Headless Chrome in Google Cloud Functions: Go Runtime - <AUTHOR> I have seen articles about puppeteer with node 8 and headless chrome. Earlier examples talk about how chrome is now bundled in the base images when using the node 8 runtime. I use [chromedp](https://github.com/chromedp/chromedp) and I tried using it in a go runtime with cloud functions but it was unable to find chrome. Really trying to not have a micro-service running a un-sandboxed chrome in the cluster. <comment><USER2> Hey! We faced a similar issue. We wanted to use Headless chrome in Cloud Functions, but with python, not go.

In the end, we ended up going with Cloud Run instead. It allows you to use an arbitrary docker image, so you can just bundle chrome in there. Le me know if you need some pointers with that, my email is in my profile!

</comment><comment><USER3> what's the question here ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Just looking for suggestions on how to deploy headless chrome. I want to use go and I don't want it in the cluster. It will be mostly idle but very important once needed. I don't want to assign compute resource to it in my cluster and I don't want to use it un-sandboxed in the cluster. I have seen the seccomp option and the configurations here ([https://github.com/Zenika/alpine- chrome/blob/master/chrome.j...](https://github.com/Zenika/alpine- chrome/blob/master/chrome.json)). The config solves the no-sandboxing issue but like I said, it will mostly be an idle thing and I don't want to worry about whether its healthy in the cluster.

<comment><USER4> I think this might be what you're looking for?

[https://www.browserless.io/](https://www.browserless.io/)</comment></comment></comment>


Covid-19 is one of Wikipedia's biggest challenges ever - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/08/07/wikipedia-covid-coronavirus/ <comment><USER2> "With so many Wikipedia editors (and bots) constantly monitoring the mountain of information, misinformation tends to be quickly weeded out."

Sorry - but this is a joke. Wikipedia is a pretty biased and unreliable source of information.</comment>


13 Sure Signs Your Landing Page is a Turn-Off - <AUTHOR> http://www.anywired.com/13-sure-signs-your-landing-page-is-a-turn-off/44/

<comment><USER2> From the article: "Exclamation marks travel in packs."

Remember: Five exclamation marks is a sign of lunacy!!!!!

Also, the semicolon is the pennant of a dimwit; a waffler. ( [http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg15020356.400-forum-- ho...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg15020356.400-forum--how-to-pack- a-verbal-punch.html) )</comment>


Supernormal Stimuli: This Is Your Brain on Porn, Junk Food, and the Internet - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gregory-ciotti/supernormal-stimuli-this-_b_5584972.html

<comment><USER2> Just a small point: the Internet is not the web. I've chosen to stay away from Facebook for a whole month. It'll end on Aug 2nd. It's uneasy but after all it's a good way to hang on with real friends and not just fb acqaintances ~</comment>


Double Down, But Only On The Right Hand - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/07/double-down-but-only-on-the-right-hand.html <comment><USER2> I normally comment on Fred's blog, but it looks like Disqus is down.

I actually somewhat disagree with both Fred and Jason on this.

Fred is right that investing in search would have been the wrong move. But I think both are looking at the deal as if Microsoft was buying Yahoo! Search Technology, which is not the case. So I'd be looking at this from an indirect approach and saying what did/should/would Yahoo! do to have increased the value of their audience to a search technology. In some ways, Yahoo! only brought audience and got out of the search technology business which they were clearly loosing. Do we really expect Bing to learn much from Yahoo search? In the last 4 years, has Yahoo! really had a chance in this space?

I'm not sure what Yahoo! should/could/would/did to increase the value of their audience to Microsoft. Any ideas?</comment>


The Cubicle-Prank Toolbox: 25 Great Ideas to Jack with Your Co-Workers - <AUTHOR> http://www.hrworld.com/features/cubicle-pranks-032008/ <comment><USER2> I do not miss my cubicle.</comment>


Cheater Cheater - <AUTHOR> http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/personal_essays/cheater_cheater.php

<comment><USER3> Pretty self-righteous article.

When I was teaching information security, I literally had more than half of my students turn in heavily plagiarized papers. It was pretty easy to spot suspicious phrases, and Googling would always turn up the sources quickly.

It was actually quite overwhelming figuring out how to deal with it all - <USER2> problem was if we gave no marks for that paper, or failed all the students, it would've been pretty disastrous for the university. In the end, we had to punish the most egregious plagiarism with no marks, and give partial marks for the rest, trying to identify and give credit for the original work.

I had not one, but several students come and argue they should get their full marks back, "for fulfilling the requirements of the assignment".

<comment><USER4> Here is a modest proposal.

Take some examples of varying severity. In front of the class say,

 _I have identified many examples of plagairism on the last assignment. Let me show you some...

Then say, "I have identified more than X cases. If you think you may have been one of them, let me know by email, and I'll let you redo the paper and ignore your first submission.

Anyone that I have identified as a plaigairist who does not offer to redo your paper will be failed. If you think you may have quoted too liberally from an unacknowledged source, I would strongly recommend playing it safe and redoing your paper._

Then on the next class come in, pick a random name out of the list of people who have not reached you yet, call that person by name, and ask him or her if he or she wishes to fail the course. After the kid says no, say, "Then are you going to be redoing your paper?" Then to the rest of the class say, "If you should redo the paper and haven't talked with me yet, I suggest doing so soon."

I believe that once expectations are clearly enough set, most of the problem will disappear fairly easily. As for the rest? I have absolutely no problem with failing cheaters as fast as possible.

<comment><USER3> Part of the problem is the time spent on administration (marking them, tracking them, etc) for all the redone papers. Definitely the worst part of teaching.

<comment><USER4> That is true.

But the hope is that if you do it right, you only have to do it once.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I got accused of plagiarism in my first year of university. Turned out that I had somehow left my computer account signed in and one of the class (basically a dropout seizing the opportunity) grabbed a copy and submitted it.

It took me an absolute age to fix; at one point the tutor basically admitted I must be telling the truth and "offered" me half the papers marks.... bah.

Also, I did an Engineering degree; lots of plagiarism going on there (most engineers are pretty bad authors it seems :P). One major problem they had was the huge section of Asian students who all hung out together (across years) and basically shared/co-wrote all their work... I know one lecturer rejected about 35% of the drafts in one course during the second year!

<comment><USER6> From my limited observations there seems to be a culture of work sharing among foreign students. Some of it can probably be put down to lesser English language skills, they feel a lot safer following anothers lead rather than attempting to write something themselves from scratch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> When reading comments on articles like this, I wonder if I'm in the minority, or whether people just don't want to get caught publicly supporting a social taboo in front of potential customers and employers.

There's something degrading about it, and I've never done it, but I don't particularly care if others cheat on homework. Many good teachers know that grade systems cheat students out of serious educations. (And incentivize them to become cheaters.) Yet few win enough power to teach as they think best and neutralize this whole class of problems.

Coincidentally, I'm taking an ungraded class. Though I didn't really notice until now. There is homework, but doing it is completely at our discretion. It could only possibly work if we're self-motivated, and it works fine.

Come to think of it, it's unlikely that my viewpoint is shared by only a tiny minority. After all, commenters here cite astonishingly high rates of plagiarism, like "literally... more than half". (Not to mention the papers which are so unoriginal that they might as well have been plagiarized.) Maybe some enterprising hackers here wrote emacs plugins to help rephrase text, in order to maximize the time they have to pursue important studies and projects.

</comment><comment><USER8> I was accused of plagiarism my freshman year of college but it was completely original. The prof believed me after I met with him and explained my thought process.

</comment><comment><USER9>
        I saw them baffled by what teachers said they wanted ([snip]), which often seemed
        to mask what they really wanted ("elegantly analyze these stories and compose,
        in formal prose, a well-supported argument that will not only engage the
        ambiguities without resolving them but delight and surprise me")

My essays would always concentrate on resolving ambiguities... this glib comment sort of makes me wonder

</comment><comment> X-Istence I post all of my papers online on my blog or other locations where they are quickly picked up by Google and various other sources.

Turnitin is used by my professors and each and every time my papers would come up as 100% plagiarised, if they then attempted to Google it they would come across my website where I had posted the paper. After the first time of being accused of plagiarism and me pointing out that the license attached to my work did not allow Turnitin to use it for commercial purposes they started checking by hand, never heard about it again.

</comment><comment><USER10> what a bunch of fucking crap. Plagiarism is theft, pure and simple. You know when you're doing it, and it means you suck.

I am getting really sick of the moral relativism building up around cheating and grades. It's a fucking nightmare. Schools should just flunk out the 40% or 50% who do this shit for a couple years, and people will get straight.

It completely devalues the work of people who actually do the work. Welcome to the mediocratization of civilization.

<comment><USER11> Well, it's helpful to keep in mind the main goal here, which is providing young people with an education (and providing society with educated young people), not having the students produce brilliant original work (it's just a school assignment, after all). Being a little more pragmatic, rather than flunking half the students for a prolonged period, probably gets you further.

