Paul Buchheit: Serendipity finds you - <AUTHOR> http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2010/10/serendipity-finds-you.html <comment><USER2> Eh, I just got approached by Google via LinkedIn and went for it even though I was sure I wouldn't get it. Sure enough, I did not get it, but it was nevertheless a valuable experience. I have learned two things:

1) An n^2 algorithm runs in polynomial time, but it is no longer good enough when n ~= 100000000. Assuming 1000000 operations a second, that is still a few hundred years. I have never thought of it because I've just never encountered that sort of scale. I may never do, but it was still a revelation for me.

2) It confirmed that I am really rusty at algorithms due to one too many jobs writing CRUD web apps. I need to do something about this. For a start, practice in my free time and secondly, look for a job that allows me to develop in that area.

I'm not saying that it wasn't disappointing even though I knew my chances weren't good, but I gave it my best shot and I am choosing to use the experience positively. Is that serendipity?

<comment><USER3> Interviewing for jobs you know you won't get is one of the best things you can do in your career. The insight you gain on both their hiring process as well as their expectation is priceless. I've interviewed with 5 big web companies, failed many, but landed one (after a failed first attempt). I credit my experiences learned from the failed attempts as the reason I was eventually hired.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "You can only connect the dots, looking backwards" - Steve Jobs, at the Stanford commencement address.

</comment><comment><USER5> A closely related story, from HN user kenjackson (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1647146> ):

"How long will you need to find your truest, most productive niche? This I cannot predict, for, sadly, access to a podium confers no gift of prophecy. But I can say that however long it takes, it will be time well spent. I am reminded of a friend from the early 1970s, Edward Witten. I liked Ed, but felt sorry for him, too, because, for all his potential, he lacked focus. He had been a history major in college, and a linguistics minor. On graduating, though, he concluded that, as rewarding as these fields had been, he was not really cut out to make a living at them. He decided that what he was really meant to do was study economics. And so, he applied to graduate school, and was accepted at the University of Wisconsin. And, after only a semester, he dropped out of the program. Not for him. So, history was out; linguistics, out; economics, out. What to do? This was a time of widespread political activism, and Ed became an aide to Senator George McGovern, then running for the presidency on an anti-war platform. He also wrote articles for political journals like the Nation and the New Republic. After some months, Ed realized that politics was not for him, because, in his words, it demanded qualities he did not have, foremost among them common sense. All right, then: history, linguistics, economics, politics, were all out as career choices. What to do? Ed suddenly realized that he was really suited to study mathematics. So he applied to graduate school, and was accepted at Princeton. I met him midway through his first year there--just after he had dropped out of the mathematics department. He realized, he said, that what he was really meant to do was study physics; he applied to the physics department, and was accepted.

I was happy for him. But I lamented all the false starts he had made, and how his career opportunities appeared to be passing him by. Many years later, in 1987, I was reading the New York Times magazine and saw a full-page picture akin to a mug shot, of a thin man with a large head staring out of thick glasses. It was Ed Witten! I was stunned. What was he doing in the Times magazine? Well, he was being profiled as the Einstein of his age, a pioneer of a revolution in physics called "String Theory." Colleagues at Harvard and Princeton, who marvelled at his use of bizarre mathematics to solve physics problems, claimed that his ideas, popularly called a "theory of everything," might at last explain the origins and nature of the cosmos. Ed said modestly of his theories that it was really much easier to solve problems when you analyzed them in at least ten dimensions. Perhaps. Much clearer to me was an observation Ed made that appeared near the end of this article: every one of us has talent; the great challenge in life is finding an outlet to express it. I thought, he has truly earned the right to say that. And I realized that, for all my earlier concerns that he had squandered his time, in fact his entire career path--the ventures in history, linguistics, economics, politics, math, as well as physics--had been rewarding: a time of hard work, self-discovery, and new insight into his potential based on growing experience."

Source: <http://www.colby.edu/colby.mag/issues/84n3/ivory.html>

<comment><USER6> How did he get accepted into all of those graduate programs? I'd love to try my hand at a new field but i have no idea how to get into a phd program.

<comment><USER7> Step 0: _Be Ed Witten_.

More generally, if you can get into one Ph.D. program you can probably get into most of them. Profs, like any employer, want the two key things: be smart, and get enough done to justify their investment in you. Except that students are really cheap, especially in the first year or two, and especially in math or theoretical physics where their cost is mostly in office space, ever-cheaper computer time, adviser hours and coffee.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A little off-topic, but what little experience I have about successfully shipping successful software is that it's all about Dwight's aphorism that planning is essential but plans are inconsequential.

When you take the mindset that planning exists to help you observe and react to future discoveries rather than to detail exactly what you're going to do regardless of future discoveries, all sorts of serendipity is showered on a development effort.

Thanks, Paul, and sorry about the alliteration.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is interesting, especially in contrast to "Nah, who needs another search engine?" from two days ago (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1822750>)

The most important thing to take from the article is this:

> I was skeptical of their business (Google) and didn't expect it to last > long, but it seemed like it could be fun and educational, so I accepted.

Live a little, and take chances!

</comment><comment><USER10> My philosophy on planning your own life:

You should think enough (and just enough, no more) about what you want in life so that when unusual opportunities arrive, you notice them, and jump at them.

<comment><USER11> "You should think enough (and just enough, no more) about what you want in life so that when unusual opportunities arrive, you notice them, and jump at them."

This is more or less my take on it. There are opportunities all around us (IE: the luck part of the equation). But, if you don't have the knowledge, expertise, or ambition to act on them, you won't be able to take advantage of it (the skill part of the equation).

<comment><USER12> Lucky people notice more opportunities and take advantage of them, according to this article by Richard Wiseman:

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/3304496/Be-lucky- its-a...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/3304496/Be-lucky-its-an-easy- skill-to-learn.html)

Key points from the article

"unlucky people miss chance opportunities because they are too focused on looking for something else"

"lucky people generate good fortune via four basic principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good."

<comment><USER11> "lucky people generate good fortune via four basic principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good."

It sounds less like luck and more like skill when it's put this way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Good content, but my favorite part of the article is the anecdote about how Paul started at Google. Putting yourself in a place where you have the opportunity to be lucky makes up some percentage of the total likelihood of being extremely successful (yes, I consider Paul extremely successful along many axes), but I think a much larger portion of this equation is actually being lucky. I guess if you iterate over and over again, by say joining startups repeatedly, eventually most people get lucky in some way. The magnitude of that success however, is certainly highly variant.

<comment><USER14> "Chance favors the prepared mind." - Louis Pasteur

<comment><USER15> Repeating a comment I made a couple of weeks ago on another post on serendipity - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1786959> -

This is even stronger than Pasteur's famous, "Chance favors the prepared mind" - if you are not actually working on a problem, there is no possible way to benefit from serendipity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There is a game called rejection therapy that is all about capitalizing on chances and getting out of your comfort zone: <http://www.rejectiontherapy.com> . I've tried it and it works.

I've found most chances come only once, and never again. That job interview, the cute girl right beside you in the produce section (etc) are opportunities we need to instinctively take (instead of instinctively shy away from).

</comment><comment><USER17> "The program for eliminating ego-fear and unblocking serendipity is very simple: seek ego-fear. Hunt it down and soak in it. Steal its energy. This is, by definition, scary. That's good."

Jason Shen is an excellent example of hunting down ego-fear: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1811868>

</comment><comment><USER18> Reminds me of my recent interview experience with a big internet company. I was casually signing up for this Linux user group. To join that group you have introduce yourself, i just gave the link explaining how i contribute to this operating system project. One night i was pinged by a strange guy, he just showed me a job posting on their website and asked me whether i would like to join. The job description is exactly what i do in free time. It was really amazing. Everything was just an accident, no plan at all. I sent them my resume, after couple of phone interviews , they gave me a flight ticket (yay! that was my first flight) . Did the interview OKAY. I am keeping my fingers crossed for result of the interview. Even if i don't get the job, it was a wonderful experience :-)

</comment><comment><USER19> I couldn't agree more. I find myself somewhat dumbfounded when I think about where I am these days and where I could be. My career path has been a series of serendipitous events that I could not have possibly planned out. I've mostly just responded to opportunities given to me, accepting the fear of rejection if things don't work out. Anyway, great advice.

</comment><comment><USER20> The problem I have with this is that you're extracting a formula (or non- formula rather) after the fact. It seems as if you lived your life like any other person, and things just eventually happened to you.

<comment><USER21> It sounds like he has lived like any other person with the difference being his attitude ("Opportunity is all around us, but we have beliefs and habits that block it."). He might just be lucky. It also might be the case that that attitude is a powerful tool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> the part about ego based fear is really good. meditation helps with that

</comment><comment><USER23> Sage advice.

</comment><comment><USER24> Meh. Lucky people always love to talk about how easy it is if you just do what they did - though they usually have a hard time explaining exactly what it was that they did.

How does he explain all the happy-go-lucky young fliberdygibbits who ended up serendipitously taking their first job offer in 1998 from Pets.com? Or those of us who labored under the impression that "as soon as DataPower takes off" there'll be bonuses raining from the sky?

