Chase Koch Turns Family's Industrial Giant to Tech VC Future - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-08-13/koch-s-massive-tech-bet-do-it-or-we-ll-end-up-in-the-dumpster <comment><AUTHOR> These guys scare the bejeezus out of me...</comment>


Pivotal Labs: Talks - Diaspora - <AUTHOR> http://pivotallabs.com/talks/107-diaspora

<comment><USER2> Unless the open-source drop blows a huge hole in Facebook, this was a story that got a lot of attention and its sad that they would continue to spend their time developing it. The original shock and gasping at the open graph is done. Everyone has kinda moved on. FB has added places, we have other things to worry about.

I wonder what they are going to do with all that unspent money.

</comment><comment><USER3> The video is a very detailed presentation of what the Diaspora guys have been up to, complete with code samples.

It is a much more interestig project now that there is more than just a bunch of promises being made. I am looking forward to checking out the code dump on github.</comment>


Ask HN: Evernote for coders - <AUTHOR>

Does anyone know of any tool which is like an evernote for coders?  I used to use twiki a lot, but I just found the interface cumbersome.<p>Evernote bugs me because syntax higlighting is so finicky. <comment><USER2> Are you thinking of something like [http://snippets.me](http://snippets.me) ?</comment>


Indian Coders Found Cheating in Google Code Jam? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nextbigwhat.com/indian-developers-accused-of-cheating-in-google-code-jam-297/ <comment><USER2> Is collusion more commonly accepted in some Asian cultures?

I distinctly remember my grad school classes, where even by getting 95% I'd be dead last in the class rankings because all the Chinese/Indian students would get 98/99/100% on their assignments. I didn't really care about it, figuring that their studying habits were much more diligent than mine, until one time I arrived in the classroom 45 minutes early and found out a sizable proportion of them were merrily exchanging answers and copying off of each other. I then learned that it was something they would do pretty much every single time.

(of course, it was not _all_ of them– a few were hard workers who went by the rules. But in all of my classes, the majority of students from those cultures would operate in such a manner).

So I'm wondering– is this purely selection bias, or is collusion just more acceptable in certain cultures? The US (and most of Europe) heavily penalizes it at all levels of education, but I wonder if it's the case everywhere in the world.

<comment><USER3> When I was a grad student (in America) a couple of decades ago, I was involved in two seminars/roundtable discussions that stayed with me. One was on sexual harassment- I'll save that for another thread. The other was a cultural awareness 'sharing.' For context, this was around the time of the Anita Hill testimony regarding Clarence Thomas

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Hill>

and the Tianaman Square protest

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_19...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989)

So sexual harassment and multicultural diversity were on the country's mind.

The department had a cultural awareness discussion centered on an exchange between the American graduate students and the recently arrived Chinese graduate students.

To my astonishment, the Chinese saw us American students as unfriendly, always retreating and 'sticking to our own kind.' They found it very hard to connect with us, much as they wanted to. It was because of the way we worked. When American students got their homework or assignment, we went to our desk and worked on it. We did the readings alone, we turned in the problems that we worked alone, and had very little discussion about the matter. We approached the courses individually, and this put the Chinese students off.

It put them off because they were very much about _community_. They discussed the lectures and reading until _every single one of them_ understood it. They lived and died together. If homework was supposed to be individual work, then they did it individually- but they collaborated heavily on everything up until the point of homework- and they made sure everybody knew the concepts, math, etc. for doing the homework.

This is a very efficient way of learning new material. In fact, I've read in TIMS studies (or, books about the studies like 'The Teaching Gap' and 'The Learning Gap') that this is the asian way of teaching and learning in lower grades as well. There was less of an emphasis on (or, perhaps better, less of a _recognition_ of) individual talent as being the basis of success in school, and more of a culture of "we can all get this together, if you can't it's because you are unwilling to work."

So I am not at all surprised that you observed heavy collaboration- I would be disappointed, however, if you saw deliberate 'cheating.' I can sympathise that people who don't fathom the concept of individuality in learning may struggle to understand the line between what we accept as cheating and not cheating. But that is not to say that they don't, and cheat anyway.

<comment><USER4> I think there needs to be a distinction between collaborating to understand something as a group and directly copying answers verbatim from others.

I felt like GuiA was describing the latter and while you are describing the former.

<comment><USER3> I feel as you do, but it's worth pointing out that if you come from a different frame of reference you may not be observing what you think you are observing. I can't say for sure in this case of course (hence how I ended my post), but he may have seen, say, discussion (in a language he may not be fluent in), showing each other papers, etc., yet may not have been seeing the actual 'cloning' of homework answers. If you walked into a bunch of American students doing this (but couldn't, for whatever reason), it's more natural to assume that there is direct cloning involved.

But different cultures have different norms.

Let's say, for example, that problems 3, 4, and 7 are assigned. Now, problem 7 is a bitch, but shares some of the devilish details, perhaps the 'trick,' with problem 6. Let's also assume that the course requirements are "You must do your own work on homework." As a team, the group worked problem 6 together. But one of the group was still struggling to complete problem 7 for homework. He turns to his friend for help, and the friend replies "remember what we did in problem 6? You do the same thing, but with two <whatevers> instead of one."

Is this cheating?

The direct help "with two <whatevers>" is getting close, but if you are from another culture you may, honestly, think no. Because remember, your whole understanding of education is about getting/doing whatever you need to do in order to solve the problem. So you are going to judge rules differently than someone whose first instinct is "this has to be my work only-- I'll fail all by myself." (I hypothesize that this is part of the problem with international IP laws as well.)

On a personal note, one the other side of the desk I was delighted when students teamed up on homework and did extra. In fact, making solution manuals available and publishing old exams was simply a sneaky way for me to get them to do more work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There is a problem, but I'd think twice before calling it collusion or cheating. Here in India the social norms are a little different - when you talk about classmates, groups of friends, teams and gangs, the failures and successes of one are the failures and successes of all.

Some examples:

* I had two friends back in college, making us a gang of three. If two of us did well on a particular subject and the third didn't, we'd get called over to his place by his mum, where she'd beg us to teach him and help him out. Home cooked food was a very common and effective bribe.

* At our first job interview on campus, we told the interviewer that we were all three joining the company, or none of us would. All three of us got in.

* One of us having a girlfriend when the other two didn't meant he was an asshole. Two of us being hitched meant we were obligated to move heaven and earth to help out the third guy.

* Each of us would do one third of the coursework, and we'd coach the others on it and learn the rest. This also applied to individual work - we'd just split it in three parts and share all of it.

* At the final year project / thesis, we did collude. I was freelancing at the time, and I managed to land an interesting project building a case handling / lifecycle system for a client. I put that design forward as my final year project, and listed the other two as my "team members". We all got top marks.

Do I regret this? No, not really. These guys were my friends. People called us the Three Musketeers, and I sure as hell wasn't going to leave either of them behind. And they would have (and did) the same for me. Would we still do it if it was illegal? I don't know. Maybe.

Now, ten years down the line, we've all gone our separate ways. There is still pressure, though. Two of us are married, and if and when we meet the third's parents, we will hang our heads in shame. We didn't help find him a wife.

Odd, but true.

<comment><USER6> if code jam restricts the sharing of code (come up with your own answers individually, emphasis on your, own, and individually), then three competitors with the same verbatim code is cheating. The test is not designed to cater and IMO should not cater to a particular culture, it is I believe, designed to be a means of identifying individuals of a skillset.

Unfortunately the title of this begins with 'Indian' which suddenly shifts the emphasis on their origin and not that fact that there was alleged cheating.

If we were to remove 'Indian' from the title, this post and mine responding to it, wouldn't be all that relevant, which kind of speaks to the sensationalism of the bit and why it is so popular especially in the technical community.

So, now what I really want to know is, for those that did submit their code, what they were thinking. Most people who intend to cheat try to obfuscate the code to hide detection. Another possibility was just being rash and hoping that it was an automated service that didn't really look at the code so much as the output. Another possibility, if we do take into account cultural norms, they didn't think there was anything wrong about posting the same answer. In either case, a lesson was learned.

<comment><USER5> We'd call this teamwork. It's understood that GCJ will try to find cloned submissions, but for a lot of people telling them not to form teams simply does not compute. It might be three guys sitting beside each other in a dorm room or a lab, or it might be a team on chat. Either everyone knows they all can't win first place, or maybe not any place. That's not the point. If you're in a team, either everyone tries or no one does.

If this is what I think it is, the alternative would have been not to participate at all. Because GCJ is a zero risk way to try something challenging, why not give the team a go? More often than not, each member might have tried different solutions or come in having read up on different subjects.

<comment><USER7> You make it sound like Indians are mentally incapable of working alone (or perhaps you're exaggerating for effect). Regardless, this is not the case. As an Indian, I know that cheating is more accepted in India, but I've never heard anyone delude themselves into calling it 'teamwork'.

<comment><USER5> I'm not generalizing - I'm sure there are plenty of Indians in that round who played by the rules, and plenty who tried deliberately to cheat (besides the ones who were actually caught). I'm saying that 'collusion' is thought of differently here in a lot of circles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Aside: Why "Indian coders" and not just "Three coders"? Would this have ever been titled "white coders found cheating"? I know this isn't the point of the article, but I wonder if, on HN, we should consider clipping "gratuitous adjectives" in titles that contribute to perpetuating dominant systems.

