Ask HN: Example of a 'non-scalar' programming language? - <AUTHOR> Greetings! I recently watched a talk by Sophie Wilson (of ARM fame) where she discusses the future of microprocessors. In the talk she mentions that "Scalar" programming languages are limited because the compiler cannot easily translate them into parallel machine instructions [1] among other reasons.
My first reaction was to see if I can find an example of a "non-scalar" programming language. Wikipedia has a page for the paradigm of Array Programming [2] but I'm not sure If that is what Wilson was implying. (The wiki page mentions languages like APL, which was featured recently through arcfide's parallel compiler work [3].)
My intention is to learn more about programming languages that actually fit modern CPU machine architectures. I was beginning to believe that C's machine-model was still relevant for CPU cache dynamics, but now with what Wilson says about it being limited by its "Scalar-ness" I'm beginning to doubt it again. (Maybe someone could convince me that OpenMP or OpenCL extends C's parallel potential, but what I'm really after is something that was conceived from the ground up to work beautifully atop modern CPU's or at least within a Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) .)
Many Thanks and Regards!
[1] https://youtu.be/_9mzmvhwMqw?t=27m
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Array_programming
[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13797797 <comment><USER2> Apologies for tooting my own horn, but I have made a language that compiles to vectorised code: [https://futhark-lang.org](https://futhark-lang.org)

You don't really need much in the way of fancy language features. If you take a simplified functional language, the requisite compiler is not too hard to write.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The closest thing that comes to mind would be languages that are vector centric, like R or Matlab. But R isn't exactly "conceived from the ground up to work beautifully atop modern CPU's". In fact, one of the knocks on R is that it isn't terribly performant and it's not easy to make it scale. _shrug_

<comment><AUTHOR> So there might be room for improving R?

<comment><USER4> It's not easy, but it's possible. Check out FastR: [https://github.com/graalvm/fastr](https://github.com/graalvm/fastr)

Here's a good video about the language and this implementation: [http://download.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/community...](http://download.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/community/H264_1280x720/20144523.mov)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the answers, folks. Maybe I was looking for Julia[1]?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_(programming_language)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_\(programming_language\))

</comment><comment><USER5> Matlab. Tensorflow.

</comment><comment><USER6> kdb

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I found an interesting discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11561573](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11561573)</comment></comment>


The Methuselah of Software Packages? - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/the-methuselah-of-software-packages/ <comment><USER2> In August, I purchased Mavis Beacon Teaches typing from Broderbund. It the worst e-commerce experience I can recall.

Let me share a few things I experienced:

Their commerce partner charged me twice. I was able to catch this as they sent me two charge confirmation emails. I decided it wasn't worth my time to collect a double charge for $20.

The check out process automatically added an extra up-sell item to my final check out and if I wasn't being careful enough to remove the item, I would have paid more. They also added state tax to what was a download only order. I don't see that too often. I had to put in a U.S. address to match my credit card, but I didn't buy from the U.S., I made the purchase from Shanghai.

After I purchased, they sent me a download instructions. This email directs me to create an account at their site and follow more instructions which ends up letting you download a file in Stuff-it format. The stuff-it file is 91.1 MB. After you download, you have to go register with Smith Micro to download their free version of Stuff-it. But there's a catch. You have to give them your email to download the free extractor and it isn't easy to figure out how to get the free version as they try to sell you the deluxe version. Now I regularly get spam from Smith Micro.

So once your done and you extract the Mavis Beacon program from the 91.1 MB stuff-it file, you end up with a 92.3M app directory. Not too much compression going on here.

And in the end, all I can say is, this program is ancient.

<comment><USER3> You could have also Googled a bit and found a program called "The Unarchiver", which will handle StuffIt files on OSX.

Now if anybody has a Mac-compatible program that will play RealMedia files, yet isn't RealPlayer, I'd be really happy...

<comment><USER4> <http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-macosx.html>

Plays pretty much everything.

<comment><USER3> Except for RealMedia; I've tried.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Damn, I'm amazed. This is one of the very few computer-related things I remember from when I was a kid.

<comment><AUTHOR> Same... I remember printing out certificates and other artistic masterpieces using a daisy-chained 9 pin printer. Wild days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Can anyone think of a software package — or anything else, really — that > proudly displays a version number higher than 23?

Well, there's Emacs.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm equally surprised that the Broderbund name still exists; last I heard they were called Ubisoft. According to Wikipedia it's had a twisty life: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Br%C3%B8derbund>

</comment><comment><USER8> AutoCAD is also up to 23 official releases (and countless spin off software packages) Though they've long since abandoned putting the release number in the name.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autocad></comment>


Ask HN: About Cloudant - <AUTHOR>

Are these guys http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=423997 the same guys from the Summer '07 funding cycle who had the truly wonderful idea of making a "GoZilla for the Router" product? <comment><USER2> No, they just inherited the name. It's an entirely different team.</comment>


Show HN: Goodreads for fanfiction built in Elixir/Phoenix - <AUTHOR> https://ficdb.com/ <comment><USER2> Surprised this didn't make the front page. Very well implemented, quick access to the actual content (books), sourced from various sites, terrific filtering.

fyi: I know lots of folks love their dark theme. Sadly, I'm not one of them. When I look at a dark theme for too long and have to focus on brighter areas (room, another site, outdoors), I see terrible spots and after-images.

(posted the above in the suggestion area[0], afterwards it took me to a login page. Not sure if suggestion went through)

[0] [https://ficdb.com/suggestions](https://ficdb.com/suggestions)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thx for the compliments!

Re: light theme - added to trello! low prio, but I grok why you want an alternative

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN - here's my side project from the past three months. I'm a closeted fanfic reader, and I wanted a better way of figuring out what fanfics are worth my time. Also, happily funemployed at the moment, so I wanted to stretch my coding brain and learn some Elixir/Phoenix before it fully atrophied.

I've open sourced the code here: [https://gitlab.com/makeitrein/ficdb_veil](https://gitlab.com/makeitrein/ficdb_veil)

I decided to give Elixir/Phoenix a go in building this - here are some thoughts...

\- Pipe syntax and with macro makes for very grokable code... with macro especially is the cleanest pattern I've come across to date for handling the "happy" path with a clearly defined escape chute.

\- [https://unpoly.com/](https://unpoly.com/) was a great tool for speeding up my site by prefetching data on hover of any link and replacing only specific content on a page - highly recommended for making your Rails/Phoneix app more SPA-like.

\- Ecto is the one true ORM. Doesn't try to redo SQL, lets you compose queries in an incredibly straightforward manner, and provides these things called changesets to help validate data and insert associations. Two thumbs up, addresses a lot of my problems with ActiveRecord and Node ORMs. Check out [https://gitlab.com/makeitrein/ficdb_veil/blob/master/lib/fic...](https://gitlab.com/makeitrein/ficdb_veil/blob/master/lib/ficdb/directory/fanfic.ex) for an example of my fanfic schema + filtration queries

\- I still have no idea how to use OTP/GenServer - Phoenix is an abstraction above the Erlang fundamentals, and I feel like this will bite me down the line

\- I used [https://gigalixir.com/](https://gigalixir.com/) to handle deployments - it's Heroku for Elixir... great service, but it does cost minimum $35/month for a basic site, which is painful for a side project... if I knew more dev ops, I would try to wing this myself on AWS

\- There's this underlying tension of whether to switch out the front-end for React or not. Phoenix templates are super speedy and play nicely with the rest of the ecosystem, but parts of the code base have now turned into brittle Jquery soup. Don't know how I'm going to handle this going forward.

\- Elixir community is strong and welcoming, but library selection is still a fraction of the Javascript/Rails community. That being said, the libraries are usually of a higher quality then what you'd expect.

\---

Ficdb is nowhere close to world domination, but it's cool to see 400+ users submit 800+ fanfics and leave just as many reviews in the last two weeks. I'd like to continue promoting this project on the side, see where it goes. Let me know what you think!

<comment><USER3> Hey thanks for sharing! What resources did you use to grok elixir/phoenix?

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://phoenixframework.org/](https://phoenixframework.org/) guide is pretty great [https://elixircasts.io/](https://elixircasts.io/) is solid

Couple good books out there, but I don't have the patience for em!</comment></comment></comment>


My GitHub Punch Card for SimplyTweet - <AUTHOR> http://hboon.com/my-simplytweet-punch-card

<comment><USER2> Not mine, but it seems 10gen keeps regular hours:

<http://github.com/mongodb/mongo/graphs/punch_card>

<comment><USER3> That's fascinating.