Of course students need to be thought that plagiarism is not ok, again the question is how to teach them best. The threat of big punishment is not necessarily an effective mean towards reducing "crime". The article also hints at the fact that the cause of the plagiarism is not so much malice, as difficult surcomstances, and a lack of knowledge/skill in students (though the main example around which the article centers, may not give a strong argument for this)

<comment><USER10> Ok, how about one warning (with 0 credit for that assignment) then expulsion? Come on, college is supposed to be work, not just a frigging party. I get the feeling people just don't care because they figure who gives a fuck, when I get a job I'll just surf the net and cut & paste my way to a paycheck anyway.

Meanwhile, we are losing ground every year in the worldwide competition to produce an educated workforce. You can't just assume every asscrack should get a degree regardless of talent or even the willingness to try, just a little.

I still say the situation is pathetic, and we are right on track to become another deposed colonial power like France or Britain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder - _is_ there an English class out there that focuses on "rewriting, rephrasing, riffing, and appropriation as real tools of the writer's trade"?

<comment><USER13> "If you copy from one person it's plagiarism; if you copy from many it's research."

<comment><USER14> Well obviously. I mean unless you literally copy every page of all those authors, you are going to be picking and choosing sections, the action of picking one sentence and not another is creative.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> re: the plagiarism in king's thesis, it might be interesting to note that this often happens among those who are gifted with speech-making. lincoln echoes so clearly the ideas of pericles in thucydides' retelling of it -- perhaps the most famous speech in america, but also the most famous speech in athens. nor in his lifetime did he ever offer the connection as a basis. even obama a couple of months ago was making that wayne gretzky quote about skating to where the puck is going to be. did he or one of his speechwriters get this from steve jobs? i don't know. but it happens all the time. harold bloom argues that all great writers are essentially rewriting other great writers (a map of misreading, etc.).

that's what's so vexing about plagiarism, esp. in teaching essays which are mostly practices in rhetoric. on the one hand, yes, intellectual honesty is very, very important. the cornerstone of reason, etc. but it's also not the only cornerstone. and arguably, it isn't what's learned first.

in any type of broad stroke, it's much smarter to borrow from others' rhetoric, and even ideas. in a way, you're giving yourself more to the ideas. e.g., imagine if all metaphors were replaced with similes. similies are more correct, have more of a 'cited' feeling, but they're also more limiting; they give themselves less to the comparison.

and also some people are better at being synthetic with their thoughts rather than analytical, scientific and precise. and frankly, this soft massaging of sources is often more important in a leader, because they are leading a group of people with more than one idea.

the problem with intellectual dishonesty is that you can lose everything. your reputation, all of the energy in your work, etc. most people don't figure this out until experiencing it first hand at some point in school. but that is because, i think, we don't properly impress upon people what can happen. if they had a better sense of the risks, i think the majority of cases would disappear. as it is, it's usually touted in some boring handout or pamphlet about an 'honor code', etc., in comic sans.

though some schools get it. the thing is to teach a student that it is always better to never give up their honor in doing the right thing, no matter how tired, etc. most students are insecure, because they don't know anything yet, so they don't really think they have much to lose. so again, you have to build up their commitment to themselves first...

<comment><USER16> Yes, but King's _thesis_ was not a speech, rather a paper of many pages on Paul Tillich. (The religion departments will tell you that Tillich was influenced by Heidegger; the philosophy departments will tell you that Tillich copied great quantities with trivial alterations.)

<comment><USER15> True. And although it took me like 3 days to respond. I would say that while you're right about scholarship and a thesis, etc., it's funny how many, I would consider, 'great' people end up not being scholars. How that dynamic works.

On the other hand, Heidegger is probably considered to be a scholar. And he plagiarized from Husserl like it was his business. So I guess in the long run, truth crushed to earth will rise again. It's best to be honest as much as possible. Always comes out in the end...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I read all of that. I have no idea why. The single paragraph on different types of plagiarism and great writers who have plagiarized was nearly though provoking, if I hadn't heard those examples before or been a student.

</comment><comment><USER15> typical, williams.</comment>


Show HN: Paint Color Matching App (Sherwin, Behr, PPG) - <AUTHOR> https://www.matchmypaintcolor.com <comment><USER2> I'm curious... if the RGB values are all accurate, is there a standard color and exposure calibration for paint swatches that is shared across brands?

The white point (color temperature) is easy, using whatever light source they're being illuminated with.

But what determines whether a particular white is (240, 240, 240) or (250, 250, 250) or (255, 255, 255)? The exposure seems far more arbitrary. Is there some kind of maximally bright matte "reference white" material photographed next to each swatch, that then gets calibrated to (255, 255, 255) or similar?

If so, it would be pretty cool if you could buy a reference white chip like that, hold it up to a painted wall in your house, and have an app that could take a photo with both and output the "true" current paint color.

<comment><USER3> You are thinking of a grey card: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_card](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_card)

However color matching is more complex than that. "Color of the light source" varies considerably, not only due to the illuminant itself, but also the materials the illuminant is reflecting off of (e.g. walls). And color temperature only defines black bodies, which most light sources are not: you need information about the full spectrum of the illuminant to determine how it interacts with the material to be color-matched. This is getting a bit into metamerism: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamerism_(color)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamerism_\(color\)) (Of course, paint cannot match an arbitrary spectrum. Matching under specific lighting conditions is the least you can hope for.)

And the above is considering color of a surface only as a scalar value, but it's really a function of illumination angle as well, due to gloss. Direct lighting on a glossy surface reflects more of the color of the gloss, whereas oblique lighting reflects than the paint itself. Diffuse lighting is some combination thereof.

(I am not a color scientist by any means, just interested in the topic. Experts please correct!)

<comment><USER2> Ah ha, thanks! So turns out gray cards use "middle gray" which has both a physical definition as well as a specific RGB value:

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

Fascinating. I never knew there was an "standard" mapping between real-world colors and RGB.

Now if only online clothing store photos would map to that, so that the olive green coat I order doesn't turn out to be closer to medium brown or vice- versa... :P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I got one of those Color Muse color matching devices and this matching gets hard when you have glossy or rough surfaces. I've been trying to get some touchup paint to cover a stucco patch and despite many attempts, never can match it close. The colors look different at various angles.

<comment><USER5> I have the same problem. My current plan is to illuminate a patch from many angles to eliminate all the shadows. Add a reference white or gray card. Take a photo then in GIMP, adjust the white point, blur the stucco, read off the RGB and look up the closest matching color code. I have yet to find a way to look up by RGB.

If it somehow works I'll avoid having to paint the whole house.

<comment><USER6> The colorimeter at your local paint store, looking at a paint chip from your wall, is very likely going to do a whole lot better than the process you just described. If you call the store, ask how big of a paint chip sample they need to match existing, weathered paint. It very well may be tiny (like, 1cm^2), and they should do this color match for free. You could buy just a pint, first, to see that it works.

I've been quite surprised by how non-uniform most digital camera imagers and in-body post processing color pipelines muck with the spectrum coming off the sensor, all in the name of producing a more pleasing JPEG. If you still want to do what you described, I'd use RAW and use dcraw to convert to tiff, and open that in gimp.

<comment><USER7> What they have in-store is most likely a spectrophotometer, not a colorimeter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This doesn't have all Sherwin Williams colors. And the dropdown stops at the letter B and after.

<comment><AUTHOR> The app actually does have all Sherwin Colors, they are just not all in the dropdown (you can search for them). I added all of them in the dropdown for now in a really janky way. I'll do a proper design in the next few days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What I want the ability to upload a picture of a paint chip, AND tell you how long it has been since that wall was painted.

That way the app could adjust for fading and tell me what color that paint was originally.

<comment><USER10> It's more variable than just time; and really if you aren't matching the color, just pick one you like?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Something is off. The matched colors show an RGB with each, but it's the same value when the color is obviously different. I took a screenshot of it and pulled it up in an image editor to make sure.

e.g. [https://www.matchmypaintcolor.com/ppg/medieval- forest](https://www.matchmypaintcolor.com/ppg/medieval-forest) shows RGB 1,116,120 for all 3 swatches, but only the Maxi Teal is that RGB, the other tiles have other RGB values.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks mjgoeke, all fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This looks exactly like one of those "Buy this domain" place holder sites.

Compare the pair:

\- [https://www.matchmypaintcolor.com/](https://www.matchmypaintcolor.com/) (this site)

\- [http://surfweb.com/](http://surfweb.com/) (fake site)

</comment><comment><USER13> How do you calculate the distance between these colors? RGB distance will be close enough, probably, but for matching paint/ink in the real world, it's important to consider visual (sensation) difference.

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

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://github.com/dtao/nearest-color](https://github.com/dtao/nearest-color)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Oh this is fun. I recently paid $4.99 to unlock similar functionality with a different webapp, though that one also supported Kelly Moore and others.

Any intentions on adding suggested palettes?

</comment><comment><USER5> I would love to be able to match by RGB.

Edit: actually it's almost possible to do what I need. It's just be much easier if it was possible to find closest match. Still this could be helpful.

<comment><USER15> I've used the following to match RGB and HTML color codes to paint colors: [http://www.easyrgb.com/en/match.php](http://www.easyrgb.com/en/match.php). Wasn't perfect, but got me pretty close!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have a Pantone CapSure color sampling/matching device, which includes a wide variety of color samples from various manufacturers.

