Screencasting with free software - <AUTHOR> http://edouard.peller.in/2016/03/12/screencasting-with-free-software.html <comment><USER2> You could use OBS, Open Broadcaster Software, which is open source that has features geared toward streaming, but could ultimately prove more valuable than "simple" screencasting software. For instance, want to show your code always even when you're googling answers? That is very easy in OBS.

<comment><USER3> I second OBS. It works great for capturing windows and screens. The only issue I had with it is that Windows Media Player won't play the "Advanced Video Codec" that it records with, so I had to run it through Handbrake.

<comment><USER4> On the flip side, I found that OBS brought my -- admittedly older -- MPB to its knees such that the app I was trying to show wouldn't perform. Huge lengths of video were frozen. Same on an older first-gen i7 Windows machine. I never did figure it out.

<comment><USER2> This is probably a configuration issue, although OBS has more issues OS X for a variety of reasons. I've ran OBS on my 10 year old PC while coding without much issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Blender can be used to edit your video, add small effects, overlay text, add audio, subs. See my old answer here [https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/175/video-e...](https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/175/video- editor-for-windows-that-can-insert-images-or-audio-at-arbitrary- points/2009#2009)

<comment><USER6> i second that, blender is actually a very good solution.

...but if you have any experience at all with the adobe suite, you'll be very confused, so beware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> On OS X, Quicktime player can also record the screen, or part of the screen. File > New Screen Recording.

AFAIK by default, it will only record the mic and not the audio card output. I don't know of a free option to do that (does ffmpeg?), but I've found Rogue Ameoba's Loopback[1] to be invaluable to capture output from the soundcard and add it as an audio track in the Screencast

[1] [https://www.rogueamoeba.com/loopback/](https://www.rogueamoeba.com/loopback/)

</comment><comment><USER7> If you're using Linux only like me, Kazam is unbeatable to capture your screen. I got similar results with ffmpeg, but Kazam is just dead easy to use.

After that, in case you need some editing, I recommend Blender. It has a steep learning curve, but as long as you don't want to do really complex editing and your hardware is not too old, it is perfect and the results are great.

<comment><USER8> This is really amazing, thanks for the recommendation. The fact that it can record not only my mic but my speakers is blowing my mind right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have been using gtk-record-desktop for many years. You can install it on Ubuntu simply with a "sudo apt-get install gtk-recordmydesktop".

</comment><comment><USER10> I used to use a ffmpeg approach to make my screencasts [1], but now I use OBS. Great piece of software. I wrote some notes about it some time back [http://dabase.com/blog/Screencasting_from_Archlinux_gotchas/](http://dabase.com/blog/Screencasting_from_Archlinux_gotchas/) and I think they've addressed all my issues.

I publish my screencasts upon [http://www.youtube.com/kaihendry](http://www.youtube.com/kaihendry)

[1][https://github.com/kaihendry/recordmydesktop2.0](https://github.com/kaihendry/recordmydesktop2.0)

</comment><comment><USER11> I personally prefer SimpleScreenRecorder: [http://www.maartenbaert.be/simplescreenrecorder/](http://www.maartenbaert.be/simplescreenrecorder/)

...Because it lets me record audio using the Opus codec.

I also edit the videos using kdenlive: [https://kdenlive.org](https://kdenlive.org)

It all works pretty well. You can see examples of the end result in my YouTube channel:

[https://YouTube.com/riskable](https://YouTube.com/riskable)

(mostly videos of modded Minecraft tips and HOWTOs; all totally harmless and no foul language)

</comment><comment><USER12> On Linux, the audio recording and video recording can be accomplished with a single command:

      ffmpeg -f x11grab -video_size [w]x[h] -r [framerate] -i $DISPLAY -f alsa -i default ...

Like the author, I've found that the x264 codec with the ultrafast preset does the best job of avoiding framedrops (which from what I've observed can be caused by either the CPU spending too long encoding or the disk spending too long writing data).

</comment><comment><USER13> I just press Alt+Ctrl+Shift R ;-)

"screencast tool

Gnome3 has already a screen recording functionality. Pressing Alt+Ctrl+Shift+R recording will start. There should be a red icon on the message tray in the right-bottom corner of your screen. If the message tray is hidden, Super+M will activate it. Pressing the red icon will stop the recording. The video is saved in the Video directory on your home directory on webm format."

</comment><comment><USER14> I just use ShareX and enable sound recording in Task Settings -> Capture -> Screen recorder -> Screen recording options. Seems easier than downloading three separate pieces of software and recording each track individually then joining them...

<comment><AUTHOR> Isn't ShareX windows only ? I tried to be platform agnostic in my post and I am using OSX myself.

<comment><USER15> ShareX is a Windows GUI wrapper around ffmpeg (when recording video of the screen).

I think it makes sense to mention even platform-specific tools that can make ffmpeg command line parameter incantation easier!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This might be a bit out of date (2013), but it's what worked for me at the time using a not particularly high-powered computer running Ubuntu: [http://thinkinghard.com/blog/HowToMakeHighQualityScreencasts...](http://thinkinghard.com/blog/HowToMakeHighQualityScreencastsInLinux.html) (recommended software SimpleScreenRecorder).

</comment><comment><USER17> You can also use [https://jumpshare.com](https://jumpshare.com), which uses FFMPEG for screen recording. We built this app to help everyone be more productive. You can capture and annotate screenshots, record screencasts and audio clips, compose notes (in text, markdown, and code), and more.

</comment><comment><USER18> For me, the cost of having to go through all those steps and learn all those tools is significantly higher than the $300 or so cost of buying Camtasia. For me, it's not just the time cost, but the energy and cognitive resources consumed by not paying for the easy solution.

...just offering an opposing perspective, I respect your approach.

<comment><USER19> OBS can't be simpler and works great.

<comment><USER18> Looks great, especially nice since I can put it on my linux machine which I prefer to use.

How does it match up against Camtasia in terms of putting together a presentation? Like can you add text and fade in/out images on top of the video?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> For some reason that OS X recording command line (pasted in directly) won't work for me. I'm using ffmpeg 3.0, the latest from Homebrew. It seems to be OK until I try to open it in QuickTime and it says the file is broken. I wonder if OS X 10.11 is the problem -- what version are you on?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's because of the color profile used by avfoundation, quicktime requires a specific profile. You should be able to open the file with mpv/mplayerX or VLC. If you want to open it with quicktime or imovie, you need to reencode the file with a specific color space, more info on the ffmpeg wiki[0] (Using -pix_fmt yuv420p should be sufficient). Sadly, you cannot record directly in yuv420p with avfoundation.

[0] [https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Encode/H.264#AppleQuicktime](https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Encode/H.264#AppleQuicktime)

<comment><USER20> Thanks a lot, that fixed it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Screenr.com used to be an amazing and awesome tool for cheap user testing/screen recording. I would embed their widget and then go to Mechancial Turk and pay each tester $1 to go through various steps they recorded using the Screenr widget. It worked like a charm and was inexpensive compared to say $50 a pop at usertesting.com.

Does anyone know of any Screenr.com alternatives?

<comment><USER22> It sounds like Inspectlet might do what you need. It records DOM changes and mouse movement, rather than video, but watching recorded sessions feels similar to watching video.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Breakapart: simple gestures on a physical keyboard - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/fanfare/breakapart/blob/master/README.md <comment><USER2> You should allow it to be any number of keys. Imagine if touchpads had you do gestures exactly in dedicated areas, it would kinda ruin the experience.

E.g. I thought it wasn't working because I accidentally used the wrong key.</comment>


U.S. Code § 2381. Treason - <AUTHOR> https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2381 <comment><USER2> This is interesting, but there is no context regarding the reason for posting this.</comment>


Another requested change to RSS feed - <AUTHOR>

I'd really like to be able to filter by karma, number of comments, and, for articles, originating publication.
I half-wrote an app on Google App Engine to do this, but then I saw this http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=567885, so I stopped working on it, as it's not that satisfying to only scratch my itch.  Though I guess if people seem to like this idea, I'll finish it.
I also tried to do it in Yahoo Pipes, but I wasn't able to figure it out. <comment><AUTHOR> Real link: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=567885></comment>


Ask YC: How to Dazzle? - <AUTHOR> http://ideamonk.blogspot.com/2008/08/trying-to-dazzle.html eversince I have seen http://tinyurl.com/6ddzjh , I have always wanted to automate creation of such images. such an attempt is http://ideamonk.blogspot.com/2008/08/trying-to-dazzle.html But I am wondering how to perfect it. Right now it's just a rand() doing the magic. But there is something more to the original art. It seems that "the edges have a nice particle effect, the size of squares vary according to either luminance or similarity of neighbor area... and there might be a lot more to watch out! Boxes don't overlap much in the original work, and smaller tiny boxes play very significant role in giving life to the guitar kid..."<p>So, fellow hackers please help this kid as to what he needs to know in image processing to be able to do the trick. Like how to detect uniform areas in an image... how to detect edges. For example if i have a photo of a shirt, I wish to detect where it is crumpled where it is plain. If I am able to do this, I will put big squares at plain areas and small ones at non uniform areas. I think that might reproduce the effect! Thanks! <comment><AUTHOR> eversince I have seen <http://tinyurl.com/6ddzjh> , I have always wanted to automate creation of such images. such an attempt is <http://ideamonk.blogspot.com/2008/08/trying-to-dazzle.html> But I am wondering how to perfect it. Right now it's just a rand() doing the magic. But there is something more to the original art. It seems that "the edges have a nice particle effect, the size of squares vary according to either luminance or similarity of neighbor area... and there might be a lot more to watch out! Boxes don't overlap much in the original work, and smaller tiny boxes play very significant role in giving life to the guitar kid..."