Right time, right place. Right age group. Right skill set. 25% of the above are things you can plan for.

<comment><USER25> I think PB is too consistent to dismiss him as merely lucky. He didn't just happen to be an early employee at Google. He also wrote GMail (which entailed not only a redesign of the email experience, but also was a pretty dramatic evolutionary step in web apps because of its then extreme use of Javascript), built the first version of AdSense, and was the one who came up with "Don't be evil." It's unlikely to be a coincidence.

Nor does he have a hard time explaining what he did. He has spoken several times at Startup School about his approach to solving problems. I've learned a lot from him.

<comment><USER24> I'm not saying the guy isn't smart. Just throwing out a little "outliers" to grease the wheel for the rest of us donkeys.

Sometimes reasons to hope are not best expressed by those who have nothing to regret. This is one of those times.

<comment><USER26> I'm with you on this one. After the initial 'serendipity' of google, PB's reputation was sealed and he could pick his title and company.

While it's interesting to speculate if PB had chosen a pets.com instead of google what would have happened to his career, it's not particularly constructive.

The idea that our success is largely beyond our control is sufficiently pernicious that we're all better off just pretending it is not the case and keeping our heads down and trying our damnedest.

<comment><USER27> If PB had been at Pets.com then I'm guessing FriendFeed would have involved feeding dogs?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


I'm a Stanford professor accused of being a terrorist - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/08/stanford-professor-mccarthyism-antifa?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other <comment><USER2> Perhaps more interesting is the Stanford Review's response:

"Palumbo-Liu claims that we make the egregious error of failing to distinguish between the term "antifa" and its variant "antifascist," used in the name of his organization the Campus Antifascist Network. Given that perhaps the most prominent scholar of the antifa movement, Mark Bray, has titled his book Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, I hope that we may be forgiven for equivocating the two terms. Claiming that they have separate meanings in today's political culture is Bill Clinton-level linguistic obfuscation reminiscent of his infamous statement, "depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." "

[https://stanfordreview.org/if-it-quacks-like-a- duck/](https://stanfordreview.org/if-it-quacks-like-a-duck/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Screenshot and publish the hate mail and death threats. Push it all into the open so that people can actually see what's going on, not just second hand information.

</comment><comment><USER4> That piece has a lot of grammatical errors for a professor of _anything_ to write in something for broad consumption.

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't recommend labelling yourself as a terrorist, but I think it's important to consider if there is any society so unjust that you would give your life to destroying it, and maybe considering how, exactly, that's different.

<comment><USER6> I don't think I quite get your point, are you implying that destroying an unjust society is equivalent to the injustice of the society?

<comment><USER5> No, I'm saying that it's terrorism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Funny to see his name, I had him for IHUM back in...2005?

</comment><comment><USER8> Me: "Alexa, what is a terrorist?"

Alexa: "... a person who terrorizes or frightens others."

Me: "Alexa, define the word 'terrorize'"

Alexa "... to dominate or coerce by intimidation."

Me: "Alexa, define the word 'fascism'"

Alexa: "A political regime, having totalitarian aspirations, ideologically based on a relationship between business and the centralized government, business-and-government control of the marketplace, repression of criticism or opposition, a leader cult and exalting the state and/or religion above individual rights"

Me: "Alexa, what is conservative liberalism?"

Alexa "...conservative liberalism promotes ordered liberty under God and establishes constitutional safeguards against tyranny. It shows that a regime of liberty based on traditional morality and classical-Christian culture is an achievement we can be proud of, rather than merely defensive about, as trustees of Western civilization"

Me: "Alexa, what is tyranny?"

Alexa: "oppressive or unjustly severe government on the part of any ruler."

Me: "Thank you for the explanations Alexa, I think I'm done here."

<comment><USER9> > "A political regime, having totalitarian aspirations, ideologically based on > a relationship between business and the centralized government, business- > and-government control of the marketplace, repression of criticism or > opposition, a leader cult and exalting the state and/or religion above > individual rights"

Siri doesn't have the same answer, can anybody confirm this is Alexa's output?

<comment><USER8> Try [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fascism](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fascism)

<comment><USER9> For sure, quoting from another page is easy. I was curious about the functionality of the robot... whether the parent comment was representing reality, or making some other form of commentary.

I should have been more specific so I didn't wind up with so many blowhards downvoting me</comment></comment></comment></comment>


New lower prices for GPUs and preemptible Local SSDs - <AUTHOR> https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2017/11/new-lower-prices-for-GPUs-and-preemptible-Local-SSDs.html <comment><USER2> This is great news!

One thing that I miss in my daily Google Cloud usage is ability to assign a single public IP to multiple VMs. (For certain reasons Google Load Balancer does not work for my use case.)</comment>


Scientists have discovered nearly 100 new planets outside of our solar system - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1207878/scientists-have-discovered-nearly-100-new-planets-outside-of-our-solar-system/ <comment><USER2> They just report on confirming a bunch more Kepler candidates, you'll have to look elsewhere if you want to know if there is anything interesting with this bunch.

> To date, we've uncovered 3,600 of these planets, and scientists believe > billions more lurk in the Milky Way.

> An international team of researchers from institutions including NASA, > Caltech, Denmark, and the University of California, Berkeley, today added 95 > new exoplanets to the list.</comment>


Ask HN: what visa do most European's use for Y Combinator? - <AUTHOR>

I have searched in a number of places and have not found a definitive answer to this - surely they are not using the Business Visitor as part of the visa waiver program as they would be doing too much work <comment><USER2> They use the visa waiver

<comment><AUTHOR> Quote - For example, if the purpose for your planned travel is to consult with business associates, travel for a scientific, educational, professional or business convention, or conference on specific dates, settle an estate, or negotiate a contract, then a business visitor visa (B-1) would be the appropriate type of visa for your travel

Does that really apply to someone working every day in an office - even if they don't earn a salary

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess 'training' could apply: Participating in a training program that is not designed primarily to provide employment. Will receive no payment or income from a U.S. based company/entity, other than an expense allowance or expense reimbursement related to traveler's stay.</comment></comment></comment>


Tech Firms Seek Washington's Prized Asset: Top-Secret Clearances - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-23/tech-firms-seek-washington-s-prized-asset-top-secret-clearances <comment><USER2> The article uses the Russia election situation as an example, but one doesn't need a clearance -- or any classified information, for that matter -- in order to prevent a large number of these recent "hacks" or, at the least, make the attackers work much harder to be successful.

When companies can't even be bothered to install security updates on public- facing applications or web sites (cf. Equifax), is anyone really surprised that they're being broken into and having all their private data stolen?

In my experience, these public/private information sharing "partnerships" are heavily weighted in the government's favor. That is, the private companies share their detailed, specific data with the government but the information that the government shares with the private companies is laughable. When I was on the "receiving end", it was typically bulletins and notifications that were vague and lacked enough detail to actually be useful or actionable (and even those were limited with regard to distribution).

It's been a few years since I was involved with that stuff so perhaps things have changed. I would be really surprised if they have, though.

In addition, it seems to me that this is a good way for the government to get these tech companies to "go along with" some of their "requests". Oh, you have some private data that the government would like to have access to but you don't want to turn it over? Or, the government has a "black box" they want you to install in your network but you don't want to? Boy, it sure would be a shame if your employees' security clearances got denied, wouldn't it?

<comment><USER3> In order to conduct an appropriate vulnerability assessment, you need to be able to classify your adversaries capabilities and motivations. That's hard to do with out some kind of privileged information. Only then can you get down to the stuff that most people think of when they talk about "security" \- e.g. the risk mitigation and countermeasures.

Edit - added text

To continue the point, the Russia example is important. Individual commercial ventures are not set up to handle state level attacks. Any company that thinks they are is going to be in for a rude awakening.

Worse, companies like Google and Facebook are going to be vulnerable by their very design and function.

Sure, the credit bureau hacks are bad, but truthfully that's only the tip of the iceberg as far as consequences.

I'm not discounting your point that you may have found government cooperation unhelpful, but I will say if you are one of these large companies that could be the target of a state level actor, you are going to want a state level actor on your side. And in the US that means you are going to have to have employees with access, which means you are going to need to have a government sponsor for clearances.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For those in this thread that are confused what the tech companies could be looking for with these cleared people, let me give you an example. I used to work for a company that ran DNS services for public utilities i.e. "critical infrastructure". Every week we would get a classified list of "bad" domains (usually domains that malware would phone home to) from a 3 letter agency and we would notify the utilities if we saw any DNS requests for those domains from any of their computers. Only cleared personnel were allowed to see the list or touch any of the computers that saw the list in any way.

A tech company that wanted to work with a 3 letter agency to see such a list in order to protect their own infrastructure would need cleared personnel and a SCIF (the windowless air-gapped rooms that cleared people work from) to even talk to the agency about a list.

