Ask HN: What is your favorite hand-rolled malloc? - <AUTHOR>

In a similar vein to http://graphics.stanford.edu/~seander/bithacks.html, I'm curious to hear the people's choice for memory pool/slab allocators.  My question is a three-parter:
1) Allocation size function: Do you allocate fixed size chunks of N objects at a time?  Exponential increase in chunk size (I believe valgrind does this for its memchecker)?  If exponential, do you also back off exponentially, or linearly?  Something else?
2) Used/free record keeping: Bitfield?  Linked-list?  Other?
3) New allocations: realloc or array/linked list of pointers (I bet I know the answer to this one)?
Some justification would be nice, if you've got the time. <comment><USER2> I have two go-to solutions for malloc. In order of preference:

I use arena allocators when I can get away with it. Arenas are absolutely trivial to code; there's no per-object "free", so allocation is just a pointer bump. You will be surprised at how often you can get away with this; lots of allocation-heavy code paths map to a single operation, transaction, request, file, or what-have-you, and all you're doing is deferring free to the end of it. Using arenas in this scenario basically erases the cost of allocation from your program. It's also dramatically harder to fuck up.

For anything else, when malloc hits the top of my profile, I have a simple freelist library for pools of homogenous allocations, with an embedded linked list of free items.

You could get smarter than an arena, a generic freelist, and malloc, but why?

<comment><USER3> Yeah, arena allocators are great. I wouldn't immediately go and write my own from scratch, though: talloc (<http://talloc.samba.org/>), Postgres, and APR all implement variants on the arena idea that you can copy from liberally.

<comment><USER4> And talloc was derived from halloc (<http://swapped.cc/halloc>), which is a hierarchical allocator. Or rather a _wrapper_ for an existing allocation api.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for mentioning that link -- that's a nice library.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> At various times I've profiled some CPU bound code and thought malloc is taking too much time. This has led me to read up on, and try and develop various usage-optimised allocators. The one lesson I've learnt is that in most cases the standard libc allocator is actually extremely good.

Where I have had big advantages over libc malloc is where the memory allocations have been specific to a thread context. For example, consider a multi-threaded server, where by you could guarantee that only one thread was active in a connection at anyone time. It's quite easy for a single connection to spend 5-10% of it's time in malloc and there are often big globalish locks around general purpose allocators, so it's easy to get get mutex contention which is far worse than the overhead of a sub-efficient allocator.

In such cases you often need to have small bits of memory within the context of a connection. Here I found big benefits my mallocing memory in bug chunks and then simply splitting that up into small sections within a connection specific allocator to avoid any malloc mutex locking.

What I've found is that in order to beat normal malloc, I think you really have to have a specific usage case that restricts something to do better.

</comment><comment><USER6> Slab Allocators, as described by Bonwick ([http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.29.4...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.29.4759)) if I'm allocating lots of same-size objects. Other than that, I mainly stick to the system malloc(), or something specifically optimized for the task at hand.

</comment><comment><USER7> At Google we use tcmalloc which is now open sourced.

A paper about it:

<http://goog-perftools.sourceforge.net/doc/tcmalloc.html>

The code:

<http://code.google.com/p/google-perftools/>

</comment><comment><USER8> It really depends on the application. I just use the default system allocator until it's inadequate for some task, and then I switch to an allocation scheme or heap allocator that's well-suited for that problem.

Can you tell us more about your specific problem? Then we'd be able to give suggestions and help evaluate the options.

<comment><AUTHOR> The current issue is that we allocate and free small structures very, very rapidly. They have very short lifespan, and there are never (in the average case) more than a few around at any one time. After profiling, we saw lots of time spent in malloc, and wrote a fixed-size-slab bitfield-based allocator which gave fantastic performance.

There are some other issues with the same piece of code that need re-working, and we'll end up with a totally different approach by the end, so I don't really have a problem that needs a crowd solution; I was just curious what everyone here thinks.

<comment><USER4> If it's a fixed-size slab, why bother with the bitfield ? It is hard to beat the performance of allocating a block from a free (double-linked) list. Start with an empty list and full slab. Try allocating from the list first, and from the bottom of the slab second. Free into the free list only. If you memory utilization is stable in a long run, then at some point you will be allocating/freeing from the list only.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My recent allocator design is an attempt to address memory fragmentation in Windows XP & Vista. The unique problem I faced was that there was significant amount of code already in place which used C++ new/delete (about 300KLOC) and lot of coding is ongoing at breakneck speed. The allocator is written in C++.

My story:

\- Profiled the code to figure out allocation sizes and number of allocations.

       * Found most objects are 32, 64, 128 bytes and we allocate millions of them.

       * Allocation rate is linear in the sense, rate of allocation is pretty steady within a time window.

       * Life time of these objects are long; Majority of them (99.9%) lasts as long as the application itself.

       * Found couple of large allocations in the range of 64MB to 128MB

Can you tell me yours? With such detail, then perhaps we can figure out what's best for you? :-)

<comment><USER10> Did you try the windows low-fragmentation heap? I've seen it used very successfully.

<comment><USER9> Yes. That didn't work to our satisfaction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Mine: <http://www.cs.vt.edu/~scschnei/streamflow>

We allocated fixed size chunks of N objects, although we didn't have a smooth function for what the chunk size was. The inflection points where we changed our strategy were cache-line size and page size.

Used/free record keeping was a simple table to map an address to the data structure for that address, and we re-used the free memory for an internal list.

That's what we did to get good sequential performance - it was the multithreaded performance we were interested in. Aiming for good multithreaded performance influenced the data structure design to be simpler to reduce synchronization.

Details are in the paper and source code.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm using jemalloc in places where we ran in to trouble with the regular malloc.

It's been a long long time since I rolled my own, so I don't think I'm qualified to answer the rest of your questions except for the second, linked list of pointers of free(d) memory would be the best choice I think, with as an extra an array of such lists grouped by size. (I hope that makes sense...) to speed up the search for a block of the right size.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the regular (gnu, at least) malloc uses bucketed linked lists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> For me the best malloc for me is one I don't have to know anything about - whatever is built in to the scripting language I happen to be using. But I know you aren't playing around with memory allocation for the sheer geekery of it. There are still some problems that can't be solved efficiently with higher level languages. This class of problems I'll gladly leave to you guys.

</comment><comment><USER14> I usually just use the standard GCC implementation. I remember implementing a pretty quick red-black tree version for my systems class. It got me an A, but I don't think I'd use it unless I find myself having serious problems with GCC.

</comment><comment><USER15> tcmalloc: <http://goog-perftools.sourceforge.net/doc/tcmalloc.html> [http://mituzas.lt/2006/12/06/google-perftools-tcmalloc- squid...](http://mituzas.lt/2006/12/06/google-perftools-tcmalloc-squid/)</comment>


How fresh are your gems? - <AUTHOR> http://jonathannen.com/how-fresh-are-your-gems

<comment><USER2> Or just install the prerelease of bundler (`gem install bundler --pre`), which works well enough that Heroku uses it for slug compilation, and run:

      bundle outdated

<comment><AUTHOR> I mistakenly thought that was a deprecated feature, but I've taken a look. Not getting the same results at the moment (1.1 won't let me update at all at the moment), but I'll see if I can merge/collaborate. Thanks for the pointer.

<comment><USER3> That also confused me. It is in the docs but not in the code yet (see: <https://github.com/carlhuda/bundler/issues/1401> )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's a cool site here <http://www.bundlewatcher.com/> that can read your bundle definition and provides a RSS feed of updates to all your gems.