So, fellow hackers please help this kid as to what he needs to know in image processing to be able to do the trick. Like how to detect uniform areas in an image... how to detect edges. For example if i have a photo of a shirt, I wish to detect where it is crumpled where it is plain. If I am able to do this, I will put big squares at plain areas and small ones at non uniform areas. I think that might reproduce the effect! Thanks!

<comment><USER2> In regards to the size, it looks to me like it varies according to similarity of neighboring area. This makes much more sense than luminance, since it allows the more complex areas of the images to be represented by more "pixels".

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes after trying out luminance style plotting, I'm sure its based on uniformity!

How about taking a point(p,q) and the area of 3x3 around it,

find the average of luminance in this 3x3 block,

store it as a0 and

now increase the size of 3x3 square to 4x4, find average of luminance, lets call it a1,

now if |a1-a0|<threshold, we say the area is uniform! and repeat steps till size<size_threshold

Will this work? or instead of averaging luminance, I should average R,G,B separately and match against threshhold to increase the size(to be more strict)

Have got exam tomorrow, will work more on these insights as soon as I finish preparing my data sctuctures and discrete maths syllabus. thanks :), (psst! can't get my head away from these new ideas)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm curious, why aren't you trying to use the GIMP to do this? It can be scripted with Scheme/Script-Fu and Python, it seems that would be easier than using C++ and Allegro.

Cool stuff in any case :D

<comment><AUTHOR> It will be less _open_ in nature if I try doing in Script-Fu. Firstly I will have to understand how it works... then it will become something which only GIMP users can use, and besides... I just want to do from basics... once done ;) I will surely make it for GIMP and Matlab (psst.. I have no idea of matlab and know very little python ;) )

yeah! GIMP will give support for loads of image formats ;) But nothing new to explore before my exams get over :X

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here is another option:

<http://mybedazzler.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> what the hell is this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Split the picture into grids of 10x10. Take the color in that grid and find the average color of all the colors in there. Calculate the color distance to the box beside it. Do same for luminance.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's been a while since my multimedia class (and I was never that good at it :D) but the effect is reminiscent of JPEG compression. Might be worth looking into that algorithm.

<comment><AUTHOR> JPEG compression is producing pixelation type effects... I think it is bigger than this. <http://ideamonk.blogspot.com/2008/08/dazzle-hard.html>

<comment><USER6> Not as very low quality settings:

<http://cobweb.ecn.purdue.edu/~ace/jpeg-tut/pix/imagec3.jpg>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is great.</comment>


Fedora CoreOS, Red Hat CoreOS, and the future of Container Linux - <AUTHOR> https://coreos.com/blog/fedora-coreos-red-hat-coreos-and-future-container-linux <comment><USER2> This is exactly what I thought would happen when I switched off of CoreOS earlier this year. I recently switched back[0] since according to their blog post[1] Container Linux would live and not be replaced by their Atomic project... I thought I was a fool for overreacting.

I don't want OpenShift, it looks like a bloated clusterfuck. I don't want Atomic either -- Container Linux had all the pieces I needed and not much else, along with innovation just where it was needed (the update engine).

It might not mean much to Red Hat in the economical sense right now but Red Hat has gotten a red strike in my book from this. I won't forget. Corporate double speak/renegging on acqui-hired goodwill normally doesn't get me so riled up but man if my jimmies aren't rustled right now.

What does everyone else use for their server distros? Is debian the way to go? Ubuntu seems bloated but maybe I just don't know enough about the fat that is cut out of Ubuntu Server? CentOS and Fedora are stable but they seem like they update too slowly, is my assumption wrong?

[EDIT] - This post is likely an overreaction (again?) -- as pointed out by others the linked thread is from May 2018 -- so my reaction is very much delayed. If I had seen this thread when I made my decision to switch back to Container Linux, I wouldn't have.

I'll likely be moving to flatcar linux[2].

[0]: [https://vadosware.io/post/yet-another-cluster-reinstall- back...](https://vadosware.io/post/yet-another-cluster-reinstall-back-to- container-linux/)

[1]: [https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/red-hat- acqui...](https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/red-hat-acquire- coreos-expanding-its-kubernetes-and-containers-leadership)

[2]: [https://www.flatcar-linux.org/](https://www.flatcar-linux.org/)

<comment><USER3> I happily use Ubuntu on a few thousand servers running 10s of thousands of containers. We're a polyglot shop with lots of java and lots of go/node and my comfort level with ubuntu is high.

<comment><USER2> Thanks so much for sharing -- I think I'm going to give Ubuntu Server a try -- Canonical has done so much for open source (as noted by the other comment) and a bunch of innovation lately -- LXD is something I've actually wanted to play with as well as a virtualization option, which I actually failed to set up on Container Linux[0]. I swear I'm not trying to blog-spam, I just legitimately have been dealing with this stuff lately and have been effectively swimming upstream by not using Ubuntu -- looks like I need to stop.

I was mainly worried I'd be spending time downloading noveau/radeon drivers and associated packages on a server with no attached GPUs. I've been leaning towards languages that compile fat binaries (and running with docker regardless), so this is why I'm a little wary of Ubuntu bringing too much to the table. Also, it's been a long time since I ran Ubuntu on a personal machine, I am still a little worried about the risky the dist-upgrade process can be.

Basically all I feel I need is ufw, docker, ssh and was worried that Ubuntu brings too much along for the ride.

[0]: [https://vadosware.io/post/trying-and-failing-to-get-lxd- runn...](https://vadosware.io/post/trying-and-failing-to-get-lxd-running-on- container-linux/)

<comment><USER4> Server is based on a very minimal seed. There are no graphics drivers or anything X or desktop related. The seed is ultimately very close to what a cloud instance of Ubuntu will include if you want to give it a spin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you have a deployed fleet of CoreOS instances, FlatCar[1] looks like a viable alternative. This article from NewStack gets into the details.

[1] [https://www.flatcar-linux.org/](https://www.flatcar-linux.org/) [2] [https://thenewstack.io/flatcar-linux-the-coreos-operating- sy...](https://thenewstack.io/flatcar-linux-the-coreos-operating-system-lives- on-beyond-red-hat/)

<comment><USER6> Maintaining an operating system is a massive undertaking. Can Kinvolk guarantee that they will support the distro after Red Hat stops working on it?

<comment><USER7> That's a very valid question and one we also asked ourselves before taking on the task. There are three main considerations that made us feel this is doable. Firstly, Flatcar is a minimal Linux distro, with more effort made to reduce the number of packages rather than expand. Secondly, Flatcar has not only Container Linux as an upstream, but also Gentoo, which is also a common upstream for Chrome OS and Container-optimized Linux, so well tended to. Thirdly, the technologies (kernel, systemd, containers, low-level Linux userspace) are our core focus as a company. These three considerations are what led us to feel confident in picking up the project and have the motivation to do so.

The way I personally see it, if you were ok with using an OS from a team of veteran Linux/open-source contributors in 2013 you should be ok with using one from a team of veteran Linux/open-source contributors in 2018. But this time it's from a team that does not take venture funding.

Lastly, it is telling that the ppl that have the most confidence in us pulling this off are the ppl we've worked with as clients or through open source collaborations. We're happy to start there and prove ourselves along the way to other.

<comment><USER6> Thank you for your response!

I wish you the best of luck, choice is important for the ecosystem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In general, I'm pretty happy about this. The more I used Atomic Host, the more I liked it. While it was a pretty dramatic departure from Fedora's dnf/rpm world, I really like how rpm-ostree handled the Atomic update/rollback stuff. I thought it was a nice middle ground between a traditional Linux distro and Container Linux's "just slap a new image down to disk for upgrades". I think there's a time and place for both and Atomic Host had a nice merging. Container Linux with the rpm-ostree tooling should be really nice for orgs that want to customize their distributions.

I'm only a novice Ignition user though, so I'd appreciate it if anyone could tell me what benefit it has over kickstart for provisioning nodes and clusters that makes Red Hat want to keep using it. Kickstart clearly has way more configurability for deciding how you want the host to be provisioned (at the expense of added complexity), so the only place I see Ignition adding value is that it's a really easy way to group nodes and assign roles by hostname, like a lightweight Cobbler install or something. Am I missing something else?