Any idea how this process compares?

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm curious. What is the algorithm to determine how to mix paints to match a color?

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://github.com/dtao/nearest-color](https://github.com/dtao/nearest-color)

</comment></comment><comment> kube-system I need this but for automotive paints

</comment><comment><USER18> > PPG, Behr, & Sherwin Williams

What are these? The website doesn't seem to explain anywhere.

<comment><AUTHOR> The major paint manufacturers.

<comment><USER18> Ahh ok, thanks. Must be American. Never heard of them in my part of the world.</comment></comment></comment>


Weave – The Docker Network - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/zettio/weave/

<comment><USER3> I hope all of these Docker overlay networks start using the in-kernel overlay network technologies soon. User-space promiscuous capture is obscenely slow.

Take a look at GRE and/or VXLAN and the kernels multiple routing table support. (This is precisely why network namespaces are so badass btw). Feel free to ping me if you are working on one of these and want some pointers on how to go about integrating more deeply with the kernel.

It's worth mentioning these protocols also have reasonable hardware offload support, unlike custom protocols implemented on UDP/TCP.

<comment><USER4> I would love to take you up on that. I want to bake vxlan support into Docker upstream (as an optional plugin, like everything else).

Edit: Hi Joseph! Just realized it was you :)

<comment><USER5> If you're going down the path of VXLAN support in Docker, I'd love to talk. The company I founded built a Linux distribution for commodity hardware switches that can do VXLAN encap/decap in hardware at 2+ Tbit/sec. The same configuration that works in a Linux container host or a hypervisor works on the switches.

email@example.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This looks like a great idea. For me this was a missing piece two months ago when playing with Docker.

However I have strong doubts about the network performance, not only the overhead of the UDP encapsulation (that should be quite small), but mostly the capturing of packets with pcap and then handling them in user-mode. Looks like a lot of context-switches, copying and parsing with non-optimal code paths. Are there any benchmarks available?

My feeling is that this will consume large amounts of CPU for moderate network loads and thus be unusable with most NoSQL kind of systems that benefit from clustering across hosts?

<comment><USER7> re benchmarks...publishing some is on the TODO list. See [https://github.com/zettio/weave/issues/37](https://github.com/zettio/weave/issues/37). Informally, weave is pretty fast but it's not saturating Gbit Ethernet. As you say, capturing with pcap and handling packets in user space carries an appreciable overhead.

We've got some issues filed to look at pcap alternatives and also generally aim to improve performance.

re suitability for NoSQL clustering... depends on where the bottlenecks are; if you want to cluster for HA rather than scale, i.e. there aren't any real bottlenecks, then weave will work well. Same if you want to cluster because of CPU or memory bottlenecks. If, otoh, networking is the bottleneck then adding weave into the mix isn't going to improve matters.

<comment><USER6> Ok, good to know. I think the challenge in taking another route than pcap is that you would need to do complex tricks with the existing network stack. Because if I understand the way Weave works you would really only need to do processing at the beginning of a connection and for some ARP requests etc while you don't need to do anything to existing TCP streams apart from encapsulating and forwarding?

<comment><USER7> > complex tricks with the existing network stack

To retain the essence of how weave operates, this would likely not just be complex but impossible, short of kernel hackery.

> you would really only need to do processing at the beginning of a connection > and for some ARP request

Weave needs to look at every Ethernet packet. Well, the headers at least. It's a virtual Ethernet switch. It doesn't even really know about IP, let alone TCP streams. See [https://github.com/zettio/weave#how-does-it- work](https://github.com/zettio/weave#how-does-it-work)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This seems very nice. What would be the pros and cons of using Weave instead of Tinc ? I have used Tinc for a while[0] and, the end result looks very similar (i.e. there is not a nice command-line tool dedicated to use Tinc with Docker, but the high level description match).

[0]: [https://gist.github.com/noteed/11031504](https://gist.github.com/noteed/11031504)

<comment><USER7> Just having a look at Tinc.. one difference is completely non-technical - <USER2> is GPL but Weave is Apache licensed so aligns better with the whole Docker ecosystem. More comments to come.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> These are the same people who built RabbitMQ.

<comment><USER9> RabbitMQ has always been an extraordinarily good piece of software, from the very first versions. I think this is very good news for anyone using Docker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> as someone who is more developer than ops, I feel like the docker stuff is still changing fast and that the way you would use docker today will be very different a year from now; but that containers seem to be the way of the future - if I have no pressing need to change my server architecture does it make sense to wait for things settle or would it be more beneficial to get in and learn now and experience the changes and why they were necessary?

<comment><USER11> precisely because you're a developer you whould embrace docker with open arms.

Because docker removes all the trouble of running applications that you need for your development: databases, application servers, queues...

I love the fact that I can focus on my code and not on all those details that stole so much of my time.

<comment><USER12> I'd like to see a post/writeup (or even an essay!) on how to do the magic "backing services" ([http://12factor.net/backing- services](http://12factor.net/backing-services)) with Docker. And that's where I find Deis and other Docker orchestration systems lacking very much.

Sure, you can run MySQL in Docker, but it's a far cry from running it on native xfs with aligned partitions and whatever fancy you feel configuring. And since docker containers are very reusable, whereas backing data is by default should be persistent, my impression is that it's too easy to accidentally remove a docker container.

<comment><USER13> Nothing is stopping you from running MySQL in Docker on native xfs with aligned partitions: bind-mount whatever partition you want into the container by defining a volume in Docker.

This _will_ be persistent, and _will_ survive when you destroy the container. I use this to e.g. share a /home directory between a dozen experimental dev container I use to run my various projects - each container ensures I keep track of exact dependencies for each individual project, while I get to have a nice "comfortable" swiss-army-knife container with my dev tools and all all project files.

I _also_ run a number of database containers which use volumes where I bind mount host directories to ensure persistence so I can wipe and rebuild the containers themselves without worrying about touching data.

<comment><USER14> Am intrigued (and, again, showing my current early-stage understanding of LXCs), can you link the same data store container to multiple application containers? As in, have both a beta application and production application pulling data from the same core DB?

And do you simply define the container as a volume to ensure it stays persistent? That was the feeling I got from the docs, but again, might just be flagging how little I know at the minute...

<comment><USER15> docker run --name=my-data -v /host/data:/container/data data-container

docker run --volumes-from=my-data app-beta-container

docker run --volumes-from=my-data app-prod-container

That would share the data store, however the real way you'd do this would be....

docker run --name=my-data -v /host/data:/container/data data-image

docker run --volumes-from my-data --name my-database database-image

docker run --link=my-database beta-app

docker run --link=my-database prod-app

Doing --link will allow those two containers to network-communicate and you should only be communicating with your database over the network anyways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is really interesting. I've been looking for a way to build in support for networking between Docker hosts in my clocker.io software, to simplify deploying applications into a cloud hosted Docker environment. I'd been young with adding Open vSwitch, but am going to try weave as the network layer in the next release. Will there be any problems running in a cloud where I have limited control over the configuration of the host network interfaces and the traffic they can carry, such as AWS only allowing TCP and UDP between VMs?

<comment><USER7> TCP and UDP is all you need. (And the UDP can actually be quite broken, just not completely)

We've created weave networks spanning hosts on EC2, GCE and local data centres.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Err can anyone spot the tests in the repo? I cannot.

</comment><comment><USER18> What this really means security wise:

[http://i.imgur.com/Cko02do.png](http://i.imgur.com/Cko02do.png)

<comment><USER19> Each `W` node in that graphic is a different physical host. So 3 kernels.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Question for weavenetwork: are containers addressable by hostname from other containers? Is there a good way to do that? I didn't see anything about it in the readme.

I suppose service discovery is out-of-scope for this project but having some sort of weave-wide hostsfile would certainly simplify it. Am I misunderstanding the project?

<comment><USER7> Weave itself does not provide addressability beyond IP. That is the situation now, but this area is very much high on the agenda for us - service discovery is definitely _in scope_ for weave.

Meanwhile, two points of note:

1) In weave the IP addresses can be much "stickier" than in other network setups, i.e. a moving a container from one host to another can retain the containers IP. That means it is quite amenable to relatively static name resolution configurations, e.g. via /etc/hosts files.

2) Since weave creates a fully-fledged L2 Ethernet network between app containers, name resolution technologies like mDNS that rely on multicast should work just fine.

So, in summary, while weave currently does not have any built-in service discovery, existing solutions and technologies for that should be relatively easy to deploy inside weave application networks, until weave itself grows these capabilities.

<comment><USER21> Perhaps you'd consider looking for the best way to "weave" weave into consul?

[http://consul.io](http://consul.io)

<comment><USER7> We are certainly aware of consul, and have indeed been thinking of weaving weave into it. Would love to see an experiment along those lines, if there are any volunteers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Has anyone compared this to rudder ([https://coreos.com/blog/introducing- rudder/](https://coreos.com/blog/introducing-rudder/))?

