Building a Cathedral - <AUTHOR> https://theprepared.org/features/2019/4/28/building-a-cathedral <comment><USER2> See also: the brilliant illustrator David Macaulay's glorious "how-to" book.

[https://www.amazon.com/Cathedral-Story-Construction-David- Ma...](https://www.amazon.com/Cathedral-Story-Construction-David- Macaulay/dp/0395316685)

<comment><USER3> This book is one of the childhood books that made me who I am today. I also had Pyramid and City.

<comment><USER4> Don't forget _The Way Things Work_!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure of it's historical accuracy, or if the author took some liberties with the subject at hand, but one of my favorite works of fiction on the "building of a cathedral" is Ken Follett's "The Pillars of the Earth". If you haven't read it, you may be as surprised by it as I was...

<comment><USER6> Wish there was less 'adult' content in it, I'd recommend it more widely. As it is, it's one of the few books I've thrown out, and I recommend David Macaulay's Cathedral instead. :/

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> So the key points of the essay -- cathedrals are accretions of effort over time, no cathedral is ever finished -- do they apply to software? And do they apply more to cathedral-structured projects than to bazaar-structured projects? I'm perhaps more drawn to this metaphor than I should be; I think I'm still trying to make up my mind about whether it's really useful, and to what extent.

<comment><USER2> > cathedrals are accretions of effort over time, no cathedral is ever finished

The basic premise of "How Buildings Learn" by Stewart Brand, co-founder of The WELL, is that the better buildings are those that can and may adapt to different purposes over their life span. Like they say, 'this home has good bones' if the house has good infrastructure and structure. This can also be obviously applied to software construction.

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

<comment><USER7> Interesting notion! It puts me in mind of Levittown. All houses followed an original standard design (or three), but if you go there today, no two are alike. Originally derided as the paragon of uniformity, each house in Levittown has grown and changed to suit its owners.

<comment><USER8> any link with more information about Levittown?

<comment><USER7> This is the Levittown I'm talking about:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levittown,_Pennsylvania](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levittown,_Pennsylvania)

This song distills the low regard in which it was held.

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

My comment is based on visits to Levittown -- a friend of mine grew up there.

<comment><USER9> Though note that "Little Boxes" originally refers to Daly City, California (you can see them when riding BART to or from SFO).

<comment><USER7> I did not know that. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is a fascinating web site. I was particularly impressed by the section labeled "Tool Guide".

<comment><USER11> <3 thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Cathedrals are unfinished. It is just the nature of the beast"

Always mis-read 'beast' as 'breast' in literature. It gladdens your heart and puts a great spin on everything.

<comment><USER12> An irreverent remark on Hacker News! Attack! Attack!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Failed YC Startups - <AUTHOR> Applying to YC and want to hear about a failed startup founder's experience hopefully before we submit. Contact: firstname.lastname@example.com <comment><USER2> In the past there've been a couple of threads about being rejected from YC

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=rejected%20yc&sort=byPopularit...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=rejected%20yc&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)</comment>


Distributed systems primer - <AUTHOR> http://blog.evanweaver.com/articles/2009/05/04/distributed-systems-primer/ <comment><USER2> This post is full of errors. For example, Paxos is _not_ about the Byzantine General's problem, Paxos is a consensus algorithm for the non-Byzantine case.

<comment><USER3> I fixed it, thanks. What other mistakes did you see?

<comment><USER2> It still reads "Basic Paxos handles a single failure; it can be extended to handle multiple untrustworthy nodes (the Byzantine generals problem)." which is incorrect.

The correct statement is "Paxos handles the failure of a minority of nodes" or "Paxos can make progress if a majority of nodes is alive and connected". Paxos does not deal with nodes that do not follow the protocol (ie. lie, have been hacked, etc, this is what 'byzantine' means). Paxos only deals with non- byzantine failure.

<comment><USER3> Removed the reference to Byzantine generals and used your language for basic Paxos; clarified Tokyo Cabinet.

Thanks, let me know if there are other issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hats of to the author, he did a very good job selecting the quintessentials.

<comment><USER5> No. Don't use a big word that you don't understand when a simple one will do.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Everybody lies. How do you deal with it though? - <AUTHOR> Often lying or not telling complete truth contextually becomes easier to have more efficient conversations and relationships. I started with being bad at it in early twenties, but now as I have grown older it's become second nature to quickly cook up a lie to get out of an uncomfortable situation (usually of minor significance most of the times) and to maintain relationships (especially the long distance ones, not necessarily romantic ones). Once in a while on some days, I get super depressed about having to lie so often though, even though they make life way more efficient and lower maintenance cost. On most days, I just accept it as a way of life to live better in present world... Was wondering how other people deal with it? (Asking in this forum, as I feel slightly more technical people will probably prefer to lie to quickly get out of a situation as it's more efficient use of time...) <comment><USER2> Your question starts with a false premise "Everybody lies". You lie, and justify the lying by projecting it on to everybody else. The answer is very simple, stop lying. You'll find everything beneath you fall away. Your relationships will all be adjusted to accomodate your truthfulness. Your life would be unrecognisable months from now. And you will no longer be super depressed about having to lie.

Personally I don't think a "more efficient use of time" is more important to me than how I feel in my day to day life. It's better to be late to work than to miss a once in a life time conversation with a stranger as I pass an interesting scene on the way to work.

<comment><AUTHOR> While I was on the same page when I was fresh out of college and actually did believe this... I am sorry but I have learned otherwise only after stumbling through all the really uncomfortable life experiences from working in a large "regulated" bank, to working in a funky tech startup with "great" founders, to starting my own company and pitching to "great" investors, to even the personal relationships and even the other seemingly "ideal" relationships. Being too truthful only leaves you feeling more lonely. Almost all the hustles are based on lies anyways... I do personally believe that if one has had to struggle enough in life and wasn't blessed with enough privilege/guidance/network, moving forward in life without some lies is almost an impossibility. (Basing this on candid conversations with some of the "successful" people I have had the chance to interact with at times...) So I am pretty sure, there enough people here who lie often, but aren't comfortable admitting it yet. I just try not to lie to myself at least, hence was looking for opinions if someone did feel the same and how they dealt with it.

<comment><USER3> Sounds like you've been engaging sociopaths on their own turf, and yes I can see that in that environment everyone lies would be a true statement. Personnally, I don't lie about anything, and I find life to be very simple. I don't have to think about what I told to who, when. But I'm just an old developer who's been in the trenches for a lonng time.

You might read up on the gervais priciple, it explains a lot imo.

[https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais- principle-...](https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or- the-office-according-to-the-office/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What sorts of lies are we talking about? What context?

"I love your new haircut!" is a very different lie from "I used to be pen pals with Barack Obama".

Telling a creepy stranger at a bar "I have a boyfriend" is a different sort of lie than saying the same thing to your friend who lives across the country.

And "I've got food poisoning" is a very different "I can't come into work today" excuse/lie than "my grandmother just died".

In each of these juxtapositions, people will judge you less harshly (and you should probably judge yourself less harshly) for the former lie than the latter.

The difference basically boils down to the fact that it's normal, it's not especially harmful, and to a degree it's expected that people sometimes tell transient untruths to grease the wheels of social interaction or get out of an uncomfortable situation.

What's not OK or accepted is to tell lies that misrepresent yourself, your history, or your life situation to someone with whom you have an ongoing personal or professional relationship.

If you're telling the former type of lies, I suggest you find a way to live with the fact that you and everyone else tell them and probably always will.

If you're telling the latter type, you may want to engage in some self- examination as to why. It's the sort of choice that can get you into major difficulties, and it's the sort of problem you can even get professional help for.

</comment><comment><USER5> My sense of things is that yes, everyone lies to some extent. I don't believe someone who says they don't.

The question is really what magnitude of lying are you talking about?

The way I think about it is something like this: what ethical obligation do you have to be truthful? I usually assume that the obligation is to be truthful, but recognize there are some scenarios where the situation or other person's request of information from you is unethical, and so in those situation I feel under no obligation to reciprocate.

My in-laws, for example, routinely inquire about my spouse and me in ways that are inappropriate and cross boundaries. To me, we should not be in the position of having to refuse to give that information; I have tried, but they ignore that, and escalate things. So now I lie, and feel no guilt because to me they violated basic social contract to begin with.

That's an extreme example, but I think it extends to other more mild situations as well. I think there's some situations where the likely consequence of telling the truth or refusing to give that information is unfair or unreasonable, so I see lying as ethical.

I guess I see the assumption that you should always tell the truth as being based on an assumption, in turn, that the elicitation of information itself is being done in good faith. I don't see that assumption as necessarily true.

</comment><comment><USER6> Are you an immigrant by chance?

Some cultures have a greater degree of bluntness. This society makes great use of lies to smooth over social transactions and it's something that can seem alien depending on where you came from. Social lies and soft lies can be difficult to work with early on in life because lies will make you question your assessment of reality and the severity of situations that could affect you adversely. The fact that everyone peddles the same sorts of lies in this culture doesn't make things any easier.