I have all my gems locked on specific versions to avoid surprises, and this site shows me when there are updates and I can decide to update my bundle to use the updates.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - That looks pretty interesting. I'll give it a shot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thanks! I was planning to do this, but now I can just use it.

</comment><comment><USER6> hmm it just throws an error for me when I call gemfresh

<comment><AUTHOR> Happy to take a look - Can you raise an issue at: <https://github.com/jonathannen/gemfresh/issues>

If you can, include the stack and the output of `gem environment`. Plus (if they are public) the links to the Gemfile and Gemfile.lock.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is this an issue for people?

I have bundle update as a part of my build/release process, if things break, I either update, or freeze the version.

How do other people deal with this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Doesn't keep me up at night, but it was something I was doing manually and I thought better off scripted. Even with fuzzy/handwave "~> 1.1.1" specifications you can end up off the most current version. I've got a handful of projects on the go and as a rule I don't like to let them go stale.

<comment><USER7> but, just simply leaving the version number blank, "bundle update" will get the latest. correct?

<comment><USER8> Yes, that's correct.

Personally I always assign the working version numbers to the Gemfile. What happens in say a years time when you're meant to come back and maintain the site? New versions could mean a drastically broken system and you won't be maintaining a contracts codebase if you are not getting paid to do so.

<comment><USER7> The .lock file will have the versions that are currently bundled, so you can always check what versions are bundled there. But I guess that requires a bit of messing around, where as what you do seems quite straight forward.

<comment><USER8> Yes but if the repository is cloned with a lock file, when you bundle install, the lock file is then updated with your new gem versions if you have not specified a specific gem version number.

<comment><USER7> not to labor the point. But the lock file is in the repo, it doesn't matter if it's updated, there is a version in the repo.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Facebook overrides fact-checks when climate science is "opinion" - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/07/facebook-overrides-fact-checks-when-climate-science-is-opinion/ <comment><USER2> I remember being very concerned that the fact checkers wouldn't be operating in a vacuum and we'd have a bunch of facebook execs being arbiters of truth.

And that appears to be exactly what has happened. This is terrifying. A handful of mainstream publications and a bunch of basically unknown facebook folks are now the censors. We've already seen well known EFF activists rated untrue for their arguments against warrantless surveillance, and now the censors already can't agree on climate change. I've seen arguments about Confederate generals rated as false because of modern news events - in ways that disagree with well tenured academic historians.

We seem doomed in this regard.

<comment><USER3> Yup. This is why I actually agree with Zuckerberg on his "no censorship" approach.

He's smart enough to recognize that taking on the burden of what should be censored and what shouldn't is a quagmire he'd prefer to avoid. No matter how "good" your filters are, you're going to piss off a massive group of customers, despite all the effort.

It's just a massive time sink with little to no benefit.

"The only way to win is to not play at all."

<comment><USER4> I think it's fine for Facebook to opt out of fact-checking, as long as they also opt out of algorithmic syndication of content.

If my feed is going to have posts shared by others (even non-friends) or, worse, op-eds in it, then FB is vouching for whatever I see. If they share a link with 50 million people, they're certainly responsible for the consequences.

Worse is the ad side, where Facebook wants to continue to profit from well- funded wars against science while still claiming to be neutral.

If you get paid to broadcast a message and then broadcast it, you are not neutral.

<comment><USER5> How does this argument apply to Google? When you search something e.g. is climate change real, Google ranks the results algorithmically. If Google doesn't do fact checking, are they liable for false statements?

<comment><USER6> It applies just as much because it is a fundamentally technically illiterate argument. It already ignores that the whole point of the algorithim is to prioritize. In this case just as much means "none" for both because it is asking for an outright contradiction to - provide prioritization without any bias. Or bias without bias. Nonsensical stupidity. The mobster with a cudgel making vague threats rhetoric is just another form of the stupid and wrong meme of service and platform being mutually excluse.

I personally try to do my part by stomping on this dumb sentiment like a cockroach whenever it pops up.

<comment><USER7> I disagree. The "algorithm" is fundamentally an optimization problem and companies get to choose what the fitness function for each algorithm is. Facebook chooses "engagement". This is not an accident nor some fundamental property of math. It's a product decision made by a human. One that can be changed.

And there _is_ a fundamental difference between Google's algorithm and Facebook's: control. Google requires user input through search, Facebook decides what shows up when you open the app/site based on an algorithmic feed. In one case the user has some idea that what they're doing is interacting with an algorithm and they can change their search terms if they're not satisfied with the results, in the other the algorithm is in the background making decisions without making itself obvious.

<comment><USER8> There is an implicit search on Facebook though, namely the personal information you've entered into your profile and your relationships.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What a disgustingly terrible article. Never explains what precise facts Facebook is taking into consideration as opinion, just throws around political leanings and pointlessly polarizes it as "climate scientists" vs "climate change deniers".

This is the kind of journalism that only serves to divide the people even further by empowering their tribalism instead of trying to discuss the matter at hand.

<comment><USER10> More insidiously, it's another drumbeat for the idea that we need classical media gate keepers to invade people's personal space and "correct" any wrong- think. Very dangerous and unwelcome idea for a free society. The media has no valid purpose for having the power to amend private citizens conversations, we wouldn't tolerate at a bar and we shouldn't on our personal web space.

<comment><USER11> The greatest trick the devil ever pulled is making you think he doesn't exist.

Even without active censorship, Facebook very much is a gate keeper invading your personal space. It's just rather than building _up_ walls around you, it's merely giving you a shovel and showering you with dopamine bursts every time you dig yourself _down_ into your own personal hole. The end effect is the same, though -- all you hear is echos bouncing off walls around you. You just think the echos are only your own.

I agree a free society shouldn't tolerate amending private citizen's conversation. However, that comes with the responsibility of recognizing the more insidious ways of doing that, such as when your attention has been hijacked with industrialized behavioral profiling. The "private citizen conversations" you hear bouncing off your walls are being algorithmically seeded by whatever brings in the most dollars the most efficiently. That's not a truly free society, that's just a very subtle form of mass indoctrination.

The devil already exists out there whether you think he does or not. And when you play with the devil, the only winning move is to not play his game.

<comment><USER6> The real hillariously devious move is the devil does not really exist as a literal thing. Yet he causes people to carry out the agenda by not only scapegoating it for their selfish desires but from countereffective attempts to fight the devil. If he was real it would be easier to learn and recognize an actual bad actor and their mechanisms. That can't be done when it is fake. Attempts to fight are always a wild goose chase when building something good is the only actual way.

"The secret to my success is that I do not really exist."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Would be nice to know what the actual claims are. I'm not at all a climate change denialist, but some of the things claimed by people trying to raise awareness for climate change are outright false, or at least extremely unlikely, e.g. humans almost certainly aren't going to go extinct because of climate change. But it can still be catastrophic at a society level.

It's a shame the issue is so polarized, because while the claims that the earth is warming and that the warming is at least in part caused by c02 and other forms of pollution are solid, some of the assumptions going into the models are questionable and can be legitimately debated.

<comment><USER13> The problem is there are three groups: climate deniers, climate alarmists, and climate realists. The first two are _much_ louder than the third, so the debate quickly turns into an extremist yelling match full of misinformation in the public arena. Most people never settle into the minority middle ground of climate realist, because it can be difficult to muddle through the extremist views to get to the truth. And even if you do, the majority of people will just make it a point to tell you how wrong you are anyway.

<comment><USER14> This trichotomy is not really helpful.