<comment><USER7> The most significant conceptual difference is that in rudder sub-nets are tied to hosts. So containers on different hosts will always be on different sub- nets. By contrast, in weave containers belonging to the same application reside in the same sub-net, regardless of what host they are running on. In other words, weave makes the network topology fit the application topology, not the other way round.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Yikes, this looks scary. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. Networks are finicky, perf is king.

</comment><comment><USER24> can you compare this with openvpn, or any other vpn if we're at it?</comment>


So long, and thanks for all the fish - <AUTHOR> http://tipjoys2cents.blogspot.com/2009/08/so-long-and-thanks-for-all-fish.html <comment><USER2> Sad. The thing about "ramen" profitability is there's another level to be achieved after that, which I refer to as "opportunity cost" profitability. It's often much more challenging, and I sense it being an issue in this article.

<comment><USER3> Actually that's an excellent point that I don't see mentioned enough. Profitability enough to offset opportunity cost - ie, how much you'd be making if you were working in a "real job" - is indeed very hard to reach.

Anyone can be "ramen profitable", defining that as say, under $1k a month. In fact, in actual good countries, you don't need to do anything at all to be able to eat. Australia will pay you $1k/month just to not be a criminal; in other countries it's higher. People can and do live off that their whole lives!

Your average HN reader/startup founder is generally highly capable, multi- skilled, and, probably, a very valuable employee. To start a business capable of matching or exceeding their likely "normal" salary is indeed a far harder proposition than just making enough to eat.

<comment><USER4> >Australia will pay you $1k/month just to not be a criminal

FWIW, this isn't strictly true, at least not in the last 10 years. Provided you are not disabled or retired, Australia will only really pay you ~$1k/month while you demonstrably look for work, or while you are an undergraduate student doing your first degree.

<comment><USER3> Well .. in theory yes. But in practise, people stay on it for years and years, just putting up with the hoops they make you jump through. Apparently they stop even pretending to care after a couple of years. I know this because a couple of friends of my brother have been on the dole for literally 10 years. There is nothing wrong with them, they just don't want to work and are apparently happy to live within the constraints of their $450/fortnight. Places like Broome and Byron Bay are full of such people.

I used to resent people living off the system like this but now having lived in countries without it, I don't mind it anymore. In fact I now support a Norway-style basic income program. They're never going to work, that is completely obvious, just give them the damn money...

<comment><USER5> I just burst into raucous laughter, mostly from my own shock at realizing that that the idea is potentially practical.

I've always thought of government assistance on a large scale as the kind of thing that will seriously damage a country if allowed to continue indefinitely -- by creating economic incentives not to work. [See: Sweden]

I'm not sure it has to work that way. Between food technology and plateaus in first-world population growth, sustenance and covering could probably become as cheap as we are motivated to make them, for some definition of "sustenance" and "covering."

I think it's obvious that society is better off if people work. But society is also better off if the people who work work harder, and only Ayn Rand fans walk around the office glaring at the dullards dragging society down. ;)

In a way, those who really don't _want_ to work are holding a gun to their head and demanding money. If we don't give it to them, then we'll have to get the blood out of our carpet, which will cost more than the few dollars they are asking for. If there were no risk of this, there would be no blood to clean up and thus no reason for social programs to exist. (Those who _can't_ work are already bleeding, and the assistance is intended to keep their situation from worsening expensively).

The people that don't want to work are doing something that I would find morally wrong. But I'm doing something that others doubtless would be troubled by: I work three months out of the year, saving my money, and then live off of that money for the rest of the year in a third-world country. I've had people angry at me for not spending all of my money in the US; others feel it's short-changing society to minimize the amount of work you do for money. Nonetheless, I'm at least paying with my own money, and society is net richer.

From the standpoint of a person, I think that being a parasite is morally questionable.

From the standpoint of society, however, maybe it makes sense to subsidize some level of determined laziness. I can vaguely imagine that under certain circumstances and with sufficient disincentives, such a thing could be a net win for a society.

It seems societally risky, though. ;) Better to "officially" not support such a policy, so you can jettison it if its effects get out of hand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm sorry to hear it you guys; best of luck with your next venture!

<comment><USER7> Their efforts might have borne more fruit if I could have actually paid for the tips I owed. Every time I clicked on a link to pay them, I'd get an unhelpful error message along the lines of "The cash-out feature is temporarily down for maintenance." This situation either lasted for a couple of weeks, or was broken all three times I tried over that period.

I thought Tipjoy was great in concept, but ultimately they didn't seem to have either the technical or marketing chops to go up against other systems like Amazon's.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Props to Ivan for getting on here and giving frank responses to nearly all of the questions and comments.

</comment><comment><USER9> Having launched a few ventures, I've learned that smarts and hard work are not most of the story - having the right venture is.

Tipjoy struck me, from the very first time I heard of it, as the entirely wrong idea. It "solved" a problem that didn't really exist, competed with multiple existing solutions, and I couldn't figure out who the customers were supposed to be.

I will say that ivankirigin came to his senses and abandoned his bad idea far faster than I came to my senses and abandoned various of my bad ideas, so hats off for that.

</comment><comment><USER10> Sorry to hear, my friend. I had a hunch it was coming; why move back to SF unless you were soon to be in need of a job (or fresh investors for TipJoy 2 ;)?

I'm, impressed though. You stuck with it for a long time and handled the shutdown right and without a ton of fanfare. If only you hadn't lost all that money to me in Poker, you might have been able to keep running... ;)

Give Abby my best!

<comment><AUTHOR> Damn the semi bluff!

The move to the bay area was independent of the shutdown. There are so many more opportunities, for biz dev, investment, talent, acquisitions, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Best of luck to Abby & Ivan in their future endeavors

It's refreshing to see this communal response to the closing of a startup rather than the typical icy headlines with droves of disconnected commentary...

<comment><USER12> For sure; it's always sad when these things happen because this community especially knows how hard all these people have worked whether their ideas ultimately panned out in the end or not. A complete 180 from Techcrunch comments where assholes seem to rule.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sorry to hear the news -- wish you both the best of luck going forward!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

<comment><USER14> And thanks for taking the time to answer the questions here !

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I called this one also: <http://apps.ycombinator.com/item?id=200025>

Another YC company that will soon be going under or losing its founder will be loopt.

<comment><USER16> Oh? I'm interested in hearing your logic. I see no point to Loopt and think it looks cheap, but it's expanded to the point where it's mentioned in TV commercials, and its founder is Paul Graham's golden boy.

I'm asking because your logic re:Tipjoy was sound, and I'd like to see a similar argument for Loopt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Was the shutdown at all related to the need to get licensed as a money transfer agent? I know that's a very expensive process (since you have to go state by state) and I know you guys were thinking about doing it. How did that end up playing out?

<comment><AUTHOR> Lack of traction was much more important.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> You gave it your best shot. Best of luck on your next venture!

</comment><comment><USER18> With your attitude, it's just a matter of time before you succeed.

BTW: I appreciate your analysis. It reminds me of how hard EDI is to get started without a dominant trading partner who mandates it, such as a dept. store or supermarket chain.

</comment><comment><USER19> This is a little meta, but to what extent does the fact that companies die like this prevent adoption of new services? If I had a business, I'd hesitate to make it dependent on or spend a lot of time integrating with some small startup that stands a fair chance of going belly up next year, and as a user I'm not about to do something like, say, spend a lot of time picking my favorite music for some music recommendation site when they might die at any time.

</comment><comment><USER20> The whole story seems to repeatedly wave the arms and shout:

"Hey, Twitter! Hey, Facebook! Here we are! We know how to do this! Hire us, hire us, hire us!!!".

At least that's how I read the story. And I'm quite convinced it's their intent. Which shouldn't be a bad thing too.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a pretty bold statement, and on the face of it incorrect.

Our messages was first and foremost to assure users that their money is still there. And then we made a comment on the market that we failed to succeed in.

<comment><USER20> Well, of course customers' money is the most important thing, no doubt about it.

But it struck me that you mentioned several times in the article that you know what and how to do, you just don't have the leverage of being _the_ main body. Why would you deny it? Is it something bad? I don't think so. Would you refuse if Twitter or Facebook approached you with a decent offer?

<comment><AUTHOR> Writing a blog post like this would be a lame way to get the attention of any future employer - that's why I'm complaining. You're questioning my motivations, which you have no insight into.

Whether I would choose one thing or another is irrelevant.

If I wanted to get the company bought, or get a job, I'd just have a conversation with any of our awesome advisers to get directly in touch with pretty much anyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is really sad news...we had the pleasure of working with them to integrate the TipJoy API on an experimental project called MightyTweets. Even though our project didn't go anywhere, they were fantastic to work with.

I wish them the best of luck in whatever they do next!

</comment><comment><USER22> What about poker night? Still hosting it in Arlington?

<comment><USER10> Alan (of Cloudant) is tryng to take the reigns but we haven't had lot of interest (granted, only a couple days notice this week). Subscribe to boston- email@example.com for more info.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, use the google group in place of the meetup. <http://groups.google.com/group/boston-startup-poker>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> True scientists celebrate their failures.

</comment><comment><USER3> Surprised to hear it. I thought you had plenty of "mindshare", around here at least. Guess that doesn't translate to actual dollars.

