Interview: Larry Wall - <AUTHOR> http://www.linuxvoice.com/interview-larry-wall/ <comment><USER2> I have a very charming Larry Wall story. He came to give a seminar to the research center where I was working, and gave a fantastic talk on Perl 6.

Late in the evening, I ran into him and his wife on the bus when getting home from work - and started talking to them. Apparently, nobody from the department had arranged to take them out for dinner, so we ended up going out for dinner together, where we had a fantastic discussion covering religion, tolerance, and lots of other topics. I am a staunch materialist and atheist, while both the Walls are serious committed Christians, but we had a really pleasant discussion on religion and the nature of evidence.

I ended up giving his wife a copy of Hume's Dialogue on Natural Religion, and they were kind enough to sign a copy of the Camel book for a friend who is a huge Perl fan.

A lot of people know Larry by reputation - but his wife Gloria is just as smart and kind. It was a bit of a strange evening, but it was a rare privilege to meet two such interesting people.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm such a fan of how Larry Wall speaks and writes, it's filled with a million little tangents that are stories of their own, but everything relates to the same thing of course. His BigThink videos are entertaining and enlightening. I've always respected Larry, even though Perl was sort-of "before my time" and I never got to write much in his language. But the fact that I mostly have written in languages (for server-side web development) that have been influenced by Perl makes me feel like I understand what he was going for.

</comment><comment><USER4> Perl was the second programming language I learned. Teenage me idolized Larry and his hippie wisdom.

"... the three great virtues of a programmer: laziness, impatience, and hubris." — Larry Wall

</comment><comment><USER5> While building perl6, you see "-Larry -Wall" as part of the gcc args, which I thought was a clever + syntactically correct joke :-)

<comment><USER6> One of my friends built a project that included a library called "library". You would link it with -lrary.

It was funny for about 30 seconds and then just frustrating when debugging the build.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I started learning perl 6 to prototype creating a DSL. Holy fucking shit perl grammars and actions are cool.

<comment><USER8> Yes, but...

Perl's greatest criticism is that it's friggin' unreadable, especially when written by less-than-stellar coders. It's my impression from a skim of Perl 6 that due to a bunch of fairly intricate features added there, it will be come even less readable than Perl 5. Is that a mistaken assessment?

<comment><USER9> I used to have trouble reading the Perl5 code I would write a few weeks later. But these were small scripts I'd write and a month or two would go by before I'd right another one.

The issue was I didn't fully know the language. Having spent a few years in Perl 5 now, I no longer have this issue. But the Ruby 1.8 code I wrote 5 years ago I can no longer read, I seem to have forgotten it. I never have been able to read Python, I don't know it either (though I do from time to time dig through their std lib and port some stuff into my modules I author :).

The point is, you can't read a language that you don't know, this is such an old argument. And saying "you can read a language if you don't know it if it is easy enough/designed right", is just well... just keep me away from those languages... Reminds me of a 70 year old retired EE friend of mine. He still buys only chips that come with Basic onboard stating "its so simple, I could never learn any of this new languages", yet what takes him a page of basic, I can do in one line in any modern one... The point is simplicity is just one trait out of many, you can't hang everything on it.

<comment><USER10> To me, Python is so close to pseudocode that I find it very readable. I found and fixed a bug in python code having never before seen any python code. At the time, I only really knew C.

<comment><USER11> "Executable whiteboard."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Up until now, the Python community has done a much better job of getting > into the lower levels of education than we have. We'd like to do something > in that space too, and that's partly why we have the butterfly logo, because > it's going to be appealing to seven year old girls!

Heh, I can't tell whether or not he's kidding.

<comment><USER13> Perhaps a bit of both. Regardless, Larry's intentions are good and he's an angel -- which is rare among programmers. Many (like Linus, RMS, DHH) are almost sociopathic in how they view others' work and treat the people they work with, so it's very refreshing to see someone that's not only passionate about his work, but gentle and kind as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> the man is a legend.

Perl was awesome when it first came out. Its time has passed but you can see Perl's influence in many things we use and take for granted today.

favorite writing: [http://www.wall.org/~larry/pm.html](http://www.wall.org/~larry/pm.html)

<comment><USER15> The first time I saw "use strict"; at the top of a JavaScript file, I wiped a little tear for Larry Wall.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Would I be nuts to pick perl over python as my main scripting/server admin language? I am a postgres, openbsd, data/text processing guy.

OpenBSD is 40% perl. Postgres uses perl for its builds. Perl seems to have better text processing capabilities. But it seems to be dying out compared to python.

<comment><USER17> You would be reasonable.

Perl often fits in better with the 'advanced shell scripting' type of work than Python or Ruby. It has more libraries for unix-like admin tasks, but less common support for external APIs (which more commonly support Java/Ruby/Python/etc.) so it may be an uphill battle if you use a _lot_ of external APIs.

Perl won't ever 'die out', especially if you write good perl that doesn't depend on flashy popularity-train things. It's far too ingrained in many unix derivatives.

If you're a server admin, you're missing out if you don't know perl. Choosing perl might be a little less common today, but it's totally reasonable if you want it.

<comment><USER18> > but less common support for external APIs (which more commonly support > Java/Ruby/Python/etc.)

Yesterday, there were an even 60 CPAN module releases, and that is a pretty typical day. Most of them weren't NEW modules, but some were.

It's true that you don't as often see Perl APIs released along with the various 'external API' things, but, as someone who probably spends too much time tracking the various new hot things, Perl API support is first rate. It's damn rare that I don't see a Perl API for something, even if it's relatively new.

I'be been watching CPAN for a long, long time, and I will say that it's more vibrant and active now than I have ever seen it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I miss Perl. It was the first programming language I learned as a kid. I read the entire Perl for dummies book when I was 14 and uploaded my first script to a "cgi-bin" shortly after. Thanks Larry for your contributions!

<comment><USER20> If you want to make a web app with modern Perl practices, check out Mojolicious[1] or Dancer[2].

[1] [https://metacpan.org/release/Mojolicious](https://metacpan.org/release/Mojolicious)

[2] [https://metacpan.org/release/Dancer](https://metacpan.org/release/Dancer)

<comment><USER21> Mojolicious is Great, a flying holy Camel.

<comment><USER22> or Catalyst

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Perl will always have a soft spot in my heart. I remember accidentally putting down the Llama book on a stove top, still have that half burned book.

Only non-trivial thing I ever wrote in Perl was the obligatory irc bot :) Spaceship operator...says it all imo

Those were different days. I got the O'Reilly catalog at a book store regularly and marveled at the possibilities and cool books because I didn't have reliable Internet.

</comment><comment><USER24> prodigious intellect and a childhood hero of mine. Unfortunately his contribution to web design rarely gets mentioned ([http://www.wall.org/~larry/);](http://www.wall.org/~larry/\);) no bootstrap --incredible.

<comment><USER25> For the ease of others (your link is broken): [http://www.wall.org/~larry/](http://www.wall.org/~larry/)

<comment><USER24> works for me; in any event, here's the homepage: [http://www.wall.org/](http://www.wall.org/)

LW's blog is behind the first link from the top

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Slightly off topic, but has there been any "State on the Onion" updates since 2007[0]? I always looked forward to reading these and was surprised to find nothing new since I last checked some years ago.

[0] [http://www.perl.com/pub/2007/12/06/soto-11.html](http://www.perl.com/pub/2007/12/06/soto-11.html)

<comment><USER27> A recent post that seems relevant,

[http://shadow.cat/blog/matt-s-trout/sotv-vi/](http://shadow.cat/blog/matt-s- trout/sotv-vi/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I had to check the year on the article - "He's the creator of Perl, a programming language that's _widely regarded as the glue holding the internet together_ " was arguably true in 1999 - 16 years ago.

<comment><USER29> I get what you're saying, but if Perl magically stopped running today I think there's a legit chance the Internet would cease functioning.

<comment><USER30> [https://twitter.com/devops_borat/status/248770195580125185](https://twitter.com/devops_borat/status/248770195580125185)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> i like the recursive sentence "you could have something that you think of as a noun, but you can verb it"

<comment><USER32> I'm a bear of very little brain, could you explain the recursive properties of this sentence? I don't see them.

<comment><USER33> It's self-referencing, but I agree that this is not strictly recursive.

<comment><USER34> you must be funny at parties

<comment><USER33> If you don't understand the difference, read this sentence again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I will never give up on Perl. There are just a whole lot of really talented people involved ;)

</comment><comment><USER36> Like several others in this thread, Perl was my first "real" language after POSIX Shell (I started by reading and modifying the early Frozen Bubble sources), and Programming Perl was my first programming book.

That kind of introduction to programming may not be for everyone, but I believe it was instrumental in me making software my career.

I had the privilege to be in the room at FOSDEM when Larry announced Perl 6 for _this_ Christmas. I don't write much Perl those days, but I certainly am going to play with Perl 6. Even if I never write anything useful in it, there are certainly lots of ideas to be taken from that language.