In this society, I think the correct approach is to trust the judgment nature put in you instinctively to sort out the truth from fiction. Moreover, if lies are a sort of social currency, then there's no reason you can't be a fiction monger yourself -- especially if you think the consequences of such lies will be a wash in the grand scheme of things. (In particular, you have to balance soft lies with your sense of what you consider ethical behavior.) In particular, I think you have to be more selective about who you actually owe the truth to rather than commit to framing yourself as a liar.

</comment><comment><USER7> Check out the book "Radical Honesty" by Brad Blanton. He proposes a way of living ones life without all of the small lies, and the benefits there of.

<comment><USER8> A. J. Jacobs' interview with the author[0] is an interesting read.

[0] [http://www.esquire.com/news- politics/a26792/honesty0707/](http://www.esquire.com/news- politics/a26792/honesty0707/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't really buy any of your assertions. Why even lie? If you're lying to get out of an uncomfortable situation for example, you can't possibly value that person that much no? Ultimately, if telling the truth kills the relationship, it was probably never really alive to begin with.

As you lie it'll only beget more lying. E.g. Pretending to be friends with someone which will only get you more pretend friends and so forth.

What exactly is the end goal of lying? Financial gain? Prestige? Power?

\---

Anyway, it's pretty easy to tell when someone lies consistently. When you do so the honest people will begin to limit interactions with the liar. And so your interactions will be consist of a higher and higher percentage of liars. Eventually you'll have to lie to keep up with the other liars. It's almost like the "keeping up with the joneses" effect, but with lying.

I've found that most vices are committed in pursuit of others. Identifying those and eliminating all of them (not necessarily entirely, but together) is the solution, if you that's what you want.

</comment><comment><USER10> This question just came after when I was watching House M.D. episodes :)

Question is right, I did not understand other commenters saying that it started with a false premise. People lie, people cheat, people kill and they corrupt. That is why we have police, that is why we have prisons, etc.

My personal solution is to interact with as less people as I can in my daily life. I have friends which I know and chose to be my friends; other than that, although I know not everyone is a bad person; I choose to interact as minimum as possible.

</comment><comment><USER11> I think your problem (I get super depressed about having to lie so often) is simply because you've not thought it through very well so I'll share a few things I've learned...

The first job I ever had I watched my boss take credit for things I designed several times while I was standing right there listening to them.

At first I was stunned, then I got pissed, then I realized they were just insecure and selfish but I still couldn't recover any respect for them and that lesson stuck with me. I didn't want anyone to think of me the way I thought of them.

There have been a few times when I was sure someone was telling me a lie and I was wrong, so I try not to jump to the conclusion that someone is lying even when what they're telling me sounds a bit far fetched, but I reserve the right to not take it for the truth. There have been times I'm really glad I did that.

As to telling a lie to get out of an uncomfortable situation I can't really think of many times I've done that. I just don't find telling a lie to be easier because I don't want to worry about that coming back to bite me in the ass and that worry is the minimum wage we must pay for a lie.

There are times I know lying could be convenient and potentially beneficial. For example, I quit school in the 10th grade and that doesn't look good on a résumé. But I've learned not to worry about that because the truth is if the person or company doing the hiring cannot see past that one bit than the odds are I probably won't want to work with them.

And if I lied and they hired me and then found out I lied I must expect they should fire me. How could everything else I've told them not be suspect? That would really suck if I found I loved working with them.

No, when you think it through and consider the cost vs benefits it's far easier to not lie and there is no necessity at all to lie and in the end growing old with a clean conscious is what becomes the most valuable think you can possess.

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't really lie, but I believed strongly in telling the truth from a young age. For instance, if I tried lying about having some illness, I would literally get a psychosomatic case of it. So, yeah, I have lied, a few times, but hardly ever. Sometimes, I will not say things and let the other party infer it (which they shouldn't have much trouble doing, because I don't _hide_ it, I simply don't see any reason to say things they might find hurtful, unless the demand it. If I see some old acquaintance that looks terrible, I won't say they look good, or the same, or anything...but if they ask, they'll get the true answer.) As it turns out, the world doesn't end if you always tell the truth, though I don't know how you can make that transition if you live in a world held up by lies.

So, I disagree. Not everybody lies.

</comment><comment><USER13> Interesting question. I don't completely agree. I've learnt that lying is a statement based on the assumption of absolutes, meaning that you are certain of one outcome but are presenting another. This might be presumptuous as a start.

To be fully truthful, I've found it helpful to consider myself capable of fault and not fully informed to make absolute assertions, but rather I opt for statements of confidence with narrowed scope. Therefore, there is no truth or lie but only your perception, which is limited. (flashback to Stats 101, confidence intervals)

It also depends on the kind of person you are. I think the more comfortable you are in your own skin, the less likely you are to be affected by the judgements of others. If I ask a good friend something, I don't want them to lie, even if I don't like the answer. Extending this, I will do for them what I expect in return.

I know this all sounds very vague and kind of like baloney, but I've met a person who has always been a straight shooter with me, and I've since tried to emulate it. The above is what I've learnt from him.

<comment><AUTHOR> As I mentioned in the other comment I think it's easier to be honest when you are in a position of power (economically or socially) as you can probably absorb the repercussions without too much of a harm. Like probably only telling the positive stats when raising money is much more beneficially. It's always great to have some friend to ground you back again in truth, but it's very rare to find such folks. Most people are way more comfortable in ignorance rather than hearing/telling the real truth... so just to even have amicable relationships with most people you have gotta lie ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

<comment><USER13> Can't argue with that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "as I have grown older it's become second nature to quickly cook up a lie to get out of an uncomfortable situation"

Thats a terrible habit to have developed. The old idea ideas of honor, of character, of moral strength, of reputation grew because they were based in innate principals of human trust. We live now in a transient place where people switch groups at the drop of the hat so some people think these ideas no longer apply. These people are wrong and the old ideas will be back with a vengeance. Be someone you would want to do business with. Have as a friend, as a lover. Otherwise you are in for a long, lonely and difficult road moving from place to place as you burn one set of people after another. Because cultures that lie as a habit ultimately can't out-compete those where honer is an important attribute. Don't be very clever. Just as in code, it catches up with one soon enough and it's just not worth it.

</comment><comment><USER15> Most people can detect lies easily, they just don't bother with confrontation so maybe you did not get better at lying, simply people started giving less weight to your words. Your relationships got easier because they become weaker and more shallow and that might be one reason why you get super depressed once in a while.

</comment><comment><USER16> I used to be in a similar situation until I decided to rectify it all at once: Not only I never (almost) lie, but I tell the blatant truth. This dropped the number of my friends to a few. (or three at best count?).

Guess what? I no longer have to care about it because I played it the other way: I don't have to adjust my way of life for you, so only friends that can adjust to your way of life sticks around.

</comment><comment><USER17> Strive to avoid lying by learning to be comfortable with yourself (e.g. just be honest why you don't want to attend something instead of making up excuses) and by getting away from people and situations that you feel push you into telling lies. If you feel forced to lie a lot there's probably changes you can make to your life to help this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, I think it's easier to be honest when you are in a position of power (economically or socially) as you can probably absorb the repercussions without too much of a harm

<comment><USER2> I think for those people it's harder to be truthful - there is more to lose, especially if they've always lied for the purpose of accumulating power economically or socially - the more lies there are the more lies there have to be.

It's much easier for people with nothing to lose to tell the truth. IMO telling the truth is not an ability you can gain by accumulating power or status, but is an ability you sacrifice to attain power or status.</comment></comment></comment>


Bloodborne creator Hidetaka Miyazaki: 'I didn't have a dream, wasn't ambitious' - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/mar/31/bloodborne-dark-souls-creator-hidetaka-miyazaki-interview <comment><USER3> Great quote from Miyazaki, who rose from programmer to president of the company.

 _"Now I'm president," he says, "I get to meet a lot of other company presidents. They're such weird people. I'm fascinated by them." With a smile, he adds: "I use some of them as enemy characters in our games."_

<comment><USER4> This quote reminded me of an anime/manga called Attack on Titan, where it's said that its creator draws inspiration for Titan looks from bullies that had in his school years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> >But Miyazaki had a problem: at 29, he was too old to apply for graduate positions and too inexperienced for anything else. "Not a lot of places would take me," he says. "From Software was one of the few."

Career switchers who are slow to find their knack in life deserve a fresh start. I say that from the position of being one. Talent _does_ exist among the people who are trapped in mediocre, unfulfilled lives, and all they look for is their chance to shine.

I bloody love Dark Souls and Bloodborne.

<comment><USER5> I am considering a career AND industry change, and I'm almost 40. Can you give me some general advice or pointers about career switching. I'm not entirely sure why I would think you might have a basis, just reaching out.

<comment><USER6> This is not an advice, but just a comment. I think many software engineers would KILL it if they worked for small mom and pop shops, or small practices. They could help turn many $500,000/year businesses into several times that revenue. Plus they would have WAY more autonomy then working at startups and tech companies, which in my opinion are just factories.

