I just finished my cat video. Also, I'm thinking of what to watch next. So an ad playing in the background doesn't bother me as much. Maybe it's even subliminal, since I'm not really concentrating on it. That's just what the advertisers want! ;)

I think ads at the end would also be more in the same spirit as the text-only ads on Google Search, that it would be better to have an ad go unnoticed than have an ad that is interfering. Actually I think the genius is that text-only ads fit in better with text-only search results. The user is already in careful-reading mode. So in fact I think they are more likely to run across the text-only ad than some flashing image, which they would have quickly learned to ignore.

I finally signed up for Youtube Red, despite my pennypinchingness. I think I'll stick with it. It includes also all the free music I want, on Google Play. Through that I found a new album by an obscure band that I always liked. It's only $10 a month, and if you can buy a family plan for $15.

<comment><USER11> I've had YouTube show me ads at the end of videos. It certainly beats ads during the middle, but it's also often more jarring than ads at the start. Say you put some soft music playing and tab away, then it ends and suddenly you get a loud, fast-paced ad - I usually respond by closing the tab immediately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> They're changing to 20 second unskippable ads. Big deal.

</comment><comment><USER36> Adblockers have kept YT totally-ad free on desktop for years. I'm surprised Google hasn't found a workaround for this. I rarely access the Youtube app because of the constant ads; plus, I don't find the mobile experience to be as good as the desktop one.

</comment><comment><USER37> A long time back, HTTP Switchboard stopped blocking preroll ads, for me in the US. Is there a rule I can add back in?

Edit: Just figured it out. Blocking this with an adbock rule fixes it at as a logged-in user, in the US, using Chrome.

       https://www.youtube.com/get_video_info*

</comment><comment><USER38> I guess this means my 13 year old won't have to watch a full 30 second add for Viagra any more.

</comment><comment><USER39> I wish fixyt.com was still working, but a quick /watch?v=SLUG_ID appending to it still saves the day on videos-with-ads I just cannot bare.

</comment><comment><USER40> I never see ads on youtube, since I use youtube-dl to download the videos first before I watch them, and the downloaded videos never have ads.

</comment><comment><USER41> Maybe they will make the ads seekable, at least in the past. I saw some good ads and I wanted to go back but it's not possible.

</comment><comment><USER42> BGR Page is complete with a 30 second Ad that auto plays..at least that's the case on mobile

</comment><comment><USER43> Just use an adblocker, then you don't need to wait on them to do anything.

</comment><comment><USER44> Why are they so slow on releasing YouTube Red in more countries?

</comment><comment> k-mcgrady Good. I was just closing the tab when I saw these.

<comment><USER45> If this was a driver, Google will apparently be the first site to account for bounces in their advertising strategy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> the worst offenders are the 30 second horror film trailers. nope.

</comment><comment><USER47> Url changed from [http://bgr.com/2017/02/17/youtube-video-ads- unskippable/](http://bgr.com/2017/02/17/youtube-video-ads-unskippable/), which points to this.</comment>


Solving Tech's Diversity Problem - <AUTHOR> https://www.technewsworld.com/story/85319.html <comment><USER2> The underlying ideas in this opinion piece are dangerous and should not be left unchallenged.

1) Identity politics is a road to hell. It's bad when the far right plays that game with white supremacy and it's equally bad when the left plays the game with equality of outcome.

2) Where are the hospitals having their conference on how to get more male nurses? Where are the construction companies complaining there aren't enough women doing hard labor? Why is tech the center of this craziness when there are plenty of other careers that have the same type of demographic imbalance?

3) The value of your ideas aren't limited to the color and gender you were born with. It is racist and sexist to say otherwise. As a white man, I can have ideas on race relations and women in the workplace that is just as valid as a black man's ideas or a woman's ideas. Ideas need to be evaluated with reason and logic.

<comment><USER3> What you have said is what any intelligent, fair-minded person, male or female, would say who was not cowed by the irrational ideas of the extreme left. I mourn for my country -- a country in which statements like yours are no longer too obvious to bother expressing.</comment></comment>


Printing Lenses on the Form 1+ 3D Printer - <AUTHOR> http://formlabs.com/en/company/blog/2014/09/24/lenses-3D-printed-formlabs/

<comment><USER2> Very impressive stuff, but looking at the models raises a question in my mind. Why do the parts look like they have about an inch of supporting, sprue-like structure beneath them? Wouldn't it be better to have them be closer to the surface so as little material is wasted in the supports as possible?

<comment><USER3> sometimes these structures act as heat sinks to ensure even heat dissipation throughout the part and improve conformity

<comment><USER4> This is a photopolymer printer - while the reaction is mildly exothermic, the amount of heat produced is negligible.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Essential Podcasts? - <AUTHOR> What do you guys/gals consider essential podcasts? Be it tech, or webdev, or just generally 'interesting'? <comment><USER2> * Cooking Issues

* EconTalk

* Sound Opinions

* Planet Money

* The Nerdist, when the guest outweighs how annoying I find Chris Hardwick

* Slate Political Gabfest

* This American Life

* NPR Pop Culture Happy Hour

* Marc Maron, for guests I'm interested in

I have ATP in my podcast client, but any time I find myself listening to it, that's my cue to go buy an audiobook because I've run out of reasonable podcast.