</comment><comment><USER9> If anyone cares there was a recorded Larry Wall Q&A session at YAPC a month ago: [https://youtu.be/PK9UnAmrxsA?t=12m40s](https://youtu.be/PK9UnAmrxsA?t=12m40s)

</comment><comment><USER37> >you have a lot of instances of shoving one word into a different slot...you could have something that you think of as a noun, but you can verb it

Oh, Larry

</comment><comment><USER38> I love the shirt he's wearing in those pictures. What is it with geeks and psychedelic/hippie outfits ? Is it because of the patterns and colors, eccentricity or because of real involvement with the counterculture/psychedelia ? It's always fascinated and intrigued me.

Any people 'in the know' care to elaborate on that ?

<comment><USER39> Well he attended UC Berkeley in the 1970s, so it's safe to assume that he has had lots of exposure to hippie culture.

There are actually quite strong connections between computer nerds and the counterculture of the 60s/70s. If you're curious I recommend the following books:

# _What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry_ / John Markoff. A great book with many fascinating characters.

# _From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism_ / Fred Turner. Also an interesting read, but much less accessible than Markoff's book.

# _The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage_ / Clifford Stoll. Very good book, reads like a detective novel in a Berkeley setting.

PS. More psychedelic shirt goodness this way: [https://www.google.com/search?q=larry+wall&tbm=isch](https://www.google.com/search?q=larry+wall&tbm=isch)

<comment><USER40> "Two things came out of Berkeley: LSD and Unix. We do not believe this to be a coincidence."

<comment><USER41> LSD and BSD.

<comment><USER42> See Chapter 1 of the Unix Hater's Handbook. [http://www.csf.ac.at/fileadmin/user_upload/BioComp/training/...](http://www.csf.ac.at/fileadmin/user_upload/BioComp/training/unix_haters_handbook.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> the linux voice interviews are in general really good. keep up the good work!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :-) Glad you enjoyed it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Always a pleasure to see Larry.

</comment><comment><USER45> Larry Wall is a great guy. Perl brings me back to the days of my Pentium 2, tinkering about with my primitive IRC bots.

<comment><USER46> Perl was what made one my all-time favorite side projects possible.

Back around 2000, I was working at a mid-size company that stored tons of data in a company intranet. There was lots of useful stuff locked up in there, but hardly anybody ever used it because the web interface was clunky and slow.

One day I had a brainstorm, and after a few evenings' Perl hacking it was up and running -- a conversational interface to the intranet, running over AOL Instant Messenger. You added the bot as a buddy, and then you could query the intranet a bunch of different ways; IM it a client's name, for instance, and it would ping you back with their contact information, who their account reps were, what projects they were associated with, etc. (Which is very useful when your phone rings and it's someone you don't recognize.) Pretty nifty stuff, for the time. Everyone had AIM running all the time anyway, so this turned out to be a big hit -- much bigger than I ever expected.

And I probably never would have been able to get it working were it not for the ease of programming in Perl and the ability to tap into CPAN's massive library of code and take advantage of modules like Net::AIM ([http://search.cpan.org/~aryeh/Net- AIM-1.22/AIM.pm](http://search.cpan.org/~aryeh/Net-AIM-1.22/AIM.pm)). So thanks Larry, and thanks to all the Perl folks who contributed to CPAN over the years!

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> This question was submitted 7 hours ago and appears on the front page with 8 points. There must be a way to play with the ranking algorithm.

<comment> vezzy-fnord It's the mods out with a new feature, see dang's reply here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9864365](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9864365)

<comment><USER47> Interesting that 8 points was enough. Well, it's off to the races. People should remember Perl programmers sleep late and live on the West Coast. Nothing before 1pm EST.

Let the Perl reminiscing commence.

Also, the warning as to why you should never start over.

[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html)

<comment><USER48> I started out learning Perl. This was when 5.10 was the newest version which was pretty much forever ago.

I just went to look up Perl 5.10 release notes, and they billed it as "the first major upgrade... in over five years."

[http://dev.perl.org/perl5/news/2007/perl-5.10.0.html](http://dev.perl.org/perl5/news/2007/perl-5.10.0.html)

I would have loved to keep using Perl in a professional setting but even when I first learned it, it was already forever between two major updates. Perl was fun to use. It's just too bad everyone moved on.

<comment><USER49> That was the nadir of perl releases. Starting in 2010, they've released a new major version each year.

The first serious perl compiler was just released a week ago: [http://rperl.org/](http://rperl.org/)

Some people moved on, some people stayed.

<comment><USER50> How do come to the opinion that rperl is the first "serious perl compiler"? It certainly is not.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to Gain or Lose 30 Minutes of Life Every Day  - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-to-gain-or-lose-30-minutes-of-life-everyday <comment><USER2> Keep in mind that life expectancy is a statistical notion. Something specific is going to kill you. You won't die or live 30 minutes longer or shorter as a result of a cigarette or a meal many years in the past.

Rather, these behaviors are correlated with outcomes, and average to 20 or 30 minutes or whatever. This sort of daily accounting is misleading.

Similarly, the notion that we are living longer largely has to do with less infant mortality. Specific people are not dying at birth that otherwise would have, pushing up the expectancy. Someone else's not-dying-at-birth hasn't made you healthier.

Now, is the "20 minutes a day" thing a noble lie, to encourage good behavior? Perhaps. But that should be put to scientific scrutiny too: to what degree have people changed their behavior due to these notions, and what's the outcome?

Can I add two years to my life by regularly reading pop-sci recommendations?

<comment><USER3> Exercising for 20 minutes a day to add 60 minutes to my life sounds like a good plan.

I wonder if other things are reproducible. Is the "1 alcoholic drink" thing been replicated when correcting for income? Lots of rich people may have 1 drink a day, and so this pushes up the average of the "1 drink a day people", but it doesn't mean you can replicate it.

<comment><USER4> I've always hypothesised alcohol consumption is largely independent of income.

At both ends of the wealth spectrum you find people drinking far more alcohol than is healthy, just in different forms.

<comment><USER3> Yes, but what group of people drinks exactly 1 drink a day?

I'm aware this could be a just-so story I've explained to myself.

<comment><USER5> I do. I usually have one glass of alcoholic drink with dinner (beer or wine, depending on the food). I don't often drink when I go out, except on special occasions.

<comment><USER6> The fact that you 'go out' (especially often enough to distinguish between 'normal' occasions and 'special' occasions) puts you pretty firmly in the 'wealthy' class (at least as far as most of the world is concerned), and the other implications of your class will likely contribute to a longer life than someone who is less well off.

So, will you live longer _because_ you have one drink a day, or is the fact that you're able to have one drink a day simply a byproduct of a lifestyle that will naturally lead to a longer life?

<comment><USER5> Uh, no. "Go out" simply means "attend social event."

You're telling me that a young man in the poorest part of Africa doesn't "go out" with his buddies now and then?

<comment><USER6> In the context, 'go out' clearly meant 'go out to meals at restaurants where alcoholic beverages are the social norm.'

Yes, I'm absolutely telling you that a significant portion of the world does not have the resources to do that (even 'now and then').

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Again with the red meat?! Is there actually a real study that has established a causal relationship between eating meat and living shorter?

<comment><USER8> I'm not a big fan of the overweight argument either. If I can find it, I read an article just the other day[1] that said there was no expectation of untimely death from being in a BMI that is considered 'overweight'. So there is no lost time there. And a couple drinks a night isn't going to cost you any time either.

[1] [http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-overweight- surviv...](http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-overweight- survival-20130102,0,7418358.story)

<comment><USER9> BMI is an absolute crap metric. It's vaguely useful for populations (and even there serious objections have been raised). It's utterly inappropriate for individuals, particularly when ready alternatives exist (waist size, for example, is a more robust predictor, despite its own vagaries).

For individuals, BMI suffers in that it generally understates obesity in unfit, but "BMI-compliant" individuals, while overstating obesity in fit, BMI- noncompliant individuals. Which means that interventions are _not_ indicated for those who would benefit and _are_ indicated for those who would not.

Generally, there's also the issue that there are large natural variations in healthy human weights, and no single target or designator will be appropriate for all. Fitness is multidimensional, and any attempt to reduce it to a single metric will likely fail.

My lay recollection is that slightly higher-than-prescribed BMI is positively associated with greater life expectancy. Rationales vary, but among them, sick or ill individuals typically have lower-than-average bodyweights (skewing life expectancy down for low BMI scores), and athletes typically have elevated BMIs. Studies of Scandinavian Olympic athletes shows a pronounced lifetime mortality benefit to having competed in games (which tends to balance out the notoriously poor life expectancies of US professional athletes, particularly football, many associated with cumulative injuries sustained).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is might be a helpful way to get people to care about making small, incremental improvements but the scientific basis is suspect.

There is no evidence that 20 minutes of exercise adds an hour to your life. Taking the aggregate information around years and dividing it into days is not a meaningful operation and I'm sure that Spiegelhalter knows that as he says that this method of displaying the data "seems to resonate with people".

As an aside, I've heard Dr Spiegelhalter regularly contributing to More or Less[1] and he seems to be a well informed scientist.

[1] <http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qshd>

<comment><USER11> I'll assume these figures apply to only established daily patterns.

I find exercising lonely, painful, boring, and stupidity inducing - although I completely believe others obtain opposite results. If I had a choice for myself between exercising for 20 minutes, then dying, or dying immediately, I'd choose the latter.