<comment><USER9> They are from the country named India. Thus Indian coders. Color has nothing to do with it. If they were from America the title would not have been white coders but American coders.

<comment><USER8> I can absolutely accept that distinction. Do you think "American coders" would have been the title if that were the case?

<comment><USER10> If the host were not an American company, perhaps. Not all news is world news, though

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is shocking.

I'm competing in Code Jam, and it's nice to think that everyone is interested in playing fair. If you're not capable of solving the problems at this stage, you won't be capable of solving them at the later stages either, so in that respect I don't really see the point in cheating.

All it really means is that a few of the borderline-qualifying competitors missed out.

EDIT: Might be interesting to download everybody's round 1B solutions and look for similarity. I'm going to attempt to do this now.

EDIT2: Boy, Google sure don't make it easy to download everybody's solutions...

<comment><USER12> This behaviour was common in the last Facebook Hacker Cup too. Most of the announcements of rounds starting included discussion of (and in some cases links to) solutions.

I guess it's part and parcel - I think Facebook did take action against obvious plagiarisers. If not, the later rounds will weed out the cheaters in any case.

<comment><USER13> I think you are missing the point here , instead of 3 cheaters three honest coders could have qualified to the next round , which would in turn give them the chance for competing in round 2 and round 3.

<comment><USER14> If someone barely missed passing through 1st round, chance for him to make it through any of the following rounds is practically non-existant. Exception being if he's experienced competitor who fell short for some reason.

<comment><USER15> So what you are saying is that since they may not have had a chance to win it's okay that someone cheating got ahead of them?

<comment><USER11> I understand zplesivcak's point. While it is lame that cheating is going on, it doesn't really impact the overall winner of the contest.

Also, for the last 3 spots out of 1000, there is a lot of luck involved anyway.

<comment><USER16> you assume a lot there with "last" 3 spots.

<comment><USER11> Well, it will only be the last 3 spots that are (substantially) affected by 3 cheaters - everybody else either qualified or failed to qualify anyway.

And the luck I'm referring to is in timing. If you look at the scoreboard for round 1B, 1000th place scored 34 points and a time of 1:30:38. 1001st place 34 points and a time of 1:30:48.

That 10 seconds is nothing if not luck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> alok-g The quality of higher education in India is just bad (I am originally from India) making it more about the degree* than about education itself. Given this, copying assignments is rampant as it is an economically sensible step to getting the degree (without having to also getting the education). A part of the problem is also that the professors themselves are barely good (as such I come from a very reputed engineering college) to provide quality education for those who actually care about it. Students had no trust on the course syllabus itself. So they would copy the assignments for the degree, and if interested, would pursue self-study for the education.

A student in my session once remarked that these colleges are still very reputed because ultimately the students coming out of the colleges are still very good. This is not because of the college though -- The students going "in" have to be extremely good in the entrance exams to get into the college* .

Based on the advice a relative gave me, I balanced my efforts between the degree and education (given the two do not overlap as much) to maintain just average grades in college purposefully. If my grades in the last semester were better than the average, I would reduce my degree/assignments effort while increasing my education efforts studying in the college library.

I do not think this is limited to India though. I was teaching assistant for a course at a reputed US university, and found a programming assignment for a group of 17 oriental students to be exactly the same. So it was clear that only one of them had actually done it. Until I found that one of the students did not even remove the original author's name from the assignment (!) and this name was none of the 17!

Another incidence I recall from the same US university is when some 38 out of 40 students were proven to have copied the assignments. The explanation the teaching assistant gave to the professor was that it was not a good idea to have an assignment due just two days before the final exams.

PS: I am not suggesting of course that cheating in the Code Jam is justified by any means. Just trying to explain where the cheating culture is coming from.

* Keep in mind the significantly higher population as well as population density in India as compared to say the US, which amongst other things makes the market very competitive.

<comment><USER17> The biggest problem is you can't get into any elite institution by doing "Learning the concept thing". There is far too much competition for marks and too many people competing. The only way you can get in, is you have to mug up and memorize everything by heart.

What's worst same thing continues every where.

Do you serious think, companies that come to hire look at how the candidates work, Do they check if the guy is known as somebody who gets the work done? They simply check if the guy knows some algorithms from the books. Or some pointless puzzles, which can be gamed by practicing it for an hour a day.

This sort of thing works at all levels. It even works at some big web giants like Google.

As a society we reward this kind of behavior lot. And then when we get it back, why do we look so surprised?

<comment> alok-g I wonder what is the solution.

Recommendations from former employers does not seem to work either. I have some very good recommendations on my LinkedIn profile, but note that many dumb people I knew also have great recommendations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is terrible. I am from India and I know how deeply copying is rooted in the brains of students here. Basically, all parents (and thus children) care about is marks. So, students learn copying and tend to copy all the assignments. Plug, we have professors who are good for nothing and accept this equally.

Recently, I made a small web app and got lowest marks in class for project. In another project, when I told my idea to professor, she was all like, "this is too small, increase the scope!" So, my idea of attendance tracker expended to "Learning Management System". I used WordPress as foundation for app and added plugins. Instead of testing anything, professor asked, "What does "collapse menu" do?" Nothing else asked.

Other people who copied it all and shied crappy command line "hospital management system" and other things scored way higher than me.

While all people do not copy here, copying is not checked at all and this indirectly encourages it. India is worst place to be a programmer right now. At least in college. I don't think companies are any better. I had a friend certified as "Java Programmer" for a crappy one day program.

<comment><USER19> Well yours may be the typical scenario. I had the slightly opposite experience.

I built Warehouse management system with RFID. i bought a RFID reader and few cards, connected with serial port to PC and basically had a checkout check-in system in place (for the curious, Java is the language, sadly i lost the original source code :( still have the RFID reader tough ).

On the demo day the professor was so happy with my project, the first question e asked was "From where did u buy this project?" . He was very reluctant to believe that projects of such scope can be built by students. If the professors are so sure the projects are copied, why do they even grade them?.

Ya and most of the students in my class bought projects(C Compiler, Steganography etc,) for few thousand rupees and got equally good marks (Hey , i got the top mark ;) .

<comment><USER18> Great work there.

I've had same experience when in my first year, I made a GUI app with Win32 API while others were giving command line stuff. Teacher clearly said, "This is too complex, even I will need 2-3 days to understand it. Did you buy it?"

I have to make fourth year project soon, hope I get same reaction!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Original Source:[http://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/1dpxc0/3_indian_coder...](http://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/1dpxc0/3_indian_coders_found_cheating_in_google_code_jam/)

The submission's url just has some editorial fluff that doesn't say anything useful and has no extra information. Would be a shame to give them the traffic for essentially cut paste + crappy commentary.

</comment><comment><USER21> From what it seems, problem of corruption in India is not limited to the Government or big corps alone. It is a deep seated cultural issue, at grass roots level, in the tiniest of day-to-day transactions and actions. And I am afraid to say it starts with the proud claim of calling everything a jugaad [1] in the first place - a hack or easy way out which lends to itself a cheap name.

While a portion of jugaad, a prideful hack, is certainly useful and of positive kind, but there is a significant negative portion of it, the one which is unhealthy from karma/long-term-impact point of view, that is rampant in Indian subcontinent. It's a mess. And I believe the main reason for shrinking competitiveness and resources of the place.

[1] [http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=304...](http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=3041%22)

<comment><USER22> You are the first person whom I have encountered who acknowledges the grass- root and "common man" level of corruption in India.

In the last 5 years or so, I am finding this corruption becoming even more widespread even, as you rightly pointed out, in the tiniest of the day-to-day transactions!

<comment><USER21> Thank you virtualmic, yes karma is what I figured our country is poor at. We have an extremely poor karma. To put it simply, most of us are running after marks and grade points during our school age, and easy money and promotions and boot-licking after that.

There are only few who ever thought of doing it the right way, working hard or even voting the right people to power. Everyone else only expects things to work, and yet does it the jugaad way cursing everyone else on the way.

I'd say the collective karma of our nation is broken; and where ever it has, things have imploded or gone for worse as we can already witness. Look at any community or country out there, it's always the fundamentals that make or break its destiny.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Pretty frustrating to read this.

Question for HN: Many CodeJam competitors (this is not limited to CodeJam, though) do these competitions so often that they essentially have a library of similar problems and solutions to reference. In which case, a top competitor can identify a similar problem, copy the source code from his previous solution, and slightly modify it to the problem's specifics.

Is this considered cheating? It's incredibly frustrating for a competitor like me - who makes it into Round 2 by the skin of his teeth (rank 768 in round 1A) - to see the top guys (whose names I recognize!) finish problems in _minutes_. Is it possible for them to just be that fast? Maybe, but it's well-known that many copy solutions from previous problems.

<comment><USER24> This is a comment that often comes up, but rest assured the top competitors really are that fast from scratch. There are some screencasts floating around of Petr competing in Toocoder SRMs, and you can also look at the timings on I site Topcoder and ACM competitions, where there really is no copy and paste. That said, one does end up memorizing some things with practice. For example, after having to code it up a few times it is easy to get a nice short implementation of network flow that you can type in in 2 minutes or so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> To all the Indians here who are saying collusion / cheating is deeply ingrained in the culture - I'm just curious, is this true at IITs as well? Those schools are generally well-regarded, so I'd be interested to hear what things are like there.

<comment><USER18> +1

Though someone in the comments is hinting that they are from IIT BHU and confirmed this thing in their college.