<comment><USER7> I agree with you, but there are a lot of catches when dealing with small businesses. They don't apply to every business, and my experience could be anecdotal. But there is an argument to be made that some of these businesses remain small for a good reason.

The first problem with many of these small businesses is they don't want to pay market rates for people with the skills and talent. If you do generate that much revenue, it's not guaranteed that you'll be brought up to a market rate.

You might not even get credit for achievements, where people view you as a commodity worker. You'll encounter owners or employees who know just enough to be dangerous, and therefore don't value the skills you bring to the table. Their son knows some HTML, how hard can it be? You can't build Facebook or automate all of their business processes in a weekend?

You'll be caught in situations where your time will be micromanaged to the point where you can't be productive. The farther away a business gets from software, the less experience management has with managing software projects and the people who work on them. It's difficult to get autonomy for a project that might take days and weeks for tangible results, when most people are used to being able to see the progress and results more immediately. They won't understand everything or anything you're doing and may doubt you actually know what you're talking about or understand their needs.

Your "maker's schedule" will be sliced and diced into useless microblocks of time. Because you know computers, you'll be tasked with keeping printers and desktops running. You will be the first person people disrupt throughout the day with any issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've been playing Bloodborne every evening for the last week or so, and it is tremendous. It's the only game that __minor spoiler __has ever gotten Lovecraftian horror correct in a really convincing way. The tone is pretty much one hundred percent on target.

I'd love a couple of my cosmic-horror-loving friends to play it, but it is _fucking_ hard. I'm not sure they'd make it to the first boss, to say nothing of past it and the next however many there are.

As someone else points out, it may unfeasible for you to get a copy of your own (it's a PS4 exclusive), so you can of course watch others play - <USER2> seriously, it's not the same thing. Creeping around corners waiting for an ambush, inspecting hideous statues, hearing the slither of some nearby yet hidden hostile creature - the mindset you enter while playing is important to the consumption of the content. Watching another play, you don't quite have that. If at all possible, don't watch, just wait for your chance to play it - outside of Dark Souls and to some extent its prequel and sequel, it's pretty much a one-of-a-kind experience.

<comment><USER9> > I'd love a couple of my cosmic-horror-loving friends to play it, but it is > fucking hard. I'm not sure they'd make it to the first boss, to say nothing > of past it and the next however many there are.

> outside of Dark Souls and to some extent its prequel and sequel, it's pretty > much a one-of-a-kind experience.

Weird. Bloodborne is the first of the "series" that I've even been remotely tempted to play. The combat mechanics look fresh and exciting. Every video I've ever seen of its predecessors featured gameplay that looked boring and clunky (even if challenging).

<comment><USER10> The combat in Dark Souls was amazing. The hitboxes were so finely tuned you could just about dodge by a hair. The Artorias boss fight was the most fluid battle I've seen in a game, though maybe Bloodborne can top it. The PVP was absolutely great also, with skill-intensive counters for everything meaning the most skilled player almost always came out on top.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWLsLb- tK8A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWLsLb-tK8A) (audio possibly NSFW)

<comment><AUTHOR> The hitboxes are done very well in Bloodborne, to the point where the Bloodborne subreddit has dubbed it "hitbox porn".

Examples: [http://gfycat.com/FlatOffbeatDrake](http://gfycat.com/FlatOffbeatDrake) [http://i.imgur.com/WWUzhSe.gifv](http://i.imgur.com/WWUzhSe.gifv) [http://gfycat.com/LinedCookedKoodoo](http://gfycat.com/LinedCookedKoodoo)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This game is just phenomenal, I find myself thinking about the game and it's creatures late at night while trying to sleep. It has a quality to it that requires your undivided attention and I think that's why it permeates so easily into your psyche.

If you haven't tried it out yet, do yourself a favor and at least rent it. It's one of the best game to come out in the past decade. You'll hear people whine about it being hard, but it's not like that. It's fair. You mess up you will be hit. If you're patient and time your movements you'll glide through the areas and make the game seem like a typical hack n slash. You will make it look easy.

</comment><comment><USER12> Does this game also require you to pointlessly repeat large chunks of levels after death on bosses like the Dark Souls games did?

<comment><USER13> Yes, coupled with a 30 second load screen after every single death. I've never played any of the other games, but I can tell you after playing this for a while that this game is not for me due to how they implement the difficulty.

Just to give you an idea, it took me 7 or 8 years to beat Kingdom Hearts 1 because of how bad the camera was. I got to a point where I just walked away. I really dislike games that are difficult due to ackward controls, cheesy mechanics (such as enemies popping behind you in an area you just cleared), that sort of thing

I played it for a few hours but I got tired of things like

\- you roll and the camera lifts up so you're staring down at yourself and can no longer see the enemies you rolled from

\- if you hit the enemy at the end of your range your attack pushes them back further than your characters steps forward so you miss the followup attack and they end up killing you (or hurting you badly).

\- Sometimes when you attack an enemy they'll slide sideways (I say sometimes, I mean quite often). I've seen them slide so far they slide behind the camera at which point you're guessing where they are based upon where they disappeared.

\- Your attacks do random amounts of damage. Sometimes it takes 3 hits to kill a mob, sometimes 4 or 5. But because every attack uses stamina, you really want to use as few attacks as possible and sometimes you die for it because that 1 random enemy required an extra hit. I never figured out why.

\- the healing items appeared to give a random amount of health back.

\- Some of the level designs appeared to be such that it maximized the pain of the camera. One enemy in particular I'm thinking of is big and surroundedin by innumerable unbreakable boxes and such. He wasn't that difficult himself, but being able to avoid his attack successfull due to the aforementioned boxes, etc, was a tedious chore.

I can see the appeal to the game, but it just isn't for me. And this is coming from a guy who plays most games on hard. But there's a certain kind of difficulty I don't enjoy and unfortunately this game lands right square in the middle of it.

edit: The thing that caused me to respond in the first place.

The game moves slow overall. You kill an enemy, he drops loot, but not immediately, so you end up waiting to see if he dropped loot. If he does, you run to the body, hit X, wait for the confirmation to pop up, hit X again, and then eventually go on about your day. When you're playing the same level over and over again it gets _really_ time consumingly tedious. Add on to that the 30 second load screen (that's not an exaggeration) and you have a game that's pure tedium (atleast for me).

<comment><USER14> _Your attacks do random amounts of damage_

No, it matters which part of the weapon hits the enemy. With the hammer for instance, you really need to aim it right - to hit the enemy with the head part and not the hilt part.

Some of your other gripes can also be summarized as "you must become proficient at the mechanics" and the rest is fucking bullshit which Miyazaki put in because he hates you.

<comment><USER13> I figured that's what it was, but I couldn't ever see it. Someone else created the character so I didn't choose the weapon, but it was a long whip/blade thing that would open and close (for faster/slower attacks). It may just be harder to see with that particular weapon, I did actively try and check if that was the case.

For the point about the mechanics, there are some mechanics I simply don't want to deal with because I don't personally find them fun. The designers are free to design the hit system so that the enemies have a tendency to slide back towards the camera. I'm just as free to avoid the game because I don't want to get good at turning my analog stick at just the right angle because they slid back in a way that makes no sense.

That isn't me attacking the game, there are obviously a lot of people who really like the game. I've been gaming since the Atari days and I've grown to have my own set of likes and dislikes for games.

I will say there was something really addictive about the game. I wanted to keep playing despite the frustration, but the frustration itself was due to mechanics I simply don't like (and the slowness of the play is a _huge_ pet peeve of mine. I played Tales of the Abyss on emulator because I couldn't deal with the slow load times on the actual PS2, I actually stopped playing the game because of them).

OTOH, I ordered my PS4 from Amazon and it bricked w/i 6 hours of getting it, so maybe if I put in a bit more time I'll learn how they want you to play the game... We'll see, I could not believe it when the PS4 shut off and refused to start up again.

<comment><USER14> Haha, yeah, I can see where you're coming from. The game really is meant to be bullshit and to hurt you. From what I've seen though, Bloodborne has a lot less bullshit mechanics-wise than the previous games. Just look at the Capra Demon fight from Dark Souls: small room with pillars all over, one huge boss and two attack dogs crammed in there with you. Your weapons bounce back when you hit the geometry; theirs don't. Have fun. Also: The Archers in Anor Londo.

For me though, that's part of what makes it special. It wouldn't feel so good actually getting past the obstacles if it was fair.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you want to see more of the game but find it too cumbersome to buy, I started by just watching it on Twitch[0].

[http://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Bloodborne](http://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Bloodborne)

<comment><USER16> How would it be too cumbersome to buy?

<comment><USER17> It's a PS4 exclusive, so anyone who doesn't already have the console have to buy it ($400) to be able to have the privilege of buying it.

(it was worth it)

<comment><USER18> There's some chance it comes on PC later on. Maybe. Just like Dark Souls did.