<comment><USER5> I think the article created a lot of the confusion. Having access to cleared people is important to companies primarily for winning lucrative government contracts. For example, if a 3 letter agency wants to implement a cloud service on an air-gapped intranet, or award a contract to implement social- media algorithms to suss out terrorist networks, they'll look to companies with that sort of expertise. But if those companies don't have a corps of cleared employees, they're out of the running. Having said that, having trustworthy employees (which a clearance implies, but does not guarantee) might be valuable to companies not dealing with classified information, but the article left out the real reason that companies are heavily invested in recruiting people with clearances.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This article makes the asinine inference that hiring a ts worker somehow magically grants you access to ts data. Sf86 makes it perfectly clear: you can be tried for treason up to and including capital punishment for leaking state secrets at the ts level. The information is on a need to know basis and requires the company be certified by disa, NSA, and cleared to have a compartmentalized government facility that includes an FSO and yearly dod inspections. The government also chooses you for classified work and sensitive data. Not the other way around.

</comment><comment><USER7> > The average annual salary for a systems engineer working for the U.S. > government with a security clearance is about $119,000...

In other words, the _average_ USG systems engineer is roughly a GS-14 Step 6 based on 2017 Rest-of-US locality...GTFO with this garbage.

<comment><USER8> Most with that high of clearance are working in the DC area, one of the highest locality pay in the country

<comment><USER7> For USG systems engineers, clearance level has zero impact on compensation; you either have it or you don't.

> Most with that high of clearance are working in the DC area...

For a systems engineer based on 2017 DC locality, that's lead-/supervisory- level GS-14 Step 3, or working-level GS-13 at the tail end of a _long_ career in government...hardly an _average_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Article is wrong if you had clearance you don't get to transfer it if you move to a civilian job is my understanding.

So is there an equivalent to List X companies in the USA who are allowed put staff through clearance.

And for TS clearance I doubt that any dual national other than those because of birth circumstances will be getting clearance any time soon which sucks for SV company employees who are immigrants

<comment><USER10> You are mistaken. Security clearances go with the person and not the job. Indeed, there's an entire industry available to people with the correct clearance. Yeah, there's paperwork to do when you move to a new job.

[https://www.state.gov/m/ds/clearances/c10977.htm#9](https://www.state.gov/m/ds/clearances/c10977.htm#9)

[https://www.clearancejobs.com/](https://www.clearancejobs.com/)

For example, Edward Snowden had a clearance and worked for a private company, Booz Allen after first working for the NSA as a security guard then the CIA.

<comment><USER11> The first link you have makes it sound like clearance does not transfer, unless I'm reading it wrong

<comment><USER10> _Security clearances only apply to positions that fall under the purview of the federal government._

 _Under the purview_ doesn't mean that you are employed directly by the US Government. Again, from the example, Snowden had a clearance from his previous employment. Yeah, it had to get transferred but he didn't have to get re- cleared all over again.

<comment><USER11> Ah ok. Thanks for explaining that to me.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Church of Interruption - <AUTHOR> https://sambleckley.com/writing/church-of-interruption.html <comment><USER2> I've noticed a pretty heinous conversational pattern develop out of interruption sometimes.

In theory, the best way to conduct a church-of-interruption exchange of ideas is big-endian: you begin by summarising your idea and only then flesh out the details. That way if your conclusion is understood you find out as quickly as possible.

Unfortunately, if your conversational partner tends to interrupt incorrectly or in bad faith, the better strategy is little-endian: you craft your idea in such a way that it can't be understood until you've finished talking, and is thus uninterruptible. In extreme cases, you can even make the sentence not parse until the final word.

Big-endian: "I don't like sand. It's coarse, rough, irritating and it gets everywhere."

Little-endian: "You know what's coarse, rough, irritating and gets everywhere? Sand. I don't like it."

Little-endian (parser pipeline stall edition): "What I don't like, because it's coarse, rough, irritating, and gets everywhere, is sand."

<comment><USER3> So jokes are Little-endian I guess.

<comment><USER4> It makes sense. They say humour is based on creating expectations and solving them suddenly.

<comment><USER5> > They say humour is based on creating expectations and solving them suddenly.

I don't know what it means to solve expectations; I'd guess it means to meet them, but I've always understood part of the recipe for humour to be _violating_ expectations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sounds like 2 cultures, and the adaptive person realizes who they are speaking to, and adapts to that culture to have better conversations.

I was raised as a 'civil' person, but learned that in some groups, you get a better result & energy as an interrupter.

Another dynamic is high overt conflict & emotions vs low overt conflict & emotions cultures. High overt will seem like they are arguing passionately about something and they will never see each other again, and 10 minutes later are having tea like it's no big deal, because the emotion level isn't really a big deal to them. The same emotional display in a non-overt culture and you can be fairly certain that the conflict is a a fairly big deal, and 10 minutes later, it won't recover.

<comment><USER7> And bad things happen when the high/low wires get crossed. A high-overt arguing with a low-overt often leads to confusion and resentment, because the exchange was no big deal to the high-overt, but a hostile act to the low- overt.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, this can unfortunately happen with almost any communication style mismatch. The best advice anyone can follow is just, _start from an assumption of good faith_.

I've seen it most bafflingly in a tech help forum I used to frequent: folks coming for help would get really miffed at requests for clarification/expansion from the people who were trying to help. Probably some of those requests should have been worded better -- less terse, a little more "friendly"? -- but I never really understood the starting point of "anything other than an answer to my post is rude" that seemed to come up over and over.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm a Meek and one of the strategies I have developed for dealing with more interrupt-based communicators is to rely on an asynchronous, written medium. Be it slack, a shared google drive doc, whatever. "Hey, can we have a meeting to discuss X" will often be answered by "here's my written opinion on X and the different options I see. If you still think we need to meet, here's my availability". If this doesn't remove the meeting completely, it allows you to prepare and state your opinion in advance.

Some people don't like it. It's easier to do when you are remote with a significant time difference.

<comment><USER10> This is a valid approach, but it does have a problem: it can lead to long back and forth messaging/email exchanges, including lengthy messages.

I don't, generally, have time to write long messages, nor (often) to read them, so as soon as I see this happening I've started to point out the behaviour and set up a short meeting to resolve whatever the issues are.

<comment><USER11> Maybe those short meetings loose some of the nuance of the longer written discussion and lead to worse decisions.

I'm reminded of Amazon's supposed culture of well-written memos ahead of meetings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a very compassionate take. I generally find that anything sufficiently complex can't be communicated with constant interruption, which limits communicating with interrupters to the point that I don't care to do it. I like to think I can handle myself in social situations where there's an interrupter present, but if someone interrupts me frequently I'll usually not go out of my way to interact with that person.

There are many cases where the attributes I find most intolerable in others are actually the attributes I find most intolerable in myself, and this is one. What it comes down to for me is that as a kid I was praised a lot for my intelligence so I subconsciously see intelligence as my social value, so my tendency is to always be trying to show how intelligent I am as a social proof. Among the many frustrating habits that come out of this is interrupting to show I've understood something quickly. I've gotten a lot better about this over the years, but still catch myself doing it sometimes. So I appreciate the author's compassionate view.

</comment><comment><USER13> This falls apart when you have an interrupter who thinks they know everything, but really doesn't have a clue.

They don't let you explain critical detail about something because 'they got it they got it' and when they inevitably screw up its your fault for not explaining it right.

<comment><USER14> Or interrupters who interrupt not to complete your thought, but to say whatever they don't want to wait their turn to say.

<comment><USER15> That seems to fall under "Barkers"

<comment><USER16> The distinction between interrupters and barkers is more of a slippery slope than a sharp divide.

<comment><USER17> You could say that about the distinctions between most groups of humans. There's almost always overlap/normal distribution

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm an interrupter, by nature. And I also have a tendency to talk when I'm nervous. As TFA says, I'm fine with other interrupters. We have great conversations. We start finishing each others thoughts. But otherwise, not so great.

Probably the best insight that I got from group therapy was being told that I needed to learn when to shut up. So I've learned to be adaptive. And when I'm nervous, I've learned to draw people out.

<comment><USER19> Do you ever stop thinking about what you're about to say and instead focus on how your audience is reacting to what you just said? I find watching peoples' faces and any cues that reveal their emotion helps me gauge whether or not I'm having a "not so great" conversation, which allows me to be less interrupt-y and more of a listener.

<comment><USER18> Yes, I do that constantly. I tried direct sales for a while, and one of my long-term jobs involved public speaking. So I've had some training.

Also, and maybe this will seem strange, I often feel like I'm just pretending to be a "normal person".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This also supports that: if person A has the expectation "they'll interrupt/reply once they understand" and B has the expectation "let the speaker finish", this leads to A rambling. (A has no indication that things were understood).

<comment><USER21> I think in a lot of situations there needs to be one of the parties that steers the conversation a bit - interrupt themselves or the other party if they're going on a tangent. It takes some time and practice but it will pay off in the end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I am an interrupter living in a land of strong civility. Self-awareness will bring you a bit of the way to fitting in, but I am always known as an interrupter. Tbh, i haven't changed entirely, because we have a startup, and my opinion is that strong civility is not always the most effective communication pattern when stuff needs to get done now. Strong civility works great where you have longer term plans and people who stick to them and resources. Startups don't have much of that.

</comment><comment><USER23> Beyond just interrupting or not, there are norms in conservational turn taking that vary between languages, cultures, and individuals, which are well studied by linguists.