Add 3 hours as lots of the developers are on eastern time. So that explains the smaller dots as 9 (lunch).

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Anyone else willing to share their punch cards?

<comment><USER4> Does this count? <http://dustin.github.com/2009/01/11/timecard.html> :)

<comment><AUTHOR> What you did with the Caps Lock LED is cool.</comment></comment></comment>


Waiting for Apache Open Office - <AUTHOR> https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/729460/ad130bc79f387e7e/ <comment><USER2> So, it appears the problem is that OpenOffice still has all the brand recognition, while LibreOffice suffers from a lack of awareness. The chances are slim to none that LibreOffice will ever be able adopt the OpenOffice trademark.

I think the LibreOffice project should use this opportunity to rebrand themselves and build even more distance from OpenOffice and MS Office. Pick a name that's easier to pronounce, spell, and remember - simple English words without two vowels in a row. ( _What was that? Did you say Leebray Office? Libruh Office? Lib Roffice? Does this have something to do with Mexicans and liberals? We 're capitalists here!_)

Everyone who cares about "libre" software will still know it's libre without putting it in the name. Communicate that this is the office suite that successful people use, not the one that poor people use because they're poor.

<comment><USER3> When people want OpenOffice, I just give them LibreOffice. Non technical people can deal with that dissonance, after all, Office says something like "FILE untitled" on top, and not "Microsoft Office".

LibreOffice and the document foundation can't use the OpenOffice trademark, but that doesn't mean we can't. We should write a lot of articles pointing to LibreOffice and calling it The OpenOffice, and try to make LibreOffice the #1 search result for OpenOffice. Let's genericize the hell out of OpenOffice.

Trademarks should ideally serve to protect customers, so they get what they think they are buying. But this is one of the cases where the exclusive right to the trademark hurts customers.

<comment><USER2> Diluting the trademark is an interesting thought, but I'm pretty sure it would backfire. After all that effort, it will still take a court battle just to _gamble_ on proving the trademark generic. The lawyers will dig up threads like this to show conspiracy. When it all flops, OpenOffice comes away with a ton of publicity and a stronger brand than ever before. Silver lining: maybe that would be enough to jump-start development.

If the community were to write a ton of articles pointing to LibreOffice and calling it _anything_ , that would help brand recognition for whatever they're calling it. MindStream, Keen Suite, Able Office, The Expressive Toolbox, the open office called LibreOffice, ... (random ideas)

I think LibreOffice can and probably will absorb OpenOffice's mind share over time, but I don't think either one stands a chance to become the standard suite that everyone expects to find everywhere. Not as long as dull license terms that almost nobody cares about remain the core of their identity.

<comment><USER4> License terms don't lie at the core of Libreoffice's identity...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Genuine curiosity. Since I dont know much about the nitty gritty history of the fork. Who are these couple people who work on AOO instead of LO and why do they?

Do they think its a better product? Better community? Brand loyalty? Money? Did they loose a bet?

I'm not trolling (ok - maybe a little with the last question). I just want to know the story here.

<comment><USER6> Apache was given OO by Oracle, and people in Apache then treated it as the Apache project that it had become; it didn't work out as well as some other Apache projects.

<comment><USER5> Doesnt really answer my question. Who are these "people in apache" who cannot see like LibreOffice is more mature product? Well, what does "people in apache" mean?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> At this point, it is clear that Apache OpenOffice is dead. The Apache board have been utterly irresponsible in accepting Oracle's "donation" of the trademark. They were, quite simply, suckered.

I'm a contributor to LibreOffice, but don't speak on behalf of the TDF. But IMO, I don't think LibreOffice devs would be at all happy with a rename to OpenOffice - that ship has long sailed and the history of obstructionism, poor quality in terms of builds, bad faith comments from leaders at AOO and an utter inability to maintain their own software has sullied their brand to the point it's in many ways a net liability to take on the OpenOffice name now.

LibreOffice has made literally thousands of code improvements and major refactoring is still ongoing. If anything the rate has gone up exponentially, to the point now where we are beginning to actually compete with Microsoft Office. We are already better at a number if things than the Microsoft product - we even produce more compact XML than what is generated by the latest version of Office. In fact, in terms of product direction you have a far better chance of influencing product features in LO and getting issues resolved than you'll ever have with Microsoft. Microsoft Connect is less than useless in so many ways, it's not terribly open and I've seen bug reports that are acknowledged and sat on for years - with LO, you can pay a reasonable amount of money to a third party to get the feature implemented or the bug fixed. You could never do this with Microsoft.

I think that the way Oracle went about things should be a lesson for any company or organization: Oracle cannot be trusted, and if they give you a code dump, if there is a competing fork then seriously consider whether they should be consulted and supported before you accept the "gift" from Oracle.

<comment><USER7> _Oracle cannot be trusted, and if they give you a code dump, if there is a competing fork then seriously consider whether they should be consulted and supported before you accept the "gift" from Oracle._

What exactly is it you think Oracle did wrong, w/r/t the ASF? They donated code and trademarks, and as far as I can tell, they delivered exactly what they promised. Beyond that , everybody involved in AOO knew about LO from the beginning.. there was no confusion on that point.

If anything, the biggest lesson for AOO should be more about over-dependence on paid developers from one company. But in this case, that "one company" was IBM, not Oracle. AOO was moving along quite well until IBM decided to yank their support and all the paid staff they had working on the project. But then again, everybody involved knew that was a risk, from the beginning.

<comment><USER8> Imagine your neighbor Larry comes to your front door, with a sick and dying dog that's suffered abuse and malnourishment. He kindly offers it to you, telling you about its storied past as a beloved television character, as well as all the veterinary papers saying it's a sick, dying dog. Everything's above board. What do you do?

Yeah, Apache was stupid for accepting the dog. But it's also good to be pretty damn skeptical anytime Larry offers you anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is important: geeks know the score and use LibreOffice for this sort of thing - but ordinary people don't. "OpenOffice" still has _stupendous_ brand awareness. You will have friends and family using this thing! Warn them, get them onto LO!

Oh, and well done to the Apache Software Foundation for falsifying the meeting minutes when a journalist came calling to ask what was up. [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/04/28/apache_openoffice_n...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/04/28/apache_openoffice_not_dead_yet/) Note that's not the "independent" project, but the board of the nonprofit itself doing that.

BTW, AOO will probably _finally_ get 4.1.4 out this month - they've got a release candidate for Mac and Linux, just need someone to successfully build revision 1803945 for Windows. [http://www.mail- email@example.com/msg313...](http://www.mail- email@example.com/msg31399.html) [http://www.mail- firstname.lastname@example.com/msg314...](http://www.mail- email@example.com/msg31400.html)

<comment><USER10> > You will have friends and family using this thing! Warn them, get them onto > LO!

I just installed LO 5.4 on HiDPI Windows. The LO home page (localized) advertised that "LibreOffice 4 (sic!) just arrived". Unfortunately it went downhill from there: the HiDPI support is kind of not really present. Icons have negative margins (are halfway visible) and what's even worse the hit targets are not where the icon lies! So you select item N from a list and item N-1 gets selected.

I get it that OO is now evil due to Oracle but LO is just not usable. I know, I know free software but advertising LO to my family and friends would be the quickest way of getting them to not to ask me any IT related advice. Which may be a good side effect in itself.

Edit: I just tried AOO. It works. Looks a little bit dated but the controls are where they should be and everything I tested works correctly.

<comment><USER11> @hdhzy:

The problem you are having with the icons and clicks mis-registering is due to OpenGL rendering. I had the same problem. Go to Tools-Options-View and disable OpenGL rendering, should fix the problem.

Looks like there is some problem with the Intel drivers and LibreOffice, not sure.

<comment><USER10> Yes, I've verified that this fixes the issue. I'm using Intel drivers FWIW.

<comment><USER4> We might need to add your driver to the blacklist. What do you use exactly?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The Register posted about this mystery 4.1.4 security fix mentioned in the board minutes back in April. After the article was published, the meeting record appeared to have been edited and any mention of security fixes removed (with time stamps in the apache directory list revealing as much) - [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/04/28/apache_openoffice_n...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/04/28/apache_openoffice_not_dead_yet/)

It was also quite telling that when a security vulnerability in 4.1.1 was discovered, at least when checking the wayback machine the earliest security announcement was posted at April 29th 2015 ( [http://web.archive.org/web/20150429084734/https://www.openof...](http://web.archive.org/web/20150429084734/https://www.openoffice.org/security/cves/CVE-2015-1774.html) ) and while multiple snapshots have been captured since ( [http://web.archive.org/web/20150501000000*/https://www.openo...](http://web.archive.org/web/20150501000000*/https://www.openoffice.org/security/cves/CVE-2015-1774.html) ) it took until November 1st 2015 for the recommendation to change from "delete the .dll" to "upgrade to 4.1.2" ( [http://web.archive.org/web/20151101015732/https://www.openof...](http://web.archive.org/web/20151101015732/https://www.openoffice.org/security/cves/CVE-2015-1774.html) ). At least until September 24th 2015, version 4.1.1 was still the latest version and the recommendation to delete the .dll was still present ( [http://web.archive.org/web/20150924061922/https://www.openof...](http://web.archive.org/web/20150924061922/https://www.openoffice.org/security/cves/CVE-2015-1774.html) )

</comment><comment><USER13> Apache foundation should donate the "OpenOffice" brand to LibreOffice!!