The non-exercising part of my life is spent pleasantly or sleeping, so I see a net gain of 27 minutes ((60 minutes life extension - 20 minutes exercising) * 2/3(awake factor)) for the first 20 minutes/day of exercising, but a net 7 minute loss for the next 40 minutes ((30 minutes life extension - 40 minutes exercising) * 2/3(awake factor)).

Am I using these numbers correctly?

<comment><USER12> Even if you don't like exercise, it isn't necessarily a loss. Have you considered the potential quality-of-life improvements you could enjoy during the time you aren't exercising? E.g. better mood, better health, more energy/vigor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Silly system. Takes very broad and multivariable dependent statistics and tries to parse them down to micro lifestyle criteria.

Red meat is a perfect example. There are no convincing studies that demonstrate that it as an independent factor reduces life expectancy. If anything, quite the opposite is true, based on previous generations or the health of populations where red meat is very heavily consumed but suffer few other adverse major health factors.

<comment><USER14>
      Takes very broad and multivariable dependent statistics and tries to parse them down to micro lifestyle criteria.

That's the point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have a hard time believing I could start smoking 1 cigarette per an hour if I stood at my desk instead of sat, and the bad (smoking) would be balanced out with the good (standing)?

Is sitting really that bad? Or is smoking really not that bad?

<comment><USER16> Sitting really is that bad.

I have a script on my work computer that runs once every hour, reminding me to get up and making suggestions on things I can do: make some tea, do some situps, do some pushups, do some leg lifts, go up and down the stairs, take a walk around the block, and so on.

I lack self-discipline but am very obedient, so it has been extremely successful for me.

<comment><USER17> Mind sharing your script? I'd love to have something similar.

<comment><USER18> For Ubuntu, try this: [http://askubuntu.com/questions/63999/how-can-i-install- typin...](http://askubuntu.com/questions/63999/how-can-i-install-typing-break)

<comment><USER17> Thanks! I found a good free one for OS X as well:

<http://www.dejal.com/timeout/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> These articles always seem to ignore quality of life - they assume that more life is necessarily a better thing. I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking that an extra ten years of life isn't much to look forward to if your mental and physical faculties are degraded to the point that you're a shadow of your former self. Better to burn out than fade away...?

<comment><USER20> You're assumption is that you get a fixed amount of functional life, followed by a variable amount of less- or non-functional life. OTOH, you might get a variable amount of functional life, followed by a more-or-less fixed amount of non-functional life. In general, I think the second option more closely matches how we understand aging and disease.

(Also, watch the TED talk by the referenced professor. He doesn't ignore quality of life.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Spiegelhalter's TED talk about this subject is quite good.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=4...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=4LSbnEgvmG8)

</comment><comment><USER22> Prior to reading the article I thought it was going to be about the way smokers get an hourly break of 5 mins at work while non-smokers don't. That's always an interesting subject.

<comment><USER23> Would your employer prevent you from going outside for 5 minutes every hour?

That actually sounds like a great idea. Once an hour, head down to the street and walk a couple blocks.

<comment><USER22> I'm sure they wouldn't mind - the timing would obviously be dependent upon business but that isn't a consideration for the smokers I work with, they just leave their colleagues to take up the slack.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Scientific American's website is riddled with ads. Can AdBlock get rid of those full-page intermissions? I might finally install it.

<comment><USER25> Yes, except for the tweet/+1/reddit/others floating bar.

<comment><USER26> Adblock can do them too! You can either add them manually or subscribe to a filter that has them all already - I use "Fanboy's Annoyance List".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Its the comments that are the best part of that article. Wow.</comment>


How can ISPs need more money for service when Netflix charges only $7.99? - <AUTHOR>

So here is my thought: Lets take, as an example,a group of people who get Netflix.  Those same people use CheapBastardISP.  Those customers pay $50 a month for broadband. They use that broadband to connect to Netflix and download movies.  The ISP screams that their customers are using too much bandwidth and Netflix needs to pay them more.... this makes no sense. The customer uses the ISP's pipe and Netflix pipe to download the movie. If Netflix can pay for that amount of bandwidth use when customers pay $8, why cant the ISPs handle that amount of bandwidth on $50?<p>I seriously do not think that Netflix takes up more than 1/6th of the  total internet use of all their customers on average. <comment><USER2> Bandwidth isn't cheap if you're away from a large metropolitan area. Our prices are somewhere near $3k per gigabit circuit, but you can do 10gbit for like $6k. Cogent and HE are dirt cheap if you can get them, but Cogent is garbage and HE isn't always available.

Netflix is a serious strain on our networks. It only takes 75 subscribers streaming HD concurrently to eat 500mbit. Do the math. 75*$6=$600, but our cost on that bandwidth is $1500?

It hurts. Don't blame the ISPs though. The entire ecosystem is designed to screw anyone who can't get multiple 40gbit+ circuits.

edit: had netflix at $7 not $8

Might I also add that a year and a half ago we were still paying $2000 for a T3?

<comment><USER3> How about we blame the metro ISPs and not the rural ones? The 80% of Americans that live in cities should _all_ have world-class internet the way people in Tokyo and Helsinki do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Lack of true competition.

ISP's have little true competition anymore against other ISPs, so there is very little competitive pressure to force prices down to the actual costs plus a small margin.

Or, to put it another way, the ISP can charge $50 just because it can.

</comment><comment><USER5> Because there is no competition. They are the only ones with the basketball court and the basketball to boot. Cities have tried to implement their own internet only for them to whine "anticompetitive!" and then increase their prices $10.

</comment><comment><USER6> Because last mile bandwidth has significantly different economics to data centre and interchange bandwidth economics.

</comment><comment><USER7> The reason is greed and the means is extortion. They have the ability to slow down traffic if a service isn't paying up and that gives them the tool.

</comment><comment><USER8> You're comparing apples and oranges.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd like to know how. I am confused. :) it just seems to me that Netflix pays for bandwidth and so does the ISP. And bandwidth use is what is at question here because its what the ISP is complaining customers use too much of.

<comment><USER9> Because the ISPs oversell their actual bandwidth on the hope that no one actually uses all of it at the same time. It's like how an airline might overbook a flight expecting a few people to not show up. Then Netflix comes along and everyone can very easily max out their bandwidth simultaneously all streaming movies in the evening.

<comment><USER10> I can see this as a valid point, but netflix has been around for years now. surely they still can't still be using the same thought process..

airlines get burned anytime they oversell and everyone does show up, they give out flight vouchers, hotel rooms, meal tickets all on top of another flight a few hours later or the next day..</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Can Vipassana meditation help me concentrate better? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for a tool that can help me concentrate on a singular task for extended periods of time. Those experienced in Vipassana meditation: do you think attending a 10-day meditation camp can help my cause? <comment><USER2> Possibly. To test it out, you can use brainwave entrainment software like Neuro-Programmer 3. Just loop the session and listen to it as you work and see if it helps you.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes, undoubtedly.

</comment><comment><USER4> yes, it will definitely help</comment>


Startup Rage Comics: Using rage to evaluate startup ideas - <AUTHOR> http://startuprage.com

<comment><USER2> I'm upvoting this, not because I think it's a good idea, but because I want to live in a more surreal world, and having startups audition using rage comics seems like a great leap forward.

</comment><comment><USER3> "me gusta" isn't just pleasure, but pleasure from something others might consider strange. Having your startup make users go "me gusta" might not be what you want. See: [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sweet-jesus-face-sweet- jesus-h...](http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sweet-jesus-face-sweet-jesus-have- mercy)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ahh you're right. The "Sweet Jesus" face would be more appropriate for that incredible bliss. It is important to understand the subtleties.

One part that I had forgotten to talk about within the post was the fact that each face can't be lumped into a single emotive adjective.

It is the fact that the faces can mean different things depending on the context of what happened before and what happened after actually gives them more power over its written counterpart.

I'd argue it's in the subtle details of different facial arrangements that help explain why there is such a strong effect of empathy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I feel like reddit.com should be referenced in this article. All I know about rage comics comes from reddit.

</comment><comment><USER5> Here's my rage comic for <http://mocku.ps> and also my very first rage comic.

<http://imgur.com/HKSI3>

</comment><comment><USER6> Awesome idea! This would benefit greatly from a "starter deck" of stock pictures collected from knowyourmeme or possibly less reputable but fresher sources.

<comment><AUTHOR> A clean site that I used to make the sample comics is at: <http://ragemaker.net>

It has a listing of the standard emotive faces that you can drag and drop to portray your story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There you go: <http://imgur.com/lztPh>. Not exactly a "rage" comic though...

</comment><comment><USER8> Awesome, would love to see more of these.

Perhaps this is a litmus test for my own ideas!

</comment><comment><USER9> jiggity, this is an awesome idea. i think i'm going to do this and put it in a pitch deck. =)

<comment><USER10> i totally made one of these for messageparty in april. will have to dig through my inbox...</comment></comment>


Who's Afraid of Joe Rogan? - <AUTHOR> https://spectator.org/whos-afraid-of-joe-rogan/ <comment><USER2> I don't know about this Atlantic Publication. But God forbid anyone offends them because their opiniobs sound important.