<comment><USER19> Dark Souls never was an exclusive and it was published by Namco. Demon's Souls would be a better comparison and it was never ported to the PC unfortunately. Sony is publishing the game and I'm not sure it would be in their best interest to have one of their only notable PS4 exclusives available on an other platform.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Data mining on hashtag #cwc15(cricket world cup 2015) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@hr1383/data-mining-on-cwc15-52dd8d0af0f1

<comment><USER2> This is pretty cool...great insights Harsh! It will be interesting to see sentiment analysis post match next time. :)</comment>


I'm a Barbie Girl in a CS World - <AUTHOR> http://www.scribd.com/doc/27710281/I%E2%80%99m-a-Barbie-Girl-in-a-CS-World <comment><USER2> It would be nice to link to the original pdf rather than scribd. Their buggy website wouldn't work under Chrome, so I had to fire up Firefox to read the article. Which let me page forward through the article, but not backwards.

Yes, I know that scribd is a YC company, is what the cool kids use, etc. But. It. Doesn't. Actually. Work. The pdf reader I have does.

That said, I liked the article. Once I actually managed to read it.

<comment><USER3> You know a product is bad when people prefer to PDF...

(apologies for going off-topic - I just couldn't resist this one)

<comment><USER4> PDF is not that bad as long as you have an good enough reader (i.e. no acrobat)

<comment><USER5> _Evidence?_

I'm on Linix,

I've tried the default readers and they are all horrific.

What would you recommend, seriously. I have never found a pleasant PDF reader on any platform but I'm open to the idea they might exist.

<comment><USER6> Preview is a pretty solid app. Unfortunately, I've never across anything remotely well done on any other platform.

<comment><USER7> Preview is good but I like skim a bit more. It has the note taking features and smooth zooming with trackpad pinch gestures. I cannot believe how fast it is too! Great app. One thing I wish it had though is the pdf editing commands that preview had to remove a page and concatenate different pdfs together.

Also: foxit reader is a great reader for window. Not quite as polished as skim but still the best reader I have come into contact with on the windows side of the fence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This was wonderful. I'm a guy but I can definitely relate to never fitting in with the typical CS-crowd. I don't game, I don't play D&D or any RPGs, and I don't watch/read Sci-Fi. All of this is completely orthogonal to my skills/knowledge. I like reading celebrity gossip and watch cheesy movies that geeks despise. Sure, I watched and liked Primer but I also liked Wanted. People need to stop stereotyping. That's also kinda why I like HN and reddit because there is such a huge amount of diversity on these sites that transcending past stereotypes is an everyday occurrence.

<comment><USER9> Wanted is a terrible example, since it's a comic-book movie. :)

<comment><USER10> Wanted is a terrible example because it's a terrible movie. All that proves is that you have bad taste in cinema.

At least go with an example like... Wedding Crashers or Old School, or Bad Boys if it has to be an action movie.

ANYWAY, games are not a geek exclusive thing anymore (at least not if all of the frat bros I used to know in college are any indication). Comic books still are somewhat, but there is an ever growing independent movement that's causing the interested parties to become more diverse. Science Fiction is clearly no longer niche since like, 9 out of 10 of the top earning films are Science Fiction or Fantasy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I remember reading a post similar to this on here recently... Ah yes: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1145648>

There is a woman in my CS department that I met in a Bollywood Cinema class I was taking. She's totally non-geek; I see her in the lobby talking the fairly standard social drama banter of college students, not about this week's ACM programming problem. At first I was kind of dismissive about her, since I didn't feel she was /really/ a CS student (I remember thinking once, "I wonder if she's here to meet a boyfriend"; I'm really ashamed of that thought). Reading Patrick's piece made me reconsider that view. Regardless of what her motivations are for joining the department, I respect the fact that she's here.

It also makes me wonder about our Women in CS initiatives. Here we have a woman who, from all I can tell, does not define her identity primarily in terms of her field of study (which is something I feel like many of us do). She is not a CS woman, but rather a woman that happens to study computer science, kind of like a man who happens to study pharmacy. I'm still developing my thoughts on this, but meeting her and the discussion around this new Barbie have ironically enough really challenged my existing beliefs.

<comment><USER12> I wrote this post before reading the parent; I've moved it to be a reply to the parent because it's clearly related.

I have some cognitive dissonance on this issue. I'm not sure what to conclude, so I'll just air it.

On the one hand, I would love to see people in the field who are both high- performing and high-functioning socially.

On the other hand, the degree to which undergraduates (and, by extension, probably front-line programmers in general) "live and breathe CS" seems to be a very good heuristic for their proficiency with the nitty technical details. By "live and breathe" CS, I am not talking about passion for traditionally geeky activities like video games, DND, and so on; I am referring to their penchant for work as entertainment (not that we don't all need a break from time to time). This seems to preclude being a social individual who happens to do CS some of the time.

On the third hand, lots of researchers I've met seem to be better rounded.

<comment><USER13> > and, by extension, probably front-line programmers in general

> This seems to preclude being a social individual who happens to do CS some > of the time.

The best programmers I know (and I tentatively include myself here; though Im really an engineer) are highly social work hard/play hard type people.

<comment><USER14> Might this might be a result of the type of people you spend time with?

If I think about college, I would also have said that the best programmers I know are the ones who I frequently see out doing other stuff. However, I didn't spend that much time with the more introverted people (not being able to relate to them as well) so its hard to say if they were better or worse.

<comment><USER13> This is in a work environment too though.

I was more interested by the use of "frontline" in the original posting. It's not so much technical merit as your ability to, well, be a programmer (as a career).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My first reaction (and I assume most people's) to the CS barbie was along the lines of "... really?" but the more I think about it, the more I'm ok with it. Let's be serious here, barbies aren't realistic. To expect the CS barbie to give some sort of objective perspective of real computer engineers would be delusional, and out of character.

The big idea was to get girls excited about something related to computers. The execution was about as far off-base as you could get. The only redeeming quality is just that initial idea... but it may be enough to have an impact on its own. The point is, it helps break down the subliminal barrier that computers are a "guy thing." That's what the article is talking about at first, and then takes that point and goes even further.

Actually, that's the type of barrier-breaking that I would prefer more of. The whole "we'll give you the help you need" type of barrier-breaking seem in outreach programs implicitly reinforces that "you need the help." The implicit message with the CS barbie is the exact opposite, and that's a good thing.

<comment><USER16> But do people seriously think that computers are a guy thing nowadays? The CS barbie looks just like a secretary or any other profession to me. All moms I know (and my daughter is in the barbie demographic) have computers, most have laptops or netbooks. They use them for e-mail, internet, they are on Twitter, facebook, play online games, etc.

Now, I have no idea how a CS barbie should look. I totally agree with the author of the presentation that it is a good thing that Mattel did not make the CS barbie extra dorky. However, as it is now, I don't think girls will make any connection with programming.

<comment><USER17> Yeah they are using computers. but computers are increasingly like appliances, and there is a huge gulf between clicking buttons in an UI and messing with code in an editor.

I remember way back, when I had to learn all this stuff about DOS and RAM just to get Ultima 7 to work on my computer. I had a friend who couldn't get sound to work correctly on his PC in StarCon2, so he soldered together his own sound card to get it to work. Nowdays you don't need to do that with modern computers and most of time you can't even do that even if you wanted to, because modern software and hardware are exponentially more complicated now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> _"Once my CS friends realized I wasn't a "true geek", I wasn't invited to most of their hangouts - D &D nights, sci-fi screenings, or gaming nights. Eventually, I just wasn't invited to anything at all. I was sad, but busied myself with extracurriculars."_

I hate to be that guy, but seriously? I have never witnessed this kind of behavior before. In fact, from my experience at Cal, all of the student groups are absolutely desperate for anyone to join, let alone a girl! If you just walk across campus you will be aggressively flagged down and invited to all sorts of things. If you are on Facebook, you will be shamelessly spammed with invites to all sorts of events. I just can't picture someone getting shunned from even an IEEE meeting or hardcore hackathon because they are "not a _true_ geek".

I'd like to think adults are more mature than kindergarten-level exclusion, fellow hackers most of all.

She then goes on to say that she bought vintage gaming t-shirts and worked on some video games and afterwards, all the geeks were "cool" with her again. I don't really know what I'm trying to say here other than this seems totally unbelievable.

<comment><AUTHOR> > I hate to be that guy, but seriously? I have never witnessed this kind of > behavior before. In fact, from my experience at Cal, all of the student > groups are absolutely desperate for anyone to join, let alone a girl!

Alright, I'm a dude, but I think I can say a few things on this. Here's my biases: I train for and play sports for fun, I've never played D&D, I don't watch or read sci-fi, and I don't really play video games (and if I do, they're sports games).

In my college CS department, I was definitely not invited to anything that any of the other students were doing. I'm not saying I wanted to be, but probably greater than 90% of my CS classmates were in the D&D sci-fi crowd.

I think you underestimate the intimidation factor; I truly don't think that I was mean or overbearing to them, and we worked together just fine on projects, but we all kind of believed implicitly that we belonged to different speheres.

I suspect that a similar dynamic is often at work when women interact with that kind of group.