One example is the use of pauses. To me, in casual conversation, pausing for half a second cedes the floor, and pausing for two seconds means we're done with a topic. But I had a friend who would always pause for two seconds before saying anything at all. Neither of us interrupted, but there were still constant collisions.

</comment><comment><USER24> Sounds like every bloody "interviewer" in the West now -- interrupting people whilst they're speaking, loudly assuming the worst possible characterisation of what was said (or flatly misrepresenting what was said), and going off on a tangent to promote their own agenda/viewpoint to anyone unfortunate enough trying to follow along.

</comment><comment><USER25> Pro tip: as you speak, after each message (sentence, couple of sentences) make sure your interlocutor understood that part - verbally or not.

It's not the same as using short sentences - personally I don't expect/allow to be interrupted (my friends know me for that).

By ensuring your messages are understood, you also make sure you are having an actual conversation, and not a mutual brain dump (which tends to lead to having a strawman POV of each other's point).

</comment><comment><USER26> "...if I don't signal my understanding in the same way you do – you'll just keep talking, imagining I don't get it."

I like to hear someone's thought and then digest on it. If my partner in conversation just keeps on re-explaining his or her thoughts, thinking is halted. I have to keep on filtering what is said, even if it's basically the same thing repeated, to make sure I didn't miss something. The end result is that my partner speaks three or four times as much as he or she needs to, and I am left understanding less than if the thought was said to me once with a little time to think afterward.

</comment><comment><USER27> I feel like I'm getting worse at communicating as I get older.

My former partner kept telling me I don't listen.

Which resulted in my thinking "What, what does that even mean?".

To this day I am still trying to learn how to listen.

I am also very much aware I am an interrupter. I know how bad this is and even so it is still hard to stop.

I also interrupt when I am excited and enthusiastic and when I like the person I am talking to.

I think the two are connected. One is less inclined to interrupt if one is actually truly listening.

Interrupters aren't having a conversation with you. They are having a conversation with themselves and not listening, just waiting to talk.

<comment><USER28> "You're not listening" often means something like "I am feeling some strong emotion (anger, frustration, sadness, ...) but you are not validating my feelings, and that lack of validation itself feels like rejection."

Even something as simple as echoing back someone's statements, or saying "it seems like you are feeling angry because ..." can make a large difference. Once you have shown that you understand and can name or describe the person's feelings it is often much easier to discuss possible solutions to practical problems. But if you jump straight to offering practical advice, that is often unwelcome.

(Of course, it might sometimes literally mean "you're not listening", which probably needs a different remedy.)

Let me recommend the book _How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk_ even if you never talk to kids.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I believe that there is also cultural factor.

Some are famous for interrupting often (in France for instance), whilst for others it is the opposite. It can also be related to the language, e.g. in German or Japanese the verb is at the end of the sentence. Because of that, one need at least to wait for the person to finish the sentence to understand it.

That being said, you surely find German interrupters, and French adepts of the Strong Civility, but maybe in different proportions.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'll be honest, I disengage from interrupters almost immediately. They consistently miss the point in their eager to hear their own shallow thoughts. Its boring.

<comment><USER31> But at least they show early that they missed the point and let you catch it early and explain better.

Instead of politely listening and after you finish ask what does the first thing (vital to understanding the whole speech) even mean.

<comment><USER32> So basically they are forcing the speaker to explain the same thing as they would have continued anyway, plus they even force the same speakers to fix the interrupters' mistakes in their thinking. Why is that good?

<comment><USER30> You're exactly on point, and your 1:1 exchange here demonstrates the principle of shallow thoughts perfectly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm more interested in the Cult of Listening.

First you listen and really try to understand not only the what but why from the person you're having a conversation with.

Then you paraphrase what you heard back to make sure you understand and that they can hear it back and agree.

If you do these two things you'll find that most people are actually pretty reasonable and you can in turn have a reasoned and listened to response and, shockingly, a real conversation.

<comment><USER21> That's a really important skill to have really; in software development there's a huge ego culture going on, people having their own opinions and clinging to them. But the path to maturity and / or seniority involves opening up to other people's opinions, truly understanding them instead of just pushing your own through. Active listening (which is what you're describing there) is a huge part of it. You can't argue with someone if you're not willing to listen in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Some people keep talking for a long time unless interrupted. They might even go in an infinite loop, reconfirming what they already said! For such people, while normally meek I force myself to interrupt!

<comment><USER21> Yup, and it's absolutely fine to do so - however, you also need them to understand what they're doing themselves, give them some advice on how to communicate more effectively. As another commenter pointed out, some people talk a lot because they're nervous, because they are afraid if they stop talking they won't get another say in a matter. They need coaching, reassurance, etc as well.

<comment><USER34> Absolutely. I should also mention I don't get angry with them, I appreciate they have a different style of communication.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Wow, what a trip to see this name at the top of HN. The author was a good friend of mine in high school, and one of my favorite people I've ever known. If you're reading this, Sam, I hope you're doing well.

<comment><USER36> Made me curious: was he an interruptor in high school?

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I often feel the urge to interrupt, just to get thing moving faster, but I don't want to be the smart-ass who is always interrupting with "I know, I know". So often times I pretend that the presented information is new to me and give the other person a chance to shine. It's not always easy and here and there I blurt out "I know", because I feel that they must be thinking that I'm dumb, or because I don't want to give them the pleasure of being the first person who enlightened me about this thing. But there is some upside to playing dumb: after he has finished talking, you can comment about the subject with some unexpected wisdom, as if you just came up with it.

I don't mind if people interrupt me, as long as they stick to the subject at hand. But I hate when someone just cut's me off mid sentence and starts talking about some totally unconnected stuff. I usually see the interruption coming. They nod impatiently and I see that their mouth is already preparing the sentence, waiting for a brief pause in my flow, not hearing a single word I'm saying.

</comment><comment><USER38> I don't agree that Strong Civility requires speaking only briefly. In fact, it makes me think someone who thinks that is just barely suppressing their interruption. "I'll wait until you finish...for a minute."

No, taking turns speaking is its own reward, just like speeding a conversation along via interruptions is _it 's_ own reward.

<comment><USER28> It's less about speaking briefly per se, and more about assuming that the other person understands what you are saying, and saying no more than necessary to convey the message. Some people will keep elaborating some point until told to stop, whereas others will assume the other person understood without any explicit evidence that is true.

I have found that in practice whether speakers assume their listeners understand them is a separate question from whether they tend to interrupt or not, however.

The most efficient and effective conversations in my experience are 1:1, with two speakers who both explicitly verify that the other person understands their meaning and is using the same definitions of words, and have some kind of efficient protocol for working backwards from a misunderstanding or gap in knowledge as soon as one pops up. There has to be enough trust involved that both interlocutors are willing to quickly and freely admit when they don't know something or don't understand an argument.

<comment><USER39> I had a team mate once who would go on and on and on explaining the same point over and over and elaborating a million different ways and it was extremely frustrating because not once would there ever be a break in his speech to give others the chance to ask questions (so he'd explain what we actually didn't understand) or to reply and move the conversation along. It was quite frustrating.

Many of us resorted to talking over him until he noticed, stopped, and let us reply. Surprisingly impervious to interruption.

<comment><USER40> I had a similar coworker. Worse still because they were a junior who couldn't yield the floor to anyone, regardless of seniority. Their eyes would become a little bewildered as anyone talked over them (read as 'everyone') and they never seemed to grasp what was happening. This piece gives me a better model for understanding them; just a lost soul deep in the church of civility to the point of affliction.

<comment><USER41> Aren't you saying they're someone who won't yield until they've said their peace? That doesn't sound like the church of civility to me, but more like the rarer "interrupts, but doesn't want to be interrupted" (Barker) style.

Combined with their lack of experience, I can imagine that would be frustrating to be around.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I'm an interrupter, and so are many of my colleagues, but there are a few people in the office who are not, and they don't enjoy our meetings.

<comment><USER43> And just hazarding a guess, I suspect women transfer out of the group at the first opportunity.

<comment><USER44> Alice makes a multipart statement about topics one and two.

Bob replies to topic two and starts to segue to topic three.

Carol has something important to say about topic one.

What is Carol supposed to do? Let the entire chain play out, then transition back to topic one when there's an opening? I know people can be bitter about interruption, but in my experience you get a prompt and decisive smackdown for trying to backtrack, especially when pressed for time. It seems important to get your point in _while it 's relevant_. Interruption of the form, "hey, before we move on, can we talk about X" seems to be the way do that.

How would you handle this situation?

I'm especially interested in this, because interruption and other conversational "traffic control" flow much less naturally on international video conferences, and our remote meetings tend to be stressful and chaotic messes. Short of a formal, parliamentarian moderator, it's not clear how to make these better.

<comment><USER45> Carol has to let it go. Worst thing to do is interrupt the current flow. She will come across as a "Barker" like she had sat there not listening to what Alice or Bob had to say and was just thinking about what she wanted to say about topic one the whole time.

Best thing to do is wait until the end and circle back with a question that leads into discussing topic one. Doing this you immediately relinquish control of the conversation, and when appropriate say your thoughts.