</comment><comment><USER3> A truly brilliant insight, this. I'm glad I clicked this link and read this article. My life is immeasurably improved for having done so. Thank you, Andrenth, for bringing this to my attention. For not hiding your lamp under a bushel. For brightening my day. Wonderful. I'm going to go and read it again, and again, and again. Like the Bible, like the Art of War, like Lovecraft, this is the wisdom that just never stops giving.</comment>


New Mathematical Model Suggests How The Brain Might Stay In Balance - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090927152049.htm <comment> a-priori The article is light on details, but I suspect that his model is predicting the cortical minicolumns. Minicolumns are small, comprising around 100 neurons, but are mostly self-contained, self-regulating units, and are very consistent across all mammals.

</comment><comment><USER2> <http://arxiv.org/abs/0808.3996>

</comment><comment><USER3> _our system is anti-Hebbian_

From what I can tell from the description, thats not quite right. Its Hebbian between groups but anti-Hebbian within a group. Am I reading this correctly?</comment>


The psychology of power: Absolutely - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15328544 <comment><USER2> "The alternative, though cleaner, is leadership by wimps." - What an underhanded way to validate the current power structure. The alternative is not leadership by wimps but a better political and power structure with more inherent fairness for all.

</comment><comment><USER3> Finally!

I've always hated that saying. "Absolute power corrupts absolutely." Nonsense.

Just look at the types of individuals who gain access to absolute power. Either they're ruthlessly ambitious, men for whom the ends always justify the means, or they're born into royalty/nobility and have a distorted sense of their own worth-- and the worth of others.

<comment><USER4> This is just correlation vs causation. ;-)

It is false that "Absolute power corrupts absolutely.", but it is true that "Those who are in absolute power are corrupted absolutely".

<comment><USER3> Yes sir, yessir, yezzir. Exactly what I'm trying to say. :D

(Caution ahead: unnecessary detour...in the form of a light rant)

Correlation is so, so often mistaken for causation. And unlike most logical fallacies, 'correlation vs. causation' seems to know no borders whatsoever. That fact is really very striking to me.

 _Ad hominem_ attacks, for example, are extremely prevalent in political discussion, especially on political talk shows, but you'd rarely see one in such forums as medical journals, formal debates, et al.

But 'correlation vs. causation' fallacies seem, to me at least, to be pervasive throughout nearly every-- if not all-- forums of discussion. Sure, it's worse in some areas than it is in others, but it's _everywhere_. Personally, I'm most annoyed when I see it in magazine and newspaper articles (especially frequent in those on medical studies and surveys and whatnot), not because journalists/writers should be more aware of this fallacy than the rest of the population but because these places are _supposed to be_ our most reliable, most verifiable sources of information available. And they're not just supposed to be, _they claim to be_ as well.

99.237% of the time, I'm a very laid-back guy. 0.763% of the time, I'm reading an article titled "Eating mashed potatoes and gravy causes CANCER?" or some similar nonsense. (Intentionally ridiculous example chosen. Everybody knows mashed potatoes and gravy have no capacity for evil, none whatsoever.)

<comment><USER3> 1\. Make that "109.237% of the time." I always go 110%. What's that, you say? Mathematically impossible? I used to think so too. Then one day I slept for 26.4 hours.

2\. In completely unrelated web surfing occurring in totally different tabs on the opposite side of my Firefox window, I was searching thesaurus.com for a contextually superior synonym of 'saying'/'phrase'. Plenty to choose from, of course. I was thinking of going with 'aphorism' for a moment, so I switched from thesaurus to dictionary to make certain it correctly fit my context.

Look for yourself: <http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/aphorism>

Infuriating how pervasive its usage is. Infuriating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> i recommend, as always, Bertrand Dejouvenal's On Power.

<comment><USER3> Give me some truly convincing reasoning, _bitte_? Doesn't have to be long; succinctness, after all, is one of the forms in which power appears.

> as always

Or, of course, a link to another time you did.

<comment><USER5> On Power is about the scope of political power throughout history. I couldn't recommend it to someone already intimately familiar with the last few hundred years, but as an overview of history that doesn't simply devolve into "story time" (viewing history as a coherent narrative in the style that we are comfortable with; involving heroes, villains, and dramatic tension) it is hard to beat. Since such gross simplification is all most people are familiar with (think the history channel) I recommend it to everyone as a starting point for non-pandering historical analysis.

In addition it is only $11 for a very nice book that will impress others :p</comment></comment></comment>


At a Software Powerhouse, the Good Life Is Under Siege - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/business/22sas.html?_r=1 <comment><USER2> I think the article misses an important point: SAS is a generational thing, and the influence of generation that cut their teeth on SAS and VAX mainframes in the 1980s is waning. There's a reason why the SAS ads you see in the airports are all targeted at management--because that's where all those people work now. And soon they will retire.

They would never dare advertise to the poor analysts who are forced to actually _use_ SAS to get work done, because we know what turd it is. I do not think I exaggerate when I say that not a single up-and-coming statistician in this day and age chooses expensive, obfuscated SAS as the language with which to hone their skills. It is truly the worst language I have ever had the misfortune of being forced to learn (by an old professor, who knew SAS and refused to learn anything else.) Somebody back me up here.

There are a few areas where SAS is unrivaled--it can crunch huge data and exploit parallel processing better than other off-the-shelf solutions. That feature gap will close over time as R and other open tools rise in popularity. And there will always be a niche market for SAS programmers because many companies have huge libraries of SAS code which run their credit card/oil rig/whatever analytics, and starting from scratch is not an option. But SAS's dominance is unquestionably on the decline, and a lot of it has to do with the fact that next generation a) isn't being trained on SAS and b) doesn't want to be.

<comment><USER3> I haven't seen SAS code before. I'll take your word that it's ugly. However, if SAS can adopt new standards, I hardly see them waning. Companies will always be thirsty for better ways to understand their customers, and now with the ease at which new internet companies are started and more people become connected, the demand for those services is only going to increase. If SAS can continue to outperform by investing in R&D and adopt new ways to bring in fresh talent (ie use more open-source tools) to keep them ahead of the curve, they'll do just fine.

<comment><USER4> It's not ugly. It's hideous. I use Stata (commercial) and R (free), and both have a much better language.

The only reason why people I know use SAS is to deal with very-big datasets directly, instead of having to partition the data by hand.

<comment><USER5> To be fair, SAS for stats has been dead for a decade. Their "state of the art" lags R by at least that much...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I really enjoyed that article. The active M&A in business intelligence software companies shows just how big Big Data is for business, and how big the market is for new startups to tailor specific techniques for niche industries. However, now that the secret is out, its going to be more difficult to prove that your secret sauce is superior than your competitors. The winners in this market will be those who can deliver results fast, and be nimble enough to account for the elastic nature of Big datasets.

<comment><USER6> BI software and enterprise software in general is a huge opportunity for startups - I know PG and YC had it as one of the RFS listings at one point.

I'm not sure that the winners will be those can deliver results fast and exhibit quick adaptability. In general, I agree that the Hacker News community is more than technically capable enough to do better than the big BI offerings. But I've been surprised (or shown my naivete if you prefer) at how much "old school" networking still accounts for sales in this space. To succeed, you are aiming at mid-level and higher execs who are used to (seriously) being wined and dined in a way that I think most hardcore tech companies would be surprised at.

Figuring out how to circumvent the normal sales channels is probably at least as important as whatever tech you put in front of people for enterprise software. I've seen how successful some companies are at simply pushing software out to their existing customer channel and making $$ off of that.

All that said, and I still have my eye on a little slice of that pie chart . . .

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> can someone who knows explain what SAS is and why it is useful( without buzzwords )

Is it a scripting language that deals with data? How is it better than SQL?

<comment><USER8> I think it's closer to a language for easily expressing and computing statistics, like R, with a very powerful set of existing methods. Anyone?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "SPSS, a maker of predictive modeling software"

AFAIK, SPSS mostly runs regressions.. linear, logit, clusters.. and same for SAS. Calling them "Business Intelligence" appears to me as some BS name to sound more impressive to mgmt in big firms.

</comment><comment><USER9> One thing that's not mention prominently in the article is that while SAS provides many perks to its employees, it actually has a history of paying salaries significantly below industry standards.

<comment><USER10> could that be a result of a lower cost of living in cary, north carolina?

<comment><USER6> Not really. IBM has a huge presence, still over 8500+ employees I think and has traditionally paid at the higher end of software developer salaries on average. And until Nortel imploded this decade, they were also in the mix as a top-paying, always-hiring type of place here.

Basically, SAS has always paid significantly less than others in the park (RTP). I think it's always been pushed as more of a lifestyle place - SAS is still privately held, so it was supposed to be a little more "sane" than big, quarterly focused IT companies.

I do know folks who have worked there and have enjoyed significant work flexibility (eg, working from home from other states) but also have worked with ex-SAS'ers who left because of what I understand to be a laid-back to the point of not getting work done atmosphere.