I won't be surprised at all if IITs have same thing. Whiles many people are there who understand concepts, I don't think all are learning after so much mugging up in entrance exams.

<comment><USER17> These days IIT's are about two things. First- A good brand to have on your resume.

Second- If you don't get a good offer during campus hiring. You basically drop out, give CAT and then apply for an MBA so that you can now get a better offer at the end of your MBA. And so that you can probably go and work at some investment bank in the US.

In short, its all about job offers and placements and has very little to do with whatever 'changing the world' thing we are all thinking or have heard about.

<comment><USER18> That's a sad thing. I wonder what effect this will have on India in long term!

<comment><USER21> What's interesting is that none of the IITians have spoken on this thread. You guys called it a goat and then wow'ed to say oh man see it is goat. That sounds so much like pure jealousy.

If there is anything that has ever worked in education system of India - it is the IITs. That's one place which certainly has good karma, and I am proud about it. The question - is there cheating in internal exams of IITs?

Check out Harvard in 2012: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Harvard_cheating_scandal>

<comment><USER22> I am an IITian, specifically from IITB. I can say for sure that the level of research in general is quite pathetic, except for one or two groups. The only thing IITs used to be good were, (in their early and mid years) to gather some good minds together and give them quite a bit of freedom and a nice environment (in the hostels and such) so that they can discuss their ideas, which they used to implement not while there in IIT, but after graduating.

However, in the recent years, the quality of these minds has become a bit questionable (this is purely anecdotal, no concrete proofs). One thing is for certain though, the amount of discussion which was there in years when each hostel room did not have its own computer was quite high, which now in the age of facebook and multiplayer games has reduced by a huge margin. As far as copying assignments is concerned, that is a pretty common phenomenon in case of general course assignments, unless one is really interested in that course and wants to learn.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I can attest that it is a very cultural thing in India. Ethically, it becomes a question like everyone else is doing it, so it isn't cheating; When I started with university, I had tried to make it a point to do my assignments by myself. Yet, it became the case that I spent more time and got worse grades that most people around. I continued with this for a while, until the point where I stopped giving a fuck about my grades; I have used someone else's work ever since. It is a lot like what Lance Armstrong said about the cycling doping scandal. It is wrong, but not unfair; Unfortunately, this is the way it works.

</comment><comment><USER27> I've been a TA for Matlab course in my university for three semesters and there are a lot of students cheating in assignments. I thought it would be interesting to see how different submissions are grouped into clustered so I made a visualization page (and a bunch of scripts). Turns out that there are quite a few clusters even the similarity threshold is set to be 90%.

<https://github.com/songgao/AlikeSubmissions>

I wonder what it's gonna be like in Google Code Jam submissions. Although alike submissions don't necessarily imply cheating.

<comment><USER10> Haha: "Students, to pass this class, analyze submissions in MATLAB, and write a report implicating the copiers."

<comment><USER27> That's a nice idea!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Currently doesn't load for me, but the http (as opposed to https) version does:

[http://www.nextbigwhat.com/indian-developers-accused-of- chea...](http://www.nextbigwhat.com/indian-developers-accused-of-cheating-in- google-code-jam-297/)

</comment><comment><USER5> It's also odd how no one seems to be asking why GCJ doesn't allow teams. On one level this is also participants forcing teams into a system that doesn't support it.

</comment><comment><USER29> In their defense they probably thought that it would get them better wives.heh.

<comment><USER30> How is that funny?

<comment><USER29> Ouch. Not even sarcastic?</comment></comment></comment>


Rich Russians Are Hoarding Ventilators - <AUTHOR> https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/03/21/exclusive-rich-russians-are-hoarding-ventilators-to-protect-themselves-against-the-coronavirus-a69703 <comment><AUTHOR> Seems like rich Americans and rich Russians have something in common: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22653962](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22653962)</comment>


32GB iPhone 7 significantly slower than more expensive versions, tests show - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/21/32gb-iphone-7-slower-than-more-expensive-versions-tests-show <comment><USER2> My suspicion is that it has to do with the test and the SLC cache. In the iPhone 7, most of the flash is TLC, but a portion of the flash is configured as much faster (for writes) SLC. The cache buffers a certain amount of writes, later transferring them to TLC. On a bigger drive this cache is bigger. So if the test fits into SLC cache on the bigger phone but falls out of it on the smaller phone, that (combined with lower write parallelism with fewer flash chips) would explain the write delta.

<comment><USER3> These tests churn GBs of data (necessary given how fast flash is), rendering the cache largely irrelevant. As I mentioned elsewhere, it is incredibly unlikely that parallelism plays a part (and has _never_ been the case in prior devices, nor is it the case with the vast majority of SSDs. Anyone blindly buying larger for more parallelism is very likely to be disappointed). Different vendors make their memory solutions, and there are huge variations in options. We've seen this across a single model of a set size when two different vendors provide the storage.

In the end it really won't make a difference for real world use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> More troublesome than the slower SSD speeds is the lower quality Intel Modem compared with the Qualcomm Modem -- at least in large cities where there are large buildings that block signal. Meanwhile, the Samsung S7 has the Qualcomm Modem (MDM 9645M) with 4 antennas that allow for 4x4 MIMO, 256 QAM DL, EVS (Enhanced voice services). On the Samsung phone the 4x4 MIMO is now turned on as is the EVS (Ultra HD voice), the later which provides higher quality voice and operable at lower signal strength than current HD voice.

For those of us the own the Verizon/Sprint version, I wish that Apple would at least match the capabilities of the Samsung S7 that shipped 6 months before the iPhone 7. The difference is the quality of the voice and the ability to communicate when signals are weaker.

<comment><USER5> The Verizon/Sprint version has the Qualcomm modem. Are you saying that even with Qualcomm there's a noticeable difference between the iPhone and the S7?

<comment><USER4> Yes, the Samsung is better.

Important is not only the baseband modem, the Qualcomm MDM 9645M, but also the RF Front End, the number of antennas, and the antenna design.

Both units have the Qualcomm X12 MDM9645M baseband modem and two transceivers, Qualcomm WTR3925 and WTR4905.

But the iPhone has only 2 antennas and only able to support 4x2 MIMO while the Samsung has 4 antennas does currently support the 4x4 MIMO.

The 256 QAM DL/ 64 QAM UL can be turned on with a firmware upgrade in both phones. Neither phone has it turned on at this time.

The EVS -- Enhanced Voice Services offers significantly improved voice quality over even the HD voice with an improved codec and a better packet communications layer.

Samsung has EVS turned on, the iPhone does not.

The 4x4 MIMO, 256 QAM, and EVS are also contingent on the carriers implementing these features, but these are available on T-mobile and will soon be available on Verizon.

I am disappointed that Apple did not do at least as good of a job as Samsung which provides the 4x4 MIMO, 256 QAM, and EVS.

The 4x4 MIMO and 256 QAM are important not only for better signal quality but also a better use of spectrum, which in large cities is going to be an issue in the (near) future.

One other feature to look out for is Band 66 support which covers the newly purchased AWS-3 spectrum (US). The LG V20 phone coming out at the end of this month will be the first phone to support band 66. In this sense, both the Samsung phone and the iPhone are already obsolete.

<comment><USER6> We could also just link to the source: [http://cellularinsights.com/iphone7/](http://cellularinsights.com/iphone7/)

<comment><USER4> CellularInsights was a source. My undergrad is EE/CS and I studied digital comms as well as meet Qualcomm people mobile health summit and other health computer conferences.

Sources included iFixit which discussed the chips involved (but neglected to mention whether there were 2 or 4 antennas in iPhone 7 which cellular insights did provide), Qualcomm data sheets, Tmobile and Verizon press releases, fiercewireless, howardforums, Enhanced Voice Services (EVS) specs and datasheets from Ericcson, Nokia, and others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A slowdown is to be expected with Solid State Disks; as smaller SSDs are slower then larger ones. Simply because larger ones have more NAND chips and are therefore able to write to more locations at once.

[https://superuser.com/questions/977080/does-a-large-ssd- perf...](https://superuser.com/questions/977080/does-a-large-ssd-perform- better-than-a-smaller-one)

<comment><USER8> that explains the 25-30% slower read speed, it does not explain the nearly 10 times slower write speed, there must be something else going on

<comment><USER7> You bring up a good point a 10x slowdown is quite dramatic. I have edited my original post to make it sound like less NAND chips in the SDD isn't the only issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> From the looks of it, my 7+ shipped with the Intel modem, and I can definitely see a drop in network strength when compared to my wife's iPhone 6. This is particularly worse when traveling, as the phone barely manages handoff properly.

I also noticed strange interference noise when using my earphones during my everyday commute. This seems to have been fixed by the recent update (10.0.3) though.

<comment><USER10> The moment I heard that modems were different between service provider models, I suspected that trouble like this may arise from them more band-restricted model of the two. It's one of the reasons I waited for the SIM- free/international model to become available before buying.

I think band/antenna differences between models should be much, much more visible. Right now this info can only be found on the tech specs page of Apple's iPhone site, but it really should be prominently visible on one of the feature pages too. Otherwise you're going to have a bunch of AT&T/Sprint subscribers being unpleasantly surprised when their $700+ "unlocked" flagship phone is almost useless overseas.