The OpenOffice brand is still very well know, and unfortunately the current situation might trick average joes to download and outdated unsupported build, while the very active LibreOffice is around the corner.

<comment><USER14> No one _should_ do anything ... but IMO the best outcome here would be for AOO to a) highlight the availability of LibreOffice on their landing page (with perhaps a header on their other web), and b) release a final OpenOffice version with some similar pop-up or notification that directs users towards LibreOffice.

<comment><USER15> At the moment of this reply, your comment was downvoted, and I don't understand why. People, or at least techies, when talking about free/libre open source projects, see them as double edged swords - on one side, a diversity in solutions provides choice (and better chance of it being upheld over time) along with freedom to users, and on the other side, the complaints are usually about a lack of focus, with energy and time being split across projects rather than uniting against locked-in commercial interests. From the latter point of view, I personally would prefer AOO doing exactly what you stated in the interest of "greater good".

<comment><USER14> Thank you. I possibly should have augmented with a comment around how I think trying to re-re-name LibreOffice back to OpenOffice would be a bad idea.

Even though I'm one of the minority that understands the nature of the fork, and the current status of both projects, as some LO developers have noted here it would not be palatable to some of them to try to flip back to 'OpenOffice' as a project name. I don't believe educating users of OpenOffice about the name change is an intractable problem, but, again as some LO contributors have noted here, it's not necessarily LO's role to do this, nor is it something they necessarily _could_ do. But it _is_ something the AOO team could do, and, as per TFA, it's probably now the right thing to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> With the number of publicly known security holes in the last Apache Open Office release, I feel this is getting close to criminal behaviour -- waiting this long without making a new release, or making clear at least on the download page the software is unsafe, shouldn't be acceptable (or in my opinion legal).

<comment><USER17> I don't understand why this should be illegal.

The value of open source is that the code is there for anybody that wants to contribute, or _fork_ in case people find its maintenance unsuitable. And even if the project dies, the code remains there for anybody to pick it up later, in case it has value. It has happened before, it can happen again. On the other hand most open source volunteers are unpaid and have no contractual obligation.

So tell me who is the criminal?

The Apache Foundation? But that's silly, since this project might have been simply dumped on GitHub. The few volunteers that tried pushing some fixes since last year? Oracle for donating the project? Speak for yourself in this case, because I'd rather have companies release their stuff, instead of locking it away.

This is an upsetting entitlement complex show here. If you want to contribute, then do so, otherwise GTFO.

<comment><USER16> The criminality is putting a program on the internet which you know is full of security holes.

It's not legal for me to set up a shop selling known faulty electronics, or even give them away for free unless I make clear I know they are faulty. I wonder if this should be extended to tech.

I'm not saying they have to take the code down entirely, but they could pop a big warning on the download page at least. They are knowingly having thousands of downloads a day of software they have known is dangerously broken for over a year.

<comment><USER18> Pretty much all free and open source software licenses specifically say there is no warranty at all.

 _All_ non-trivial software has security bugs. To reiterate, every program you've ever heard of has had and will have serious security bugs. If no bugs have been published, then either nobody is looking or someone is keeping them secret.

I agree that Apache has behaved irresponsibly.

<comment><USER19> Apache has a process for retiring inactive top-level and incubator projects. It's not immediate but it does happen quite often.

<comment><USER20> Indeed it does. That's the process which was mooted last September.

However contributors _and Apache Board Members_ chimed in to announce that Apache OpenOffice was healthy and would continue. They managed, weeks laters, to spit out a release containing almost literally just one bug fix and then nothing since. So long as Board Members pretend everything is fine the Apache process won't trigger. This has become about the ego of Board Members versus the interests of the wider community.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Discussion from a year ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12411747](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12411747) (336 comments)

<comment><USER22> Interesting tidbit about the meta here:

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

> > One thing has definitely changed: the last time LWN wrote a critical piece > about the project, we had some AOOers drop by to repeatedly complain about > what a bunch of meanies we all were for criticizing them instead of > volunteering to help them out. This time? Crickets...

> ...or they are not LWN subscribers, and nobody posted a SubscriberLink > somewhere they could find yet.

> Last year I had posted a SubscriberLink to a LWN article about AOO to HN; > I'm doing it again right now, so if they read HN and my post reaches the > front page there, we might be able to see them here again.

\</comment><comment>-

I'm not sure if HN is really supposed to be used like that..

<comment><USER7> _Last year I had posted a SubscriberLink to a LWN article about AOO to HN; I 'm doing it again right now, so if they read HN and my post reaches the front page there, we might be able to see them here again._

Or maybe we're tired of wasting our time on this public drama, none of which - at the end of the day - helps get any software shipped.

I'm just sad that I don't personally have more cycles free to contribute to AOO. I have a bunch of stuff I want to work on, but my life is so chaotic right now that it doesn't happen. So I guess I share in the blame for the lack of AOO progress. I wish I had something more to tell you guys, but it's a project that's driven pretty much 100% by volunteers these days, and those volunteers do what they can while maintaining their day jobs, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Anyway, things are not quite so dire as this article makes out. See:

[http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/openoffice-dev/2017...](http://mail- archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/openoffice- dev/201708.mbox/%3CEE94F650-28AA-4DB1-BB74-5377A3914750%40jaguNET.com%3E)

So yes, development on AOO is absolutely continuing. Is the pace slower than we'd all like? Absolutely. Would we welcome newcomers to help out? Absolutely. In the meantime, the volunteers that are around are doing what they can.

I really wish people would let this whole supposed "AOO vs LO rivalry" thing go. At this point, I'm pretty sure the bulk of the AOO contributors don't see LO as a rival, and mostly don't care what LO does, so long as people affiliated with LO aren't running us down in public. The two projects will probably never re-merge, so it is what it is. They do their thing, AOO does its thing. Such is the way of things.

<comment><USER23> > I really wish people would let this whole supposed "AOO vs LO rivalry" thing > go. At this point, I'm pretty sure the bulk of the AOO contributors don't > see LO as a rival, and mostly don't care what LO does, so long as people > affiliated with LO aren't running us down in public. The two projects will > probably never re-merge, so it is what it is. They do their thing, AOO does > its thing. Such is the way of things.

Given that most of the energy is with one project and not the other, and codebases have diverged so much that one can't accept patches from the other, why is it beneficial to have both? Who does OOo serve that LO doesn't? And why would a volunteer choose to work on OOo and not LO if they weren't on the OOo side of the fork to begin with?

<comment><USER7> _why is it beneficial to have both? Who does OOo serve that LO doesn 't? And why would a volunteer choose to work on OOo and not LO if they weren't on the OOo side of the fork to begin with?_

It sounds like you expect some sort of objective, definitive answer to those questions. I don't think there are any such answers. A lot of people use AOO, a bit fewer contribute to development. I can't explain the motivations of any of those people, outside of myself. I can't even explain why so many of the "old school" OO developers "sided" \- so to speak - with LO, other than just the timing of the thing.

But I came into AOO after a lot of the weird stuff had already happened, that created all this bitterness and resentment between the two projects. I'm a bit of an outsider as it were. So I have a hard time understanding why there even _is_ all this acrimony and tension at all.

So I don't have a lot of good answers for you. All I can say is that, for myself, I gravitated to AOO for a few reasons:

1\. I prefer the Apache License

2\. I was familiar with, and liked, the ASF way of doing things.

3\. I started out with high hopes to leverage what seemed like a natural synergy between AOO and other ASF projects. In particular, some of the Semantic Web tech (Jena, Fuseki), and all the "big data" projects. It just felt natural to me to want to work on AOO since there was a certain amount of overlap in membership between these various projects, etc.

Sadly, I got so bogged down with other activities, that I have never found time to really contribute to AOO and work on a lot of the things I had hoped to work on. I still cling to some of those ambitions, but other priorities keep getting in the way.