While cost of living is good in NC, here in the Raleigh/Durham/Cary/Chapel Hill area, it's definitely significantly higher than other places in NC. It's much cheaper than the biggest metro areas (SV, Boston, NY, DC) but after that it tends to run higher than you might think, particularly if you are shopping for homes in areas with "good" school districts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The amazing thing about SAS is that it makes R look like a beautifully designed language. (R is great, but has a LOT of idiosyncracies related to silly type conversion defaults.)

</comment><comment><USER12> single page please [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/business/22sas.html?_r=2&#...</a>

</comment><comment><USER13> My take-away is that even a great company with great culture to foster creativity can have serious problem when it grows to a big organization.

It seems creativity happens mostly in little start-ups.</comment>


Binance to acquire CoinMarketCap for $400M - <AUTHOR> https://decrypt.co/24031/binance-to-acquire-coinmarketcap-in-400-million-deal <comment><USER2> Congrats to the CMC team, but I fail to see how barring some special IP this makes sense at that valuation; they're an index that, while useful to an exchange, can't really be worth $400 Million in a current (albeit resilient) crypto Bear Market.

Binanace must be wanting to get rid of some Yuan as the CCP is just dumping Billions of it into the Market via bailouts, while people in Wuhan are supposedly coming [1] back online and wanting to 'Revenge shop.'

As for the idea of monopolizing such information, sites like Coingecko have been around for nearly as long as CMC, so it makes no sense. The other notable purchases Binance as made have been other exchanges, and a news site in China, which make actual sense to strengthen their position or get a foot-hold in other Markets in their core business as an exchange.

1: [https://oklahoman.com/article/5659041/time-to-revenge- shop-c...](https://oklahoman.com/article/5659041/time-to-revenge-shop-chinas- virus-hot-spot-reopens)

<comment><USER3> I think it's because they have a massive audience, and along with that comes influence and marketing/advertising opportunity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 400 Million?! Maybe I'm missing something, but last time I checked, CoinMarketCap was just a stock ticker website for cryptocurrencies. Where is the value...?

<comment><USER5> You're underestimating the influence CMC has over the space.

They determine what exchange volume is legit and what isn't, also what coins are worthy of being listed. At the least, this gives Binance additional stability, at the most, they can really consolidate trading volume at their exchange and for Binance approved coins.

<comment><USER2> >They determine what exchange volume is legit and what isn't, also what coins are worthy of being listed.

Heh, well this aged well:

[https://bitcoinist.com/coinmarketcap-new-listing- vote/](https://bitcoinist.com/coinmarketcap-new-listing-vote/)

[https://bitcoinist.com/binance-listing-2-6-million- fee/](https://bitcoinist.com/binance-listing-2-6-million-fee/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> To the suspicious, CMC is more than a crypto prices list: [https://coinmarketcap.com/api/pricing/](https://coinmarketcap.com/api/pricing/)

They also have several openings: [https://jobs.coinmarketcap.com/employers/293118-coinmarketca...](https://jobs.coinmarketcap.com/employers/293118-coinmarketcap?utm_source=coinmarketcap&utm_content=footer)

<comment><USER7> I'm one of the paying client for the API, people in the comments fail to understand that CMC API has many paying customers

<comment><USER2> > I'm one of the paying client for the API, people in the comments fail to > understand that CMC API has many paying customers

Ok, I'll bite as I think I have somewhat of an idea what their underlying value is from this service, even though I admit I don't trade; do you honestly believe that without that rating system offered to the Institutional Investment crowd I mentioned earlier they'd be at even a fraction of their valuation/purchase price?

I ask because gaining a paying client list, which is probably a rounding error in comparison to Binance's current accrued trading fees, cannot really be the main selling point for this deal. Especially when investing in various cryptocurrencies itself is likely to have a higher risk-reward ratio than this API being the best thing since Bitcoin's Layer 2.

It's at best a (minor) value added service, in comparison to the potential of targeting and capturing the (predicted?) incoming waves capital flight risk, now that all this hot money is entering the Economy from China, US, EU, Australia, UK etc...

<comment><USER7> >do you honestly believe that without that rating system offered to the Institutional Investment crowd I mentioned earlier they'd be at even a fraction of their valuation/purchase price?

Standard license is $299/ mo, even with only 3000 paying customers, and there are likely way more than 3000 paying customers, that would be $10M a year in revenue

CMC is a good asset and a valuation/purchase price of $400M is a fair price for the API product only, let alone the ranking /rating aspect

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> $400 million for a consumer-facing analytics company with some SaaS data streams. HN can hate on crypto all it wants, but that's a real startup success! Great work CMC

</comment><comment><USER9> Perhaps this isn't $400M in cash, but instead is $400M in binance-coins, which are virtually worthless, but make crypto startups appear much more valuable.

<comment><USER2> You mean this:

[https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/binance- coin/](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/binance-coin/)

Which would effectively give them close to 1/4 of the entire token supply, which they could dump at any time and disrupt Binances financials? That's worse than giving them cheaply printed fiat from all of these bailouts/stimulus.

<comment><USER10> Agreed. The bailout money will go straight into crypto.

I predict that people are going to start taking out bank loans at 0% interest to buy crypto. Crypto assets have a very unusual attribute that they cannot always be recovered in case of bankrupcy because only the owner knows the private key to their wallet and they can claim to have 'lost their keys'. Cryptocurrencies therefore offer a decentralized mechanism to allow people to convert their ever inflating debt-money (which is not even their own money) into money that is their own and in limited supply.

Is it unethical? Yes, but we all know what happens when everyone start doing the wrong thing; it becomes OK. That's how fiat money came about; it's also highly unethical (compared to gold-backed currency), but when all the banks started loaning money backed by gold which they didn't actually have, it became OK too.

Our financial system's incentives which reward reckless behavior are going to be its own demise.

<comment><USER11> I also predict some utter idiots will indeed take out low interest loans and stake them in the heavily manipulated, volatile casino that is the cryptocurrency market.

Then they will find themselves with a pile of debt and no way to pay it off, just as many have before when 'investing' in hokey schemes and outright scams.

<comment><USER2> > Then they will find themselves with a pile of debt and no way to pay it off, > just as many have before when 'investing' in hokey schemes and outright > scams.

Oh, you mean like the rest of the entire banking and financial markets that led to all of the bailouts in the first place? And enriched and further consolidated the power of the 'too big to fail' institutions that continue to be rewarded for their corruption.

I'm not going to engage with the same tired arguments we had last time, and I don't doubt the scenario above happening either now that the Federal Reserve essentially got Carte Blanche to buy up so many loans should they go bad from the Banks, but given the current situation you have to at least see the BLATANT irony in your statement.

The SEC shuts down the mainly algo-trained, bot-trading driven stock market because they're taking on too many loses and you're decrying Crypto as the hotbed of malfeasance and manipulation?

If you can't see regulatory capture when it stares at you in the face this way, maybe you should really be looking at another more pertinent axe to grind.

<comment><USER12> Whataboutism does not strengthen your own position.

Cryptocurrencies still suck as currencies and they are always just one regulatory action away from becoming practically useless for non-criminals.

<comment><USER2> > Whataboutism does not strengthen your own position.

Granted, but what you may fail to see is that Cryptocurrency is reactionary to the blatant corruption that has been normalized, the very same beahviour that the poster decries is plaguing Cryptocurrenices without providing much of an argument.

When in reality, currencies like Bitcoin continue to follow the Network's protocol that it derives its value from and has not detracted from it, despite the continuous polemics and external threats and attacks.

Sucks in what way exactly?

Because this is always a point of contention for most of its detractors. They aggregate all Cryptocurrencies into a single group, which is absurd.

Telling me how easy it is to lose a private key, thus your ability to move your funds, may be a valid point to your argument as functional (read: entirely fool-proof) key storage is still why I think its not ready for global mainstream use, in my opinion; but telling me about how a celebrity influencer Marketed alt/ICO didn't 1000x overnight as projected and instead crashed and burned as the creators absconded with the money that you read a blurb on techcrunch's twitter account is not.

Because from where I'm standing: I continue to have access to a low cost, friction-less token on an immutable ledger operating on the World's most secure Network on my phone, that I can use anywhere with wifi, and I can pay anyone who currently accepts Bitcoin and it operates 24/7 without anyone's permission.

And I can program it to do various things on top of that should I need it to, with built in trustless systems; and is also one that I can use to divide my unit of currency to 8 decimal points and still be able to operate on said network(s).

All of which incentivizes not only fair commerce and a real usecase for triple bottom line accounting, as it spurs on renewable energy as its main source as it continues to grow but also allows for previously marginalized/undocumented people into an economic system to be on boarded; unlike the exclusionary, war and fossil fueled driven fiat based system that is used to props up the Institutions I think we all know have outlived their purpose.

<comment><USER12> > Sucks in what way exactly?

You can't really use them as currencies. They're too unstable. Cryptocurrency transactions are taxable events in the US. That alone is too much of hassle to make them worthwhile.

They're usually backed by nothing, which makes them a purely speculative risk asset. The most stable coins are backed, ironically, by fiat. Sometimes with fractional reserve. I've looked into crypto backed by precious metals, but liquidity is awful.

So they're useless as currencies, they're useless as a hedge, the only use for cryptocurrency is to speculate on cryptocurrency.