Here's a more helpful one: people who actually have expertise and peer- reviewed publications, people who at least pay attention to the above, and everyone else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This problem was created by social media by choosing which articles to show in your news feed based on engagement. That is, how much you'll emotionally react to it.

The solution is not to add another layer of "fact checking". That's super dubious.

Get rid of what got us here.

News feeds organized by engagement are evil. Dismantling them would solve both the production and consumption of emotion driven information.

<comment><USER16> Traditional news media is also organized by engagement: an entire department is responsible for picking the home page of a newspaper and importance of each story.

The major publications do a better job at not sensationalizing everything, but this has been a problem since 1890 at least: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism)

That social media naturally tends to become a tabloid magazine may be more a reflection on readers than the editor (whether human or machine).

<comment><USER15> I agree. That's a problem, too.

The reason it became so pronounced is that social media got very good at it and then taught the lesson to traditional media. They, too, now use metrics of engagement to choose what they show.

It is true also that it is a weakness of people. But there are other weaknesses that we regulate in the interest of a healthy society.

I'm not a fan of regulation but a general awareness of the core issue would go a long way towards a solution.

Right now, the talk about the issue seems misdirected. I can only see the proposed solutions putting immense power of controlling narrative in a few hands.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Facebook warned me yesterday when sharing a satire article that the article was over a year old and the facts may not longer be current.

Thank you for protecting me Facebook gosh darnit!

<comment><USER18> Heh, satire can get stale if overtaken by reality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't understand why it's Facebook's role to teach people. Maybe if regulations were instead imposed on school curriculums we wouldn't have dumb adults arguing about climate change, flat earth or mask wearing. Combat issues at the root not the fruit.

<comment><USER20> Facebook endumbens people. It's there front and center of the stupidification process, whether it wants to be or not. And it wants to be: it's aware that the mechanisms it uses to attract eyeballs (and thus revenue) favor lies and propaganda over facts. Facts are boring. Proof that your ideological enemies are out to get you is endlessly fascinating.

They want to have it both ways, to remain sticky but without having the world become a worse place for it. I'm sure they'd love it if schools didn't also contribute to the increasing gullibility of the US, but that's not something they can control. Their own feeds, by contrast, is something they have power over.

<comment><USER21> > Facebook endumbens people. It's there front and center of the > stupidification process, whether it wants to be or not.

Facebook isn't making anyone dumb. They were already dumb; you just didn't notice before.

<comment><USER20> You're correct that they were already dumb, but it does actively remove knowledge from their heads and replaces it with harder-to-budge falsehoods. That sclerosis of the neurons makes them act like people even dumber than their natural state of stupefaction.

<comment><USER8> With Facebook there is at least a chance, however minuscule, that you are exposed to different ideas. With media like Fox News, it's straight out propaganda. This is what's causing the polarization; the conspiracy theories and extremism have to come from somewhere. Why go after the symptom and not the cause?

<comment><USER20> The cause is all mixed up in cause and effect. Fox News exists because there are people who want it. It amplifies what they believe and gradually pushes them to believe more extreme forms of it, but it's just one part of a huge ecosystem -- politicians, right-wing radio, religious leaders, etc. The common factor all of those have is the population.

Facebook doesn't have control of any of those things. The only thing it can control is itself. But it can at least reduce its own part in the way the people and the media perform for each other to be even more extreme. And Facebook is in a rare (if not unique) position to be directly in front of that population: it can't make Fox News go away, but it can put a flag in front of Fox News stories.

The "cause" is ultimately the individuals, not the media or the politicians or the wealthy think-tank funders. They don't have mind control. All they can do is appeal to people with what they already want to believe and amplify it -- a process that's been going on for at least four decades. Reversing it will take at least as long. I don't expect FB to solve it, but I do think it's a good idea for them to not allow themselves to be part of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> According to the piece, the fact checkers claimed an opinion piece was false because all of the facts in it were cherry picked:

"The researchers found that the post by the CO2 Coalition was based on cherry- picked information to mislead readers into thinking climate science models are wrong about global warming."

This is not a logical argument. Facts are correct or incorrect, whether they're cherrypicked or not.

<comment><USER23> cherry picking truths and listing them out of context (i.e. wildfire reduction without mentioning land usage changed) may not be fake news, but it definitely smells like propaganda

not defending Facebook actions, which are wrong for a different set of motives detached from the actual article quality, but this isn't the censorship smoking gun people want it to be

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Question: facebook as a platform is not liable for information it contains. However if Facebook would publish fact checking info, that is wrong or missleading, are they liable?

Could I sue facebook if their "facts" were proven wrong, and cause me damage?

<comment><USER25> > Could I sue facebook if their "facts" were proven wrong, and cause me > damage?

Per the landmark ruling NYTimes v Sullivan — no, you'd probably lose that case.

<comment><USER26> This case seems to apply to public officials, I assume it would be different for private citizens?

<comment><USER25> The case was specifically about a full page ad that the New York Times had taken out that contained a number of factual inaccuracies, such as the number of times King had been arrested during the protests, what song the protesters had sung, and whether or not students had been expelled for participating.

GP asked:

> facebook as a platform is not liable for information it contains. However if > Facebook would publish fact checking info, that is wrong or missleading, are > they liable?

> Could I sue facebook if their "facts" were proven wrong, and cause me damage

NYTimes v Sullivan held that unless the "facts" proven wrong are specifically about a private individual, you can't sue for damages if a newspaper publishes information that are factually incorrect. If the NYTimes Editorial Board published an article that claimed that the sky is green, you can't sue them for that. More practically, if the NYTimes Editorial Board published an article that "climate change isn't real", you can't sue them for that either.

Likewise, if Facebook published fact checking info that's proven wrong or misleading, they won't be held liable unless the fact checking info directly defames a private individual.

Also note that this is US-centric. Outside of the US, this kind of publisher speech protection doesn't exist, and such nations can cause legal problems for Facebook. Either FB would have to hide the contents from citizens of those nations, or stop operating there altogether.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm not really sure what people expected from Facebook here.

The oldest of newspapers struggle with these kinds of judgements (until they just decide to stop caring and cater to a certain political side).

It is not reasonable to expect Facebook to get it right with any consistency, if there even is a definitive correct answer to begin with.

<comment><USER28> Consistency is the word here.

Facebook has a policy that they put in place that's fairly reasonable, they have outside fact-checkers they acknowledge as experts. They deliberately set aside the mechanism _they put in place_ to avoid this kind of nonsense.

It is entirely reasonable to expect Facebook to apply the policy that they themselves created in order to avoid having to make these kind of calls.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Or we could get rid of Democracy and back to kingship/dictatorship. /s

But on a serious note. It seems that the requirement of functioning Democracy is under the assumption that the majority is educated and know what is good for them. Information warfare like this spells disaster for Democracy.

</comment><comment><USER30> Stop using someone else's domain and server space to act like that is where you deserve unhindered free speech. I'm so tired of hearing the bitching about Facebook or Twitter on HN lately. The future of the web will be decentralized. It never made sense to use your real identity and then go and post totally private conversations, unencrypted, on someone else's machines! Create your personally hosted cheap blog and post your thoughts there, where YOU control them. I think Facebook should start charging like $50/month to use it so it would wake everyone up to the simple fact it isn't your service. It isn't your server. You are choosing to be moderated in your "private" conversations, because you choose to do so. We should have millions of personal websites and blogs that are solely controlled by the individual but instead, millions of people flock to private web servers, for free, and act like they own it!Absurd.