Otherwise, just let it go. Is it going to kill you to not say it?

I read a good summary once of analysing the thought process:

\- Does this need to be said?

\- Does this need to be said by me?

\- Does this need to be said by me now?

Which are good questions to ask when interrupting the flow of a conversation.

<comment><USER32> Your view is extremely simplistic and just doesn't reflect the sophistication of any abstract and complex conversation.

Especially if the topic at hand is a new territory with a lot of unknown unknowns. If no-one ever explicitly says that "OK, we covered topic one and now we move on to topic two. Is there anyone who wants to add comments?", then the conversation was not very civil, was not yet over, and whoever organized the meeting was an amateur, and let the worst thing happen: Alice and Bob change topics for no reason, instead of stopping them short.

<comment><USER45> You're reading a lot into what was a fairly simple scenario with no mention of what the topics were. It came across as being an informal meeting with no agenda, moderator or stated outcomes.

About all we can assume from the scenario are the power dynamics. Alice spoke first which says it's either her meeting or she is the ranking person there - not Carol.

If it was a meeting to address the potential critical failure of a system that Carol is the most knowledgeable about, then yes, she should speak up. It could be potentially negligent to not do so, but most meetings are not that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> This is beautifully written.

<comment><USER40> The use of dialogue to illustrate the point was great.

<comment><USER47> One suspects the author is a big fan of _Gödel Escher Bach_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> When talking, I feel like a CPU waiting for DRAM reads all the time. "Gee... why is this going so slow?!" Anything that can speed things up is appreciated. Talk fast, interrupt me, let me interrupt, fill the gaps, ask what you don't understand, point what I got wrong, and lets complete this data transmission as soon as possible.

<comment><USER49> Interrupting when talking is simply the human equivalent of XON/XOFF flow control in RS232. Some humans are not capable of such software flow control and need the human RTS / CTS handshake which is probably body language. And then other humans simply don't have flow control enabled. At all.

<comment><USER48> I love this metaphor. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Most annoying to me, from the top of my head, is when you are trying to find a word to say, and your interlocutor finishes your sentence with a word which is sort of fits in, but not the one you had in mind.

I'm not sure I'm all that against interrupters, and I think I can handle them and can sort of be one myself, but it is surely exhausting.

</comment><comment><USER51> Excited conversations between geeks tend to ramble a lot with a lot of interruptions, and while everyone's having fun, many conversational threads get abandoned as people get drawn into the new topic and forget what they were planning to say.

I invented conversation queues for me and my friends. Whenever someone is inspired to tangent onto a new topic, they interrupt only long enough to point at me and say a word or two, which I write down. The next time there's a lull in conversation, I announce the next topic in the queue and cross it off, and the person who inserted it gets to expound.

It seems to work really well, and the list can get quite long with a few hours over coffee or beer.

</comment><comment><USER52> I've noticed this can happen in Slack. I see someone is typing - and because I assume it's a full duplex channel, I start typing too while I wait for their answer. And they stop typing. When I delete what I began to type, they resume.

</comment><comment><USER53> The article talks about interrupters, but I think it confuses two types of them: People who interrupt to say their piece, and people who interrupt to complete the other person's sentence.

Both are annoying, but people who complete others' sentences are IMO worse: it's a way of showing that you don't care what the other person thinks, especially when the interrupter guesses wrong and the speaker has to out-talk them in order to get their actual words in.

<comment><USER21> That's definitely a distinction to make. The person completing the sentence will feel - or emit the feeling - that they get what you mean already but the speaker is being too slow. In a case like that it's important for the speaker to be assertive and raise their hand, mention the other person's behaviour and finish the sentence themselves. Like a sharp callout of the other person's behaviour, a meta-statement about what is happening. Just pointing it out is already enough for a lot of people. That will cost some extra energy though, because you're not just talking about subject x, but you're also mindful of your own and others' behaviour in a conversation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Or everyone could just stop being a little bitch about everything 24/7.</comment>


Restorify Backups - <AUTHOR> https://restorify.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> showHN Restorify is the e-commerce backup app of choice for small businesses. Its like Autosave for your e-Commerce store. We backup Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Magento and Wix Stores. Find us at [https://restorify.io/](https://restorify.io/)</comment>


Apple tells Congress that it has found no sign of microchip tampering - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/7/17948924/apple-cybersecurity-microchip-george-stathakopoulos-denial-congress <comment> King-Aaron I can definitely entertain the possibility that Bloomberg was lying in their reporting, as like all media reports what's written should be taken with a reasonable grain of salt.

But to intentionally publish such an inflammatory article, knowing to be false, which implicates two of America's most influential corporates just seems like absolute professional suicide to me.

<comment><USER2> The story can be false or misleading without the reporters lying. They may simply have believed their sources and chosen not to question them too closely. That's more common than reporters making things up.

<comment><USER3> There's the story about how Bloomberg pays its reporters if they "move markets".

Would that create the appropriate incentive to explain this behavior?

<comment><USER4> People are having a bit of a field day with that, but how is it any different from any other paper which gives bonuses for stories which move subscriptions? Or simply the fact that a journalist's career progress is basically pegged to the importance of their stories?

It's a niche-specific metric for rewarding the same thing every publication does - reader interest. If a reader is interested in a financial article, pretty much by definition it will alter their market behaviour.

I actually agree, as with all journalism, that there is some incentive to write exaggerated articles. But it rarely causes respectable journalists to fabricate stories, and I can't see how this would be any different.

<comment><USER5> Also the ones calling no fouls are the primary targets and would be most affected by this as one of their selling points is their security levels.

Independent 3rd party review is needed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm probably wrong, but for the life of me I can't help but wonder if there's weasel-wording going on.

Bloomberg:

> Three senior insiders at Apple say that in the summer of 2015, it, too, > found malicious chips on Supermicro motherboards.

Apple:

> Apple has never found malicious chips, "hardware manipulations" or > vulnerabilities purposely planted in any server.

Why did they say "purposely planted" here? Were they trying to exclude the possibility of malicious chips being _accidentally_ planted in any server? Is that even a thing? If so, why? If not, then why include those qualifiers if they are unnecessary?

<comment><USER7> Saying "vulnerabilities purposely planted" just means that their servers may have had bugs like heartbleed in the past.

<comment><USER6> Thanks, that makes sense for vulnerabilities. But what about "malicious chips"? I have such a hard time ignoring the fact that it modifies that phrase too. Should I be?

<comment><USER8> I don't think "malicious chips" was a quote from Apple - Apple's letter mentioned "the existence of malware or other malicious activity." adding "Nothing was ever found." \- which is pretty broad.

Every webstory is quoting that same excerpt - if the entire letter was printed somewhere, I can't find it.

<comment><USER9> Apple statement is available here: [https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2018/10/what-businessweek- got...](https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2018/10/what-businessweek-got-wrong- about-apple/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Oct 4th 2018: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYAHPPXmcts](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYAHPPXmcts)

Not sure what to make of the current hardware backdoor story, anon sources are practically useless, but I study this stuff and the VP is being charitable on the real subjects.

</comment><comment><USER11> It appears that Bloomberg News pays reporters more if their stories move markets: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18162440](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18162440)

One can only wonder if this story is due to the other.

<comment><USER12> A commenter there said that Bloomberg abolished this practice several years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "before the congress"... pff how that is any kind of truth-detector?

Not that long time ago the bosses of tobacco industry sweared that smoking have nothing todo with cancer..

words come and go.. and noone listens. or remembers.

btw there's no bad advertisement, only a missing one..

</comment><comment><USER14> This entire situation is really bizarre.

</comment><comment><USER15> "it' found no signs of hardware tampering. What about an outside party, or someone who isn't covered as being 'it'.

Sounds like some weasel wording to me, and of course they can't admit it because of their huge push to be seen as a 'secure' company to store your data with.

<comment><USER16> I wouldn't want to be the lawyer at apple found guilty of contempt of congress.

Weasel wording is what a bad salesman does. It doesn't fly in court or in congress.

<comment><USER17> What flies in any court is claiming ignorance while having any possible evidence of the contrary destroyed or not documented at all in the first place.

I think this was a warning to some companies to return their fab processes to the USA or at least vouch to better the anti-tampering verification methods to protect from foreign state actors.

If the breaches are confirmed there will be a lot more damage to the stock market, but it all depends on __how __that would happen. I really hope they don 't throw the baby out along with the bathwater.

<comment><USER15> If they are found to have lied to congress (Or to have feign ignorance at the matter) there will probably be stock implication, but very little in the way of punishment from the government.

<comment><USER16> If a lawyer knowingly lies to congress it's grounds for disbarment. I wouldn't risk it for any company, tho IANAL</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Using Drones to Train Falcons - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2015/12/hobbyists_are_using_drones_to_train_falcons.html <comment><USER2> Why do they need to take the Falcons higher than a falcon would normally fly?

<comment><USER3> It's not really taking them higher than they would "normally" fly. Wild falcons often fly high and that is a learned behavior. Height is an advantage -- they can see more area and they're less likely to be spotted by prey.