> Because from where I'm standing: I continue to have access to a low cost, > friction-less token on an immutable ledger operating on the World's most > secure Network on my phone, that I can use anywhere with wifi, and I can pay > anyone who currently accepts Bitcoin and it operates 24/7 without anyone's > permission.

Yes, that's the gimmick. I get it.

> And I can program it to do various things on top of that should I need it > to, with built in trustless systems

All your "trustless" system can do is shift around entries on digital ledgers. That's not that useful. Most systems require some degree of real world trust and accountability.

For example, how does cryptocurrency deal with fraud and theft? Quite poorly, if you ask me.

> All of which incentivizes not only fair commerce and a real usecase for > triple bottom line accounting, as it spurs on renewable energy as its main > source as it continues to grow but also allows for previously > marginalized/undocumented people into an economic system to be on boarded

I don't see any evidence that it actually does that. Sounds more like wishful thinking.

<comment><USER13> > So they're useless as currencies

Maybe to you, just like the INR is useless to you as a currency (because you don't live in India). Many people do use Bitcoin as currency, and transact with it every day.

<comment><USER12> > Maybe to you, just like the INR is useless to you as a currency (because you > don't live in India).

Apples and Oranges.

> Many people do use Bitcoin as currency, and transact with it every day.

Do they really? To buy _what_? Other cryptocurrencies?

Virtually nobody accepts Bitcoin as a currency. Some shops accept Bitcoin as the vehicle for transactions in USD or EUR, or whatever. They use services like Bitpay, who pay out in ordinary currencies. Prices are calculated based on the Bitcoin market price in ordinary currencies - plus a markup for volatility and transaction fees, which is generally more expensive than just using the ordinary currencies themselves.

That's not Bitcoin being used like a currency, that's Bitcoin being used like a payment provider, like PayPal. Millions of people transact with PayPal every day, but PayPal is not a currency.

Of course, that one time some guy bought a Pizza or even a House with Bitcoin. That's Bitcoin being used "like a currency". Exceptions to the rule.

<comment><USER13> > Virtually nobody accepts Bitcoin as a currency. Some shops accept Bitcoin as > the vehicle for transactions in USD or EUR, or whatever. They use services > like Bitpay, who pay out in ordinary currencies. Prices are calculated based > on the Bitcoin market price in ordinary currencies - plus a markup for > volatility and transaction fees, which is generally more expensive than just > using the ordinary currencies themselves.

I mean if you just want to ignore the fact that all over Europe, you can pay rent, buy groceries, and live your life solely by using bitcoin, then I guess there's no arguing with you. You live in your own little bubble.

<comment><USER12> > I mean if you just want to ignore the fact that all over Europe, you can pay > rent, buy groceries, and live your life solely by using bitcoin, then I > guess there's no arguing with you.

That's a _massive_ exaggeration. I can guarantee you 99.99% of landlords will not accept Bitcoin as payment. Most major stores will not accept Bitcoin.

Are there a couple of hipster places in major cities that may accept Bitcoin? Sure, presumably you can waste your money exclusively dining and shopping there, if that's your thing.

Pretty much nobody is going to do that in their daily life though, except to write one of these "I lived only on Bitcoin for a month" blog posts. That's because Bitcoin _sucks as a currency_. Right now, a single transaction to go through in about _ten minutes_ will cost almost a dollar. It's just not practical.

Of course you can also get one of these Bitcoin credit cards and pay almost everywhere in the whole world. Again, that's not Bitcoin used a currency, that's Bitcoin used as a gimmick payment platform.

> You live in your own little bubble.

I suspect the same of you.

<comment><USER14> Look into Bitpay and others. Square has it built in too. It's rare but it's around. Look for the sticker next to Visa, MasterCard. Ever head of Diners Club? Ever heard of buying a sandwich with stock shares? Me either.

<comment><USER12> > Look into Bitpay and others.

I already mentioned Bitpay and made the distinction there.

> Ever heard of buying a sandwich with stock shares?

Well no, stocks aren't currency. That's my point. Bitcoin sucks at being _a currency_.

Unlike stocks, it also sucks _as an investment_ , because like gold, it doesn't do any work, a Bitcoin stays a Bitcoin.

Unlike gold however, it also sucks _as a hedge_ , because there is no intrinsic value to it.

So, what's the point of Bitcoin? Price speculation. You can speculate on the price of anything, like Beanie Babies or Funco Pops or trading cards.

At least a Bitcoin doesn't take up space on a landfill, should it become worthless. On the other hand, the electricity cost of producing is immense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Holy moly $400m for website that aggregates crypto coins data. Congrats to Coinmarketcap. I remember first using it in 2013, it was just another crypto website but it became the most popular soon after.

</comment><comment><USER16> Bye bye impartiality

</comment><comment><USER17> Nomics[0] is a viable alternative for those that are now suspect of CMC.

[0] [https://nomics.com](https://nomics.com)

<comment><USER18> prices are incorrect for me, says eth price is 101eur when its actually 120eur

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Well I guess it's time to find a different website to check Bitcoin prices.

</comment><comment><USER20> Waste of money</comment>


Show HN: Use Twitter as CLI for any *other* app - <AUTHOR>

Ever noticed that the 140 chars tweet sometimes feels like CLIing? Me too. So I made CtrlTwit with which you can use twitter as CLI to any other app (that has an API).
For example: you can like an instagram photo simply by replying "@instagram like #ctrltwit" to a tweet with an instagram photo.
Or, you can RSVP to a meetup simply by replying "@meetup rsvp yes #ctrltwit" to a tweet with a meetup link.
Or you can tweet "@foursquare where to eat? #ctrltwit" and fsq will reply with the best restaurant recommendation based on your location.
There are more examples on the website and of course I'd be happy to include any other app/API you can think about. If you run an app or API, you can let your users start using it via simple tweets with the help of CtrlTwit.
http://ctrltwit.com <comment><USER2> Interesting. Seems like there's a syntax to learn for each app you support?

Can you provide a few more details on how it works?

<comment><AUTHOR> Ye, I try to "translate" the API to simple english tweets. So each new supported API will create a new lingo.

It's a node/mongo app that listens on the #ctrltwit hashtag and processes the commands it gets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> :(){ :|:&};: #ctrltwit

<comment><AUTHOR> Is this a regexp? :)

<comment><USER4> (Not sure if your smiley means you're joking, but just in case you're not:) It's a shell forkbomb.</comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft issues a surprise new Windows 10 release – build 10159 - <AUTHOR> http://betanews.com/2015/06/30/microsoft-windows-10-build-10159/

<comment><USER2> I installed the 10158 less than 2 hours ago, and it just started to download 10159, dang it Microsoft, i am not prepared for this many new builds

I'm gonna get a build overdose if they keep this up :)

</comment><comment><USER3> More root certs?

<comment><USER4> A whole new build for a wallpaper?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best, easiest, no headache credit card payment gateway for websites - <AUTHOR>

What would be a good, easy, no headache, good standing credit card payment for a website I am creating. <comment><USER2> stripe.com

<comment><AUTHOR> They take no monthly charges. But charge 2.9% of every transcation + 0.3c

So for every dollar I would be paying them 0.029.

How about braintreepayments.com [from paypal]</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do I aquire skills to be an Autonomous Vehicles Engineer? - <AUTHOR> 	I completed my bachelors in Computer Science Engineering around 5 years back. I am currently working as a web and mobile application developer. My skill set includes Java, JavaScript, a couple of JavaScript frameworks - AngularJS, React, Node, and a little bit of Swift and Objective C. Of late I feel it very underwhelming and believe that I could do more. I want to move to a more challenging career stream. I want to gain skills to work on something like Autonomous vehicles. A few job listings I checked out mention very generic requirements as C/C++, Linux Systems etc as required skills, and all of these listing are looking for someone with years of experience in this field. I am looking for pointers on how I can acquire the required skills to get considered for these roles. Any guidance will be deeply appreciated!<p>TL,DR; Web developer and wannabe Autonomous Vehicles engineer looking for guidance. <comment><USER2> You should email employees and engineers from Aut Veh startups and see what they did or what they are looking for. The udacity Autonomous nanodegree gives an idea of what skills are relevant, but you have to see/learn what skills are they looking for enough for them to actually hire you. I completed a masters degree from a good university and did some research in machine learning. I think an advanced degree helps with credibility as well.</comment>


Google employees reportedly quit over military drone AI project - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2018/05/14/google-project-maven-employee-protest/ <comment><USER2> seems like a dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17074148](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17074148) which has more comments

</comment><comment><USER3> dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17064776](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17064776) (98 comments) (discussion of the Gizmodo article thats the source of this article)

</comment><comment><USER4> I once worked for a large industrial group in Europe. The kind that has a bit of a piece of every little pie there is - military, transportation, etc. I was pretty happy working there .. until I got a demo from the 'defence' group.

They demonstrated the willingness to push the company's technology into heinous, heinous territory. The kind of thing where a drone would be able to follow a single person in a crowd, and target them for execution - unguided, of course.

I quit the next day. Those of us who make technology, need to be very sure we see that it is not used destructively against the human species. The responsibility is very, very high. And, the danger is extreme. These people were revelling in the fact that they could develop targeted assassination drones and sell them to any country in the world.

Heinous.

