China: UCLA teammates facing 3-10 years in prison if convicted of shoplifting - <AUTHOR> https://sports.yahoo.com/liangelo-ball-ucla-teammates-face-3-10-years-prison-convicted-shoplifting-013958780.html <comment><AUTHOR> Extract:

What they face now bears little resemblance to the legal system of the United States. The three men could be detained for more than a month without American-style bail before local prosecutors even decide whether to press charges, according to William Nee, a Hong Kong-based researcher of the Chinese court system for Amnesty International.

Nee said it is not uncommon for a defendant to wait 30-37 days before being officially indicted. Among those indicted, Chinese prosecutors enjoy a 99.2 percent conviction rate, according to Nee's research.

While it is unknown exactly what the players are being detained for, Chinese law calls for a fine and between three to 10 years in prison for anyone convicted of "robbing public or private property using force, coercion, or other methods."</comment>


Senior Apple engineer told Jobs antenna could fail - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-15/apple-engineer-said-to-have-told-jobs-last-year-about-iphone-antenna-flaw.html

<comment><USER2> Of course this was brought up. Apple generally does a 10-3-1 design process - 10 different fully working prototypes are made and they let the designers go crazy. From that they further develop 3, then go with the best one. I've been in some of these meetings as an external contractor and no detail is left out - we made custom screws for them and did about 50 different design iterations for one application.

Surely they had different antenna designs in the process - internal and external. I think the pros outweighed the cons in the decision: Higher reception signal than any internal antenna and a dual use, high strength steel case exterior. The one caveat being that if you cover the lower left, the signal will drop a bit, 10-20dB max. I agree with that logic and as a consumer, if Apple offered both an internal and external antenna iPhone, I sure as hell would go with the external - iPhone 4 reception (unscientifically) is far better in my office than my old 3G and the steel won't dent or crack like 2 black plastic ones I returned.

Now putting glass on the back... the jury is still out on that one.

<comment><USER3> That's what's so frustrating about this whole situation... most people seem to be getting much better wireless performance from the 4 than any previous iPhone.

But, Apple's a company selling devices to the public, and they have to factor in the way "the public" works. And the public knows all about this issue at this point (that the issue exists, that is — not the details of the issue)... and that could have been foreseen. So even if the design is "the best" according to Apple's particularly chosen set of engineering tradeoffs, it still seems apparent they should've used some sort of coating or something.

<comment><USER4> Can anyone provide technical articles discussing the iPhone 4's antenna? How it compares to other phones, for example.

There are too many anecdotal stories. Personally, I'd like to see the issue quantified.

<comment><USER5> <http://www.anandtech.com/show/3794/the-iphone-4-review/2>

Edit: Here's a pertinent quote from that article...

"So, an entire day and more than a quarter tank of gas later, here are the results. Holding the iPhone 4 without a case, in your left hand, crossing the black strip can result in a worst case drop of 24 dB in signal. As we'll show in a second, how you hold the phone makes a huge difference across every smartphone - and we've tested thoroughly in 5 different positions.

Now, there are two vastly different possibilities for what happens to the bar visualization after you drop 24 dB. I happen to live less than one block from an AT&T UMTS tower (it's across the street, literally), and have exceptionally strong signal in all of my house - it's part of why I chose to live here, actually. Signal is above -65 dBm in every single room, in most cases it's at -51 dBm. When I incur that worst case drop of 24 dB from squeezing the phone, I fall down to -83 dBm, which is still visualized as 5 bars.

However, in locales that have less signal, but where iOS still displays 5 bars, the drop of 24 dB is visualized much differently. For example, at another test location, signal without holding the phone is -89 dBm, which is still displayed as 5 bars. Cup the phone, and you'll fall all the way to -113 dBm. All the bars dramatically disappear one after the other, people think they've dramatically lost all the signal, and you know the rest."

<comment><USER6> The problem isn't that the signal drops. The problem is that Apple fudged the bars, to make "5 bars" show in more locations.

This fudging means that in a few cases, squeezing the phone will lose all the bars, not just 1 or 2.

Now, they don't deserve to be beat up over their antenna design - they get better signals than the old iPhones, even if you hold them wrong. They do deserve to be beat up for fudging the bar calculations.

I guess that's karma - dishonest behavior highlighted a minor design flaw, and now everyone is hung-up over the minor design flaw.

<comment><USER7> "I guess that's karma - dishonest behavior highlighted a minor design flaw, and now everyone is hung-up over the minor design flaw."

The same thing happened to Intel with the Pentium 5 FDIV bug. By denying it, Intel turned a trivial bug into a major PR fiasco. Don't forget, it required a floating point division with TWELVE significant digits to trigger the bug.