Sorry for the long, rambling semi-answer. I'm tired and just kind of going "stream of consciousness" here.

<comment><USER24> If OpenOffice cannot get _security fixes_ in a timely manner and the site is still getting a substantial number of monthly downloads, wouldn't you agree that the ethical move would be to display a prominent link to an actively maintained open source alternative to the software on the Apache OpenOffice frontpage?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I wonder if the other big Oracle project being pawned off to the great retirement home in the sky, NetBeans, will be pulled out of Incubator and thrown in the trash.

<comment><USER26> Anything that gets projects to move off the CDDL in favor of better licenses (like Apache 2.0) is a good thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> OpenOffice is much less annoying so I keep using it. Does everything I need to do. I haven't even upgraded to the most recent version, the one I have is fine. Not-for-profit orgs like Libre and Mozilla have their own motivations for pushing people to stop using software that is free and works, with no ads (no, not saying Libre has ads, but OO doesn't either, so why disparage it?)

</comment><comment><USER28> Why did they fork?

<comment><USER29> Oracle Copyrights etc.

<comment><USER30> My understanding was LibreOffice, a better maintained project, forked to further distance itself from Oracle. When Apache accepted the OpenOffice project Oracle assigned all trademarks, etc. Are you referring to something else?

edit: See the second and third subsections under this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice#History). LibreOffice was the fork motivated by dissatisfaction with Oracle. OpenOffice code was donated, along with trademarks, etc. to the ASF.

<comment><USER4> Actually, it's more complicated than that. It's not entirely Oracle's fault - Sun made third party developers' lives very painful and wouldn't accept patches without an enormous amount of red tape. They essentially caused the split when Michael Meeks was forced to create the Go-OO fork where he produced a build that merged in a huge number of patches that were backlogged from the main tree.

When OpenOffice pushed back (and after they completely shafted Kohei's effort in contributing a solver for Calc) they in essence told the wider development community that their contributions weren't welcome and forced the creation of The Document Foundation to govern the development of LibreOffice. The TDF then worked out how to be welcoming, lowered barriers to entry for new contributors massively, put in infrastructure like gerrit and opengrok, majorly simplified the build process and generally showed a lot of love to their developers. At this point it was game over for Apache OpenOffice, and now everyone contributes their code to LibreOffice. Which is an utter no-brainer really - why send your code to a bunch of people who arrogantly think your efforts are by default crap as you have no experience with the codebase?

<comment><USER30> Thanks for the added detail - but I didn't mean to assign blame to Oracle or oversimplify it. I'm just saying AOO isn't a fork motivated by Oracle copyrights as stated in the posts I was replying to. LibreOffice would more correctly be called the fork, and copyright really wasn't the motivation.

<comment><USER4> All good :-) LO is definitely a fork, and licensing was indeed a big issue, there is just quite a bit of history that led up to the fork, which happened before Oracle donated their code and trademark to the Apache Foundation.

It's frankly all kind of old news for most LO devs. We're far more interested in improving LO and competing against our real rival, which is Microsoft. Every now and then someone might make a small comment about AOO, but we don't encourage a lot of criticism of AOO because we have enough to do than spend any effort on ill-will towards Apache. We want to drive positive change and win by being awesome, not "win" through negativity :-)

<comment><USER30> Being that you're a LO contributor, then - thank you for your work! I use LibreOffice all the time and it's replaced Microsoft at the home of virtually every friend and relative who comes to me for tech support. I'm yet to hear of any problems using it from any of them.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Could This Be the Year Movies Stopped Mattering? - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2016/08/do-movies-still-matter-2016/ <comment><USER2> Interesting article, spoken from a movie geek. I posit though, the Betteridge factor is a bit lower for movies than it is for movie _theaters_.</comment>


Show HN: Dockpit – Painless isolation for you microservice development - <AUTHOR> https://dockpit.io/

<comment><AUTHOR> Author Here, Last 6 months I worked on my graduation project at the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering. Most of my fellow student graduate on a physical product, I decided to combine my passion for programming by trying to find and seize the opportunity for a new software development product. Dockpit is the MVP that resulted from this process, I hope you like the value proposition, let me know what you think!</comment>


Ask HN: Problem of social unrest and shutting down Internet - jor-el TL;DR: Internet is considered a fundamental right in modern times, but it is also a reason to lead to social unrest because of misinformation being spread on it. What can be a solution to this problem? Is it justified to shutdown internet in times of social unrest?
Today I came across a very disturbing news of health workers being attacked while they visited a suspected Covid-19 infected patients house in India (and many other countries). The cause of attack has been attributed to misinformation being spread on a Whatsapp group. This news is not a one off incidence of Internet services leading to a social unrest.
As a solution, often Indian government lean to shutdown the internet in such places during riots, or any kind of social unrest. Indian government did the same in Kashmir recently as a per-emptive measure in 2019. This was criticized and our Supreme court went on to say Internet is a fundamental right.
So here lies my dilemma. On one hand Internet - which of course includes Facebook, Insta, whatsapp, Signal etc services - is very important and considered as a fundamental right, but it is also causing harm to the society. How can such problem be solved, which from my vantage point is becoming more frequent? Can it be justified to shutdown internet or censor internet during crisis? If not, then how to tackle this problem from a governance point of view when you know the cause from where the problem is arising.
I am giving examples from India, but this problem is becoming very global according to me, and would like to hear your views from a global perspective, is there some country handling this in a better way? And I humbly request, please do not indulge in any political arguments.
[1] https://www.news18.com/news/india/four-arrested-in-indore-for-attacking-spitting-on-health-officials-during-covid-19-contact-tracing-2561659.html  (Whatsapp part mentioned towards the end of article) <comment><AUTHOR> EDIT: Notice I find OP's line of thinking "dangerous". My reaction is not to appeal to any authority and have anyone censor, ban, or de-platform them. I combat it with speech.

I see this line of thinking extremely dangerous and misguided.

> is very important... but it is also causing harm to the society

Let me stop you right there. You can literally make this case about every noun ever. History is littered with a long list of do-gooders that tried to ban books, alcohol, some sort of human sexuality, gambling, and on and on. I believe this is roughly where the saying "The path to hell is paved with good intentions" comes from.

In the United States, we believe in freedom. Freedom has the same properties that can lead to good or bad outcomes. People can choose good or bad. They can choose the right political candidate or the wrong candidate. They can believe what they want to believe. They can choose different paths that may lead to prosperity or to poverty.

Censorship or banning things mostly don't work and banning it just because it can cause harm is not defensible. Censorship, especially, creates a large amount of harm itself by reducing trust in the government. Reminds me when I was a teenager and I asked for a hacking book for Christmas. My relative refused to get it for me because of the harm it could do. My response was that knowledge was neither good nor bad. It's what you decide to do with it. My argument was that that same knowledge of computer hacking, while can be used for bad or evil, can also be used for good or defense against those wishing to do harmful things.

In the United States we have experience with alcohol and other drug prohibition, and it's been an absolute disaster. And the thinking about that is the same alarming attitude that is displayed here regarding free speech.

The reason the United States has a 1st Amendment that prevents the government from restricting speech is because it's incredibly dangerous to allow anyone or any group to decide what speech is allowed. It may start out with good intentions, but is far too dangerous to even allow the beginnings of it to exist.

</comment><comment><USER2> >> causing harm to the society

This will continue in this life. If you give all power to government, then they will cause the harm. If you give all power to the public sector, they will cause the harm. A balance is required between the two and that based on agreement.

To the issue you bring up, specifically. Become a trusted source of information that the public sector can rely on. Trust, once lost, becomes difficult to re-obtain.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have been thinking about the same problem. Apparently the damage of misinformation is done once it is out, apparently it can not be reversed. Then I come up with an idea: why don't we fight misinformation with misinformation. The only thing someone who believe in misinformation can only be misinformation.

</comment><comment><USER4> You are confused between "internet" and "social media". Should we shut down internet ? hell no. Right now, my business would literally die if we shut down the internet because that is the only thing that keeps us going. Do I care about social media ? Not so much. SOme of it is important, some of it is cool and most of it is downright nasty. I particularly wouldn't care too much if the likes of FB/Twitter went down for a short period but again, some people also make money from those platforms and possibly have a livelihood tied to them (marketers ?)

Kill the message, not the messenger. If Social media is easy to mis-spread information, teach people how to use it better.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think it's still quite feasible to shut down Internet access in some regions -- look at Kashmir. However, there electricity and water are still provided because almost nothing can function without those.