Good luck in your future endeavours. Hopefully it's been a positive learning experience. Look forward to seeing the next big thing!

<comment><AUTHOR> The learning experience has been astounding. I have a bunch of things I will do differently next time. Karma on new.yc doesn't translate to usage unfortunately. And twitter as a marketplace is about as mature as @ev's kid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I know hindsight is 20/20, but would you be willing to be completely forthright and tell us what your business plan was at the beginning stages, when you were raising money? I would find that sort of insight very valuable, and appreciate it greatly.

<comment><AUTHOR> take a cut

<comment><USER24> how did the math work out, taking a cut of tips (presumably small, and even smaller after payment processing fees?) how many users would you have needed to reach profitability? i actually tried doing the back-of-envelope math for your site a while back, and was perplexed. i'm curious as to your answer..

<comment><AUTHOR> Tips don't really work. You need to sell stuff. Branding in the name sucked when we were pushing long and hard* to become a general purpose payments company. Our twitter API could power a full freemium model, subscriptions, etc. - but not enough apps on twitter used it.

*twss

<comment><USER25> Did you ever see <http://www.harmony-central.com/Features/Fairtunes/> \- tips for music artists in 2000 that closed down.

For musicians, what if there was a way to offer downloads or a virtual chatroom where musicans could interact with tippers only. Artists could keep log of all their fans.

The problem may have been a tip niche wasn't honed in upon.

<comment> cunard-n Interesting. So, what became of Goyer and Cormie? I'd like to hear more about their experience. yr. 2000 was early days!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Stupid Market...

<comment><USER27> Downvoted the best comment? That does it. I am going to start at the bottom of the comments from now on. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> It is a stupid comment, without much content. Like the other reply, even if I agree, this is no way to say it. Our announcement is essentially saying the same thing, but elaborating to add information.

<comment><USER27> I thought it added levity and gave a gentle ribbing (did you think it was harsh?) {shrug}... I've said the same thing when my own startups closed.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm approaching this from a news.yc community perspective. Feel free to tweet about it :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> See Chagora (dot) com and CulturalEngineer.blogspot (dot) com (why chagora, live debate function and other related posts) for the role of the Pooled-User- Determined Account and the microtransaction as essential in politics and a catalyst for enabling the practical micro (and other)transaction in charity and commercial areas. The political microtransaction is a fundamental of speech. I believe this could have made Tipjoy workable. Sorry I couldn't reach you. I tried.

<comment><USER29> Please don't.

<comment><USER28> I understand... and will consider it. But could you give a clearer evaluation since I've put a great deal into this and would appreciate more helpful feedback. Thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


JavaScript Vulnerabilities and How GWT Developers Can Fight Back - <AUTHOR> http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Web-Toolkit/web/security-for-gwt-applications <comment><USER2> Hah! I knew Google would be first to respond!</comment>


Critical bug in Ethereum multisig wallet. At least $32M worth of ethers stolen - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/maraoz/status/887751004971831296 <comment><USER2> This bug is specifically in the Parity multisig wallet.

The bug is that the initWallet function (which includes setting the owner of the wallet) could be called by anyone, at any time, not just by the creator at initialisation time. Yes, really.

The attacker is searching for Parity multisig wallets, setting himself as the owner, and withdrawing all of the money.

<comment><USER3> Wow, this falls into the "fucking what?" category of security bugs. It's like walking into the Central New York Gold Depository and declaring yourself king of the world and walking out with everyone's gold with nobody noticing stupid.

<comment><USER4> Best summary I've read so far.</comment></comment></comment>


The Disappeared: the day 43 Mexican students went missing - <AUTHOR> https://stories.californiasunday.com/2015-01-04/mexico-the-disappeared-en

<comment><USER2> I wonder if Mexico can ever be peaceful while the US still has Prohibition.

<comment><USER3> I've been living in Mexico city for the last 18 months and visiting Senora regularly for a couple of years before that. Mexico is a country rich in resources but with very little production. What there is is largely foreign owned. Given solid law enforcement, and some stimulus to encourage new businesses to harness the resources that are available, Mexico could do very well. The corrupting influence of drug exports to the US however is simply too much to bear for law enforcement in local communities that often have little else on which to survive. Mexico has the feel of a country preparing to move forwards though, the millennial generation has very different expectations to their parents. There's a vision building for what they want to see their country become and it doesn't include drugs. The people are ready for a big change but until prohibition ends in the US the existing power structures will hold them where they are.</comment></comment>


Design Is Not Art - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/tech-talk/d229af10c167

<comment><USER2> Design is a learned skill with rules and techniques. Design is visual engineering.

The confusion that design has something to do with art irritates me every time I come across a fellow developer that is confused in this regard.

If art is fiction, design is technical writing. Though they are both made of words they couldn't be more different.</comment>


Uber Fined $649M for Saying Drivers Aren't Employees - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/14/nyregion/uber-new-jersey-drivers.html <comment><USER2> We don't want to face the reality, but turning the gig-economy into actual employment, we may wipe it out entirely.

Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Postmates, etc. operate at losses already because the demand for a taxi ride or food delivery is not high enough to support a critical supply/demand.

While I understand the need of people to support themselves, the gig-economy should not be that. It can't. It's supposed to be a way to make a little cash on the side, not a full time job.

The larger problem I think is that a scarcity of low-level jobs means that they all get taken up by people trying to make a living.

As someone who occasionally uses ride sharing, I already find the prices to be on the upper end of what I'm willing to pay. In the situation where the gig- economy is treated as employment, no doubt gig-employers will be forced to pass on cost to the end users. I think any more than a 20% increase to cost, I'll probably stop using it.

All this does at the company/investment level is promote more actions to reduce employment. If an Uber driver now costs twice as much, there's double the incentive to replace them with autonomous vehicles.

It's a dangerous game.

</comment><comment><USER3> looks like Uber's most central innovation, avoiding employer duties and regulation, finally comes to an end. Thank God.</comment>


The Case Against Marriage – What You Lose When You Gain a Spouse - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/07/case-against-marriage/591973/ <comment><USER2> The article has a few interesting points about community ties, but it's generally long on word games and short on substance.

The article equivocates between marriage as legal privileges, marriage as lifelong monogamous commitment, marriage as cultural ideal, and marriage as signaling mechanism about relationship seriousness.

Yes, this is par for the course for the "Case Against X" template -- shift seamlessly between different meanings of the word X, because the whole point is it's a polemic and not a careful argument. But it's still frustrating and sloppy thinking.

</comment><comment><USER3> Then there's the other side of the coin: What your spouse loses when (s)he gains you.

Second-time-arounders who take their time and spend several years with their partners before marrying again tend to choose more wisely.

My first marriage: 16 and a half years. My (2nd) wife's first marriage: 18 and a half years. Our partnership: Four years as de-facto partners, 28 years married. 32 years together so far.

Big lesson from first marriage: When you "win", you lose. My first wife and I were always arguing and fighting. My second wife and I have never argued. We both refuse to fight. (We've had some terse words, but never a fight.) We agree on so many things that nothing else is important enough to lose angst over.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's not acceptable to speak of, but marrying does chain you to a person. If they decide they don't like you any more, or just plain go crazy, they can easily drag you over the cliff, financially and in ways that are even more important.

Yes, you can break the chain, but not necessarily quickly enough to save yourself. A "successful" divorce requires a certain level of decency on both sides, and you won't truly know whether that's there until it's too late.

I hope for the best when people marry, but I also know a part of just how bad a bad case can be. And reading personal accounts on the Internet (and in the press), I'm aware that my experience is far from the worst.

</comment><comment><USER5> The problem is you guys are marrying the wrong person.

My wife and I do everything together, including late night code sprints.

Find a best friend and marry them when you have that feeling you had as a kid when you had to go home after a sleep over. Everyday feels like a sleepover.

I'm a workaholic, but I work from home right beside my wife so we can still chat and hang out.

<comment><USER4> You're very lucky. Unfortunately, IME it's almost impossible to tell whether someone is a right person until you've been together several years.

And even more unfortunately, your perfect mate can turn into an evil menace right before your eyes. Been there.

<comment><USER5> > IME it's almost impossible to tell whether someone is a right person until > you've been together several years.

I disagree. My wife and I got married the year we met, engaged the first month we met.

We had an instant connection of lust and similar interests. After two dates, I invited her to go overseas w/ me for two months. We knew we'd either hate or love each other by the end of it. It took 1 week for us to realize we were deeply in love. We got engaged 2 weeks later and married the same year.

This was all after I had given up on finding anyone. You need to get to know yourself and what you want, then find someone that wants the same things. Straight up talk to them about the important things the first date.

The important points for us were the things that had caused past relationship issues. Weed friendly, really sexual, introverted, dark humor, knows depression, same political belief, same religious belief. Yes it's good to be able to compromise, but ideally you don't want to.

> And even more unfortunately, your perfect mate can turn into an evil menace > right before your eyes. Been there.

We know that neither of us could take that. We would kill ourselves if we didn't have each other, so propping each other up is actually propping ourselves up.

Some might call that an unhealthy dependence, I call it being soulmates.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting quote from the article attributed to Anton Chekhov: "If you're afraid of loneliness, don't marry."

