An interactive cheatsheet tool for the command-line - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/denisidoro/navi <comment><USER2> Once I tried a tool like this, but just realized, there is already a method of that: the ~/bin folder.

You can write bash scripts, or scripts in any programming language with the proper shebang line, you can download other people's scripts, and you don't need bash history to keep them. Listing all of them is just an ls. I tend to not put file extensions of them and use good naming, so you can see everything without looking into them.

<comment><USER3>
        > ... there is already a method of that: the ~/bin folder.

More power to you if you can do that, but for me it's a memory problem and a problem of being able to figure out WTF options I need when I am in the middle of something.

man pages (and --help) are great if you have the time to sit down, ponder and experiment. But when you're trying to get stuff overwith, a massive wall of historically interesting text just isn't helpful.

The vast majority of invocations of any given command, I suspect, are limited to a not more than a handful of use-cases. In other words just enough combinations of arguments and options to perform a small number of different tasks. _This_ is what people are typically interested in when they're on the command line. In that context getting massive dump of every possible option in a man page is frustrating and counter-productive.

For example, "tar". I use this command in 2 simple ways: archive a directory into a gzipped tar or extract a gzipped tar. This is what effectively everyone uses it for >99% of the time: toggle between a directory and a tar.gz file.

Basically... just 2 forms "tar -zxvf" and "tar ..." oh shit, I forgot how to tar/compress a directory, let's check the man page... ok "tar -cf" to create a tar, but wait I want it gzipped, and actually I forgot what the z, v and f stand for, now I need look each of those up, wait, do I really mean gzip? or bzip, oops more research.

To be fair, tar might be too easy an example but you can easily go down a manpage-rabbit-hole because of a lack of common usage examples.

<comment><USER4> I think it's just a habit to turn these two or four versions of using tar into the same amount of one liner shell scripts. Or maybe a longer one with options and usage printing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow, this is really cool. I assumed this was going to be written in go or rust, but taking a look it's actually all bash! I'm always surprised by how much people can get out of bash.

It's also some of the cleanest bash I've seen. Definitely going to be using some of these patterns for my own scripts.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Actually it's written in bash because it started as a 25-line script. If it gets bigger, I'll consider rust.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This looks cool, a common workflow of mine is `cmd --blah --blah ` ah damn I don't know the value for blah, okay, fzf ` --blah=(blahgen | fzf) ` oh I'm also missing [...]

This seems like it can help do the same thing more quickly, so I'm keen to give it a go.

I do like shell history though, a shame to just have a bunch of `navi` entries - I wonder if it could be faked; populated with the chosen command afterwards?

<comment><AUTHOR> I could write a zsh/bash plug-in so that it fills the prompt instead of running the command, in the same manner as ctrl-r. What do you think?

<comment><USER7> That would make the difference between me using this tool and not using this tool. Losing my shell history isn't worth a momentary ergonomics gain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> navi allows you to browse through cheatsheets (that you may write yourself or download from maintainers) and execute commands, prompting for argument values.

<comment><USER8> not only this looks super awesome but this is also the first time i have seen a shell program architected in such a nice way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Looks neat. I wish, though, there was a way to try it out in the browser as advertised _without_ having to sign up or login. Might be a requirement of the site hosting the demo but whoever it is, forcing login is always and forever a deal breaker for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't know it requires a login. Do you know any online free platform that can launch a given docker image?

<comment><USER9> Sorry but I do not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is really cool, I remember a similar effort being posted here a few years ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7121268](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7121268)

I really like this implementation!

</comment><comment><USER11> Is there any way to run this on Windows, for people who use Cygwin or Git Bash? It seems really cool and useful

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it should work out of the box. Did you get any error?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Looks like a really useful tool. Another tool I use like this is bropages or the `bro` command(1) which gives many examples similar to this for any command like ls, docker, etc. Sometimes it's useful when you don't have time to read the entire man page.

(1) [https://www.ostechnix.com/3-good-alternatives-man-pages- ever...](https://www.ostechnix.com/3-good-alternatives-man-pages-every-linux- user-know/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Looks really nice;

I don't like the fact that an unknown command is executed _before_ i can see/inspect what it is. Currently you won't even see what command was executed afterwards, you only see the result...

Would be nice to be able to also show the command below the item/result.

\--print is possible, but it's cumbersome and not interactive: you can't "accept" the command after inspecting, and execute it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Based on your input, the latest version has a preview window: [https://user- images.githubusercontent.com/3226564/65380182-6...](https://user- images.githubusercontent.com/3226564/65380182-69431380-dcac-11e9-9af8-0f7b3c869d0f.gif)

I hope you like it!

<comment><USER13> That was fast, great!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This looks really cool. I've been building something similar in Crystal to scratch my own itch - [https://video.twimg.com/tweet_video/EEQqvAeWkAAx3-3.mp4](https://video.twimg.com/tweet_video/EEQqvAeWkAAx3-3.mp4)

</comment><comment><USER15> I want to use this, but I'm afraid of it be deprecated or not being maintained over time.

</comment><comment><USER16> Is there a key command or way to find out what's below the cheat? For instance, I tried the "local ip address" example in the demo and it gave the IP address but now 'how' \-- ifconfig? was it in a text file? env var? script?

<comment><USER17> Appears to be implemented here.

[https://github.com/denisidoro/navi/blob/master/cheats/networ...](https://github.com/denisidoro/navi/blob/master/cheats/network.cheat)

I'd nitpick on the implementation, but the point is you can change it. :)

<comment><USER17> On Linux, you can do something more robust that also supports IPv6 based on

        ip -o a sh up primary scope global

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Same idea as [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19436884](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19436884) but more polished and faster.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll add it to the "alternatives" section

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is pretty cool! It's great to see that lots of tools are trying to make the command line less intimidating, and adopting more friendly methods than the man pages.

About the cheatsheets itself, it might be great to share the cheatsheets with a project sharing somewhat similar goals, tldr.sh[0] (which focuses less on interactivity but more on completeness and practicality).

I'm more than excited to see the shell being more approachable. I have introduced the shell to quite a lot of my non-programmer friends with package managers and bulk renaming, but they don't use the shell enough to memorize all of the commands. These efforts lower the barrier to use the shell... hence making the demonstration of the command line's powers more easy.

[0] [https://tldr.sh](https://tldr.sh)

</comment><comment><USER20> Simply brilliant. Making bash easier

</comment><comment><USER21> Would be neat if `navi git` started it up and applied a filter at the same time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool! Will do it!

My only concern is that this way it would be impossible to add subcommands to navi

Let's say that in the future I want to add a command for removing a cheat (navi remove)

The way you described, it would look for snippets which contain "remove"

Any ideas?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> oh this is really cool, thanks for sharing. i also really appreciate that you have links to other projects that offer similar features so people can contrast and compare and find what works best for them.

</comment><comment><USER23> Similar concept: cheat.sh

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll add it to the "alternatives" section

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Does it also work in zsh?

<comment><USER6> Not sure what you mean, the shebang line is bash, so you need bash installed, but invoking it from zsh shouldn't cause a problem any more than invoking anything else could.

If you meant 'why is the shebang line bash, isn't it POSIX compliant' \- I don't know.

Looks nice though. Not sure I fully understand how the chaining/'prompts you for arguments' works (from UX perspective) but keen to give it a go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Great tool!!!</comment>


What is it about the financial sector that encourages bad behavior? - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/banking-culture-encourages-dishonesty/

<comment><USER2> One reason why bankers might become more dishonest after being primed to think about their jobs is that being a good banker, like being a good used-car salesman, often _requires_ dishonesty.

I'm thinking of a scene from the (non-fiction) book Liar's Poker where an investment bank finds itself stuck holding a bunch of bonds whose value is rapidly declining. Does the firm swallow the loss? Of course not! Management tells the sales team that priority #1 is unloading the low-quality bonds onto the bank's gullible customers at an inflated price.

Another example that might hit closer-to-home here is that of equities analysts on Wall Street during the .com bubble who became unreasonably bullish on certain tech companies in order to gin up IPO business for their firms' profitable mergers/acquisitions divisions.

In banking, the interests of the firm and the customer are often misaligned, and, well, it's not the _customer_ who's going to pay the banker's bonus.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting article, but I'm not entirely sure I agree with the author's attempt to explain the findings of the original study.

