Protect IP Renamed E-Parasites Act; Would Create The Great Firewall Of America - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111026/12130616523/protect-ip-renamed-e-parasites-act-would-create-great-firewall-america.shtml <comment><USER2> The key point here, as another commenter pointed out, is _they are not going to give up._

You can win a battle here, perhaps rally around your congressman and get it killed, or petition the president to veto it, but it doesn't matter. They'll just be back again next year, and the next year, and the next.

This is the importance of constitutional amendments: they settle things on a broad scale exactly to prevent this kind of nipping (although it still happens, it just takes much longer time) We need an amendment or two around internet and computer freedom, specifically that computers are extensions of our minds, not machines to play content on, and that the internet is our primary form of political organization and persuasion, not a fancy telephone line.

I hate to be all doom-and-gloom, but I think that boat has sailed. The tech community _might_ get its act together, give up all social causes and form some kind of committee or group to push for such amendments, but I seriously doubt it. Half the community is in bed with big media and the other half are just as concerned with other issues as this one. We are not organized, coherent, or focused.

Just saw a great series on PBS, Ken Burns' "Prohibition". It was all about how focused groups can make big changes -- but it takes a long time. I don't see the kind of anger and outrage against this as we had against alcohol. Very sad, because this is a lot worse.

<comment><USER3> I agree with you about the persistence problem; the government acts like a rotten two-year-old that keeps trying until it gets its way. Like a two-year- old, it learns what it can get away with and tries harder each time. _Unlike_ a two-year-old, it doesn't grow up and learn what not to do.

We shouldn't need a constitutional amendment here; the constitution is a whitelist of things the federal government may do, not a blacklist of things it may not do. While the constitution does sadly include the notion of copyright, it does not include anything allowing regulatory authority over the Internet.

<comment><USER4> Hang on one second, who in the hell is "the government" in this situation?

The politicians supporting this bill, mostly republicans, work the phrase "I'm anti-government" into every single public speech they give. Those are the only supporters on the public payroll, the rest are all corporate entities and lobbyists, as well as the Chamber of Commerce, natch. Those are your pro- government marxist ideologues in this story.

I really think the phrase "the government" or even worse, capital-G "Government", should be banned from any discussion of policy, it turns everyone involved into an idiot. Government and industry both have lots of moving parts.

Lastly, I agree that our existing constitution should prevent this sort of law. I'm not optimistic about the current "small-government" supreme court agreeing with me.

<comment><USER5> The sponsors of this bill break down as 16 Democrats to 11 Republicans. How does that work out to "mostly republicans"? It appears that this has support from both parties, and I think casting it as a party issue will weaken opposition.

<comment><USER4> Ok, it's bipartisan, but the only meaningful opposition has come from democrats, and the entire political spectrum of "anti government" has lined up behind it. I'm just saying breaking everything down to "government" is a ridiculous tagline that obfuscates more than it helps.

I mean, even if this is approved, it's basically the government doing extremely cheap contract work for the companies who'd benefit. I have a problem with it being done, period, if the ISPs formed a cartel with the MPAA to do this without the government it'd be just as bad.

<comment><USER6> _the only meaningful opposition has come from democrats, and the entire political spectrum of "anti government" has lined up behind it_

Which Libertarian think-tank was it that was supporting the bill?

Really, jbooth, your partisanship isn't helping anything.

<comment><USER4> Some of the think tanks on all sides are alright, but most legislators on both sides ignore the principled argument as soon as the established industry weighs in. That's the problem. I said it was a bipartisan failure in my last comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As long as our bandwidth and/or content is in the hands of corporations who'd rather fuck us than cultivate virtuous, reciprocally beneficial relationships, we will never be free.

I always worried, as a kid, that one day I'd grow up and think nostalgically back to days before the internet had been made dull and sterile by government rules.

I wasn't imaginative enough then, or even as a young adult, to predict this kind of nonsense would happen instead.

The internet is destined for a bleak period. We care, we're pissed, sure. But most people aren't. Most people don't even know. And wouldn't care if they did.

This law, or one like it, will be subverted in breathtaking and terrifying ways. Thought using the DMCA to shut down early thanksgiving coupon sites was bad? That's going to seem cute by comparison to what you can do when a moronic, bureaucratic authority can disappear entire websites at will.

I've been scratching my head for years trying to think of a way out. But I just can't. The most powerful means of distribution and communication in human history is either in the hands of inept, short-sighted, unimaginative buffoons or subject to regulation from the same.

I'm excited for the practical and technological revolution that upends this control. But I can't imagine what it would look like or how it would work. And that leaves me a pretty sad panda while we wait for it. But – this kind of stupidity is bad for _everyone_. Even the morons who want this law passed. So I'd like to believe that this period will pass with the same inevitability that will bring on its start.

<comment><USER8> >I've been scratching my head for years trying to think of a way out. But I just can't. The most powerful means of distribution and communication in human history is either in the hands of inept, short-sighted, unimaginative buffoons or subject to regulation from the same.

if you think about it, the Earth's most advanced political systems - the US and the other Western democracies - are just refined implementations of 2000+ years old architectural principles - the Greek's "democracy" (decisions and laws are made by a group of people limited to the size of the big room, the modern refinement of this ancient system is that the members of that group are supposedly elected instead of just being rich and powerful elite of the society) and the Rome's "rule of law" (a law overrides moral and any other motivation/rationale). It's somehow disappointing that human race hasn't been able to come up with (or more precisely - hasn't evolved enough for) a better system. [The most recent attempts to build new, and thought at the time as significantly improved, systems - fascism and socialism/communism - turned out to be catastrophic disasters.]

>I'm excited for the practical and technological revolution that upends this control. But I can't imagine what it would look like or how it would work.

every time significant technological development happens - be it steam engine, Smith&Wesson, radio, cars, phone, television - it looks like it would change the world and free the people from the control of the system ... well, as it happens, the system just absorbs the technological development as a more advanced tool for the control. And it is happening the same way with the computers and the Internet. All the improvement in the society comes from improvement in people (which of course is frequently technically facilitated and accelerated by the technological advances). "Peasants are also humans, not a property", "women are also humans, not a property", "blacks are also humans, not a property", "gays are also humans", ..., (some day we will even evolve enough to recognize the rights of animals and look back in horror to today's treatment of them as property) - all this is just a change in people minds, not a change in law (which follows the change in minds) and not a change in technology (which though does usually help a lot)

>And that leaves me a pretty sad panda while we wait for it.

Look at the "Occupiers" - like the new born kittens they don't know what to do, where to go, yet they have already "born" while we're sitting and waiting :) [ note : i don't have illusions - many of the Occupiers will become lawyers, government employees, political officials ... - ie. indistinguishable part of the system and will try to forgot their "stupid mistakes of youth", yet just for a moment they are "born" and it became an undeletable part of the whole human race history and evolution]

<comment><USER9> >It's somehow disappointing that human race hasn't been able to come up with (or more precisely - hasn't evolved enough for) a better system.

A little off topic, but since it was bought up, I am going to mention that I have been thinking of a systems where members of Parliament or Congress are hired by a committee from the general public and then last for something like 20 years terms (unless he or she themselves resign of course). It would take advantage of the separation of powers spreading power out among different kinds of people, so it would not have the problems a dictatorship or monarchy have. It would also allow specialization.

<comment><USER8> it sounds like a hybrid between Supreme Court and the corporate board/CEO scheme.

To me the problem lies deeper - it is in the principle that government/state is a concentrated power (taken away from people by force) and what behaves like a violent force against the people. Any tweaks to the current system is tweaks with who and how authorizes the application of that violence.

The government should get it power through willful delegation from people. The US was a nice attempt to implement the idea. Unfortunately the "willful" isn't there anymore. And without it the government looses moral ground under its violence.