<comment><USER7> There are very few things worse than being lonely in a marriage. On the other hand, a good marriage is absolutely worth it.

<comment><USER8> And it's hardly trivial to derisk. People grow apart (even if you were perfect together at marriage), and the cost of splitting can be enormous (emotionally, financially, and socially).

Do you like to gamble? Marriage is a gamble.

<comment><USER7> You grow apart. Every year to year-and-a-half, we've had to _deliberately_ grow back together.

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately, that takes two.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not much, just your freedom, happiness, dignity and money.

</comment><comment><USER10> I agree with jdm2212. This was not a well thought out article. The ultimate purpose of marriage is to provide a stable environment for raising children. The fact that she mentions being married reduces her after-work beers is the point which zooms right over her head.</comment>


"Safe Spaces" and the Mote in America's Eye - <AUTHOR> http://popehat.com/2015/04/19/safe-spaces-and-the-mote-in-americas-eye/ <comment><USER3> I'm not really sure how the author is making the link between post 9/11 safety versus liberty issues and safe spaces.

It is really quite confusing because the people that exist in these spaces are generally quite vehemently opposed to those same types of interventions. They see themselves as existing in a system which has worked against them for years, and they are suspicious of it. They see legislation as typically working against them, and they are working to fight it.

Personally, I support the right for safe spaces to exist, and for people to be angry when they are offended.

I am also personally opposed to safe spaces. I'm queer and they made me feel like I wasn't the right type of queer. I view them as another reinforcement of utterly meaningless hierarchies.

In this case though, the author's view of the people in those spaces seems to be that they are linked with a movement that they generally reject. The author doesn't have a very nuanced view of those people. I'd venture that they don't know those spaces very well.

edit: Its also quite confusing since safe spaces have a history that starts long before 9/11.

<comment><USER4> I think the complaint is not about safe spaces as something that people can opt into if they prefer, but the idea that an _entire_ university should be such a "safe space."

The bulk of the specific complaints are about things like free speech zones, censorship, or banning, disinviting, or attacking speakers. These are all basically methods to provide intellectual "safety" to everybody regardless of whether they've asked for it, and I don't think they're really comparable with more limited (what I would think of as "traditional") safe spaces.

Edit: The Judith Shulevitz New York Times opinion piece linked early on (which made the rounds a few weeks ago) is clearly an inspiration of this post, and Shulevitz does a much better job of actually engaging with the "normal" definition of a safe space, its earlier history, and the expansion the article decries.

"In most cases, safe spaces are innocuous gatherings of like-minded people who agree to refrain from ridicule, criticism or what they term microaggressions — subtle displays of racial or sexual bias — so that everyone can relax enough to explore the nuances of, say, a fluid gender identity. As long as all parties consent to such restrictions, these little islands of self-restraint seem like a perfectly fine idea.

But the notion that ticklish conversations must be scrubbed clean of controversy has a way of leaking out and spreading. Once you designate some spaces as safe, you imply that the rest are unsafe. It follows that they should be made safer."

<comment><USER3> I'm finding Judith's article much better written. Looking at the response the students had to the "dangerous space" flier, seems to typify free speech. Why shouldn't they ask the university to condemn the flier?

But the article is very slippery-slope, and mostly doesn't criticize safe spaces directly, just what the author sees as their side effects.

<comment><USER4> I'd agree that both Shulevitz's piece and this one are flawed. They both offer some interesting anecdotes but don't do a great job of criticism (or even, you could argue, identifying what's being criticized).

Instead, both are to some extent willing to leave things at "look at the what the wacky Millenials (substitute "leftists", "feminists", "statists" as needed) are up to!"

Part of the problem, I suspect, is the messy intersection with politics and identity in this area. It's tough to come across criticism that doesn't devolve into political posturing, and even thoughtful discussion is easily dismissed as it often comes from "the other side."

<comment><USER3> I'd actively encourage everyone to listen to "the other side" regardless of what side they are on. I see the popehat article as guilty of not doing that, but similarly I think dismissing popehat entirely as a result of this article is a mistake for "my side" because the same thing will happen when we criticize it. We won't have understood the full picture, so we'll use the wrong words and make mistakes. I feel like this is true in many domains.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Don't know much about the rest of the US, but debates in my school are usually won by whoever feels hurt and marginalized the most. The latest Israel- Divestment debate revolved around what would be least offensive to Jews/Israelis/Palestinians/Muslims, with Black and Latino students' feelings thrown in for good measure. It was all about who self-victimizes the hardest, objective reality in the middle east never came into play. Surprisingly enough, most Muslim/Jewish/Black/Latino students went on peacefully with their life, totally oblivious to how badly their feelings were hurt during that debate. Thank god the school paper was there to tell them.

<comment><USER6> Hmm. It doesn't seem to me that Israeli-Palestinian debates are one of the ones centered around whose feelings are hurt the most. It's an emotional discussion, to be sure, but one based around hard facts on the ground: anti- Semitism/people calling for a second Holocaust, terrorism, mass expulsion, expropriation, colonization, ethnic cleansing.

Hurt feeling debates are about nothing, typically, but Israel/Palestine is very much about something.

<comment><USER5> >It's an emotional discussion, to be sure, but one based around hard facts on the ground: anti-Semitism/people calling for a second Holocaust, terrorism, mass expulsion, expropriation, colonization, ethnic cleansing.

For sure, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is substantial and deals with objective reality in the middle east that actually affects the lives of millions of people. I'm just saying that the debate on my campus was never about any _objective_ reality, and only revolved around the feelings of the participants. The main claim was on both sides "if the school adopts decision _, my feelings will be hurt really bad".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a rant, one of weaker ones for PopeHat. There is nothing on the history or nature of the idea of "safe spaces" beyond a couple of anecdotes in the form of links to previous PopeHat posts. There is zero mention of queer politics and queer theory, despite those enterprises hosting the strongest advocates for safe spaces. One might imagine this is because the writer is ignorant of what is going on modern LGBT politics, or supports queer politics, or realizes that his rant would be unpopular if he talked about ideas like the extremely popular notion that certain kinds of speech is _literally_ violence against trans people.

But really, the only purpose here, as is the case with most PopeHat rants, is to attempt to appeal to everyone. The subtle calling-out of women, blacks, and gays will please one type of person. The civil libertarianism will please another type of person. It's a very transparent thing if you read more than one PopeHat rant -- what they choose to focus on is what will maximize their readership and back-patting. Anything else is minimized and ignored.

PopeHat is useful because the writers are sometimes passionate enough to produce decent writing about individual cases of people's self-interest overriding common sense and maybe endangering actual freedom. But many posts on it are transparently sparked by dishonest opportunism. In this case, the opportunity was fabricated out of nothing. (see tomlock's comment)

</comment><comment><USER8> Very passionate write up, but what in gods name does Russia have to do with anything here?! No people in Moscow or other parts of Russia will not stop to correct a strangers scarf. In fact, most Russians don't even like eye contact with strangers. They don't smile in the same way Americans do because it's often seen as fake. It it is a very different culture for sure.

Author is display exceptional level of bias throwing in culture he doesn't understand or know about...

</comment><comment><USER9> The idea that women are a minority group on college campuses is laughable. How can you be marginalized when you control public opinion and make up 55-75% of students?

<comment><USER10> You can be marginalized if you only make up a small percentage of the executive and administrative staff. Students don't have significant power on most university campuses...administrators and wealthy alumni tend to hold the reigns. And, at some universities, the football team administrators hold a stunning amount of power.

Just like in a city urban center that is predominantly black, but the police, judges, city council and mayor are all predominantly white.

Number of people does not necessarily equal power.

<comment><USER9> I'm going to invoke identity politics and say that this does not match my lived experiences. All of the deans I ever dealt with at my Ivy League college were women. And Buddy Teevens did not hold an amount of power that could stun a fourth-string walk-on fullback into a concussion.

<comment><USER10> I think it is reasonable to say that progress has been made and is being made, but there is still an imbalance that is not representative of the population at large, and probably does not accurately represent the number of qualified women and people of color who could be in positions of power within universities.

[https://chronicle.com/article/Who-Are-College- Presidents-/13...](https://chronicle.com/article/Who-Are-College- Presidents-/131138/)

There are probably _also_ interesting conversations to have about why men are graduating college less than women, particularly black men, who attend college at a rate much lower than any other demographic in the US, including black women. It's tempting to make it "us against them" (no matter who the "us" is), but, it's probably not useful except for the most powerful (who do tend to be white and male, though not all white males fit into that category).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _We should have taught them not to give up essential liberty for a little safety. Instead, we taught them that the government needs the power to send flying robots to kill anyone on the face of the earth without review and without telling us why._

Ken is a great writer and a great American. I'm grateful to him for pointing out these problems with great style.

</comment><comment><USER12> It is as simple as agreeing to listen. The concept of safe space is reasonable within the assumption that there is a dominant culture that is free- speechified(variously politicized, highest bidder, protectionist, victimized). Within the college spaces it tends to swing towards naive radicalism, engaging in the dominant narrative as a "counter" force without questioning the ideology that creates that context.