The paper upon which this article is based is really cool, because it scientifically confirms something that many people (myself included) already believed: mere participation in our financial industry leads to a certain degree of moral corruption. However, the author of this article goes on to make the case that the cause of such endemic dishonesty is the focus on money and number crunching required in banking.

The author's evidence seems reasonable, but doesn't match up with the original study: banking employees that work in industry "support units" (e.g., HR or risk management) showed the same tend towards dishonesty as those working in "core" units (private bankers, asset managers, etc.) This issue is directly addressed in the original study. The author's thesis suggests that working more directly with numbers/money would cause a higher degree of dishonesty, but the paper points out: "the treatment effect in core units is similar and statistically indistinguishable from the support units."

There's something more complex at work in our banking system.

<comment><USER4> Or the study was just not adequately powered to discover a difference. Haven't actually read it so just throwing it out there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Banking culture is unique in that it seems completely willing to burn customers - I can't think of any other businesses that have this so embedded in their approach. Imagine a company like Zendesk, where, at the end of the year, they suddenly charged their clients an additional $5k on their credit card just because they had it on file.

And yet people and companies continue to do business with them. If a company like Goldman approached me about doing a deal on a credit swap, I'd assume I'm going to get the shaft - but large pension companies continue to work with them.

Of course, this is a generalization - there are honest people in the finance industry, but they tend to be in roles where the incentives, again, are aligned with their clients. I'm thinking RIAs and companies like Vanguard.

<comment><USER6> > And yet people and companies continue to do business with them. If a company > like Goldman approached me about doing a deal on a credit swap, I'd assume > I'm going to get the shaft - but large pension companies continue to work > with them.

This is what I've always wondered: how the hell do companies like Goldman still exist and get business?

<comment><USER5> To a large extent, I think it is because there are very few companies that can deal with the complexity of, say, going public or writing CDS contracts. So to a certain extent people, particularly large clients with billions under management, don't have much choice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is another cultural norm that is prevalent in the financial industry leads (IMHO) to dishonesty. It is an incredibly competitive industry, reliant on a small(ish) number of very well remunerated individuals.

These individuals are put under immense pressure to perform flawlessly. Any mistakes are picked up on very quickly and a perceived weakness can cause the wolves to circle in an instant. There is no incentive to come clean about mistakes, and immense pressure to cover-up and hide any weaknesses or errors.

You can't avoid human fallibility. If you expect perfection, all you get is lies and deceit. The only way to truly outperform is to institutionalise openness, continual improvement, and learning from our mistakes.

<comment><USER8> That sounds a lot like medicine, and a lot of other professional services.

<comment><USER9> And in medicine, and aviation, and civil engineering, the regulators have teeth because the stakes are so high.

But, there's also a culture of not blaming the lowest-common-denominator employee when there are problems. To the best of my knowledge, the FAA and NTSB explicitly don't blame any individuals when putting together post-mortem incident reports. That's specifically to avoid creating the culture of ducking responsibility that GP was talking about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Higher social class predicts increased unethical behavior

[http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1118373109](http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1118373109)

</comment><comment><USER11> A system of incentives will see people act in line with those incentives. If you have heavy incentives to be dishonest, people's actions will be bent towards dishonesty.

<comment><USER5> Also, if there is little-to-no punishment for dishonest behavior, then those incentives to be dishonest are enhanced.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> There's an old saying: "The fish stinks from the head down."

A players hire A players.

Cheats hire cheats.

</comment><comment><USER13> The actual title of the article is "Banking Culture Encourages Dishonesty". There is no question mark at the end.

I point this out because many times people assume that a headline that is in the form of a question means that the answer is "no", and the author is trying to make it sound like there is some question to get people to read. E.g., if you were reporting on an expedition that searched for and failed to find Bigfoot, no one is going to be interested if the headline is "Bigfoot not found", so you write it as "Bigfoot found?". If the expedition had found Bigfoot, you would have written "Bigfoot found!" which would pull in a lot more readers.

There are some pretty interesting things in this article, so it would be a shame if people skipped it because of that incorrectly added question mark.

<comment><USER14> worth noting that the HN admins often silently change submission titles so the poster wasn't necessarily responsible for this

<comment><USER15> We added the question mark. We sometimes do that when a title makes a highly controversial claim. Otherwise the threads tend to turn into discussions about how the HN title is misleading.

I usually post a comment about this but it was late and I was impatient.</comment></comment></comment>


The Google Shuttle Effect:  Gentrification and San Francisco's Dot Com Boom 2.0 - <AUTHOR> http://svenworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Goldman_PRFinal.pdf <comment><USER2> The city is free to mandate subsidized housing ratios in the neighborhoods it is worried about becoming gentrified.

Maybe it doesn't because it wants the property tax revenue from the highly paid tech employees that live in these neighborhoods but don't use as many of the city services (including, most evidently, the public transport).

This is like the OPPOSITE of what Wal-Mart is infamous for - paying their employees as little as they can, and forcing them to depend on millions of dollars of federal subsidies like food stamps to actually make ends meet.

Gentrification is a real social concern that needs careful but focused solutions. But it is a goddamn travesty that all the discussion is focused on "Google" (really all Silicon Valley tech companies that are doing this stuff), and the employees that have the audacity of being highly skilled, highly desired, and are willing to put up with a long commute to stay in the city.

They pay city taxes, they put money into the local economy, and they're the enemy? And don't give me the garbage that they spend all their time at the company offices. If that was the case, they'd just live in the valley and save on rent. They live in San Fran because they want to spend money on the things that you can do in San Fran that you can't do in the suburban sprawl hell that is the valley.

This isn't a "99%" thing. Everyone involved here is in the 99%.

<comment><USER3> > The city is free to mandate subsidized housing ratios in the neighborhoods > it is worried about becoming gentrified.

Subsidized housing doesn't prevent gentrification, it just shifts rental profits from landlords to subletters, while depriving the city of tax income on the market value of the housing.

> Gentrification is a real social concern

Why? Why is it that nobody bemaons the pricing of gucci watches or belgian caviar or first class airline seats, but as soon as it's "living in one of the most desirable neighboods in the world", all reason has to go out the window? Clearly not everyone who wants to live in San Francisco can live in San Francisco, why aren't we talking about the millions of people in (for example) Somalia who are being prevented from moving to Mission Hill by gentrification? Why is it just those who by accident of history decided to _rent_ (which by it's very nature is temporary occupancy) in SF that need to be now subsidized?

<comment><USER4> > Why? Why is it that nobody bemaons the pricing of gucci watches

Because the sale of Gucci watches does not push more affordable watches off the marketplace and out of the hands of people who do not have enough money for more.

The issue with gentrification is this: it ruins existing communities and takes opportunities away from people that don't have many to begin with.

People have to move from the neighbourhood they've known for decades with good facilities and schools to an area considerably further away from the job market, bringing down their quality of life and reducing the chances that they'll ever be prosperous enough to live in the neighbourhood they've just been forced out of. But hey, smart, innovative kids will still rise up, right? Well, no, because now they're nowhere near the good schools and after school programs. Neither they nor their parents have the opportunities that others do. It's not exactly the kind of meritocracy Silicon Valley champions.

The very fact that you think these people are _deciding_ to rent speaks volumes. Not everyone can afford to buy a house or get approved for a mortgage. They _have_ to rent, and are increasingly powerless to stop these kind of changes. Gentrification is not all negatives, but are you seriously saying you can't see why people would be angry about it?

<comment><USER5> The underlying injury is that people who feel they belong to a neighborhood cannot afford live there anymore. Now, as a society, there are a variety of ways to entitle someone to live in a neighborhood: primarily, by owning a home in the neighborhood, or possibly by coming to an arrangement with the owner voluntarily (a long-term lease negotiated up front, or continually paying more money, commensurate with the rising rents).

We also have other ways. San Francisco's rent control is one such way. It entitles the tenant to continued occupancy and limits the rent the owner can charge that tenant. Of course, this has significant negative side effects. It deliberately fails to respect the owner's interests, instead rejecting him as an invalid actor, some sort of Evil Capitalist type. It effectively functions as a wealth transfer from the owner to the renter, in the form of foregone rent increases. This naturally changes the capitalist's incentives, inhibiting the maintenance of and formation of new capital (specifically the capital we call a "housing stock"), and provides other perverse incentives for the landlord to mess with tenants.