The next stage would be government/state system that acts not through force. What can be used instead of force? Persuasion/education, consensus...? it is though too far fetched for any specifics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am headed to DC tonight and my partner and I and a few other VCs entrepreneurs and folks from Google are going to try to talk some sense into congress on this bill. Wish us luck tomorrow.

<comment> brown9-2 Can you share what types of meetings you have lined up, if you'll be speaking to any members of Congress in a formal setting, etc?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Consider a blacklist of our own, if you write, vote for, or play a role in legislation that restricts and censors the internet you will be barred from using our service.

Imagine a future in which politicians are incapable of using even the most basic web services and technologies because they have been barred from use. It would be quite an embarrassment if you could not have a Facebook or Twitter account, couldn't advertise on Google, and your email was rejected by most ISPs.

Of course, this should paint an image of how ludicrous the notion of any blacklist is.

<comment><USER12> I think this may actually be genius. Someone call Zuck, Jack, and Larry.

<comment><USER13> I think Wikipedia Italia had a better idea. Forget the politicians, Google and Facebook have the ability to highlight the implications to virtually everybody in the US. Big corporations might not often be inclined towards grandstanding, but there's precedent when it comes to Google objecting to censorship. A little "if this Bill passes, we'll be serving a lot less search results" message above every search performed by US users would be sufficient to make the bill politically suicidal, methinks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I would have called this too ridiculous to pose an actual danger before the PATRIOT Act.

It points to a deeper problem, though: Lawmakers intent on passing something that a large portion of the public finds objectionable can often achieve their goal simply by persistence; renaming and resubmitting a bill each time oppositional furor dies down, or slipping pieces of it into unrelated bills until it's effectively passed.

I'm normally far more progressive than conservative, but at times like this I wish there were some penalty associated with proposing or backing a really bad bill, or with legislation by subterfuge.

<comment><USER15> > I'm normally far more progressive than conservative, but at times like this > I wish there were some penalty associated with proposing or backing a really > bad bill, or with legislation by subterfuge.

I believe the intended result for this, if a sufficient portion of the represented find this behavior objectionable, is to lose one's office. This assumes an educated electorate , or at least the voting subset of the represented to be so educated and so opposed.

<comment><USER16> But oftentimes, the party of the incumbent won't run another candidate (since that might split the vote and lose the seat to the other party). So the only way to vote an incumbent out is to vote for the other party, which may also be against your interests.

<comment><USER15> You might also turn in a blank ballot. Depending on circumstance, this might be a fine way to signal to the incumbent that they did not do a Good Job, though you in general support the policy of their party. Close races, etc, will change the calculus of voting. Some states do not include blank ballots in the vote totals, others do.

<comment><USER17> An simple improvement to our voting system would be to include a 'none of the above' option on all ballot papers. If 'none of the above' should win, another ballot must be held and the original candidates are excluded from running.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The sad thing about all of this is that the backers of the legislation stand to _lose_ , in the long run, if their legislation is passed.

Consider the VCR. Back in the 1980s, when the VCR was a new and disruptive piece of technology, the film industry lobbied to have it outlawed or at least severely restricted. They lost that battle, and it's fortunate for them that they did. A decade or so later, home video sales and rentals would grow to account for nearly half the revenue of the entire industry. What had initially been seen as a menace came to be seen as a savior. Highly ironic, to say the least, and the irony is compounded even more by this attempted legislation.

<comment><USER19> Totally agreed. The internet is merely a medium, you aren't going to stop piracy by "banning" it.

What really pisses me off is that I have to wait 2-3 months for a film to go from cinema to dvd. I don't pirate because I'm fiscally short, I pirate because I just saw an amazing movie and I want to watch it again. I don't want to go back to a theatre, I want to watch it at home, but I can't. The irony is, I can go to a nearby hotel and rent pre-pay-per-view movies that are still showing in the secondary phase of the cinema market (cheapie theatres). Why can't I rent pre-pay-per-view at home? I pay 8 bucks for a fucking PPV as it is, why can't I pay the $11 I would at the hotel or at a theatre.

I don't get why when _I want to pay them more money_ they make it impossible for me to do so.

<comment><USER18> Film studios and TV networks are eventually going to come to the realization that piracy is a marketing vehicle for them. Of course, they'll still need to find a way to make money off of their content, and that's an understandably tricky situation. But recent studies have shown that movie pirates are also movie studios' biggest paying customers.

The big challenge for studios right now is that there used to be two lifecycles for any given film: the exhibition lifecycle (i.e., the theatrical release window), and the ownership lifecycle (i.e., DVD or Blu-ray purchase). These days, both are being compressed, and ownership is increasingly unnecessary. Piracy may or may not be a legitimate threat to ownership, but that's sort of beside the point, because ownership -- as a fundamental concept -- won't matter in the cloud-driven, on-demand world of the very near future. But piracy can still exist as an interesting _exhibition_ tactic. It just needs to be harnessed in the right way, and/or a compelling and equally convenient alternative needs to be created.

This is a very tough spot for studios, but legislative attempts at sticking their heads in the sand are not going to solve any problems for them -- and may, in fact, exacerbate their problems by putting innovation attempts on hold.

<comment><USER19> > Of course, they'll still need to find a way to make money off of their > content, and that's an understandably tricky situation.

Not particularly. TV networks regularly make money off of their content online. I can go to virtually any networks website and stream an episode of whatever and get adverts in the regular breaks. Why not simply do the same with a movie?

People don't care about giving up 18 minutes of their lives for 42 minutes of a show. Why do the movie networks have such a hard time grasping that people will gladly give up 30 minutes of their lives to advertisers for a 90 minute film.

I genuinely think they don't do this simply so they can say "well people are stealing because they just don't want to pay".

<comment><USER20> The issue I see with that is that we've grown accustomed to breaks in our TV shows, whereas we would likely see any break in our movie experience as jarring and negative.

Something more like YouTube's banner ads along the bottom might work.

<comment><USER19> Banner ads piss me off more than a commercial break. I'm used to advert breaks in movies around the holidays when every network runs old movies so I'm sure it wouldn't be a huge leap.

Perhaps cut the breaks to every 30 minutes or so. An advert break every 10 minutes in Titanic would likely induce suicide.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Rep. Lamar Smith is also the legislative genius behind the bureaucratic monstrosity that is our current immigration system. I don't like him much, as you can probably tell.

Two things you can do: Write, on paper, to your congressional representatives and explain briefly and politely that this legislation will hinder job growth, hurt exports, and mention that you will donate only to legislators who vote against this bill. Then follow through. If you can afford it, make a donation to a known existing opponent and include a copy of your receipt with the letter to your representative. Money talks like nothing else does. It does not have to be a large amount. Nor is it important for you to agree with the other politician about everything. All you need to do is make it clear that there are votes and issues at stake on this particular margin. A pattern of small donations outside of election season will get people's attention.

Donate to either a primary or general election challenger in Rep. Smith's district.

<comment><USER22> Here's the wiki for the 21st district of TX (Mr. Smith's): [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texass_21st_congressional_distr...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texass_21st_congressional_district)

Seems like he's been in office since 1987, so there may not be much hope for a challenger in any given election.

Any standout opponents of this thing that I could donate to instead?

<comment><USER21> Ron Wyden seems to be the leading legislator for tech freedom, but I admit to being a poor scorekeeper in this area - I like law more than politics, so I don't pay enough attention to individual congresspersons.

<comment><USER22> Yeah, I've donated to him this year already. Wondering if he has any counterparts on the house side...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Another concerning section is the power to take action against, "any entity that knowingly and willfully provides or offers to provide a product or service designed or marketed for the circumvention or bypassing of measures described". Does this mean that the Tor Project would be shut down? It would be nearly impossible to eradicate a piece of open source software, but if this bill has passed, it would not be a leap to imagine a bill making the use of Tor or related services a felony passing.

</comment><comment><USER24> For a minute I thought this was satire put out by one of the campaigns against the Act. I was thinking, "Who would really call something that?" I'm glad I clicked the link to see that it's actually what happened.