The issue is about training. Pretty much all our medium and large falcons (peregrines, gyrs, hybrids) are captive bred, so humans are the only thing teaching them to fly strongly and hunt. And because we're humans, we want to train quickly so we can go hunting and nail some ducks.

Climbing to 1000', 1500' takes muscle, and all the techniques (balloon, kite, drone) give the bird motivation to get up there and build that muscle. It also trains in the habit of getting to a good height.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I still wonder if you could train falcons to knock down drones (the small ones obviously not a Predator).</comment>


"Yoda Conditions", "Pokémon Exception Handling" and other programming classics - <AUTHOR> http://www.dodgycoder.net/2011/11/yoda-conditions-pokemon-exception.html

<comment><USER2> It's a shame it didn't mention the _reason_ for Yoda Conditions: as a protection against accidentally using the assignment operator rather than a check for equality. Accidentally writing if (foo=4) { } will not raise an exception, whereas if (4=foo) {} does, thus alerting you of your typo rather than allowing a rather nasty bug to persist.

<comment><USER3> Of course, any compiler written in the past decade should print a warning on _if (foo = 4)_ , so this reason doesn't apply much any more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This post is copied from a famous StackOverflow thread, including the pictures: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2349378/new- programming-j...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2349378/new-programming- jargon-you-coined)</comment>


Eben Moglen: The alternate net we need, and how we can build it ourselves - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gORNmfpD0ak <comment><USER2> Eben is a very skilled rhetorician. Anyone trying to sell anything would do well to take notes. If he had a dash more narrative to the story, I think he'd nail it.

"Ok, that's the next 15 years of your life and mine. You're going to try to end anonymity on earth and I'm going to try to keep it. Because without anonymity the human race will not be human anymore."

"They [governments, business] are not going to be left to their devices... They are going to be left to our devices. And our devices are going to be about Freedom!"

<comment><USER3> With anonymity, I can risk being who I want to be. I can say what I want to say and do what I want to do regardless of what anybody else wants.

Without anonymity, I can't risk being who I want to be, saying what I want to say, doing what I want to do, because someone else might find out and give me trouble.

Encryption should be declared a munition, and get a slot right next to the right to bear arms. Governments shall not infringe on the right of the people to encrypt any data that they use between two parties. This is not a trivial matter, this is the future of the human collective taking form here. Will everything we do be tracked, or will some of it be private?

Here is Eben talking about what he's doing on CBS: <http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7358702n>

<comment> loup-vaillant > _Encryption should be declared a munition, and get a slot right next to the > right to bear arms._

Err, I don't think so, based on the following utilitarian argument:

First, more freedom in the network means more freedom in general. Evidence for this is easy to find. Encryption in particular does one thing and one thing only: preventing eavesdropping. That helps freedom of though, and even of speech (for small groups on a chat room, for instance).

Second, more arms means more dead people (not much, compared to car crashes and ageing, but still). Evidence is even easier to find. And as far as I know, it doesn't increase freedom in any interesting way.

Even beyond my judgement call, it should now be obvious that encryption and ammunitions have very different effects. Using one as an analogy for the other would be wildly inaccurate.

<comment><USER4> More arms means more dead people? The potential, perhaps, but I don't believe, even though for many years, we kept ramping up more and more nuclear arms, there was more and more nuclear destruction. You might say the presence of those weapons dissuaded another's use of them.

<comment><USER5> If you really want to make the argument that nuclear weapons haven't been a hugely destructive force, you need to wait until the game has ended. They are still there, and the opportunity for them to generate a lot of dead people to prove you wrong may still arise. That game isn't over yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> When I think about all the issues being addressed in many talks such as this, one thought comes to mind:

"This is why we can't have nice things."

We have the technology, the skill and the knowledge to do so much we couldn't even dream about a decade ago, but everything we do seems to raise so many new issues of possible abuse. Always the same dual-use dilemma [1].

With every step forward, we need to make an additional step in every other direction just to make sure we aren't walking the plank.

[] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_use_technology>

</comment><comment><USER7> He is talking about the plans and especially the motivation for the Freedom Box project:

<http://freedomboxfoundation.org/>

</comment><comment><USER8> The irony of this not being viewable in WebM is pretty thick.

<comment><USER9> works for me

<comment><USER8> Hmm, you're right... apparently Youtube decided to turn off the html5 preview for my account. Re-enabled it and it looks fine.

Boggles my mind why it's not enabled as a fallback for browsers without flash.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why not just use freenet? :)

Or perfectdark

<comment><USER11> He wants to make something that everyone can use. Freenet isn't there yet. (This doesn't meen that the FreedomBox software couldn't be built on top of Freenet or ship with Freenet, however.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> After he claimed that Apple is sponsoring LLVM/clang solely to undermine freedom, and said "The human race has a susceptibility to harm, but Mr. Zuckerberg has attained an unenviable record. He has done more harm to the human race than anybody else his age", I have a hard time taking Moglen seriously.

<comment><USER13> Neither of these claims were made in the linked video btw. I would definitely recommend the linked video.

I am not sure when or how he made the LLVM claim, but I would understand Zuckerberg claim. Eben considers the right of anonymity a very important right and facebook has made the biggest assault on anonymity on the net ever. It is actually erie how they have managed to remove anonymity from a huge swats of the net without the users complaining at all.

<comment> loup-vaillant > _It is actually erie how they have managed […]_

Hidden, uncertain, common costs just aren't accounted for.

The loss of freedom is easily invisible, and the actual cost very hard to measure. Plus, it's a common. More individual freedom for others often mean more for yourself. (Case in point: anonymity: more _other_ nodes means you're harder to find.) With those three effects, it's no wonder "no one cares" about freedom.

Facebook _feels_ gratis, and even free, because (1) you don't pay money, and (2) you have an easy way to talk with other people. The advertisement you can live with, and the spying you don't even see. Few people could actually link Facebook's spying to changes in their present lives. (I'm not sure those that can are at liberty to speak their mind right now.)</comment></comment></comment>


John Cleese: We Can't Have Comedy and Be Politically Correct [video] - <AUTHOR> http://bigthink.com/videos/john-cleese-on-political-correctness <comment><USER2> Let me preface this by saying that my favorite comedian is Doug Stanhope. So I like very politically incorrect humor.

However, it's an issue of boundaries.

I make terribly politically incorrect jokes with my girlfriend, who shares my un-pc sense of humor. But I wouldn't be caught dead saying those things at work or around my friends who would be upset by such joking. I respect their boundaries.

Being politically incorrect with people who are going to be upset by it is just a form aggression. It's not funny, it's pathetic and juvenile.

For comedians it's a matter of marketing: do they want to appeal to a larger crowd and kowtow to political correctness or do they want to be authentic and cultivate a niche market?

My guess is that John Cleese wants it both ways. Sorry pal, not going to happen. If you want to be politically incorrect you're going to have to go the Doug Stanhope route and be authentic and poor instead of politically correct and rich.

<comment> norea-armozel I feel that people to use free speech as a shield want to be able to scream at a random stranger whatever is on their mind without that stranger telling them to f __* off. Maybe they don 't exactly see it that way, but it seems to be the result. It's like forcing everyone to watch Steven Universe (frankly I don't see the point of that show or Adventure Time, go figure). Anyone worth their salt would see this as a violation of their liberties. Yet, when we look at universities or similar institutions like Twitter some people decide that they must be unfettered platforms for all speech even if it's clearly criminal. I don't see how people make a special case in this situation. Maybe I'm dense, but I just see an institution as a person at least in the legal sense and having all the authority to protect their reputation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm just waiting for the day when all of the short guys join together to check women on their 'height privilege'.

I made a minor, off the cuff remark to my roommate and her friend about how my brother is a couple of inches shorter than me and they went off for at least a half hour about how they won't date a guy unless he's at least 6'2". How they don't know why short guys even bother trying to date. How they'd never, 'even if he was the last guy on earth' subject themselves to dating somebody shorter than their 'standard.'

I couldn't help but to think to myself, 'wow, I haven't seen this level of off the cuff bigotry since the last time I lived in the south and experienced real, American made, southerner racism.' Talk about hating on a class of people about characteristics that's beyond their ability to change.

</comment><comment> norea-armozel I really wish people would stop saying this sort of bs. Deciding not to misgender or use racist/sexist slurs isn't PC out of control. It's called not being a bigot. Maybe I'm just not all into dropping the n/f/t-words like some other folks. And honestly I wouldn't call myself particularly a leftist in politics save for my views in economics. So, if PC is out of control because people call you out for saying something racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic then maybe your first response should be "how it is that way?" and not "stop being so PC brah!!!1!". If this is seriously too hard for people to do then maybe you ought not be speaking in public because there's always going to be push back from the public audience you're speaking to. It's not a one way street.

<comment><USER4> The issue is the push back from the politically correct is having a serious chilling effect where even feminist comedians are being no platformed for having opinions that offend people. The definition of racism/sexism/homophobia/transphobia is so wide that there is a very vocal minority of people that are able to shut down opposing opinions by being offended on the behalf of someone else. Take Kate Smurthwaite for example, Because she had politically incorrect views on prostitution and the burka she was denied the ability to speak at a university due to pressure from Goldsmiths' feminist society.