</comment><comment><USER31> I think the problem with Facebook and similar platforms is that they tend to merge everything into one stream. You see news, opinion, humor, satire, and ads all in one continuous feed, often not labeled as to which type it is (except ads usually say "sponsored" or something like that).

Furthermore, they are designed to get you to consume as much of this stream as possible. They would rather have you shallowly engage 120 article in an hour than deeply delve into 2 articles.

(In fact, their stupid system actually penalizes you for going too deeply into an article, but I'll save the rant that would follow if I went into detail on that for another time...)

This results in their readers often failing at telling news, opinion, humor, etc., apart.

They should probably separate stuff out, like newspapers and magazines usually do. Then fact check everything in news, and perhaps have a disclaimer in the opinion section clearly stating that the articles are the opinions of their authors and have specifically not been fact checked.

<comment><USER32> This was Neil Postman's critique of (pre-Facebook, pre-WWW) media in _Amusing Ourselves to Death_ , originally published in 1987.

[https://www.worldcat.org/title/amusing-ourselves-to-death- pu...](https://www.worldcat.org/title/amusing-ourselves-to-death-public- discourse-in-the-age-of-show-business/oclc/1171114784)

The underlying criticism of news media is rather older.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> The bottom line is that much of the climate science is nothing more than conjecture and you can get as mad about it as you like, and call it "misinformation" all you like. There is no evidence. Several million years ago we can tell that ppm levels of CO2 were over 1,000 and could climb higher than that. Today, we are way lower in comparison, and we face more pollution than anything. I find often times that people like to argue and conflate pollution with global warming. We have evidence of pollution. We don't have evidence that the poles shifting and climate shifting is actually man made, or that it WILL factually be detrimental. The planet is still here and spinning although it's seen CO2 atmospheric levels over 1200 ppm/ppb in past centuries, prior to industrialization. So much drama is involved in these tightly held opinions based in conjecture.

</comment><comment><USER33> Facebook is arbitraging manpower here.

Firstly, this article is about American issues, so it's only the America issue "lens" that is being used to focus on issues. These same and similar issues must exist for every other country, many of whom have 0 ability to fund and afford individuals who can dedicate their time and lives to fact checking their Local power structures or narratives.

Secondly, even the constrained solution/issue space is too deep for Facebook to effectively police - leaving aside the philosophical arguments.

Removing statements which say "all minority people need to die" is easy,

Removing opinion pieces ? Suppose Kanye says he doesn't believe in vaccines and that is his opinion. Remove ? Keep?

Is it noteworthy because a huge personality said it ? What about people who are B list celebrities. Or C list ?

What about an article which says "we find that the science on climate change makes claims that are not supported entirely by the data, here is why and here is research." -

Now you need specialistS or have access to a network of diagnosticians who can tell you whether complex pieces of content are Trojans or not.

Facebook and social media enterprises are paying the price of the hollowing out of editorial boards. All those local newspapers and newsrooms where stuff gets filtered - that is the likely amount of (Skilled) manpower Facebook needs to employ to handle this.

This is where the social media model totally collapses - you can have issues with climate denial, fake medicine, voter suppression etc. - and sub divisions of these problem.

There's never a shortage of problems and a fractal level of complexity.

How do you ever satisfy the verification needs at this point?

Therefore social networks will always have massive numbers of bad actors, subterranean cults, hidden mind viruses infecting armies of people, propaganda and legions of victims.

This isn't an idle question - the problems here are about the nature of how humans structure Their networks, verify information and build trust.

Facebook or any social network will always fail at this, unless they see this as what it really is - time to make editorial decisions on content on the network at scale.

The Silicon Valley hey day ideal of free speech is dead. We're now in a rear guard action to ring fence people from infectious and malicious ideas.

If you think this is a step too far, please remember that America has people actively fighting wearing face masks during the greatest modern Pandemic.

<comment><USER28> > Removing an article which says ...

This is no different from removing an article which says you shouldn't use vaccines because they are ineffective and cause Autism.

When the _facts_ which are used to back the opinion are false, then the factual portions of that opinion piece are subject to fact checking. Otherwise, there is zero point to having Fact checkers or any sort of moderation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> When facebook hired the daily wire to be part of its "truth" everyone knew is was going to be trash.

</comment><comment><USER35> maybe this is because Zuck flies between Hawaii and SF about 2 times every month? (just guessing based on his freckle count)

</comment><comment><USER36> If they didn't allow opinions, then the platform is no longer a discussion platform.

<comment><USER37> It was never a question, if they allow opinions, or don't, but always what are you allowed to publish on their platform.

And as in any forum, private or public, there are restrictions in place. The question is only, which. If it no restrictions where in place, then it wouldn't be longer a discussion platform either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Facebook has devolved into the Karen social network.

</comment><comment><USER22> According to the Ars piece, the outsourced fact checkers claimed an opinion piece was false because all of the facts in it were cherry picked:

"The researchers found that the post by the CO2 Coalition was based on cherry- picked information to mislead readers into thinking climate science models are wrong about global warming."

This is not a logical argument. Facts are correct or incorrect, whether they're cherrypicked or not.

</comment><comment><USER39> But we don't want to be the arbiters of truth!

Has this company ever been honest about anything in its entire history? Do any of the execs have mirrors in their houses so they have to look at who they are every now and then?

<comment><USER40> First sentence of the second paragraph:

> _Facebook does not employ fact-checkers directly but rather works with a > range of third-party organizations to rate how true or false content shared > in categories is._

The checker in the particular incident in question was Climate Feedback. The article doesn't have a link to the original Daily Wire article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Consider the outrageous claim that Tucker Carlson made today (that NYT was "planning" to dox him). Was it true? Did he just cleverly "pre-empt" it? Or did he intentionally create a story to teach a lesson to the NYT reporters?

Things are made much murkier when you then find out that, yes, indeed, he was actually doxxed before once. And people did actually show up to his house to protest. And even more amazingly, the first person account of this "witness" actually makes you believe if Tucker has a point. Why did they go to his house at night? And how can anyone, from the inside of a house, distinguish "firm knocking" vs trying to break down the door. Will you be calm enough and just say "Oh.. I thought he was going to break it. But it was just a firm knock, now that I think about it. Phew.. "? And why in fuck's name would you actually spray paint anything on Tucker's property? He is going to refer to it as vandalism, because if someone came to your house and peed on the front door, that's exactly how you would refer to it too. Or are you instead going to say "Well, it's just some organic material, it can always be wiped off"?

[https://archive.thinkprogress.org/i-was-at-the-protest- outsi...](https://archive.thinkprogress.org/i-was-at-the-protest-outside- tucker-carlsons-house-heres-what-actually-happened-665c2dc0cb67/)

At this point, there isn't actually any reason to believe one side over the other anymore. It is just complete hysterics on both sides.

<comment><USER42> > Consider the outrageous claim

Is it really outrageous when NYT has previously threatened to dox people? Most recently the owner of Slate Star Codex, which recieved a lot of attention on HN.

[https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/22/nyt-is-threatening- my-...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/22/nyt-is-threatening-my-safety-by- revealing-my-real-name-so-i-am-deleting-the-blog/)

<comment><USER6> Yes, because you can't dox known public figures by definition. Donald Trump resides in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Look I just doxxed the president!

To claim knowingly claim something impossible by definition is outragous.

<comment><USER42> Just because Tucker is a public figure doesn't mean his private residence needs to be publicized by the NYT. Regardless, the rest of his family who live with him aren't public figures.