</comment><comment><USER3> TED Radio Hour -- Guy Raz on NPR. [http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_detail.php?siteId=151...](http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_detail.php?siteId=151446218)

Freakonomics Radio -- Stephen Dubner [http://freakonomics.com/category/freakonomics- radio/podcasts...](http://freakonomics.com/category/freakonomics- radio/podcasts/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Some of the ones i have enjoyed listening to lately.

Debug ([http://www.imore.com/debug](http://www.imore.com/debug)): Interviews with interesting people in tech. Several of them with former Apple engineers.

The Infinite Monkey Cage ([http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/timc](http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/timc)): Panel discussion show hosted by physicist Brian Cox and comedian Robin Ince with guest Scientist, Mathematicians and Comedians. Both entertaining and interesting.

Sill Untitled: The Adam Savage Project ([http://www.tested.com/podcast/still- untitled-the-adam-savage...](http://www.tested.com/podcast/still-untitled-the- adam-savage-project/)): The podcast is hosted by, among others, Mythbusters host Adam Savage. The show covers a large variety of topics but always seems to land on something that interests me.

</comment><comment><USER5> Cross-posting from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8041789](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8041789)

Manager Tools: [http://www.manager-tools.com/](http://www.manager-tools.com/)

I'm surprised nobody mentioned FLOSS Weekly: [http://twit.tv/show/floss- weekly](http://twit.tv/show/floss-weekly)

</comment><comment><USER6> Omega Tau [http://omegataupodcast.net/](http://omegataupodcast.net/) has in- depth interviews about science and technology.

Highlights are [http://omegataupodcast.net/2011/12/83-how-apollo-flew-to- the...](http://omegataupodcast.net/2011/12/83-how-apollo-flew-to-the-moon/) and more recently, [http://omegataupodcast.net/2014/06/150-the-european- extremel...](http://omegataupodcast.net/2014/06/150-the-european-extremely- large-telescope/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Essential? None really.

However I've been enjoying the StackOverflow/StackExchange podcast archive. It began as a simple weekly Skype call between Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood in the pre release days of StackOverflow. The idea was that they would develop the company in the open. It's also interesting because community building forms a central theme, If you think Spolsky is funny the podcasts might even be enjoyable.

[http://blog.stackoverflow.com/archive/](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/archive/)

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't have any specific tech related ones but these are my favorites:

* Radiolab - pretty interesting science related stories with interesting audio production.

* This American Life - pretty standard but always good

* Snap Judgement - another storytelling show, I switch between this and TAL.

* Savage Lovecast - mostly sex talk but the questions provide cultural insight I think.

* Alt Latino - discussion and mix of latin alternative music.

* The Splendid Table - variety of cooking topics.

* A Podcast of Ice and Fire - yes, i'm an ASOIAF fan and like hearing about rereads and book theories.

</comment><comment><USER9> Node.js related:

* NodeUp: [http://nodeup.com](http://nodeup.com)

* Ghostalk: [http://talk.ghost.io](http://talk.ghost.io) (I am a co-host)

</comment><comment><USER10> "Hardcore History" is such a great one. I was surprised to not see it mentioned. They are really just fabulous entertainment.

Dan Carlin also has another podcast called "Common Sense". Couldn't recommend them both enough. Dan Carlin has an extremely strong ability to take historical events and use them to bring context to current events.

</comment><comment><USER11> BBC Radio 4:

In Our Time - Discussion of ideas

Frontier - Discussion of science topics

Farming Today - The name gives it away

Great Lives - Famous people nominate people from history as a great life

Last Word - Weekly obituaries of famous people

Gardeners Question Time - I like gardening.

Others:

Iron Radio - Powerlifting/bodybuilding info

Art Of Manliness - Being Manly info

Bulletproof Executive - Interesting items about how to be "bulletproof". Some are good, some sound like absolute horse shit.

</comment><comment><USER12> Men in Blazers -- [http://meninblazers.com/](http://meninblazers.com/)

"We discuss football. And wear blazers. Usually at the same time. Men in Blazers is driven by the belief that Soccer is America's Sport of the Future. As it has been since 1972."

Consistently excellent. Zero football/soccer knowledge required.

</comment><comment><USER13> Have several, but one I never missed and always look forward to is [StarTalk radio]([http://www.startalkradio.net/](http://www.startalkradio.net/)). I don't even really understand most of the topic in the show, but I still find it very entertaining.

</comment><comment><USER14> I listen to lots of podcasts...

BS Report (Sports), Grantland (Sports & Pop Culture), Adam & Dr. Drew Show, Dr Drew Show, This American Life, Here's The Thing, The Moth, 99% Invisible, Risk!, in addition to a few I listen to only if the subject matter seems interesting.

</comment><comment><USER15> I like listening to the Slate podcasts, especially The Culture Gabfest. Found here: [http://www.mixcloud.com/SlatesCultureGabfest/](http://www.mixcloud.com/SlatesCultureGabfest/)

</comment><comment><USER16> I prefer the podcasts that address the business end of things:

* Stanford Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders

* EconTalk

* HBR IdeaCast

For lifestyle businesses:

* Startups for the Rest of Us

* Tropical BMA

* Smart Passive Income

* The Foolish Adventure

Music:

* KCRW's Today's Top Tune

* KEXP Song of the Day

* Too many EDM podcasts to mention

</comment><comment><USER17> Here's my current list, what used to be a 50/50 mix of technology and comedy podcasts has slowly become almost all comedy ones (I increasingly find podcasts to be a bad medium for technology discussions that aren't just "news"):

* U Talkin' U2 To Me? -- A limited series (ostensibly they talk about a different U2 album every week, but even as someone who doesn't like U2 I found this hilarious).