<comment><USER25> Same here - the utterly tone-deaf nature of the name literally made me think it was a link to the Onion.

It is just freaking weird that the biggest, most blatantly rent-seeking organizations in the world call their own legislation the E-PARASITE bill.

<comment><USER26> E-PARASITE bill; the bill by and for e-parasites.

Seems legit, no?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The government has identified DNS as an especially vulnerable component of the internet and intends to attack it:

"A service provider shall take technically feasible and reasonable measures designed to prevent [...] the domain name [...] from resolving to that domain name's Internet Protocol address."

Hard to tell which incarnation of this effort will become law, and when, but it seems prudent to assume that it will. Rather than simply hope the government won't attack the network, or petition the government not to attack it, we should engineer improvements to the network which increase its resistance to attack.

Time for a more distributed, probably peer-to-peer, DNS.

It's been said that the internet interprets censorship as damage, and routes around it. That's precisely what these threats call for.

</comment><comment><USER28> Didn't Wyden put a hold on the "PROTECT IP" act in the Senate? Does that make this moot, or will there be a new bill in the Senate?

<comment><USER29> Weird coincidence. I just saw Wyden speak a few minutes ago at a town hall style meeting here in Oregon, and asked him about PROTECT IP when he was taking questions.

I'm not sure he can keep it on hold indefinitely, but he definitely sounded committed to doing whatever is within his power to oppose it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I thought the name change was great. As long as you recognize who the real parasites are.

<comment><USER22> Yeah, the irony is pretty intense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Silver lining: the word "IP" is apparently so unpopular that it's better not to associate your proposals with it.

<comment><USER32> I would like you to be right: do you have evidence that this was the reason the name was changed?

I am personally hoping that "PARASITE" has a much more negative ring that will make it easier to campaign against the bill.

<comment><USER33> Yeah, the people we think of as parasites and the people they think of as parasites are two different sets.

Brand _them_ as the parasites and kill it. Maybe a Googlebomb is in order, listing the sponsors of this bill as e-parasites? Sadly, the document linked on SCRIBD doesn't seem to include the list of cosponsors and mentions only "Mr. Smith of Texas".

Does anyone know where to find out who all is sponsoring this? A quick search only found a bunch of news about it and copies of the bill, but no further information.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Is anyone putting together any kind of concerted, consolidated effort to kill this bill?

There must be some kind of movement one can throw their weight behind to help stop this nonsense.

<comment><USER35> <http://act.demandprogress.org/sign/pipa_house/?source=eff>

<comment><USER34> Thanks for this

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> These things scare me because I think a significant amount of citizens don't know what they stand to lose, and I think politicians understand just enough to know exactly what they're taking away.

</comment><comment><USER37> First COICA, then Protect IP, now E-PARASITES Act? Looks like I have to contact my local congressmen again. Seems like they spend more time renaming this bill than actually reading it.

<comment><USER38> > Looks like I have to contact my local congressmen again.

Yeah, you and some giant company with tons of cash to finance his next campaign.

Guess who's gonna win his support.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> IF this were to become law, that would definitely be scary, but from the description of what they require of the ISP, it sounds like they aren't blocking access to the server, just keeping the DNS from resolving to the IP. Thus, could you not use a public DNS (or foreign DNS) server, thus getting around the blocked DNS from your local ISP? Just an idea, or wonder, of mine.

<comment><USER38> Yeah, let's just allow them to pass their restrictions bit by bit in subsequent laws, arguing that "as it is we can still get around it".

It doesn't matter if we can get around it using a public DNS server. For one, tomorrow they can even outlaw using non government compliant dns providers).

What hackers tend to forget is that such problems are not technical, are political. "Bypassing" by technical expertise is not a solution, it's monkey- patching a system that's broken and dangerous.

1) Even if geeks can bypass some restrictions, they too tend to lose --content, community participation etc-- if the general populace cannot do it just as easily, or is scared not to do it.

2) Even the cleverest bypassing can be outlawed.

3) One should not trust one's self to always be one step ahead of the government in the bypassing game.

Take P2P for example. Say you're totally bypassing the P2P download restrictions with some clever hackery that makes you untraceable online, be it Tor or whatever. What good will it do if the authorities can come knocking on your _physical_ door and find that same illegally downloaded stuff in use on your computer?

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I hate this sort of article. Every month or so, another "look at this evil bill that will destroy our liberties" article comes out, and everybody gets all worked up about it.

tl;dr - The judges sitting on federal courts and the supreme court aren't responsible to voters, don't need campaign funds, and don't have a career to worry about. In the unlikely event that this bull makes it out of congress and past the president, it'll be struck down. Just like it has been every time before.

Sure. If this bill was an enforced law, that would be bad. Unthinkably bad. But that goes for a great deal of what happens in congress - especially the House. A small portion of this manure actually manages to make it out of congress and past the president - and it gets taken to the courts. The more interesting cases make it to the Supreme Court, where the nine judges who aren't up for re-election, have no career to worry about, and are already rich enough to be well impossible to buy off, get the pleasure of telling - in this case - the entertainment industry to go stuff it. The supreme court has repeatedly refrained from supporting this sort of thing, and they're unlikely to start in the future. Even if the worst happens, and this thing gets passed, the courts will strike it down long before the bureaucracy finds a way to start enforcing it. It's highly unlikely to affect any of us.

Some other commenters have almost correctly pointed out that "they're not going to give up" - because in many cases, fighting for these inane laws is their day job. First, there's also a group of people whose day job is to argue these sorts of laws. And another group whose day job is to strike them down, _even if_ the opposition is poorly argued. Second, those lobbyists are likely to be loosing their jobs soon as the industry paying for them begins to fall apart.

So, please. Stop freaking out every time one part of the government does something stupid. Writing to your local dimwit to point out the obvious: ok. Running in panicked circles on the internet: unhelpful and irritating.

/rant

<comment><USER41> After Citizens United, I no longer trust the court.

<comment><USER42> You do realize the consequences if they had ruled opposite of what they did-- that a movie made by a corporation was not protected speech covered by the first amendment.

Books, movies, magazines, television, radio, and many websites, would no longer be protected under the first amendment, and would be open to government regulation and censorship.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I think I'm just going to start copyrighting trivial javascript and CSS code, then sue the fuck out of the MPAA when one of their offshore developers steals it from me. Fight fire with fire, they say.

<comment><USER44> Has anyone done an audit for all the websites of the supporters of this act?

I remember some recent HN article about someone (German politician?) who had used a photo without permission on his website.

Lily Allen has spoken out about piracy, but used then distributed music via her blog.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> How is this working out for Australia? I understand a blacklist/firewall was put in the place there?

<comment><USER46> No, it died just before the last election in August 2010. Officially it's 'on hold', but practically, it is dead.

How? A lot of pressure put on a lot of politicians in the run-up to the last federal election, which promised to be very close (and was actually one of the closest in history).

You obviously have to pressure whomever holds the majority, but you've got to let the other side know about it as well.

So Australia is filter-free for the foreseeable future - it's become a 'dead issue' that politicians aren't willing to spend political capital on.

US Folks should take this as a bright data point that these battles can be won, but it will take a lot of effort.

Personally it's something that Tea Party and OWS types could get together on, because it sucks for everyone. That's what happened in Australia - they took heat from both 'sides' of politics and it got dumped (sorry, _postponed_ )

<comment><USER22> That's great news! Do you have any nuts and bolts information on how this was organized? (Was there any formal opposition?) If so, that could be very useful here...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> The sad thing is that it seems that the worse a bill is, the more likely it is to pass.

</comment><comment><USER48> How would this effect Canada or Europe?

</comment><comment><USER49> I do like American government acts.

I always picture the governor in Mel Brook's Blazing Saddles:

"Patriotism is good isn't it?"

"Yes Governor"

"So I should sign this PATRIOT act without reading it?"

"Yes Governor"

"Parasites are bad aren't they?"