<comment> norea-armozel 1\. The definition of racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia are not that wide. Racism is pretty clearly defined in terms of treating racial minorities as subhuman both in legal and social terms. The same follows for sexism, homophobia, and transphobia. The individual incident in question can be assessed pretty clearly by this standard. For example, if you insist on calling a POC "boy" when they're 20 years your senior then you're probably being a racist. Also, if you insist on calling Caitlyn Jenner by her old first name. Then you're probably a transphobe. And so forth. This isn't rocket science. If you can't determine what's bigotry either you're not observant or you're being dishonest. Either way, it's not the job of the marginalized to coddle you.

2\. Having your event canceled isn't equivalent to censorship. No one has put a gag order on Smurthwaite to not perform. You're not guaranteed a platform to speak either beyond the voting booth or to petition. It's not the onus of individual organizations or individuals themselves to listen or debate you. The freedom of speech also implies the freedom to not listen to your speech. Or to not associate one's organization or self in regards to that speech. If you don't like this either, then IMO you're demanding to be coddled.

So, all these false claims of PC being out of control smacks of social conservatives demanding to be taken seriously by their opposition. Guess what? They don't talk their opposition seriously either. DEAL WITH IT is my motto. If you can't then you're a brat.

<comment><USER4> I think you've just shown how hard it is to define racism. We have different definitions of racism, Most people define it as discrimination against someone because of their race. Since we can all have different ideas on whats racist who is the arbiter? Currently it seems to be up to the small number of politically correct to decide what is racist and what isn't.

Having your event cancelled in a university because of a few people is censorship. The comedy society in Goldsmiths wanted to hear what Kate had to say and arranged for her to talk at the university even though she was labeled a sexist. Their right to listen to other ideas were denied when the feminist society threatens to picket at it. We have a group of people who want to listen to "sexist" material and a group that don't, Would you not agree that the correct outcome would be to let Kate have her event and people who want to listen can go and people who don't want to listen don't go?

The university denied the people who had arranged the event with Kate the ability to listen to her. The university favored the censors over the tolerant. Its important that the offensive have the ability to speak even when there is a backlash from the minority.

Would you feel any different if instead of the politically correct there was a rabid group of religious zealots in university picketing to get people kicked of campus because they are seen as sinners?

<comment> norea-armozel Wow, there's so many flaws in your argument I'm not sure where to begin.

It seems you want minorities to listen to any and all bigoted opinions without protest and you want to treat such opinions as morally equal. When you're part of a minority that gets assaulted, murdered, and discriminated in general you don't have to listen to any and all people's opinions. If you think that I as a transwoman _must_ listen to TERFs, social conservatives, and hand wringers then you're greatly mistaken. Their opinions are morally invalid for many reasons chief among them is their desire to control others. Being ostracized/protested by a minority is nowhere near being harmed by said minority.

And if a private party like a university feels its reputation is contingent on reaching out to those minorities then that's their authority to do so. It doesn't matter what you or I think either way. If you don't like that university then don't attend it. Or call your representative and see if they can cut its public funding. Either way, you, the comedy society, and the comedian are not entitled to any platform. Free speech is not about fairness, it's about whether or not the state or collusive corporations are intentionally impeding your ability to speak. The comedian isn't out of work because of one gig. The comedy society isn't defunct because it has to find another venue to present comedians. If said university went out of its way to tell every other venue holder to not let that society or comedian act in their interests then that would be true harm.

Also, the fact people throw the word censorship around seems troubling to me for a couple reasons. First, it's turning into the modern bogey man of our day. If Twitter bans someone I swear every other day I see someone claiming its censorship whether the account was by a political conservative or liberal. It's ridiculous. Stop using a word as a bludgeon to get your way. Deal with the fact private parties can and will protect their reputations. Second, calling anything censorship at will has the same effect as censorship especially when the opposing side has pointed out rightly the bigotry of a specific opinion (ex. people who refuse to desist from using racial slurs). And that's exactly how I've seen it used both on Twitter and on here. If you don't like being called a bigot then ask the accuser why they called you one. You'd be surprised how easily such an accusation is disarmed by one question (Wil Wheaton did that easily despite the slow uptake by certain people on Twitter yesterday).

Simply put, learn to interact with people, especially minorities. And stop blaming them when they're in the right.

<comment><USER5> "It seems you want minorities to listen to any and all bigoted opinions without protest..."

Nobody was "forcing" any person to listen to anything, so this critique has pretty much gotten off on the wrong foot right at the start.

<comment> norea-armozel Yet free speech advocates are all for forcing private institutions to open their platforms to any and all speech. Sorry, but if you can't see this as a problem and probably a violation of property rights (especially in the US) then I can't say we'll ever agree on anything.

<comment><USER5> > Yet free speech advocates are all for forcing private institutions to open > their platforms to any and all speech.

No, they are not in favor of _forcing_ them to do so. You are making the unfortunately common mistake of confusing _advocating_ something with making it _legally required._ These are not the same thing, and you'll be a more convincing advocate for your side once you really get that.

What free-speech advocates are stating is that while private universities are _legally allowed_ to ban speakers, because as you correctly state they have no obligation to provide a platform to anyone or anything they don't want to... that this is _illiberal behavior, not in the spirit of freedom of speech, and these universities are not living up to their claimed principles when they do it._

Which it is.

<comment> norea-armozel >You are making the unfortunately common mistake of confusing advocating something with making it legally required.

Nope I'm not. Try again.

>because as you correctly state they have no obligation to provide a platform to anyone or anything they don't want to... that this is illiberal behavior, not in the spirit of freedom of speech, and these universities are not living up to their claimed principles when they do it.

This is still trying to force a private institution to conform to your wishes. If you can't deal with a university telling you to eff off and your response is to try to bully them into opening their platform then you're a bullying twit imo. The HRC, GLAAD, and etc never demand that Liberty University (socially conservative institution) let say Dan Savage speak at their university. Why should the door be open only one way? You can speak big lofty words about free speech all you want, but the reality is that it's built on hypocrisy as the majority of online "free speech" advocates are socially conservative (they now call themselves culturally libertarian which IMO is an insult to libertarianism as a political position). So, I can't say I'm a supporter of the majority of free speech advocates since their agenda is as clear as day (i.e. to force widely rejected view points into class rooms of moderate to socially liberal institutions but not to open the door the other way to socially conservative ones for liberal speakers).

<comment><USER5> > This is still trying to force a private institution to conform to your > wishes.

I'm curious what your opinion is of our current advocacy campaigns attempting to "force" tech companies to hire more women, or "force" movies and TV to to have more characters who are ethnic minorities.

> The HRC, GLAAD, and etc never demand that Liberty University (socially > conservative institution) let say Dan Savage speak at their university.

Maybe they should! They'd certainly be well within their rights. Although I'd be interested to learn more about a situation where someone like Savage was _prevented_ from speaking at Liberty University, as I hadn't heard of that.

<comment> norea-armozel >I'm curious what your opinion is of our current advocacy campaigns attempting to "force" tech companies to hire more women, or "force" movies and TV to to have more characters who are ethnic minorities.

There's a huge difference between writing a crappy article on Kotaku and some jerk threatening to dogpile Twitter w/ false SEC/FTC reports. This has been the crap that's been circulating since NRx/alt-right and GG reared its collective fugly head. And they often operate under false pretenses of "free speech."

>Maybe they should! They'd certainly be well within their rights.

Or maybe they know something certain free speech advocates refuse to disclose: institutions are largely fossils of their time. Trying to convert an evangelical university to their cause is as Quixotic as you can get.

>Although I'd be interested to learn more about a situation where someone like Savage was prevented from speaking at Liberty University, as I hadn't heard of that.

Because social conservatives know what the believe and will exercise it to its fullest within the law (and sometimes outside of it)? Just saying.

So you can stump for a cause that does not need protection (considering the strength of EFF and the ACLU on these matters) or you all can admit that maybe just maybe being PC isn't all that bad. And maybe just maybe a bigot should be freely called a bigot and jeered by the general audience whether or not John Cleese wants that to happen. Guess what? The Marx Brothers dealt with jeers and rotten tomatoes thrown their way so I'm sure modern comedians can deal with mean tweets and crappy Kotaku hit pieces.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sure you can: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99s19HBs-6A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99s19HBs-6A)

<comment><USER7> I see his point, but it's not very funny.

<comment><USER6> not a lot of sight gags; his observational comedy about observational comedy is a chuckle</comment></comment></comment>


How phones went from $200 to $2k - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/18/18263584/why-phones-are-so-expensive-price-apple-samsung-google <comment><USER2> They are basically comparing the price of mid-low end phones from 10+ years ago to the highest end phones of today. The Motorola StarTAC was introduced in 1996 for $1000 and later, the Motorola Razr was $800 when it was introduced. Adjusted for inflation the difference in price isn't that big and flip phones of the time did very little. You can pick up a phone which is vastly better than the Razor today for $25.

The iPhone wasn't $200 unless you ignored the cost of the expensive phone contract it was attached to, nor were the early top end Android phones.

The only way this article makes any sense if you compare the highest end phones of today to the low-midrange phones from 10+ years ago which makes zero sense.