* The Critical Path -- I like Horace's perspective on the mobile market

* WTF -- I subscribe to it, but only download if it's a guest I'm interested in. I also usually skip forward until the interview.

* Postmodem -- Doesn't come out very often, but I find it enjoyable

* The Andy Daly Podcast Project -- Mostly because I think Andy Daly is a national treasure

* Bret Easton Ellis Podcast -- Though easy to dislike, I have been a big fan of his for many years. I like hearing his commentary about the state of the film industry.

* Doug Loves Movies -- Sometimes hit or miss, but way more enjoyable than a live show where guests play movie-related games on stage should be.

* ATP -- I have inordinate affection for John Siracusa, even if I find the format of talking about things "in the news" with little time to have any context constantly frustrating.

* The Talk Show -- Lots of people here don't like Gruber, but I do.

* I Seem Fun -- Probably my favorite podcast currently. Jen Kirkman (a comedian) just records a show a week without any guests. I'm pretty sure the majority of people on this site would hate it though.

* Call Chelsea Peretti -- I should hate this show, because she lets people call in and talks to them (and I hate pretty much all "radio call-in shows"); but she's hilarious.

* By the Way -- Jeff Garlin is an acquired taste, but he got very good guests for this show.

* Back to Work -- I miss an episode here or there, but I still find Merlin and Dan's banter super enjoyable.

* Ronna and Beverly -- Also probably not for people here, but it's two comedians "in character" who interview a guest every week. Mostly I love it because they sound and act like everyone I grew up with's parents.

* Roderick on the Line -- I find John Roderick immensely entertaining.

* Comedy Bang Bang -- Responsible for making me laugh more than any other podcast.

* You Made it Weird -- Pete's interviews are frequently more interesting than funny, but they're frequently both.

* Thrilling Adventure Hour -- I never miss an episode of "Beyond Belief", some of the others I let pile up.

* The Dead Authors Podcast -- Only recently started getting into, but it's pretty funny.

* The Pod F. Tompkast -- I think it's currently on hiatus, but the old ones are great.

* Analyze Phish -- One guy who likes Phish tries to get another guy who doesn't like Phish to like Phish by playing him their songs (and later taking him to Phish shows). I hate Phish, and think this show is wonderful.

* Making it with Riki Lindhome -- I feel like this one might also be on hiatus, but Riki had a lot of good interviews with people about how the "broke in" to Hollywood.

* Who Charted? -- The only way I ever hear current music. Every week they count down the top 5 songs and movies with a guest.

* The Todd Glass Show -- It's a little long, but I love Todd Glass, so I like his podcast very much.

* How Did This Get Made? -- Every episode they pick a terrible movie and go off about it. It's usually really really funny.

* Nerdist Writers Panel -- Ben Blacker and Ben Acker interview a bunch of writers (usually tv writers). I like this one a lot too.</comment>


We Didn't Want to Run This Ad - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.twitter.com/jasonfried/status/1168986962704982016 <comment><USER2> When your brand name is a generic word that is also used by other products and services, and you're still the top search result, you don't really have that much to complain about.

</comment><comment><USER3> I guess only duckduckgo has the cajones to compete with google</comment>


Frozen in Time:  Verizon Subjects Massachusetts Residents to Low Speed DSL - <AUTHOR> http://stopthecap.com/2017/01/10/frozen-in-time-verizons-ultra-slow-dsl-languishes-on-in-massachusetts/ <comment><USER2> I noticed this several months ago and switched to [http://www.4gcommunity.org/service- overview/](http://www.4gcommunity.org/service-overview/). No affiliation, just a happy customer (it's faster and cheaper, anyways)</comment>


A Jazz Pianist Flips Bach Upside-Down - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/15/arts/music/dan-tepfer-bach.html <comment><AUTHOR> _Mr. Tepfer, 38, who also excels in classical music and has an undergraduate degree in astrophysics as well as sophisticated technology skills, wrote a computer program. He recorded himself playing Bach's "Goldberg" Variations, beautifully, on a Yamaha Disklavier, a full grand piano with a high-tech player piano function; his program then played back each variation, but flipped._

 _... The results, Mr. Tepfer writes on his website, are like looking at Bach "through a prism"; the music "feels like a new piece."_</comment>


JSON on the Command Line with Jq - <AUTHOR> https://shapeshed.com/jq-json/ <comment><USER2> Every time I try to do something involved with jq (i.e. more than a couple commands deep) and inevitably end up wandering through the manual, I get a persistent feeling that jq could be cleaned up quite a bit. That it either has structure throughout that I fail to grasp, or that it's really rather disorganized and convoluted in places. This is exacerbated by me never being able to find anything in the manual without skimming half of it each single time.

E.g.:

Filtering and transforming objects by reaching a few levels deeper in them seems to be way easier to slap together in Python's list comprehensions or some functional notation. Stuff like [{ * * x, qwe: x.qwe*2} for x in a.b if x.y.z == 1].

Add nested lists to the above, and I can spend another fifteen minutes writing a one-liner (i.e. `a` is a list of objects with lists in some field).

I once had to deal with a conditional structure where a field might be one object or a list of them. Hoo boy.

Every time I want to check the number of entries my filters print out, I need to wrap them in an array. Repeat this a couple dozen times during writing a complex query. Weirdly, this is where strict structure gets in the way―and while I understand the reasoning, I feel that something could be done for such basic need. (Like, aggregate filters should be able to aggregate instead of acting on individual items? Maybe it's already in the language, but I'm not in the mood to go over the manual again.)