In the case of San Francisco, this housing shortfall exacerbates its problems by raising the price of all housing... a humanitarian tragedy far in excess of mere neighborhood-dissolution. Not that this is the only thing that inhibits homebuilding in the Bay Area, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am mystified by housing/anti-gentrification advocates' refusal to consider building new housing stock as a solution to this problem. And what's with "luxury housing" snub? You can't prevent highly paid tech workers from moving into the city without restricting their freedom of movement.. so why not make some room for them? The "historic character" of neighborhoods doesn't have to be ruined, either.

I'm not opposed to something like her Community Benefits Agreements, as long as it actually does speed the approval process up. Of course, it might be hard to get off the ground, since "While the community coalition might be a representative group, there is no oversight to guarantee appropriate representation", and the rest of the community will always be arguing over who has the right to represent them.

<comment><USER3> > I am mystified by housing/anti-gentrification advocates' refusal to consider > building new housing stock as a solution to this problem.

Because an anti-gentrification advocate is bascially saying, "you don't have the right to desire to live in my neighborhood, only I should be allowed to desire to live in my neighborhood"

<comment><USER7> "... that I moved to as part of the last round of gentrification."

<comment><USER8> That's the real kicker. They are _all_ "forty-niners".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> tl;dr: The City of San Fancisco should prohibit Google buses until Google promises to magically repeal the laws of economics that rents increase when demand exceeds supply.

EDIT:

The paper specifically recommends that the city prevent Google buses from stopping to pick up passengers until Google enters into "Community Benefits Agreements" (CBAs), the purpose of which is to "foster changes" and "mitigate impact".

Unfortunately, it's obvious to any rational person that Google cannot change human nature via any kind of CBA. Hell, they can't even get me to sign up for Google+!

The thing that makes the paper super-funny, are the types of things the author be included in these CBAs would be agreements to "hire locally", which would require Google to open new offices in San Francicso, which would... further increase rents. Funding for parks, which would... further increase rents. Job training, which would increase wages and... further increase rents.

But hey, we could all live in a Marxist paradise if people would all just magically stop being humans who want what's best for themselves.

<comment><USER9> ...so you haven't actually read the paper

<comment><USER3> I read the paper. 90% of it was hand waving that could be boiled down to a grudging acceptance that demand exceeds supply, and drives up rents, and the remaing 10% was wishful thinking about how to change reality so that rents would somehow dip below market-clearing rates.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wasn't aware until now that "city planning" was so much marxist navel gazing. Am I supposed to just assume that rising rents and gentrification are a bad thing?

<comment><USER11> Indeed. I waded through the whole thing, trying to mentally rewrite it in a wikipedia NPOV voice. I failed.

I was also heartily amused that IPO deserved a footnote, but the reader is expected to swallow 'neoliberal urbanism' whole.

An interesting undertone is introduced very early on, there is a quote:

"many first-stage (sweat equity) gentrifiers have sold their property to new (very well-off gentrifiers), who are regentrifying property in the neighborhood"

To me this implies the idea that a tech workers income is not sweat equity, that it is either undeserved or un-earned—while this may be true for some, it fails to recognize the work that most of us put in at every level of schooling, at work and on our own time

<comment><USER12> "sweat equity" specifically means doing repairs to a property to increase its value, as opposed to building equity by making payments. A tech worker's income is not sweat equity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This master's thesis does provide some evidence that shuttle stops are correlated with localized rent increases. This is a survey rather than an experiment; there's no way to tell whether the shuttle lines caused rent increases, or whether they simply started in already up-and-coming neighborhoods. It's also impossible to tell whether the desirability is due to shuttles or other transit; all the chosen shuttle stops ("selected by the San Francisco Tenants' Union"!) are also within a couple blocks of a Bart station or the intersection of major Muni bus lines. I wish she had at least compared these locations to other Bart and Muni stops that don't have shuttles (although admittedly this can be difficult). She also makes no attempt to correct for geography or neighborhood differences and just assumes that the annulus around a circle contains "similar units in the same neighborhood."

I doubt that this would be too useful to the greater debate, however. The real problem is not that a few bus stops are getting too expensive; it's that _the entire city and peninsula are getting too expensive_. And to discuss that, we really need to quote the number of housing units and the number of jobs in the area.

</comment><comment><USER14> Not sure I agree with all of it, the data on rents of 1 and 2 br units within and not within walking distance didn't see particularly convincing. But I really appreciate that the approached it methodically and could share that with us (a requirement for the project I know, I still appreciate it).

I get kind of lost on the economic justice angle though. I'm not sure what an economically "just" city would entail.

</comment><comment><USER15> This article is confusing cause and effect. Bus routes have been opened to cater to people who choose to live in desirable neighborhoods. It's not the buses that make the neighborhood desirable. If all googlers decided they wanted to live in Marin, I would bet that google would send a bus up there in a heartbeat.

<comment><USER16> I'd imagine it's at least partially a feedback loop. Bus routes are determined by looking at where employees live, and figuring out the optimal locations for stops, which I'd imagine is how the first routes opened up. For new employees/employees moving who are figuring out where to live, though, proximity to a shuttle stop seems like a relevant factor in the decision. If nothing else, not having shuttle service could be a point against living in a given neighborhood. I'd imagine if you took away shuttle service away from one neighborhood (just for the sake of argument), you would probably see a gradual decline in the number of employees living there.

Thing is, it'd be hard to quantify to what extent shuttle service availability influences the decision making process, so I'm not sure how much we can say about the net effect of shuttle routes on demand for living in a particular neighborhood.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Thanks providing something concrete to go with all the hand waving on all sides of this.

</comment><comment><USER18> I gladly welcome more study in general. Every conversation on this topic is either anti-gentrification hand-wringing or self-victimization by oversensitive tech professionals. More data, less sensationalism.</comment>


Model Metropolis - <AUTHOR> https://logicmag.io/06-model-metropolis/ <comment><USER4> The article was interesting; I'd never heard of Forrester before.

What I found interesting though, is the fact that the article never seemed to get into the question of whether he was _right_. Is that because the author considered it too obvious to warrant discussion, or because he didn't think it was relevant?

The tone of the piece feels like it's intended as a takedown, but the only actual criticism I noticed was here:

> we have decades of real-world evidence that demonstrates the disastrous > costs of the "counterintuitive" anti-welfare agenda

But this came immediately after a section tracing this line of thinking back to some of the 20th centuries most respected thinkers, and after stating that this was now the default mode of analysis for policy wonks.

It reads like the author thinks they're administering the final blow after building up a damning case, and yet...

<comment><USER5> I agree. I think the real conclusions ought to be (non-exhaustive):

Keep the model's assumptions in mind when making decisions based on it.

Always remember that it's a model, and consequently always wrong (as measured against reality).

All models have to be fine-tuned over time, especially dynamic models (where the system being modeled is itself subject to change in structure, consequently invalidating the model).

=====

If you emphasize that the model is just a model, and its assumptions (both for excluded factors and included ones), then you can make reasonable decisions guided by the model. If you fail to do that, you'll start to believe the reductionist model and make flawed decisions.

<comment><USER6> Which is essentially the whole argument of the article. For example as summarized in the last paragraph:

"Expert knowledge, of course, has an important place in democratic deliberation, but it can also cut people out of the policy process, dampen the urgency of moral claims, and program a sense of powerlessness into our public discourse."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> While I think I'm somewhat in agreement with this, this post seems to be making some claims without backing them up at all:

> To Forrester, low-income housing was an especially egregious example of a > "counterproductive" urban program. According to the model, these programs > increased the local tax burden, attracted underemployed people into the > city, and occupied land which might otherwise have been put to more > economically healthy uses. Housing programs aimed at improving the condition > of the underemployed, Forrester warned, "increased unemployment and reduced > upward economic mobility" and would condemn the underemployed to lifelong > poverty.

Where's the data to suggest this is false? In fact it seems to me like something that may hold true in data, even if deeper causes are at fault.

> but we have decades of real-world evidence that demonstrates the disastrous > costs of the "counterintuitive" anti-welfare agenda

... with no evidence provided?

Overall they actually seem like pretty reasonable theories at face value and calling them crap without evidence doesn't seem like a good solution if there's a problem with them.