<comment><USER11> > Otherwise you're going to have a bunch of AT&T/Sprint subscribers being > unpleasantly surprised when their $700+ "unlocked" flagship phone is almost > useless overseas

This was a dealbreaker in the dualband/quadband days, an issue in the early UMTS days (when there were phones without 2100), but these days even the "band restricted" models mean you're just not going to get extended range bands, far from "useless overseas".

<comment><USER10> Granted, but it's still disappointing and less than I'd expect from a device costing so much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> title omission: "... in benchmarks".

In the real world, the flash speed difference is rather insignificant. I don't copy around huge 4K movies on my phone very often.

<comment><USER13> I think this really depends on how long you are expecting to use your phone. Presently the iPhone 7 feels unnecessarily fast, but in 2-4 years when more data is consumed and operating systems are more taxing, I may care more about those difference.

<comment><USER14> How can something feel unnecessarily fast? It may _be_ unnecessarily fast but to me tech never feels fast enough. Unless it would respond before I do something perhaps... I'd like lag to approach zero to be honest.

<comment><USER15> _but to me tech never feels fast enough_

Because of programmers and Hardin's "Tragedy of the Commons." Coders will always use the computation, memory, and bandwidth resources that are there. "If I just use a little more, it benefits my app, but it hurts everyone else just incrementally." Everyone makes the same calculation, and voila, the machine that's 2X faster feels just as slow. It's the same reason why building more highways just results in more people stuck in slow traffic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Did they run these tests again AFTER the 10.0.3 patch that was supposed to significantly improve Verizon service for many people (back to at least where it was on a 6s)?

</comment><comment><USER17> After reading both of the Guardian's sources here and seeing what their testing methodology was, I think I'll withhold judgement until someone with a more solid reputation does the testing.

Quite a few users in the comment thread over on GSMArena are posting testing results for their 32GB iPhone 7 which are much faster than what GSMArena is claiming. Judge for yourself:

[http://www.gsmarena.com/the_32gb_iphone_7_plus_uses_a_substa...](http://www.gsmarena.com/the_32gb_iphone_7_plus_uses_a_substantially_slower_storage_our_tests_show- blog-20943.php)

Edit: one more note. GSMArena's article on this was posted on October 7; too early for the latest iOS updates to have been used in testing.

</comment><comment><USER18> Missing from the title: «…significantly slower _on network access_ than…»

</comment><comment><USER15> _The 128GB iPhone 7 wrote to memory at 341Mbps, but the 32GB iPhone 7 was over eight times slower at just 42Mbps._

Slow write speeds are the hallmark of being too much of a cheapskate when buying SSDs. 42Mbps would be miserably slow for a laptop SSD. Buying such a slow SSD is the kind of mistake I'd expect from a non-savvy consumer.

Then again, how much data is being written to an iPhone's SSD per second on average?

</comment><comment><USER19> Two possible reasons for shower performance:

1\. 32GB capacity comes with lower SLC cache 2\. 32 GB storage has fewer dies/planes in NAND reducing parallelism

</comment><comment><USER20> Gotta maintain that ~40% gross profit margin somehow.

</comment><comment><USER21> ... but it's still more than fast enough for any process which executes on the phone.

<comment><USER22> Except for writing photos and videos to disk, as stated in the article.

It's not the CPU that is the problem, it's the flash storage and the cellular modem. Two things which can definitely impact users on a day-to-day basis.</comment></comment>


Average water use per person*day by country - <AUTHOR> http://www.data360.org/dsg.aspx?Data_Set_Group_Id=757 <comment><USER2> Most water is used for farming (grain in particular), and it would be good if it was possible to adjust the numbers based on relative import/export of food.

Countries without enough water import water in the form of grain, and vis versa for those blessed with plenty.

So don't look at this graph and automatically think "The US should reduce water use". First you have to look at how much grain the US exports.

Second you have to look at how the water is used. For example household water usage with a sewer system is a null usage. Reducing that does almost nothing - all the water used gets recycled downstream by the next city downriver.

On the other hand septic systems waste water. So a county that (for household use) uses 1/4 of the water, but only uses it once is worse than a country that recycles that water 5 times on its way to the ocean. Yet they look much better on a per capita basis.

So although this graph is very very interesting it doesn't give you actionable information.

<comment><USER3> Check this out, from the EPA: [http://i.imgur.com/3S4LnzS.png](http://i.imgur.com/3S4LnzS.png)

Can that be true? Why does generating electricity use more water than farming?

[http://www.epa.gov/watersense/our_water/water_use_today.html](http://www.epa.gov/watersense/our_water/water_use_today.html)

> Running an average refrigerator all day uses about as much water as a ten- > minute shower

[http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-saving- energy-...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-saving-energy-means- conserving-water/)

<comment><USER4> You need the water for cooling in a power plant, this is why many are built near rivers or lakes, and if they aren't they will have large manmade ponds or lakes from which to gather and dump water.

[http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Current-and-Future- Generat...](http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Current-and-Future- Generation/Cooling-Power-Plants/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would be very interested in seeing a breakdown of the amounts. You only drink maybe 1-2 liters per day. Showers and toilet flushes add to a fair amount but the majority has to be water for the plants and animals you eat.

<comment><USER6> I'm surprised the figures for the United States vs United Kingdom are are so far apart (550 vs 150). These leads me to think much of the usage is water lost during transmission, or used in farming/industry rather than in the home.

<comment><AUTHOR> Farming sounds very plausible:

[http://www.onegreenplanet.org/news/californias-drought- whos-...](http://www.onegreenplanet.org/news/californias-drought-whos-really- using-all-the-water/)

and something I never thought about: ".. humans drink less than one gallon of water per day, but a cow can drink up to 23 gallons of water a day."

<comment><USER7> Think about the sheer acreage in the USA compared to England and how much of the land is used for crops or livestock.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is also neat:

[http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/freshw...](http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/freshwater/change- the-course/water-footprint-calculator/)

It shows how your household compares to national averages in terms of water use, diet, energy, and shopping. I was a little surprised to read that the average person does 3 loads of laundry a week. I'm closer to every 3 weeks -- but I guess I have a pretty small household.

</comment><comment><USER8> Also consider that water is renewable. If you use less than the amount that gets replenished, you're fine. If you use more it will just get worse and worse.

</comment><comment><USER9> Missing Canada. :(

</comment><comment><USER10> Shouldn't the title then be "average water use per person/day by country"?

</comment><comment><USER11> I wonder what percentage of that is from fracking.

<comment><USER2> A more important question is what percentage is used by recycling.</comment></comment>


Snob coffee shops ban milk and sugar - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20190402-these-coffee-snobs-ban-milk-and-sugar <comment><USER2> Why would you NOT ban these 2 killers? Dairy especially is toxic to humans yet celebrated in the form of cheeses, etc. Sick

<comment><AUTHOR> I see your point but how is Dairy toxic exactly? Also, by that logic, we should also ban alcohol for example</comment></comment>


Incredible video of Boston Dynamics' Atlas robot doing parkour - <AUTHOR> https://boingboing.net/2018/10/11/incredible-video-of-boston-dyn.html <comment><AUTHOR> This is starting to get to terminator levels of mobility.</comment>


Why an Android addict isn't excited for Android M - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnet.com/news/google-failed-to-address-the-one-problem-plaguing-android/

<comment><USER2> The reason why companies abandon their phones is because there's no incentive for them to do otherwise. Once you've bought the phone, they're not going to get any more money out of you, so why throw money away updating it?

The only way out of this is to give manufacturers a piece of the action on apps sold through the store to users of their phones. This would align their motivations more closely with Google's.</comment>


Modern man a wimp - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/modern-man-a-wimp-says-anthropologist-1802501.html

<comment><USER2> The Roman business is silly. The legions routinely set up stockaded camps every night, a job that required several hours. If you look at Cyrus's marching rates in The Anabasis, generally his troops (contemporary with the early republican legions) made a bit under 20 miles per day, making camps that weren't fortified. The legions may have managed the occasional 40-mile forced march, but so have infantries much more recently.The USMC at one point made a fetish of the 50-mile hike.

I suspect the Athenian business is silly. Our information about the building and operation of the triremes is quite sketchy, or was within the last ten to fifteen years.

As I recall the Tutsis had a step up before the bar, from which they jumped. What the mechanical advantage of that might be, I don't know.

I'm tired of this nonsense, probably because I'm a modern wimp-- australopithecus surely had a higher tolerance for pseudo-scientific nonsense.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Turning to the high jump, McAllister said photographs taken by a German anthropologist showed young men jumping heights of up to 2.52 meters in the early years of last century."

Does this mean that people were jumping 2.52 in the early 1900s?! If so, did they use the Fosbury Flop and it faded out after that? Because if not, they probably jumped that height with the Scissors-Jump, which seems highly unlikely...

<comment><USER4> Was there a ruler in the picture? How could he possibly have calibrated?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Domestication of animals consists of selecting examples with protracted juvenile form; more docile and manageable for longer. Humans have self- domesticated. Today we have later onset of puberty, lower hormone levels, bred out much aggression.

</comment><comment><USER5> This might be the case, but even if it's true, the principle of evolution dictates that we're wimpier because it doesn't matter anymore. Why be strong when we have tools to be strong for us?

</comment><comment><USER6> That's why we are "sapiens", our physical strength is not as good as ancients homos but we are smarter. Smarter proved to be better than faster or stronger. We may be wimp, but we survived.