Variables seem to be bolted on as an afterthought, or at least the syntax doesn't exactly accommodate them. Meanwhile, they're necessary to implement some filters omitted in the language. Compare that to Lisp's simple `(let)`. IIRC the manual also says that jq has some semblance of functions, but I'm afraid to think about them with this syntax.

I like the idea a lot, but execution not so much. Frankly I'll probably end up throwing together a script in Lumo or something, that will accept Lisp expressions and feed JSON structure to them. (I'd use Fennel, but JSON has actual null while Lua... doesn't.)

Btw, I have pretty much the same sentiment about Git. Git structures, great. Git tools, oy vey. Maybe I need Lisp for Git, or at least Python for Git.

<comment><USER3> Personally I prefer [https://github.com/jmespath/jp](https://github.com/jmespath/jp) \- it has a bit saner syntax based on an actual standard (at least for me it's easier to remember than jq).

And perhaps more importantly it doesn't mess with your numbers! Some other comment mentioned doubles, but I had a problem with Longs, jq would silently truncate them when they became to large to fit inside a float (I was working with random Long numbers used as secrets in some schema so it happened quite quickly in my use case).

<comment><USER4> Thanks for this; for the few cases/year I need something like `jq`, I just find its selector syntax too hard to remember (seems a common theme). `jp` seems way more usable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thread from 2016: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13090604](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13090604)

2015: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9446980](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9446980)

2014: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7895076](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7895076)

2013: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5734683](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5734683)

2012: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4985250](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4985250)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4679933](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4679933)

(for the curious)

</comment><comment> DC-3 For those interested in JSON as a command line protocol, I think it's interesting to see how Andreas Kling has integrated it into his Serenity OS project. While the project is aesthetically retro, its architecture is forward-facing, and the usage of JSON for the representation of such data as the process tree is, I think, an interesting take on old Unix ideas.

<comment><USER6> It definitely makes writing the userspace code a lot nicer!

The main issue I've run into so far is that my JSON parser can generate quite heavy in-memory representations of parsed data. It's far from optimized though, and a lot can be done before needing to worry about the limitations of the format itself. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> jq is the AWK of today. I'm in favour of jq in *nix base. I use it almost as much as grep | cut | sort.

JSON is ubiquitous now. So much so that even my <conservative enterprise customers>, who 20 years preferred data in CSV, 10 years ago preferred XML, now want to exchange data in JSON.

<comment><USER8> Something better than jq please. It has the most arcane and inconsistent syntax that I have ever seen in a CLI tool. There are newer tools like jp with simpler language that can be understood by mere mortals with limited brain power.

<comment><USER9> You should check out GROQ ([https://groq.dev](https://groq.dev)), it's a query language for JSON.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A line of `jq` to turn any .json into a set of xpaths.

[https://github.com/TomConlin/json2xpath](https://github.com/TomConlin/json2xpath)

<comment><USER11> This is useful! Thank you for sharing!!!!

</comment></comment><comment> dan-robertson Jq can do lots of things that are similar to what's normally done with awk, cut, sed, and grep. The languages pipeline model is slightly opaque (eg as soon as you use a function like select) and I feel tricky to get the hang of but overall I think it works well for the kind of job jq does.

That said, I usually get on well with a halfway house of piping jq -c ... into eg grep or sort -u for easy processing (-c writes one json object per line, aka compact form), or selecting a few elements, putting them in an array, jq- piping into @csv, and passing -r to get raw output which I can then process with awk or sort or other Unix commands.

One subtle caveat is that jq normalises all the json it processes, so for example escaped characters in strings may change and numbers which are not IEEE doubles get converted (eg if someone writes a 64-bit int or a bignum as a number not a string in the json)

</comment><comment><USER12> Jq is nice and I regularly use it.

Does anyone know a more interactive json tool? With, for example, auto- completion? Showing possible fields to select next and maybe even possible values if fields are choosen.

<comment><USER13> > Does anyone know a more interactive json tool? With, for example, auto- > completion?

[https://github.com/antonmedv/fx](https://github.com/antonmedv/fx)

It just uses JS for the query language and can be hooked in to bash completion.

Personally I don't get on with jq, because I don't feel that plinking with JSON is something that warrants memorising a bespoke language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Being reminded of JQ has me thinking... I actually don't hate powershell or at least I like it's attempt at typed pipes.

Has anyone gone down the road of posix like Json pipes? Or maybe just Json bridging the gap between fully typed pipes and the string based Unix cli world?

Even just having a Json output format for the core posix apps would be good. If it had OS support, maybe you wouldn't even have to serialize to strings if both sides of the pipe happened to be compatible.

<comment><USER15> Yes, Oil Shell is one:

[https://www.oilshell.org/preview/doc/json.html](https://www.oilshell.org/preview/doc/json.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I like jq, but the documentation is super thin. Every time I go to do anything involved, I inevitably end up at stack overflow hoping somebody else has had to do it before.

I really wish there were a much greater selection of usage examples in the manual.

</comment><comment><USER17> Jq is a great tool, I wish more people knew about it!

<comment><USER18> It's a bit arcane to use, but has proven itself over and over when doing little tasks with AWS CLI returns.

<comment><USER11> Exactly right.

I use jq to mangle get/list requests from AWS (and others) and then recursively hit each element for whatever reason. Without jq none of my workflows in this area would be remotely easy.