</comment><comment><USER9> Canonical has timed its announcement of Minimal Ubuntu (29MB) really well. [0]

[0] [https://blog.ubuntu.com/2018/07/09/minimal-ubuntu- released](https://blog.ubuntu.com/2018/07/09/minimal-ubuntu-released)

</comment><comment><USER10> I think by the time they figure out what Fedora CoreOS will be, they will have basically missed the boat for non-Red Hat customer adoption.

Basically it will only really matter for people running OpenShift.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm cautiously optimistic about Fedora CoreOS, but am worried that it brings with it bloat that wasn't present in Container Linux.

</comment><comment><USER12> What is the story with rkt? Is it deprecated?

<comment><USER8> Yes, they announced at the Red Hat summit that they'll be phasing out development of rkt, though of course will do nothing to stop outside development. Between docker and cri-o, I think they decided that the need for a third supported and actively developed runtime wasn't enough to justify the effort. I'm excited to have the rkt developers work on cri-o, assuming that's where they're going.

<comment><USER12> Bummer, I preferred it in some ways.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Where does SilverBlue fit in? Is it going to be the workstation distro of Fedora CoreOS that bundles a GUI and some userland tools?

[https://teamsilverblue.org/](https://teamsilverblue.org/)

I've been interested for about a year and gave Atomic a couple test drives, but with the CoreOS acquisition and so much overlap between these projects I'm wondering if RedHat actually has a plan for each of them.

</comment><comment><USER14> > In-place upgrades from Container Linux to Fedora CoreOS will not be possible

...

Why not use the flatcar-linux model?!

</comment><comment><USER15> We've crossed the point where running Kubernetes on CoreOS was easy.

Maintaining Kubernetes on Ubuntu with docker (vs rkt) is now just easier to handle.

</comment><comment><USER16> You mightwant check Alpine or ArchLinux. They are fast, reliable and updated regularly.

<comment><USER17> In my experience Arch Linux isn't that reliable. I had a few packages which where broken for weeks and I couldn't manage to downgrade them due to the rolling-release nature.

With Fedora there are less feature updates and I can still go back to a previous release. And if I really need the cutting edge, I can cherry-pick packages from Rawhide.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think the title needs to be fixed, it's a tad sensationalist. The Google Groups message is just "Container Linux project update" and is dated May 18th. Since then, there has been more clarification [0], [1], [2], that really calls out a rationalization of the RH roadmap and where CoreOS fits. It might be fair to say that RH doesnt plan to support "CoreOS Container Linux" in exactly the fashion prior to acquisition, but it would be disingenuous to imply it is being wholly discontinued.

[0] [https://coreos.com/blog/coreos-tech-to-combine-with-red- hat-...](https://coreos.com/blog/coreos-tech-to-combine-with-red-hat- openshift)

[1] [https://coreos.com/blog/fedora-coreos-red-hat-coreos-and- fut...](https://coreos.com/blog/fedora-coreos-red-hat-coreos-and-future- container-linux)

[2] [https://fedoramagazine.org/announcing-fedora- coreos/](https://fedoramagazine.org/announcing-fedora-coreos/)

<comment><USER19> Thanks! A moderator updated the link from [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/coreos- user/PFHJQMJSRb...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/coreos- user/PFHJQMJSRbE/nUGlUYpXBQAJ).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Hold on, lets just buy the competition so we can rack in more enterprise clients. :/

With my experiences with RedHat, The only thing I've gleamed from it is that they are a mess with packages, and are their own 'standard.'

</comment><comment><USER21> RH became irrelevant when everyone was moving to cloud shenanigans and they didn't update their pricing accordingly.

when even fortune50 have to drop your product they used for decades because of costs, that's a very clear indication of the end.

<comment><USER22> Source?

<comment><USER23> I have heard(both directly from customer and from friends at other orgs) of 3 Global 500 companies in the past 6 months walking away from OpenShift due to licensing costs. I am sure this will play out more frequently over the next 12-18 months.

Take some time to review RH's annual statement from 2017. Think about where they were in 2013/14, where we are at today and what things might look like in 2023. I am interested to see how they navigate the market. There is a fleet of Titantic like vessels plowing through the enterprise ocean right now...it will be interesting to observe what plays out over the next 3-5 years.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Melodia – The Smart Music App - <AUTHOR> http://melodia.io <comment><AUTHOR> Melodia is a smart music app, offering a simpler way to play and explore music. Instead of playlists and radio stations, Melodia offers one "smart station" that's personalized to your unique taste and every moment. With its state-of-the-art machine learning and AI algorithms, Melodia learns from your listening patterns to dynamically curate your music flow. Just open the app and Melodia will start playing your moment's music!

Questions, thoughts, suggestions? Let us know! Email email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER2> Cool app! I noticed you let users connect their spotify for on-demand listening, any plans to inclued apple music?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Yes, and we'll soon be offering Melodia's own premium service as well :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Great idea. Any plans for an android version?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes! An Android version is also in the works!</comment></comment>


Reviving a 16-year-old Mac App - <AUTHOR> https://blog.tumult.com/2020/05/04/reviving-a-16-year-old-mac-app/ <comment><USER2> > In 2020, distributing requires learning the intricacies of certificates, > code signing, provisioning profiles, hardening, notarization, .dmg creation, > gatekeeper, and paying a $99 per year fee.

I had to manually create, sign, and notarize a Mac app the other day and it was total madness. It took multiple tabs of Apple documentation ( _new_ documentation, I might add, created this year because everyone complained last year about how the process was impenetrable) and back-and-forth with some seasoned Mac devs before I had something that would launch successfully on a fully updated, GateKeepered system.

<comment><USER3> This may be a question you get a lot, and I apologize in advance if it is, but: Why use Mac, if it makes so simple of things difficult?

<comment><USER4> App signing has always been inexplicably horrible; other than Cupertino contempt for their developers, I really don't know what would explain it, it certainly doesn't have to be that way.

But things have gotten worse for developers recently with Catalina. I should note that I don't write mac-specific code - I mainly write things that target Linux servers.

The Mac has long been the best unix workstation on the market. It is solid, generally stable (although that's been slipping), and certainly has by far the best window manager. It has nice consumer apps for when you need them and is a solid, if not always up to date, unix. The hardware is generally great.

Then the sandboxing, weird parallel fire permission systems/quarantining, new filesystem conventions/restrictions and so on made it incredibly difficult to treat, well, like a unix workstation.

We'll probably keep using Macs at work out of inertia, and it is a lot easier for me to use other resources there. And my personal Mac laptop is probably good for quite a while yet - I tend to get 7+ years out of them. But this is the end of the road for me and the Mac. I require that my tools do what I tell them, not the other way around.

<comment><USER5> > The Mac has long been the best unix workstation on the market. It is solid, > generally stable (although that's been slipping), and certainly has by far > the best window manager. It has nice consumer apps for when you need them > and is a solid, if not always up to date, unix. The hardware is generally > great.

I was on that same line of thinking until some time ago when my old macbook pro died, and I ended up again on Linux, on a thinkpad. I'm currently running Manjaro (plasma + i3), and tbh, the Mac's window manager is awful once you get used to the power of i3. Dev experience (for anything but Mac/iOS apps) is probably better on Linux, too...

If you haven't used Linux in a while (as was my case), I can highly recommend it.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, modern plug and play distros like Ubuntu are not the Linux of yesteryear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I created a commercial Mac desktop app in 2008. I sold it off late last year (2019).

It stopped being fun somewhere along the way. This was partly because I never knew what new requirement Apple was going to add with each new annual release of macOS. Would my app work? Would it not work? How many days, weeks, or more of work would I need to do to keep my app working while not actually making it better for my users?

</comment><comment><USER8> > I don't think it is an exaggeration to say the amount required to learn to > distribute software exceeds the amount I needed to know to write the first > beta of HyperEdit! I wonder if it would have gotten off the ground if I > started today.

This mirrors my feeling. It might be easier to learn to program say TypeScript or Go today than it was to learn php or C in the late 90s, but actually creating a complete program, distributing it, having it run or accessed by users is much harder than when I learned to program back then.

<comment><USER9> Same story in cloud. It takes less effort to write the program than to properly set up CI/CD, permissions, auth, auto-scaling, backup, monitoring, and so many more.

<comment><USER10> I think that's doing it wrong because you don't need those features until you do... At which point you should invest in them. Otherwise, I don't see the benefit of having them. If all you end up with is one user.

<comment><USER9> > If all you end up with is one user.

This isn't what I'm talking about. With just one user, even for desktop software the complexities of distributing the software are negligible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Maybe I was just the right age as a teenager back then and it does feel cliche to say, but there really was something special and magical about Mac software like this back in those days. I miss the pinstripes and aqua glossiness, but also the fact that software in other platforms just seemed so boring in comparison!

<comment><AUTHOR> Removing color from toolbar/sidebar icons and fixing all line weights reduces the personality of software as well as increasing usability cognition. Even with years of use, I still have trouble quickly discerning the difference between many of Mail.app's toolbar buttons!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was thinking initially that it'd be an especially challenging thing bringing code from OS 9 into the modern era, then I realized that MacOS (formerly OS X) is almost twenty years old.

I've got some old PHP code that dates back to the 90s and is still running although I had to make some changes when my web host EOL'd PHP5 (I'd note that some of the files have a .php4 suffix).

