Apache considered harmful - <AUTHOR> http://www.mikealrogers.com/posts/apache-considered-harmful.html <comment><USER2> Ok, there's a lot to cover here.

First off, the Apache Software Foundation isn't trying to absorb anyone or anything. Projects and people come to the ASF. It's a specific policy of the Foundation to NOT solicit projects. If someone says they're representing Apache and soliciting projects, they're wrong.

Secondly, Apache is very opinionated about how projects should be run. This comes from years of experience as not only a successful project, but as a successful non-profit organization overseeing dozens of projects. If a community doesn't like the ASF's style or rules (such as no dictators, benevolent or otherwise), they don't need to be there. No one wants to keep projects hostage. Part of the point of the Incubator is to get this figured out earlier than later.

Thirdly, about git and subversion. First off, there's increasing support for git at Apache (see <http://git.apache.org/>) but there are some serious drawbacks for use of git. Consider this: subversion was practically made for Apache in the way Linus made git for Linux. With that in mind, subversion isn't going anywhere at the ASF. Some of the rational is just plain stubbornness, but some of it goes straight to the core values of the Foundation.

Apache has become, for better or worse, the place where lots of projects go when they grow up. Growing up is hard to do. It's not fun. You have to do things like get a job, pay taxes, etc. When a project grows up, people start caring about who contributed what, under which license and making sure every line of code is legit. A lot of engineers don't care about this, but businesses and their lawyers do. A lot of the Apache Foundation "bureaucracy" is to handle this oversight and paperwork.

Git is an impressive tool and github is awesome for what it is, but it's not a non-profit foundation and it won't replace one. Confusing the Apache Software Foundation for your coding sandbox only suggests you don't understand the true purpose of either.

<comment><USER3> >there are some serious drawbacks for use of git

Such as?

<comment><USER4> >> _there are some serious drawbacks for use of git_

> _Such as?_

The more important question is: what are developers really missing when they have to use svn to hack ASF's code in comparison to using git? (leaving github out of the equation, it is not git) You can hack locally to your heart's content and in case you want to contribute, you can diff and contribute.

I don't really see the problem.

<comment> buff-a What you describe is the original use case for git: pull-based community development. So I can only conclude that you don't see a problem because you've never actually done it.

<comment><USER5> Which is the exact basic use case for almost all modern source control systems. Git doesn't do anything new or unique for that use case.

<comment> buff-a All server based vcs are push based. Certainly they can be used pull-based, where others diff code, send the patch, and a committer then integrates and commits. Git, on the other hand does two things differently. 1) it makes it vastly easier to create, submit, and integrate patches (because it was designed for it) and 2) it makes it vastly easier for the people making the patches, who don't have commit privs, to maintain their changes in their own repo, while still syncing with the master.

svn does not offer these features, which means that when you dont have commit privs, its a PITA to track and maintain your own version. I'll say that again: it makes it massively frustrating to maintain your own version. The result is that people dont, and the number of potential hackers is vastly reduced.

git, like svn, allows a small community, such as ASF, to manage and control a project - addressing legal and operational concerns. committers can push just as easily as with svn. _but in addition_ , each committer can (if they so choose) also maintain relationships with a much greater community, each member of which can hack away on their own with a fully synced, fully versioned repo of their own. hackers get their own repo. committers have a really robust system for integrating patches.

If ASF wishes to do no more than have a small number of committers working on a project then indeed, svn suffices. its "good enough". the point of mikeal's post is that this is missing out hugely on the vast army of hackers.

I said in an earlier post that I had no skin in the game. that's true. now. i used to track tomcat. but it was such a pain in the arse to handle merging my code with the official code that I gave up. it just wasnt worth it. git would have solved every problem I had. perhaps by now I would be a committer on the tomcat project. who knows? svn made that a certain "no".

an organization like ASF needs a finite number of committers. git allows keeping that group small, yet engaging a much greater community.

but as mikeal says, its not about svn vs git. its about the mindset that sees no need for git because it sees no need for more than just committers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The ASF is the first home that comes to mind when an successful open-source project needs independent stewardship. Often when a company wants to "spin off" an open source project, they turn to Apache.

What alternative organizations fill this need in a more lightweight fashion? Most other umbrella open source organizations I know of focus on copyleft and other issues that can be hostile to commercial interests.

<comment><USER7> Software Freedom Conservancy. <http://sfconservancy.org/>

Conservancy doesn't care about licenses as long as they are free. For example, jQuery (MIT license) is part of Conservancy.

Conservancy members include prominent projects such as Boost, BusyBox, Darcs, Git, Inkscape, jQuery, Mercurial, PyPy, Samba, Selenium, Squeak, uClibc, Wine.

<comment><USER6> Very cool. It seems like they are the type of organization Mikeal is encouraging ASF to become: legal and administrative support for open source projects, and other services if the project's leaders wish. Quite hands-off.

Comparing the lists of projects, I'm surprised to find I use more SFC software than ASF software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just to get two things out of the way: I'm an ASF member (albeit not very active lately) and a huge fan of git with or without GitHub. I'm one of the many people advocating for git internally at the ASF. I have been met with opposition in the past, but a lot of it has been around who's going to maintain the infrastructure, given it's a volunteer system. Let's just take it as axiomatic that the ASF is going to self-host its code. So it's at least a fairly pragmatic argument. And I think we finally have a solution.

My real issue is with the bouncing back-and-forth the author does in his post around the notion of IP. It's a shitty topic that most devs don't want to be bothered with, but alas, it's quite important in the real world. And GitHub is mostly a landmine field when it comes to this. I don't think it's a failing of GitHub itself, but most projects just don't have licenses attached to them. Unlike with SourceForge, there's no requirement to have an OSS license on public projects. Then many that do fail to meet the copyright header requirements for the license. Or you could have a public project with a restrictive license [1]. Being public doesn't mean you get to do whatever you want with the code. This is dangerous and bad for OSS.

Apache gives you that protection. There's never any question about it. That's the primary reason projects go through the incubator -- to make sure the IP is all in order. It's an annoying, bureaucratic, but necessary process in a litigious society. But because of the care and protections Apache provides in this regard, I think they've done more to get OSS adopted in traditionally closed companies than just about anyone else.

[1] I came across Tom Preston-Werner's repo for his site. He's one of the GitHub founders. It's a public repo with a license that restricts usage of certain portions of the project (generally his content): <https://github.com/mojombo/mojombo.github.com>

<comment><USER9> This is a good point. Anyone who starts an open-source project should, from day one, have a vetted Contributor License Agreement and ONLY accept pull requests that include signed CLAs (or from a person who has one on file).

<comment><USER8> It'd be kinda nifty if GitHub had this built-in. I personally don't require CLAs for every project because it can be onerous. But at the least I try to pick a license that wouldn't allow for submarine patent claims.

<comment><USER10> I've wondered for years why GitHub doesn't provide a license field as part of the repo along side name and description. I've been known to pester people after they point me to their repo, and ask them to add a license before I'll use their code. Automating CLAs would be a dream.

GitHub, are you listening?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Some good points, but github doesn't take the place of a community. When it's working well, it helps, but when there is a breakdown of collaboration and communication, you get one of those codebases that has been forked 1298 times where none of the people doing the forking is sharing anything. That's a community fail, not a version control system issue.

I do think that it'd be nice if the ASF offered git alongside svn, and concentrated on the community aspect of things, which it does tend to do fairly well.

<comment><USER12> Just because you can't 'see' the fork with subversion doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I'm sure plenty of ASF projects are 'forked' within companies and the code is never shared.

What I've been advocating for a while now on the members@apache list is that the ASF look at using Github (either they host it or the ASF does) as the basis to build a new type of community that the ASF has never experienced before. Something that isn't tied to the old school.

<comment><USER11> Sure, github may bring more things into the open, but it is ultimately just an aid to a community of people, who must communicate about the project. You can't just dump the code on github without communicating with other people working on it.

I agree that outsourcing some of the infrastructure to github might be an interesting idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm curious how does it harm anything? Did it kill any puppies? Maybe it's inefficient but harmful?

Also remember GitHub is a for profit company. Its allowance for Open Source hosting is a marketing tactic. Anytime they feel the marketing value is not there, they will shut it down. Not that I'm against GitHub. It's a great company for itself. But comparing the Apache to GitHub is like comparing apple and orange.

<comment><USER14> Don't get caught up on GitHub specifically. GitHub is just the most popular example of how projects don't need Apache to host them anymore, yet Apache still expects to do so, and worse, expects to assert a lot of restriction over it.

The point is, that is at odds with what the community wants and needs. As the author pointed out, ten years ago, rolling your own SCM hosting was a big pain. Now, it's not, partly because of GitHub and Bitbucket and others, but also because rolling your own isn't as hard either.

Anyone with minimal server admin experience and knowledge of Git can run their own Git server on a VPS with something like Gitolite. I know because I succeeded in doing so myself, and I'm neither a pro server admin, nor did I have any Git experience at the time I did the initial setup of Gitolite. Prior to that, I had set up a Mercurial server with no prior Mercurial experience either. It's pretty easy now.

So, yeah, GitHub is there, but GitHub could disappear tomorrow and the community still wouldn't need to turn to Apache for project hosting. In that respect, they're still solving a problem nobody has anymore, and that was the point the author was making.