If the internet is made indespensible, as water and electricity are considered, then access cannot be shut off.

But even where IPs are being passed around, it has been possible for some governments like Turkey's and China's to block access to certain sites, especially if they have architected their communications topology to support that (e.g. having few transport links outside their country).

</comment><comment><USER6> IMO, it is better to educate the society not to trust the forwards people randomly send them. In fact, there should be consequences for the people who start the spread.

Blocking the internet is out right foolish and harmful.

</comment><comment><USER7> The solution is not technological. It is social. We should not cynically dismiss the average person's capacity for rationality. Through sustained effort, we can produce a society where people penalize provocative, sectarian memes and reward scientific, rational, progressive efforts.

If that seems quaint, consider the alternative. The internet gives nuclear- scale ammunition to fear mongerers and foreign agents. Scientific nation building, moderated by democratic humanitarianism, is a necessity not a fantasy in this day and age.

</comment><comment><USER8> Do you shutdown electricity/water during riots? Food for thought.

<comment> jor-el Does electricity/water spread misinformation over it?

<comment><USER8> Not sure about water but electricity, sure. My PC is plugged to the wall socket.

<comment> jor-el And my PC is using water for cooling it. I am thinking on your points now :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> shutting down the internet entirely would be an unmitigated disaster. the internet is my only source of information from the outside world, since I have no TV or radio in my apartment. since monday, it has been illegal for me to go outside unless it's a short walk for exercise or a trip to the grocery store. if I didn't have access to the internet, I would have no way of knowing this.

a slightly more reasonable alternative would be for the government to censor misinformation during the crisis. this raises the usual questions: what will be censored? at what level will it be decided? I certainly do not trust the trump administration to curate my news.

</comment><comment><USER10> The spread of true information is much more powerful and prevalent than misinformation.

</comment><comment><USER11> Internet and other forms of communications should not be shut down or censored.

But if there is bad information on there, then the government and/or anyone else who has good information should add the good informations too.

</comment><comment><USER12> This implies there's not only an arbiter of what misinformation is and is not in all cases, but that the arbiter is your government / local authority over the internet.

</comment><comment><USER13> Solution volunteer to quit social media. Including these messengers.

Call friends instead</comment>


Ask HN: What is a good text-based role-playing game to get into as a newbie? - <AUTHOR> I'd like to see what online text-based role-playing games are like. I know there are many choices and I've never played them before. I never even played non-online games like D&D anywhere, but have become curious. Recommendations? <comment><USER2> NetHack is an old favourite -- [http://www.nethack.org/](http://www.nethack.org/)

</comment><comment><USER3> A few weeks ago someone posted the command line mysteries on hacker news. I thought that was really fun and educational at the same time.</comment>


Someone took over the Australian PMs domain name and is boasting about it - <AUTHOR> https://satiex.net/2018/10/18/someone-took-over-the-pms-domain-name-and-is-boasting-about-it-on-facebook/ <comment><USER2> I do so love that they can mock him via song. I can't imagine being able to do this for any previous prime minster while poor Scotty M is once again ripe for mockery.

I do wonder how long his website will remain this way before lawyers and such are engaged as a .com.au requires actual business details to be provided to the registrar. But I'm not an expert on Australia's domain name jurisprudence so this might be interesting to watch.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can I send a thankyou note to him?</comment>


HackerNews Trends - <AUTHOR> http://www.hntrends.com

<comment><USER2> How long does it take to load? I gave it around 30 seconds (Safari/OSX).

<comment><AUTHOR> Eesh, it is obnoxiously slow isn't it? It was working this morning, but isn't now.

I'll export the data anyway, just in case anyone wants to do analysis.

<comment><AUTHOR> FYSA: I'm working on fixing it now, which is affecting the way the information is presented. It should be back to normal in a few hours.

<comment><USER3> I'm assuming that's referring to how the lines tend to go both forward and backwards in time. Otherwise it's a nice visual.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I worked on this side project a few months ago in order to learn some ActionScript and Python.

The script has been logging HackerNews's front page news articles every 15 minutes since then, which is why it currently takes a little while to load. If anyone is interested, I can export the data and post it, which might make for some interesting analysis (ie, when is the best time to post, etc).

</comment><comment><USER4> I did wait for a bit, and I never got past the loading screen. Maybe to speed everything up you should run a cron every hour or so that creates a static end-result graphing dataset.

Loading this would be much quicker and it would prevent users from waiting around too long.

</comment><comment><USER5> Seems to have fallen over.

</comment><comment><USER6> You need to sort the datapoints by time before plotting them. The plots seem to go to the second point at the end, making strange loops.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, this was a result of toying with the data during the last hour to fix some other stuff. Should sort itself out within the hour.

<comment><USER4> Also, I only seem to get titles on the right for items 24-30, down at the bottom. It doesn't look like the rest are rendered (although hovering over them helps).

Could I suggest using Google visualization and dropping flash all together? Ever wonder why any page that has flash on it comes up with W3C validation errors?

(EDIT: I know this was an exercise to learn AS3 and Flash, but that begs the question - why?)

<comment><AUTHOR> I should point out that I am not actively working on this anymore--after it launched a few months back the traffic died out pretty quickly and I moved on to bigger and better things.

The titles, along with the awkward order of the points for some of the items, should fix itself in about 30 minutes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It doesn't work in IE6. (I think I may have just lost my last sliver of geek cred. In my defense, I'm stuck at an Internet cafe.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks

<comment><USER7> Crikey, you're fast. Salarymen everywhere salute you... also this one is going back to the hotel before he gets locked out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> tomh- My Flash debug player gave a connection timeout to querytrends.php, hope you can fix it :)

</comment><comment><USER8> Have you discovered time travel?

(some of the lines go forward then back in time)

<comment><AUTHOR> Doh. Ok. It's fixed now. For good. Really.</comment></comment>


Leading companies are trying to make powerful, low-cost Lidar - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/02/the-ars-technica-guide-to-the-lidar-industry/ <comment><USER2> Tim is one of the best informed journalists on lidar - and this is a pretty solid summary of where the leading companies are (although Luminar continues to be incredibly misleading).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Again, HN software mindlessly strips the title. Here it's not just "How" (debatable), but also "10", which is useful information, and would have survived in another position in the title.</comment>


Show HN: Gamification of actions that help the environment - <AUTHOR> https://microvist.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi all - new here so please forgive if I'm a bit naive on HN etiquette.

Looking for feedback and thoughts on this project I've been working on - <USER2> also want to discuss other peoples experiences and techniques in the psychology getting users to engage where they normally wouldn't.

The goal in my case is getting people started with sustainability so my demographic is newcomers - not those that already care about the environment. I've chosen the ability to unlock badges/achievements to add motivation.

Thinking of also adding competitiveness but unsure what would be the most effective, self or group (i.e. level up your own profile or compete against others).

Thoughts and experiences from others would be great to hear.</comment>


Some common unknown truth about DeCSS - <AUTHOR> http://www.trust-us.ch/decss/decsstruth.txt

<comment><USER2> Wow, didn't think people were still distributing this.

Having worked with Jon on both open source (PyMusique) and commercial (we worked at the same startup for a while) projects, I will say this: He made some stupid mistakes around DeCSS, and since has done great things for the open source community and the anti-DRM crusade in general. Before he's crucified for his anti-Linux remarks and license mishaps, bear in mind that he was all of 16 when DeCSS was released, and he's since done a lot of fully original work (alone and in teams) that's freely available.

<comment><USER3> I agree.

We all make mistakes (especially when we're young, but not only). And the Net already keeps the history of most of our faux pas anyway.

More importantly, we all often change our mind as a result of learning new things and seeing things from new and different perspectives. Which is good!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> All those years I glorified that hacker and ten years later it all crumbles to dust. I never knew about this, wish I did.

<comment><USER5> grow up. he did.</comment></comment>


Tim Berners-Lee Announces Creation of New Foundation to Bring the Web to All People - <AUTHOR> http://www.webfoundation.org/donations/knight2008/tbl-speech

<comment><USER2> I love how folks create non-profits and big elaborate plans to "push along" something that is already historically inevitable.

The "One Laptop Per Child" is an example of this: people are getting wealthier (especially in the third world - the last decade had the biggest movement out of poverty in the history of mankind), and computers are getting cheaper and cheaper, so it is a matter of WHEN not of IF everyone on the planet will have a computer.

...and then the OLPC gets out in front of this, as if they're needed, or something.

Web access is the same: everyone on the planet WILL have web access, thanks to Moore's Law and free markets.

...and now TBL is getting out in front of inevitability to "make it happen".

Sigh.