Willfully conflating the White House and Tucker's house is disingenuous.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


8 Elements That Make A Great SaaS Website - <AUTHOR> http://blog.kissmetrics.com/8-saas-elements/

<comment><USER2> Nice, succinct article and good examples. Very helpful.</comment>


The Trapper Keeper (2017) - <AUTHOR> http://mentalfloss.com/article/52726/history-trapper-keeper <comment><USER2> This line is curious:

> _Folders with vertical pockets, called PeeChees (as in, peachy keen), had > been around since the 1940s and were sold on the West Coast, but they had > never made the leap across the Rockies—so Crutchfield was doubtful. "I said, > 'They only sell on the West Coast, and what's the real benefit of a vertical > pocket?'"_

I know a lot of products are regional, but how can these things stay confined to one side of the country for decades?

I had Trapper Keepers in elementary and junior high school. When I started high school, I switched to 3 or 4 PeeChee folders duct taped together as a makeshift binder. It was a cheap way to signal how much "I didn't care."

<comment><USER3> National distribution in the U.S. is an immense affair. Beyond the expense of advertising in local markets, it took the intensive development of several layers of massive infrastructure projects before we've arrived at today's level of "effortless" distribution. The principle problem is that the United States has no domestic East-West waterway option. No matter how good your rail and road shipping system is (and the U.S. has among the best in the world for freight), you can fit a lot of train's worth of goods into a single big container ship. Rail also only gets you so far, as you need local trucking links, large inter-modal warehouses and so-on.

What really happened was the rise of the trucking industry in the late 70s and early 80s coinciding with the rise of big-box stores like Walmart. This built all of the secondary and tertiary infrastructure -- and capacity -- to move whatever stuff you wanted wherever you wanted, pretty cheaply.

However, there's also two major East-West barriers in the U.S., the Mississippi river, which has largely been overcome but was a major geographic barrier in an earlier age, and the Rockies, which both involve a large energy cost to get over, but also have unreliable roads in certain areas during large parts of the year.

Many many large brands exist only on one side of their respective barriers or the other. Yuengling beers for example, more or less don't go any further than the Mississippi, while Dreyers ice cream more or less go no further than the Western Rockies.

<comment><USER4> It's interesting you mention Yuengling beers. I grew up in Michigan and never heard of them. I was visiting a friend in Pennsylvania over the new years and I was introduced to this beer as one of the oldest breweries in Pennsylvania. Everyone was excited that they were were now in more areas. Coming from just a short distance away in Michigan I have never heard of them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This topic has made me kind of interested in other regional/national school supply items. I remember my Trapper Keeper very fondly and spent quite a bit of time picking mine out when I was a child. I also grew up during the heydey of the metal lunchbox [1]

I also went to school in an area and time when there was a large influx of South Korean immigrants and I remember eyeing their incredibly cool pencil cases with quite a bit of jealousy [2]. An incredible marketing opportunity that never seemed to quite make it to the U.S. market.

What kind of ubiquitous local market school supplies were popular in other places?

1 - [https://www.ebay.com/itm/PAC-MAN-vintage-metal- lunchbox-/222...](https://www.ebay.com/itm/PAC-MAN-vintage-metal- lunchbox-/222179820263) 2 - [https://www.ebay.com/itm/Transformers-Students- Multifunction...](https://www.ebay.com/itm/Transformers-Students- Multifunction-Stationery-Pencil-Case-Korean-Box-Cool-/163244930362)

<comment><USER5> I'm guessing the pencil case was more like this one, with a thermometer and a sleek black case: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwdwoSkKdLw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwdwoSkKdLw)

Several of my kindergarten classmates got them, after one of them had visited their family in Japan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> My memory of the Trapper Keeper is that it wasn't very durable and you'd be lucky if it made it through the school year. The flap was cheap and thin plastic that would tear easily. The plastic rings were also easily broken. I think I ended up just using the folders by themselves.

<comment><USER7> plastic rings?

<comment><USER6> The binder mechanism including the binder rings were plastic:

[https://tedium.imgix.net/2018/01/ktyhjn3jkmcetsgini69.jpg](https://tedium.imgix.net/2018/01/ktyhjn3jkmcetsgini69.jpg)

<comment><USER7> So they were. I guess I was remembering off-brand trapper keepers with metal rings

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I remember having a trapper keeper. I don't think I noticed that the logo font seems to be the same as for the apple //e though.

<comment><USER9> Motter Tektura. Also used by Reebok shoes.

[https://fontsinuse.com/typefaces/10214/motter- tektura](https://fontsinuse.com/typefaces/10214/motter-tektura)

[https://gizmodo.com/why-youve-never-heard-of-this- typeface-t...](https://gizmodo.com/why-youve-never-heard-of-this-typeface- that-defined-the-1602584135)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I recently excavated my much loved Trapper Keeper from 8th grade (circa 1990) and it was peak random design with zebra stripes, polka dots, colors everywhere. I actually used it for a little while because the physical quality of the product was still amazing. Good solid feel, great bendable binding, plastic coating on the outside to be rainproof, pockets, zippers and all the interior folders were uniquely designed as well. Yes, they won through shiny design for kids, social signalling and marketing, but the form factor really was much better than alternatives, too.

Of course, after nearly 30 years in a closet my Trapper Keeper's plastic and rubber bits were ready to give up the ghost and it started to disintegrate after a bit of use. But I would love to get another one, just as it was.

</comment><comment><USER11> Please explain this trapper keeper. It looks like a re-usable enveloppe for school stuff?

<comment><USER12> It's the brand name for the original 3-ring binder. The paper company Mead sold them along with 3-hole punched notebooks so that you could store and swap out multiple notebooks.

It was ultimately a way of selling more paper. It was hugely successful and is the reason 3-hole punches and 3-ring binders exist today.

<comment><USER13> The Trapper Keeper came out after I graduated high school. But we had 3-ring binders before that - they were fabric covered (like a cheap denim) and had metal rings which made a loud snap when you closed them. They had good & bad aspects - you could draw on the fabric and customize your binder (something the Trapper Keeper couldn't do until they allowed an artwork insert years later). And bad: the metal rings would get bent and not meet up anymore so your papers would fall out.

So far as customization - the thing we'd do with textbooks is cover them in paper grocery bag material so you'd have something to draw on, as well as protect the book so you wouldn't be charged when you returned it.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: ReactPWA v2 boilerplate built with PawJS, a pluggable framework - <AUTHOR> https://new.reactpwa.com <comment><USER2> For people who want to know about PawJS, the GitHub link to its repo is: [https://github.com/atyantik/pawjs](https://github.com/atyantik/pawjs)</comment>


Twilio Searching for "Superstar" Web Developer - <AUTHOR> http://www.onethirdofmylife.com/one-third-of-my-life/2010/05/be-a-web-developer-at-twilio.html

<comment><USER2> _Please_ stop using hyperbole to describe job candidates. I'm begging you.</comment>


NeuralStyler AI released -Turn your videos into art - <AUTHOR> http://neuralstyler.com/downloads.html <comment><USER2> [http://neuralstyler.com/downloads.html](http://neuralstyler.com/downloads.html) Windows version coming soon

</comment><comment><USER3> Landing page: [http://neuralstyler.com/index.html](http://neuralstyler.com/index.html)</comment>


Udacity Launches the "Self-Driving Car Engineer Nanodegree" - <AUTHOR> https://www.udacity.com/course/self-driving-car-engineer-nanodegree--nd013 <comment><AUTHOR> Corresponding [Reddit discussion]([https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/4tsi2n/uda...](https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/4tsi2n/udacity_selfdriving_car_engineer_nanodegree_just/)) and [Medium post]([https://medium.com/self-driving-cars/udacitys-self- driving-c...](https://medium.com/self-driving-cars/udacitys-self-driving-car- nanodegree-6f34f18d1704#.atljrnxzi))

</comment><comment><USER2> Is there a detailed curriculum? I don't see any on the udacity page.</comment>


The World May Have Too Much Food - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-31/the-world-may-have-too-much-food <comment><USER2> "The obesity rate doubled" means literally nothing because "obesity" is a threshold. Under the right circumstances a 0.01% increase in weightlifting could lead to a 1000x increase in the "obesity rate".