"Yes Governor"

"So we ban them ?"

"Yes Governor" ....

If only Mr Obama had found a way of making his health care bill spell out "IF YOU VOTE AGAINST THIS YOU ARE SO GAY" ACT - he would have got it through.

<comment><USER50> > he would have got it through

Huh? You realize it's law, right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Does stopping internet piracy mean no more talk like a pirate day?

<comment><USER48> I hope not

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> The problem is that the only people who bother getting up in arms about this are the objectively pro-piracy crowd -- the folks who think that they _ought_ to be allowed to freely download a copy of any movie in existence without paying for it if they happen to feel like doing so. Otherwise known as the "I want to do _X_ , therefore _X_ should be legal" school of legal thinking.

I see some of that crowd in this thread. I'm not interested in arguing with 'em. But when the loudest spokesmen against some particular piece of silly law (and this is a silly law) turn out to be extremists with a position that most thoughtful people would disagree with, it makes it difficult to put forth a coherent argument against it.

<comment><USER53> 'Otherwise known as the "I want to do X, therefore X should be legal" school of legal thinking.'

You mean like "I want a monopoly, therefore monopolies should be legal. Also, I should have police powers to enforce my monopoly: search people's computers, shut down their internet access, make accusations based on flimsy evidence like IP addresses, and presume guilt rather than innocence."

Like that?

I mean, if society were a roomful of people, and someone stood up and suggested that, would you nod and agree?

I'm not saying copyright isn't a useful tool for society to encourage creation of works, but it does need to be balanced with other things. Not least is the fact that it hinders the creation of derivative works. This argument is even stronger in the realm of patents.</comment></comment>


Gmail: Design breakdown?  - <AUTHOR>

Google is pushing a new "Email experience" [0], in which the compose window becomes a smallish rectangle near the edge of the screen, and every editing option is hidden inside menus. The rest of the screen is just an unusable background now. How can anyone think this is better than the current design?<p>[0] Before - http://i.imgur.com/FvnkaWX.png<p>After - http://i.imgur.com/0mTa36W.png <comment><USER2> Good question, with so many complaints about the UX I wonder why we still even use it.

In case you didn't know, <https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/h/> gives you the old interface back.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Working links: before - <http://i.imgur.com/FvnkaWX.png> after - <http://i.imgur.com/0mTa36W.png>

</comment><comment><USER3> Open multiple compose/edit windows simultaneously visible without switching tabs; see new email while composing.

Whether those are good goals or not is a question, but those are among the goals.

</comment><comment> saiko-chriskun rest of the screen unusable? huh? it's just as usuable as it is without the compose window up. I find it useful.</comment>


Medicine's Answer to Instagram, Figure 1, Raises $2M - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2013/12/09/medicines-answer-to-instagram-figure-1-raises-c2m/

<comment><USER2> " _Figure 1 currently offers its app free and has not yet generated revenue. However, Mr. Chabra believes, "If they continue to grow at the [current] pace, they will have lots of monetization options in the near future," thanks to their reach and engagement with the world's 30 million medical professionals, and medical students and dentists too.

In the U.S., health-care and pharmaceutical companies will spend $1.18 billion on digital advertising this year, according to eMarketer research._"

I'm not sure why they're even thinking of advertising as a revenue model. Unlike Instagram, the number of people who will look at any given image is very small. Also, it wouldn't inspire patients' confidence to see ads plastered all over a screen in their doctors' offices; it just doesn't look professional. (Nor would an ad-supported service seem professional to the doctors who use it.) It makes much more sense to charge for subscriptions to this service. Hospitals or large practices could get volume discounts.

<comment><USER3> While the number of views may be small, the potential payoff could be huge. Drug companies advertise with doctors, give free samples, etc. for a reason.

<comment><USER2> But the average doctor is already inundated with ads from drug companies. Would there be a big payoff from having yet another place where they're advertised to?

Also, an ad in a medical journal is less obtrusive than an ad that's shoved in the doctor's face while she's trying to get a consult on an MRI. Doctors may find ads in their workstream to be distracting and annoying. I certainly would.

<comment><USER4> Hi guys, I'm Josh Landy, one of the founders of Figure 1. As a practicing physician, I am (very) sensitive to the need for an unobstructed workflow. We are hoping to build a really strong product, and suggestions like these keep us on the right track. Thanks for bringing it up.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Handwritten coding sheets for Burroughs 205 Algol (1960) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Knuth_Don_X4100/PDF_index/k-2-pdf/k-2-c1039-ALGOL-B205.pdf <comment><USER2> Yeah I used to code like that a lot. The next step was to work out the "core layout" for the "overlay loader". There wasn't enough memory to keep the whole program resident at once so you had to invoke the loader to bring in the next piece.

There was a "front panel" on every computer that showed the registers and memory. You could "single step" through your program to see what was in the registers. When DEC shipped the PDP-11 series the front panel was gone. I didn't know how I was going to debug. (Imagine single-stepping a program that runs on a 3 GHz machine.)

Next task was to transfer the program to paper tape using a piece of plastic with a slot for the tape, 8 holes, and a slim rod to punch out the bits. Be sure to leave a couple extra bytes so you can "hot patch" the program. This involved changing the bits into a jump to an address where you had punched new instructions.

Oddly though, I don't see the literate programming markup. I guess that's on the next page.

<comment><USER3> > When DEC shipped the PDP-11 series the front panel was gone

That's not true. The earlier models definitely had front panels. Only the very latest had reduced or no front panels.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Another interesting read related: [http://ed-thelen.org/comp- hist/B5000-AlgolRWaychoff.html#7](http://ed-thelen.org/comp- hist/B5000-AlgolRWaychoff.html#7)

<comment><USER4> Thank you for that link because this quote is _so good!_

"It was becoming clear to me that Dr. Forsythe and Dr. Harroit wanted a B5000. But the best that Burroughs would offer was about a 40% discount. IBM was offering them the world to take an IBM 7090. Finally, IBM said that they would give Stanford the 7090 for free plus a gift of $900000 that could be used to build a new computer center. Stanford had a Burroughs 220 and IBM was determined to dislodge us. Stanford accepted the offer and used $400000 to build the computer center and $500000 to buy a B5000. So IBM had unwittingly paid Stanford to buy a B5000, much to their dismay. "

First, a nice illustration of shady practices that get shoddy tech to dominant market share. Windows had its share, too. Second, a rare illustration of it backfiring in an epic way. That the inferior, pretend-to-be-first, mainframe company bought them The Real Deal by mistake is just hard to top. It's better than when Microsoft was called out on NT Server's alleged superiority over AS/400's by pointing out they ran their whole business on an AS/400\. These moments just don't happen enough.

The Fortran vs Algol vs people who open mail moment was great, too.

<comment><USER5> Another pretty good quote about the young Don Knuth:

"We had written our [compiler] in STAR 0, the only assembler that Burroughs supported on the 205. Our compiler took one hour and 45 minutes to assemble. The first week of don's project he spent in writing his own assembler. He could assemble his compiler in 45 minutes. We were green with envy."

That's practical, right? He had limited computer time, and since every change meant a re-assembly, the obvious answer to quicker turnaround was to write a faster assembler...

<comment><USER4> Yeah, that's a good one. I wonder if something like HLA would've helped them back then:

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

Maybe it with s-expressions and Wirth-style compilation. Might have made those iterations pretty fast with lots of efficiency. The HLL's too heavy to compile could be mapped to it by hand if they wanted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> more context here: [http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/ALGOL/algol58im...](http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/ALGOL/algol58impl/#Burroughs_205)

<comment><USER6> Thanks! This looks really cool.

 _Kimpel has written an emulator for the Burroughs 205, and has been able to execute two versions of Knuth 's Algol 58 compiler on the emulator._

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> He talks about this here... [http://www.webofstories.com/play/donald.knuth/27](http://www.webofstories.com/play/donald.knuth/27)

</comment><comment><USER8> The thing I love about the handwritten sheets is the small things that aren't perfect. The drift of the commands to the right as they go down the page. The strikethrough of sections.