<comment><USER3> I don't share in your cynicism or in your application of the phrase 'historically inevitable'. There are many technologies that were invented along time ago and that were historically inevitable that still haven't reached many parts of the world, for example electricity and clean water. Poverty may have been reduced substantially but it still has a long way to go and can benefit hugely from organizations like the OLPC and their ilk.

<comment><USER4> The question that then arises is: Is OLPC likely to reach the widely available $100 laptop goal substantially sooner then the commercial market?

At the least, they need history unfolding to take them 90% of the way. But that 10% may be substantial.</comment></comment></comment>


CES 2014: What To Expect From The Biggest Tech Show of The Year - <AUTHOR> http://www.techradar.com/us/news/phone-and-communications/ces-2014-what-to-expect-from-the-show-1193036

<comment><USER2> i only really care about seeing more about steam machines</comment>


Why We Still Type with Qwerty - bauta-steen http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20180521-why-we-cant-give-up-this-odd-way-of-typing <comment><AUTHOR> Spends most of the time promoting Dvorak but says Colemak is better.</comment>


The America our parents left us - <AUTHOR> http://scripting.com/stories/2011/04/19/theAmericaOurParentsLeftUs.html "The thing we make that everyone wants that no one else can make is the US dollar."<p>"We will go down as the stupidest generation ever. The one who had it all and threw it all away." <comment><USER2> The real question should be:

Just what is the point of a "debt ceiling" if, every time we get near it, it simply gets raised to allow more debt to be aquired?

It is not really a ceiling if it never actually stops the debt from growing.

<comment><USER3> That's correct. It's completely unnecessary. The budget that was passed by Congress and signed by the President dictates the finances for the country for the next twelve months. Its dishonest for a party to have voted for the budget and then to turn around and blame the other party for the spending it dictates. The time to have this fight is when deciding on the budget. Not by holding the economy hostage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > It's known around the world that the United States always pays its > debts...We're pretty much the only country that people depend on this way.

Really? I thought that the US arrears situation with the UN for the last 25 years was well known. I would suggest Finland as a country that always pays its debts.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is factually incorrect. If we fail to raise the debt ceiling, we still wouldn't default unless our tax revenue failed to cover our interest payments for the year. As it stands, our tax revenue is somewhere between 3 and 5 times the interest payments we pay in a year.

<comment><USER6> Doesn't the US government have rather a lot of ongoing expenses that is "has" to pay?

<comment><USER5> There is a lot of "mandatory spending," but the portion of that for which the government has a contractual or legal obligation to pay is approximately nothing.

Evidence RE: Social Security - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flemming_v._Nestor>

<comment><USER7> I think the argument here is that we inherited a country which always paid it's debts. If we decide we don't HAVE to pay our debts, then this is a different country, the world will recognize this and we'll find it more painful to borrow.

If we abolish every federal institution citizens depend on (social security, medicare, education, etc.) to pay debts, I think you're asking for a revolution.

<comment><USER3> It's much worse than that. We enjoy a special status with the dollar as the reserve currency. We'd probsbly lose that before we defaulted, just the fact that we were considering defaulting would be enough. And without a reserve currencey the world economy would go into a tailspin.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_currency></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


From SV elite to social media hate: The radicalization that led to Gab - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/10/31/silicon-valley-elite-social-media-hate-radicalization-that-led-gab/?noredirect=on <comment><AUTHOR> Original title: "From Silicon Valley elite to social media hate: The radicalization that led to Gab" (2 characters too long).</comment>


Montreal cracks down on UberX; seizes 40 cars and fines drivers - <AUTHOR> http://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/city-seizes-40-cars-in-crackdown-against-uberx <comment><USER2> This is sad. I live in Quebec Province, but not in Montreal. Quebec's laws regarding taxis are old and stupid, but they exists. I hope they will change, but in the meantime, sadly, this is their right to execute those laws.

The population (including me) wouldn't be so angry at the taxi industry if they embraced innovation instead of fighting with laws. Please, I want an app to know when my cab will be here, I don't mind that much about saving money, but I do want to pay easily and have a great and easy ride. That's all I want.

FYI, the taxi owners need a licenses, which I think is over $100k, and none were issued in a long time, so price increases. So, if I had one, yes, I would be super angry seeing Uber and stuff like that.

Still makes me very sad that this industry stagnated for so long and is not even trying to adapt now, but getting more laws :(

Edit: fixed typo.

<comment><USER3> If Montreal is like most other cities, people driving taxis do not own their own permit -- they typically rent them from a small number of people who control a large number of permits.

<comment><USER2> That's indeed the norm I think in most cities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Most Canadian cities are fighting Uber's refusal to follow city bylaws and insurance requirements, Montreal is only the most recent:

[http://globalnews.ca/news/1678342/city-to-announce- developme...](http://globalnews.ca/news/1678342/city-to-announce-developments- regarding-uber-service-in-toronto/)

Uber's current tactic is to assert that their drivers are insured in Canada, but refuse to provide proof of that to anyone, including drivers themselves and city regulators. This sort of "Russell's teapot" insurance claim is, unsurprisingly, looked upon dimly by the regulators. The laws are quite clear in Canada that personal insurance _will not_ cover Uber drivers.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure exactly what this says about the culture and business norms of Montreal, but while there for PyCon, I noticed that the number of police seemed to have increased at least 10x from last year at the same time.

There is a great deal of political upheaval centered at UQAM, apparently mostly related to issues of pension promises broken for public workers. This is the ostensible reason to have so many more police and police substations, but I have to believe that it has other cultural effects as well.

<comment><USER6> There was a very iconic image recently making the rounds:

[http://i.imgur.com/IHIOxLK.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/IHIOxLK.jpg)

What's particularly striking about this picture, if you'll pardon the pun, is that the cop is wearing stickers that are protesting the same austerity that the students are protesting with their red velvet squares. Cops are not allowed to strike (i.e. not work), so they wear stickers instead.

Howard Zinn's final chapter of his famous book comes to mind: "The Coming Revolt of the Guards". A system that separates people into prisoners and guards and pits them against each other, despite their common cause:

[http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncomrev24.html](http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncomrev24.html)

As to what this all says about police in Montréal, I don't know either. I've lived here for nearly eight years and have never had any unpleasant interaction with the police. The students are _very_ leftist, though, and with such a large student population (four major universities, two Francophone, two Anglophone, plus several other research and education centres), the students' attitudes just amplify themselves.

<comment><USER7> "I've lived here for nearly eight years and have never had any unpleasant interaction with the police. "

This is a tangent from your original post but I've noticed that Montreal cops seem much more relax than the ones I've dealt with in the US.

This is completely anecdotal but I feel like cops in the US are somewhat more prone to talk and act aggressively when they start interaction with people. I'm wondering if that's a side effect of their training. In general I've had the opposite impression from the Montreal and Canadian cops in general. (Also border patrol in both country are night and day in how they interact with you).

<comment><USER8> It could just be risk? I don't have numbers on the comparative risk between Canadian cops vs. American cops, but I know that America isn't the safest place to be a cop, and it's well-understood that a cop who does not feel at risk is a friendlier cop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> it's worth pointing out that Quebec has no trouble at all living life as an "outsider" with respect to Canadian and north american "norms" ... i.e. no matter how "standard" uber becomes (or not) this will not be an argument in favour of adopting it.

there are a metric ton of examples of how life in quebec is bizarre compared to neighbouring provinces in Canada (and compared to the US)

this may be just another one

<comment><USER10> What are the arguments for a city to adopt Uber? Presumably there were reasons to implement taxi regulations and medallion caps and whatever those reasons were, if they made sense to the city 5 years ago, they probably still make sense today.

<comment><USER11> The reasons tend to be closer to a century old than 5 years, and similarly tend to have been the result of preferential regulation in favor of the taxi companies.

A good history of the jitney transport industry[0]. I'll note that the statistics reported regarding length of service and demographics of jitney drivers indicate that UberX is a much more apt solution to the problem of matching riders with drivers than a "traditional" taxi service with full-time employees.

[0][http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/724795?uid=3739976&uid...](http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/724795?uid=3739976&uid=2134&uid=2488599363&uid=2488599353&uid=2&uid=70&uid=3&uid=3739256&uid=60&sid=21106185861931) \- note article is available with a free registration.

<comment><USER10> I didn't say the reasons were created 5 years ago, only that if there were reasons 5 years ago they probably haven't changed. Of course you could make the argument that there weren't valid reasons 5 years ago but that doesn't seem compelling, I don't think a city would have de-regulated the taxi industry and let anyone pick people up for money 5 years ago.