<comment><USER8> Shouldn't the burden of proof should be on Forrester's model to prove that it is true?

As I understand it, this article is implying that Forrester's model incorporated those as base truths, without particularly rigourous evidence to support them - hence the comment about his lack of social science credentials. (Whether Forrester actually had evidence to support his model I do not know, as I have not dug deeper.)

<comment><USER7> It's a bit like saying that math is wrong though - logically speaking, low- income housing has costs associated with it in more ways than one, not just housing but for law enforcement, education, etc, all of which will clearly have demand go up and income won't go up as much as if someone who had more money were to live in that city instead. Depressing, perhaps, but factual.

If that basic piece of math is wrong, it needs to be proven - how do low income households contribute more than their fair share of city revenue for example? Does homelessness cause law enforcement issues to increase to a greater amount than low-income housing? Do low-income households produce more future earners that add up better for the city?

We need some data here to show that the basic economics of this don't actually add up if that's the claim being made, because from a basic economics perspective the argument logically and mathematically follows.

<comment><USER9> That entire argument is dependent on the assumption that low income housing _attracts_ people instead of responding to the needs of the local community. Logically, areas that require low income housing are very likely to have a relatively high cost of living to begin with and economic mobility has not changed enough in the last few decades to account for the increase in the homeless population in concentrated metropolitan areas. Despite the great recession, homelessness rates have fallen by almost 20% since 2000 but anyone who has lived in LA, SF, NYC, Portland, or Seattle can tell you that on the ground, bare facts dont tell the whole story.

No doubt locating the actual sweet spot is impossibly complicated and it depends on the region but naive logic will not solve this problem, only experience and data will.

<comment><USER10> > That entire argument is dependent on the assumption that low income housing > _attracts_ people instead of responding to the needs of the local community.

Not necessarily. It could cause/allow people to stay who would otherwise have left, to much the same effect.

You also have the opposite problem, because the same land could have been used for market rate housing, so you've prevented entry by new middle income people who could have brought more resources into the community.

<comment><USER11> Forester's model of public housing here is looking only in terms of cost, and not what it can provide.

A very large assumption lies here: >Housing programs aimed at improving the condition of the underemployed, Forrester warned, "increased unemployment and reduced upward economic mobility" and would condemn the underemployed to lifelong poverty.

and completely ignores the benefits that public housing in a city can provide.

That is, housing can provide security and meet a basic need for those who may be struggling with many basic needs (food, employment, education, health).

Having this need met allows recipients to focus energy and money normally spent on housing on other issues, potentially reducing other costs and allowing them to progress out of poverty.

I think we can see the evidence there are benefits in examples at the furthest end of poverty - homelessness. Many cities found that it is cheaper to house the homeless and provide them social services, than to ignore them and treat the effects of homelessness issues (police and jail time for crimes, from desperation or untreated mental illness, emergency medical services for treating overdoses etc).

This is not even getting to the question of the purpose of government - it is not a business trying to achieve maximum profit, so why should it be seeking to drive out low-income residents?

[https://thinkprogress.org/leaving-homeless-person-on-the- str...](https://thinkprogress.org/leaving-homeless-person-on-the- streets-31-065-giving-them-housing-10-051-3107834a8632/)

<comment><USER7> > This is not even getting to the question of the purpose of government - <USER2> > is not a business trying to achieve maximum profit, so why should it be > seeking to drive out low-income residents?

Can I move somewhere that _is_ run like a business trying to maximize profit? I think I'd far prefer it to my wasteful city...

<comment><USER11> Let's say every local government in a country operated that way - all doing their best to maximize attractions for the rich (and 'profit') and limit attractions/spending for the poor.

Obviously poor people must move somewhere, so the end result is society has just conspired to make their poverty and misery government's permanent goal.

I think this attitude is fairly common in the US. Look how many people think punishments or burdens need to be attached to welfare, without any proof of fraud reduction. Things like mandatory drug testing, work requirements, restrictions to what TANF and SNAP and be spent on.

<comment><USER7> Perhaps "profit" isn't the best way to put it, but "wellbeing per dollar" in some way - ultimately a measurable optimization factor of some sort needs to be decided on and used.

Instead we see cities without any sort of optimization, repeatedly trying failed ideas, flushing tax dollars down the toilet. "This clearly isn't working, let's just keep doing it" ought to be the slogan for many midsize cities.

<comment><USER12> We already optimize for wellbeing per dollar.

<comment><USER7> You're joking, right? Broken transit systems, barely maintained roads, large backlogs of intersections that need lights leading to safety incidents even deaths, planners that accept everything a developer or NIMBY can say... No, we don't optimize for shit except perhaps councilors pocketbooks and re-election.

We _wish_ these systems were optimized, but they're not. If they were, we'd at least see pushes to get people to live closer to work, the rejection of NIMBYs in favor of multiunit developers in central areas while in distant areas we'd see rejection of developers in favor of improved transit.

Many areas in my city have terrible access by car or public transit because the city has kept pushing back road and transit improvements while allowing developers to keep going. It's gotten so bad a few developers were offering to do road widening for the city on an interest free loan as their property values were taking a hit due to a reputation for long commutes - <USER3> that fell through even, it's a mess, a completely unoptimized mess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > "Even though Forrester had no expertise in urban affairs—or in social > science more generally—Collins agreed that a collaboration could prove > fruitful."

This is one of the most interesting sentences to me. I have long been convinced that the efforts to reduce behaviour and models down to pure numbers, and disregard the human element - whether willfully or through ignorance or naivety), are more harmful than we think.

I think we are seeing similar things with how the attempt to 'personalise' services like news by crunching user behaviour into 'predictive' algorithms has led to the rise of echo chambers and fake news.

Or, I suppose you could consider the attempts to reduce bundles of derivatives to simple algorithms, that largely led to the 2008 financial crisis.

It seems a particularly human thing to assume we know far more about what's going on than we actually do.

</comment><comment><USER13> My friends and coworkers often speak a lot of praises about the survival/industrial game _Factorio_. In the game, pollution from the player's generators attract hostile creatures that one has to manage. The player can use renewable energy an option, but it's not as easily productive or scalable as other sources of power.

I haven't played the game, but I always thought of the pollution/conflict dynamic and renewables being more safe (but harder to get right) as a statement on environmental policy.

<comment><USER14> I think the actual game is much harsher than this. You play as the main character and the game is really just about expanding the factory for the sake of expanding the factory. It serves no purpose other than making the factory bigger. You might be able to produce a little less pollution with solar but at the end, the game is about expanding the factory. You will cut down the forests, and pollute the environment, and pave over the beautiful landscape and the remove the homes of the natives that stand in your way. Why? Because it's what you do. It's factorio. It's slightly subtle, but not really. I think everyone realizes this is the backdrop of the game but you just keep building, and paving and polluting, because it's Factorio. It feels like it should be some moral lesson, I'm not sure what it is though. You just keep doing stuff and having fun.

<comment><USER15> er, there is an endgame. the rocket.

<comment><USER14> Yes, yes. Rocket is good. But what about second rocket?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Adam Curtis talked about Forester and the study of "cybernetic systems" (to use the contemporary term) in general, in episode 2 of "All Watched Over By the Machines Of Loving Grace" [0].

The core argument (which is alluded to in the Logic Magazine article) is that in the 1960s when computers were beginning to be integrated into companies and governments, there was a strong desire to have the computer solve all the world's problems. Of course, the problems were not well understood (and still often aren't), while at the same time the computers were woefully underdeveloped. Therefore simplifications were made so that the computer could calculate something that looked somewhat reasonable. Of course the models were symplistic, and the data encoding symplistic and biased as well. But hey, the computer "solved" the problem, and as we all know, "Computers don't make mistakes." Eventually (and Forrester encouraged) the simplistic world was confused for an actual complete description of the real one. Most damningly, industrial leaders and politicians, started trying to make people and society fit the simplistic model, instead of improving the models to better fit society. Why? Well, there was a computer model made by Very Smart Men(tm), and it gave cover for what was already decided, so it must be right.

It's as if the proverbial dairy farmer that received the report that begins, "Suppose you have a spherical cow...", started selective breeding and cutting his cows to optimize for sphericality, as opposed to milk production, because the report says "spherical cows."