I don't know how to explain it, typically, but notebooks are incredibly intimidating when the examples you see will be perfect end products. Seeing a few of the sheets that made it into the trash are really instructive.

</comment><comment><USER9> Great information both from the linked document and the fellow posts, thanks to all for sharing.

I follow with great interest everything Burroughs related, specially their approaches to safe programming.

<comment><USER4> You got to see the one linked in the parent to the comment below. I'm linking the comment since it has the highlight:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12466890](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12466890)

<comment><USER9> Thanks, I had read it already. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A thing of beauty. This guy is so much smarter than I am.

</comment><comment><USER11> Lol pp41 "..GO TO HELL"</comment>


Gilead Claims 'Positive Data' to Come from NIH Trial of Remdesivir - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/29/health/gilead-remdesivir-coronavirus.html <comment><USER2> From the article:

 _" "Unfortunately ... remdesivir did not provide significant benefits over placebo," said the lead investigator of the new study"_

 _A clinical trials expert at Duke, said ..., "all you can say is it doesn't seem to work in this population."_

 _"Remdesivir appears not to be a magic bullet"_

 _"This is a flawed study."_

The press release serves no other purpose than to goose the share price. The virus will stay with us, this isn't the antiviral that we have been hoping for.

<comment><AUTHOR> Edit: Be careful not to misinterpret the flawed study comment. The "this is a flawed study" comment is _not_ with regards to the NIH trial. It is in regards to the lancet trial, the one that did not show benefit to remdesivir.

It's not working in severe populations, but that study wasn't fully enrolled so we don't know if it was powered enough, which the study in the lancet states. And, it doesn't need to be a magic bullet to be a major step forward in the fight against the drug? The NIH sponsored placebo-controlled trial met its primary endpoint - how is stating that just an attempt to goose the share price? If they are lying about that, then their credibility will be killed. If they are not lying about that, then there is now statistically significant evidence that remdesivir does work in treating COVID-19 patients, likely in less severe patients.

<comment><USER2> The Lancet study was a randomized trial with > 200 patients that showed no clinical benefits of remdesivir but did reveal some adverse effects. That's worrying. It's not the game changer that azidothymidine was for AIDS/HIV.

The issue with remdesivir in mild cases is that it's expensive to produce (six steps, two at low temperature, outside the capability of many contract shops) and that multigram amounts are required for a course of treatment. It's not what you want to have for that group.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Basically, Gilead is claiming that the NIAID's trial of Remdisivir (an antiviral being tested against COVID-19) met its primary endpoint, and that results will be coming out soon. Looks like this trial is randomized/double- blinded/placebo-controlled, which is awesome. It's the first time we're getting proper, interpretable data on this drug and it looks like it'll be good news.

</comment><comment><USER3> trying to boost the share price maybe? or as is usual with these things they will hide negative results and/or promote something they consider positive because it helps share price but does nothing for patients.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't see how this would work to boost the share price? If they're lying about this data it'll kill them as a company.

They're announcing that the drug worked in the trial that most people have been playing close attention to. That is a randomized controlled trial run by the NIH etc. They're not just saying positive results, they say in their press release that "We understand that the trial has met its primary endpoint and that NIAID will provide detailed information at an upcoming briefing" [0]. That's a clear statistical indication that the drug works. If they're lying about that, it'll kill their credibility and tank their stock.

[0] [https://www.gilead.com/news-and-press/press-room/press- relea...](https://www.gilead.com/news-and-press/press-room/press- releases/2020/4/gilead-sciences-statement-on-positive-data-emerging-from- national-institute-of-allergy-and-infectious-diseases-study-of- investigational-antiviral-rem)

<comment><USER3> because it isn't the company that wants the share price boosted, if you bought into Gilead a few weeks ago when this drug was first announced then boosting the share price helps the shareholders who aren't in it for the long run</comment></comment></comment>


U.S. Government Intelligence: DNI/IARPA Announces Open Source Indicators Program - <AUTHOR> http://infodocket.com/2011/08/29/recently-announced-intelligence-iarpa-announces-open-source-indicators-program/ <comment><USER2> How likely is it that this public data analyzer will be significantly faster than, say, watching TwitScoop? Or have any advantage over just grabbing the private data of social networks, which contain such valuable indicators including the number of and keyword content of messages between parties of interest?

<comment><USER3> "Or have any advantage over just grabbing the private data of social networks"

But, that would be illegal.

<comment><USER4> I would like to point out that hasn't stopped them in the past[1][2]

[1] <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/01/us/01nsa.html>

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinThread></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Hired to write, but mostly code, what to do? - <AUTHOR>

Hello denizens of Hacker News. I could really use your help.
Background: I've been slowly building up my webdev skills since I attended a bootcamp about a year and a half ago. I've been at my current job about 8 months (after doing freelance content work before then), where I was initially hired to write, but also told I would be given the freedom to develop my skills.
And they have completely, totally come through for me, allowing me to build tools like:
A realtime-ish dashboard built in Node and React that displays data from our industry database (can't be too specific!) on TV screens in our office lobby (built this at the CEO's request)
A twitterbot (also in Node) that tweets statistics to our members (we're an industry association) and can respond to specific stats queries with the relevant information
Scraping tools (mix of some hacked-out Python and Node again) for keeping member data up to date
And I'm currently a big bart of building our new site, as well as a website for the event-booking business our company wants to develop.
So now the current problem: I like it here, but I'm no longer interested in the written portion of my duties (or at least, writing about the subject of our industry). I want to keep building digital tools and not creating marketing collateral.
Is there a way I could address my future plans (and salary expectations) and how they could fit in at my current work? Am I being unreasonable since they have given me such good work to develop my portfolio?
Thanks in advance! <comment><USER2> I was in a similar boat with my last job doing Support/QA/Custom Development for 2 years while the "official" devs went off and made a new version of the product. About a year and a half in i brought it up and they agreed to move me out of support, but the pay raise wasn't nearly adequate for the duties expected. And I regretfully agreed to half raise now, half a raise later... (24k to 32k total) and ended up getting dev/support removed leaving me with QA (devs wanted dev back and I wasn't invited to the party). I promptly left the company and found a much better job doing Dev for 55k, which sadly burnt some bridges with people i liked.

They will likely agree that you should be moved more officially into a dev position, but since you're moving up within the same company you shouldn't expect to get paid what you think is adequate for the duties. Giant pay bumps are an extreme rarity when moving up in the same company. This isn't just an IT problem, but it is why developers don't generally stay at the same company for more than 2-3 years.

Have a friendly conversation with the right people about it, but make sure you have terms laid out that you can agree to in the long run with them, otherwise start looking elsewhere.

<comment><AUTHOR> Did you have any trouble finding that new position, coming from an "official" non-dev job? Or was it pretty straightforward once you showed them what you could do? I know getting your foot in the door is hard as a junior developer, so I'm inclined to stay here if they switch my title and duties.

<comment><USER2> I was worried about it since I only have my Associates (no plans to go back), but I code A LOT in my free time. I didn't realize it at the time, but I have the benefit of living in an area that has high demand and low supply of good developers. That helps a lot and I had 2 offers off the bat. I didn't even know the language i was hired to use, just had to show i knew how to code and solve problems.

If they can't offer what you want long term, take what they are willing to give. Having a dev title for a year or so will help, but there isn't anything stopping you from searching shortly after you take what your current company offers. Then once you get an offer from somewhere else, you can see what your current company will do to keep you, but make sure you are willing to take the other job before you do that (doesn't always end well).

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, thanks for the advice!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't think it's unreasonable. I would speak to your manager about it. And honestly if he/she doesn't understand your career goals or is not willing to work with you on them, you should look for work elsewhere.

<comment><USER4> I second this.