<comment><USER15> GitHub isn't a new version of Apache - GitHub is a new version of SourceForge. I don't think that even 10 years ago anyone with a line (or 100 lines) of code can set up their own Apache projects.

10 years ago if you needed free SCM, you'd use SourceForge, not Apache. I don't think it would've been that big of a pain even then.

GitHub projects don't necessarily come with its own community with diverse contributors, whereas Apache projects require it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This essay put me in mind of The Cathedral and the Bazaar. It is a neat demonstration of how tools and processes are inextricably linked.

Who knew, though, that the ASF would be cast as the new priests in the cathedral? I suppose it took a whole new level of social development, enabled by tools, to cast them in that role.

<comment><USER17> Actually I think it is either:

a) a complete misunderstanding of how and why the ASF operates the way it does

or

b) a desire for sensationalist blog pieces with almost no factual content

The ASF _is_ working with Git, it has been for years. It doesn't yet provide a canonical repository from which to make releases. This is due to a number of non-trivial technical issues introduced by the processes adopted by Apache projects.

The Apache infrastructure team believe that they have now solved those issues and are testing them in CouchDB. Assuming the CouchDB experiment is a success the ASF will be rolling out Git as the canonical repository to all projects that want it.

Once the ASF has mapped the tools to the processes we can all move on and stop wasting our time with this spurious argument.

Disclaimer: Unlike the author of this blog I do have access to all the discussions about Git in the ASF and I am one of the mentors of PhoneGap, a project mentioned in the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I second this thoroughly. I was was almost driven to start blogging last week by ASF's poor job of maintaining its projects. There was a small bug in Solr. I was not the first to find this bug, and someone had not only reported the bug, but filed a patch on the bug tracker a year and a half ago. The patch was never merged in, nobody provided any feedback as to why the patch wasn't merged in.

One huge plus with Github is that if the official steward of a project would like to hand it off to someone else, or is failing to maintain it, it is trivial for someone else to take over the project.

<comment><USER2> Then fork it. It's open source for a reason. Or raise a fuss on the mailing list. That's how open source works.

<comment><USER19> While forking is _a_ solution, it hardly precludes discussion of other less drastic potential solutions to the problem at hand. It does nicely bound the maximum negative impact that Apache social problems can cause, though.

<comment><USER2> If you're using git, as the OP suggets, then you're going to fork it just to work on it. Forking isn't dramatic. Code is open source for a reason. If you have a critical bug in code you need running in your infrastructure, take ownership of it and fork it. Then do the dirty work to get the patch pushed back up stream.

If the maintainers really aren't doing what they volunteered to do, then volunteer yourself and get it done.

<comment><USER19> Sorry, explain to me _clearly_ why that is the One Answer and we must stop discussing alternatives?

You're answering a question I'm not even remotely asking.

<comment><USER2> There isn't One Answer. The point is, you have plenty of alternatives. I don't know why the patch hasn't been applied. I know how I can find out though: I can join the developer mailing list and ask. If that doesn't work, I can track down a developer directly (they're not hard to find once you're on the mailing list) and bug 'em until I get a decent response. If it's clear the maintainers aren't doing their job, raise hell on the mailing lists and push to become a committer yourself so you can do the job right.

While that's happening, you can take the approach of maintaining your own patches so that you're not beholden to anyone in particular.

The whole point of open source is empowerment, not entitlement. No one is entitled to get any bug fixed. It's great when it happens but ultimately, everyone is empowered to make things happen themselves.

<comment><USER19> So you do agree that there are options beyond forking it or merely "raising a ruckus on the mailing list". My point was precisely that there are additional answers and that just glibly saying "Well, just fork it or accept what the mailing list result is" isn't a good summary of the alternatives, and in the context of what you were replying to borders on deceptive.

In the meantime, the fact that I am rich with options _doesn't negate the original discussion_ , which is that the Apache processes are becoming distinctly suboptimal for the context they work in. The fact that I can just take the software and run with it doesn't fix their processes, and the fact that anybody can do so doesn't excuse broken processes. The fact that we can fork does not mean everybody should just stop discussing Apache processes; it doesn't follow.

I'm still in context: "I was was almost driven to start blogging last week by ASF's poor job of maintaining its projects. There was a small bug in Solr. I was not the first to find this bug, and someone had not only reported the bug, but filed a patch on the bug tracker a year and a half ago. The patch was never merged in, nobody provided any feedback as to why the patch wasn't merged in." "You can just fork it" is _not_ an answer to this problem. I'd say in its own way it's a disguised confession that in fact the problems with the project are indeed so bad that your only hope is to fork it yourself. Well, that still says bad things about the project, regardless of whether I have mitigation options.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> So you're saying a system that has had repeated successes is harmful. I really think you make a good point here about the need to remain open to change. So talk about that. Obviously github has some very positive impact. How can Apache adapt to that? You're not really talking about the tools here, you're talking about community.

I see a potential solution here being that Apache has different rules for projects in different stages. Do you think that would solve the issues?

Remember, you're view of anarchy on GitHub will only last so long. Rules and order come out of anarchy for a reason and like all things GitHub will become the exact same stale community you're complaining of now in 10 years.

</comment><comment><USER21> Note that this article is about the Apache Software Foundation, not the webserver.

<comment><USER22> Yeah, I found the title to be misleading and quite annoying. It should definitely be fixed to clarify. To the _vast_ majority of the IT world, Apache == Web Server, not Apache Software Foundation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm curious as to the average age of committers by project under the ASF vs. popular projects on github. My hypothesis is that they would be older by a significant margin.

<comment><USER24> I would agree with that hypothesis.

What I've observed from running <http://www.Apache.com> for several years, is indeed an older crowd (40+) by a nice margin compared to a lot of the younger projects floating around that are generating a ton of buzz.

It's been much more rare in my experience to see a 20 something hipster programmer seriously diving in with the ASF. I'm generalizing though of course...

The type of questions and people I interact with through that project are older engineering types, and those with a long history in the programming and computer scene. Usually with an old-school *nix approach to things.

Just wanted to chime in with that, since like stated elsewhere in the HN comments, I think this blog post is more about the organization structure and members of the ASF than the actual Apache Web Server project... which we all love so dearly. ;)

\- Chase

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Hate to be the grammar cop here, but the consistent misspelling of "its" in the article is distracting. If the author is here, could you please fix that? It's taking away from a very well-written and insightful piece of writing.

<comment><USER26> I stopped reading at the misuse of weary for wary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I am not entirely sure what the article is trying to get at. Politics and law in open source are real and needed, especially in the face of software patents.

Many contributors develop open source code as part of their paid work, as such it is quite important to establish the legal framework to allow contributing the companies IP to an open source project (which includes necessary patent grants). Comitters need to submit an Individual Contributor License Agreement stating that they have the legal right to contribute the code they're contributing. If worked on contributions as employee the company also typically needs to submit a corporate contributor license agreement.

Like it or not (and I personally do very much _not_ like it), you cannot just upload some code somewhere these days.

As such the even FSF is an extremely important organization. Much frowned upon and usually not understood. Open source licenses would not work without Copyright Law, most developers don't know or understand that.

And the whole thing of svn vs git. Personally I don't get it. I use svn when it makes sense and I use git when that makes sense, just like I use Java/Ruby/C++/Python/Javascript/Closure/Scala/whatever or GoogleDocs/PDF/OpenOffice/MS Word(yes) when needed.

The main feature I need from VCS are atomic commits. So CVS is out for me for that reason. Sure git's nice and all, but I spend 99.9% of my time writing or thinking about code and software architecture, not tinkering with my VCS, so as long as it works, I don't care. Easy forking and branching is nice too. In the end, though, just as with Linux there is/are some de-facto master branch(es) somewhere from which "releases" are cut.

Currently with apache it's more convenient to use svn, so I do that.

I don't get the religious opposition against one version control system vs another.

Disclaimer: Apache committer here.

<comment><USER28> Ever since I started using Git, I would never go back to SVN, because branching and merging is now an essential part of my workflow, even on small project on which I work by myself with no other contributers.

         just as with Linux there is/are some de-facto
         master branch(es)

Well yeah, but I don't get how that's an argument for SVN. The thing I like about Git is that branching is now really, really cheap. You can now keep track of dozens of _local_ branches with experiments that you don't have to push to master. You can now share your experiments with a colleague and push to master whenever something is actually ready. You can now also ban commits to the main repository that haven't been code-reviewed (something which is a PITA with SVN). And so on and so forth.

        I don't get the religious opposition against one
        version control system vs another.

Even though I prefer Git, neither do I, especially since you can just use the Git-SVN bridge :) I've used it for more than a year, it does has some quirks, but it works fine.

Also, the Apache Foundation does its job and does it well. There's room for both anarchy and bureaucracy and both are needed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Or perhaps "Apache [Foundation] considered harmful" since in common usage "Apache" tends to mean "The Apache web server."

<comment><USER30> Agreed. The title should be edited.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> 1) Apache Software Foundation and GitHub are two totally different things. Who cares about their internal preferences and bureaucracies. They're both producing outstanding open-source projects which are used by hundreds of thousands of companies and people.

Open-source (and the world) has only gained __positive __things out of these communities.

2) If you're suggesting that ASF needs to change its bureaucracy, I disagree. Frankly, I feel the bureaucracy has worked, given the success the foundation projects have had.

3) I'm not sure what other points your post brings, but if you're simply just saying that ASF needs to keep itself up-to-date with new tech (dunno git?) then this is also a totally absurd argument since the tech being used in Apache is totally amazing and new.