Makes for a great headline though. And it's a great marketing technique. Want to make your numbers seem arbitrarily fast growing? Find a threshold for engagement that lots of people are moving back and forth across and wait for an up month.

</comment><comment><USER3> Despite the world having too much food, there are still many people who don't have enough food to eat or are forced to eat very basic diets.

<comment><USER4> It's because the problem isn't growing food, it's distributing it efficiently.</comment></comment>


The Structure of "Unstructured" Decision Processes (1976) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/irol/97/97664/reports/Mintzberg.pdf <comment><USER2> See also: _The Tyranny of Structurelessness_ [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessne...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessness)

"this apparent lack of structure too often disguised an informal, unacknowledged and unaccountable leadership that was all the more pernicious because its very existence was denied."

Or in Software, the _Big Ball of Mud_ architecture.

You _always_ get some sort of structure. The question is whether you get any say in what that structure will be.

<comment><USER3> Yes, that's a problem. The process tends to yield to the loudest voice in the room, or something like that.

The military has the tradition that, when officers discuss a plan of action, the most junior officers speak first. This is to avoid everybody agreeing with the boss.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Decision analysis is the area which deals with this kind of problems: how to structure your decision processes</comment>


On NSA disclosures, has Glenn Greenwald become something other than a reporter? - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/on-nsa-disclosures-has-glenn-greenwald-become-something-other-than-a-reporter/2013/06/23/c6e65be4-dc47-11e2-9218-bc2ac7cd44e2_story.html?tid=rssfeed

<comment><USER2> Jay Rosen on Greenwald's style of reporting:

>The professional stance that proscribes all political commitments and discourages journalists from having a clear view or taking a firm position on matters in dispute (you can call it objectivity, if you like, or viewlessness, which I like better) is one way of doing good work. A very different professional stance, where the conclusions that you come to by staring at the facts and thinking through the issues serve to identify your journalism… this is another way of doing good work.

>They are both valid. They are both standard. (And "traditional.") They are both major league. Greenwald operates in the second fashion, but the language we have for this style — calling him a blogger or an advocate, hoping that these shorthands convey what's different about him — is not very illuminating. "Blurring the line between opinion pieces and straight reporting…" is not very illuminating.

"Politics: none", the first kind of journalism, is a _form of persuasion_ that tries to signal credibility by refraining from taking a view so far as is possible. "Politics: some" is a form of persuasion where you are transparent about your commitments and your judgments of the facts. These _both_ have their advantages, neither is more inherently "journalistic" than the other.

[http://pressthink.org/2013/06/politics-some-politics-none- tw...](http://pressthink.org/2013/06/politics-some-politics-none-two-ways-to- excel-in-political-journalism-neither-dominates/)

<comment><USER3> As Camus said: "le goût de la vérité n'empêche pas la prise de parti" \- (the taste for truth does not stop you from having an opinion). I don't understand why this is supposed to be so controversial: newspapers have had opinions for centuries!

<comment><USER4> Presentation of opinion as fact, and selection of a set of facts that support your opinion, with an accompanying omission of those that don't, is controversial.

<comment><USER5> Selecting facts and presenting opinions while pretending not to have them is worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ah, the smear begins.

If you don't toe the line on the Washington Consensus you're not a 'journalist', you're an 'activist'.

Hint: 'objectively' reporting on only the approved message coming out of the government isn't objective _at all_. I'd take this as yet another warning sign (if more were needed) that mainstream newspaper journalism in America is deeply unhealthy; who needs the likes of Pravda, Izvestia, or TASS if the nominally 'free' press is happy to bend over and distribute your propaganda voluntarily?

<comment><USER7> Been waiting for it, going to see the Administrations sycophants in the press line up and declare those who don't follow the approved script of somehow being in cahoots with those they report on.

First it was going after the Fox reporter, after all he worked for FOXS NEWS, now we got a few more targets because the government was caught red handed and worse, looks inept in grabbing a single person.

Should be fun to see who sides with who.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You can't make this stuff up. Now journalists are complaining that this "blogger" (as the NYTimes called him) has blown open a huge story that was under their noses the whole time.

<comment><USER8> But if they reported on it they might have lost their access!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This article is really troubling because there is an understated assumption that 'freedom of the press' is a special right afforded to a class of people - the fourth estate. This is a corruption of the original meaning of the first amendment, bolstered by our american language which refers to the journalistic vocation as 'the press'. The original meaning, rather, is quite literal. The freedom of the press is the freedom _for anyone_ to use technology to disseminate factual information, especially any factual information which is news (time-dependent).

Scary.

<comment><USER10> Exactly.

I'm curious how people today would characterize Thomas Paine, were we to zap them back in time to report on the founding of the US. I'm sure they would all be toeing the King's line and denouncing people like Paine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Other reporters, in thrall to the consensus of the ruling classes, are experiencing cognitive dissonance when faced with someone this effective and yet so heedless of the red lines.

</comment><comment><USER12> This article just shows how compromised the Washington Post is. This is the biggest news story of the year -- a deliberate subversion of the constitution -- and they are clutching their pearls because he is acting like it matters.

<comment><USER13> Imagine if this were a Russian or Chinese story of this magnitude - isn't this how its press would report the story? Wouldn't we be surprised if the press did not focus on the circus of the affair and failings of the accusers rather than the abusive power of the state.

Would not the US press mock the complete blurring of state propaganda and journalistic ethics?

This is a travesty for an institution that holds a constitutional responsibility as a check on the state. Our press has mostly turned into a deliberate pun - The Peoples Magazine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is dumb. Glenn Greenwald's politics aren't the problem, his wild interpretation of the PRISM slides is the problem. He made a serious substantive error based on nothing. Being a reporter is a position of trust- and you probably can't trust him.

<comment><USER15> Good thing you can read, apply your critical thinking skills, and make up your own mind then. Itsn't it?

<comment><USER16> I think this diagram I created for you may clarify things: [http://i.imgur.com/o870mrh.png](http://i.imgur.com/o870mrh.png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The only thing Greenwald has done wrong is be overconfident in his ability to report accurately on technological specifics he doesn't understand. And I don't see how the resultant errors have hurt much of anything.

The main impact of his reporting is to get people out of denial about what they sort of knew anyway, namely that the NSA has access to lots and lots and lots and lots of otherwise-private information. EXACTLY which kinds of information the NSA has, and which kinds it's still a few years away from securing, hardly matter from a public policy standpoint. Little practical harm is coming to innocent people from the snooping right now; the risks to liberty over time are horrific, and so something must be done to rein them in; those things are true under any reasonable theory as to exactly what data the NSA does or doesn't already have.

</comment><comment><USER18> I suppose it would be better if Greenwald presented evenly balanced quotes and regurgitated propaganda with no analysis. He might be lucky enough to get a job at NYTimes then.

<comment><USER19> He only has a New York Times Best Selling Book on the Bush Administration and its abuses of power.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> No. To suggest otherwise is to attempt to redefine "journalist" in a way that is quite frankly un-American. The Constitution enshrines freedom of the press for exactly this reason.