</comment><comment><USER13> The old app really still looks quite nice. Even windows 98-era apps look pretty good in a way.

One part of me doesn't like how much space is wasted by the new Mac UI trends shown in the second screenshot, mostly the left side panel. But I understand screens are different these days as well.

<comment><USER14> I think Mac apps have settled into a pleasant place for the most part, though I'm not a fan of the look of Apple's newer apps like the App Store and News.

I'm glad that the brighter colors are more subdued now, annoying UI elements like drawers and palette windows have mostly been replaced by inspector panes, and brushed metal is long gone.

<comment><USER15> Yep these new apps (including the "Marzipan" or "Catalyst" or whatever it's called) are pure garbage both in terms of design and usability.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The 99$ annual fee is ridiculous. Big companies don't talk about it because it is a regressive tax. It hurts hobbyist more than anyone else.

<comment><USER17> I don't think Apple want hobbyist apps in the store. They want apps that will create revenue and the fee creates a filter of sorts.

It would be good to be able to side load hobby apps, but that's never happening.

The fee does also get you 2 tech support requests, which should connect you with their engineers if you need help (never needed this, can't say how extensive it is).

Also, I did read somewhere that they waive the fee for some nonprofit/education institutions.

<comment><USER16> Google Play store has a 25$ one-time fee. Much more affordable IMHO than 99$ annual fee. If I am being charged a 99$ fee, I simply can't share my creation without finding a way to make money off of my users. That isn't easy. Future hobbyists will be created on non-Apple platforms.

<comment><USER18> That's the whole point - making it not too affordable so that users browsing the App Store don't have to wade through too many nonserious hobbyist apps. Lowering the bar too much hurts users.

I mean, all this is about _mass distribution to unsophisticated consumers_ , not hobbyists - without that $99 you can work on your hobby projects and you can share them with other hobbyists; the only place where that $99 is a barrier is the distribution channel to _non-hobbyist_ users.

In essence, the message from Apple to hobbyist developers is to 'go big or go home' \- if you're seriously developing something useful, then $99 is insignificant; and if the time effort you're putting in that app is not much, much more than $99 then it's reasonable to draw a line that they don't want such hobby projects on the app store. You can experiment with it and share it in small communities and when (if!) you think this project has become serious enough to go beyond hobbyists to the mass market, only then you need to pull out that symbolic $99 to demonstrate that you mean it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > _In 2003, you could switch the config to Release, hit build, zip the app, > and then put on a web server._

You can still do that.

<comment><USER20> ...and that's how a lot of stuff is released on GitHub, but you can't get into Apple's walled garden that way.

<comment><USER19> You can still distribute macOS apps on your own, just have to get users to trust you.

Why do you want to publish on the Mac App Store? If you think there's an advantage, then the costs are justified.

<comment><USER21> Sadly, this does not work for everything, as users can't always override the notarization requirement that was introduced in Catalina. I had the issue with Aerial, it's a screensaver which, technically, is a plugin and not an application. As such, the user will never get prompted for anything (and I'm putting aside the compounding effect/slight madness that screensavers are now a plugin to an appex to two different applications with different permissions set ! Oh Catalina...).

The only solution was to sign/notarize it, and I have to admit it took me more than a few days to figure it out, as finding exactly what works for distributing a plugin was not documented. And this is just to distribute a usable plugin on GitHub !

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This feels similar to Glitch, FKA HyperDev, Fog Creek's developer playground.

</comment><comment><USER23> I still use Tumult's Hype 3 (Pro, I think) to do HTML5 animations - it's pretty great, even if moving to 4/Pro for the (very few) features I'd like to have seems a bit steep at $99.

Whisk appeals to me because I _know_ it's going to be a polished, lightweight app, but with VS Code having quite usable previews I don't see the value of its current price point (to me).

<comment><AUTHOR> Note that we do have upgrade discounts available, and if you purchased v3 after Oct 14, 2017 it is a free upgrade to the corresponding v4 edition.

[https://tumult.com/hype/support/upgrade- discounts/](https://tumult.com/hype/support/upgrade-discounts/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Cool story. In a way I'm surprised one would try to adapt the old code after so much time has passed, rather than just starting fresh. It can definitely be interesting, just more... frustrating.

<comment><USER25> I guess Objective-C/Cocoa might have not changed much between the last HyperEdit version and now. If the developer organized his codebase well, replacing the old webview with the new stuff and so on should be less work than rewriting the whole app (IMHO).

I haven't coded for the mac in more than a decade but what I remember from ObjC/Cocoa was that it was quite pleasant to use and very powerful. By powerful I mean that the ratio between LoC and smiles on my face was skewed towards smiling.

<comment><USER24> That's true. I maintain a couple of obj-C iOS apps (one of those ~10 years old) and apart from framework upgrades (iOS 6-7 was a big one) and dealing with a few deprecations, it's been surprisingly friction-free.

macOS is probably even more stable.

Swift, on the other hand... it's been a moving target for sure, and I'm glad I didn't just rewrite everything (like I did for one app).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Every modern web framework has auto reload, so this is an app that's only targeting people who know HTML well enough to hand write a page but don't know about modern web development. Good luck, but I can't imagine it's a growing market.

<comment><USER27> I build my website with Jekyll 4 and use livereload, but have actually found some use out of this tool for writing small snippets. Seeing your CSS come to life with every keystroke in real time (without having to press CMD+S in your IDE) is surprisingly useful.

The main use-case where this tool has been useful, though, is when I'm working on my Mac app that uses WKWebView and Javascript pretty extensively. It's much faster to get little JS snippets right compared to the really slow build+run cycle in Xcode.

<comment><USER2> Jekyll is kind of slow :(

<comment><USER27> After I upgraded to Jekyll 4, stopped using the GitHub pages gem (deploying to Netlify instead), it's been WAY faster for me personally!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Scale of real-life DDoS attacks? - <AUTHOR>

What was the biggest DDoS attack you have ever encountered? How many gigabits per second? Packets per second? How many unique source IP addresses? How long did it last?<p>The peak number of real (non-spoofed) source IPs is also very interesting. I wonder whether it is feasible to automatically maintain a blacklist of offending IPs that managed to establish a TCP connection (and are thus real). <comment><USER2> Its old but GRC had a write-up about the attacks against them and infiltrating the bots: <http://www.crime-research.org/library/grcdos.pdf>

I couldn't find the originals on GRC website anymore: <http://www.grc.com/default.htm>

If I recall, after that writeup, GRC was knocked off the web by a BGP attack or something...

</comment><comment><USER3> The best attack vector is usually Apache. Nonetheless, the records I heard are from Akamai:

Peak: 300,000 unique IPs, 795,000 page views/s, 98,000 unique views/s, 200Gbps [0].

[0] <http://wwwns.akamai.com/rsa_2011/RSA_NOCC_DDoS.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER4> I have not encountered DDoS attacks directed at my own properties, but I had domains hosted on Namecheap that were hit when their DNS got DDoS'd a few times last year.

There is plenty of coverage of this if you just do a search: [http://www.google.com/search?gcx=c&sourceid=chrome&i...](http://www.google.com/search?gcx=c&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=namecheap+dns+ddos)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I have collected some reports on DDoS sizes here: [https://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/detail?id=6...](https://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/detail?id=6000#c1)</comment>


BackType (YC08) Has Been Acquired by Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://www.backtype.com

<comment><USER2> Duplicated: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2730438></comment>


MLB.com CEO: iOS users more likely to purchase content than Android users - <AUTHOR> http://www.edibleapple.com/mlb-ceo-bob-bowman-ios-more-likely-purchase-content-than-android-users/ <comment><USER2> The iOS MLB app (especially the iPad variety) is probably my favorite. The Android MLB app is probably my least favorite. It's just ugly ... only does a fraction of what the iOS app does, and provides very little beyond what you can get for free from any number of other sports or baseball apps.

People will pay for quality. Right now, the Android app isn't anywhere near what I'd consider a quality app.

<comment><USER3> Is this MLB.com's fault, limitations of Android, or both?

<comment><USER4> What limitations would there be on Android, relative to to iOS? I can just think of in-app purchases.

<comment><USER5> While perhaps limitation is a strong word, it is clear that the development environments/tools/api's for the two platforms are very different. Is it not possible that one is simply better suited to producing high quality apps than the other?

<comment><USER6> That's a diversion from the original point that iOS users are more willing to pay for apps. Whether it's easier to develop high quality apps for whichever platform, the fact that the iOS app is higher quality is an important factor when that makes the comparison invalid.

<comment><USER5> Well, I agree that a drastic difference in quality between the two versions of the app invalidates the data from MLB, the grand parent of my post asked why the quality is different between the two. Specifically, wether it is MLB's fault or a deficiency in Android. I think my answer is relevant, and the question, while a diversion from the question here as to wether users from the two platforms approach paying for apps differently, is especially relevant to the deeper question of "which platform should I work on."

<comment><USER6> You make a very fair point, one that's important to the deeper question.