I feel like your outcry is referred to general institutions... you should probably refer to governments and other political entities instead of bashing on a foundation that has given the world amazing products.

</comment><comment><USER32> _Some_ people at the ASF think that Git may have _some_ issues so are not wholeheartedly endorsing it for any and all projects.

Somehow this gets translated into "Apache considered harmful".

Why is this even on the front page?

<comment><USER33> I would be seriously pissed if I donated my time and effort towards something like ASF, trying to help the open source world, only to be "considered harmful". WTF.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Well written... I wrote a response last night that dives into some numbers and my experiences with helping the Eclipse Foundation move to Git and Gerrit... [http://aniszczyk.org/2011/11/23/apache-and-politics-over- cod...](http://aniszczyk.org/2011/11/23/apache-and-politics-over-code/)

Apache is pretty much the last major open source community to not move to some form of distributed version control. It's either politics (they host the Subversion project there) or negligence in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER12> Well written.

I wrote a similar article recently as well...

[http://lookfirst.com/2011/11/contributing-to-open- source.htm...](http://lookfirst.com/2011/11/contributing-to-open-source.html)

</comment><comment><USER35> This might be slightly offtopic, but might be a symptom of the "institutional"/"organizational" issues addressed in the article:

I always thought Apache 2 and Subversion were two of the best examples of _second-system effect_. I mentioned this once to one of the core Apache (and Svn) developers years ago, and not only was he blissfully unaware of the effect, he indicated that he had helped build incredibly successful pieces of software (ie., Apache 1.x) and didn't need any advice from from Fred Brooks or anyone on how to do it.

Both Apache 2 and svn have been extremely successful projects, but both were late, didn't really match expectations or even the success of their predecessors, and are slowly being outcompeted by much smaller and usually more efficient projects (eg., nginx, lighttpd, git, hg) that are developed much more quickly by much smaller teams.

</comment><comment><USER36> Free project infrastructure wasn't hard to setup five years ago. It hasn't really been a problem since 1999 when SourceForge opened. Before that, the SunSites did a nice job, and before that you basically had to know a friendly university sysadm (which wasn't _that_ hard to find).

I'm not sure what people think they gain by going under the Apache umbrella, but it must be something since they bother. There are no lack of alternatives.

</comment><comment><USER37> I wish at least one open source replacement adopted .htaccess (and httpd.conf) compatibility.

Litespeed is the only product in existence which has made switching over from a complex Apache install a one hour affair, but it's free version is limited to 5 hosts and the commercial version can only be justified in a profitable environment.

The performance difference is breathtaking however.

</comment><comment><USER38> ..why isn't project x on git /rant

tl;dr

Github has a great social interface, it is a tool, there are others and there will be more.

Yes it is an evolution towards DVC + great social interfaces, older industry mammoths will be slower to adopt then newer more agile projects.

ps. I just switched from git to mercurial and it's a breath of fresh air.

</comment><comment><USER39> As an aside, the Clay Shirky quote ("Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.") was new to me, but puts the RIAA/MPAA pretty much perfectly into perspective. Not really related to the article, but it clicked as I was reading.

</comment><comment><USER40> push vs. pull. Basically the tools and overall environment grew up to have pull as a feasible model.

</comment><comment><USER41> Where to start with this blog post? It appears that the author has seen a couple of private emails and thinks he knows all about the internal workings of the Apache Foundation. He is wrong on so many counts.

His entire dislike of the Apache Foundation appears to be predicated on the fact that the organisation did not force every project to move to this blogger's favourite version control tool. Making a change as large as this requires many different things, but in particular:

1\. Community change. How committers interact with each other when there are lots of forks is quite different to the current situation. That suits some projects and not others. Not every project at Apache will benefit. Some will. All who change will need to think long and hard about release processes, merging strategies and much more. Git encourages the idea that every commit or fork is completely equal to every other fork or commit. The Apache Foundation is built on the concept of meritocracy: commit rights are given in response to demonstrated skill. This is not an intractible problem with git, but new challenges need to be solved.

2\. Legal change. Right now there is a simple process for signing off intellectual property for contributions which were merged from external contributors (who have not signed a release). That changes with git and becomes more complex. There are solutions, but they require careful planning.

3\. Infrastructure. Hosting a large git repository with the level of downtime acceptable to Apache isn't something you do quickly. That needs planning and maintenance.

4\. Toolsets. Lots of things in Apache are tied into subversion. From mailing list commit hooks to build servers and much more. Changing those things takes work.

5\. Splitting the community. Right now the entire organisation's intellectual property is held in a single repository. Everyone knows where everything is to be found. Changing this simplicity requires a very good reason.

So what do we have now? A blogger who (it appears) doesn't actually contribute code to any Apache project. Telling other people how to run their organisation (which is wildly successful). And that they should change to this blogger's favourite new tool (they should have done it in 2008!) or face irrelevance.

If Apache moved every project to github tomorrow would that satisfy this blogger? More importantly, would that have caused this guy to commit high quality code toward one of the Apache projects? Or is he just blowing a lot of hot air about something he knows little?

And what brought on this great complaint? That the Apache Foundation is currently underway with trials for one project to see how git would succeed for their workflow. And to then evaluate its suitability for other projects across Apache.

Apache is not Github. That is, Apache is much more than a website, a couple of tools and a repository of code of random quality.

Disclaimer: I am an Apache member, but not speaking on behalf of Apache

<comment><USER42> > 2\. Legal change. Right now there is a simple process for signing off > intellectual property for contributions which were merged from external > contributors (who have not signed a release). That changes with git and > becomes more complex. There are solutions, but they require careful > planning.

I'm curious as to how exactly you feel git impacts on Legal processes versus the use of svn. I'd expect that the choice of tools and the legal issues surrounded merges made by those tools should be completely orthogonal.

<comment><USER41> With an svn workflow the committer sends each patch in a single authenticated request directly to the Apache svn server. With every commit they are saying "this code is appropriately licensed, even though the code may have come from other committers. The history of that code is completely obscured."

With a git workflow, the push (which is authenticated against a committer who has signed the appropriate license agreement) could contain multiple commits from other sources. This is particularly the case if it includes code from a pull request. The Apache git tree will then have commits with publically visible attribution to people who are not Apache committers and may not have signed the appropriate license agreements.

I am not saying this is a deal breaker, but it does require some thought. We don't want some contributor to come back three years later and say "that contribution from me: it was only released under the GPL". We need clear guidelines around that original pull request and how copyright/patent signoff happens. Right now, third party contributions go through a Jira patch process which includes a copyright/assignment tick box.

<comment><USER42> Doesn't simply requiring that all pull requests be squashed down to a single clean commit from a developer known to have signed the license agreements give you back the exact scenario you have under SVN?

Anecdotally, a lot of projects I've been involved with have required that pull requests be squashed to avoid polluting the "main" repo with irrelevant/undesired third-party history.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> "Considered Harmful" considered pretentious

</comment><comment><USER44> Much of this is pretty unsurprising, especially for people like me who watched the attempted transition of OOo to Apache.

The way the article puts it is that the ASF is trying to solve problems that don't exist anymore, which is true to an extent, but the deeper problem is that the ASF has a particular view of how open source development and project management work, and attempts to impose that view on far too diverse a community, even as it tries to absorb more and more communities.

The ASF is simultaneously trying to be "big tent" and unified, and the balance is all out of whack. It's easy to draw parallels to recent political problems in the US and EU. In all three cases, there's going to have to be some transformations, probably in both society/community and structure, to come back to a place where the institution contributes to the greater good, instead of being a source of unending tension and meta-arguments.

<comment><USER45> Very well said. I was going to write something like that but don't have to. Yay for up votes!</comment></comment>


Amazon's growth is shaking up retail - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2009/09/20/amazons_growth_is_shaking_up_retail/?camp=localsearch:on:twit:biz

<comment><USER2> "Amazon's profit and margins have always been slender; it earned only $645 million in 2008, up 36 percent from the year before, compared with Wal-Mart's $13.4 billion, up 5 percent. But Wall Street is more enamored by the promise of the online retailer, valuing Amazon at around 60 times earnings and Wal- Mart at 15 times earnings."

... and that's what you get as a tech company where people believe in the promise of innovation.

</comment><comment><USER3> How can you write an article called 'Amazon's growth is shaking up retail' without discussing, at all (even mentioning), how Amazon has been moving more and more to becoming a platform for other people to sell goods

</comment><comment><USER4> Amazon is a relatively cheap and easy way to build your customer base without doing much else. List your products on Amazon and give them 15% of the first sale (which may consume all your profit). But you own the name now. Drive susequent sales through your own website and keep the 15% for the life of that customer.</comment>


Elon Musk Faces Cash Squeeze at Tesla, SolarCity - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-faces-cash-squeeze-at-tesla-solarcity-1472687133 <comment><USER2> Building the future is expensive. If Elon ever really needs the cash, he only needs to ask. I'll be there to open my wallet for him and I'm sure many others will be too.

I wish he'd give up on his Mars mission plans though. He's just not bankrolled for it. He ought to be focusing on mining the moon and near earth asteroids. The first company to do that will probably be the richest company until our species dies out. That would give him more than enough cash to fund his Mars retirement plans. It bothers me slightly that he can't see that. Unless he's angling for some NASA funding; then it would make sense.