TLDR: Learn JQ! It is like sed and grep, but for JSON.

<comment><USER19> If you're using AWS you're better using the built in option available for the cli. The --query option (and often combined with the --output option) does this, and uses JMESPath. Especially when you're scripting, it eliminates the need for having yet another tool.

<comment><USER20> > If you're using AWS you're better using the built in option available for > the cli. The --query option (and often combined with the --output option) > does this, and uses JMESPath.

Jq is so much more capable than jmespath that I find myself using jq on the json output of AWS CLI commands more than using the built-in query option. Sure, it requires another tool, but it'a often the best tool for the job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'd like to have a command line tool that allows me to modify the json with javascript. Does jq provide any feature to process json that it's very difficult/cumbersome to do in js?

<comment><USER19> Jq allows you to fully transform a json structure. Batteries included. Similar to awk/sed etc you can even write your jq code in a separate file, and point jq to it.</comment></comment>


Can aerobic exercise slow down ageing? - open-source-ux https://www.nhs.uk/news/lifestyle-and-exercise/can-aerobic-exercise-slow-down-ageing/ <comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the article, however I have a problem with a lot of these trials. The number of test subjects. A couple of hundred I feel is not enough people, and half of those dropped out. We need thousands of test subjects from different age ranges and in different states of health for more accurate data.</comment>


I'm not collaborating with Kenneth Reitz - <AUTHOR> https://vorpus.org/blog/why-im-not-collaborating-with-kenneth-reitz/ <comment><USER5> SQLAlchemy author / maintainer here.

If Kenneth has been acting in bad faith within the community, that should be brought to light and called out. That said, I can't help but think this blog post swings that hammer _way_ too hard, and then even gets into rumors about other unethical things he has allegedly done without any attribution. The author goes on long enough in this manner so much so that they have to remind the reader "please don't abuse or harass Kenneth!" That's a sign you've swung too hard. I know Kenneth personally, as the blog post mentions, he has mental health issues and while the article rightly points out this is no excuse, it's not the authors place to judge how effectively or not a mental health sufferer is capable of managing their illness.

Again i agree the incidents in question should be called out and I am glad this author has spoken out. But as someone who also suffers from mental illness I am concerned for the extended nature of the post.

<comment><USER6> This is from the post:

Many people manage their conditions without causing this kind of harm, and when they mess up, they make amends, just like the rest of us. If someone can't do that, then as a community, we can have compassion but shouldn't give them power and influence.

<comment><USER5> I agree totally but at the same time this post goes well beyond the realm of calling out the behavior and into deep rumor and character assasination territory. All of which may also be true but there is simply no need.

<comment><USER7> >All of which may also be true but there is simply no need.

I don't understand this logic. If all may be true, then there is absolutely a need to alert the community of a prominent member who may be damaging that very community.

<comment><USER8> There is a need. 30.000 dollar in donations went missing. That is enough information for anyone to stop interacting until they are accounted for.

What isn't needed is personal speculation about how a cheap laptop would suffice, or how taxes can't be that high, or how much documentation should cost, or etc. etc. It's all pretty much irrelevant in light of the fact that 30 grand went missing.

What definitely isn't needed is an insulting analysis of perceived wrong-doing backed by pop-psychology. "Many people manage their conditions without causing this kind of harm..." Yeah, and some don't.

There is a difference between "alerting the community" and writing an opinion piece placing yourself in a victim/martyr role to underline you're really "the good guy" here.

<comment><USER7> >What isn't needed is personal speculation about how a cheap laptop would suffice

Sure it is. He stated he was going to use the proceeds to buy a laptop to work on this project. A $5,000 dollar laptop is above and beyond what is required to work on this project. There certainly is reason to question this.

>or how taxes can't be that high

It wasn't "that high", it was "most of it." If someone told me they received $30,000 in donations, but $15,000.01 or more went to taxes, I'd be asking questions.

>or how much documentation should cost

$28,000 to write documentation for the next version of this library. No, it should NOT cost that much for the amount of work and resources necessary to complete this particular task.

None of this is reaching; these are very necessary and prudent concerns.

<comment><USER8> Why is there more reason to question the cost of the laptop specifically than simply questioning the disappearance of $30.000?

Everything the authors states are interpretations of how the author interpreted their interactions; they're allegations.

You don't need allegations to support an already established fact unless you're playing to the people, that is, appealing to sentiment to win them over to a cause.

> None of this is reaching

It isn't, but it also isn't needed to publish those personal misgivings in a populist format. If the 30k is missing, then that's a clear indictment by itself. There's no need to cast aspersions about how the money was used, speculation on mental health issues, or how little other people personally liked someone.

<comment><USER9> Hate to jump in here...

The $30,000 was accounted for: taxes, a machine, and documentation. Perfectly reasonable.

But...

* "Most of it" went to taxes. (Wait, what?)

* A $5000 machine. (For what?)

* Documentation? (For a version that doesn't exist yet?)

These kinds of shenanigans are why government contracts are such a mess. Details matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It wasn't really mentioned in the linked article, but at the start of the year there was a lot of very heated discussion about Python, packaging, Pipenv, what was (and wasn't) an "official" packaging tool, etc. See, for example, this earlier discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18612590](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18612590)

Obviously there are multiple sides to that debate, but I _personally_ came to the conclusion that Reitz had behaved quite poorly there. It's interesting to see his name come up again, here.

<comment><USER11> Interestingly, Pipenv is no longer in the list of projects on his website:

[https://www.kennethreitz.org/projects](https://www.kennethreitz.org/projects)

What that means, I don't know.