</comment><comment><USER7> _Modern journalist 'a shill', says Internet commenter who finds older reporters had better things to do than misinterpret fascinating archaeology as insults to the modern age_

<comment><USER4> "Sour Grapes!" trumpets blog hacker who has nothing better to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> In other news: Ancient men did not have modern technology.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think if you look further back along the evolutionary chain you'll find that apes monkeys etc are far better climbers than us. This just seems like a pointless rant about how adaptation has taken us in a different direction. :/</comment>


Ask HN: Where do you, personally, go to learn mathematics online? - <AUTHOR>

I am an engineer and entrepreneur with a fairly broad but not terribly deep understanding of mathematics, mostly in the are of number theory. Deep down I really enjoy learning about and discovering more about mathematics. It's such a fun topic with so many facets and, heck, I can do with with not much more than a pencil, a note card, and my brain.
It seems like engineers and developers are always asking great questions about where to find information on algorithms to improve their coding skills or to prepare for an interview or test. There is a lot of information online from basic algebra and geometry to single and multi-variant calculus and beyond. With that I am curious to see is what others do to learn "higher" levels of mathematics outside of a University setting. By higher I mean topics at or above first year, single variable calculus.
What sorts of mathematics knowledge goals do you have? To know more generally, to know more mathematical application, to keep up on your skills from college, or just to get by with an algorithm in an interview?
Do you feel like the information you get online is useful? What kind of learning experience do you wish you could have with math online?
How committed to learning more higher levels of mathematics do you think you would be outside of a University setting?
Obviously anything else you would like to share would be great! <comment><USER2> Learning mathematics outside of a mathematics curriculum at a university is difficult, largely due to the fact that in higher level math classes, the professors become more like mentors - their aim is to guide you to approach problem solving with the right intuitions, and to prevent the all too easy rabbit hole of getting caught up in one approach to oblivion.

No text can provide you with this sort of benefit.

I came into software engineering after leaving research level mathematics. What I have found is that there are no shortcuts around investing a massive amount of time reading textbooks and trying to solve problems/figure out proofs. The time investment itself is what bakes the knowledge into your head.

This probably isn't what you wanted to hear, but at least do weigh these thoughts in.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually that's a brilliant answer! I absolutely believe that in order to really succeed in mathematics one must pay their dues in time. You put it exceptionally well.

My thoughts of the day is, would it be possible to mentor people through this process online. I quite often tutor my university age son, his friends, my neighborhood kids, and colleagues in single variable calculus level math. I was looking around and couldn't find a lot of resources online to really teach math. Sure there is text and simple explanation, even some courses like MIT opencourseware and such. But nothing that really replicates the experience of learning math, if that makes sense.

And now, in fact, it does make sense. Because it lacks the mentorship of a university professor. Now the question is, does: is a good University classroom the only way to get that level of mentorship?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This path might be of interest to you [http://hbpms.blogspot.com.es/search/label/stage%201](http://hbpms.blogspot.com.es/search/label/stage%201)</comment>


Corrosive Conformity - <AUTHOR> http://www.nationalreview.com/article/375039/corrosive-conformity-editors <comment><USER2> I'm tired of these silly reversals. It's disingenuous, this attitude like there is some sort of gay mafia overpowering commonfolk. "Tolerance" only comes up as a topic when it's about tolerating some shitty retrograde attitude. Please.

Mozilla backed Eich the whole way as far as I remember. They initially shrugged off rarebit's reaction with the standard "we should all respect personal opinions" (except for the personal opinions of people affected by Eich's actions, of course).

<comment><USER3> You are not seeing the full picture. There is no "gay mafia". I have gay friends who are wonderful people, and I support their right to marry. Some of my biggest idols in tech are gay. What scares me, however, is that the same confrontational tactics that are used to police tech sector against you-name- it people who had made a silly or insensitive joke about women or donated a couple of bucks to some non-PC campaign -- those same confrontational, entryist tactics were used in the early 20th century by Lenin and his supporters, and we all know where that led.

It's not the message, it's how it is delivered.

<comment><USER4> First they came for Brendan Eich. But I did not speak out, because I disagreed with Brendan Eich's political position and thought it was obnoxious. Jerk had it coming, I say.

 _cough_

<comment><USER3> Eich is far from the first. The mob's appetite for blood is greater than you think:

* [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/donglegate-adria-richar...](http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/donglegate-adria-richards)

* [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/news/pr-executive-j...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/news/pr-executive-justine-sacco-apologises-after-losing-job-over-racist-aids-joke-provoked-hasjustinelandedyet-twitter-storm-9020809.html)

* [http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2013/09/10/busines...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2013/09/10/business-insider-fires-cto-over-offensive-tweets/)

* [http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/30/paul-graham-responds-to-cri...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/30/paul-graham-responds-to-critics/)

<comment><USER4> Okay. "First" was rhetorical, rather than factual. :P

In any event, there have been plenty of regimes in history where you needed to be a member of The Party and toe the party line... and if not, you'd be ineligible for any position of power, and maybe out of a job. Perhaps your nation had a revolution, and the party in question is Communists. Perhaps it's merely a Reformation, and you're just not allowed to be Catholic anymore (or a counter-reformation, and you're not allowed to be Protestant). Maybe it's just the local banana republic.

And this is purely a partisan-affiliation play. No one has seriously asserted that Eich was mean to any individual gay person, influenced company policy in a way that said gay people are unwelcome, or anything of that nature.

In any event, it's quite clear that at least _some_ portion of our society -- the one Mozilla operates in -- works under the guiding principles of those regimes. How modern of us!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The whole Mozilla thing is a little bitter-sweet for me. I'm glad that we've progressed to the point where actively working to deny another person equal rights is no longer acceptable, but I wonder if this was really the best use of our time and "outrage." Eich wasn't an activist or even a huge contributor as far as we know. I support sending a peaceful, voluntary message - but in retrospect, I think we sent it to the wrong person and company.

The article makes some good points and some weak arguments (the Obama comparison is bizarre), but the author makes little distinction between holding a differing view and contributing to causes that (IMO) encourage discrimination and unjust inequality.

In other words, I think it's fair game to boycott and protest supporters of anti-gay-marriage bills, but we (myself included) should have focused on something with greater impact - a "real" bad guy. There are hundreds of politicians who are actively working against equal rights, and a lot of big money going to them and pro-discrimination PACs. For those who support equality in marriage, that's a better place to start.

<comment><USER6> I will only tolerate such behavior in one and only one instance: when the issue is a human rights violation.

But where does it end? Do people start boycotting companies because one of their board members are not opposed to abortion? Do people start boycotting companies because the CEO feels that Michael Jackson was not a pedophile?

In the end my favorite quote on free speech: "Sir, I disagree with you whole- heartedly, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it."

Also, what if since then he has changed his mind? These things happen, people had wrong opinions and through argument have changed them.

<comment><USER7>
      > "Sir, I disagree with you whole-heartedly, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it."

Yes, but this applies to censorship. No one was censoring Eich or asking for him to be censored and, even more importantly, no one was asking for the _government_ to step in.

I support his _right_ to be a bigot. I do not, however, want a bigot running an organization that is important to me, and I (and many others whose opinions matter far more than mine) said so (our right).

<comment><USER8> > I support his right to be a bigot

According to Google, "bigotry" is defined as "having or revealing an obstinate belief in the superiority of one's own opinions and a prejudiced intolerance of the opinions of others."

I'm getting confused here, since English is not my native language -- but how's Eich a bigot, and the other side of the barricade not? In fact, according to that definition, how are the people who ousted him not the bigger bigots? Just wondering.

<comment><USER4> The answer is that when you see the word "bigot" here, it actually means:

* this person has a different model of the structure of the world than we do

* we do not wish to recognize (or are not capable of recognizing, or have not been informed) that it is possible or intellectually valid to use a different model of the structure of the world than we do

* assuming that you use the same model as we do, it is impossible to support Prop 8 unless you also think that gay people don't deserve to be treated as people

* therefore he must not think they should be treated as people, and is bad. we should call him names and try to impugn his ability to empathize and/or be intellectually consistent.

Any relation of this to the dictionary definition is coincidental.

For your personal edification: the real question about gay marriage is a what marriage is (and what the government should recognize), not about whether gay people are people. If you believe that marriage is primarily about an emotional commitment between two arbitrary people, then the only logical conclusion is to support gay marriage. If you're old-school and think in the general case that it has something more to do with children and families and sexual reproduction (notwithstanding current practices to the contrary), then you may support measures like Prop 8 or Amendment 1. It is this difference in attitudes which drives the issue and drives enough voter turnout to pass measures like Prop 8 -- not bigotry and hatred, but defending something that these people care about, Marriage and Family. This is also why it's called the "Defense of Marriage Act"; it's a defense.

These supporters of gay marriage long ago internalized the notion of marriage as an emotional commitment between.... well, let's say N arbitrary people, not always 2.

<comment><USER7>
      > * assuming that you use the same model as we do, it is impossible to support Prop 8 unless you also think that gay people don't deserve to be treated as people

This is basically accurate. It is not possible to support Prop 8 without _treating_ gay people as though they are not people.

If the _only_ advantage marriage conferred was being allowed to make babies, then I would agree with you. The problem is that marriage confers a bunch of additional benefits (including hospital visitation and inheritance with less drama).

Additionally, there is no need to be married to have children, and there is no need to have children to be married, so the whole "marriage is about kids" thing is, frankly, really, really hard to take seriously.

So by supporting Prop 8, people were saying "gay people do not deserve the privileges mentioned above even through straight people who don't intend to have kids can have those privileges".