<comment><USER5> That's the thing isn't it ? They can't do anything alone.

It always amazes me that those big entities exist, because they require such a huge highly educated and skilled human power. What are all those genius at the NSA thinking ? I can't imagine somebody smart enough to work here is not smart enough to understand the consequences of working there. So why are they not quitting ?

Social pressure and money are part of the equation, certainly. I remember when I turned down a Google interview, my close circle though it was weird that I did that, even more for ethical reason.

Having the best toys, budgets and projects certainly helps as well.

But still, I wonder.

<comment><USER6> Have you considered that there are people out there with values that differ from yours? It's not wildly impossible, regardless of what the screaming minority would have you believe.

Maybe they don't have a problem with working on such projects, because they agree with their end goal?

<comment><USER7> They probably understand others have different values. The confusion is, some values seem so self evident that its bewildering anyone with a certain level of intelligence wouldn't realize the same values.

I think the answer might be that they _do_ have the same values, but they have a different model of the world overall, which calls for different ways of achieving those values.

To take this to an extreme, imagine a person fighting for their life against actual criminals threatening vs a person fighting for their life against a random person they think is a shape-shifting alien impostor. Both are internally justified by the same values, one is externally justified by a more correct perception of reality.

<comment><USER8> How can you tell that your perception of reality is more "correct" than mine?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd like to offer the point of view that if the drones become better and more surgical in their precision, it would reduce civilian casualties.

Like it or not the world is full of extremists who would like nothing more than to hurt innocent people. There is no "oh just send the cops and arrest them!" route to take.

Shit, just look at the time Osama bin Laden could have been bombed with a tomahawk missile during Clinton's presidency. He didn't do it because of the potential to kill a Saudi prince he was meeting at that time.

Would those angry Googlers be against surgically killing Osama? I think not.

Better drone software might help track a potential target and present with the optimal window in which a target could be shot and have reduced civilian casualties. It could also present with better intel to let a surgical ground strike which would put more American soldiers at risk but would allow for better intel and again less civilian deaths.

Lastly, it could offer new knowledge and experience in tracking humans with drones during humanitarian disasters. It could also help in tracking victims of kidnapping, are the Googlers opposed to rescuing the hundreds and thousands kidnapped by Boko Haram and company?

Who is going to go into the African heart of darkness to rescue those people? Is it the arm chair Googlers who pretend to know better?

<comment><USER5> But again this assume the people giving order to the drone are the good guys.

But I never seen any good guys in my history books or in the news.

Hence I always assume, when given a power to somebody, that the person doesn't have my best interest in mind.

Let's all remember it's possible any of our country become one day a dictatorship. Just because we enjoyed a lot of freedom for the last decades doesn't exempt us from still working like we can loose it at any moment. Because we definitly can.

More pragmatically, with powerful AI, giant communications nets, huge database of everything and everybody, cameras with facial detection and wire typing everywhere, do you really want to add drones to the collections of what the power that be can do ?

<comment><USER9> If you can foresee what potential benefits each technological application has, then maybe i agree with you. There are plenty of examples where military applications and research has led to a bonanza of side applications which improve the human condition.

Look at the MRI imaging. They are a downstream invention that came from the development of nuclear weapons (nuclear magnetic resonance). How many lives do you think that has saved and improved in the past 70 years?

<comment><USER5> We could have gotten nuclear tech without the will to kill people. There are smart scientists outside of the military, and a need for power plants. Which everybody agree would have been built with safer tech without the need for the bomb.

Now the problem is never the tech, as usual. It's that the society we are living is not constructed in a way that can prevent the tech from being abused.

We are talking about a country that attacked Irak while lying out the WMD and against the vote of the majority of the world, killing countless people for no proven result and living a country still in ruin decades after that.

I'm not really trusting with the governments we have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wouldn't say that developing military hardware necessarily negates the "don't be evil" principal (especially if the developed articles are dual use, for both military and civilian applications). The western world, our principals and values have prospered for more than half a century in Pax Americana afforded, in a large part, by the prosperous US Military Industrial Complex.

I totally get the objection to developing combative AI - that's a separate ethical question - but you can contribute to the military and still maintain your humane values.

<comment><USER11> Given that the US military has killed nearly 4,000 people with drone strikes in Pakistan over the past decade, a country in which no formal military conflict exists, nor any formal enemy, just vague accusations of terrorist networks (and likely a bunch of political dissidents fed to them by the Pakistani government), I am really wondering where the "Pax" is coming from. Because if you do the math the odds of any given person knowing someone who was killed by a drone strike, or someone who knows someone who was, are pretty damn high. The US has brought hell to Pakistan.

I say fuck that.

<comment><USER12> If you're going to say that the US has brought hell to Pakistan, you should at least back it up with some reasoning. What would Pakistan look like right now without the US killing those 4000 people? What would surrounding countries look like? Why did the US kill those people? Would any other country in the US's position have reasonably killed them?

It's a complex issue that can't be summed up by saying "fuck that".

<comment><USER11> Just imagine your friends' mother was killed as collateral damage in a drone strike. Or your cousin. Or your friend in school. From a missile from an invisible unmanned machine in the sky. You don't know why. You don't if they were a terrorist or mistaken for a terrorist. They were killed by a foreign government that is colluding with your own corrupt government and you have no recourse within the law, can't even fight back. Yeah, it's like that.

Would you really like to justify killed 4000 persons of unknown status with zero legal proceedings because of...opportunity cost? Because Pakistan might look different if they _weren 't_ killed? I am not sure I could keep a straight face through that one. No. Just no.

And yes, missiles from the sky killing people: FUCK THAT. Rule of law. Round up those "terrorists" and interrogate them, charge them with crimes. I have no forgiveness for psychos on any side of this that want to push us back to barbarism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Kudos to those who is ready to stand for their principles.

If you are at G and thinking whether you should resign or not, remembers this - the market for AI talent is super hot. You will immediately find lots of great and challenging AI work pushing humanity forward

<comment> rm_-rf_slash Corollary: plenty of skilled engineers with fewer moralistic constraints will jump at the chance to do interesting work for high pay. For a company as large and wealthy as Google, they can continue to raise offer salaries until they are adequately staffed.

There is a school of thought that recommends "moral" people doing "immoral" work because if those people left then other "immoral" people will take those jobs and more readily implement "immoral" features. So the "moral" engineers have an incentive to stay and act as a front line against "immoral" actions, or at least have an insider's position for whistleblowing.

Military drones are here to stay, and whether or not the US builds them, other military powers certainly will.

Ultimately, I don't think this changes anything.

<comment><USER14> "If you don't do it, someone else will" does not go infinitely far. It's entirely possible that if enough people don't do it, no one will.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash The military industrial complex is a huge employer, both in the state of California and the rest of the county. The likelihood of enough people saying no to a high paying job like this is effectively zero.

And even if - wave a very large magic wand - every AI/ML engineer in the United States pledged to not work on military applications, the U.S, would just contract that same work out from the U.K., Canada, etc...

<comment><USER14> There is a limited amount of total work that can be done by those people. Every low-level employee who refuses to work on this decreases the overall capacity. Every manager who has to deal with recruiting new people and getting them up to speed reduces capacity. Every company with reduced ability to compete for bids reduces capacity. Pushing the work to foreign companies and getting more red tape involved reduces capacity. It's not zero.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I am worried we are not too far away from this becoming a reality: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlO2gcs1YvM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlO2gcs1YvM)

<comment><USER16> That video seems to have been copied _everywhere_ , and the copy you linked to seems to be on a fringe UFO conspiracy channel.

As far as I can tell, this is the original: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CO6M2HsoIA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CO6M2HsoIA)

<comment><USER17> This video is fictional, and was made as a warning about where current tech could take us. I have no doubt that generals who have seen it are quite upset that they can't have it yet.

<comment><USER16> I realize that, I just wanted to drive the traffic to the original source rather than to some weirdo who uploaded a copy.

<comment><USER15> Thanks. I thought I had found the original upload after sifting through a lot of copies on youtube. Wish youtube was a little proactive with detecting dupes, rather than reactive. Or at least some sort of an automatic note/link to original even if it is a legal derivative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > runs contrary to Google's ethos -- the mantra "don't be evil" has long been > at the heart of Google's principles

Thinking that the military of your own country is "evil" seems a bit puerile to me. Watching too many movies and TV shows can have that effect.

<comment><USER19> For years we have known that US drone strikes can very accurately kill anonymous people - often civilians (such as women and children):

 _" Every independent investigation of the strikes has found far more civilian casualties than administration officials admit. Gradually, it has become clear that when operators in Nevada fire missiles into remote tribal territories on the other side of the world, they often do not know who they are killing, but are making an imperfect best guess."_ [1]

 _" Leaked military documents reveal that the vast majority of people killed have not been the intended targets, with approximately 13% of deaths being the intended targets, 81% being other "militants", and 6% being civilians."_ [2]

 _" strikes have killed 3,852 people, 476 of them civilians. But those counts, based on news accounts and some on-the-ground interviews, are considered very rough estimates"_ [1]

Not only that, we bomb inside of countries that are (sort of?) our allies, without informing them and without their consent:

 _" Pakistan's Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, has repeatedly demanded an end to the strikes, stating: "The use of drones is not only a continual violation of our territorial integrity but also detrimental to our resolve and efforts at eliminating terrorism from our country"_ [2]

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/world/asia/drone- strikes-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/world/asia/drone-strikes- reveal-uncomfortable-truth-us-is-often-unsure-about-who-will-die.html) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_strikes_in_Pakistan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_strikes_in_Pakistan)

Yeah, I have no problem calling our military evil.