It's a similar pattern we're seeing play out with ML, where the assumption is that the classifier is correct regardless of its actual performance.

[0] [https://archive.org/details/AllWatchedOverByMachinesOfLoving...](https://archive.org/details/AllWatchedOverByMachinesOfLovingGraceEpisode2TheUseAndAbuseOfVegetationalConcepts)

</comment><comment><USER17> "Using this rhetorical tactic, the conservative speaker can claim that they share your social goal, but simultaneously argue that the means you are using to achieve it will only make matters worse."

I think this line in particular really demonstrates the resistance to ideological debate on the left (to say nothing of resistance on the right which I think has a different character). It's like, these ideas that aren't already part of your ideology are discredited because you assume they come from a place of bad-faith.

If you refuse to engage with someone's ideas (who supposedly wants to solve the same problems you do!) because you've already assumed they're evil- that seems like a pretty dangerous mindset to me.

</comment><comment><USER18> At the moment I am playing 'Cities: skylines' which it one of the best city cims at the moment imho.

But the real question is: does it simulate what we know or what works best?

Ofcourse I think it simulates what we know which might not be the best for people.

When you read the works of Christopher Alexander you will get the feeling that we need to redesign our areas. And this is not what a sim simulates..

</comment><comment><USER19> I agree with the general sentiment of this sort of objection, but where it goes off the rails is the generalization to all sorts of modeling. If you think the model and it's assumptions are wrong why not go build a better model? That's the whole point of the scientific method after all.

<comment><USER20> >If you think the model and it's assumptions are wrong why not go build a better model?

The better model may be intractable to fit (so complex that we lack enough data to train it). Or, it may be fittable but not easy to understand, e.g. a neural network model.

<comment><USER21> This. I work with models that are considerably simpler than "200 equations and 150 parameters" and we run into non-identifiability problems _all the time_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > As one moved down the class ladder in the urban dynamics model, classist > assumptions about the urban poor piled up: birth rates were higher

Why is this controversial, or, for that matter, an assumption? There's plenty of studies demonstrating correlation between income and fertility... or are they implying that the correlation is only meaningful nation-wide, not within any particular city?

<comment><USER4> It was puzzling. I suppose the argument isn't that the assumption was factually wrong, but morally wrong?

<comment><USER6> No, it is arguing that it is factually wrong based on prejudice. Most obviously that the groups negative factors aren't inherent and their contributions aren't valued.

<comment><USER22> That would be worded very differently than it actually is in the article. It specifically states that the very notion that urban poor have higher birthrates is _in and of itself_ a "classist assumption", not because other factors are omitted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> LGR just released a video retrospective on the subject, 30 years later. You can find it here : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrScy1icWjI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrScy1icWjI)

</comment><comment><USER24> Does anyone know if there's a strong link between Forrester and Donella Meadows, of Thinking in Systems? I'm reading that book after seeing it praised more than once on HN.

Meadows provides lots of food for thought, and I think I could make my workplace better if I figured out how to apply some of the ideas she expresses. I'm not convinced that all of her reasoning is very rigorous, and I suppose that matches the feelings of the author of this article, not that I think he does a great job of rigor either. Once the fine article extended its ideas from city planning to no platforming, without apparent irony, or data, I got the yawn.

<comment><USER5> She worked with Forrester's group in the late 60s/early 70s. So there's a direct connection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> For more on Jay Forrester's philosophy and influence on politics, internationally, check out the All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace documentary series by Adam Curtis.

</comment><comment><USER26> The vast majority of social programs when played out to their natural conclusions do make problems far worse.

Just look at the mayhem easy to obtain government backed student loans have caused in "higher" education - skyrocketing tuition and a bachelors degree being worth about the same as a high school diploma was in the 80's. But now with crippling debt for new graduates.

Yeah! But we are improving things!

<comment><USER27> >Just look at the mayhem easy to obtain government backed student loans have caused in "higher" education - skyrocketing tuition and a bachelors degree being worth about the same as a high school diploma was in the 80's. But now with crippling debt for new graduates.

This is a problem that, as far as I can tell, exists mostly in America. I doubt this is a problem in European countries where tuition is mostly free or extremely low cost to begin with.

Maybe the key for effective social programs is not to apply a bandaid but to fix the root cause.</comment></comment>


Support for Windows 7 has ended - <AUTHOR> https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-7-end-of-life-support-information <comment><USER2> I am in the midst of switching over to Windows 10, after many happy years on 7. I was very reluctant to switch because of all the things I read about how Windows had tried to put a desktop gui together with a tablet and phone one. But it turns out that Windows 10 is pretty much like 7.

There is one huge difference, that's accounts. In 7 you get in with a password, but in 10 you can also use a pin. Also 7 has two types of account, administrator and standard. In 10 there are two more variables, Microsoft account vs local, and family vs other user, with a different procedure for creating each.

Also there is cortana, but I haven't use it except for the initial setting up.

Let me add that I have found David Pogue's Windows 10 The Missing Manual very helpful.

</comment><comment><USER3> I find it odd that on the blue screen notification they stated that they "Strongly Recommend" you to upgrade to Windows 10 on a "New PC".

</comment><comment><USER4> And I know companies still using XP...

<comment><USER5> I still write .NET 1.1 software for deployment on (sometimes new!) XP machines. (Industrial) It can be a challenge keeping an older Microsoft dev environment active... it's the most valuable VM image I have.

<comment><USER6> It's not unlike some very big companies that are continually out of date when it comes to patches. The reason in their case is not a lack of diligence -- they are _testing_ those patches before they ever install them on a critical server.

It is worth noting that a huge number of atm bank machines are running NT well beyond the days Microsoft was trying to get people to stop using it. For those who worked with NT and with what was replacing it, the decision was a no- brainer. Even at Y2K. Where is the cost going to be, and how much should we expect?

How many failed patches have you ever installed? That's exactly what they are avoiding. Risk has a weight. Denial of service is a risk, and in many businesses, the potential DoS is a more expensive risk than what the patch fixes. It's also the same reason employed COBOL programmers still exist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> oh no...</comment>


The Art of Computer Programming Vol 1 eBook Pre-Order (Use Discount KNUTHVOL160) - <AUTHOR> http://www.informit.com/store/art-of-computer-programming-volume-1-fundamental-algorithms-9780133489330

<comment><AUTHOR> The discount code saves you 60% off the list price, and is only valid until March 28, 2014.</comment>


Why You Should Use a Text Area for Address Form Fields - <AUTHOR> http://uxmovement.com/forms/why-you-should-use-a-text-area-for-address-form-fields/ <comment><USER2> Changing the label from "Address 2" to "Apartment, Suite, etc (optional)" and adding dynamic dropdowns for City, State, Country decreased the number of incorrect addresses for us by nearly 50%.

Although I can't claim credit I stole it from Shopify's checkout.

<comment><USER3> This approach seems best to me, rather than dealing with free form text and then trying to parse and cleanse that.

<comment><USER4> > trying to parse and cleanse that

But why would you? If you need to send something to the address you can just print the exact user input on the shipping label.

<comment><USER5> You might wabt to run some analytics on your data based on city, general area, etc. Also simplifies fraud detection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is good advice, especially because anyone who is serious about using the address will be passing it through CASS certification or geocoding on the backend before using the address. Such APIs are fully capable of parsing the full address without you splitting the address lines.

[http://www.datasciencetoolkit.org/](http://www.datasciencetoolkit.org/)

[https://accuzip.iaccutrace.com/cass/#/app](https://accuzip.iaccutrace.com/cass/#/app)

[https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/...](https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/examples/geocoding- simple)

</comment><comment><USER7> This is especially valid for forms that accept non-US addresses. It is such a pain to deal with assumed formats, length/charset limits or other restrictions put in place by devs who clearly have no idea how addresses work in other countries.

</comment><comment><USER8> It is virtually impossible to agree on a set of fields - there is always an exception: [https://www.mjt.me.uk/posts/falsehoods-programmers- believe-a...](https://www.mjt.me.uk/posts/falsehoods-programmers-believe- about-addresses/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Yes, 'two address lines' is ad-hoc, but a user's expectations may also not match the pattern: 'a multi-line street number, name, apt #, etc; a zip; a city; a state.'

Should we get rid of auto-complete for state and city, using the zip, too, then? I don't think so. But where to draw the distinction?