Or to put it another way - you stand a much better chance of experiencing safe space within a group of trusted acquaintances who agree to the agenda, than in a broad-based organization . The latter is there to employ you in a war.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's surprising, to me, that the author seems to equate the people who use the term "safe spaces" as being on the other side of his calls for liberty. In my personal experience, "safe space" is a term used by activists almost exclusively...and those activists are almost universally, vocally, and visibly, opposed to: Drones, mass surveillance, TSA, DHS, perpetual war, the drug war, the war on terror, etc.

The people I know who use the term "safe space" are the same folks I consistently see at rallies and marches and direct actions related to all of those issues (and more, that you _never_ see the white "liberty" guys show up for; women's reproductive health access particularly among poor women of color, immigrant detainment issues, murder of people of color by police, etc.).

The term "safe space" has a specific meaning, which has nothing to do with free speech. It is a term used to define a space that people opt into, and generally the use of force is not considered part of the process of achieving a safe space. It isn't about whether you're free to say something. A safe space is something one chooses to be part of; a specific community or conversation, which, as a group, has decided to not be assholes to each other based on race, or gender, or sexual preference, etc.

It's interesting that in a conversation alleging people are demanding they never have their feelings hurt, a lot of white men are demanding they not have their feelings hurt by anyone asserting that white men sometimes say/do racist/sexist/misogynist/homophobic stuff. The privilege tantrum is truly a thing to behold. It never ceases to amaze me, no matter how many times I see it...and I see it all the time.

<comment><USER13> I do think it is important to give credit to the far left for their activism on certain fronts. On this point I agree with you.

You define a safe space as something that people opt into. Do you really believe that? Here's an example that doesn't look very opt-in to me:

[http://www.brownpoliticalreview.org/2013/10/nypd- commissione...](http://www.brownpoliticalreview.org/2013/10/nypd-commissioner- ray-kelly-shut-down-at-brown/)

Further - while some people are no doubt standing up for free speech to protect their privilege, many are doing so for reasons that have nothing to do with their own feelings - but because we are concerned about the possibility that we might be wrong in our beliefs; the exact opposite of worrying about our own feelings. I don't agree with NYPD actions in recent times. But I need to be able to listen to what they have to say - JUST IN CASE I'm wrong in those beliefs.

To not admit this possibility would be hubris of the worst kind. That many on the left can't see this is a great modern, political tragedy. They would achieve so much more if they did.

<comment><USER10> _" You define a safe space as something that people opt into. Do you really believe that? Here's an example that doesn't look very opt-in to me"_

I believe the police commissioner of NYPD has sufficient power and influence to be heard in any number of venues (and, any time he holds a press conference, the world shows that I'm right in this assertion). I believe it is protecting privilege to insist he be heard when there are thousands of voices in the neighborhoods he has pledged to protect who those in power have refused to hear for _decades_. The time for the police commissioner to speak on issues of police abuse might be over...it might be time to hear somebody else talk about it, even if they have to be rude and yell to be heard.

 _" To not admit this possibility would be hubris of the worst kind."_

On that, we are agreed. So why do we hear predominantly from police and representatives of police when police kill someone? I think our difference of perspective comes from the idea that everyone has equal access to "free speech" and so we should listen to everyone equally. But, that's not the reality we live in. The police commissioner, the mayor, the attorney general, etc. all have a vastly disproportionate amount of access to "free speech" that people of color who are their victims do not have.

 _" That many on the left can't see this is a great modern, political tragedy."_

I am not on the left, though I can see how it might appear that way in this particular conversation.

 _" They would achieve so much more if they did."_

I believe they'd also achieve so much more if they had the resources of those in power. But, they don't. So, they work with what they've got. And, sometimes all they have is the ability to shut shit down (and then go to jail for it, because that's how this system responds to criticism from those with the least access who resort to direct action out of desperation).

<comment><USER13> _I think our difference of perspective comes from the idea that everyone has equal access to "free speech" and so we should listen to everyone equally. But, that's not the reality we live in. The police commissioner, the mayor, the attorney general, etc. all have a vastly disproportionate amount of access to "free speech" that people of color who are their victims do not have._

Yeah - to be honest this response reads as though it was printed on the back of a packet of intersectional brand cereal. If only it were police chiefs that this cereal logic is responsible for attacking.

There are comedians who get publicly humiliated over misunderstandings:

[http://kotaku.com/xbox-one-presenter-humiliated-me-on- stage-...](http://kotaku.com/xbox-one-presenter-humiliated-me-on-stage-says- transge-1421596988)

Male developers that get fired for making dick jokes:

[http://www.cbsnews.com/news/techie-adria-richards-fired- afte...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/techie-adria-richards-fired-after- tweeting-about-mens-comments/)

...as though either of these transgressions were really worth the level of sanction your cereal logic ultimately demands.

Yes, yes all privileged so you don't care about them - and you'll point out that the blow back onto the naive social justice folks that tried to apply this cereal logic is arguably worse. And I would agree. Except while I'll see the cause of both their completely unnecessary suffering in that cereal logic of yours, you'll blame the existing power structures for it.

You'll egg them on while writing outraged tweets in their defense - <USER2> how much of a good person you are for being intersectional. Kotaku will get another zillion page views for covering the controversy. And the two people at the center of it - get publicly torn apart.

It might be time to challenge that response of yours.

<comment><USER10> What are you even talking about? I've mentioned none of the things you're talking about. I'm willing to go off on some tangents (obviously, since I followed you down the police commissioner tangent), but this is getting ridiculous. I'm not responsible, and I don't feel obligated to answer, for every ill you perceive in the world.

Also, what brand of cereal are you buying that comes with "logic"? Your comment is more confusing than anything, frankly.

 _" You'll egg them on while writing outraged tweets in their defense - signalling how much of a good person you are for being intersectional."_

I don't think we know each other, and I don't believe you follow me on twitter. I'm not interested in being some sort of straw man for your angry tirade.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Very brave of Ken to call out women, black people, and the LGBT community.

Safe spaces don't insulate minority groups from ideas they don't like. Those groups are exposed to ideas they don't like _all the time_ , every day, via every avenue of media.

A safe space is a moment of solace to discuss issues specific groups are particularly affected by without being berated by the 18 year old generic white male libertarian who seems so keen on letting the minority groups how they should be behaving.

<comment><USER15> I see things the other way around. The generic white males are constantly berated and ridiculed in the mainstream media. People are constantly getting in trouble or losing their jobs for saying the wrong thing, e.g. Satya Nadella for not knowing the "right" response to the issue of women not asking for raises.

<comment><USER3> I chuckled a little because you mention "generic white males" and then Satya in the next sentence.

Satya's comments were poorly stated and he said as much. People spoke freely about it, and he clarified. Free speech in action!

<comment><USER15> You must be easily amused then. Satya Nadella was an example of people in generally being required to speak in a politically correct way. Haven't you heard of intersectionality? Nadella could still be accused of having male privilege in spite of being non-White.

And your analysis is very shallow. Of course speech was "free" in the legal sense, that is not the issue. The issue is that even though his honest opinion was that in the long run, women's approach might not be a big disadvantage, he was forced to recant and give the "right" answer.

<comment><USER3> I _am_ easily amused and I also know what intersectionality is.

I'm interested in why you have the perspective that Satya was being honest and then recanted, since he pretty clearly stated that he misspoke, and it is easy to see how he misspoke. My perspective is he was speaking in terms of how tech ought to be for women, but failed to mention that the situation for women was currently different. The idea that women ought to be able to trust the system is a given, but Satya didn't say "but it currently isn't so" and in his apology he cleared that up. Good on him!

<comment><USER15> _My perspective is he was speaking in terms of how tech ought to be for women, but failed to mention that the situation for women was currently different._

That's just completely wrong, watch the video again. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndm_RSvAgO4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndm_RSvAgO4)

<comment><USER3> I disagree. Could you help me understand why you think he backed down rather than just clarifying his comments?

<comment><USER15> If you watch the video, there is nothing that suggests Satya is not talking about the way things are in the workplace, not they way they should be. I just don't see where you are getting this idea from. Do you have a single source for this?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> SJWs are annoying as hell. On the other hand they are self defeating movement (except the fat acceptance part of them that does not move at all). If you victimize yourself you will never make anything out of you ...</comment>


A +Pool in the East River - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/08/04/swim-swam-swum

<comment><USER2> Off-topic, but why do traditional print companies always stubbornly insist on ignoring the fundamental differences between print and web media?

All that text, and not a single link to the +Pool Kickstarter page. It doesn't even have to be in the article text itself, having it at the end would be just fine.

<comment><USER3> Agreed

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/694835844/pool-a- floati...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/694835844/pool-a-floating- pool-in-the-river-for-everyone)

<comment><USER4> The article says they raised $300k, but this kickstarter only says $50k. Any ideas where the discrepancy comes from?

<comment><USER5> That was the first kickstarter; they then ran a second one for the next phase of the project: [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/694835844/pool-tile- by-...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/694835844/pool-tile-by-tile)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is it just me, or is this a completely stupid idea?