<comment><USER3> If we take his stated motivations at face value, he's genuinely concerned that we hedge our bets against existential threats as soon as possible. Establishing a colony on another planet is both within planning range and likely the strongest hedge we can currently make. If he thinks he can get there, I'll take his published timelines with grains of salt, but at this point I'll also trust him that the goal is plausible.

<comment><USER4> I think with globalization we can see most of humanity as a single super- organism and it is very scary to me that we are the only specimen.

Maybe we should cut down on those antibiotics and check our near future climate first, so we don't need the mars tech here.

It would be very ironic, if most of humanity got wiped out by some virus and the few native tribes are the lone survivors.</comment></comment></comment>


Omg I'm a n00b and too afraid to start - <AUTHOR> https://sdawncasey.wordpress.com/about/ <comment><USER2> Just give yourself an assignment and start with it.. It's easy to read arround and don't do anything :)

Use PHP because your friends know it. Write me a simple CRUD application for a daily todo list (etc. for groceries), use bootstrap and CodeIgniter, no authentication required ..

Ready, set... Go ;-)</comment>


Congress Asks Tech to Face Hard Truths About Russian Meddling - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/congress-asks-tech-to-face-hard-truths-about-russian-meddling/ <comment><USER2> Were Congress to make publishing political advertising payed for by foreign interest a crime, the tech providers would find a solution without requiring Congress to intervene in the technical details of their business. I can't imagine how such Congressional intervention would not be a horrible mess. I'm not knocking Congress here. The subject is just too far outside of scope of effective legislation.

</comment><comment><USER3> Congress should ask Tech to face hard truth about Tech meddling in the election. Google and Facebook spent way more time and energy trying to sway voters. Russian is just an easy scape goat. If Mark Zuckerberg decides to run for president think about how scary it will be to have the full backing and support of Facebook behind him.</comment>


"NSFW" doesn't begin to describe Bluetooth security in sex toys - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/10/screwdriving-many-bluetooth-sex-toys-leave-users-vulnerable/ <comment><USER2> Every once in a while, I pick up my neighbors' sex toys while I'm scanning BT frequencies.

It made me feel kind of gross when I realized that I could (probably) play with the toy remotely and they'd never realize that _I_ was the one who intruded on their time (if they even realized it was more than a bug). I never actually did (see point about gross), but I've been debating buying one myself just to fiddle around with it.

Good to know we've progressed to an age where digital sexual assault is possible.

<comment><USER3> This gives me a product idea.

Massively Multiplayer Online Interconnected Sex Toys (MMOIST).

You connect, find a peer and have some online fun together. Could even open it to local bluetooth networks by simply... well, not updating the security at all !

<comment><USER4> > _Could even open it to local bluetooth networks by simply... well, not > updating the security at all !_

You're literally talking about digital STDs here.

(Sometimes I feel the future is coming _too soon_...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> An external will have control of your toy. It's not a bug, it's a feature.

</comment><comment><USER6> Golden promoted comment from article.

 _" I'm pretty sure letting the public control your sex toy is an entire category of fetish I don't know the name of.

This isn't a bug. This is a feature."_

</comment><comment><USER7> just out of SciFi esque curiosity, would that be e-rape? if you can prove it some how

<comment><USER8> Reading the NY penal code (not sure for other states), I'm not sure. It wouldn't be rape or a criminal sexual act since there's no intercourse. And for sexual abuse it states the offender must "touch" the victim or "insert" a foreign object. In this case the criminal isn't actually touching the victim, and the victim inserted the object themselves... I imagine this isn't something lawmakers thought of at the time. Hopefully this remains theoretical for the time being.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Do the correct marketing and some of these flaws can become features for some specific public who want... hum... different experiences.

<comment><USER10> I think having a 'door' that is locked by default, and able to be left open and 'unlocked', might be plausible consent.

The above very well would be a feature at least in fantasy (fiction, not genera) settings if not real ones as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Well. I'm getting ideas for Defcon fun.</comment>


Ask HN: Please help us with our Nigerian domains - <AUTHOR>

Brief history: We (3 developers) reserved a bunch of Nigerian domains when they came available last year and thought we would develop something on them. During the past year we failed miserably to allocate time to do anything to this and now the domains are expiring within 2 weeks, on the 15th-16th of April.
To be honest with ourselves, we really don't see ourselves doing any better during the next year on our own. Thus we have pretty much conceded to the loss of the initial registration fees and are thinking of just letting the domains expire.
It still feels like a waste to let this great collection of domains expire though, so any advice on what to do with the domains would be greatly appreciated:
boati.ng bowli.ng cycli.ng danci.ng fighti.ng fishi.ng golfi.ng hiki.ng hiri.ng painti.ng raci.ng ranki.ng saili.ng spanki.ng swi.ng
The renewal of these domains would cost us USD 218.90 per domain on our registrar 101domain.com, totalling USD 3502.40. This is a lot more than we initially anticipated the renewal would cost and in our current life situations we just are not prepared to reinvest that sum, even though there clearly is some potential with these domains.
Even the thought of donating the domains to "good use" before they expire has crossed our minds. We just don't really see how we should actually go about arranging this without having to take the risk of ending up paying the renewal fees ourselves in this short timeframe.
What should we do? <comment><USER2> Woah! There are some good mainstream names there that should'nt be hard to work with and monetize (ex. hiri.ng).

Some sound as if they were for porn or alternate lifestyles (ie. spanki.ng swi.ng).

I'd personally find a cheaper registrar and take OoTheNigerian on his offer.

Also, if budget remains a concern, you could trim the list down a bit to the ones which you could work with in the future and let the rest go.

</comment><comment><USER3> We offer available option for you guys, $112 at GigaLayer and transfer in less than 72hrs. We also accept international card payments and PayPal.

You can email firstname.lastname@example.com or that. ;)

</comment><comment><USER4> I know registrar that register at the rate of about $100 per domain.

Maybe transfer them to halve the cost and seek to sell them afterwards?

You may email me if you want introductions to the registrar

Cheers!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the suggestion Oo!

Dropping the cost to less than half would definitely make us reconsider just keeping the domains while we figure out what we can do with them.

BTW do you happen to have any knowledge on why registering and renewing the Nigerian domains cost so much more compared to other domains?

<comment><USER3> So far the reason for the cost is yet unknown, except that the registry decided to sell at that expensive rate. Possibly because of available clever domains like traveli.ng, shoppi.ng, flyi.ng etc and maybe they have some overhead operating cost because the country is still in alpha stage of internet penetration and knowledge.

Whatever the case, we hope they cut it down soon.</comment></comment></comment>


Dear HN: I Don't care about your f*cking opinion - <AUTHOR> http://vanelsas.wordpress.com/2011/11/16/dear-hn-i-am-not-interested-in-your-fcking-opinion/

<comment><USER2> If you're on HN and haven't read all of the following, it's worth your time and effort to do so:

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

<http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html>

<http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html>

<http://www.paulgraham.com/trolls.html>

<http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html>

Though far less important that the above, there are _plenty_ people on HN who are counter examples to the points of the article author (vanelsas). I just had a exchange which was counter example: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3241478>

It's fine to disagree, and it's good suggest improvements, but also taking the time to note the good stuff created by the original author helps and encourages civility.

</comment><comment><USER3> Another negative comment here but frankly, I don't agree with the author's logic. Gruber had made a very unsubstantiated point and the commenters on that story had pointed that out. Apart from fanboyism, Gruber's comment is on pretty thin ice.

Most commenters on the Android Open source story also raised some pretty valid concerns. It's not a lie that Google has been loose with term "open", commenters were ready to point that out.

There is no reason to get all worked up about valid negative points (most of which are not opinions).

<comment><USER4> I agree regarding Gruber.

And most of the top comments on the Google thread were either positive or "negative" but still informative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Every time HN down votes or strongly disagrees with my contributions, be they comments or submissions, I feel the same way as vanelsas.

Not having the right to down vote, I usually decide to go on an up vote rampage to throw the system out of whack, even if only in a minuscule way.

It's unfortunate that HN has a high concentration of people with nothing better to do than prove their superiority by tearing others apart.

It's not too unlike chimpanzee society with an alpha male exerting his dominance over the rest with a display of violence. It's not often that someone can constructively show me why my argument is missing some point.

You can down vote this too if you disagree with it. My karma here is a meaningless integer in a DB.

I'd rather have meaningful talks with open minded individuals.

</comment><comment><USER6> So your opinion, and those that support it, are positive contributions while contrary opinions are spiteful and useless?

First of all, why are you here? To have people tell you that you are right, or to get closer to the truth? If it's the former, then this is the wrong place (and the right places would probably bore you).

If it's the latter, then we're going to have to put forward different ideas about what the truth might be. Some of them will be right and some wrong. One can be excessively rude about this, but I find that is a very minor problem here. Usually, HN commenters are only as blunt as they need to be to express an idea clearly.

What is more of a problem is when people get emotionally attached to their opinions and then get upset when anyone disagrees with them. We're only human, so that attachment tends to creep in. But staying detached is a much more sensible strategy than everybody walking on eggshells all the time.

I am far more impressed with people who can take criticism than I am with people who can refrain from giving it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I can fully agree to that. I am not suggesting censorship or refraining from criticisms. I just like to see people doing that respectfully and in a way that actually adds something to the discussion

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I read the comments on one of the articles he refers to. Given the potential for fanboism and holy war the topic (platform orientated career advice) inspires and that a larger fraction of readers probably feel qualified to comment on this post rather than, say, the Haskell cheat sheet I thought the comments were ok.