(edited to add: except the Jordanians! I forgot, we had a small group of Jordanians in the group that I got along with great, they taught me to smoke houkah and we watched soccer together. They weren't involved with the CS kids either.)

<comment><USER19> It's kind of eerie to read this. What you've described is exactly how the nerds felt in your high school.

When they got to college, they found a social group that would accept them without them having to pretend to like the things they don't care about. Apparently that's a bad thing.

<comment><USER2> It is only a bad thing when they become exclusive about it. And that is bad for all the same reasons that the way they were treated in high school is bad.

Speaking personally I grew up without a TV, get motion sick if I play first person shooters, and don't like sushi. Despite being a stereotypical geek in many ways I can't count the times when I've felt excluded by the fact that I don't know Monty Python inside out, have avoided most games produced in the last 15 years, and don't want to eat at certain restaurants.

I can only imagine how much worse it can be if I didn't catch and appreciate other geek references.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Questions for the author whom I presume is unavailable...

If it was clear to both parties that the other did not enjoy the same activities... why would you expect to be invited to those activities? Why would it bother you to not be invited to an activity you probably would not enjoy?

The only answer seems to be that she was lonely, so she put on a mask to fit in... not really surprising but seems a bit shallow and I can't imagine it really being personally fulfilling. Would not her time have been better sent seeking out those with whom she shares more common interests?

Hope I am not too badly missing the point.

<comment><USER21> Yeah, that's a good point.

I guess I think that I would have enjoyed some of the activities (e.g. I do watch some Sci-fi flicks), but as they had a perception of me not being like them, they assumed I wouldn't like anything at all.

But, right, ultimately, its about realizing that I am not as interested in most of the things that my colleagues were interested in, and I am hoping that the diversity of my colleagues increases so that would not be the case.

I seek out other stuff like dance lessons, art classes, etc, but it does take time to meet the strangers at those activities. I still prefer that stuff (even if its by myself) to going to the pub, which is the defacto activity around here.

<comment><USER22> I'm a very big video game nerd, but I'm also interested in stuff like dance and the outdoors. Has it not been your experience that your D&D-playing colleagues also do things completely unrelated to nerdom?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I do not get this stuff about women feeling lonely or ignored in CS. I studied computer engineering (which had even more skewed gender ratios than CS), and there the few women that we had had absolutely no problems being part of our group. In fact if they had any issues, it was getting too much attention.

Of course everybody liked to be friends with the few girls in our classes. Even if we were not attracted to them, it was nice to actually chat with a girl once in a while.

<comment><USER24> I studied computer engineering in college too, and I'm a woman. It wasn't a huge deal, and there was some extra attention sometimes that was nice, and other times was not nice. But there were also small things like that the computer engineering dorm floor was male only or when I got a microsoft internship and my lab partner said "must be nice being female" that made me feel different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I love this presentation! It has a strong point and doesn't fail to entertain. The best slide is #17.

 _You should be able to be a fashionable construction worker, a cross-dressing politician, a preppy tattoo artist, or a sex-crazy golfer_

Instant classic.

<comment><USER26> Construction workers dress for safety / function not for fashion. It's like saying I will be a fashionable doctor in the ER.

<comment><USER27> Presumably she meant dressing fashionably when not at work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> From my point of view the anti-cs view in many girls forms a few years after they stop playing with Barbies.

So I wonder if this could really make a difference. I have seen my nieces playing with barbies and I don't think they really notice if Barbie has a computer, a bikini or a purse.

Could be reading things wrong tought

<comment><USER28> I have a friend who likes to share his "Daughter with a Barbie" story. However, we need a little back story first. A professor at McGill University, he's an avid role player and war gamer, amongst other things. He raised his children on that, and they had a grand old time. They have pictures, and all sorts of things around the house from growing up playing D&D with dad. The daughter is still very much into gaming, and is apart of our regular gaming group (along with her dad). And she is still in high school.

So, onto the story.

Apparently, one day at McDonalds, she ordered a happy meal. She was rather young, when McDonald happy meals with toys were awesome and fun. Anyways, being who she was, she would normally pick the cards, or the other "Boy" toys. However, this time, she asked to get the Barbie. Her father was shocked, because this was unusual for her, but she got the Barbie. Anyways, they went home, and she ran to her room with the Barbie. After some time, she came out, and proudly displayed her barbie to her father. The barbie had been changed, shortened hair, different clothes and other assorted accessories. She explaimed proudly:

"Look dad! It's Lt. Ripley!"

I can only hope my kids and I have that kind of relationship when they grow up.

<comment><USER29> He watched Alien with his smallish kids?

<comment><USER26> My Mom is a horror movie lover, and I saws JAWS when I was 5. Different kids can deal with different things.

Although, I had some issues with our vacation to the Oregon beach that summer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> So CS compelled her to look like this?

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/johncarney/3515851216/>

I'm not really buying that she's a Barbie girl.

<comment><USER21> The title was more about mirroring the Aqua song, less about me being an actual Barbie Girl. I'm personally a mix of alot of things. More a wannabe 80s rock star than anything else.. if only I could sing. :)

<comment><USER30> Ok, but your look is classic geek. Short hair, dyed, eyebrow piercings, barcode shirt? It's totally cute, I'm just saying that you don't seem to be as far away from the stereotypical look as that the slideshow suggests.

Of course, you're welcome to camouflage as much as you like, I'm just sayin'

I think a better example of someone who's like that is Isis (she's in research- but the same sort of thing applies in science too <http://scienceblogs.com/isisthescientist/> Exhibit A: <http://scienceblogs.com/isisthescientist/weekly_shoe/> Exhibit B: [http://scienceblogs.com/isisthescientist/2008/11/on_the_need...](http://scienceblogs.com/isisthescientist/2008/11/on_the_need_for_women_to_defen.php) )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This reminded me of the nerd/geek/dork method of categorization (or perhaps stereotyping):

[http://www.goingthewongway.com/208/difference-between- nerd-g...](http://www.goingthewongway.com/208/difference-between-nerd-geek- and-dork/)

You can be an extreme of either, or more likely a custom mix of all three. The thinking goes not all combinations necessary mesh perfectly with one another.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Side note: why is this article (atm, 64 points 2 hours ago) below one on the home page with 22 points submitted 3 hours ago?

<comment><USER32> i believe there is also a 'velocity' aspect. like, a bunch of votes in a short time is assumed to be a spike of interest, giving a particular article a boost.

i'm just guessing, though. i haven't actually read the arc source code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm sorry, girl geeks don't wear mini skirts?

She must know different geeks than I do.</comment>


A Follow-Up to "The Web is Public Domain" - <AUTHOR> http://www.cookssource.com/

<comment><USER4> The editor's response reveals a lot about her understanding (or lack thereof) of the business she's in. Normally I'm willing to overlook small typos in blog posts -- but when you are an editor, and you are writing an important response on an important issue, it's not wise to get the punctuation wrong on the _very first word_. (It should be "it's sad", not "its sad".)

That she continues not to use apostrophes throughout the post and gets other things wrong ("I never ment to hurt"), pretty much sends the message that "I don't really know what I'm doing" and "I just don't really care." If, as an editor, she doesn't understand basic rules of punctuation, then is it any surprise that she doesn't understand copyright?

If, as she claims, the magazine is going to go out of business, the real culprit is the editor's lack of knowledge about the business she's in.

After all, we wouldn't feel sorry for a chef who had to close his restaurant after it was revealed that he was violating health codes. Why should we feel sorry for an editor who still doesn't understand copyright, even after having gone through this whole episode?

<comment><USER5> I couldn't agree more that this editor's fate is deserved and that this is an "apology" only in the traditional meaning of that word (an attempted defense and not a _mea culpa_ ), and a poor one at that. I also have been critical of her unbelievably tone-deaf approach to the subject of handling the complaint of an innocent person whom she had wronged (see <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1870300>).

Yet, at some level, I do feel sorry for this person in a sense that I can best describe through an anecdote.

I once had to fire one of my employees (an attorney) who had been with me no more than a few weeks and who produced atrociously bad work when measured by the standards that apply to legal work in the startup area (which must technically meet high standards or else). This employee was a very nice person but, as I saw her work in various contexts, I realized that she was basically in _way_ over her head. The details are not important, except to note the following: as I was explaining the reasons for having to fire her, she had this astonished look in her eyes, as if, all through her schooling and prior work experiences, no one had ever been straight with her about her shortcomings. In essence, she truly didn't have what it took _ever_ to be good in this field (I did not put it to her that bluntly, of course). As I talked with her and tried to encourage her in any way I could about her future, I was literally grieved to realize that this young lady had essentially been coddled all the way through the school system in a way that left her to hit a cold wall of reality only after having likely wasted all kinds of time and money in pursuing a career for which she was not at all suited. This was one of the saddest encounters I have ever had. Though I was the one who had been short- changed in the relationship, and hurt financially owing to incompetent work, I could not help but feel profoundly sorry for that young lady.