</comment><comment> King-Aaron RIP devs that need to sanitize address data from random textarea inputs

</comment><comment><USER10> until you need to integrate an api needing it seperated with a db full of free text</comment>


Man Says Twins Who Sued Facebook 'Backstabbed' Him, Sues for Settlement Money - <AUTHOR> http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/winklevoss-twins-sued-partner-backstabbed/story?id=12381904

<comment><USER2> Cool that grellas is quoted within :)</comment>


Can Donald Trump Rescind Chelsea Manning's Clemency? - <AUTHOR> http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2017-01-26/can-donald-trump-rescind-chelsea-mannings-clemency <comment><USER2> It would set a terrible president. In 4/8 years when Trump leaves office it would leave open for his decisions to be upended. If He don't respect Obama's clemency-revocation powers then why should the next PoTUS respect his?</comment>


We build a Single Page App in 10 Days, here's how - <AUTHOR> http://www.tierranews.org/pages/how

<comment><USER2> We broke various "entrepreneurial" barriers that have limited start-up endeavours in Costa Rica. By building a crowd-sourced app as an MVP in one day and a "complete" product in 10 days we solved 3 problems that public and private sectors had been trying to solve for years, which are very difficult to solve to cultural idiosyncracy. 1. Education: all participants learned how to use the OPF framework the very same day they coded the MVP. 2. Initial capital: no investment was needed except minor tool usage and hosting. 3. Finding partners/entrepreneurs: 30 people of different professions came together to build the app. We experimented and are VERY happy with the result and what will come of it.</comment>


Ur-Fascism (1995) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/ <comment><USER2> _The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism._

Ironically, totalitarianism is itself a product of modernism: the idea that you can premeditate a "perfect" society and then bring it about at scale, by force. The theme of mastery over nature is extremely modernist, where nature in this case is humanity.

<comment><USER3> True. He mentions throughout that fascism is littered with internal contradictions that it has no interest in reconciling rationally.

<comment><USER4> It most certainly is, how can a group they disparage simultaneously be weak and subhuman, while also having lots of power and "controlling the world"?

<comment><USER5> One obvious answer (not ascribing to the theory, just playing devil's advocate) is through deception and manipulation.

A group is weak, so it resorts to manipulation and deceiving , and thus gains power over stronger more "pure" groups don't stoop down to these tactics.

<comment><USER6> "A group is weak, so it resorts to manipulation and deceiving"

And yet the "superior" group isn't smart enough to evade or detect this effectively.

<comment><USER5> Well, superior could mean morally better, more hardworking, etc - so could be equally smart or even more, but might not be cynical enough to even think someone could do this kind of thing.

The superior group is not meant to be "superior" in every aspect -- only to the aspects that matter for the values of those defining it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _Foucault 's Pendulum_ also contain a great (fictional, but clearly autobiographical somehow) account of life in rural Italy during the Resistance.

<comment><USER8> Also an exemplar for a lot of more recent novels of... ahem... varying quality from people like Pérez-Reverte or Dan Brown.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a brilliant article. I would just like to add that it seems to me you can summarize what fascism is by saying it is the attempt to impose premodern, tribalistic social forms and ways of thinking on a modern, industrial society. This is not workable, and so I think it accounts for the many ideological contradictions that Eco points out.

</comment><comment><USER10> it's odd that they characterise ur-fascism with irrationalism given the level of scientific innovation present in Nazi Germany (even though that innovation was entirely directed at more efficiently killing people). I'd more characterise it as anti-intellectual, as from reading this article the scorn seemed to be more directed at academics, bourgeois artists and armchair thinker types than science or rationality in general.

<comment><USER11> The amount of scientific innovation in Nazi Germany is incredibly overhyped. In reality outside of rockets they made very few major advances. And even in Rocketry there were major scientific breakthroughs, just improved engineering. The medical experiments inflicted on prisoners were useless scientifically, just pure sadism. The "experiments" to test hypothermia for instance often did not record the patience weight, the temperature and volume of the water, and other factors. Not to mention that the experiments were being conducted on people who were often on the verge of starvation and in terrible health. They provide no useful data.

Not to mention their rejection of "Jewish Physics", science in Nazi Germany was incredibly politicized and if your research didn't conform to the dogma you had to change it or risk your life.

<comment><USER10> hm, I did not know that. I'd picked up a perception that the Nazis were innovative in quite a few scientific disciplines, at least partially due to their complete disdain for ethics, but it sounds like that belief is unfounded.

<comment><USER11> It's the whole mad science angle that we have in our culture I think. But that ignores that ethics are tied to things like oversight, methodology, and being objective which are all important for research.

<comment><USER12> It is also worth noting that a lot of those mad-science projects that we look back at and consider potentially visionary were often stabs in the dark by scientists who saw a ministry picking up their project as a way to avoid conscription into the army. They were seldom backed up by any real science and frequently had little chance of success, but they somewhat resemble something that was developed later so we assume the project leads knew what they were doing...

<comment><USER6> Also, perhaps they were adept at playing on the misconceptions or weird beliefs of those in powerful positions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The perfect example of faux-deep, but ultimately shallow work Eco was made famous for.</comment>


Things about the new Firefox browser for Android - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mozilla.org/firefox/firefox-android-new-features/ <comment><USER2> I'm using Firefox Preview regularly for a few month now, and it really is a huge step up in performance. Javascript and CSS-heavy sites now behave as they should, and browsing feels smooth overall. However the UI changes are a big step back and the main reason why I've not completely switched over from the regular Firefox (now I won't have that choice it looks like) :

\- The address/search bar is much much inferior. Much less relevant results now come up first. When typing the domain name of a site I visit daily said site will come up low on the list, needing to scroll, while some autocompleted address I've never visited once will be on top.

\- Extensions are not supported. A single supported extension does not count.

\- The thumbnails are removed from the tab list. Not a huge loss but I had gotten used to it

\- Popups each time you close a tab use up unnecessary screen space. Also they often just stay there.

\- The address bar is now at the bottom. Change for the sake of change.

I don't know if all of these issues will transfer to the new Firefox, but I wish they would have brought in the engine changes only. Current UI is fine.

<comment><USER3> I know you say a single supported extension does not count, but they did include the one extension that was an absolute deal breaker for me if it didn't exist.

They -don't- support extensions yet, but they did make it approachable for people like me who simply won't browse the web without an adblocker.

<comment><USER4> Agreed, to be honest uBlock Origin is the only extension I'm currently running on mobile, and "deal-breaker" is exactly how I'd describe browsing without it. I'll probably give this new build a try.

<comment><USER5> Yup. uBlock Origin on mobile is what made me switch back from chrome a couple years ago. Definite dealbreaker if it was unsupported

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'll keep using Mobile Firefox, and my experience with the new version is indeed favorable, but I admit that I'm frustrated and confused that this is being pushed to stable users before complete extension support is implemented. Thankfully uBlock Origin is supported or I'd be looking for a new browser, but my less-important extensions aren't so lucky.

At best I could imagine that Mozilla is privy to internal metrics showing that some overwhelming proportion of users have uBlock Origin as their only extension, which I could absolutely believe. Still, what sort of timeframe will it take to support the remaining addons, and why couldn't the new browser have baked on the nightly channel for a while longer until extension support was completed?

<comment><USER7> I think the metrics actually show that most users don't use extensions. But of the group that _do_ use extensions, I'd guess an adblocker is the top one.

<comment><USER8> The question is - _an_ adblocker or _the_ adblocker (ublock)? As a long time FF Android user I prefer uMatrix and will wait with upgrade, hoping they fix this quickly. Otherwise... Not sure what I'll do. This is bad. :-(

<comment><USER9> As far as I know, uMatrix is not a (dynamic) ad blocker. That is, if some requests to subdomain.domain.net are for ads and some of the requests are for important page content, uMatrix isn't capable of distinguishing between the two. A real ad blocker uses block lists compiled (at least in part) by other people that can distinguish between two different URLs on the same domain.

<comment><USER8> Fair point, except - I am more concerned with tracking than the ads themselves. Which means I want to block Google fonts anywhere, and only allow domains when I want to. So no, I prefer uMatrix approach.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Am I reading this right? They're going to launch a browser update that removes support for most extensions and claim it's an upgrade?