You see, all the USSR should've done was re-labeled journalists as 'activists' before having them rounded up. All better! Oh wait, they did…

Betteridge's law of headlines strikes again.

</comment><comment><USER21> Betteridge's law of headlines applies here.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_Law_of_Headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_Law_of_Headlines)

We walk a dangerous line when we start playing around with the idea that Greenwald, a journalist, is something other than a journalist. A journalist is allowed to have opinions and causes.

A journalist can engage in activism. There's nothing wrong with performing your work with passion, so why should it be any different for journalists? I get the creeps when I hear people suggest that Greenwald is just an activist and not a journalist. That usually means someone is being staged for oppression (ala Assange).

Members of the US government will suggest anything to get the scandal spotlight off of them and sweep this issue under the rug. To these criminals, the US Constitution has truly become a historical document. They pass secret rulings and laws to justify these constitutional violations in their minds.

</comment><comment><USER22> It's interesting that the Washington Post is now going to educate us on journalism. Is suppressing information for the government considered journalism these days? I thought the entire idea behind freedom of the press was to act as a check to government power. I don't call what they do journalism, I call it state sponsored propaganda.

</comment><comment><USER23> Why the defamatory article? Journo's can't have opinions because the Washington post decided so yesterday? On the flipside, why should we trust the wash-post since they clearly have an agenda too?

</comment><comment><USER24> I think it's becoming fairly clear here that there are two groups of people, each composing about 10% of the electorate.

The first group views terrorism as a magic trump card. Whatever we do to stop terrorism is worth the price we pay. (These folks also tend to believe in other issues as trumping everything else) Most of these folks are plugged into the establishment in some way -- military, legislative, security, and now reporters. For these guys, Snowden is the enemy. The story here is all about him and how we're going to "get him"

The other group of people are technically-inclined folks and, well, libertarian-type weirdos (And I say that as a little-l libertarian). We view the enemy as the ideology that enough is never enough: the enemy is the thought that we should continue collecting and collating data on each American citizen (and the rest of the world) until we have perfect knowledge about everybody. For them, the story is the disaster the first group has created out of the country. Snowden is just an example, a very small piece of a very big story.

80% of folks, however, could care less, as long as Farmville keeps working. What we're seeing in the press is this battle between insiders like Gregory and outsiders like Greenwald for control over the narrative. Is this going to be just another "bad guy on the run" story? Or will it actually have an impact on public opinion?

Short run, I'm not optimistic the 80% are going to see the minutely-studied drones that BigCorp and BigGov are turning them into. But these things have a way of building on each other. The smart move for government here, if it wants to remain legitimate, is to make some major concessions right now while keeping important capabilities intact. It's not an "us or them" posture. But that seems to be what we're going to get.

I just wish the focus would get off of Snowden and Greenwald. Just like Assange before them, once the story becomes about the person and not the issue, the narrative (argument) is lost.

<comment><USER22> I don't fall into either of those groups and I care deeply. I would never ever call myself a libertarian, but I am deeply disturbed by the direction the world is going in. As the world becomes more extreme, the middle chooses a side. That is the way it has always been. The only question is, have oppressive powers finally "beaten" the game? If not, will they ever? That is yet to be seen.

<comment><USER25> > _I don 't fall into either of those groups..._

I don't want to speak for you but, given your hackernewsers profile, I think you fall into the "technically-inclined folks" category.

<comment><USER22> "technically-inclined folks and, well, libertarian-type weirdos"

<comment><USER25> ("technically-inclined folks" ∪ "libertarian-type weirdos")

<comment><USER22> thanks for clarifying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Let's just say that if I had to choose between "real journalists" that take the side of government no matter what, and "amateur bloggers" that try to stand up to government abuses, I'll take the latter, every single time.

The "real journalists" from the mainstream media are a _disgrace_ to their profession these days. Thank god for bloggers who do the real journalists' jobs.

Plus, it's time to focus on what really matters - the _act_ of journalism. Whoever is doing it doesn't really matter.

</comment><comment><USER27> On NSA disclosures, has Glenn Greenwald just gotten smeared?

</comment><comment><USER28> So this case is a big case. And it opens up a lot of interesting philosophical questions that are worth exploring. Try not to shout down anything you don't like as "Big government lie/smear campaigns". Conceptually, I believe we want journalists not to be carrying an agenda. Conceptually, I think we understand that bloggers and non journalists do carry an agenda. This helps us filter the information we are receiving. What does it mean for journalism that it took an independent blogger to break it? Does journalism need to look at itself and re-invent itself if it can't break these stories? The fact that Greenwald so obviously and openly has an agenda that he pushes - how comfortable are we with the closed loop information source of Snowden to Greenwald? Do we trust Greenwald would easily present key facts that contradicted the current story if they came to light? These (and more) are critical questions to ask.

<comment><USER23> Greenwood is not the only reporter in the world, other sources can contradict him if they have clues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Well given Greenwald seems to concede that it would be a crime for him to "aid and abet" Snowden in his activities that means there is a line between journalist and "something else".

Given Greenwald is a lawyer surely a sensible response to the original question of whether he has broken the law is an explanation as to why he has not. Rather than a series of "you're a journalist, you shouldn't ask me that", "why don't we all arrest Congress for lying?" and "Obama is trying to criminalise investigative journalists".

His being a lawyer is supposed to be a big part of what makes him a good journalist. Given an opportunity to explain what aiding and abetting means in law, and why he hasn't done it, he decided to have a huff. Which is rather unlawerly.

<comment><USER30> My take on it was David Gregory was assuming, in his line of questioning, that Snowden is already a convicted felon so Greenwald is potentially aiding & abetting. Greenwald began his answer by saying Gregory's assumption in his question was flawed - therefore he couldn't be aiding & abetting someone who wasn't convicted of any crime. So while he didn't directly say "No" \- he did give a pretty convincing answer by dismissing Gregory's premise from the outset.

<comment><USER31> He was also making the point that journalists are supposed to disseminate information. Snowden broke the law as he distributed classified materials contrary to his legal access and responsibilities, but Glenn Greenwald has no such legal liability.

David Gregory has forgotten what journalism is. It's not sitting on TV bloviating and collecting a fat paycheck.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Surely the primary difference between Greenwald and journalists who came before him is the existence of social media.

Previously, investigative journalists would privately muse that they were doing a public service. Now they can say as much on twitter. I would be shocked if it were any other way.

This article belongs in an opinion section.

EDIT: I see it's in the "style" section, whatever that means.

</comment><comment><USER33> Groklaw: opinionated, pro FSF.

Beholden to no one. Enshrining important cases in plain text in the public record. Crowdsourcing prior art and patent busting. Surfacing contradictions in court cases.

In short, they're the gold standard in IP law reporting. And it wouldn't be happening without their passion.

</comment><comment><USER34> Only as much as the NYT has become a subtle propaganda mouthpiece for the Mil/Ind complex.

<comment><USER34> But hey if you can't attack the message attacking the messenger works pretty effectively too right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> He has always communicated his own point of view, which I think is fine, even as a reporter. But in the past I feel he has spun yarns and made connections that don't exist for sake of a story and his point of view. That does bug me.

</comment><comment><USER36> This is probably just an attempt to generate controversy.

</comment><comment><USER37> Glenn Greenwald has never really been a journalist, he has been a blogger and op-ed writer from the beginning. Of course he has taken a side--that's his job. The fact that he so clearly takes sides is why he was able to break this story in the first place.