Comments perhaps contain more critique than glowing praise because the action is at the margin. The value to me of a 'this is wonderful' comment followed by lots of 'I agree' is less that a robust discussion.

</comment><comment><USER8> Most comment threads that I see on HN, by and large, contain both sides to any argument.

They're like a conversation you might have with a friend, one person gives their opinion, the other perhaps gives the opposing argument and so on.

But of course, if you take any single comment out of context, it's usually either positive or negative. There are exceptions where commenters give a more rounded, thought out perspective, but it's mainly short opinionated comments.

And that's how conversations often are; short, off the cuff remarks. Rarely carefully worded, equal handed monologues.

</comment><comment><USER9> "I honestly don't care about your f*cking opinion... I just ask all of us to show a little respect..."

be the change you want to see in the world.

</comment><comment><USER10> OK...this is going to be a bit meta. Then why submit it here?

<comment><USER11> Because it this piece is well written and can prove important to readers of HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> You just asked for HN's opinion, though, even though you don't care about it? That's a bit of doublethink right there.

Anyway, yes, fuck you too, but if it makes you feel better, most of the Internet is populated by tools, trolls, and fools, and HN's not somehow above that. I'm not sure why you'd think that, either. As two of our greatest philosophers once noted, the Internet's greatest purpose is slandering others anonymously.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess my writing skills are not so good. I think opinions matter, I just feel we can do a little less with f*cking opinions.

<comment><USER13> To me, your point was completely lost by the fact that you choose to attack people yourself, rather than highlight the stories with positive comments. You didn't really do a meaningful comparison, but rather just looked at two stories' comments and decided to write a rant about it. What would be cooler would be to take an Opinion Analyzer and run it over the comments from all stories for a week, and get a true idea of the factual amount of positive/negative.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, and I might have done a better job at it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Inventory Software Sucks - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@CyberStockroom/why-inventory-software-sucks-fd596a5bc14f <comment><USER2> Basically like a D&D Game. You put the jewel into the gold box which is in your backpack and the whole lot follows you around the dungeon.</comment>


The Zappos holacracy, Edward Tufte's sparklines, and an 11×17 printer - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2015/10/01/the-zappos-holacracy-edward-tuftes-sparklines-and-an-11x17-printer/ <comment><USER2> Having spent multiple decades in big technology corporations (now out of that and in startup world), one thing I started noticing towards the end is the dilution of power of Execs' due to information becoming freely available to all and sundry in an organization.

These are strategic level information (the technology trend, shifts, competitive landscape etc.) to information on company metrics which are now freely available publicly and it can be argued that even Exces' would not be aware of all of these info (blogs, analysis, leaks and even things like anonymous public forums where employees speak out - not limited to 'Glassdoor' and its ilk).

Few decades back none of these information were available to an average joe employee, they were accessible only to Execs - strategical knowledge through paid researches, consultants, high paid industry advisors etc.

At that time _information WAS power_ , Execs' would take decisions and employees would follow, they had no room for doubts as they did not have any information with them which would make them to think critically. However, now things have changed so drastically that today a young employee is much more clued in to technology trends, shifts and competition than an old world clueless execs'. If you throw in jaded middle management in this mix, the scenario gets even more ugly.

I guess this liberation and accessibility of information is going to play a very big role in coming decades as to how organizations gets shaped.

</comment><comment><USER3> Do I really want a piece of paper? Or a dashboard with the same contents - perhaps set as my browser's home page. With the addition of a few large format screens showing the dashboards in the work area, I think that would suit our group better than a printed piece of paper.

I think the more important concept is to get everyone in the group focused on the core metrics and one thing I do like about the idea is that there can be more than a "few key metrics".

I'm imagining every one of our application servers counting the errors that show up in the logs - right next to the raw hits and response time. We're responsible for more than 80 products and it would also be informative to show the error rates of products versus each other. Which of the products needs maintenance work most?

We capture metrics for some of the newer applications in Ganglia, but the idea that you might fit 500 numbers and spark-lines on a single dashboard has given me so great ideas.

<comment><USER4> > Do I really want a piece of paper? Or a dashboard with the same contents - > perhaps set as my browser's home page.

The piece of paper would be sitting there, waiting to be seen. When's the last time you looked at your browser's home page? I don't even think mine has one.

And changes to a dashboard-generating system can be a lot more expensive that changes made in a paper-printing system. As someone elsethread noted, he's seen millions spent on tools to replace cents spent on paper.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The idea that a company would have 500 meaningful and actionable metrics that would each produce relevant data daily seems laughable.

I've always found that the more time, money, and employee hours a company spent on tracking metrics, the crappier that company was. (My sample size here is admittedly small.)

<comment><USER6> I've usually found that when metrics become the focus of an organization, the organization optimizes around gaming the metrics. This happens in companies, volunteer groups, communist dictatorships, capitalist paradises, everywhere.

Something inevitably gives.

I also have a hard time believing that this idea is floating putting a piece of paper on everybody's desks, in 2015.

<comment><USER7> I use paper all of the time to present information. It's remarkably effective and easy to do vs. screwing around with dashboard apps, accessing various data sources, etc.

To avoid the horrific costs of printing things on color, I've seen millions wasted on BI tools and other fluffery. 10 minutes of excel and 10 pieces of paper does the job.

<comment><USER8> That is only a single paper though. Now you must replicate and distribute that paper to every person in the company...ASAP.

<comment><USER7> The consumer of metrics that I give a hoot about are a few key team members, the COO and CTO. I go to "# of copies" hit 6, and I'm done.

I'm not a total luddite btw, Most of what I do is project based or operations in transition. So metrics are either evolving or we don't have a consensus over what matters. So the building process of automated dashboard isn't a high roi activity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For anybody else that was confused: 11x17 = A3 (this might save you 30 seconds of googling)

<comment><USER10> 11x17 at least gives a sense of dimensions (provided you recognize those as a standard imperial paper size). With the A series of paper sizes, most people know A4, then don't remember if sizes go up or down numerically.

<comment><USER9> Not the case in the UK, I suspect, which is where I live - most people will be familiar with A3/A4/A5. They've been the standard for the past 50-odd years, and penetration of non-ISO paper sizes is approximately 0%.

Until I followed the link, I didn't know 11x17 wasn't just a particular type of printer. And once I found out it was a paper size, I wondered how large it was, since I don't have a good feel for anything in inches once you get past the 12 that fit on a standard 30cm ruler. Which is why I posted :)

<comment><USER11> > Not the case in the UK, I suspect, which is where I live - most people will > be familiar with A3/A4/A5.

Exactly. A4 is for letters and documents, so it's everywhere, people know A5 from their exercise books at school, and will have used A3 for something at school, perhaps art or technical drawing.

Beyond that, flipcharts are A1, and postcards are A6, although i suspect most people don't realise that. You don't see A2 much.

I once came across a giant A0 flipchart pad, and immediately attempted to make a paper aeroplane from it. However, it's too thin relative to its size, so the plane collapsed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This headline sounds like it was generated by a Markov chain reading hacker news.

</comment><comment><USER13> _" What do readers who work in companies with at least 50 employees think? Would it be helpful to arrive at work and find an 11×17 sheet of paper across your keyboard with perhaps 150 metrics of the company's performance?"_

Performance metrics like these don't really help with many of the kinds of decisions we pay high-level managers for, especially long-term strategic planning. For example:

\- Do we want to move into new line of business X? Would purchasing Company Y help us do this?

\- What qualities are we looking for in the person we'll hire to replace our CTO, who just turned in her resignation?

\- Should we be trying to negotiate a better deal with our health insurance provider when the contract renews?

\- Should we change the way we recruit developers? Should we open a new office in Shanghai to get access to the pool of developers there?

\- Is government regulation in our industry likely to hurt our business over the next few years?

The company still needs people to deal with questions like these, and real- time operational data doesn't really help with these kinds of problems.

</comment><comment><USER14> One thing that essentially every organization has is specialization (job roles). When I was working as an engineer, my problems focused around engineering. I simply didn't have the time to think about company-level problems every day.</comment>


Coinbase suffers outages amid Bitcoin surge - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-coinbase-outages-idUSKBN18L2MK <comment><USER2> Perfect opportunity to ask:

Does anyone know of an alternative to Coinbase with an API for sending payouts to Bitcoin addresses?

I am disappointed with their standard of transparency and support. A couple months ago they decided to stop paying on-chain transaction fees. While I understand this move - the manner in which they conducted this change was abysmal: no notice and a brief mention in an obscure blog post. When I reached out to them, I received no response on the matter and I spend several hundred a week through their API.</comment>


Uniprocessor Garbage Collection Techniques - <AUTHOR> http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.47.2438

<comment><AUTHOR> This paper is an excellent survey of fundamental GC designs.</comment>


Beijing to Judge Every Resident Based on Behavior by End of 2020 - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-21/beijing-to-judge-every-resident-based-on-behavior-by-end-of-2020 <comment><USER3> I've been frustrated lately that my rating as a passenger in Uber is at 4.78 and falling despite my own preception of always being an excellent passenger. I can't imagine how frustrating it would be to have your entire life controlled by this type of rating system. I listened to a podcast that dug into how once you get into a hole with this type of rating system it's self- reinforcing and practically impossible to get out of. This can't be a good thing for civil liberties.