<comment><USER11> God Damnit I Hoped They Wouldn't Do This. I love you Firefox but you make it so hard. I've come to depend on NoScript on mobile (the mobile web is a _nightmare_ with JS enabled by default) and now they're going to break it on me. The worst part is the part of this article about how their browser is not ready for extensions is labeled "Extension-ready". No it fucking isn't.

Fuck this is so frustrating.

<comment><USER12> It's not like there isn't really a solution to this. You don't really need NoScript if you can learn how to use ublock origin in advanced mode.

<comment><USER11> I've never tried the uBO script blocker, but NoScript's UI is really nice for performing common tasks related to blocking JS. Stuff like allowing temporary permissions per domain, or allowing all on the current tab. Does uBO have similar features?

<comment><USER13> You can try the brave browser on Android. Disabling and enabling js temporarily is easy. Even better, enabling js on a website in private mode does not persist. So you can disable all js by default, enable it on trusted sites via 1 click easy to use UI, and enable anywhere in private mode without worrying about forgetting to disable it later.

<comment><USER14> > enable it on trusted sites via 1 click easy to use UI

Does this just enable all scripts loaded by that site, or does it allow filtering by domain the scripts themselves are loaded from?

E.g. when browsing site.com you want to allow site.com (and often sitestatic.com or something), but still not allow doubleclick.net even though it's loaded by the same page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm on nightly on my phone so have had this experience for a while. I very much dislike the new homescreen with collections instead of the 2x4 of most frecently visited sites.

Collections would be ok if it kept the old UI of a 2x4 grid. Instead I get to see 2 sites at first, and have to scroll to see more. If I close a tab, I'm not able to use the bottom 1/4 of the screen for ~2 seconds while the undo popup hangs out. This means even more scrolling. This decluttering really sucks imo.

The other annoying thing is that the upgrade starts up with an empty collection screen. The upgrade should have created a default collection populated with my 2x4 grid for me. Come on Mozilla, stop giving me paper cuts like this.

<comment><USER16> Ah, the old "we know what's best for our users" mentality. Take something good away in favor of a worse UX, with no config setting to switch back, even though old and new _could_ co-exist.

<comment><USER15> I definitely understand them not wanting to maintain two parallel settings here. I think this failure sits squarely on the project manager who decided to couple the new behavior (collections instead of frecency) together with a new ui. I'd bet dollars to donuts that they didn't test the changes independently, and they're probably tightly linked in the code.

I imagine collections were the driving force here. If the new behavior (collections) were shipped separately, I imagine they would have certainly migrated installations to have a default `recents` collection that users could then easily delete (or migrate and maintain manually)! What a nice situation that would have been as everyone would have gotten exactly what they wanted.

If the new UI were tested separately, I can't imagine it would have gotten positive feedback. But maybe I'm just an old grump and most people like it better? It seems like shipping the UI change as a separate feature would have easily identified that the grid view was something a lot of people liked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > "[...]everyone using the Firefox browser on their Android phones and tablets > will get the update."

Well, everyone who has at least Android 5... which excludes about 10% of the android landscape[1].

Most of these people probably still haven't upgraded because they a)can't afford it or b) use their devices until they're broken and will not buy a new device simply because it's newer.

I understand the move, but still, Mozilla has to communicate this in the right way and not "Everyone will have to update and if you can't, sorry for you, not our business"

[1] [https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/](https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/)

<comment><USER18> Android 5 was released in 2014. It's time to move on.

<comment><USER17> Is anything which is older than 6 years considered legacy now? Should this be the expected lifetime of smartphones? Please not.

<comment><USER19> Smartphones, no (although with batteries being almost universally not replaceable now, six years is usually a difficult prospect without some delicate surgery), but a particular version of an OS, I think six years is plenty reasonable.

The root of the problem is that phones have so much proprietary hardware with closed source drivers that prevent the end-user from keeping the OS up-to-date like we can on PCs. If I wanted to, I could put a completely modern version of Linux on a 15-year-old desktop and it'd work fine, assuming the hardware's still fine. But with phone OSs you're completely at the mercy of your phone's manufacturer for OS releases, and so "six year old smartphone" necessarily means "smartphone missing probably at least 2-3 years of security updates and multiple OS versions behind the latest". It doesn't _have_ to be that way, but that's the world phone manufacturers have created for us, and they have no incentive to change it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> yjftsjthsd-h > 3\. Extension-ready

> This update will initially include support for one of the most popular > extensions on Android, uBlock Origin. Additional extensions will be > supported in subsequent releases

... if it supports exactly 1 extension, it is absolutely _not_ "extension- ready"!

<comment><USER20> I'm guessing the wording was meant to suggest extension ready vs extension supporting. As in, the codebase is capable of adding full extension support, no rearchitecture needed.

No user-facing advantage yet, sadly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The github issue discussing extension support is here [https://github.com/mozilla- mobile/fenix/issues/5315#issuecom...](https://github.com/mozilla- mobile/fenix/issues/5315#issuecomment-582309086)

I find the attitudes about extensions and UX in general to be evolving in a strange way. People used to focus on the 80/20 rule, make what 80% of people want to do easy, and the remaining 20% possible. But now many people seem to be saying "if most people don't need it, it's not important." But that just takes products down a path of diminishing ability that is dictated by a few UX people and the personas they test with, and when we're talking about a general purpose product like a browser it means fewer opportunities for anyone to create and use innovative features.

<comment><USER22> Even worse, it means people can't rely on your features anymore. A feature that could disappear at any time might as well not exist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> If you're not very happy with Firefox for Android, consider switching to Bromite [0]. It's based on Chromium, but includes many privacy patches, including ad blocking, and is completely open source.

Releases are available through an _official_ F-Droid repository as well as GitHub. It is a very well run project.

0\. [https://github.com/bromite/bromite](https://github.com/bromite/bromite)

</comment><comment><USER24> Glad to see support for uBlock Origin landing, finally. Although to be honest, I've been using FF Preview for about a month now, and I haven't observed any ads to speak of. The tracking blockers may be enough on their own.

<comment><USER25> I've seen a few, but the majority gets caught :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I like this browser and usually have it set as my default on my phone. I like that I can set links to open in private mode by default quite a bit.

My wishlist: 1. collections syncing to my Firefox account and desktop Firefox 2. a menu option to move a page from private mode to normal mode where I'm logged into things; right now I copy/paste the url 3. (sadly) an easy way to open the current page in Chrome.

The biggest issue I've run into is some app sign-in flows that roll through the browser or webview break when using Firefox private by default. I switch Chrome to the default temporarily to work around this.

</comment><comment><USER27> I hope they make it impossible for sites to determine whether you're in private mode. Lots of sites refuse to work in private mode, and frankly, they shouldn't have any way to tell. Private mode is nice because it's the easiest way to delete all their tracking cookies when you leave the site.

</comment><comment><USER28> The top comments are so negative. I find the steps towards making uBlock origin directly available, and extensions available in subsequent releases laudable. I have been using Firefox mobile for at least 8 years and it's been getting faster and better with every new release.

</comment><comment><USER29> Well this is worrying, afaik Firefox Preview still kernel panics some LineageOS roms (like mine) [1].

[1] [https://github.com/mozilla- mobile/fenix/issues/5663](https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/5663)

<comment><USER30> To be honest, if a userland application is capable of kernel panicking a phone, that's a bug in the kernel, not in the application.

There's also a bug in Android (official and LOS) which I've encountered many times related to location detection in certain always-on GPS apps, causing a systems freeze and a reboot. This sucks, but it's a bug with Android, not with the application itself.

The Android/LOS peeps should really take a look at this though. I don't expect this to be the only app that can cause this and with some severe bad luck the crash might even be exploitable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> But you still can't change tabs with a swipe like in Chrome, and to be honest it's the only thing keeping me from switching to FF

<comment><USER31> Well, at least I could contribute this feature myself someday, while many annoyances in Chrome I won't be ever able to fix :)

<comment><USER32> What prevents you from contributing to this feature targeting Chrome?

<comment><USER33> Their bias.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I just tried this again after being back on Firefox Beta on Android for a few months. It's really gotten quite nice, and they added back the reader mode which I use a lot to simplify long pages on my phone. The only thing I occasionally use that's not there right now is the ability to open a site from a tab open on my desktop.