Anyway, great journalists throughout history have taken sides. One of the most celebrated moments in U.S. journalism was Edward R. Murrow's "reporting" on Joe McCarthy--which took sides against McCarthy and helped bring him down.

<comment><USER37> Edit to clarify: Greenwald has never been a "journalist" in the modern conception of a totally impartial stater of facts. Personally I think people with opinions can be journalists too, _especially_ with regard to legal protections for the press.

<comment><USER38> Totally impartial stater of QUOTES, actually. 'Facts' implies a journalistic responsibility to call out quotes that are inaccurate, but they very much don't ever do that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> TL;DR- No.[1]

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines)</comment>


This old drug was free. Now it's $109,500 a year - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/12/18/this-old-drug-was-free-now-its-109500-a-year/ <comment> chroem- This kind of insanity makes me wish we would just abolish the legal notion of intellectual property already. It flies in the face of everything that the free market stands for by actively blocking competition. Yes, you can come up with all sorts of contrived allegories for why IP might be beneficial, but all of those fail in practice and are vastly outweighed by IP being used anticompetitively.

This article hits especially close to home since I have a very rare eye condition that's destroying my sight, but the drug to adequately treat it costs $67k a year and isn't covered by insurance because of the high cost. So now I'm left making the most of my new life on significantly cheaper but less effective drugs.

<comment><USER2> The problem is not IP but your FDA. I could send it to you for much lower price but it's not allowed.

Free market works truly great when there is a free market, but considering the fact that medicine in general can never be a one unless we all take a risk of snake oil and arsenic sellers, it's crazy to think people don't get pushed over. It's some sort of crazy utopia of Americans, where the ideology is more important than outcome. Capitalism is good because majority of the time it works the best. Not with medicine.

<comment> chroem- This is a separate issue from large emergency medical bills. You can get a drug prescribed for a chronic condition just about anywhere, but if it's produced by a monopolist then you're forced to pay whatever absurd price the manufacturer demands. Adequate competition without IP restrictions can drive drug prices very, very low. This can be seen in the Indian pharma industry.

<comment><USER3> There is no adequate competition, this is an orphan drug that will sustain at most one producer. Fun fact: most generics are sourced to very few producers because margins are so low, competition is working.

There are similarities to fine chemical shortages: [http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/06/16/spa...](http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/06/16/sparteine_and_other_fine_chemical_shortages)

The world can do without sparteine, but orphan drugs call for regulation as natural monopolies, or even government subsidies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is the problem right here: "Although Keveyis is actually a decades-old drug, its federal approval for periodic paralysis came with a seven-year period of exclusive marketing rights."

A decades-old drug should not have _any_ IP left.

<comment><USER5> The exclusivity period is intended to incentivize developing old drugs for new indications. What would you suggest instead of the exclusivity window?

<comment><USER6> Government manufacturing of generics by the CDC or NSF. It is the only method by which you can guarantee supply as well as ensure transparency in the process.

<comment><USER5> I can't say I understand why you selected those two organizations: the CDC doesn't have pharma manufacturing expertise that I am aware of (interested to hear of what you know on that angle); the NSF is non-medical and it's a grant agency, no labs. I should also note that even if they were chartered for this sort of work and were working on it, they would face the same source material supply problems facing commercial groups that result in some supply interruptions, and the basket of problems associated with manufacturing small amounts of drugs.

There are many non-profit and academic institutes that are working on the problem of generic drug costs holistically, including figuring out how to produce APIs (in pharma, API is active pharmaceutical ingredient) from plentiful source materials and how to produce the APIs by flow processes so that small quantities of drugs are more economical to produce. They're doing good work but it's a hard problem, experienced execs and leaders are difficult to come by, and getting funding in biotech is far more difficult than getting funding in IT. They do receive support from NIH, FDA, DARPA (making drugs at a CSH in the middle of Afghanistan is useful), big pharma (being able to make drugs cheaper is generally of interest), and philanthropic groups. Many smart and talented people are "on it!", good progress is being made, but it is a hard problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Basically, this is the pharma - health insurance industry nexus, that jacksup prices of drugs, making it looks like an amazing deal for those getting the drugs through insurance.

For a new patient needing this drug, he/she would think "wow, I pay only $1000 a month of insurance, and I'm getting $109,500 a year worth of drugs for $5000 only."

Without fixing pharma+healthInsurnace nexus, healthcare in the US feels like a ripoff, whether you are rich or poor.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm not sure how Single payer could ever be less efficient then our current system.

</comment><comment><USER9> >Anderson, for example, pays nothing.

Buried in this article is the fact that the person they introduced at the beginning of the article is still paying nothing for this drug. Seems like much ado about nothing.

<comment><USER10> Everyone else in the insurance pool is paying more than they need to as a result.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> [http://archive.is/BOf2k](http://archive.is/BOf2k)

if you get stuck behind the paywall like me</comment>


Ask: small weekend projects for Ruby-beginner? - <AUTHOR> Hey guys, wondering if there are any sites or maybe freelance boards with some beginner/intermediate level Ruby assignments?<p>I've followed quite some tutorials till now, though don't have any projects to work on. I've already looked around town, but there isn't any programming club or something around for me to join. <comment><USER2> Try some problems at <http://rubeque.com/> or <http://www.codeeval.com/>. Project Euler is also good, as duggieawesome suggested. As you're doing the problems, try and find "Ruby-esque" ways to solve them.

Other than that, run through the <http://RubyMonk.com> lessons, and try some of the Ruby courses at <http://CodeSchool.com>.

The best way to learn is with hands-on stuff though. So, if you're looking to get into Rails as well, I'd recommend what jfaucett recommended: try and pick a (simple) app to build, and build it.

I'm not sure what town your in, but if you don't see any meetup groups (check <http://meetup.com> .. or search Google), then why not create one?

I've heard that meetup.com can increase attendance to these meetups significantly, but I think it depends on which town your in. (I.e. if people in your town don't know about meetup.com, then it doesn't matter and you can get away with a website and marketing it another way [try reaching out to Python/Perl/Web Design groups and see if anyone would be interested in meeting up to talk or learn Ruby]).

If you'll be meeting with a bunch of people who are new to Ruby, going through RubyMonk.com together can be a good way to get people up to speed. Then try Rails for Zombies Redux at <http://www.codeschool.com/courses/rails-for- zombies-redux> (it's free).

But, yeah, practice, practice, practice. If you want some intermediate level stuff to work on, try creating a Rails app. You'll likely come across some intermediate-level stuff.

And good on ya for looking to improve your skills and get active in a local community. That's great! :)

I hope this helps.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm learning rails/ruby right now. I don't know what your background is, but I'd say try to just build something. For instance, last weekend I built a todo app in rails and learned a lot about resources, routing, models, etc in rails along the way.

hope this helps, good luck!

</comment><comment><USER4> If you want to simply practice coding, check out Project Euler. Essentially, it's problem solving for programmers.

As for building a small product, try automating a simple task that you do every day.

</comment><comment><USER5> Go to github and fix bugs on some OSS projects.</comment>


OpenCL drivers discovered on Nexus 4 and Nexus 10 devices - <AUTHOR> http://www.anandtech.com/show/6804/opencl-drivers-discovered-on-nexus-4-and-nexus-10-devices

<comment><USER2> Note that Android already has Renderscript, which is arguably a more mobile, variable alternative to OpenCL.

<comment><USER3> Renderscript is proprietary Google API, which uses OpenCL as a backend. It's nowhere as powerful as OpenCL. More like a sandbox to limit developers access to GPU Compute on mobile devices.</comment></comment>