<comment><USER12> The hype around pipenv is gone now that more people actually tried to use it in real life project and foubd out that it was not the storytelled solution to all your problems

<comment><USER11> Sure, but I still don't get why it is missing from the project list. The list is not that curated. It includes Autoenv for example, a project whose Github README [0] says,

 _" Note: you should probably use direnv instead. Simply put, it is higher quality software. But, autoenv is still great, too. Maybe try both? :)"_

[0] [https://github.com/kennethreitz/autoenv](https://github.com/kennethreitz/autoenv)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > His collaborators also consistently cited his bipolar disorder as an excuse > for whatever he did. I think this is deeply unfair to Reitz, and to everyone > struggling with mental health issues.

He's right it's completely unfair to others with bipolar disorder (can't speak for other mental illnesses). If you take you take your medication, go to therapy, practice CBT, and stay sober you can live a normal life. Don't get me wrong, it's hard work and expensive.

I have no idea what Kenneth's situation is and I'm not excusing any of the alleged behavior, I'm just asking that others not to assume automatically all others successfully treating bipolar disorder (1 or 2) are up to no good.

</comment><comment><USER14> Reitz really does not come off looking very good here.

I was always a little suspicious of the set of libraries he maintains - <USER4> documentation pages are so slick that I begin to wonder if this is a software package or a lifestyle upgrade.

Anecdotally, I was at one point in an informal business relationship with someone who has bipolar disorder and I had a very similar experience when I attempted to formalize our procedures for collecting and recording income. This was in a band (garage bands seemingly not that different from OSS) - <USER3> we're talking a few hundred dollars a month going in to one person's checking account. I thought we'd all feel better if we knew exactly how much money we were making and how it was being spent. Had a similar set of objections from my colleague to this kind of openness.

<comment><USER15> > I was always a little suspicious of the set of libraries he maintains - <USER4> > documentation pages are so slick that I begin to wonder if this is a > software package or a lifestyle upgrade.

Does that mean bad documentation is a _good_ thing? Not sure if serious...

That said, there are so many red flags in this whole story that I can't tell why the whole thing is only being revealed today. It seems that, as the person who was actually working on a crowdfunded feature, OP should have disclosed the potential issues to the community as soon as he became conclusively aware of them. Much of the damage would've been repaired a lot more smoothly, had he done so.

<comment><USER16> I wish I could upvote the half of this comment that questions the wisdom of seeing good docs as a bad signal, and not upvote the part about not disclosing these issues earlier.

This same question comes up when people reveal abuse (of any kind) or other traumatic experiences.

People need time to process some events, and when you're going through some interpersonal trouble, you may think this (is your fault|will go away|is not a big problem|has been solved).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Bipolar can often comorbid with another mental illness. If he has a narcissistic trait, he could have a personality disorder. But I urge the community to stop guessing what he has or doesn't have. Even professionals have hard times diagnosing their own patients. The point, as the author says, is not to circle around mental illness. Let's skip this part of the discussion...

<comment><USER13> He has been pretty transparent with his bipolar disorder. Speaking from experience mania drastically changes your personality.

[https://www.kennethreitz.org/essays/mentalhealtherror-an- exc...](https://www.kennethreitz.org/essays/mentalhealtherror-an-exception- occurred)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Reitz has responded (and subsequently removed his response).

Please un-flag this article so that HN can discuss the controversy/debate surrounding Reitz and his accuser.

</comment><comment><USER19> Out of fairness, I urge everyone to give Kenneth a chance to respond before judging him.

Separately: Humans do their best work when they are collaborating with one another. I have worked in many different organizational formats, but I have never worked in an organization where an excessively negative person did so much good work that it was worth team destruction. When everyone else is doing less work because of one person, you have to remove that person or you raise risk of mission failure.

<comment><USER20> (Throwaway account)

This is not an isolated mistake. There is a consistent pattern of exploitation and toxicity from Kenneth that has been ongoing for many years.

Many people in the community have known about this and worse. This post is courageous for finally calling it out.

It's difficult to call out a person in a position of power like himself, especially one who obsessively engages in abusive tactics yet has an army of people who worship him and make excuses for him.

<comment><USER21> Presumably you have good intentions, but I think it's dangerous for us to have criticisms of one person's name come from other people who won't stand behind it with their own names.

Perhaps there is a whistleblower exception, such as when the person being criticized is powerful, and the whistleblower is vulnerable, but I'm not aware that's the situation here, and whistleblowing involves an investigation (by officials, journalists).

<comment><USER20> You're comparing a hypothetical danger of society gone amok with the practical already-experienced danger of pissing off a systemic abuser with tens of thousands of followers. Even this very HN thread is full of people blindly defending him.

If there is a functioning body of authority that is accepting confidential complaints, then I will happily use my real name. I am not eager to invite abuse just to help the HN community gain some awareness of what has been going on for years.

<comment><USER21> Not society gone amok -- we have institutions, which might be applicable. Is this within the purview of any of the Python organizations, open source funding organizations, donation payment processors, government authorities, etc.?

<comment><USER22> Reitz controls the Requests project. He accepted donations through a money transfer service that disclaims any responsibility. Smith has no grounds to sue Reitz. Government authorities are unlikely to investigate an uninvolved party's concerns about a possible $30,000 fraud with no known victims in their jurisdiction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Reading the link to Reitz's description of his bipolar diagnosis it's very hard not to see what is being described as manipulation, toxicity, narcissism, gaslighting ... as all being rooted in that.