</comment><comment><USER35> Sounds good. Does lastpass work on this version of Firefox? Lastpass is a really popular password manager, but last I checked it didn't work on Firefox on Android (Lastpass works fine on Firefox on desktop).

<comment><USER36> LastPass's Android app works. But maybe you can try out Bitwarden while you're at it. It's open source and can be self-hosted (and is audited).

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Firefox preview has two really annoying bugs -

a) when closing a tab the option to revert that action gets stuck most of the time on my screen and it's hard to get the timing right - if you do it too soon you gonna actually restore the tab but if you do it later it'll stop working and just disappear

b) downloading some attachments creates 0byte or incomplete file in my download folder, not sure what's going on there

</comment><comment><USER38> I really wish they'd get around to implementing saving credit card info, that's one reason I go back to chrome now and then. and there are some bugs with opening Firefox, clicking the address field on a tab that is loading and writing a search and pressing enter. That search is somehow lost if the timing of loading what was already in the tab is unfortunate. Maybe this never happens on a brand new phone on a high speed connection, but for me it is the biggest nuisance with Firefox mobile.

</comment><comment><USER39> I wish there was still about:config. It's much more fine-grained and you can turn on experimental features like lazy loading images.

</comment><comment><USER40> I've heard that extensions aren't supported in the new Firefox for Android, but did they also drop support for Personas/Themes? The blog post mentions light or dark themes, but not custom ones. (Am I the only person in the world who installed a theme on Firefox for Android?)

</comment><comment><USER41> Maybe the could publish the current version with a different name (Firefox Rusty?) for the ones of us who want to keep using their extensions. The current Firefox feels fast enough on my phone. I can wait to install the new one when extensions support is complete.

</comment><comment><USER42> If they fix the frequent crashes, and even more frequent inability to render a page at all (just a white screen, even after refreshing), then I'll definitely give it a go. I'd love to switch back, but had to retreat to Brave for the time being...

<comment><USER43> What phone are you using?

<comment><USER44> I have this issue on the Galaxy S10e (stock). I get the white screen of death after a while. I uninstalled it because my phone was swapping out the second to last app when I had Firefox Preview installed, even when not using it. (Maybe it was being the default web view inside other apps?) The phone seems fine with it gone as I use regular Firefox.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Any progress on Servo? What the mobile web needs is a parallel layout engine.

</comment><comment><USER46> We'll see. To be honest I don't really have a problem with the current Firefox on Android. Maybe I'll get accustomed to the bottom url bar.

I also use Firefox Focus for links from external apps.

<comment><USER47> The bar position is a setting, you don't to get used to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> The Firefox Preview Nightly (with ublock) is an incredible improvement, especially regarding speed. I got a new phone this past August (moto g7) and I was already wondering if I needed another new phone because FF on android was so slow. It was unbearable. I was about to ditch it completely and resign myself to ads. FF is doing a great job overall with their browsers on android and desktop (except for the loss of sourcemap support for some that makes it unusable for JS debugging). I suppose there was a lot of room for improvement since the old FF was incredibly slow. I hope they do not let this new version degrade into what it was in the future.

</comment><comment><USER49> I've been using Firefox Preview for months and it is the first time I don't hate using the browser on my phone. Huge props to the Firefox team for it.

</comment><comment><USER50> Is there a way to download a .apk of the preview?

<comment><USER51> Just download 'Firefox Preview' in the Play Store. That's the version which will eventually replace the old one.

<comment><USER50> I want to avoid the play store. So I was looking for an official apk source.

<comment><USER52> From [https://github.com/mozilla- mobile/fenix/issues/8350#issuecom...](https://github.com/mozilla- mobile/fenix/issues/8350#issuecomment-585246432)

> _We do a staged roll-out before publishing APKs. As far as I 'm aware > neither are at 100% which is a requirement for posting the builds. The APK > is available from automation in the meantime if you want: [https://firefox- > ci-tc.services.mozilla.com/tasks/index/proje...](https://firefox-ci- > tc.services.mozilla.com/tasks/index/project.mobile.fenix.v2.production/latest*)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> mike-cardwell Can I use this, or does it come with DoH? I hate that I have to even ask this question.

</comment><comment><USER53> It's nice that they used Kotlin, the codebase is beautiful to look at.

</comment><comment><USER54> I don't have Firefox on my smartphone, I still use Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER55> I use many extensions on Firefox for Android. It's why I use Firefox, and Firefox is a big reason for why I use Android.

I already switched from Nightly to the Release version to continue using extensions.</comment>


A Replica of an 18th-Century Organ Rings Clear and True - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/science/22organ.html

<comment><USER2> This is very impressive. One can only imagine what it sounds like. Wonder if Donald Knuth [http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2006/mayjun/feat...](http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2006/mayjun/features/knuth.html) has had a chance to see it (scroll to nearly the end of this article).</comment>


FT begins search for new editor to replace Lionel Barber - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/may/03/ft-begins-search-for-new-editor-to-replace-lionel-barber <comment><USER2> Continuity of editorial is huge. The Times under Harold Evans was different from William Rees-Mogg and Douglas-Home. But, I think in essential qualities, much remained the same. After Simon Jenkins I lost touch, but I do believe there is a house style and it pays to maintain it.

The counter-argument is of course the Daily Mail and Dacre, who is a crypto- fascist and evil. The sooner the editorial there is fixed the better (and it is, a work in progress of sorts)

The FT used to be read by a lot of left leaning people, because it seemed money-men don't lie to each other about matters of fact. Useful if you are worried capitalism might not be in crisis after all.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting points. And I agree with your note, "I do believe there is a house style and it pays to maintain it."

When Nikkei bought the FT a few years ago, I remember some were concerned the voice would be lost. I'm happy it's pretty stable.</comment></comment>


HN Plays 2048 (democracy) - <AUTHOR> http://hnplays2048-democracy.herokuapp.com

<comment><USER2> A bit frustrating since people keep making bad moves.

It's is NOT the best move to always combine big numbers!!

You want to keep shifting the larger numbers over to the corner. If you combine numbers on the other side you have a large number on the wrong side and the game becomes unwinable.

In fact if you have combinable numbers on the wrong side you want to try hard to _avoid_ combining them. (By shaking the board, and hoping to put a number in between the combinable ones.)

</comment><comment><USER3> All this is telling me is that a lot of people are kind of bad at this game. :/

<comment> ah- Just a friendly reminder, never ever move the highest number out of the corner.

<comment><USER2> The group just has to decide _which_ corner.

Personally I prefer the lower left.

<comment><USER3> well, once it's in a corner it shouldn't really matter which one any individual prefers. Once it's past 512 you have really low odds of recovering from moving it out of the corner in a single player game, probably more like 128 in this group form.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is this a proof that democracy does not work ? :)

<comment><USER5> actually...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's broken for me!

There are no tiles, and I'm the only user online.

</comment><comment><USER7> Right after an exceptionally dumb move is made, all activity seems to halt for just a moment, like everyone said "crap!" all at once.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is the only way I'll be able to win :). Thanks!

edit: And we lost the first game.

</comment><comment><USER8> It might be useful to record the inputs. Someone could train an AI to play 2048 like HN.

<comment><USER2> It's not really a hard game, just tedious since too many mistakes and you're finished. Sometimes a single mistake and it's over.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Democracy?? More like Chaos!</comment>


HN: Where is the value of a business-only partner? - <AUTHOR>

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=477601
Stemming from this discussion, I was wondering what everyone's thoughts are on a business-only partner when pursuing a technology centric startup.
I don't understand where the inherent value-add lies with someone that cannot help build the product. All the other stuff seems pretty simple in relative comparison. Am I just naive? Or do you guys agree? <comment><USER2> This has been talked to death.

[http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ahackerne.ws+%22idea+gu...](http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ahackerne.ws+%22idea+guy%22)

[http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ahackerne.ws+%22busines...](http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ahackerne.ws+%22business+guy%22)

(Strangely, I tried these same searches on searchyc.com, and it failed to do anything useful with the quotes, so it came back with a lot of irrelevant crap. It used to work...I'm pretty sure of it.)

Summary: Hackers don't think very highly of "business guys" or "idea guys". "Business guys" and "idea guys" think hackers are interchange-able cogs. If your business or idea guy doesn't also bring "money guy" to the table, you're better off without him.</comment>