I would say that this editor too is a sadly misplaced person for her chosen field and that this whole episode has essentially exposed that fact _in a very public way_. There is something quite tragic in all this, even as it is hard to sympathize either with her position taken in this fiasco or with her clumsy (and unwise) attempts to defend the indefensible. Above all, this must have been a severe embarrassment and humiliation for this editor, whether or not deserved, and at a human level I am truly sorry for her.

<comment><USER6> People who appear to be coddled through their education may just have taken the easy way out and cheated:

<http://chronicle.com/article/article-content/125329/>

<comment><USER7> I had a reply filled with disbelief about the ability to successfully cheat through law school, but after reading that article I'm truly blown away.

It's beyond pitiful - in the literal, not pejorative sense - how many people manage to get through our so-called higher education without so much as the ability to communicate on a sixth-grade level. I guess all I can do is teach my kids the value of what it means to love learning, and how to communicate their thoughts and ideas well. The system obviously hasn't figured out how to make that happen yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow, reading this didn't give me any sympathy for her at all. I'm reminded of the episode of South Park where Cartman feels bad only about getting punished, no actual guilt or remorse for his crime, and fails to understand how the other kids can feel bad in any way other than because of punishment.

She steals someone else's work, gets caught and sends an arrogant, rude email with absurd claims (web is public domain) and then when she is hit with the internet backlash, she writes a post that it's not her fault because she was overworked and throws in an insincere apology where she still clearly doesn't believe she did anything wrong ("I think I did a nice job for you").

The original article didn't irk me nearly as much as her rebuttal. Quite frankly, if this really does put them out of business, they deserve it.

<comment><USER9> If that list of plagiarized articles is accurate, she certainly seemed to have it coming, but you'll have to forgive me if I can't feel awesome about the victory of asymmetrical internet mob justice over a small-time regional magazine.

God forbid they ever smell blood in the water _you're_ swimming in.

<comment><USER10> Actually the so-called "mob justice" was a HUGE FAVOR. I'll explain.

How would you feel if your start-up was ripped off? Would you want HN people to rally around you, or would that be "mob justice"?

And what if it turned out the same people were also ripping off, say, Microsoft and Apple and several other large corporations?

If everyone had been so civil and polite, they wouldn't have felt pressured to shut down.

I don't know about you, but I'll take Facebook comments and phone calls over getting served with papers from half a dozen massive legal departments _any day_.

Lawsuits are expensive even when you're innocent.

If the penalties are draconian for not even distributing but just "making available" mp3s with NO commercial intentions whatsoever, what do you think the penalties are going to look like for massive distribution of hundreds or thousands of discrete willful infringements _for profit_?

This so-called mob justice is immeasurably nicer than what the actual legal system would have done to them.

<comment><USER11> MP3s are different, they're covered by a specific law (the Digital Millennium Copyright Act) created at the behest of the record companies and it wouldn't apply here.

While there may be some elements of criminal law that might apply, in all probability this would have been a straight civil case rather than a criminal matter with the writers claiming damages for the work published without permission. She could have accepted liability (or even not done so), paid them (which would likely have been relatively limited given the pieces she's used - it's not like she's been grabbing major scoops from the NYT) and moved on.

The chances are that the writers would be no more interested in racking up legal bills that she would so costs there would have been minimal. Basically she gives each one of them a few hundred dollars, they give her a letter saying it's OK to run the piece.

She was in the wrong but the punishment (essentially being forced out of business) doesn't really fit the "crime" and the legal remedies would have been far easier on her than the mob was.

<comment><USER10> Copyright law was _originally_ instituted to cover written works. There is a ton of case law.

It would not have been kind to them.

Nobody "forced" them out of business, they voluntarily quit when they realized their sham was exposed.

In aggregate, their behavior easily qualified as multiple felonies; and damages alone would most likely have been ruinous.

I know _I_ would not want to roll those dice.

So I think you're mistaken about essentially everything you said above.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's really amazing how utterly contemptible this editor's responses have been.

Rip off everyone else knowingly for months or years, then claim innocence and that it was an isolated mistake. Blame everyone else for your own actions and pretend that your apology was fake because people were mean FIRST, when actually the fake apology came first and THAT is what made them mad. Be offered a chance to make it up, denigrate the offer, then cry and lie later about not getting a chance.

This newest statement is so rife with errors, I gotta say:

 _"I am sorry, but you as a professional should know that the article we used written by you was in very bad need of editing"_

I also like how she makes it out to be about one blogger, when it turns out Cooks Source stole articles and photos from sites for The Food Network, Oprah, and Martha Stewart. They would have been sued out of existence anyway.

 _"If my apology to Monica seemed shallow it was because I was angry about the harm she has inflicted on others on behalf of her own agenda."_

Pretending it's about one blogger, when in reality it was the collective actions of thousands of people that the editor pissed off. And pretending that her apology was affected by events that hadn't even happened yet!

 _"I really wish she had given me a chance to respond to her before blasting me. She really never gave me a chance."_

So ripping people off is okay, but pointing this out is "blasting someone". And of course she got the chance to respond, her fake apology was included in the initial post and was what pissed everyone off. "The Web Is Public Domain", the headline that GOT all the attention, is _from her response_ , the one she claims she never got the chance to make.

 _"But one night when working yet another 12 hour day late into the night, I was short one article..."_

Anyone can make a mistake, but the research shows they ripped off most if not all of their material, on a constant basis.

 _"Bleary-eyed I didnt notice it was copy written and reordered some of it."_

Except that any editor knows that EVERYTHING is automatically copyrighted. Oh yeah, and also they ripped off plenty of stuff from big commercial sites which was obviously copyrighted and said so explicitly.

And then she was informed directly by the author that it was copyrighted, so that there was no confusion, to which the editor responded: _"But honestly Monica, the web is considered "public domain" and you should be happy we just didn't "lift" your whole article and put someone else's name on it!"_ [...] _"We put some time into rewrites, you should compensate me!_ "

And then...

 _"To one writer in particular, Monica Gaudio, I wish you had given me a chance."_

She DID give the editor a chance. She just asked for a donation to the Columbia School of Journalism amounting to 10 cents per word.

So at the end, when you're finally about to face the music for a MULTITUDE of misdeeds, try to distract and cover for them all by copping to a single incident with a single person and then claim it was an accident.

Nothing is ever your fault!

It's difficult to comprehend this level of depravity.

<comment><USER13> If I recall correctly—I could be mistaken—some of the parts of the article that were supposedly "...in need of editing..." were the verbatim historical recipes, which used the archaic spellings found in the original documents (e.g. "To make pies of grene apples.") Which would make it even more entertaining, in a schadenfreude-filled sort of way.

<comment><USER12> That's correct! A real editor with 3 decades' experience would have understood things like _English has changed over time_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _Bleary-eyed I didnt notice it was copy written and reordered some of it._

Copyright is the default, not the exception. Unless there's an explicit declaration that copying is OK (e.g. Creative Commons, other _licenses_ ), you should assume you can't copy it.

She gets no sympathy from me. In fact, her comments just push me further from her side.

<comment><USER15> That is true for the US, not necessarily the rest of the world. Not disagreeing with your point, just want to help out anyone that would take away what you said as hard fact.

<comment><USER14> The US, where Cooks Source seems to be based, is a signatory of the Berne Convention[1]. From Wikipedia:

 _The Berne Convention requires its signatories to recognize the copyright of works of authors from other signatory countries (known as members of the Berne Union) in the same way as it recognises the copyright of its own nationals. For example, French copyright law applies to anything published or performed in France, regardless of where it was originally created._

Additionally, The Berne Convention makes copyright _automatic_ in countries which observe it. This image, also from Wikipedia, shows the Berne signatories in blue: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Berne_Convention_signatori...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Berne_Convention_signatories.svg)

While my post is "not necessarily [true] for the rest of the world," it _is_ true for an awful large portion of it.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention_for_the_Protec...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention_for_the_Protection_of_Literary_and_Artistic_Works)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> No sympathy from me. Anyone who works as a magazine editor should realize that these things are copyrighted (NOT "copy written"; seriously, editor?) by default. The FIRST thing you do is check the article's license, and if there isn't one, get permission (NOT "contact the author" to let them know you've decided to use it; she never had that right). Monica had every right to be rude -- Cooks Source had unapologetically violated her rights. This article just makes them seem whiny and reluctant to take responsibility for their own choices. I bet if they had owned up right away and published a real apology plus a mention of paying the author for her work, things would have gone much more smoothly.

</comment><comment><USER17> > But one night when working yet another 12 hour day late into the night, I > was short one article... Instead of picking up one of the multitude of books > sent to me and typing it, I got lazy and went to the www and "found" > something. Bleary-eyed I didnt notice it was copy written and reordered some > of it. I did keep the author's name on it rather than outright "stealing" > it, and it was my intention to contact the author, but I simply forgot, > between proofreading, deliveries, exhaustion.

And I suppose the author was also "bleary-eyed" when she plagiarized all the other articles which were identified as having been taken from other cooking magazines?