If this is really about children and families, where is the movement to prevent infertile straight people from getting married, or just people who have no intention of having children. They are ruining the tradition just as much as gay people supposedly would.

<comment><USER9> Thank you for using the correct word, privileges, and not the incorrect word, rights.

The issue isn't about rights, its about equal treatment and equal privileges.

However, I disagree with you on "It is not possible to support Prop 8 without treating gay people as though they are not people." That would be like saying "It is not possible to support progressive tax rates without treating 'rich' people as though they are not people."

<comment><USER4> On the topic of loaded words, the Wall Street Journal this morning had a front-page above-the-fold piece quoting Anil Dash: "The 'mob'? Seriously? Would you say that someone who tried to criminalize your marriage was fit to lead you?"

Results of Prop 8, to wit: No one was charged with a felony. No one was charged with a misdemeanor. No one was charged with an infraction. No one was fined, arrested, detained, or jailed. Criminalization!!!

(Determining whether "the mob" that forced Eich to step down, the phrase against which Dash protests, is similarly loaded or not: is left as an exercise to the HN reader.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> George Takei said it so well I'll have to quote him:

"Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences. This man donated money to a campaign designed to keep LGBT people from full equality and to deny our families equal rights under the law. He was free to make that choice, but we are free to hold him accountable. If he'd donated money to White Supremacists to help outlaw interracial marriage, there'd be little outcry over his ouster".

It's not conformity, but Mozilla stands for a set of values, among those equality, which is not compatible with the values publicly demonstrated by Eich.

<comment><USER4> I'll counter with Clarence Thomas.

"I cannot endorse a view of the First Amendment that subjects citizens of this Nation to death threats, ruined careers, damaged or defaced property, or pre- emptive and threatening warning letters as the price for engaging in "core political speech, the 'primary object of First Amendment protection.' "

\- Dissenting in part, _Citizens United vs FEC_. Regarding Proposition 8, and the fact that the law compelled the disclosure of donors and made all this donation information public to begin with.

<comment><USER10> If at the time he made his donation the rules allowed his contribution to remain secret, then this is disturbing.

If not, it's just that he is not suited to run the Mozilla Foundation after stating publicly he does not agree with one of the core values of the foundation and its contributors. If it were the case, he could have apologized and say he changed his mind. If he didn't change his mind, again, he is not suitable to run a foundation where many core contributors have strong moral feelings about equality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My issue with this is that it is completely political. The National Review isn't against what happened to Eich because of "conformity," but because they happen to agree with his political views.

Want proof? In 2011, a Notre Dame Board of Trustees member was pressured to resign because of her donations to a pro-choice group. Not only did the National Review not have a problem with her resignation, they published a feature criticizubg Notre Dame at length[1] for appointing her to begin with and in general not upholding pro-life only Catholic values.

So you'll forgive me if I think this article is bullshit and its arguments completely specious.

I await your downvotes.

[1]: [http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/269303/more-cracks- go...](http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/269303/more-cracks-golden-dome- george-weigel)

<comment><USER12> The National Review may be on this side purely due to politics, but many others (For instance gay-marriage supporter Conor Friesedorf) are on this side due for open political discourse and anti-comformity.

[http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/04/mozillas...](http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/04/mozillas- gay-marriage-litmus-test-violates-liberal-values/360156/)

I completely agree that a lot of the rhetoric is completely tribal (this side is right, the other side is wrong, now let's sling mud and accuse the other side of X!). But some people (in fact, a lot of Hacker News) does seem to get beyond this.

<comment><USER11> There is absolutely a non-political argument to be made, you are absolutely correct. I guess what I'm saying is that this article is not making that argument. At all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The problem wasn't that mozilla doesn't allow dissent; the problem is that the world wouldn't allow Eich to be CEO, and he realized that whatever good he could do as CEO was overwhelmed by the harm he would do to it as staying CEO. Mozilla didn't bounce Eich; the internet did.

<comment><USER14> More specifically: a particularly noisy _part_ of the Internet did.

<comment><USER15> Those hysterical screaming queens?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's curious that gay-rights supporters are being called the "intolerant ones." I keep hearing this. It was a common talking point during the Duck Dynasty fiasco. I wonder if this tactic was used in the past to attack opponents of racism?

<comment> mkr-hn I don't know if I'll ever understand how people reason that using one right to deny a right to another person should be immune to criticism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The problem wasn't that "some CEO of some company has an anti-gay view" the problem is that the ideological head (the CEO) of an organization whose stated mission is one of greater good (rather than profit) not only harbours anti-gay thoughts, but actively acted to deny people of their human rights, and it wasn't a mistake (he's never said anything to suggest he's changed his mind or regrets it at all)

</comment><comment><USER18> The problem isn't that he was pretty much forced to step down as CEO, it's that he was ever given the position without proper vetting in the first place. Being a co-founder does not make one CEO material.

I don't know Mozilla's process, but if I were just making a casual observance, I'd say they were determined to hire the guy without using all the resources available to determine whether he was the best candidate for the job.

The slippery slope argument is bullshit. "Where do we draw the line?" Well, let's see: if he has simply voted Republican, he'd have been fine. If he'd have voted for Prop 8 but contributed no money to it, there wouldn't be a money trail to show that he's a bigot. He'd probably fine until he got himself into the potential HR fiasco that would have damaged Mozilla a great deal more than they've been for not doing a proper executive search. But neither of those happened. Instead, he left a money trail to specifically support a bigoted cause.

There's the line.

</comment><comment><USER19> For those who haven't seen it, Barack Obama opined on this topic around the same time as Brendan Eich, and over a much bigger megaphone than $1000 will buy:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6K9dS9wl7U](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6K9dS9wl7U)

tl;dv: "I believe that marriage is the union between a man and woman ... For me as a Christian, it's also a sacred union .. you know, God's in the mix. ... I'm not somebody who promotes same-sex marriage, but I do believe in civil unions."

<comment><USER20> > For those who haven't seen it, Barack Obama opined on this topic around the > same time as Brendan Eich, and over a much bigger megaphone than $1000 will > buy:

If you mean the topic actually at issue -- California's Prop. 8 -- that's true, but not on the side you suggest:

[http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Obama-opposes-proposed- ba...](http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Obama-opposes-proposed-ban-on-gay- marriage-3278328.php)

\--[quote]--

John Wildermuth, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Gay rights moved to the forefront of the presidential campaign Tuesday after Democratic Sen. Barack Obama's announcement that he opposes a November ballot measure that would ban same-sex marriage in California.

In a letter to San Francisco's Alice B. Toklas Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Democratic Club, the presumptive presidential nominee said he opposed "the divisive and discriminatory efforts to amend the California Constitution" and similar efforts in other states.

\--[end quote]--

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The interesting thing to notice is that us 'old people' will be on the losing side of another human-rights issue if the demographics are correct.

It looks like the younger generations are much more likely to be pro-life, and it will be interesting to see if pro-choice people will be haunted for their views going forward.

If denying denying civil marriage to gay partners incurs such wrath - I dearly hope that the our pro-life children will find it possible to forgive us.

</comment><comment><USER22> _> In 2008, Barack Obama and Brendan Eich both were against gay marriage...Barack Obama inexplicably remains, as of this writing, president of the United States of America, but Mr. Eich has just been forced out as CEO of Mozilla because of his political views._

Nonsense.

A two-party political horse race is not analogous. If you don't like one or more views your closest candidate has, the ONLY other alternative is often MUCH worse on the whole, not only for your issue of choice, but a range of them.

Compare that to selecting a leader of an organization that is not structured to return profit to shareholders, but instead carry out _a social and ethical objective_ and it is easy to see why a leader that is NOT ethical (in the view of significant numbers of people inside the org and "customers/users" outside the org) would be deemed not qualified to hold the job. Couple that with plethora of other viable candidates (as opposed to the two-person horse race of a presidential run), and the analogy doesn't just fall flat, it refuses to exist.

</comment><comment><USER23> Does Eich have grounds to file suit against Mozilla employees for making a hostile work environment?</comment>


Ask HN: Does a startup has to fail to get HNers feedback? - <AUTHOR>

Dear HNers,
I have noticed many times how valuable HN comments can be. So many skilled people are contributing and provide top level advices.
Nonetheless, It seems to me this occurs even more after a startup failed. I noticed (completely unscientific approach here) posts or questions about failure get many times more feedback/comments than the one about asking idea at subjectively the same quality content.
To be honest, I failed many time to get some feedback about my new startup. I tried to post at different time, with various subject without success. Last post I submitted (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5601127) got a single extra point and 2 comments. I'd definitely appreciate to be helped to discover my obvious mistakes before that would be too late.
Do I really have to fail first to get your valuable advices/feedback? <comment><USER2> No, you have to ask an interesting question or propose an interesting scenario for people to want to comment.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> clickable link <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5601127>

</comment><comment><USER3> Shoot me an email.</comment>


What It's Like to Almost Get Executed - <AUTHOR> https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/03/31/what-it-s-like-to-almost-get-executed#.jTmiocXwQ <comment><USER3> In the United States, innocence has never been grounds for an appeal, a stay, overturning, or clemency. Here in Florida, I could write an accurate algorithm for calculating the application of the Death Penalty. Skin darkness (literally, not race), IQ, wealth, sex are the relevant factors. The elements of the case are not.

I'm not against the Death Penalty on general principle grounds; I'm against it because we clearly aren't to be trusted with it.