Sorry if I sounded combative, I was merely trying to point out that (still cogent) point does not say anything about the willingness of Android/iOS users to pay for apps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My dad, who is far from being technically-savvy, owns an iPhone (a Christmas gift from my brother and I to our parents.)

He wasn't a fan of the phone at first. Too complicated, too hard to make calls, etc. However, something amazing (considering my dad's, uh, "technological capabilities"...) happened a few weeks ago. He calls me up and asks about his "iTunes password" and whether he had ever set that up. I told him, "yeah we did, and it's probably your e-mail password." He tries it and it works.

I asked him what he needed that for and he replies "I've reached my five song limit for Shazam and want to upgrade."

I was kind of blown away by this. Here is my dad, who can't get drag & drop right, upgrading his free version of Shazam with an in-app purchase. An app, I honestly didn't think he would use that much but found enough value in it, he wanted to pay for the full version...

After that, I walked him through finding more apps on the App store. I warned him though. "The one click purchase makes it easy to go crazy."

<comment><USER8> While iOS is a smooth experience, I honestly cannot tell what is the substantial difference from Android. Both have the same enter credit card information once, one click purchasing from now on experience.

Beyond the pretty small group of people who don't like giving Google more info/don't trust Google as mentioned elsewhere in the thread, what is so much better about iTunes than Google Checkout?

<comment><USER9> It's not the tech that makes it better it's the people, as an app developer it's easier to make money on the Apple ecosystem than Google. If I can't make a profit I'm not going to produce for that platform.

Apple's marketing message appeals to a set of consumers who want to buy stuff digitally. Apple has done a bunch of work for me, whereas it's hard to monetize the marketing message of 'open platform'

<comment><USER8> Again, I think this argument applies to a Hacker News crowd, not the general population. I have seen plenty of Android marketing and I can't remember a single mass market ad that touted openness beyond saying that it runs Flash.

Of course, Google employees have said things to that effect, but that is directed to a separate smaller audience. You won't find that on the sides of buses or on TV. I'd be surprised if more than 10% of Android users know it is open source or even made by Google. I'm trying to find the root of why iOS is more profitable for paid apps. In this particular case, I think it is overcharging for a fairly weak app, but I know this is a larger trend which I can't ascribe to an open platform bias.

<comment><USER10> Sure. But 1. do we see any actual Android marketing on TV or media? We see marketing from the individuals handset makers, but very rarely, or at least I haven't from Google, for the OS, which makes sense in some light.

Contrast that with a lot of the advertising that Apple does, it's not about the phone, it's about the software, experience, and the apps. In print ads, tv ads, etc there is an explicit focus on the content you can buy to create a better experience.

I think that makes a difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I consider myself pretty high on the chart of "technology-savvy" and trusting when it comes to payment on the Internet.

But for some reason, I won't pay for something inside the Android store. I know Google's behind it and that my stuff is probably safe. But there's just something inherintly shady about the Android store that I can't put my finger on.

I know it's irrational, but imagine how someone who hasn't created apps feels.

<comment><USER12> My guess (not having used the Amazon store however) is that Android's permissions system is hurting it. Why does that app need location and full network access? So you become suspicious. And so on. While on iOS its automatically given full rights apps get, apart from location, which it asks for at runtime, not install time. So while the iOS app has as much ability to start feeding data home, the fact that the Android app is forced to admit it uses network access leaves us more suspicious.

It doesn't help that many apps have a perfectly legitimate purpose for that network access, to download and display ads.

<comment><USER13> Actually if you use certain frameworks without good reason in the Apple App Store, you get rejected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> How about there is no Honeycomb version of At Bat, but there is an iPad and iPhone/iPod version. Basically, they don't support Android the same way they support iOS. I have both and iPad and a Xoom, but I only purchased the iPad version because there is no Honeycomb version.

<comment><USER7> I'm curious: Do you find you use the iPad more because of that one app? Or, is the iPad strictly used for At Bat, and the rest of your time (email, browsing, etc.) used on the Xoom?

I know Apple likes to advertise how many apps they have, but you're the first person that I've seen who has claimed to purchase hardware based on app availability...

<comment><USER14> I think most people would choose hardware based on App availability. So, for baseball, absolutely. The iPad has a better tablet version of At Bat 11.

In more general terms, I'm still figuring my use patterns out. I've had the iPad since it came out in Mar 2010. I've had a Xoom since the WiFi model came out in Mar 2011. To be as objective as possible, I'd still tell my non tech savvy friends and family to go with the iPad. The whole experience (not just hardware specs) is smoother.

Right now, the Xoom is fun, but a lot of what I use the iPad for is not available yet. Netflix, Hulu, and Zinio are all either not working at all or require hacks. I thrive on figuring out how to make that stuff work, but my parents do not. Since this is a post about MLB, I'll leave my deeper thought on the subject for a later post.

<comment><USER7> Very interesting! Thanks for the reply!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This applies to apps too. Here my simple logic.

Android phones are available for free from carriers. Thus, the typical Android buy is more price sensitive. They are more likely to choose free content & apps.

iPhone customers don't get FREE iPhones. They are willing to pay $200+ for a phone and contract. Their willingness to pay for apps & content is higher than Android users.

Just look at Angry Birds. It's FREE on the Android store, but charged for on the iOS store.

<comment><USER16> _Just look at Angry Birds. It's FREE on the Android store, but charged for on the iOS store._

But it's 99 cents on the Amazon Android store: [http://www.amazon.com/Rovio- Mobile-Angry-Birds-Ad-Free/dp/B0...](http://www.amazon.com/Rovio-Mobile-Angry- Birds-Ad-Free/dp/B004SBQGHS/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1301937710&sr=8-7)

<comment><USER17> Maybe I've missed it, but has Amazon actually released any sales numbers from its store? So far, it seems to me like little more than a curiosity. The difficulty of installation alone will rule out most customers.

<comment><USER16> Isn't that true of anything? "Why would people trust Amazon to run their data center?" "Why would people wait for books to be shipped when they could just go to the bookstore?"

Fact is, everything new and different is new and different at first. But that fades away quite quickly.

<comment><USER17> Sorry, I think the way I backed into my point has confused you. I'm not saying, "Amazon's store is new and different. Why would people use it?" What I mean to say is: "I don't have any reason to believe many people are currently using Amazon's store. It seems unlikely. Since (as far as we can tell) this store is currently not successful, and its lack of success is quite possibly due to factors other than price, its pricing doesn't reveal much about what people are willing to pay." And that is _not_ true of everything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> MLB.tv is the only subscription service (that I'm aware of) that charges for the app as well. And they do it inconsistently.

I paid I think $120-$130, somewhere in that range, for MLB.tv, however I need to pay an additional $15 to get it on my Android phone and an additional $15 to get it on my iPad. However on Roku I pay no additional cost for the app, and on the web I pay no additional cost.

I bought the iPad app because I felt I would be more likely to use it, when laying in bed and such. On the phone I would probably only use it in rare situations and so it's just not worth it for me.

Is any one aware of another subscription that has this type of price model?

<comment><USER19> This is exactly my issue with the At Bat app. I already pay for MLB.tv which plays video in Flash and I have a flash capable Android phone. I don't understand why I should have to pay extra for the app just to watch video. However, last time I checked I was blocked from watching content on my phone.

<comment><USER2> Unless I'm missing something, even with an MLB.tv subscription, the Android app doesn't provide that feature.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Be careful about generalizing too far from the MLB experience. As has been discussed over and over, the Android experience for video locked down by DRM is sorely lacking. iOS has a single unified video DRM scheme while different carriers and handset makers seem to be going different ways on Android. Hence, the MLB app's video is only available for 11 phones so far, there's no official Netflix client for any yet and so on. The fact that MLB makes 5 times more from iOS users is partially explained by the fact that all iOS users can buy the app but only a small portion of Android users.

However, not sure that should apply to the entire spectrum of apps. Rovio has said it's making the same on both platforms and the Pocket Legends folks say they make more on Android. Not to say that Android is equal to iOS in app monetization, which it's surely not, but there are signs that it's catching up in some segments. Video, however, is not one of those areas.

</comment><comment><USER21> Why the Amazon App store is revolutionary by Matt Maroon:

[http://mattmaroon.com/2011/03/31/why-the-amazon-app-store- is...](http://mattmaroon.com/2011/03/31/why-the-amazon-app-store-is- revolutionary/)

</comment><comment><USER22> I recently switched from iPhone to an Android and I am definitely less willing to pay for apps. To me its all about the pricing.

Going through a list of apps on the first page of the android market I see prices of: $8.05, $7.99, $2.89, $0.99, $9.99, $14.26, $5.99, $2.99.

A random selection from the iTunes app store: $0.99, $0.99, $0.99, $0.99, $0.99, $0.99, $0.99, $0.99, $0.99, $4.99, $2.99.

To me, and I'm sure that I'm not the only one, a $3 app is 20x more expensive than a $1 app. There are few iPhone apps that cost more than $1 and its rare to find one more than $5. This pricing makes me feel like the android marketplace is a huge ripoff, so there is almost no chance of me buying an app for $15. When I buy an app that sucks on the iPhone market I only lose $1 which in turn makes me feel better about future purchases.