Your time is really valuable and you should be spending it on things that you want to do (for whatever reason).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Your company should have some sort of review process where they go over your performance and goals. These are usually the best places to express your passions and career path. If they don't have that, you can always try and seek out one of the leadership team members and request a 1 on 1. If the leadership is reasonable, it would make sense to keep you coding and hire someone else that is a little more jr. to do the writing. The financial compensation might be a little trickier, but I think you should be able to negotiate that accordingly as well.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'd just talk to them about it. Sounds like you are at a startup, so the likely hood is you will still have to write marketing content- everyone wears many hats. But they could compensate you as a developer instead of a marketer.

At my startup, I spend about 75% of my time working on sales because that is something we need to do, and I'm the best person to do it. As a coder at heart, I take an engineering approach to sales and use my coding skills to automate parts of the process.

</comment><comment><USER7> If they hired you as a writer (at a writer's rate) and instead got a competent programmer, they should be fairly happy with that and willing to give you a pay bump.

</comment><comment><USER8> You could outsource the writing portion of your work, as long as it doesn't involve anything confidential.

<comment><USER9> This also requires not having any moral qualms about misleading your employer. That's probably a bigger block than confidentiality for most people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Out of curiosity are you in the states or Europe?

<comment><AUTHOR> the states</comment></comment>


Google Go: Good For What? - <AUTHOR> http://www.lessonsoffailure.com/software/google-go-good-for-nothing/

<comment><USER2> From a previous Go blog post by the same author:

 _Go decided to use a foreign syntax to C++, C and Java programmers. They borrows forward declarations from BASIC (yep, you heard me right…BASIC), creating declarations that are backwards from what we've been using for close to 20 years_

"Yep, you heard me right... BASIC". Consider carefully how seriously you want to take this blog.

<comment><USER3> Go's declaration syntax has some benefits: <http://blog.golang.org/2010/07/gos-declaration-syntax.html>

And they didn't borrow the declaration syntax from BASIC, but from Pascal: <http://golang.org/doc/go_faq.html#ancestors>

At the time Pascal was invented BASIC distinguished variable types via name postfixes like % and $.

Also, a "forward declaration" is not what the author seems to think: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_declaration>

<comment><USER4> What really annoys me about Go's declaration syntax is that they _left out the colon_.

Like Pascal/Ada/etc, Go uses a postfix type declaration syntax, but the former languages separate the variable from the type with a colon. This is both more readable—the colon acts as a highly visible marker for the type, whereas with the Go style, the variable and type end up sort of smudged together—and because of its long history, much more familiar.

Go-style: var foo, bar int

Pascal-style: var foo, bar : int

My suspicion is that Go originally _did_ use a colon in declarations and they got rid of it at some point for some reason, because Go's "auto-declaration" syntax actually does use a colon, only without an explicit type: "x := expr" makes much more sense if the normal declaration syntax is "x : type = expr" ("just leave out the type and it will be deduced")....

There doesn't seem any particularly good _reason_ to omit the colon, it's neither onerous to use nor particularly space-consuming. Neither is it likely it simply didn't occur to them, as the declaration syntax is probably consciously based on that of Pascal-family languages. Given that it seem to yield obvious benefits without any obvious problems, I'm mystified as to why it was omitted.

Unfortunately for all its obvious goodness in some areas Go also seems to have a number of these "WTF were they thinking" areas as well. The impression it leaves is of a rough draft, not something polished. Sadly, these quirks are pretty much set in stone now...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ok, I will do this one more time.

The authors of go come from my generation. Back in those days, the term "Systems Programming" meant something different than what wikipedia, and probably most everyone today thinks of it.

Systems Programming in those days meant writing compilers, text processors, unix command line programs. It did not then mean programming an operating system, or anything near hard real-time.

Not a very high quality article.

<comment><USER6> Go also isn't described as a systems language anymore, but rather as a general-purpose language, although this article predates that change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's worth noting that this post is from December 2009.

<comment><USER8> This is often the most important thing about an article and often overlooked. Second _scruffy_ <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggRLVdOoNGI>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Did the author change the title? It now reads "Google Go: Good for what?", although the article (or, for that matter, the link) still quite clearly suggests (and explicitly says at the end) that the answer is 'nothing'.

<comment><USER6> The conclusion is that "Go is good for absolutely nothing."

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Somebody criticizing a language he freely admits to never having used.

Nothing interesting to see here.

<comment><USER10> By that token, there is nothing interesting to see in most of the language advocacy posts on HN.

<comment><USER11> Yes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "I'd say there are plenty of non-starters to keep Go out of the application programming space."

God, I've got tired of all desktop applications written in python, they're soo slow. I hope Go gets used both in the application space and system space, so not just our systems are fast, the applications too.

</comment><comment><USER13> Go is a young language with a growing community that should only get better as more minds come to it.

For me it's very accessible for rapidly developing heavy-lifting tools, in particular networking tools. It's not the only language but it's served me well when I've reached for it.

</comment><comment><USER14> A gross and incorrect generalization. It should have been:

Go: Good here, bad there.

</comment><comment><USER15> How good is the Go optimizer? I would guess that there's still a lot of room for improvement because that's not something you'd spend a lot of time on early in the life of a language.

<comment><USER16> Basically, not much (depending on which compiler chain you are using). The Plan9 based compilers (which compile at light speed) don't produce great code.

<comment><USER17> They don't produce great code because they are optimized for compilation speed. IIRC, the plan is to have your quick to compile compiler and your fast execution time compiler..

<comment><USER6> It's not the plan; they already exist: gc is the default, fast suite of compilers; gccgo is a Go front-end for GCC.

<comment><USER17> I should have been clear: it is the plan to maintain this dichotomy

<comment><USER6> Yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm genuinely curious - Scala is faster and better performant, what is there in GO that there isn't in Scala? I mean, if you were to build a highly scalable web app, why would you choose one over the other? Any thoughts??

<comment><USER19> Ask what isn't in Go that is in Scala. The Go authors deliberately left out certain features to focus on what they call "clarity of design". I don't see them ever adding XML literals for instance!

<comment><USER20> It's worth reading [http://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2012/06/less-is- exponentia...](http://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2012/06/less-is- exponentially-more.html) to get some idea of the motivation behind including less.

If you believe that our software systems are increasingly complex _and_ that some aspect of the problems we're solving are essentially complex, then the strongest path towards simplicity lies in minimizing complexity incidental to the problems we're solving. One facet of programming which routinely introduces complexity is our tools, particularly our programming languages.

I believe both Rob Pike (and the Go authors) and Rich Hickey are both motivated in part by this impulse or a variation on it. They chose very different ways of addressing the problem, but Clojure and Go are a lot more similar than you'd think.

<comment><USER21> > _If you believe that our software systems are increasingly complex and that > some aspect of the problems we're solving are essentially complex, then the > strongest path towards simplicity lies in minimizing complexity incidental > to the problems we're solving. One facet of programming which routinely > introduces complexity is our tools, particularly our programming languages._

That is true, but I'm not sure the correlation you seem to be suggesting here — that complex tools breed complex programs — is realistic.

A lot of the time, complexity can either live in your tools or in your program. For example, garbage collection requires a more complicated toolset than manual memory management, but in return it removes the complexity of memory management from your code. Similarly, ASM is simpler than C, and Whitespace is simpler than Python, but most people will agree that a program written in the latter tends to be simpler than the same program written in the former.

<comment><USER20> GC is an abstraction which, although complex in implementation, is something which makes your program simpler. So the correlation has less to do with _how_ our tools are implemented, but the properties of the tools as we interact with them.