<comment><USER4> Unlike Uber (or even HN for that matter), China's social credit system is _transparent and explicit_ in the way it rewards or deducts points.

You know what you did wrongly to lose points, so that you can avoid it next time.

You also know what are good things that you can do to improve your score.

<comment><USER5> Which is perfect for the government because everyone will change their behaviours to match what the government wants.

<comment><USER6> But the government is made up of people. If I recall, there are something like 90 million members in the CCP. And really, any Chinese citizen can join and move up the ranks.

<comment><USER7> So we're pretending Xi is not a dictator now? Did we forget how he arrested all of his real opponents and critics before re-election? You make it sound like China is almost a democracy which couldn't be farther from the truth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Every resident, or just those who don't bribe the right people to improve their ranking, or those who aren't high enough in the political pecking order?

It almost goes without saying that such a system is ripe for abuse and puts in to the hands of the powerful a new tool for control over the powerless.

The average citizen will now have to jump even higher when their masters tell them to jump, while those at the top of the political hierarchy are very likely to be exempt.

<comment><USER9> Even if the system applies equally to everyone, the biggest problem will be that civil disobedience is now completely banned. The government is now able to do whatever they want with impunity, and the citizens can't do anything about it.

<comment><USER10> Maybe they'll be a new subculture of unrated or poorly rated people that supply their own market and services? That's if the government doesn't just start killing them.

<comment><USER8> This reminds me of Blank Reg[1], from 1984's Max Headroom.[2]

The Blanks were people who have no record in the system.

Now that was a prescient TV show if I ever saw one.

[1] - [http://www.maxheadroom.com/index.php?title=Episode_ABC.1.6:_...](http://www.maxheadroom.com/index.php?title=Episode_ABC.1.6:_%22Blanks%22)

[2] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom:_20_Minutes_into_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom:_20_Minutes_into_the_Future)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It you think this is dystopian, you probably have good credit. Try setting up home internet with a FICO under 600. Try renting an apartment in Williamsburg with an Experian score under 750. Try getting a civil service job while your gas bill is overdue. America invented this.

<comment><USER12> Some of these seem like really bad comparisons. If your credit score is bad, you just have to pay your ISP in advance, rather than be billed monthly in arrears, which is pretty logical. This is also just a rational response by a private company in response to a customer's bad credit. Not that I don't have lots of issues with the credit reporting agencies in America.

The Chinese system seems a whole lot more dystopian since it's state run, and since they are trying to link unrelated things — i.e. penalize you for certain "anti-social" behavior that goes far beyond having poor credit.

<comment><USER13> Ironically this is what the American credit system was designed to avoid. Pre modern credit score, bank loans were given out based on things like "moral character", the theory being that alcoholics shouldn't get loans, but it turns out this has a high false negative rate. Most hurt were of course minorities. After the credit system access to credit exploded, whether for better or worse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> China doesn't have a good track record of policies: the pest control, the one child. One could also argue that their economy is also showing a crisis in the future.

This system if it is unstable and has side effects will probably screw up two generations at least.

The main issue I see is that people with low scores can "infect" other people's scores. Considering this like a viral phenomenon the score will be impacted starting with family, friends, colleagues, strangers. I can't see a solution except going the old route of "killing the nine family relations".

I can see some kind of ghetto of low social score people doing barter and what not.

There are some contradictions like donating blood giving good score but what if for someone with a low score. There goes empathy if punished.

Or some exploits like colluding and creating cartels of increasing social score artificially.

</comment><comment><USER15> Society will no longer be able to function if you can't break rules. I can easily see the people who are impacted by this system starting a revolution.

<comment><USER9> The entire point of the system is to make revolution, or any change at all, impossible. The people no longer have anything to bring in on their side of the negotiation.

<comment><USER5> Also there will be no way to organise one because the government will drop your social score for even thinking about it of talking to anyone else with a low score.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Once this phase is complete, the true manacles will come out: targeted collective punishment. If your family member or friend is a bad actor, you are guilty by association, and your score suffers.

This will also make you reachable even if you're not living in China. Say something China doesn't like? Your family and friends score suffers in China. Do it for too long and they disown you for their own self preservation.

</comment><comment><USER17> A part of me feels like this can't possibly be a good thing.

But who knows, maybe this will work out and be a net positive for society at the cost of the few people that will fall through the cracks and be evaluated unfairly. It seems like this is going to happen one way or another, so here's hoping for the best.

<comment><USER18> Like all things this will have it's negatives and it positives. Will result in decrease in crime cleaner streets better behaved citizens. One major problem China faces is that they have advanced too quickly from rural to urban for the people habits and behaviours to have changed. Now this will force people to change. But at the same time the restrictions that people will be living under will result in mental problems in the future. My thought is taking this at face value and not considering how this will be abused as that is another argument which everyone else is doing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> In the future identities will belong to groups of people, not individuals. It will be like that episode of cracked where everyone is one of the characters on friends. Something weird is happening with society where as the internet connects us there are ways of doing things that win out on huge scales. It's like we're outsourcing our personalities, hobbies, likes and dislikes, etc. Powers that be want more control. They don't want us to be individuals. They want us to be neurons. We're taking a sick turn that's a hundred times worse than anything Orwell could have imagined.

<comment><USER20> Can you expound on this? I'm not sure I follow but I'm interested.

<comment><USER19> Okay but please understand you're asking me to spend a half an hour decompressing and interleaving several different ideas I have into one. I don't mind if you really are interested but this is the internet and it wouldn't be the first time I did to his only to no response or to have it start an argument that I don't want to participate in.

<comment><USER21> Another way to see it is we're interested in what you were saying and we're giving you the podium.

<comment><USER19> As information about people will be easier to access (think Google Glass) it will be natural to start grouping strangers together based on various scores. So when you see someone in the store their profile gets pulled up and you see an assessment about them. At that point the individual goes away and their AIDs (Aggregate Identities) become more important because it's just easier. From there instead of trying to grow as an individual people will try to grow in these identities or try and get the right scores to switch identities. If we enter into an age of abundance there will have to be a means of dividing up resources. Since there will be fewer jobs for many people (I ask you to assume this in a broad context but we could unpack it further to see if it has legs) they will fall back on their AIDs to determine what their share of resources should be. There won't be a reward for doing your own thing because doing your own thing won't be recognized in any of these identities. At that point you're just reading from whichever script you believe will get you the most points and you cease to become a human being, you become a neuron.

Let's start with news aggregators to talk about ideas winning out on a massive scale. One thing news aggregators do is act as a sort of activation function for ideas. For a given news aggregator an unpopular idea within the group will get tamped down while a popular idea within the group will get magnified. For example, an article about how Rust is awesome will get more points on Hacker News than an article about how Rust isn't any better than C. So when we use news aggregators we learn how to be heard and what to avoid. It's almost so bad that you can see an inaccurate version of history being written before your eyes sometimes. For example, during the last presidential election Reddit was awash with extremist left wing propaganda because those ideas were rewarded and magnified on that site. Meanwhile any centrist or right idea was immediately tamped down. The aggregator has spoken! Again, we see what to avoid and what to do to get a reward. So we trade our autonomy for internet points. I guess that is why they call it the hive mind.

To me it seems like our ideas are becoming more unified even as our population expands. I think this is because ideas spread easily on social media. But at the same time it's just easier to do things at scale. It's easier to build cookie cutter houses than homes for individuals and honestly it's easier to live in a cookie cutter house in a cookie cutter life and give up some of that autonomy so that you can focus on what matters to you. e.g. so you can specialize or just provide the best possible life for your family. But even in specialties there is a strong demand to conform to popular consensus. That's why, to me, it seems like we are outsourcing many parts of ourselves. We give up a little autonomy here so that we can focus our energy elsewhere but when we're expected to give up our autonomy there too we again become nothing more than extremely hard working, unappreciated, and unfulfilled neurons. *At this point it might sound like I am talking about myself or that I hate my job, lol. Just to clarify, I actually do enjoy my job but I know what it's like to work in a web development dungeon.

The last little bit about Orwell I don't think makes a whole lot of sense now that I look at it again. He surely could have imagined a dystopian future where a power hungry government turns its citizens into slaves by controlling their access to resources based on invasive monitoring of their "behavior". It just seems a little deeper than 1984 to me because of the psychological impact of living a prescribed life and carrying around a fake smile every second of the day.

<comment><USER22> I couldn't agree with you more. It's been getting me down lately - <USER2> everyone is just doing the same thing. Echoing the same thoughts (while ironically patting themselves on the back for their perceived intelligence in doing so). Taking the same selfie pose in the same location with the same expression of how exhilarating the experience is.

I'm currently prepping for an interview at one of the big tech companies. It's hard to push aside the thought that I'm a nobody who at best will spend years nipping at the toes of the hyper privileged individuals who are no more capable than me (in theory), yet who, because of their birth rights (parents, wealth, connections, etc), are in a position of power where their subjective desires will dictate what I do and say with my life (at least 1/3 of it, including the 1/3 where I'm unconscious). It's even harder to think that as time goes on, this paradigm will only grow further. Just thinking about the updates I'll make to my resume to pass the test, and how I'll have to squeeze in the right buzz words all while displaying a cheery demeanor as though this is all a favor to me - it saddens me. And then I consider how in 5, 20, 50 years this whole process will be that much more nuanced and invasive...