<comment><USER23> Funny, thats the same argument ("feels like a ripoff") that stops me buying Apple hardware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Wait ... he says he gets 5 x the sales on iOS but then drops this line:

> MLB recently expanded the number of supported handsets from 6 to 11

So out of literally hundreds of Android handsets on the market they supported 6?!!?! And they wonder why their Android sales are not very good? Am I missing something here?</comment>


A National Emergency Library to Provide Digitized Books - <AUTHOR> http://blog.archive.org/2020/03/24/announcing-a-national-emergency-library-to-provide-digitized-books-to-students-and-the-public/ <comment><USER2> The comments posted so far seem to miss both the ambition and innovation of the Internet Archive's efforts in recent years and the boldness of their new initiative. They developed a way to make in-copyright books available for free to anyone who wants to read them online: by keeping a physical copy of each book they scan, they can justify "lending" it to one person at a time online for a limited period. Their collection of scanned in-copyright books has been growing rapidly. Try searching at the Open Library for some popular book you enjoyed reading when you were younger—mystery, Western, young adult, science fiction—and they're likely to have a copy that you can "check out" and read in your browser. You even get to enjoy the yellowing of old paperback pages without the stench of the decaying paper.

The new initiative is bold both because it meets an urgent, unprecedented need—providing books to millions of people who are locked down and cannot go to libraries—and because it seems to be taking significant legal risks for the greater good. The announcement at archive.org links to a document [1] that in turn links to some attempts at legal justifications for the move. I'll let others weigh the merits of those arguments. I suspect, though, that if major publishers and other deep-pocketed copyright holders tried to contest it the Archive would have a difficult case on its hands.

[1] [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vkl3RX4CzpRTQsoG1tsdHC0f...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vkl3RX4CzpRTQsoG1tsdHC0foYiU7A8U_Vt1UyVboP8/edit)

</comment><comment><USER3> Chris Bourg, Director of MIT Libraries, has a lot of nerve to make this statement in the article:

 _"Ubiquitous access to open digital content has long been an important goal for MIT and MIT Libraries. Learning and research depend on it."_

Maybe Bourg should recall back in 2012 how his library aided and abetted the Secret Service's plan to have Aaron Swartz inappropriately charged under the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

As many readers of hacker news will recall, rather than serve time in a federal penitentiary for his brave act of civil disobedience, Swartz sadly chose in January 2013 to take his own life instead.

Swartz then became a martyr for the cause of "ubiquitous open access to digital content" ... rather than just "ubiquitous access to [already] open digital content." As a result, he would have been a much better spokesperson for the cause of "ubiquitous access" than a phony like Chris Bourg.

Swartz is today rightly regarded as one of the heroes of the 21st century civil rights movement. Bourg, on the other hand, is just another overpaid university administrator who collects a large (and largely undeserved) salary that has helped put millions of American college students into several trillion dollars worth of student debt ... which several presidential candidates now want taxpayers to bail out!

Bourg should also check in with MIT police to find out how often they are called into the library (post Swartz' arrest) to threaten members of the general public with arrest for the crime of using his library computer terminals "for more than hour."

Thankfully, those of us who are not on the academic dole now have libgen and scihub for our "learning and research."

@Chris Bourg: Continue to enjoy collecting your university fat-cat salary until more students wake up and realize they don't need go into debt to feed your sorry freeloading ass anymore :)

<comment><USER4> I'm curious if you give away more free access to books and computers than MIT does.

JSTOR licensed content isn't legally MIT's to give away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This may be a stupid question: how do you borrow a digital book? And why is it called borrowing? Can't you just make infinite copies?

<comment><USER6> Basically it's DRM used to avoid offending the book publishing industry. I recommend checking Library Genesis first.

<comment><USER5> I understood. So it's basically getting a book with some code that will invalidate the content after x days. Another probably stupid question: can an infinite number of people borrow the same book? Or do they have a limited number of "copies" to give out?

<comment><USER7> > During the waitlist suspension, users will be able to borrow books from the > National Emergency Library without joining a waitlist

Normally, digital libraries have a limited number of "copies" (I suppose that's what they mean by "waitlist"). In this case, it seems like they suspended the limitation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm trying to build something similar on [https://papiary.com/](https://papiary.com/)

Trying to put the public domain classics on there one by one, and build a really nice reading experience.

Help and feedback welcome.

<comment><USER9> Standard ebooks is also working that

[https://standardebooks.org/](https://standardebooks.org/)

<comment><USER8> That's a fantastic resource, thanks a ton. Will link to their download pages instead of trying to make my own files.

I'm looking more at reading online directly, having the book read to you, choosing your own fonts etc, and ultimately helping people write their own books.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The libgen project is so far the best in those times, and any time.

<comment><USER11> Agreed. [http://gen.lib.rus.ec](http://gen.lib.rus.ec) is my go-to. If it ever goes down then a quick web search or a visit to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_Genesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_Genesis) and the new mirror appears.

Also, literally everyone already knows this, but SciHub for journal articles: [https://sci-hub.tw](https://sci-hub.tw) (mirrors: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci- Hub)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Are they flouting copyright laws or do they have agreement from publishers? I didn't see any mention of how they are doing this legally.

<comment><USER4> Yes. Instead of asking for donations for rightsholders, they are betting that rightsholders aren't going sue them for copyright violation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm interested in what triggered this... is this just distributing the ebooks that various textbook publishers are offering free access to for the semester? It seems weird to me that they wouldn't have been doing this sooner if they had the rights, or that they would be doing it at all if they didn't.

<comment><USER14> From the FAQs, it looks like normally the Internet Archive uses DRM to limit the number of borrowed copies to the number of physical copies they have. Instead, they are now temporarily allowing more digital copies of the book to be borrowed than physical copies exist. There still will be DRM, requiring you to "re-borrow" the book every 14 days, but under the temporary system you will get the book again right away (instead of having to go to the back of a line, and waiting for other people to get their 14-day turns).

The collection is more than just textbooks; I saw at least one work of fiction. (Note that you might want such books for, say, an English class.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> How do you "check out" one of these to a kindle? I see you can download a kindle file, but dunno how to get that to sync to my kindle devices.

My goal is to show my 5th grader how to checkout a book to his kindle eReader by himself..

<comment><USER16> You can either use Amazon's email-to-kindle service, or just plug your Kindle into your computer with a USB cable. It should show up as a drive, and you can just copy the file over.

<comment><USER15> Thank you Justin!</comment></comment></comment>


Goldman Sachs Finally Admits It Defrauded Investors During the Financial Crisis - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2016/04/11/goldman-sachs-doj-settlement/ <comment><USER2> $5B - not pocket change, but operating on $40B revenue not exactly too damaging either.

Its stock hasn't nose dived. Nobody is going to jail. Investors think they are ok. This is just business as usual.

They have 0 incentives not to do it again. In fact they'd be stupid not to do it again. Given they know better how fines are calculated and can just fold that into the total equation.

<comment><USER3> The prize for the DOJ in this settlement was an admission of wrongdoing. Theoretically this opens Goldman Sachs up to a lot more lawsuits and damages from private investors that were screwed when Goldman Sachs knowingly sold them mortgage bundles that were doomed to fail.

That said, I'm really surprised the stock hasn't taken more of a hit from this case.

<comment><USER4> > I'm really surprised the stock hasn't taken more of a hit from this case.

Already priced in long ago. Agreement in principle was made in January.

[http://www.goldmansachs.com/media-relations/press- releases/c...](http://www.goldmansachs.com/media-relations/press- releases/current/announcement-14-jan-2016.html)

Reserves for these penalties were allocated last year.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, and stock actually moved up in the short term when this was first announced since a settlement was reached.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/15/business/dealbook/goldman-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/15/business/dealbook/goldman- to-pay-5-billion-to-settle-claims-of-faulty-mortgages.html)

TLDR: Other wall street bank settlements were much greater.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Until people actually go to jail for like 30 years and until fines far exceed any profits, companies will continue to indulge in this type of behaviour.

The rewards are just too good and the downsides too easy to live with.

<comment><USER7> I wonder what people here would say if non-tech folks started talking like this about the tech industry. For example, how many stories have we heard about data leaks involving complete incompetence or negligence by the company involved? How many of them have ended up in jail or even with a fine?

<comment><USER8> GS "knowingly misled investors". This is worse than incompetence, it's outright fraud.

It's less analogous to accidental customer data leaks and more analogous to running a phishing operation.

<comment><USER7> Similar things happen in the tech world. Ashley Madison had a feature that you could pay to have your data deleted from their database. Except they never deleted the data for those that paid. That is outright fraud as well.

When their user data eventually leaked, it resulted in countless lives and relationships ruined and at least a handful of suicides. While civil lawsuits have been filed, I haven't seen any talk of criminal charges.

<comment><AUTHOR> Dude, you aren't actually comparing the two are you. Do you actually believe that tanking the global economy comes anywhere close to what you described? May I ask where you work? No one not working on/with ties to Wall Street would have this opinion.