I understand it's tough to feel like a target of somebody's symptoms. I have been there too. But compassion is also needed.

<comment><USER24> Compassion is given.

It lays out his actions, how they are perceived by others, and why the author feels they cannot work with him.

It does not name him evil, and in fact seems disinterested in his private personal motivations.

Shunning someone is a compassionate response to bipolar disorder. Keeping the reasons for shunning someone private harms others, such that "compassionate" becomes "complicit".

The community's replies indicate that many chances have been given, well ahead of when this post was published. What further compassion would you suggest is appropriate here?

ps. It is suggested he has bipolar disorder, but replacing that with "for personal reasons" in no way alters the content of the post.

<comment><USER23> Sorry, my experience says shunning is a very shitty thing to do, as it re- enforces their bad feedback loop.

I am being vague because I don't know what the right answer is. But it is surely a compassionate one, and not one that rushes to judgement. The author is making an attempt at this, sure.

<comment><USER24> Anything will reinforce the feedback loop. That's inherent in the disorder. Either they voluntarily seek help, they are involuntarily committed, or they do not seek help. You can't pressure them. They will rationalize their decision without any regard for the reality you perceive. Eventually, you can only choose either to enable them or to shun them.

<comment><USER23> I think this is very dehumanizing and assumes the worst. I guess I don't have too huge a dataset, but I have seen it be the case that they know something is wrong even if they're not super eager to admit it, and even if they have a strong delusion they won't otherwise let go of. If they are on the fence about it, shunning will tip them over in the wrong direction.

<comment><USER24> It's your right to try and act as a counselor to them, but it's also your right not to. If you are emotionally invested in their welfare for personal reasons, that will absolutely skew your priorities away from shunning. So will the sunk cost fallacy.

The hardest thing to do is to protect yourself when those circumstances are combined, and someone is _this close_ to getting over the hump, and it's infinitely worse when they're family/friend. I'm sorry you had to live through that, no matter what you chose.

<comment><USER23> I have done both things at different times with different people. Lately, after some recent experiences, I err strongly on the side of letting go of myself, abandoning any pretense, and trying to be unconditionally supportive. I would make some attempt to do that even if I were not especially close to the person. A lot of people tell me they don't feel comfortable extending themselves in that way and that is fine, but I have decided it is the ideal we should aspire to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Just a tip (since there sometimes seem to be a pattern here to tl;dr but still comment), please read the whole thing.

My thoughts on this: I consider myself an avid pythonista and have built my career programming in python. Though I've only been watching the community at the sidelines for personal reasons. I think this post took courage to call out someone who while great at code and docs and community interaction, is a flawed human. Kenneth seems to be more about the glam and less about the code these days. Case in point - His attempt to influence the adoption of then half baked pipenv as the officially endorsed tool for pkg management.

</comment><comment><USER26> _If_ all this is to be taken at face value, Kenneth Reitz should be publicly removed from any and all projects. The reported activity (of having secret groups to "work around" the troublesome person) is untenable. Projects should _not_ be afraid to exclude people who are more trouble than they are worth; feeling that one cannot ever exclude people is also known as "Geek social fallacy #1":

[http://www.plausiblydeniable.com/opinion/gsf.html](http://www.plausiblydeniable.com/opinion/gsf.html)

</comment><comment><USER27> Why was this flagged?

<comment><USER28> We have to be neutral. /sarcasm The heavy-handed opinion of HN mods drove me away from this community. It's not about protecting folks or creating a strong community. Creating those requires cultivated judgement not neutrality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Not related to the core point of the article but why does Requests need async support? Why can't it just be good at what it is and if you want to do asyncio you use aiohttp or something else?

Or put differently, why does the author think that "everyone knows it's silly" to have different libraries doing the same thing in different ways?

<comment><USER30> Because Requests makes HTTP much easier to work with, which has dramatically expanded the pool of developers who are comfortable doing that kind of work. When we've had to add some level of concurrency to an HTTP tool, we have serious discussions over whether to swap out Requests, or to just run multiple instances of the tool, especially if it's a tool that only requires concurrency sometimes. This is nothing against aiohttp or others, but Requests is de facto standard library.

<comment><USER31> > Requests is de facto standard library.

I think a valuable discussion that could come from this is to seek to understand why it's "de facto" standard library instead of "de jure" standard library.

I've heard it said that "the standard library is where popular packages go to die", and I think that's very true. I'm very happy that Requests isn't part of the standard library, because that means that updates - including updates that are extremely important to maintaining the health of the library over time - are possible without an entirely separate release of cPython itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> My spidey sense has been acting all funny around requests since I realized it has its own vendored certificate bundle...

<comment><USER33> could you elaborate?

<comment><USER32> Maintaining a certificate bundle is not something to be taken lightly - it's a central root of trust, and is something that should generally be deferred to the system or user and easily configurable globally. As a system administrator if there is an advisory over a certain set of root certificates, I want to be able to address that and remove that from one or maybe two places on a system. Not wonder about every last package that thought to award itself that authority.

Especially the way a lot of python packages are used - as deeply nested and possibly pinned dependencies that maybe _never_ get updated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Whoever he is, despite knowing nothing about him except his unusable pipenv, in the time I have been using python I've somehow become aware through osmosis that this person is not very pleasant. I can only assume that there's no smoke without fire.

<comment><USER35> Curious about the "unusable pipenv" comment. I don't know much about it, but been meaning to try it out due to the publicity it's been getting. Care to elaborate?