<comment><USER12> There's a whole gamut of options between current regulations and no regulations. But the corrupt regulators don't want to change _anything_ because they like how the current regulations bring in $800K per year per medallion to license holders who are also their friends, partners and/or campaign donors (actual Vancouver numbers).

What kind of safety or convenience or other concerns _require_ profits in excess of $800K per taxi cab per year? What's wrong with market pricing? Why should short rides subsidize long rides? Why can't one company offer no-frills service (at no-frills prices), and the other one premium service? Why can't taxis have optional ride pooling?

Uber, Lyft & co have already proved that they can work great alongside existing cabs. There is no reason why they wouldn't work if the regulations are updated from 1930 to 2015 and from protecting incumbents' profits to protecting users' interests. But the cities are unwilling to do that because they like their profitable taxi cartels.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Not very surprising given that Quebec has the highest unionisation rate (~40%) among all Canadian provinces and U.S. states.

<comment><USER2> How is that related again? :)

<comment><USER14> yes, olalonde, enlighten us? Most taxi drivers are non-unionized people 'renting' a taxi permit/car from a permit holder

<comment><USER13> A quick Google search shows up this union: "Regroupement professionnel des chauffeurs de taxi métallos (FTQ)".

Regardless, my point was that Quebec is very pro-union and the public opinion generally tends to side with workers (taxi drivers in this case) as opposed to consumers.

In fact, multiple large unions in Quebec have shown their support for taxi drivers in their fight against Uber ([http://www.usw.ca/districts- fr/5/nouvelles?id=0158](http://www.usw.ca/districts-fr/5/nouvelles?id=0158) sorry, French).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> And people joke when startups are considered "disruptive." This is disruption in action. Uber is changing the face of society. (When it comes to cabs.)

And society is resisting. Any other company, in any other market, would just give up. But a San Francisco tech company is different: it can KNOW that progress is right, and push, push, push it through throughout society.

This is a story that repeats again and again. Idealistic disruptive startups actually change the face of society, while everyone else poo-poos and wrings their hands, until they don't.

<comment><USER16> And disrupting moral standards in business, according to some. (I'm not judging Uber or those who say that, including one of their investors)

<comment><USER15> ( _Actually that is a separate matter and I agree with you completely. They need to return to their roots and not do any of that spoiled only-child stuff (no offense to people who are an only child, I just can 't think of a better example, and of course if someone is an only child they can still learn to cooperate-etc.)

If you want, Uber, you can be a child who doesn't share their toys: just create something new again! You can't retain a monopoly otherwise. Wouldn't you rather keep growing, like Google after search, than retain a hundred percent of some single tiny specific market, like Windows as a monopoly? Just take a look at the two respective stock charts (goog and msft, max timeframe).

I actually take this subject totally seriously. However it's orthogonal to what we were discussing. For anyone who doesn't know what we're talking about, it doesn't matter here._)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is NOT a Montreal-only phenomenon: UberX cars have also been sized in Toronto and Vancouver. Edmonton is calling to ban UberX and the service has been shuttered in Calgary...

Toronto: [http://globalnews.ca/news/1914064/11-toronto-uberx- drivers-f...](http://globalnews.ca/news/1914064/11-toronto-uberx-drivers-face- charges/)

Ontario: [http://metronews.ca/voices/your-ride- toronto/1345960/queens-...](http://metronews.ca/voices/your-ride- toronto/1345960/queens-park-bill-53-could-put-the-brakes-on-uber-in-ontario/)

BC: [http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/taxi- co...](http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/taxi-companies- file-lawsuit-to-block-uber-from-expanding-into-vancouver/article21451479/)

Edmonton: [http://metronews.ca/news/edmonton/1331675/edmonton-taxi- asso...](http://metronews.ca/news/edmonton/1331675/edmonton-taxi-association- calls-for-seizure-of-uber-vehicles/)

</comment><comment><USER18> Has any taxi service, in any city, rolled out a self-dispatching app for end- users?

<comment><USER19> Yes there are apps that work with existing taxi services.

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

<comment><AUTHOR> Hailo was quite popular in Montreal for a while until Uber launched and drove them out of business. As far as i recall they shut down all of their North American operations to focus on EU. Wonder how that's going. I quite liked them, but I prefer UberX any day

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> In Manchester, UK (I don't know if it's like this in the rest of the country), uber is a normal registered taxi service, it's not normal people using the app to give people rides. It works really well

<comment><USER21> UberX is different, with UberX "anyone" can be a taxi driver.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Who cares if Uber is illegal.

The unions, the politicians, the construction companies. These groups steal from the population for decades (Charbinneau commission).

Who cares what the govt thinks in Quebec. The Quebec govt is out to steal and cheat for their own benefit, not the benefit of the population of Quebec.

Speaking English in Quebec is illegal in certain situation.

Ignore laws in Quebec. Choose what laws you follow, just like the unions, politicians etc.

If you get caught just say sorry. Quebec society loves apologies and forgives immediately so you can get back to stealing and scamming people.

Not a single person from 40 years of corruption we say at Charbonneu will even get a fine.

Uber, keep going! Fuck Quebec laws. It doesn;t matter.</comment>


How to Design Behavior - <AUTHOR> http://www.nirandfar.com/2012/03/how-to-design-behavior.html Here's the gist: - The rising interest in the science of designing behavior has also sprouted dozens of competing, and at times conflicting, methodologies. - Though the authors often flaunt their way as the only way, there are distinct use cases for when each method is appropriate. - Behavior modification methods fall into four distinct types: amateur, expert, habitué, and addict. - Each behavior type requires the use of the appropriate technique to be effective. Using the wrong method leads to frustration and failure. <comment><USER2> Nir's got some really powerful ideas brewing and you should be paying attention. He's doing a fantastic job of digesting the research of experts in the behavior-mod field and applying it to consumer web product design.

</comment><comment><USER3> Really great framework for thinking about a very noisy, complex field.</comment>


Show HN: I made a patent search tool designed for stock research - <AUTHOR> https://www.quiverquant.com/patentsearch/ <comment><AUTHOR> I was inspired to build this tool after reading about Ideanomics, a company that had a 700% stock price surge last month after announcing a pivot into electric vehicles. There are many other examples of this phenomenom, with one of the most notorious being Long Island Iced Tea's shift to blockchain ([https://cointelegraph.com/news/fbi-investigating-long- island...](https://cointelegraph.com/news/fbi-investigating-long-island-iced- teas-shift-to-blockchain)).

Regardless of the legitimacy of these business transitions, I think it's useful for investors to know which companies are doing research into new technological areas.

It's difficult to use existing tools (like Google Patents) for this purpose, because the vast majority of patents are not registered to publicly-traded companies. Companies also often register patents under a wide variety of names.

To fix this problem, I scraped patent data from the USPTO website ([https://bulkdata.uspto.gov](https://bulkdata.uspto.gov)) and then used a text-matching algorithm to identify which patents were assigned to Russell 3000 companies (the 3,000 largest publicly-traded companies in the US). From there, it was easy to match each patent to a specific ticker.

You can use this tool to search for a keyword, and find all recent patents by Russell 3000 companies (standardized by ticker) with an abstract containing the keyword.

<comment><USER2> Can you give a use case for this, or how one could have anticipated the Ideanomics surge you mention? Searching something like 'electric vehicle' will show many recent patents by Tesla, Apple, Honda, et al. Is the idea that you would search for such a term and try to find some outlier company, assume their recent patents would reflect an entry into the market, and buy accordingly?

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly. It could also be used as a tool to screen for companies that will benefit from growth in certain markets. For example, searching for 'electric vehicle' will show several companies that have developed components which can be used in electric vehicles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Feels like if this is going to be used as a stock screener, the search should start at the company level not a keyword. Or show a list of recent patents by Russell 3000 companies that don't match the previous x number of patents filed by that same company.</comment>


Record Label Picks Copyright Fight With The Wrong Guy - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/09/27/226834651/record-label-picks-a-fight-over-copyright-with-the-wrong-guy?sc=fb&cc=fmp

<comment><USER2> For anyone wondering, Lawrence Lessig is not only one of the most known names when it comes to fighting copyright infringement but he also famously co- founded Creative Commons and founded the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. Lessig is a guy you seriously do not want to ever send a copyright infringement notice to unless you want one hell of a fight.

For those wondering who Liberation Music is, it's a spin-off label of the Mushroom Music Group which was co-founded by one of the biggest and one of the most powerful names in Australian music, Michael Gudinski. Essentially it's a smaller label with the backing of a larger one.