<comment><USER12> Well, you should have a problem with calling them evil based on a few actions that you consider evil without taking all of the other things the US has done into account.

Doing one evil thing doesn't necessarily make someone evil. Doing a few evil things doesn't necessarily make someone evil either.

If a doctor who has saved thousands kills one person, are they evil? What if that person was a convicted child rapist? What if it was in self defense? What if killing them would save a thousand more? What if killing them would save 10,000 more but the doctor doesn't care about that and would have killed them anyways?

Deciding whether a single person is good or evil is a very complex process. Deciding whether a country or a military is good or evil is enormously more complex and needs to take a lot more into account that you just did.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> You'd think that killing people would be covered by "Do no evil"

<comment><USER21> It's not directly killing people. That's like saying helping improve GPS satellites kills people because weapons systems use GPS and would benefit from increased accuracy.

<comment><USER22> Just like the "do no harm" oath taken by doctors means "If you gotta kill like twenty people to save a hundred, get on with it."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I wish there was a legally-enforcable version of Douglas Crockford's "Good, not Evil" license. I haven't released any source code that could have military applications yet, but if I ever do, I want to make it 100% clear that it's _not_ to be used for any task related to the killing or injuring of other people. We're in a unique position as programmers where even the tiniest bit of our code can affect thousands or millions of people across the globe, and this terrifies me.

The GPL has already shown us that a license has the power to change culture and behavior (in however small a way). We should be able to extend this approach to other values we hold dear.

<comment><USER24> Pacifism is nice on paper, too bad not everybody adheres to it

<comment><USER23> That's fine; they can use someone else's code. I just want the power to license my software in line with my own values. I'd find it very hard to live with myself if some code I wrote ended up being used to fire missiles at people, even if they "deserved it".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I just want to congratulate those Googlers. It isn't something usual to quit a good job due to ethical concerns. The World would be a lot better if there were more people like you.

</comment><comment><USER26> Somebody else will fill the gap. It is simply a consequence of military science: If a human in the loop makes combat systems less effective, then other countries will seek the advantage over others by removing the human from the loop. It's a classic arms race at this point.

... This is a pandoras box that has already been opened I am afraid.

</comment><comment><USER27> I've been asked to work for military industry companies before. And I have always declined for ethical reasons.

But as I sit here and think about it, I wonder if its a good thing that a person like myself (that believes I'm on the ethical high-ground) decline these types of jobs.

Someone is going to take the job. Perhaps someone less skilled than myself, perhaps someone less ethical than myself ? What is the result of that ?

As another poster wrote, it's "good" that the targetting gets more precise, meaning less collateral damage.

But to each his own. We need to be able to sleep at night aswell. And that to me also seems like a really good reason to decline.

I'm kind of on the fence about wanting to work in that industry.

<comment><USER28> It's not complicated. Stick to your values. When you work on stuff that you feel ambiguous about, you aren't going to be doing you best work.

<comment><USER27> Yeah, you're right. I quickly realized that after posting my comment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Regardless of your opinion on military projects, I hope we can agree that voting with your feet is a good thing.

</comment><comment><USER30> some incoherent ramblings...

I would be curious to see the list of employees who quit for this purpose. They are making a statement. They might as well publicly disclose their identities to inspire more people.

Also, wondering. Are most of them financially independent to have made this decision? When money is not an worry, people have freedom to truly align themselves externally with their internal core values. If you are constantly worried paying rent or securing your kids future - people make compromises. That is not ideal to build a great society.

</comment><comment><USER31> The list internally is pretty small. Its like 2-4 people total. Which isn't statistically significant.

</comment><comment><USER32> I have a question for the people who applaud them.

Do you think USA should have no military?

Would you vote to dismantle it?

</comment><comment><USER21> > Google recently sponsored the Conservative Political Action Conference, for > instance.

Of course, there would be no conscientious objectors if it were a liberal event

<comment><USER33> People who disagree with you often disagree with each other as well. This doesn't come through in a media (of all political leanings) that tends toward a narrow set of well-funded viewpoints.</comment></comment>


Why Lisp Failed - <AUTHOR> http://ozmm.org/posts/why_lisp_failed.html <comment><AUTHOR> I can't say I agree with this, but I thought that instead of downvoting it because I disagree with its premise, I'd upvote it because the premise--even if wrong--is interesting.

People have often made the claim that Java is unbearable without tool support. Why could/would this be true for Java but false for Lisp?

<comment><USER2> Because you don't need to write a lot of boilerplate in Lisp, perhaps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you're going to be that brief, you better be right.

I always use vi, and I've pretty much never programmed in anything _except_ Lisp.</comment>


If You Can't Buy the Keyboard You Want, Build It Instead - <AUTHOR> https://imgur.com/gallery/fGa13nZ <comment><USER2> Always nice to see such a build. Don't visit this site without an ad-blocker though! uBlock Origin hits the double digits…

As a southpaw I am oddly never really bothered by the keypad sitting on the right side of the keyboard. For games it means that the standard 104 key keyboard gives me the arrow keys for movement (right hand), surrounded by a bunch of keys on both sides and above that I can map to whatever is required. The big letter field sits between the mouse (left hand, obviously) and can be used by either hand. Ideal really.

(I never did get used to doing numerical input with the keypad.)</comment>


Google plans to 'de-rank' Russia Today and Sputnik to combat misinformation - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/21/google-de-rank-russia-today-sputnik-combat-misinformation-alphabet-chief-executive-eric-schmidt <comment><USER2> Don't we complain when china "de-ranks" western propaganda abot tianamen square stories or tibet? Don't we complain when russia "de-ranks" propaganda they don't like. Don't we complain when the iran, saudia arabia and the middle east "de-ranks" propaganda they don't like?

Gonna be hard whining about other nation's censorship and other nation banning google without coming off as a hypocrite.

It's amazing how the nytimes/WaPo working with the government/cia has completely taken down social media.

Reddit is now completely overrun with social media workers from WaPo, TIME, Nytimes, BBC, Independent, etc. Facebook is towing the official propaganda line. And google is "scrubbing" their search and of course youtube videos. Twitter is banning "alt-right" left and right.

Just 5 years ago, all these social media companies were proclaiming themselves the beacons of free speech and open/independent discourse. Now they are pretty much official propaganda outlets.

If google is going to "de-rank" RT and sputnik, they should de-rank a whole slew of other "news/propaganda" sites.

<comment><USER3> Yes, but remember that we are the good guys ..... Seriously I agree with you on the censorship in disguise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The filter bubble[1] will keep us safe from the Russians. Hopefully this means that the Democrats will win the next time when we are freed from the distractions of election hacking by foreigners.

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

</comment><comment><USER5> They should also mark all foreign news agencies as foreign agents. BBC, Al- jazeera, Russia Today are really foreign agents trying to interfere in America. I don't blame them for trying either, the US meddles in other countries all the time.

Nation-States will always try to protect their interests first.

</comment><comment><USER6> Irrelevant since both played no role in sharing a fraction of the misinformation output by Mockingbirds.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is just a short-term patch. If they want to combat fake news or state propaganda on their rankings they would need algorithms to do it for them. Otherwise, new channels to do propaganda will appear.

</comment><comment><USER8> about time, I hope this de-rank happens on other google owned platforms too, such as YouTube</comment>


The Defenders of Free Software - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/26/business/26ping.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&hpw=&adxnnlx=1285506166-1SnnzkEegCuvewpyFguTxw

<comment><USER2> There seems to be a recurrent theme of social marginalization when reporting on software and especially open source. Specifically, opening this article with the fact that the guy "lives with his parents" immediately sets him up as an eccentric, dysfunctional person in the eyes of the typical Western reader.

Is this just a reflection of the culture and bias that NYTimes journalists have, or (more sinisterly) are there official guidelines for spin on these types of stories?

<comment><USER3> Probably neither. They're just painting a picture of a stark contrast between him and "the world's most powerful consumer electronics and technology companies."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've never heard of the Software Freedom Law Center before. Seems like a good group. I donated $10: <http://www.softwarefreedom.org/donate/>

</comment><comment><USER5> Obligatory paywall-bypassing Google search link: [http://www.google.com/search?q=Meet+the+Defenders+of+Open- So...](http://www.google.com/search?q=Meet+the+Defenders+of+Open- Source+Software)

<comment><USER6> And even better: combine with 'site' operator and "I'm Feeling Lucky" to ensure one click access:

[http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Anytimes.com+...](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Anytimes.com+%22Meet+the+Defenders+of+Open- Source+Software%22&btnI=I%27m+Feeling+Lucky)

<comment><USER5> Wow, thanks! I was actually trying to figure out how to do this, but it didn't work for me for some reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder who gets the cash when these cases are settled? Does the money go back to the original authors of the software in question?</comment>