So you take a big pool and stick it in the middle of a dirty river. You need it to be full of water, so you filter a bunch of river water and fill it up. Then, for no good reason I can discern, you take that nicely filtered water and dump it right back into the river so that you can make room for more water that you then have to filter.

What is the value add of continuous filtration here?

Why not just filter one pool's worth of water, using whatever process you want, fill it up, and be done with it? What's so magical about "fresh" East River water, aside from the presence of all of the nasty shit you have to work super hard to remove?

<comment><USER7> Their intention is for the pool to act as a filter to clean NYC's waterways[1]. Research into effective water filters could be worthwhile, but the floating pool seems to overshadow that aspect.

[1]: [http://www.pluspool.org/about/](http://www.pluspool.org/about/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Foul. Just foul.

> But when it rains hard—a quarter of an inch in an hour might do the > trick—some four hundred sewer pipes around the city begin flushing untreated > waste, using the rivers as municipal lavatories.

> For the statistically inclined, the figure to watch is the number of colony- > forming units (of bacteria) per hundred millilitres. Beach advisories are > often set at thirty-five.

> The skies opened. Grzybowski sampled again, and the C.F.U. count in the > river exceeded 24,196, the highest possible measurement. "Pretty much raw > sewage," he reported. The would-be swimmer felt a wave of compassion for the > seahorses. ♦

<comment><USER9> This is true of many riverfront municipalities. 771 cities in the US have combined sewer overflows [1]. My partner monitors the pollution level in the Hudson across from NYC (in Hoboken) and when it hasn't rained in a few days the water is clean enough to swim. But after a heavy rain, it is, indeed, foul.

That said, the Hudson is ridiculously cleaner than it was 20 years ago. So much so that the Marine Borer (a type of worm that eats wood) has made its return and is destroying the old piles that hold up parts of the landfill on the waterfront. Unintended consequences, but worth it.

[1] List here: [http://water.epa.gov/polwaste/npdes/cso/](http://water.epa.gov/polwaste/npdes/cso/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Some of us swam across the Hudson years ago -- [http://joshuaspodek.com/saturday_morning_hudson_river](http://joshuaspodek.com/saturday_morning_hudson_river) (with pictures from the disposable cameras we brought)

<comment><USER11> A really interesting story!

> It took about an hour of swimming.

> Not that the swim was "extreme," but a lot of "extreme" things people do are > actually planned and structured, which de-extremizes them. If you sky dive, > for example, you're doing exactly what someone planned for you. I don't know > of anyone who just decided to swim across the Hudson. Yet it's easy. Anyone > can do it anytime...

Requiring an hour of continuous swimming easily excludes most people, and makes it very dangerous. Swimming a mile is a big deal that requires a good deal of training. Something like 6 weeks of working on it continuously 3 days a week, with proper coaching. It's actually great workout goal. But just jumping in the water and doing it... it's pretty flabbergasting unless you had some idea of your long-distance swimming capabilities beforehand.

Considering the links at the end of the article, I'm guessing these are things you've considered quite in-depth-- even if it wasn't until you survived. Really fascinating stuff! Thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This exists already in Zurich. Sort of.

There is a river (a very clean river, of course) that flows through Zurich, and there is a 200 foot or so length of the river that is buoyed/strung off to form a decent sized "pool".

You go downstream, jump in, and swim upstream. You're swimming in the actual river, just inside a marked off area with a nice deck on one side. It's really quite well done.

Here it is:

[http://www.zuerich.com/en/visit/sport/lower-letten-river- poo...](http://www.zuerich.com/en/visit/sport/lower-letten-river-pool)

<comment><USER13> In Bern, there's a "pool" I used to love going to. It's got normal pools, but there's also the opportunity to jump into the river, where the currents will easily carry you half a mile in no time.

[http://www.bern.com/en/activities/adventure-fun/river- swim/m...](http://www.bern.com/en/activities/adventure-fun/river-swim/marzili)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Dc1vmzjwJE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Dc1vmzjwJE)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why not just fill it with fresh, chlorinated water? This project is never going to happen without chlorination.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, I'm confused. I'm assuming the NY Health Department will be the ones that certify the pool as usable by the public or not, right?

So this whole dashboard mess is really useless: it's a binary decision. Is the pool safe or not? I mean yeah, if you want a nifty graphic screen showing how messed up the river is then go nuts. But I'd rather not know that the water is "kinda okay" for swimming. Either it's safe or it's not.

<comment><USER16> what is this dashboard you are referring to?

In most municipalities, all public pools require testing daily. One can assume they're just going to test daily before opening like all the other pools and use that decide whether to open.

<comment><USER15> [http://dashboard.pluspool.org/](http://dashboard.pluspool.org/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The +Pool has been one of my favorite projects to follow. When I think about the most compelling kickstarter marketing efforts, it always springs to mind. I'm always encouraged to hear about their progress. It's hard to believe just how filthy the East River is. :(

</comment><comment><USER18> Actually, I know that a similar idea has been used before in late 19th century, earlier in the 20th century, except it was much cruder. Basically a section of the river was marked off by nets and people could swim in them. I know some resorts still use a similar method, but again the filtering is only for very large particles.

The hard part is the filtering. Developing an effective filtering method for such a large body of water would be an impressive achievement.

</comment><comment><USER19> Berlin has a floating pool build from an old ship. [https://www.google.com/search?q=ARENA+BADESCHIFF&tbm=isch](https://www.google.com/search?q=ARENA+BADESCHIFF&tbm=isch)

</comment><comment><USER20> "Technically, Norfolk has more gross tonnage."</comment>


Inform: Past, Present, Future - <AUTHOR> http://www.emshort.com/ifmu/inform.html <comment><USER2> Since it may not be entirely clear from the title:

\- Inform is a language for writing interactive fiction. Inform 7, the current version, is also a really fascinating declarative programming language. Its quasi-English look appears to be just syntactic sugar at first glance, but there's more going on than you might think.

\- Even if you're not interested in interactive fiction, per se, this is a really good, thoughtful presentation on programming languages in general from Inform's creator, who is a mathematics fellow at Oxford and an award-winning poet. (It is not surprising at all that he appears to be friends with Donald Knuth.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Inform is a fun little thing. I have to say, I much prefer the old Inform 6, that was basically C-ish, to Inform 7. Trying to write something feels very squishy and indistinct, and I never am quite sure if what I think I'm instructing is what I think it is. It's a little on the magic side, sort of like other natural language DSLs (e.g. Cucumber).

Guess the verb and satisfying the parser is a time-honored part of _playing_ interactive fiction; I'm not really sold on the idea of it being a core part of _authoring_ it.

<comment><USER4> Same here. It was straightforward, until I wanted to just make a simple "bank account" concept (you receive credits for completing certain tasks, and then you can spend credits for other purposes). Maybe there is a reasonable way to do it and I just didn't know the language well enough, but because it's English, I found it difficult to even know what else to try, besides arranging my sentence structures to look more like the examples.

It does make reading the source of an IF game really intuitive though. You can basically hand your (structurally finished) game to a writer and they can edit/extend it.

<comment><USER5> It does support the concept of score, maybe score points + score negative points?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _> The 1990s were a propitious time for this sort of hobby computing. There were really two computing bubbles in this era. The one people talk about was the dot-com boom, when the potential of websites hit the venture capital market, and startups like Amazon got going. The other was an almost ideologically opposite sort of economy, with the rise of Linux, Perl and Apache, a market in which your wealth, in the form of public standing, was proportional to how much you had given to the community, in the form of code. Jeff Bezos got to be a billionaire out of the 90s, but thanks to my software, I got to marry Emily Short, so you could say we both got to be the world's richest man._

Awwww :-D

</comment><comment><USER7> "when you have dinner with the Knuths you talk more about quilting and printing Lutheran bibles than programming"

This made me laugh for some reason. I guess everyone needs their hobbies.

</comment><comment><USER8> As some one who played around with inform and would recommend it to authors looking for new ways to express their creativity, I am glad it looks like it is getting a significant tooling upgrade. Especially important is that this lowers the barrier of entry for new micro-payment strategies (like apps and websites).

It's also really cool because it looks like someone could hook this thing up to ray tracer or modern game engine and render dynamic myst style scenes with it (but with NPCs and significantly more detail in manipulation).

</comment><comment><USER9> I think with the current indiepocalypse of game development, and Netflix creating CYOA type shows, IF is due for a surge in popularity and demand. Who's going to orchestrate those Netflix shows? They better have a good sense of IF mechanics.</comment>


Halt and Catch Fire's COMDEX '83: Cheesy, But No More Than Real Thing - <AUTHOR> http://slashdot.org/submission/3743287/halt-and-catch-fires-comdex-83-cheesy-but-no-more-than-real-thing

<comment><USER2> Gotta love 80s nostalgia</comment>


Bletchley Park WWII archive to go online - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk/10239623.stm <comment><USER2> The Germans appear to have been quite resourceful despite the number of "ball bearing factories" attacked, considering production kept increasing to the very end: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Speer>

The war was surely won not due to the efforts of western nations but simply by the _massive_ number of lives Russia was willing to sacrifice on the eastern front.</comment>