<comment><USER7> I don't work anywhere close or on anything similar to Wall Street. But I do have a degree in econ and know that what "tanked the global economy" is a lot more complicated than Goldman Sachs lying to investors. But whatever, let's just lynch the bankers and their big bonuses and pretend that our industry is without flaws.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Fraud has a very specific meaning, and what Goldman admitted to wasn't fraud (especially not criminal fraud). Here is the actual statement of facts: [https://www.justice.gov/opa/file/839901/download](https://www.justice.gov/opa/file/839901/download). They admitted to doing what companies do every day: overselling a product they knew was crappy while having shoddy Q&A.

It's also worth noting the procedural posture of the government's case against Goldman. It's under FIRREA, which allows the government to bring a civil action for violation of 14 specific criminal laws. The burden of proof in the civil action is the lower civil standard of proof, instead of the high "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard.

<comment><USER4> IANAL but I was able to look this up.

"While the exact wording of fraud charges varies among state and federal laws, the essential elements needed to prove a fraud claim in general include: (1) a misrepresentation of a material fact; (2) by a person or entity who knows or believes it to be false; (3) to a person or entity who justifiably relies on the misrepresentation; and (4) actual injury or loss resulting from his or her reliance."

[http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal- charges/fraud.html](http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-charges/fraud.html)

The statement below appears to cover 1 and 2 and we already know 3 and 4 to be true.

"Goldman received information indicating that, for certain loan pools, significant percentages of the loans reviewed did not conform to the representations made to investors about the pools of loans to be securitized, and Goldman also received certain negative information regarding the originators' business practices."

[https://www.justice.gov/opa/file/839901/download](https://www.justice.gov/opa/file/839901/download)

rayiner, given your legal background, do you consider this type of misrepresentation to be criminal fraud irrespective of what regulators have achieved to date?

<comment><USER9> I think criminal prosecution should be reserved for the most outrageous and clear-cut misrepresentations. Look at the examples on pages 6-9 of the government's statement of facts. If any of those folks should go to prison? Should the folks at Microsoft who keep stating that the latest firmware update fixes Surface Book/Pro 4 sleep issues, even though people keep having troubles getting their laptop to sleep properly, also go to prison?

<comment><USER4> I don't see any value in that comparison.

Goldman Sachs, as part of a certain class of institutions, plays a systemic role in the economy and as such, Goldman Sachs, its affiliates and the activities under discussion are subject to innumerable pages of regulations enforced by several different regulators. There is no equivalent regulation for Microsoft's firmware update announcements.

> I think criminal prosecution should be reserved for the most outrageous and > clear-cut misrepresentations.

Is this the same standard you apply to any type of criminal prosecution?

<comment><USER10> I agree with you about Goldman, but we don't yet have the law that makes materially harmful commercial misrepresentations made by systemically important financial institutions a felony. We should, but we don't.

And, one of the very first things the founders said when they booted up this country was "no _ex post facto_ laws".

<comment><USER4> > we don't yet have the law ...

False.

[http://www.ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/pdfs/bureaus/invest...](http://www.ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/pdfs/bureaus/investor_protection/library/NY%20Gen%20Bus%20Law%20Article%2023-A.pdf)

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-06-03/goldman- sa...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-06-03/goldman-sachs- investigators-in-new-york-wield-laws-stronger-than-the-feds)

The link below is a general discussion of securities fraud and related legal theory. Goldman is used as an example while discussing the case settled with the SEC in 2010.

"The law allows a case like the one against Goldman to be alleged and argued as securities fraud even if the seller merely failed to exercise due care as to whether the buyer was misled about the nature of the securities being sold or how those securities were selected. The law further permits a claim of fraud—even when brought by a private litigant—to be founded on an allegation of recklessness and allows the litigant to assert, in essence, gross negligence as to whether the buyer was misled. If one takes the federal appellate decisions on the issue at face value, the law would appear to support a criminal conviction in a case like Goldman's even if the seller were merely reckless."

[http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=...](http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1518&context=dlj)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The one thing I can never wrap my head around in the banking industry is why this kind of behavior is tolerated by _customers_.

Imagine if wherever you work had to settle with the SEC / FTC / ABCXYZ for fraud. Wouldn't this devastate your customer base?

Yet when a bank gets fined, it seems simply like business-as-usual. Even when a government agency levies a fine for fraud, or emails are released in which employees actively mock their customers for being suckers, investment banks' abilities to find customers seems unhindered.

1) Are my perceptions wrong? Do these events damage reputation more than it seems?

2) If banks acting in this manner is the standard... why? Why isn't a firm carving out the "niche" of not being assholes?

<comment><USER12> I would nuance that:

1\. investors were fighting to get their hands on subprime assets. There was so much liquidity around that it was the only way to make a little bit of money, very much like today. Investors have been piling cash into tech companies and EM markets where they probably shouldn't have. Is it financial intermediaries' role to bar them from doing so? Is it the supermarket's role to bar you from buying snacks and sodas because it's bad for your health?

2\. what annoys me is that these "unsuspecting investors" were professional buyers. It is people who's job it is to do their homework and understand these products. We are not talking about selling complex products to grannies. These are highly educated, highly paid finance professional who simply did not do their job of vetting what they were buying.

Now if Goldman made misrepresentations (i.e. lied) on the nature of the assets, then there is clearly fraud, and by reading quickly the DoJ announcement it seems to be what Goldman is accused of. But in my opinion investors bear a very large part of the blame for this credit bubble. It's not a case of nasty Goldman vs nice unsuspecting investors.

<comment><USER13> > It is people who's job it is to do their homework and understand these > products. We are not talking about selling complex products to grannies. > These are highly educated, highly paid finance professional who simply did > not do their job of vetting what they were buying.

Sure, but how many of professional money managers had their clients entire portfolios in subprime mortgages?

My guess is that it was mainly allocated to the portions of portfolio deemed "high risk", and if they're not buying subprime mortgages, they're buying high-yield bonds, Puerto Rico munis, assets of bankrupt North Dakota frackers, and high-risk high-yield real estate projects like casinos and theme parks.

There's daily trading activity on JNK and MORL and similar other instruments. I don't think there's any pretending going on that those are high-quality assets, and I also doubt anyone (in a clear state of mind with no gambling addiction) is going 100% into those ETFs.

<comment><USER12> I am not sure of that. The financial system is built to absorb expected losses. Where things go really wrong is when a big loss occurs where it was not expected. A lot of senior tranches in subprime RMBS had AAA ratings, which made then eligible for safe, low yielding portfolios. Banks could also pile them up on the balance sheet because the RWA footprint was really small given the rating. And that's why when it went "bang" it really hurt.

<comment><USER13> Right, the AAA rating is the cornerstone of the entire thing. On one hand you have originators eager to offload risk, on the other pension fund managers are under the pressure to boost their yields, but are limited into what they can invest.

The credit agencies are to blame, but they were an enabler. AIG FP was the main cause of the AAA rating by simply lending its name to the whole deal and promising to make the pension funds whole in case of any defaults.

<comment><USER14> This is another reason why defined benefit pension plans are a bad idea and ought to be discouraged as a matter of public policy. Pension fund managers tend to take excessive risks in order to meet unrealistic return targets. They have little personal stake in the outcome and if they fail then employers and taxpayers are forced to cover the gap. As a thought experiment, consider what would have happened if that money had instead been in defined contribution retirement plans utilizing low-cost index funds. I think that would have reduced the severity of the financial crisis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If anyone is actually interested in the theory behind the rating of Mortgage backed securities(MBS), have a look at this wired article.

[http://www.wired.com/2009/02/wp- quant/?currentPage=all](http://www.wired.com/2009/02/wp- quant/?currentPage=all)

It does a good job of explaining the intuition, behind the Gaussian Copula, and of course where it fell apart.

I submitted the below article a few days ago and I think at this point this topic can be considered a very dead horse.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11472094](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11472094)

<comment><USER16> >I submitted the below article a few days ago...

That article was submitted yesterday, when the US DOJ released a statement.

One day of light beating (didnt even see a link to GS' statement of facts) and this horse is 'very dead'?

<comment><USER17> Move along people! Nothing to see here!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> They will pay a 5 billion dollar fine out of the hundreds of billions of dollar they made. That's just the cost of doing business then isn't it. If a regular person is found guilty of fraud they generally wind up inside a jail cell. If a wall street bank does the same, its settled by writing a check behind closed doors and then everyone goes to lunch.

<comment> tma-1 GS makes around $10 billion a year, are you saying that the profits for the last 10 years or more came purely from sales of MBS?

I know no one has been imprisoned over the financial crisis mess, but settlements like these truly show that the justice department and the SEC are doing a pretty good job at penalising the banks. Combined, the fines probably add up to hundreds of billions, my personal opinion is that this is way more than the banks did from selling these securities.

<comment><USER18> I'm not following you. I don't understand your point. This fraudulent practice went on for the better part of a decade.