<comment><USER3> Most consumer technology has gotten cheaper over the years. In some cases, a lot cheaper, especially when adjusted for inflation. Compare the price of 55" flat screen TV's, 2009 vs today. Compare the price of a mid-range desktop computer, 1989 vs today, etc.

<comment><USER2> You have a double standard here. Newer iPhones are twice as big and have much higher display resolution. To be reasonably fair you'd need to compare that 55" flat screen TV to an 8K 120" HDR TV. Or flip it and compare the Original iPhone to the iPhone SE which is about half the cost of the original iPhone (when you consider the contract cost) and still has a much bigger/ better display.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Might be an unpopular opinion, but in terms of value I think phones are worth it. Think of how much time people spend on their phones, and how much frustration you save from not having a PoS phone. For many people, phone's are their "computer".

<comment> B-Con I completely agree.

As another comment pointed out, the price comparison is poor. What changed is the value of the phone and what people are willing to spend. When phones got good enough many were willing to replace a traditional computer with the phone.

Don't forget that social networks were a thing back at the release of the first iPhone. I suspect far fewer people would be see as much value in a smart phone if they couldn't access Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Reddit on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Overall I think rising top end brings a better set of issues than a race to the bottom does. With rising top end, the midrange options are sure to be at least decent, but with a race to the bottom you see huge compromises and underhanded methods to offset slim margins in all but the most high end options.

We've seen this play out in the PC market already, but at least there you always had the option of wiping the standard OS install and upgrading hardware to help mitigate shady preinstalls and compromises in cheaper products. With phones, hardware upgrades flat out aren't possible and many are impossible or impractical to put a clean OS install on.

</comment><comment><USER6> There's a lot of great phones in the $200 range today. I've helped a few friends buy one at MVNO's like MetroPCS, and they walked out with a 5"\+ fast Android under $200 and it always impresses me what they get for 1/6 the price of the phone I carry.

</comment><comment><USER7> I use a $12 pre-paid phone from Walmart. It has held up great for the past few years. It's probably time to get a new one. It looks like they discontinued mine and now there is a $30 version. [1] The only downside is the T9 texting, but I do not text a lot. The tiny battery in it lasts about a week without any charging.

[1] - [https://www.walmart.com/ip/Verizon-Kyocera-Cadence- Prepaid-C...](https://www.walmart.com/ip/Verizon-Kyocera-Cadence-Prepaid-Cell- Phone-16GB-Black/229903939)

</comment><comment><USER8> So did our reliance on a single all-in-one mini computer that we carry our lives, memories, photos and literally everything we do.

Simply examining the BOM cost should reveal the extraordinary amount of processing power, memory, optics, security and system integration that has taken place between $200 and $1000 phones.

So, a fair comparison would be to compare a phone from 2004:

$200 Phone

$200 Music Player

$400 Netbook

$300 Camera

\</comment><comment>-----

$1100

Just ball park figures to make a point. I don't think Netbooks existed in 2004.

<comment><USER9> The closest equivalent to a modern phone from back in 2004 was a PDA (ex: Palm Pilot or Blackberry). You had internet, contacts, email, apps, mp3, and basic camera all on one device.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treo_700p](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treo_700p)

That's 2005, but it gives you an idea of what was available at the time for ~$500. Looking back on it, it seems like the Treo 700p was still a smartphone as well... I guess I just remembered most of its PDA-functionality instead.

EDIT: The main things a modern smartphone gives you are capacitive controls and a GPS. The "real internet" as well, since PDAs kinda surfed a different... protocol. I forget exactly, but it wasn't HTML, even if it was served over HTTP. Some... format that died a long time ago. I'd estimate a GPS costs $200, plus the subscription to the maps (you had to pay for map-subscriptions back then)

<comment><USER10> Well, for Euro 800 (around US$ 1000) you could get circa 2004-2005 a Sony- Ericsson P900-P910.

It did have GPS/Maps (separate paid for program) and it could navigate the internet via WAP.

Mine lasted some 10 years (admittedly I used it much more as a phone than to navigate internet) and sported an exceptionally good handwriting recognition.

<comment><USER9> > and it could navigate the internet via WAP

That's what it was called! Thanks, I was annoyed at myself for not remembering the name of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> One assertion the article makes that I'm skeptical of is that the price of the phone used to be hidden in the monthly cost of the plan but no longer is. I have no evidence, but it definitely feels to me like my cell phone bill has been going up steadily and that there is no "phone sold separately" discount. I'd really like to see some numbers on whether the service cost has really decreased in real terms by the amount of the cost of the phone over two years.

<comment><USER12> I've always bought my phones outright and never had a prepaid plan until relatively recently. I've stayed around the $250-$300 price point since I started buying cell phones. What I can buy now for that price is vastly superior to what I could buy even only 4 or 5 years ago.

If anything, with inflation, the price of low-midrange phones has been dropping steadily and the quality and features you get for that price has been climbing at least in my observation.

Service prices have been climbing. The plan I have now isn't available with my carrier any more. The closest plan to mine costs twice as much as I pay for 3GB less data. They don't even have plans that offer as much data as I get anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Well the phones do a lot more. There are still dozens of $200 smart phones on the market without all the bells and whistles.

<comment><USER14> Yup. I got my Moto x4 for ~$250, and it does way more than I need it to. I just don't see a point in getting a >$500 phone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Even after reading the entire article head to toe, I can't understand that people would pay over 1K for a phone. So what if it folds? Is it a social status thing? do people go around showing it off? (honestly, I haven't seen that)

I bought a used HTC One M9 about 2 years ago, refurbished for 80$ and it does every I could ever want with a phone: online browsing, hacker news, apps, great graphics/sound. None of the apps are laggy. there doesn't seem to be any downside at all. Admittedly the battery is weak, but then so are most of the new phones.

<comment><USER16> FWIW, I replace my phone every ~4 years on average. With the XS Max, I have the latest OS with the latest security updates and a state-of-the-art web browser and an outstanding screen & audio. Admittedly it contains a bunch of technology I'm not making much use of at the moment, but even then the battery lasts more than 24 hours easily with regular use. If/when those killer AR apps come along, the phone is equipped to take advantage of it.

The price of the phone was something I was happy to pay, for the peace of mind that I've got a device I can depend on for as long as I want to keep using it.

I got burned about a decade ago by carriers not supporting Android updates on the early HTC devices and it left a bad taste in my mouth. Perhaps that has changed but this chart still doesn't inspire much confidence: [https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards](https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Glassdoor for Freelancers – Clients/Services Reviewed by Freelancers - <AUTHOR> https://covailnt.com/reviews/ <comment><AUTHOR> Companies, Recruiting Agencies, and Service Providers - reviewed by the freelancers that have dealt with them in the past.

While a Freelancer's reputation is everything - a lot of the talent marketplace's out there actually protect crappy clients and trigger the exploitation of the freelance talent completing the work. Recruiting agencies are also positioned to exploit freelancers. Covailnt's Glassdoor-styled reviews help level the playing field.</comment>


Show HN: SQL Viewer – UI for uber/queryparser, written in Haskell - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dlthomas/sql-viewer <comment><AUTHOR> I threw this together a while back. I've been meaning to clean up the code a bit before sharing but that keeps not happening so I figure I'll try the other way 'round.

Big thanks to Matt Halverson for getting queryparser freed at Uber and to Heli Wang for more recent maintainership, as well as for their contributions to that project in the first place!

</comment><comment><USER2> This is well done, thanks for sharing. It uses more of the page, though, if I get rid of the "float: left" on .frame and change min-width for textarea elements to 100%.

<comment><AUTHOR> > This is well done, thanks for sharing.

Thanks!

> It uses more of the page, though, if I get rid of the "float: left" on > .frame and change min-width for textarea elements to 100%.

I think I started that way; this felt better to me. That said, I'm not really a UI guy. More than happy to look at PRs :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> A similar tool is [https://astexplorer.net/](https://astexplorer.net/) , which I've found quite useful for the JS tools hacking that I've done.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool! I'd added the highlight-on-hover in an earlier version - been meaning to add that here too.

The other analyses are more interesting than just the AST, though, IMO, while the AST is most useful for people working on additional analyses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been building a ssms clone for hive too. One of the biggest complaints from the business when we switched from SQL server to Hadoop is the terrible tooling.

</comment><comment><USER5> Do you have any plans to support Snowflake and do you keep the syntax updated?

<comment><AUTHOR> Adding a new dialect to the UI, given support in queryparser, is trivial, and I certainly plan to add anything with upstream support.

I know Heli has said Uber's happy to merge new dialects, but aren't working on anything at the moment.

I've got a Teradata dialect at work which we'll probably upstream at some point. I don't know of anything else in the works. I'd be happy to advise if anyone wants to work on adding a new dialect, Snowflake or otherwise.

Personally the thing I most want to get worked out, other than upstreaming work I've already done at my day job, is something that makes it possible to apply QuickCheck to a series of SQL statements, with pre- and post-conditions as expressed as SQL. Ideally with schema inference, but probably not starting there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Thank you! Always nice to see Haskell on the front page of HN.</comment>