<comment><USER22> [https://chriswarrick.com/blog/2018/07/17/pipenv-promises- a-l...](https://chriswarrick.com/blog/2018/07/17/pipenv-promises-a-lot- delivers-very-little/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I don't understand the penny pinching in this post.

My shitty laptop costs pretty close to 3k with all the mods I have on it. My work laptop came it at over 5k. A descent desktop for a developer can cost around $10k. My fancy dream machine is over $20k.

$30k is peanuts. That's one month's wages for a senior dev. I've seen project that cost 50 times as much and the only delivery was a button of a different color.

I have no idea if anything else said there is true or not and I have no interest in looking at more drama.

<comment><USER10> I don't think this is about the _amount_. Allegedly, Reitz:

      1) Knew about a feature a volunteer was working on
      2) Started a fundraiser for the feature
      3) Kept all the money

Maybe $30k is peanute, but I'd have grave concerns if I saw a colleague stealing coins out of a tip jar at the local coffee shop, and the fact it's only a few quarters would honestly make it worse, if anything.

Of course, like you, I have no idea if the underlying accusations are true or not, although I _will_ note that all those archive.org links are going to be hard to explain away. But I don't think "it was only $30k!" is a valid defence here.

<comment><USER37> _" Knew about a feature a volunteer was working on"_

That's not quite right. He knew about a feature being added to a separate dependent library. Further work would be needed to leverage it. The author wasn't promised any money.

<comment><USER15> > That's not quite right. He knew about a feature being added to a separate > dependent library. Further work would be needed to leverage it.

Ah, but was this made clear in the crowdfunding proposal?

<comment><USER37> It's here: [https://web.archive.org/web/20180701201816/https://www.kenne...](https://web.archive.org/web/20180701201816/https://www.kennethreitz.org/requests3)

It is not specific as to how he planned to support async.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > [Mental] Illness does not erase [..] their responsibility for their actions.

Except for when it does, and linking to a lifestyle article on medium as a source to back you up doesn't really hold water.

There might be something wrong, but that's no reason for what ultimately is a very subjective public character assassination piece, no matter how cautious and caring the author claims to be.

</comment><comment><USER37> Personally, I'd have stuck with facts. There's quite a lot of unattributed quotes and conjecture in this, which makes it read more like retaliation.

It does sound like the author has a legit complaint, but the embellishments don't help.

<comment><USER38> > Personally, I'd have stuck with facts. There's quite a lot of unattributed > quotes and conjecture in this

Unattributed quotes are facts, even if they aren't easily verifiable by third parties. But then, most facts someone observes and reports aren't easily verifiable by uninvolved parties. And there is very little conjecture where the factual basis isn't presented so that one can judge whether the conjecture is warranted given the stated basis (of course, generally one must also deicde whether or not to trust the description of facts.)

> which makes it read more like retaliation.

It doesn't read like retaliation to me at all, nor is there any apparent thing to be retaliated for unless you accept the account itself, in which case it's just an account of the facts and not retaliation.

<comment><USER37> Anonymous quotes like _" he is such a fucking narcissist power broker"_ are over the line for me. If you can't stand behind that, it's better left unsaid.

<comment><USER31> I completely agree. I feel like this quote in particular is intended as a personal attack, and that its inclusion dilutes the _actual potentially valuable criticism and suggestions_ to the point that they're basically irrelevant.

That's a shame, because I also believe that all projects like this have room for improvement.

<comment><USER15> > I feel like this quote in particular is intended as a personal attack

In context, it's clearly meant to hint at a purported pattern of problematic behavior, the specific instances of which the author is unwilling to get into, for whatever reason. While gossip is _always_ unsavory to some extent - anonymous gossip all the more so - I think we should be respectful of the author's choice here and not take what they wrote as being _by definition_ a violation of civility norms (as a personal attack would be).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> A trigger warning for gaslighting is something that makes me assume low quality posts. I know it's unwise to judge a book by its cover, but I'm comfortable with discounting an API from its interface.

</comment><comment><USER40> This whole thing seems like focusing on small things and pretending they are big. I think the guys running Requests is eccentric and weird for sure. Weird eccentric guys will do weird and eccentric things. You have to expect that.

The amount of money is ridiculously small. It isn't worth the time to focus on it.

It is too bad the popular library doesn't have a competent maintainer. But at least he hasn't screwed it up.

Maybe someone should just write a replacement with better features and then we can all move on? Sounds like the best solution to me. Probably easier to do than dealing with him or even fighting him.

I guess I wouldn't focus on attacking this guy, it just isn't worth it. Life is short, the stakes are small, and it just isn't worth it.

<comment><USER14> > The amount of money is ridiculously small. It isn't worth the time to focus > on it.

Well, it's donated money... Do you think the people who donated share this view?

<comment><USER31> I donated a substantial amount - and I agree completely. I knew I was paying Kenneth Reitz, and have no concern whatsoever what happens after that. I've gotten several orders of magnitude more benefit from Kenneth and his work than my donation. Hell, for that matter, I've gotten several orders of magnitude more benefit than the total of all donations combined.

<comment><USER41> "I've gotten several orders of magnitude more benefit from Kenneth and his work than my donation."

But he hasn't committed code to requests in years, and I don't see any of the other maintainers popping up to say he's doing good work as a maintainer(which could be non-code contributions). It seems like his contribution is mostly marketing at this point.</comment></comment></comment></comment>