You think that the SEC and DOJ are doing a good job? You are in an extremely small minority then. Not only is this settlement a slap on the wrist its also "engineered" courtesy of the warm and friendly relationship Washington and Wall Street have. Please read this:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/12/business/dealbook/goldman-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/12/business/dealbook/goldman- sachs-to-pay-5-1-billion-in-mortgage-settlement.html)

<comment><USER19> >I'm not following you. I don't understand your point.

You claimed Goldman made "hundreds of billions of dollar[sic]". Their entire profit for a year is around 10 billion. Are you claiming their entire profit for multiple decades came solely from MBS?

It did not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Official DOJ statement: [https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/goldman-sachs-agrees- pay-more...](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/goldman-sachs-agrees-pay- more-5-billion-connection-its-sale-residential-mortgage-backed)

Statement of Facts: [https://www.justice.gov/opa/file/839901/download](https://www.justice.gov/opa/file/839901/download)

<comment><USER21> Don't you love how they say "agrees to pay", like it just some friends where one is trying to convince another one to pick up a bar tab.

Them (example Hillary Clinton):

 _FBI will invite Ms. Clinton for an interview sometime next month._

You:

 _FBI raided Mr. Johns house and will jail him without bail until next week 's scheduled interrogation begins._

Them (Goldman Sachs):

 _They agreed to pay a fee._

You:

 _Mr. Johns was sentenced to pay a penalty for his crime._

Is this really happening in the United States of America??

<comment><USER22> Dave Chappelle had an excellent skit on his show about that very thing. Except, true to Dave's style, it was reversed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> So finally they admit a crime was committed. Is anyone going to jail? I didn't think so.

<comment><USER24> There was no admission of a criminal offense. Or even an accusation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> They'll likely pay _billions less_ , because why not?

[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/12/business/dealbook/goldman-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/12/business/dealbook/goldman- sachs-to-pay-5-1-billion-in-mortgage-settlement.html)

This part is especially infuriating:

> On the broadest level, any money that Goldman spends on consumer relief will > be deductible from its corporate tax bill.

So Goldman Sachs will get a government subsidy for defrauding the American public. The government is literally subsidizing their fraud with taxpayer money.

<comment><USER26> > So Goldman Sachs will get a government subsidy for defrauding the American > public. The government is literally subsidizing their fraud with taxpayer > money.

That's not a fair shake at how deductions work. They aren't getting paid a subsidy, they are paying less tax because of higher expenses. No money is going from "the taxpayer" to Goldman.

The government wanted it this way because they can point to a bigger number and get money to where they want it without having to get Congress to do anything (which they won't).

<comment><USER27> > They aren't getting paid a subsidy, they are paying less tax because of > higher expenses.

They broke the law, but get to claim it on their taxes as an expense.

That's like deducting my speeding ticket payments as an expense on my tax return.

<comment><USER28> It's actually not quite like that.

Payments of fines to governments are not deductible, neither for you or Goldman. Payments of compensation and restitution are.

For what it's worth there is some vague consistency on this issue.

<comment><USER27> Interesting - I didn't know that, and I think the penalty levied here should have been levied as a fine, rather than compensations or restitution.

Where did the legal precedent or IRS rule be set that restitution should be a deductible business expense? If you need to pay compensation or restitution, it means you did something you should not have done as decided by a judge/jury, so having it be treated more like a "penalty" seems prudent to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Fine them all their profits from the fraud then triple the penalty.

Then realize solution to financial crimes is to put people in jail for 1 year for every multiple of the median yearly household income.

Steal $1M when the median income is $50K? 20 years. Steal $1B? Enjoy dying in prison.

</comment><comment><USER4> If there is any silver lining...

"The settlement expressly preserves the government's ability to bring criminal charges against Goldman, and does not release any individuals from potential criminal or civil liability."

[https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/goldman-sachs-agrees-pay- more...](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/goldman-sachs-agrees-pay- more-5-billion-connection-its-sale-residential-mortgage-backed)

Who may or may not do something about it?

[http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/recips.php?cycle=2016&...](http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/recips.php?cycle=2016&ind=F)

<comment><USER30> No silver lining there. This is just pro for a bullshit to keep the pitchforks at bay. To see just how seriously these "deferred judgements" are taken by parties on either side of the table, see HSBC (found guilty of massive and very deliberate money laundering for Mexican drug cartels), which has continued to rack up offences with impunity while operating under one of these agreements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> As long as a politician can say the words "Too Big To Fail" with a straight face this will continue.

"Too Big To Fail" should mean "Too Big To Be Allowed To Exist" but apparently it _still_ means "Open Checkbook to Taxpayer-Funded All-You-Can-Eat Buffet"

</comment><comment><USER32> How does one find out if they qualify for part of the $1.8 billion set aside for those affected?

</comment><comment><USER33> and the penalty is ..... ?

<comment><USER34> 4-8 hours worth of operating revenue. Hardly even a speeding ticket.

<comment><USER35> It's over a month worth of revenue and almost a year's worth of profit.

<comment><USER36> Fortunately for them they received more than twice this amount as part of the AIG bailout.

<comment><USER35> They also paid it back.

<comment><USER36> Wat. That $12.9 billion wasn't a loan. Maybe AIG paid some back but Goldman Sachs definitely did not. It was an insurance policy, except they (AIG) didn't call it "insurance" because that would have made it subject to regulation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> So many people should be in jail for what happened here. I'm not sure how we got here, but capitalism some how turned into socialism. Only it was not the people that the government redistributed the wealth to, it was the failing businesses. I know the reasoning was to prevent a bad recession, but I don't know how capitalism is going to work with that sort of interference from the governments.

</comment><comment><USER38> Govt will do nothing due to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome)

</comment><comment><USER39> I'll never forget this comment on HackerNews that blamed the public for the financial crisis: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5168312](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5168312)

That was the moment that I realized that some of these people live in a reality distortion zone where it really wasn't their fault.

<comment><USER40> > That was the moment that I realized that some of these people live in a > reality distortion zone where it really wasn't their fault.

To be fair, the public isn't 100% blameless as a large number of people made poor choices to create the situation. Supply without demand is largely useless, after all. Similarly, the public hasn't shutdown the routes after the fact but rather accepted a smokescreen of a solution.

The blame primarily rests on the shoulders of the banks and credit rating agencies because they provided the supply. They also were the best informed side of the transaction and engaged in a certain degree of deception that they should be punished severely for.

The best lies, or distortions of reality, do have a kernel or two of truth.

<comment><USER39> Mortgages (or any loan really) implies risk. This is part of why the loan is profitable: repayment isn't guaranteed. It is the bank's job to protect itself from risk. That is why it takes collateral and assesses that collateral. It's why the bank requires a down payment, especially if the borrower is on the edge of what they can afford. If the buyer defaults, the bank takes the collateral back and it's their job to make sure they are in an ok place afterwards.

So yeah, when the entire industry comes to the government and says "unless you bail us out right now our entire industry will collapse, but you're definitely going to save us because we're too big to fail," then yes, it means it's their fault. The public may have been complicit, but it's not the public's job to keep the financial industry healthy when the profits from that industry are kept privately.

<comment><USER41> > _when the entire industry comes to the government and says "unless you bail > us out right now our entire industry will collapse_

That's an interesting interpretation of the events. In fact, there were institutions that were coerced by the government to participate in the bailout. Much of the derivatives betting was zero-sum, and done amongst the banks. The winners of those bets would have been more than happy to watch their competitors fail (fire sale!).

<comment><USER39> Institutions had to be coerced into letting the government buy their toxic assets through TARP? I would love to see a reference on that.

<comment><USER42> Claim by Jamie Dimon that they didn't want TARP funds but were pressured to take it: [http://cnsnews.com/news/article/jpmorgan-chase-ceo-bank- took...](http://cnsnews.com/news/article/jpmorgan-chase-ceo-bank-took-tarp- because-we-were-asked-treasury-secretary)

<comment><USER39> So that speaks very highly of JPMorgan, and none of my criticism then applies to them. It's all the banks that were going to fail without TARP that I am criticizing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Dear DoJ et al.:

No jail? You fail.

</comment><comment><USER44> "defrauded"... What a nice word. Why don't we just say "robbed" instead?!

<comment><USER45> If you look up the definition of "defrauded", you'll likely answer your own question: it's a superset of "robbed".

<comment><USER44> The problem is that it sounds less threatening, more sophisticated. It's meant to obscure the crimes that were happening.

<comment><USER45> _It 's meant to obscure the crimes that were happening._

I no more know what the author's intent was than you do, but I'm going to go with a more charitable interpretation: it's meant to clarify the means by which the robbery took place. In other words, the exact opposite of "obscure". But if you have a narrative, by all means stick to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Shocker! Why is Jamie not in prison!

<comment><USER47> One of the simpler answers to your 'question' is that Jamie Dimon is not and has never been affiliated with Goldman.

<comment><USER46> You are correct I misread that. But if you think JPM is any different or less criminal you are delusional.</comment></comment></comment>


Google Open Sources Testacular, a JavaScript Test Runner - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/news/2012/11/Testacular

<comment><USER2> Worst project name ever.

<comment><USER3> Testicular...for those who don't understand why.</comment></comment>