Also, simplicity, like security, is a trade-off. When performance is paramount, people will reach for C or assembly, and rightly so. Conversely if performance is not the #1 priority, developers feel free to use higher-level languages like Java or Ruby.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The modern tech CEO: Barefoot and 21 - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/innovation/11/02/seth.priebatsch.scvngr/index.html?hpt=C2 <comment><AUTHOR> Lesson here: Be sensationalist when dealing with the media. Ham it up and call yourself a ninja or rockstar. Tell the journalist that you stay up til 5am drinking Red Bull. Don't actually do any work, though, as that's straight-up boring.</comment>


Should the U.S. Government Buy a Drug Company to Save Money? - happy-go-lucky http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/03/17/520430944/should-the-u-s-government-buy-a-drug-company-to-save-money <comment><AUTHOR> Counter question, should they annex it to do so?</comment>


Ask HN: How to manage a lot of interests and focus - <AUTHOR> Hey Everyone, I had this problem for a long time. I really love coding, design, art, drawing, game dev, voxels, 3d and lot of other things. The problem is that I don't know which of these to focus on.
Take Coding, I really love coding. But the problem is say I'm learning Haskell, halfway through I would give up and learn go, maybe then drop go and check out Machine Learning.
I would enroll in courses, bookmark websites and then literally do no follow up work on it. I am turning into a Jack of all and master of none thing. I do really want to get better at the above said things.
The question is how do I manage my interests so that I can focus on one thing and become better at it.
Any tips, tricks or anything would be really helpful, and I'm pretty nervous about asking this on HN. <comment><USER2> I like learning stuff on the job. I have a clear motivation to learn something, rather than just "it's fun", and more support than learning on my own: [https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/09/09/learn-a-new- programm...](https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/09/09/learn-a-new-programming- language/)

<comment><AUTHOR> That might be one of the reason. I learn a new language because it's all new and shiny and then run out of motivation. I think a definite purpose would help pretty much</comment></comment>


Women in the Netherlands work less, have a big gender pay gap, and they love it - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2274736/pagenum/all/

<comment><USER2> Does this apply to us?

I would hate to think that HN people would burn themselves out in an office for anything other than a passion for their work, not a drive to make more money or "succeed" in the conventional nomenclature of the American office.

As such, I doubt I could be interested in a partner who didn't have a similar desire to master her craft. Women who "succeed in the workplace" and stay-at- home moms are similar in my eyes, part of a false dichotomy.</comment>


Tell HN: Python 3.6 on OS X requires a post-install step for SSL to work - <AUTHOR> I'm posting this as a PSA, because I just wasted a few hours (should have read the release notes in full) trying to resolve an "SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED" exception every time I requested a URL over HTTPS. All my Googling take me to promising-but-irrelevant StackOverflow threads. It turns out that on OSX Python 3.6 no longer uses the systems trusted certificates, so after install it has no certificates at all (except a hardcoded one for pip) and can't validate any SSL connections.
To fix this you need to run a command [0] included in the installer that will download and install the certifi package, which is a collection of trusted certificates. If I understand the release notes correctly you are also now responsible for making sure your certificates are up to date - the release notes recommend subscribing to the mailing list.
Personally, I think this sucks. It makes Python way less friendly to new users, and I don't want to be on the hook for keeping my certificates up-to-date. At the very least, the installer should run the post-install script automatically, so that SSL connections just work.
The ReadMe with more info lives at /Applications/Python\ 3.6/ReadMe.rtf
[0] /Applications/Python\ 3.6/Install\ Certificates.command <comment><USER2> Long term one possibility is that Python will defer to your OS (in this case, OS X) to make trust decisions for SSL

[https://lwn.net/Articles/711954/](https://lwn.net/Articles/711954/)

This will involve Python ceasing to use OpenSSL in favour of native SSL APIs (except on the Unix platforms where OpenSSL is the native API).

Right now your Python uses OpenSSL, but nobody at all was responsible for keeping the trust store up-to-date. So, making you responsible was in a sense a step up. Certifi basically bundles the Mozilla NSS trust store, which is also used by the BSDs, Linux distros, Haiku and whatever else isn't Apple or Microsoft. But it won't reflect OS X changes, for better or worse. On the other hand, if that PEP goes ahead and Python trusts the OS X built-in stores, Python code may work on your Mac, but not on some guy's FreeBSD machine, because the different trust stores don't agree about whether to trust a certificate. So, swings and roundabouts.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for info, that's helpful. It seems especially bad with virtualenv, since you have the possibility that different Python environments on the same computer have different certificate sets, depending on when you created the virtualenv or whether you updated certifi in that environment.

I think the changes should have been a lot more obvious. The OSX installer should have popped up a big box saying "Warning: This version of Python does not have any SSL certificates and will not be able to connect to secure HTTP connections. Without certificates these connections will fail to work. Please click this button to install the 'certifi' package, and read these VERY IMPORTANT notes to understand the implications of this change"</comment></comment>


This website has a lot of unclosed h3 tags - <AUTHOR> http://www.sewingandembroiderywarehouse.com/embtrb.htm <comment><USER2> This is an example of a page that begins talking about sewing and embroidery, and eventually becomes about typography.

<comment><USER3> I felt like I was watching a visual in an art gallery commenting on the human condition. If you Ctrl+- out all the way and linger on some of the choice phrases you get a better show.

<comment><USER4>
         Improper
         Timing
         the
         bobbin
         hook
         won't
         catch the
         loop

<comment><USER3>
        will bend
           and
        eventually
          break

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That page loaded ridiculously fast.

Maybe flat HTML _is_ the way to go.

<comment><USER6> yeah, reminds me of this other website:

[http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/](http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/)

should we be hard-coding our styles into html and stop making stylesheets though? seems like a balance is needed

<comment><USER7> That's awesome - what framework did they use?

<comment><USER8> Digitally authentic, minimalist, grayscale... it's hitting all the fad buttons...

<comment><USER9> And responsive too

<comment><USER10> And flat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This website handled HN traffic like it was nothing, i'm taking notes

<comment><USER12> It's a new technology called "static HTML page"... I hear MS FrontPage can export this newfangled format.

<comment><USER13> At my uni there were a large number of profs with websites that, if you viewed the source, showed that they'd been creating in MS Word. This was a CS department. Slightly depressing.

<comment><USER14> Yes, because if you design a new alloy for improved performance of an f1 engine cilinder, you need to do your own oil changes too, right?

<comment><USER15> True. However this is more akin to having your dietician change your oil.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think half the people here haven't seen the ultimate crime:

[http://fabricland.co.uk/](http://fabricland.co.uk/)

The service in the shop is just as bad as the web site as well!

<comment><USER17> I think there is a trend in UK web design: [http://www.lingscars.com/](http://www.lingscars.com/)

<comment><USER8> Ling's Cars is intentionally bad. It's part of her brand. At one stage she had a site map which was laid out like a concentration camp, with the various visitors to the site shown in different sections with a stick-figure whose head was the relevant browser logo.

<comment><USER18> It's a fantastic site. My favourite is the office Web cam page

[http://www.lingscars.com/webcams.php#models](http://www.lingscars.com/webcams.php#models)

complete with 'press button to annoy staff'

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It actually renders fine without increasing the font sizes in IE 8. The creator maybe only tested it in IE?

See TIFF export here [https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1388427/__www.sewingande...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1388427/__www.sewingandembroiderywarehouse.com_embtrb.rar)

<comment><USER20> Sounds like ie default header font size is absolute whilst other browsers go with relative. Each approach has benefits, but support for highly nested headers is pretty low on the list :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is almost as wonderful as Subway's old website. I think that one had something like five HTML tags and a few BODY tags sprinkled randomly throughout.

<comment><USER22> I'd like to have a word with the person who decided that "something" should show up in a browser regardless of how broken the markup is.

<comment><USER7> Writing a HTML parser to handle everything that's out there on the web is almost as hard as writing a C compiler that tries to produce the "most accurate" executable code based on what it looks like you probably meant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This might explain it:

<META name="generator" content="Microsoft FrontPage 5.0">

<comment><USER24> Yeah, except that the site owner didn't forget to add Facebook page and the page seems quite active.