Get the popcorn ready, this is going to be one interesting fight if anything comes of it.

<comment><USER3> " _Liberation_ Music", ha!

It's not clear to me, however, just how big an award can come from _one_ instance of improper takedown? I mean, I don't expect the label to have to sign fewer artists or anything.

<comment><USER4> It sounded like the goal was to make copyright holding companies nervous about sending automated notices. If damages for infringement are $180k per song, surely damages for wrongful DMCA notices are the same order of magnitude?

<comment><USER5> Unfortunately, a quick Google search brought me to [http://www.casesofinterest.com/tiki/Lenz+v.+Universal+Music+...](http://www.casesofinterest.com/tiki/Lenz+v.+Universal+Music+Corp). (EDIT: that link seems to be broken, it's /Lenz+v.+Universal+Music+Corp. with the trailing period):

> A plaintiff suing over a wrongful Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown > notice can only recover for damages that were proximately caused by the > notice... The Court determined that attorney fees are collectable but > explicitly forbid the attorney fees if the work was done on a pro bono > basis.

So it seems like Lessig would be pushing for a change in precedent, because as current case law seems to stand (IANAL), even if he won legal costs and damages it would be a drop in the bucket to the record industry, and no reason to change their practices of sending automated notices. I hope he succeeds though!

<comment><USER6> I think there's something called "punitive damages" (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punitive_damages).

That's why that lady got a couple million dollars from McDonald's for a too hot coffee a couple years back - not because it caused her so much harm. ( [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald's_Restauran...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald's_Restaurants) )

<comment><USER7> And just to cut in with a quick response to all those who automatically use this as a call to tort reform:

1) The lady didn't ask for that much; the judge awarded it, after much shenanigans by McDonalds';

2) In the end, it wasn't a couple million, it was reduced by the judge to under $500k.

The case is more complex than most people want to believe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The Phoenix "Lisztomania" Brat Pack mashup discussed (on YouTube):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtE- xnPKj28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtE-xnPKj28)

To see some of the global creativity this video sparked, this video has a pretty comprehensive list of 'brat pack mashups':

[http://vimeo.com/4934345](http://vimeo.com/4934345)

And finally, Lawrence Lessig at TEDxNYED in 2010 discussing this case:

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

</comment><comment><USER9> Fair use doctrine is great and it was fascinating to learn about when I was a grad student at Berkeley. We need to educate people about fair use so that everyone knows how some of these lawsuits are ridiculous.

Anyone interested in how copyright vs. fair use works should watch documentary called RiP: A Remix Manifesto ([http://ripremix.com/](http://ripremix.com/)). It covers all the major issues related to copyrights, fair use etc. I highly recommend it. In fact, Lawrence Lessig is part of that documentary.

<comment><USER10> This is a great series about how innovation and creativity happens, too (hint: through remixes):

[http://everythingisaremix.info/watch-the- series/](http://everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is it fair to assume that this must be something YouTube set up? I guess I'm wondering if YouTube says to the record labels "Hey, don't worry about us anymore. We scan everything and if one of your songs is found we'll send out the notice. Just sign this doc saying you wont' sue us if/and we'll monitor this all automatically for you" Perhaps that's why they dropped it pretty quickly (or maybe it was fear of this guy) It would kind of suck if they're just trying to protect their artists from being ripped off and now are going to be the poster child for this crusade to destroy the bots. Seems like YouTube might be the significantly more guilt party. (Not sure so posting this as a question)

<comment><USER12> YouTube does have an automated monitoring system called ContenpID, but it doesn't send C&D notices like Lessig claims he received, so that's on the label. As far as I know, YouTube itself just blocks the video.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I find the inclusion of the quote from Bob Cronin the remix maker smells of false hope.

Suppose Lessig wins the case. The greatest impact to record labels I could foresee is they would have to be more careful about their takedown requests.

It sounds like a favorable outcome for Lessig isn't going to turn the world of youtube copyright upside down and automatically grant an umbrella to legitimize works in a legal grey area. They're still going to receive takedown requests, and they're still going to have no recourse.

</comment><comment><USER13> > ... says Corynne McSherry, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier > Foundation, a nonprofit digital rights group, who is representing Lessig

Wow, not even the top legal scholars in a field, pursuing a case in their own field, are willing to represent themselves. Why is that? I'd think that Lessig would feel safe representing himself in this case.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm coining a new word:

Lawrenfreude n. Schadenfreude when the underdog moonwalks over The Man.

<comment><USER15> Obligatory Blue Jeans Cable v. Monster Cable legalese catfight: [http://www.bluejeanscable.com/legal/mcp/](http://www.bluejeanscable.com/legal/mcp/) (The final response pdf in particular)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> According to the article, YouTube detects copyrighted songs and pays labels a cut of ad money. Every song ever recorded exists as at least one YouTube video. It doesn't seem like YouTube is playing whack-a-mole with all these songs anymore, the way it used to a few years ago. Does this mean YouTube is now a normalized source of income for all record companies?

<comment><USER17> If you read the article again you'll note that companies can _opt_ to get paid part of the ad revenue. If a company hasn't opted to, it's whackamole

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> so before any song all you have to do is insert slide "we are critiquing X song..."

<comment><USER19> No, because the law isn't applied by robots.

That's actually the point of Lessig's lawsuit - that there neds to be a human in the loop when these notices are issued, because deciding if something is likely fair use or not isn't something you can do mechanically (at least with current technology).</comment></comment>


Paper Dresses and Psychedelic Catsuits: When Airline Fashion Was Flying High - <AUTHOR> http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/when-airline-fashion-was-flying-high/

<comment><USER2> > Muskiet generally approaches airline offices and not former flight > attendants, because, he says, most stewardesses from Europe and other places > around the world don't own their uniforms, so when they resign or retire, > they have to return it to the airline. When an airline gets a new stewardess > look, they generally keep their old uniforms in storage, sometimes for > years. In the United States, however, flight attendants often pay for their > uniforms, and then they're allowed to keep them when they're done.

What an excellent deal for the flight attendant!</comment>


Hidden Chrome Features on CR-48 - <AUTHOR> http://calamitylane.com/articles/programming/hidden-chrome-features-on-cr-48/

<comment><USER2> The real fun lies in getting shell access in developer mode: [http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information- fo...](http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-for-chrome- os-devices/cr-48-chrome-notebook-developer-information)

From there, you can open a terminal and start experimenting, installing outside software, and working on ChromeOS development.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, you can get to a terminal without going to developer mode: [http://calamitylane.com/articles/programming/chrome-os-on- th...](http://calamitylane.com/articles/programming/chrome-os-on-the-cr-48-it- has-developer-bits/)

...but that's pretty sweet. :)

<comment><USER3> That "crosh" shell is actually _extremely_ limited, only allowing a handful of basic commands. (ssh, ping, traceroute, top, a couple of other misc utilities -- but no text editor.)

You still need to enable developer mode to get to a "traditional" linux shell: <http://www.chromium.org/poking-around-your-chrome-os-device>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> One missed in that article is chrome://system which brings up a bunch of hardware-related data. (For example, cpuinfo output. If you're wondering: Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU N455 @ 1.66GHz.)

As other commenters have mentioned, a bunch of those work well in the Chrome Browser, too. (I'm on dev channel, 10.0.612.3)

</comment><comment><USER4> In "about:flags" on Chromium (10.0.613.0 on OSX) there's an option to enable expose-style viewing of tabs by swiping three fingers down.. which is really convenient because swiping 4 fingers down is the default on Macs to invoke expose.

</comment><comment><USER5> All of those (except the file browser) works in the normal version of Chrome as well.

<comment><USER6> about:network doesn't seem to work in normal Chrome either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> +1 for "tab overview" flag in about:flags -- three finger swipe down brings up an expose like interface for selecting a tab

<comment><USER8> That's not a feature in Chrome OS....

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is there a way to watch an offline movie with the media player?

<comment><USER8> Yes, if it's in one of the supported formats (Theora and H.264 iirc). You can also just open the (local) video in a tab to view it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> These aren't specific to the CR-48 or even Chrome OS. The flags are insanely useful and make Chrome the pleasure it is to use day to day.

Click to enable plugins is the killer flag in my opinion.</comment>


Animista – CSS animations on demand - <AUTHOR> http://animista.net <comment><USER2> This is so good.

Awesome job!

I'm going to replace Animo with this for all new projects.

<comment><AUTHOR> Many thanks, looking forward to seeing what you create with it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> yay! this would also help me in learning css animations. thank you so much

<comment><AUTHOR> You are most welcome, hope you enjoy it!</comment></comment>