It's not the future I saw in youth. It's the opposite. I thought the world was one where work produced more for everyone. More wealth, more comfort, more freedom. But it seems inevitable that in a finite space with an ever growing population, that's not going to be the case. It's a constant struggle for power. It's not always the same individuals and groups driving it, but the result is the same every time.

Thank you for the write up. It resonated deeply with me.

<comment><USER20> I probably should post this from a throwaway, but whatever...burn the boats.

 _I'm currently prepping for an interview at one of the big tech companies. It's hard to push aside the thought that I'm a nobody who at best will spend years nipping at the toes of the hyper privileged individuals who are no more capable than me (in theory), yet who, because of their birth rights (parents, wealth, connections, etc), are in a position of power where their subjective desires will dictate what I do and say with my life (at least 1 /3 of it, including the 1/3 where I'm unconscious). It's even harder to think that as time goes on, this paradigm will only grow further. Just thinking about the updates I'll make to my resume to pass the test, and how I'll have to squeeze in the right buzz words all while displaying a cheery demeanor as though this is all a favor to me - it saddens me. And then I consider how in 5, 20, 50 years this whole process will be that much more nuanced and invasive..._

This describes me exactly. I've been self-employed for over a decade, I do very well at it, I have a growing "side hustle" helping other freelancers and consultants build stronger businesses, and it's close to taking over as my dominant source of income.

But every six to twelve months I just get really, really tired and I think about getting a job at one of the big tech companies. I think I could probably make as much or more over the next 10-20 years as I will working for myself, and it doesn't seem like the worst gig. It seems emotionally much easier than what I'm doing now.

But one of the biggest things that holds me back is the feeling you describe of just being a nobody cog in the wheel. Can I do that? It sounds crushing, but I can't decide if that's my ego, me being unrealistic, me placing too much value and identity on career and work and money, etc.

When I was in my 20s, I had an opportunity to go work directly for a founder of one of these companies. Everyone knows his name. He was looking for a family tech manager to basically manage all the technology for his houses around the world, yachts, private jets, etc. I deliberated for days about even interviewing for this gig. I did, but didn't get the job in the end. Maybe for the best. But the reason I didn't know if I wanted it was that I felt pretty sure that the billionaire across the table never would have taken that job in his 20s. So why was I?

And one of the things I learned that day after spending an hour with this guy was this: he's nothing special. Yeah, he's smart, and he's worked hard, but I didn't see anything there that seemed foreign to me. And that's why I've been self-employed for the last decade, and why I suspect I'll never have a job again. Because it just seems unbearable to accept defeat and get a job working for someone who got lucky, yes, but also didn't just accept defeat and get a job when it was on the table for them.

Enough rambling, back to work!

<comment><USER22> Thanks for the insight. I've only been working independently for a short two years and I'm constantly wondering if I should feel as weak as I do about it. Your analogy is very meaningful. You're right - that billionaire never would have taken the job. Not that my goal is to be a billionaire (a few million would suffice XD), but more to be in a position where I get to call the shots in my own life.

Hope things are working out for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Have not read beyond the headline, so apologies if (as is likely) I missed a critical point. However:

This seems likely to cause those who don't want or can't fit into the rated society China is building to emigrate.

The more creative, the misfits, those square pegs who don't fit in round holes... Send them our way.

<comment><USER24> I'm fairly sure that low social credit restricts their ability to travel or leave the country, so that may not work. Unfortunately the more likely scenario for then is probably winding up in 're-education'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Make no mistake, this is coming to "the west" as well. Just in a distributed, capitalistic way. Someone else here mentioned Uber ratings, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. Social media is already used as a source of data for rentals[1] and even babysitting[2] applications. But of course the most eager adopters are also the effective gatekeeper to so many aspects of modern life: insurance companies[3].

Meanwhile, the algorithms used to make these decisions are often an unaccountable, un-analyzable black box. It's going to be very possible to fall through into an "undesirable" category without any obvious misdeeds or obvious ways to fix the situation. I expect we're going to see a category of consultants emerge that will help you "fix" undesirable algorithm ratings - just like we have for credit ratings.

[1] [https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/15/naborly-lets-landlords- scr...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/15/naborly-lets-landlords-screen- tenants-automagically/)

[2] [https://venturebeat.com/2018/10/04/babysitter-screening- app-...](https://venturebeat.com/2018/10/04/babysitter-screening-app- predictim-uses-ai-to-sniff-out-bullies/)

[3] [https://medium.com/privacy-international/social-media- intell...](https://medium.com/privacy-international/social-media-intelligence- and-profiling-in-the-insurance-industry-4958fd11f86f)

<comment><USER26> > Just in a distributed, capitalistic way.

This is a HUGE difference because you are allowed to exit a given system / rating scheme or not use the services that require it. That may be difficult, but it's not literally prevented by the government. You and your fellow defectors can build alternatives. Build your own institutions.

<comment><USER27> I bet your future employer would be very interested in seeing your Uber rating before they hire you, so if a company decided to sell that information it could get very close to what China intends to do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I can't help but think of the episode Majority Rule from The Orville, but more sinister and less campy...

[https://m.imdb.com/title/tt6845666/](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt6845666/)

</comment><comment><USER29> It is worth noting that many of the penalties the Chinese government is pushing would be considered a direct violation of inalienable humans rights as recognized by our constitution. Their approach should have you terrified for their citizens.

<comment><USER20> Ha! I'm terrified for _our citizens_ , because people here apparently have no idea how good we have it, even with all our problems. According to a bunch of people on HN (on this post and previous ones about this subject), the fact that we have FICO scores in America makes us just as bad, if not worse.

People have literally no idea how good they have it. If they think everything is hell, why would they fight to protect it?

<comment><USER30> > _the fact that we have FICO scores in America makes us just as bad, if not > worse._

No, it makes us comparable. Not comparable like "we're the same". It makes us comparable like "we have something similar and let me show you some of the differences and correlations so that we might learn something".

> _People have literally no idea how good they have it._

I think you're observing us focused on the bad and it makes you think we've lost sight of what's good.

> _If they think everything is hell, why would they fight to protect it?_

What right do we have to something which we do not wish to improve? How can we fight to improve if we do not discuss how it's bad and what could be done to resolve the problems? How can you resolve problems if you don't recognize them in the first place?

<comment><USER20> By that logic every country or organization or grouping of people in history is "comparable".

<comment><USER31> You might be surprised to learn that there are entire disciplines of scholarship dedicated to comparing countries, organizations, and groupings of people.

<comment><USER20> Really?? Wow!

That doesn't mean that they're all "comparable" in any reasonable sense of the word.

<comment><USER30> What you find to be reasonable is not necessarily what others find to be reasonable. For a comparison: I find @danharaj's comment to be very reasonable.

<comment><USER20> Probably because they're agreeing with you and I'm disagreeing with you.

Is a small tribe of Native Americans in the 1400s "comparable" to the European Union in 2018?

Only in the sense that you _can_ compare them, but then, you can compare anything, so literally anything is comparable in that sense, which robs the word of all meaning.

<comment><USER31> > Only in the sense that you can compare them, but then, you can compare > anything, so literally anything is comparable in that sense, which robs the > word of all meaning.

I think there's quite a bit more in common between a 1400's tribe and the EU than say, the star Polaris and trends of Swedish Cubism in the years 1950-1980.

The point here has always been that throwing up your hands and saying the original comparison is unreasonable is not a reasoned argument, it's flipping the table and walking off. The systems of social control in the United States and China are far more comparable than "anything to anything".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This isn't mature technology. It shouldn't be opterating at this scale.

Following novelty can lead to many disasters.

I imagine that suicide and such self destructive behavior will skyrocket.

<comment><USER13> Curious if there are small scale experiments. Like, what if reddit karma were distributed by the mods?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> 1984

</comment><comment><USER34> The main difference between this and the US is that US citizens are compliant enough not to warrant such explicit measures.

In the US, if a citizen is suspected of getting out of line, all social media data, phone metadata, all bank transactions, etc., for that individual and all of his/her friends or acquaintances, which for most people is tens of thousands of people, is available for review by law enforcement, with no doubt that a warrant will be obtained.

FWIW, in the US, anyone within 100 miles of a border (which is the majority of people) has no 4th amendment right against arbitrary search.

There is most definitely a social credit system in the US to the extent that one is necessary, but due to the success of other social control mechanisms it is not necessary for it to be as overt as China's.

This sort of anti-China propaganda has been building over time and this story has been tested and revised a few times, but per the article below, is not actually true:

[https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from- chaos/2018/11/19/c...](https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from- chaos/2018/11/19/chinas-orwellian-social-credit-score-isnt-real/)

<comment><USER20> As usual, here come the comments claiming that the US is just as bad. Had HN been around at the end of WWII, I'm sure the news of millions of Jews being killed in concentration camps would have been met with "Yeah, well we put Japanese people in internment camps. We do it differently, but we still oppress people, so who are we to judge."

You're wrong about there being no doubt that a warrant can be obtained to examine the records of tens of thousands of people because one person "got out of line", except in the most extreme cases. Well, depending on how you define "getting out of line", maybe extreme national security but that's relatively rare. I'd like to see a source showing that such warrants are widespread.