[http://www.sewingandembroiderywarehouse.com/index.html](http://www.sewingandembroiderywarehouse.com/index.html)

It was created on August 14, 2013. I am just glad small business like this continues to run and use technology. We should send an email and tell them to fix it. I am also glad the site didn't go down after all this traffic...

<comment><USER25> _We should send an email and tell them to fix it._

If you do that I will come to your house and hit your computer with a hammer until it breaks into tiny tiny pieces.

<comment><USER24> I just did.

<comment><USER25> I'll pop over around tea-time, then. Make sure to back everything up first!

<comment><USER24> lol i'm ready for ya. Best comment ever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Hilarious! Initially I was thinking "poor fellow who made this mistake" and eventually I felt like I got trolled, this almost feels like its not a mistake! PS: There are 38
s and 2
s.

</comment><comment><USER27> I thought it was a result of nested  tags with font-size defined by em units. Since the each  tag is 1.75 times larger that it's parent.

</comment><comment><USER28> Every single troubleshooting tip is of greater urgency than the last!

<comment><USER29> Nah, they are just mimicking the frustration of the users when the troubleshooting is not having the desired effect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> There's a subtle brilliance here. The font starts out reasonably small and increases in parallel with the frustration of the individual doing the troubleshooting.

</comment><comment><USER30> Matt Gemmell described it pretty well: [https://twitter.com/mattgemmell/status/301735038733676546](https://twitter.com/mattgemmell/status/301735038733676546)

<comment><USER31> What the...that tweet is over a year old!

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> That's actually beautiful, I'd never considered this as a possible outcome of nesting tags with em font sizes. By the bottom of the page one letter was about 3000px high.

</comment><comment><USER33> I haven't laughed this long for ages!

<comment><USER34> Yes - it had me in stiches.

<comment><USER25> ಠ_ರೃ

<comment><USER35> [snaffled for future use]

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Oh god the h3manity

</comment><comment><USER37> In college, one of my professor's syllabus page had this exact problem. It wasn't so bad at first, but half way through the course you had to scroll so far down the page that the syllabus was barely legible. So I downloaded the page, cleaned the markup and sent him the refactored HTML page, much to his delight.

</comment><comment><USER38> I don't know why, but I liked this... It sort of reminded me of some of Monty Python's publications.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brand_New_Monty_Python_Bok](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brand_New_Monty_Python_Bok)

</comment><comment><USER39> Right at the very top of the page, they explain that. in case of "Thread Breakage" you should "try re-threading the machine", and also "make sure the thread goes through all guides".

It appears that their web designer has taken this advice to heart.

</comment><comment><USER40> Dear God, the entire source is on one line. There aren't even spaces between tags. From looking around the website a bit, this doesn't appear to be a joke, so I'm seriously wondering how this could happen without anyone noticing.

<comment><USER41> Since the site was made in FrontPage, I'm guessing that the FrontPage WYSIWYG view showed the site as looking fine, so the author didn't bother to visit every page on the site after mass-uploading the pages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> This feels like a mashup between "If the moon were only one pixel" and Spritz.

<comment><USER43> You.win

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> It also uses  tags. But I'm not here to judge, obviously.

<comment><USER45> so does hacker news ;)

<comment><USER17> I just did an 'Inspect Element' on HN. That's some state of the art 1999 web design there.

<comment><USER13> Yyyyyep HN is formatted almost entirely by tables...

But it does look good!

<comment><USER46> No, it looks like something from 1999. And it completely sucks on mobile.

Actually, it is a disgrace.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> If you create a stylesheet through dev console and change h3 font-size it's funny to see how it gets re-rendered in slow-mo :D

</comment><comment><USER48> Renders perfectly in IE8.

<comment><USER49> Renders perfectly in IE4, too.

<comment><USER50> Seems like it's IE being a bit loose with the spec (the doctype is html 3.2 after all) or just catering for the likely hood of a rule for one element being used for another.

For headings, on [http://www.w3.org/TR/REC- html32#headings](http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html32#headings) it says "You always need the start and end tags" but for block elements underneath it says that:

This is the first paragraph.

This is the second paragraph.

is perfectly valid - presumably why it's fine in IE8

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Reference since we seem to have broken it: [http://web.archive.org/web/20130723081436/http://www.sewinga...](http://web.archive.org/web/20130723081436/http://www.sewingandembroiderywarehouse.com/embtrb.htm)

</comment><comment><USER52> 8000px at the bottom of the page.

</comment><comment><USER53> > If a problem persists, we recommend that you contact > Sewing and Embroidery > Warehouse

finally

</comment><comment><USER54> It's hauntingly beautiful.

</comment><comment><USER55> Anyone actually using frontpage... or dreamweaver visual editor... just saying...

You can say: "gotta start somewhere" but... make that "somewhere" be "notepad" ... please... thank u...

</comment><comment><USER56> This is an art.

</comment><comment><USER57> For the ultimate (and entertaining) list of bad Websites, check out:

[http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/](http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/)

A veritable "How not to" of design.

</comment><comment><USER58> Looks like modern browsers aren't rendering the page correctly.

</comment><comment><USER59> Great viral marketing!

</comment><comment><USER60> I like how elements are nested for an even more optimal web experience!

[http://imgur.com/1LgIPjl](http://imgur.com/1LgIPjl)

</comment><comment><USER61> I think I felt my pulse quicken as I started to scroll.

edit: Actually, it has a bunch of unclosed h3 _and_ h2 tags.

</comment><comment><USER62> This made me realize how h3 and em works... Awesome (didn't expect that from a site like this :P)

</comment><comment><USER63> We've all had a laugh but I hope whoever found this is helping them correct the problem.

</comment><comment><USER64> What do you expect from a website that starts with SEW SEW SEW SEW SEW SEW?

</comment><comment><USER65> Thank you for the link... I just got my eye checked for sight and its fine.

</comment><comment><USER66> Looks like a neat linkbait. Unlikely the owner never noticed this..

</comment><comment><USER67> Superb, a work of art.

</comment><comment><USER68> even my non-programmer wife found this page to be hilarious

<comment><USER69> Wonderful! Usually when I find something hilarious, I share with my non- programmer friends who stare at me like I'm some sort of freak; and I am surprised every time.

<comment><USER70> Yeah I get this too. If you try to explain they go "No don't tell me, too much info!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> It's hipnotic. I absolutely love it.

</comment><comment><USER72> Unclosed h3 tags _are_ valid HTML.

<comment><USER20> This page is possibly the best argument for XHTML I've ever seen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> Wow, that's almost a work of art.

</comment><comment><USER74> It's perfect.

</comment><comment><USER75> makes me understand more how h3 tag works

<comment><USER76> It's better at showing how ems work. As the h3 is set to show at 1.17em each nested h3 is slightly larger than the last.

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> this page would be tough to scrape with an xpath to get to "Dull Needles" text node.

        /html/body/center[3]/a[2]/font/h3/font/font[2]/h3/font/font[2]/h3/font/font[2]/h3/font/font[2]/h3/font/font[2]/h3/font/font[2]/font/h3/font/font[2]/font/h3/font/font[2]/font/h3/font/font[2]/font/h3/font/font[2]/font/h3/font/font[2]/font/h3/font/font[2]/font/h3/font/font[2]/font/h3/font/font[2]/font/h3/font/font[2]/h3/font/font[2]/h3/font/font[2]/h3/font/font[2]/h3/font/font[2]/h3/font/font[2]/h3/font/font[2]/h3/font/font[2]/h3/font/font[2]/h3/font/font[2]/h3/font/font[2]/h3/font/font[2]/h3/font/font[2]/h3/font/font[1]/text()

<comment><USER78>
        //text()[contains(.,'Dull needles')]</comment></comment>


Immersion - how focused young video-game players can be - <AUTHOR> http://video.nytimes.com/video/2008/11/21/magazine/1194833565213/immersion.html <comment><AUTHOR> The girl with no emotion cracks me up.

<comment><USER2> It's even funnier that it's set to rap music. Hah.</comment></comment>