[http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=196994196748&topic...](http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=196994196748&topic=23238)

<comment><USER18> All of those magazines should pay her for cleaning up their sloppy work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> My favorite part:

"Facebook has not responded at all; not taken these advertisers name off this bogus site -- or remove the site completely -- and takes no responsibility that someone unnamed can just create a page that can suggest that people"

The entire internet is public domain, except for her site, I guess.

</comment><comment><USER20> Wow... that's one of the least gracious apologies I've ever seen. 1150 words, of which around 100 is the apology (including the choice phrase "I think I did a nice job for you") and the rest of it is excuses and blame shifting.

</comment><comment><USER21> "Instead of picking up one of the multitude of books sent to me and typing it, I got lazy and went to the www and "found" something."

In school, that's called plagiarism, and you get thrown out for it...

Why should it be so different in the real world?

<comment><USER22> Who says she hasn't already been 'thrown out' of the real world? Her ideas certainly don't match up with reality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've learned two things in life about people like this editor:

1\. I will never understand how their brain puts them in the right for every situation they've ever been in

2\. No amount of arguing or facts will get in the way of #1

<comment><USER24> Indeed, and now that she's got some free time perhaps she can help Conrad Black with his memoirs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Huh. This all feels a lot like people who ask designers or programmers to work for free in exchange for "thing that look good in your portfolio".

<comment><USER12> Minus the word "ask".

<comment><USER26> don't you mean "substitute 'demand' for 'ask'?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> "If my apology to Monica seemed shallow it was because I was angry about the harm she has inflicted on others on behalf of her own agenda."

This is neither an a letter of apology nor an admission of wrongdoing, it's a statement of blame.

"Thank you to all our readers, thanks to all our advertisers and writers... and to everyone who has been supportive and who has been a part of Cooks Source. To one writer in particular, Monica Gaudio, I wish you had given me a chance."

The "one writer in particular" directly after referring to the magazine's writers almost implies that she thinks Monica is one of their writers. I wonder if she thinks that the entire Internet are her writers?

I don't think that violating copyright is incurring her the wrath of the Internet. Plenty of people distribute content that isn't theirs, and usually they get sympathy when the big bad RIAA comes in. It's the fact that every time she gets called out on a mistake, she insults the victim. You can get away with being wrong or with being nasty, but not both.

</comment><comment><USER28> I am curious to hear the opinions of some of the people in this comment thread regarding the downloading of copyrighted music, torrenting copyrighted films, downloading copyrighted books, or otherwise illegally using copyrighted content.

I'm not defending this woman as she did do something wrong. However, I think it's distressing that people are celebrating her "defeat," especially as (I would guess) most of her critics are avid supporters of pirated content. Isn't there some statistic about how every American violates some copyright law just about every day?

Cooks Source was a small, free, regional publication--the kind you ignore at the dentist's. This doesn't excuse Cooks Source and doesn't mean that Monica shouldn't have taken issue like she did. But in the end, I just don't see a david vs. goliath story: I just see a bunch of people ganging up on one person.

<comment><USER29> No. There is a difference between pirating for personal use or even sharing with others and re-publishing content for profit.

Copyright survives precisely because it is not enforced 100% - if it was followed by the letter, everybody would very soon see that it's not a good idea, crippling culture and turning the participation in public discourse on its head. This is also why there are rules like Fair Use - to acknowledge that there is an area where copyright is just not producing any net worth for society.

That said, you cannot then go on and follow that because it is rarely followed to the letter by regular people, the whole system isn't working. I see the recent "liberal" approach to cultural content as a plain opposite and equal reaction to the decades of capitalizing on culture. The media industry had their way for a good while and very nearly fully commercialized it (which is why, even today, you see people arguing that artists wouldn't produce art if they weren't paid for it) and now that the sole purpose of their existence (distribution of cultural content) is done better, cheaper and more efficient by regular people do they circle around themselves eating their own young.

I see the Cooks Source incident as a very weird example of a regular person behaving as entitled as the big media corporations do (or compare, for instance, the various Timbaland "situations" we've had over the years) - <USER2> is not in a position where she can act like that, but others clearly CAN.

These are all symptoms of a change that is clearly happening, but the outcome will not consist of those symptoms. Or at least I hope that it does not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Is it just me or should she have started this with the "So let me say this now: Monica I am so sorry for any harm I caused you." line?

It read like:

-excuse -excuse -excuse -excuse -excuse -sorry -excuse -excuse -excuse

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> See:

<http://illadore.livejournal.com/30674.html>

and <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1868736>

<comment><USER31> Also: <http://illadore.livejournal.com/32647.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> (Working on the assumption that the author is being sincere here) This displays such a fundamental misunderstanding of copyright that it initially shocked me. But in retrospect I suspect this attitude is probably very widely shared, particularly amongst younger people who've grown up with Napster and filesharing and bit torrent. While most of us don't republish other people's copyrighted work, I'm sure very few of us haven't got _some_ "illegally copied" copyrighted material somewhere on a hard drive. And from one point of view, what she did is not really any different to all those YouTube videos with unauthorized music tracks backing them - I'm not saying that's a _correct_ interpretation, but I can easily understand why some people - <USER3> she's doing here - think they've got some right to do that.

I see this as a fundamental, and probably generational change in the way the public thinks about copyright, and it'll be fascinating to see how the legal system "catches up" with public expectations. It could well be that when people like her get into positions where they're making the decisions about whether to extend Disney's Mickey Mouse copyrights even further, they'll be sitting there saying "WTF?", and perhaps_ bringing some sanity back to copyright laws.

I hope some artists and creators survive long enough to see that day...

<comment><USER32> Actually, pondering this a bit further, I wonder if my idea of this being a "generational change" is wrong. I wonder how people in the 1930s or 1940s views their obligations to artists/composers/filmmakers/writers and those people's rights to control their published work?

It may be the "Disney era copyrights" are just a temporary anomaly in "the way the world works", in a similar way to the ~30 year "profitable album era" was for the music industry...

<comment><USER29> There sure is a disconnect going on between how big corporations utilize copyright to their advantage and how regular folks deal with it, rather hamfistedly, as in this case.

I disagree with your earlier statement that this might be a new way in which the public "thinks about copyright", it is rather the new way in which it is /misunderstood/. So I'd say we shouldn't confuse the mounting ignorance in the general populace (which is, mostly, attributable to just the sheer amount of stuff that is out there - logic usually fails when something gets too big to follow) with an actual shift in consciousness. There is a need to rethink a lot of this, but that shouldn't be about "how do we break the old thing", but about "how do we create a new thing" - and that is where efforts like CC come into play.

So I don't really disagree that this is a widespread phenomenon, I'm just saying that it will not be where the change comes from in the future. That is, of course, unless reality is particularly cruel to us.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The first sentence is only three words long and yet contains the elementary- school-level mistake of using "its" when "it's" was intended.

In fact, this article is _full_ of basic mistakes even spellcheck can correct.

She's an _editor._

<comment><USER24> Former editor, thankfully.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Put down the shovel.

</comment><comment><USER35> She's effectively written a long-winded excuse in the guide of an apology while making thinly-veiled attempts to blame the original author for her ensuing misfortune. At the same time she deftly manages to not mention the numerous other counts of plagiarism that were discovered.

I'm sure she feels extremely sorry for herself right now but for all intents and purposes she is simply a thief.

<comment><USER22> She's not a thief, but she is a fraud. (i.e. copyright violate != theft)

<comment><USER35> Fair point. Agreed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Reading this letter, all I can think is: this woman is wasting her silly recrimination and entertaining incompetence on some sort of regional print magazine, when she's so obviously tailor made for reality TV!

</comment><comment><USER37> _Instead of picking up one of the multitude of books sent to me and typing it, I got lazy and went to the www and "found" something._

Well there you go, and they didn't need to write the 2000 other words on that page which were all excuses - no one forced them to be a publisher.

They copy and pasted and planned on begging for forgiveness later being easier than asking permission. Or maybe not even being noticed at all.

Google even has a public-domain/creative-commons search option which they didn't even bother to use.

<comment><USER29> An interesting point - after all, if this was really about creating a good magazine and not having enough time to write the content, going with public or CC licensed content would actually make a lot of sense. So the way she conducted her business was actually not THAT far off - she just happened to be completely ignorant about there being a way that she could avoid the obvious legal issues.

<comment><USER38> "she just happened to be completely ignorant about there being a way that she could avoid the obvious legal issues"

I think she has known all along that she's been running her business illegally by stealing other people's work without permission, and because she was never confronted about it until now she became emboldened to continue to expand her illegal practices.

I think she's acting ignorant, and it does not feel genuine to me at all. Anyone who claims to have been employed as an editor for 3 decades certainly knows what is legal and illegal. She just figured that she could get away with it -- and when confronted she decided that "the best defense is a strong offense" so she attacked the author verbally and tried to belittle her -- thinking perhaps that the author would simply back away and 'disappear' rather than assert her rights.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> From Techcrunch:

 _If we let anonymous mobs have this much power, the world — the real, flesh- and-blood human one, not the virtual one of Tweets, blog posts, comments and LiveJournal feeds– is going to get worse, not better._

[http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/16/congrats-self-righteous- int...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/16/congrats-self-righteous-internet-mob- you-killed-a-magazine/)

Already happened!