And that's not how the 100 miles from the border / 4th amendment thing works either. Not that it's not a complete clusterfuck, but it's not as simple as you describe: [https://www.aclu.org/other/constitution-100-mile-border- zone](https://www.aclu.org/other/constitution-100-mile-border-zone)

Edit: to clarify for the dead comment in response to mine: America does all kinds of terrible shit. We always have. Internment camps are a stain on this country. And the stuff we do in the name of national security spits on the spirit of the constitution. But that doesn't mean it's on the same level as all atrocities by other governments, or that we're robbed of our moral authority to condemn human rights violations because we're imperfect. And the lazy whataboutism that's dragged out every time there's a story about a truly horrific authoritarian regime trampling on its citizens is galling. It's ignorant and useless.

<comment><USER34> > we're robbed of our moral authority to condemn human rights violations

I think you've hit the nail on the head by describing it as a form of moral authority. American exceptionalism is a religion, and the idea that America's actions are morally justifiable no matter what their humanitarian cost is one of the fundamental tenets of the religion.

To be clear, American exceptionalism is among the most destructive and horrible religious regimes ever to exist, and has caused untold suffering all over the modern world. Keep in mind we live in 2018 when most disease and scarcity that once prevented human populations from flourishing have been eradicated.

Yet America is engaged in countless wars abroad and coerces its allies to collaborate in the enactment of inhumane sanctions aimed at all sorts of populations of innocents all around the world. Their crime? Not giving up their lives to overthrow whatever dictator has taken power.

Meanwhile we sit back and watch it all on CNN or Fox and praise the bold, morally principled actions of our political leaders whose moralizing led to the sanctions, bombs, drones, etc.

It is absolutely unconscionable for Americans or American leaders to attempt to use some sort of moral superiority as a justification for committing these kinds of acts. Why is this story being promulgated about China in spite of being oversold? Because some American leaders want to threaten China militarily and want to disturb the peace that has been achieved over the past decades.

One reason American Exceptionalism may not seem to you like a religion is because it is so unbelievably widespread. Politicians are expected to pepper their remarks with platitudes about the moral righteousness of our wars and our policies. It's all complete nonsense.

We act in the service of powerful interest groups, aligning with whatever dictators suit us at the moment, and never will our political leaders discuss any sort of definition of national interest. They prefer to talk in religion- esque language with platitudes about how brave our soldiers are and how virtuous our motives.

But in fact, a simple clear articulation of what they claim US national interest to be would be more than enough. If it's in the US national interest to somehow engage in conflict with China, then claim it outright, don't spend years trying to paint China as totalitarian or ultra authoritarian. It's not true nor is it remotely relevant.

The real cost of American exceptionalist dogma is that so many of us never think deeply about why we are supporting various wars or sanctions or dictators. We just assume that of course the US would never do anything untoward while our leaders exploit that naivete to the fullest.

So please spare us the platitudes about WW2, the so-called _greatest generation_ and all that nonsense. War is ugly and we most certainly did not enter WW2 for humanitarian reasons.

<comment><USER20> I think perhaps you responded to the wrong comment. Or you didn't bother to read mine. Yours on the other hand I've read a thousand times: America is the ultimate evil, blah blah. You guys need some new material.

<comment><USER34> Of course some actions of nations against their own people or against foreign people will be worse than others.

If the consensus mechanism used in a democracy is a simple majority, that leaves the opportunity for 49% of the population to be entirely disenfranchised by 51%. Let's assume this is fair and reasonable for now.

Moral authority is something that has traditionally been claimed by members of the clergy, and notably by many governments in which the political leaders are also the religious leaders.

We've seen the many downsides of theocracy around the world, so I find it concerning that so many Americans are willing to accept hollow moralizing from elected leaders.

If a president said, "I woke this morning and I knew that God had spoken to me. He said that the US must invade country X. And so it shall be done", most people would all be appropriately freaked out.

But when instead the political leader says "Country X is led by a mentally ill tyrant, women of country X are oppressed, and the infrastructure in country X under the current regime is failing, resulting in high levels of disease and infant mortality", everyone applauds the upright moral character of the American politician.

Every day the newspapers contain a number of articles pointing to infrastructure problems in other nations... whether it's drug violence in south or central America, corruption in India, the smell of garbage or sewage in China, etc. Not to mention the many articles taking aim at social ills blamed on the ruling party in any number of nations. This writing is read by Americans as we read celebrity gossip, as entertainment. It reinforces the narrative of American exceptionalism.

But one might ask why it is necessary. It is done to help make Americans view foreign people as beneath them, unable to prevent drug violence, corruption or the smell of garbage. We are meant to read these articles and think "wow I am sure glad I live in the US".

But in reality, the way of life for middle class people in many countries in the world is superior to that experienced in the US. Not in the way that is reflected by per-capita GDP, but if you go there and see how people live it is obvious.

If Americans realized that we would tolerate a lot less from policymakers. We might even insist on accountability for grand ideas that promise to be money pits. If we saw the people of other nations as getting a lot of things right, maybe even getting some things more right than we do, we might be reluctant to allow our leaders to fly drones over their countries or scapegoat their exporters.

The entire American security state and massive military projection of power could not exist without the opiatic effect of the state religion of American Exceptionalism.

So while the program going on in China may be of some minor level of concern, we need to see through the PR campaign that is going on and realize _why_ we are being told about this one narrow aspect of Chinese policy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> To me this looks like the continuation of Project Cybersyn [1] and is just applied cybernetics on a societal scale. To call it totalitarian or dismiss it as a simple dystopian nightmare is very superficial. I am actually quite impressed at the guile of the Chinese state for going ahead with this.

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

To the unknown person who criticized me ("people like you are what's wrong with the world") but later deleted his post:

To see this from a mere political angle, is to miss the point entirely. You are deluding yourself if you think that similar cybernetic feedback loops are not currently in play in western democratic states. The difference is that in the west, these loops are driven by non-state actors and focus on cultivating consumerism (look at the Black Friday hordes), apathy and lack of critical thinking. By taking an active approach, the Chinese state could try to pre- empt these problems on one hand and aim at creating a different kind of citizen on the other.</comment>


macOS 10.15 Catalina: The Art Technica Review - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/10/macos-10-15-catalina-the-ars-technica-review/ <comment><USER2> Nooo don't make zsh the default shell. Wtf is Apple doing?

I don't have an issue if people want to use/download zsh, but making it the OS default is a huge mistake! From the zsh docs themselves:

"Broadly, bash has paid more attention to standards compliancy (i.e. POSIX) for longer, and has so far avoided the more abstruse interactive features (programmable completion, etc.) that zsh has." ~[http://zsh.sourceforge.net/FAQ/zshfaq02.html#l14](http://zsh.sourceforge.net/FAQ/zshfaq02.html#l14)

Don't make a less-standards compliant shell the default! Bash is one of the few programs I can rely on between all my different devices.

<comment><USER3> You can install it manually if you want. The reason they did it is their version of bash is ancient since they don't want GPLv3 in the operating system.

<comment><USER2> Nooooo! Don't make me INSTALL a standard-compliant shell!! Make me install a NON-standard-compliant shell.

It's better to have an old version of a standard-compliant shell be the default. Users can easily install the latest bash/zsh, but make that a personal choice.

The license isn't a valid reason to swap out bash.

<comment><USER4> I'm pretty sure bash still comes with the system. It's only the default shell which is easily configurable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Reminder: 32-bit apps will not work in Catalina. If you use your computer as your main work machine, hold off on the update. You're bound to run into a random forgotten app you use every once in a while that's no longer supported.

To see what's still 32-bit on your mac, go to:

Apple icon > About this mac > system report > applications > then click the 64-bit column to sort. No will be 32-bit apps.</comment>


New evidence that giving cash to the poor is more transformative than we thought - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/africa/1473226/unconditional-cash-transfers-help-reduce-poverty-in-africa/ <comment><AUTHOR> [https://academic.oup.com/wbro/article/33/2/259/5127165](https://academic.oup.com/wbro/article/33/2/259/5127165)</comment>


Python implementation of the WHATWG HTML5 specification - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/html5lib/

<comment><USER2> To be clear, this only implements the parser section of the specification; that is the stuff at [1]. It is pretty useful if you want a reliable-with- real-world-content HTML parser that can be used with many python tree libraries that only ship XML parsers or ship unreliable HTML parsers (e.g. ElementTree, lxml, minidom). It is probably a bad idea to use it if performance is a big concern.

(disclaimer: I am one of the maintainers of this library)

[1] [http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current- work/multipage/...](http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current- work/multipage/parsing.html#parsing)

<comment><AUTHOR> I've relied heavily on lxml in the past to parse HTML and I've found it to be quite reliable against tag soup. Do you have any specific gripes or sources I could reference? I'm interested in finding out where it is deficient.

<comment><USER2> Hmm, I only have vague recollections about people reporting problems with lxml and I can't trivially find any supporting evidence with Google so it is possible that it is good enough in almost all cases (since afaik it doesn't actually implement the HTML5 algorithm yet it presumably doesn't work when you need browser-grade compatibility, but such extreme requirements are rare). In any case lxml is a superb library which I would recommend to anyone; personally I often use html5lib with the lxml treebuilder to take advantage of all the nice features in the lxml tree. It is also the best choice I am aware of for fast parsing of possibly broken HTML in python.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> As beautifulsoup isn't actively developed anymore, I hope html5lib will pick up where beautifulsoup left off in terms of "tag soup support".</comment>