<comment><USER4> Actual innocence is a grounds for vacating a conviction.

<comment><USER3> In the USA, innocence isn't grounds for an appeal. Actual, post-conviction DNA tests aren't a basis. Errors at trial are. So good lawyers find one. Jury instructions, evidentiary errors, procedural, etc., which is why money buys justice.

<comment><USER5> Just going to jump in here and point out rayiner is an appellate lawyer.

<comment><USER6> Indeed he may be, but the case of Herrera v. Collins is pretty clear - <USER2> are about procedures, not facts. If someone has been found guilty in a trial, and there were no flaws in the prodecures followed, then it is not unconstitutional to follow through with the punishment, even if later evidence shows the person is innocent.

More importantly, it would be procedurally problematic if convicted criminals could appeal on the basis of a claim of innocence, even if it's due to new evidence. Following procedures is more important than getting at the truth. (I conjecture it's because getting at the truth is unreasonably difficult. For example, there's no guarantee that a subsequent trial will be more reliable than the original.)

<comment><USER7> Convictions get vacated when an alternate perpetrator is identified or confesses.

<comment><USER8> Still, that alternate confession must be credible. For high-profile crimes, there often seem to be dozens of alternate confessions, and they are usually obviously untrue so they should not be grounds for appeal of the convicted.

The hard part is how to establish that alternate confessions or new evidence are really significant (as they indeed sometimes are).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote some of his most significant works after his execution by firing squad was stayed at the last minute.

[http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fyodor- dostoevsky...](http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fyodor-dostoevsky- is-sentenced-to-death)

There is a vivid description of his experience in the novel "The Idiot", you can read it here: [http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2638/old/20081222-2638.txt](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2638/old/20081222-2638.txt), search for: "As to life in a prison"

Or see it here with English subtitles: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYN40R9Hjtg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYN40R9Hjtg)

Edit: s/began writing/wrote some of his most significant works/ (thank you dang)

<comment><USER10> > _began writing_

Oh no, he'd published two novels before that, both significant, but for different reasons. _Poor Folk_ was a maudlin debut but it made him the hottest new writer in Russia, briefly. Belinsky, the biggest critic of the day, famously kissed him when they were introduced.

Now that he was a celebrity he thought he'd show them what he _really_ could do, and came up with _The Double_ , which is genius. But it bombed, and Dostoevsky became a has-been in his mid-twenties. It's still one of the best things he ever wrote, equal parts comic, tragic, and weird. It's also short, so one of the best first things to read by him.

All that happened before he went to Siberia, which of course was transformative. His memoir of the prison camp, _Notes From the House of the Dead_ , is another masterpiece and a sort of decryption key for all his later work. It was Tolstoy's favorite.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov, Crime And Punishment) was sentenced to be executed by the Tsarist government in 1849. He was actually _in front of the firing squad_ , waiting for his turn to die, when he learned that his sentence had been commuted to a measly 10 years hard labor in Siberia.

One could argue that this was the defining moment of his life, and most of his greatest works were motivated in some way by the intensity of that experience. So yeah, for _lots_ more on this, read Dostoevsky.

<comment><USER12> One of the main characters in Tolstoy's War and Peace (Pierre) was also almost executed. You can read the scene here:

[https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2600/2600-h/2600-h.htm#link2...](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2600/2600-h/2600-h.htm#link2HCH0274)

<comment><USER11> Fascinating! I wonder if Tolstoy was depecting Dostoevsky. I guess I'll have to read War and Peace as my enormous literary undertaking of the summer.

<comment><USER12> Highly recommended!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> [http://murderpedia.org/male.C/c/cooper- kevin.htm](http://murderpedia.org/male.C/c/cooper-kevin.htm)

Has the first hand account of Joshua Ryen, who also experienced what it was like to almost get executed.

I'm personally not a fan of the death penalty - I generally don't think it's worth the risk in effort, except perhaps in the case for people (eg. terrorist leaders) such that keeping them alive could result in a hostage situation.

But I do think it's a little unfair to have a case like this presented in a completely one-sided way.

<comment><USER14> The Ryen account is a little far down that page. Since we heard one story in anatomical detail, how about another?

"The first time I met Kevin Cooper I was 8 years old and he slit my throat. He hit me with a hatchet and put a hole in my skull. He stabbed me twice, which broke my ribs and collapsed one lung. I lived only because I stuck four fingers in my neck to slow the bleeding, but I was too weak to move. I laid there 11 hours looking at my mother who was right beside me.

I know now he came through the sliding glass door and attacked my dad first. He was lying on the bed and was struck in the dark without warning with the hatchet and knife. He was hit many times because there is a lot of blood on the wall on his side of the bed.

My mother screamed and Cooper came around the bed and started hitting her. Somehow my dad was able to struggle between the bed and the closet but Cooper bludgeoned my father to death with the knife and hatchet, stabbing him 26 times and axing him 11. One of the blows severed his finger and it landed in the closet. My mother tried to get away but he caught her at the bottom of the bed and he stabbed her 25 times and axed her 7.

All of us kids were drawn to the room by mom's screams. Jessica was killed in the doorway with 5 ax blows and 46 stabs. I won't say how many times my best friend Chris was stabbed and axed, not because it isn't important, but because I don't want to hurt his family in any way, and they are here.

After Cooper killed everyone, and thought he had killed me, he went over to my sister and lifted her shirt and drew things on her stomach with the knife. Then he walked down the hallway, opened the refrigerator, and had a beer. I guess killing so many people can make a man thirsty."

[EDIT: this is from Ryen's testimony in 2005.]

<comment><USER15> You forgot some key info:

The sole survivor, Josh Ryen, had told a social worker in the emergency room that the murders were committed by 3 or 4 white men. Josh spelled his message by pointing at letters on a clipboard as he was unable to speak, but the social worker and medical staff observed that he was lucid and could spell his name and address correctly. Judge Fletcher wrote, "Deputies misrepresented his recollections and gradually shaped his testimony so that it was consistent with the prosecution's theory that there was only one killer." Jurors, however, said they disregarded Ryen's testimony because they believed he was confused and traumatized.

On June 9, a woman named Diana Roper called the Sheriff's Department to tell them that her boyfriend, Lee Furrow, had come home in the early hours on the night of June 4. He arrived in an unfamiliar station wagon with some people who stayed in the car. He changed out of his overalls, which he left on the floor of a closet. He was not wearing a t-shirt that he had been wearing earlier in the day. He left the house after about five minutes and did not return. [Roper and her father] both concluded that the overalls were spattered with blood. Roper turned the overalls over to the Sheriff's Department and told the deputy that she thought Furrow was involved in the murders. Roper later provided an affidavit stating that a bloody t-shirt found beside the road leading from the murder house had been Furrow's. It was a Fruit-of-the- Loom t-shirt with a breast pocket. Roper stated that she recognized it because she had bought it for him. She also stated that a bloody hatchet found beside the road matched a hatchet that was now missing from her garage. [...] The Sheriff's Department never tested the overalls for blood, never turned them over to Cooper or his lawyers, and threw them away in a dumpster on the day of Cooper's arraignment."

Furrow had been released from state prison a year earlier. He had been part of a murderous gang, but had been given a short sentence in return for turning state's evidence against the leader of the gang. The leader was sentenced to death. Furrow told friends that while he was part of the gang he killed a girl, cut up her body, and thrown her body parts into the Kern River."

We know you can implant false memories, especially in kids. If the cops decided Cooper was guilty it would have been easy to coach him into giving the testimony above.

I'm not saying he is innocent or guilty, just that there appears to be some doubt, much of it due to police sloppiness and misconduct.

<comment><USER14> This is why it's a great idea to try these cases on Hacker News. (I'm only half kidding.) Always and everywhere, if you sit on a jury and listen only to the prosecutor or defense attorney, you will come to the conclusion they want. This is for the same reason you can't tell what a magician is doing with his hands: he's an pro, you're an amateur.

From:

[http://www.cjlf.org/deathpenalty/CooperReview.htm](http://www.cjlf.org/deathpenalty/CooperReview.htm)

 _3\. Josh Ryen told the police he thought three men committed the attack. He later changed his story._

"When Josh was rescued the day after the murders, he could not talk because his throat had been slashed. He could only squeeze the police officer's hand in response to questions. The story that Josh was finally able to tell police was that he was awakened in the middle of the night by his mother's screams. When he and his friend Chris went to investigate, he saw the bodies of his parents and Jessica and the backside of one unfamiliar person, so he ran and hid. Then he heard Chris screaming, so Josh ran back towards his friend. At that point, something struck him in the head, knocking him unconscious. He awoke later in a pool of blood.

When later queried by investigators, Josh spoke of three Mexicans who had come to the house earlier and thought they could have done it because they had been there once before. However, Josh never said he saw three people commit the murders. He consistently told different investigators that he saw only one attacker. The triple murderer theory is merely speculation based on the visit of the three Mexicans and twisting of a little boy's words.

Additionally, Josh was an eight-year-old boy who was startled awake by a horrific murder and was brutally attacked. It is unsurprising that probing questions by adults and the power of suggestion later tried to confuse his story. Most important however, Cooper was not convicted on the limited testimony of an eight-year-old. He was convicted by the mountain of other evidence incriminating him."