<comment><USER40> I imagine the Iranian government might express similar sentiments about anonymous internet mobs. The power they wield might be used to all sorts of ends, some of which we might admire, and some which we might find distasteful. Would a world where we forbid the anonymous mobs from having that much power be so much better?

<comment><USER39> I've never advocated banning anonymous mobs. However, I like pointing out when they do bad things. I find too many people seem to worship the activity of internet mobs as though they're inherently good, when they're no more inherently anything than any other sort of mob.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> While I have no sympathy for this woman, something in her story does concern me.

      "we have had so much hate email (over 400 pieces) , phone calls and regular mail."

She violated some copyright. That is an issue between her and the copyright holder. I feel slightly ashamed to be part of a community (Not HN specifically, but the more global software community) that responds with hate mail and abuse.

<comment><USER29> As soon as something is "made into a facebook group", all bets are off, I suppose. This kind of abuse is rarely (if ever) justified, so I agree with you, but I would also add that it's her making this statement and I have kind of stopped trusting that voice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I might have some sympathy if I bought her premise that this ugliness could have been avoided if Monica simply waited for her to deal with the issue quietly. Monica got a written and printed apology, a donation to columbia, and a virtual assurance that this publication will no longer violate copyright. There's no way she would have received that level of satisfaction without dealing with it the way she did.

</comment><comment><USER43> _[...] a snapshot of the page as it appeared on 16 Nov 2010 20:34:40 GMT._ (in the event that the editor should decide to take down or considerably alter the statement) [1].

[1]: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:VlsfWx1...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:VlsfWx1uFBQJ:www.cookssource.com/+site:cookssource.com&strip=1)

</comment><comment><USER44> I'm sad that this meant the end of someone doing what they love to do and something they put in work for, for years.

But my sympathy ends there.

</comment><comment><USER45> My favorite part:

"I didnt notice it was copy written"

Assuming she means "copyrighted," damn. This individual is shockingly ignorant about the business of writing. The author of any work automatically receives copyright to that work (unless it's a work for hire, etc). It's that simple.

I want to believe no one can be that obtuse, and this line is just one more of the weak post-rationalizations she's offering for obvious bad behavior.

</comment><comment><USER46> Hopefully she'll have learned a bit about how to interact with people on the Internet by the time she starts her next venture (if this one is going down the tubes as a result of her previous actions).

Sadly that response tells me she's learned nothing from all of this and can't see beyond her own bloodied nose.

<comment><USER47> It is indeed going down the 'tubes' [http://www.gazettenet.com/2010/11/16/cooks-source-calls- it-q...](http://www.gazettenet.com/2010/11/16/cooks-source-calls-it-quits)

<comment><USER22> There's a part where some of the quotes from the apology letter are implied to have been given to the Gazette in a phone interview. (not necessarily intentional)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Not to defend her, but when your typical blog author finds out that something he wrote got published, his response is one of pleasure. This "editor" is wrong on all counts, but from her perspective, the response of the blogger is highly unusual.

</comment><comment><USER49> In a way, I see her twisted logic and I empathize.

I'm not a fan of the mob mentality that drove the harassment she received. Its amazing what people will do once they're convinced they're _right_

</comment><comment><USER50> I'm going to have to go against the prevailing view and say that you guys are being way too harsh. She messed up. She apologized.

Maybe it wan't sincere enough for you, fine. But in any case, what she did is less horrible than what has since been done to her. I have no doubt that "harass" is the right word, no doubt that her advertisers are being contacted, her voice mail stuffed, and her mailbox filled.

Based on what? How's this different than suing companies for silly shit? Its only different because you're the judge. An armchair judge. This should have been handled privately. Like adults. This is drama..a soap opera...stuff of tabloid.

Someone has wronged me and I'll unleash the internet on them.

Put your pitchforks away.

<comment><USER51> Copyright is not "silly shit" to a bunch of programmers (especially when many of them work on open source). Programmers make things that are copyrighted. A story about an individual having their work stolen by another invokes the same response among programmers as a story about a violent robbery would invoke in a storm owner. It gets personal. Right or wrong that explains the emotion behind the mob.

(Why this doesn't extend to violating copyright on music, movies, and games is beyond me.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Woe to the society that believes being punished is the only wrong, and that guilt is something to be accused of only, not something to be ashamed of.

</comment><comment><USER53> This is beyond ridiculous... the epitome of stupidity.

</comment><comment><USER54> WTH, you screwed up -- get over it. Nobody in the entire internet needed that lame excuse letter.

</comment><comment><USER55> instead of cookssource.com I get www.intuit.com.

<comment><USER43> See googles cached version (I've posted it ITT).</comment></comment>


Simply scale with Nginx, Memcached, PHP-FPM and APC - <AUTHOR> http://www.jblotus.com/2013/02/01/simply-scale-with-nginx-memcached-php-fpm-and-apc/ When I started programming in PHP, my hosting setup involved a cPanel installation with Apache and MySQL. This has been the de facto standard for many PHP developers and for the most part I don't think any of that needs to change. I simply never had to deal with websites that got more than 10,000 visits a day. This all changed when I started work at my current job a few years ago. We sell an educational product that serves a predictable 15,000 requests per minute for 10+ hours/day, every day. Instead of Apache, we use nginx with PHP-FPM to handle this traffic. This is becoming a very popular setup for many companies with non-trivial traffic, but I have also found success with it in my small 256MB Ram VPS. For various reasons, nginx does a better job with memory and concurrent connection handling than Apache. In this post, I want to talk about some of the reasons you might want to go with this setup. <comment><USER2> For those that do not follow php internals, believe or not APC will probably be phased out with PHP 5.5 as Zend has volunteered to open source their Optimizer+ which has a slightly faster opcode cache.

Mixed emotions about this.

<comment><AUTHOR> interesting, for those of us who have been using apc for years.</comment></comment>


Your Startup Sucks - <AUTHOR> http://www.startupswami.com/2009/09/your-startup-sucks.html

<comment><USER2> I like and appreciate the motivating aspect of this article from the perspective of the startup founder. As for the perspective of all those looking in from the outside, one has to realize their criticism comes as a result of the fact that most startups eventually fail, as it is extremely difficult for a startup to succeed over the long term. However, I do agree with the author that one must focus on the task at hand in the process of cultivating a startup because sometimes one person may see something special that millions or even billions do not.

</comment><comment><USER3> I almost stopped reading halfway through. Glad I read to the end. He's right on.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes, I agree, you should generally ignore the naysayers, the ones who say "don't do it", "it'll never happen", "this is going nowhere", etc. However, don't immediately write them off. They may actually have some valid points and they should be considered. Sure, you don't have to halt process on your idea, but it can and should force you to re-analyze everything.

If these naysayers completely stop you from continuing your startup, chances are you're not cut out to run one.

<comment><USER5> I agree.

The hard part about listening to negative feedback is knowing what to ignore and what to pay attention to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> _If you believe you can do it, that's the only thing that matters._

Believing is a necessary but hardly sufficient condition. Ironically, almost everything OP mentions before the missing </sarcasm> flag matters too.

</comment><comment><USER7> _If you don't fix each and every one of them there is no way you can get the "early adopters" to use your product. And you know that you need the early adopters if you ever have the chance to cross over the chasm to the mainstream user._

Tell that to Twitter. Nothing to see here, move along.

<comment><USER8> His point, at the end, was to ignore all the naysayers, so he actually agrees with you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Uh huh. Perfect example.</comment></comment></comment>


Could Y Combinator Save The World? - <AUTHOR> http://socialentrepreneurship.change.org/blog/view/could_y_combinator_save_the_world

<comment><USER2> No.

That's easy enough.

The worlds problems are massive and while I'm sure there are plenty of great people involved with YC I highly doubt that they have the power required to do what you suggest they could do.

What's more interesting though is whether YOU can change the world. Not save it, not all of it, but just that little patch of it that you have influence over.

And then to try to get as many people as you can to do that same thing, influence the small area of the world where they have a foot on the ground for the better as much as they can.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, fair enough point. But I think the interesting thing is that your description of influencing "that little patch of it that you have influence over" (which is great phrasing, by the way) is exactly what I'm asking YC to do, right?

Their little patch is the organizations that come through their door. When Paul Graham writes "Be Good," his orgs (at least a bunch of them) listen, and it matters.

If they took the initiative to prompt for organizations that had a particular social impact, there could be some amazing results.

<comment><USER2> I'm pretty sure they're doing just that. Ethics seem to be pretty high up in PGs value system.

<comment><AUTHOR> For sure, but there's a difference between finding and prompting ethical companies and specifically seeking out companies that have a bottom line that's not just financial but actually has measurable social or environmental impact as well.

<comment><USER2> check out this guy:

<http://www.extent.nl/>

Unfortunately he is no longer, but he was one of the nicest venture capitalists out there.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>