 _1\. The girlfriend of a former inmate friend of Cooper 's, thought her boyfriend might have been involved in the murder. She turned his bloody coveralls over to the local Yucaipa sheriff's substation, but they threw out the coveralls without testing them._

"This girlfriend, Diane Roper, was dismissed by law enforcement as completely lacking credibility. She was a professed witch who claimed she had a vision during a trance that the murder had been committed after she heard about the Ryen case. However, she had no substantive reason to believe her boyfriend was involved with Cooper the night of the murder. In fact, she told sheriff's investigators that she did not even know to whom the coveralls belonged. She said she "just knew" from the vision that the coveralls were connected to the case. By the time the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department heard about her fantastic story, they had Cooper in custody with mountains of evidence (see above) against him. Based on their limited resources and already having the likely killer in custody, the San Bernardino County police chose not to expend precious time and money chasing Roper's crazy story."

As for the other evidence:

"The victims died from numerous chopping wounds later determined to have been inflicted by a hatchet or axe and stabbing wounds inflicted by both a knife and an ice pick. Later that day, bloodstained items were found in the vacant house where Cooper had stayed, including a button from a prison jacket identical to the one he was wearing when he escaped. A police criminologist also found evidence of blood on the carpet, in the bathroom sink and in the shower along with Cooper's footprint. Hairs from the shower drain and the bathroom sink were consistent with those from two of the victims.

A bloodstained hatchet from the vacant house was later found near the Ryen home. The sheath from the hatchet was found on the floor of the bedroom where Cooper had slept. Some hunting knives and at least one ice pick were also missing from the vacant house. A strap fitting one of the missing knives was found in the same bedroom. Shoe prints were found in the Ryen home and the vacant house next door matching the unique pattern of shoes issued exclusively to prison inmates. The prints indicated shoes of Cooper's size and brand that he had recently received in prison.

While most of the blood samples taken at the murder scene were determined to have come from the victims, one sample was conclusively determined to have come from a black person with the same blood group as Cooper. The sample was too small to determine if it was Cooper's rare blood type.

The Ryen station wagon was found several days after the killings in a church parking lot in Long Beach. Hairs found in the car matched those of Cooper. Tobacco issued exclusively to prison inmates, which Cooper smoked, was found in the vacant house and in the Ryen's station wagon.

Two days after the murders, Cooper befriended a couple in Mexico and joined them on a boat trip up the California Coast. Weeks later, Cooper was arrested on a boat off of Santa Barbara after the woman reported that he had raped her at knife point, threatening to kill her if she woke her husband. Following his arrest, several items taken from the vacant house in Chino were discovered on the boat.

At his trial, Cooper admitted staying in the Chino house but denied any involvement in the Ryen murders. Josh Ryen, who miraculously survived his injuries, testified that he awoke on the night of the murders after hearing his mother's screams. He remembered being hit from behind when trying to investigate but was unable to identify his attacker.

For the 19 years following his 1985 conviction, Cooper's claims of trial and sentencing errors have been reviewed by California and federal courts. In 2000 he won a delay of his execution so that new DNA testing could be performed on various blood and saliva samples found at the murder scene, in the stolen station wagon, and on a bloody t-shirt found near the Ryen home. The DNA from all of these samples was found to have come from the same person. This DNA was then compared to DNA from Cooper's blood. It matched. The odds of the match being by chance were 1 in 310 billion."

When you hear one side of the story, always look for the other -- whether or not it's a criminal trial. Adversarial justice works.

EDIT: show quotes clearly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Shame on anyone still for such an archaic form of "justice".

<comment><USER17> Let's not make blanket statements or anything.

<comment><USER18> Why not? Some practices are totally abhorrent and have no place in any liberal society.

<comment><USER19> Some might say that the practice of allowing brutal murderers and rapists to live out their lives and die in peace is totally abhorrent and has no place in any liberal society.

It's almost as though different rational people of good will disagree about moral matters.

<comment><USER18> A couple points:

> the practice of allowing brutal murderers and rapists to live out their > lives and die in peace

Unless I'm misreading you, that's a huge misrepresentation of what death penalty abolitionists advocate. I don't want violent criminals to have zero repercussions for their actions, and no present-day society I've ever heard of allows them to.

But I agree with (what I perceive to be your greater) point about differences in personal moral code. I was merely speaking contextually about the general trend Western society has followed for the past few centuries -- like fewer, more lenient punishments and more respect for civil rights, among others.

<comment><USER17> Maybe I wasn't talking about Western / liberal society. Maybe most people don't currently live in that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This kind of emotional experience is beyond understanding for most of us (and hopefully remains so). The masterpiece of a film Army of Shadows by Jean- Pierre Melville has a scene in it, of an execution that .. (I won't continue with spoilers). It was one of the most powerful things I've ever watched that made me feel maybe just a tiny bit, what that might be like.

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

<comment><USER21> There is also _The Wall_ by Jean-Paul Sartre (warning, PDF):

[http://faculty.risd.edu/dkeefer/pod/wall.pdf](http://faculty.risd.edu/dkeefer/pod/wall.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> If the only reason for banning capital punishment in the USA was to prevent DA's from personally benefiting from "being tough on crime" in the next election for DA or governor, that would be enough.

The entire American criminal system is beyond corrupt at this point.

<comment><USER23> It seems crazy -- there are so many independently-sufficient reasons to abolish the death penalty, argued from virtually any grounds, many of which otherwise are completely opposed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I live in Denmark. As do around 5.7 million others, all told. We have no death penalty.

In 2015 we had 41 cases of homicide.

It can be done.

<comment><USER25> Denmark doesn't exactly have the cultural baggage the US has.

There isn't a gun culture* (just picking one aspect) at all in Denmark, there is a rich culture in the US to the point that people think you are changing the identity of the country if you reform gun law. Stating that a progressive state that never had such problems can solve them has no meaning.

* guns would be the leading cause of homicide in the US.

<comment><USER26> Leading mechanism, not cause, IMO.

<comment><USER25> Is there any real difference?

Like a trigger is a leading mechanism, but it's the combustion that fires the bullet?

<comment><USER26> The cause (IMO) is a human who lacks self-control, anger-management, moral compass, or is otherwise broken in a way that causes/allows them to intentionally take the life of a fellow human.

The gun/trigger/bullet/gunpowder/whatever is a mechanism of the murder, not the cause. (I'm not a rabid "gun nut" [nor even a gun owner], but blaming guns as the cause is just as fundamentally misplaced as blaming a baseball bat, knife, or rope, IMO.)

<comment><USER25> But the facts don't reflect what you are saying.

Removal of guns from a society lowers total murders, it doesn't just move those murders to some other weapon/cause.

Look at Australia's crime statistics, or Canada, or Britain before and after serious gun control. They all show this to be true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I simply don't think it wise to entrust the State, with a completely fallible justice system, with the power to end a citizen's life. Haven't quite worked out the philosophical grounding of that argument, but I think that's where I'll start.

</comment><comment><USER28> This would have been a far more interesting article if he had spoken more about his thoughts and feelings, rather than the mechanical processes.

<comment><USER23> I find the factual, mechanical description more emotionally moving, because I can more easily put myself in the position of the writer. My emotions matter a lot more to me than what a (convicted) murderer says he's feeling -- I'm against the death penalty even in cases where the person is clearly guilty and a horrible person.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Why are stays left to the last minute? Death pealty cases and their appeals last many years.

<comment><USER30> The closer you get to the actual death, the sadder the story gets and the more people come out of the woodwork to try and help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> "I was supposed to be executed one minute after midnight on February 10, 2004. ...

The prison also started sending a psychiatrist — it was clear that they wanted to make sure I was not going to commit suicide."

So absurd!

</comment><comment><USER32> The family of four he brutally murdered might have had an opinion on that, too.

<comment><USER33> There are victims and families of victims who do not support the death penalty. A documentary aired in the UK a few years ago that spoke with the family of a prison officer (Daniel Nagle) who was murdered, the perpetrator (Robert Pruett) had been sentenced to the death penalty and the Nagle family were against the sentence -- even though they believe him to be guilty of the murder.

If you're in the UK you can watch that here: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03zndw4/life-and- death...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03zndw4/life-and-death-row- series-1-3-crisis-stage)

I'm not quite sure if I'm interpreting your comment correctly, apologies if I've misunderstood the point you're making.

<comment><USER25> But there are families who clearly want revenge as well.

Revenge or resiprocity seems a pretty core part of the human condition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I oppose the death penalty. Not because I have sympathy for murderers, but because it is uncivilized to ritualistically kill people.

</comment><comment><USER35> I don't get it. Cooper's stay of execution was granted in 2004, most probably due to facts that became known at the time. This article was published in 2016, and he is still in prison - for the same crime? Twelve years have passed and no progress has been made in determining whether Cooper was responsible or not?

</comment><comment><USER36> Isn't community service better than capital punishment?

</comment><comment><USER37> I understand that US justice system is completely biased against minorities (Mainly blacks) but i can't completely come to terms with total abolition of death penalty as expressed by many here on HN. Here are few incidents where i think death penalty can be justified (examples are from Norway which has abolished death penalty & India where it is very rarely carried out - only 5 from 1995)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Norway_attacks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Norway_attacks)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Delhi_gang_rape](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Delhi_gang_rape)

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

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masood_Azhar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masood_Azhar) (Got released after a hijacking and founded JeM)

<comment><USER38> A reformed Breivik, once released, would be able to do some good by working against his former cause, speaking to prevent others from following down the path that he took.</comment></comment>