The only reason that it became a huge PR fiasco is that when a scientific researcher ran into it, Intel tried to hide it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't recall ever being involved in any project that didn't have risks, and where someone predicted problems - and occasionally the wrong decision is made and they end up right. Especially in RF.

</comment><comment><USER9> Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture:

A good apology has three parts: 1. "I'm sorry"; 2. "It was my fault" and 3. "How do I make it right". The last part tells about your sincerity. [http://teamrich.wordpress.com/2007/10/20/pausch-last- lecture...](http://teamrich.wordpress.com/2007/10/20/pausch-last-lecture/)

Apple has to hit all of that, with #3 being; "Here is how we are going to make this right."

You can argue all you want about the technical aspects of this, but a few days ago, my _local news_ led with a three-minute report about Consumer Reports and the iPhone. This is a Richter-scale sized PR disaster.

</comment><comment><USER10> They should just offer a generic case/bumper or $10 rebate towards the sale of a range of cases with proof of purchase. Brand image restored, the world continues spinning.

<comment><USER11> Releasing a beautiful product that needs a plastic cover to function properly (without this being made known at launch) is no way to restore brand image. That's actually a great way to become a laughing stock and make the early adopters feel like chumps. I think that woud actually be worse than doing nothing--it admits fault.

Apple has never hosted a press conference like this, I doubt it will be for something as simple as a free bumper.

<comment><USER12> Critics have always and easily posited that Apple makes shiny devices that are easily scratched up in your pocket or through day to day use. Critics have always pointed out the need for a case to "properly use" an Apple product...going as far back as the original 5GB Firewire only, Mac only iPod.

<comment><USER13> I disagree. I've had my iPhone 3G for 2 years and always carried it in my pocket. I keep keys and coins (and anything else scratchy) in a different pocket. The phone is completely unscratched (apart from tiny and unimportant scratches on the plastic back from being placed on hard surfaces).

Every iPhone case I've seen has looked ugly and clumsy to me. The 'bumpers' are better than most, but there's no way I'd be prepared to use one, even if it were free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Anyone else find it ridiculous that Chuck Schumer feels the need to weigh in on this?

</comment><comment><USER15> So I guess at least one antenna engineer at Apple might be able to keep his job.

<comment><AUTHOR> but will they fire Jobs?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "The company also said that a software error, dating to the June 2007 release of the first iPhone, has resulted in overstated signal strength, leading users to believe they had better reception than they did. Apple said on July 2 that a software fix will be released "within a few weeks.""

Bug or feature?

</comment><comment><USER17> Poor Apple. Every phone suffers from similar problem (admittedly to the lesser degree), but now Apple will be forced to find the solution nobody was looking before, just because all this attention. That would be double annoying to them, especially because iPhone 4 _has_ better reception.

</comment><comment><USER18> Would a little clearcoat have been that hard?

<comment><USER19> Well, the hardness of the clearcoat would certainly impact the durability of that solution. Specifically, if the clearcoat were too hard, it would have a tendency to chip. Too soft and it might show marks from impact or wear off with the use of a case. It's a harder problem than it seems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is there any <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistle_blower> protection in corporate environment?

</comment><comment><USER21> _a design chosen by Apple executives_

Ding!

</comment><comment><USER22> It feels like the external antenna was just a gimmick to sell phones because a new screen + another camera isn't enough to warrant a new phone. I have never had reception issues with the dozens of internal-antenna phones I've owned.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it!

</comment><comment><USER23> This is just noise created by the media. 2 months from now everybody will be happily using the iPhone without changes, as I do now. For example, about consumer reports... What was the last time you read that publication to decide what phone to buy? Most people wouldn't care less.

<comment><USER24> I think the magazine is more widely read than you think. Their mobile phone coverage is actually quite good, and very in-depth - including quite a bit of consumer polling along with their own testing.

<comment><USER23> I am not questioning the quality of the magazine, just saying that only a small number of people read it. 99% of the customers just look at the phone, think it is cool, and buy it.

Moreover, even if you read the magazine and see the negative recommendation, I doubt you wouldn't buy the iPhone just because of that.</comment></comment></comment>


Twitter-based Botnet Command Channel - <AUTHOR> http://asert.arbornetworks.com/2009/08/twitter-based-botnet-command-channel/

<comment><USER2> Hm, it certainly is new to create a twitter-account to coordinate a bot-net, but on the other hand... why should communicating via a public, active (and slow) site be better than communicating via some little known (or even private) IRC-server?

<comment><USER3> Using Twitter (or some other public messaging bus) allows the bots to connect to a control channel that is already highly available and accessible (heh, Twitter... yeah, I see the irony). This should make it somewhat easier to hide the bots behind a couple of proxies (if you want to mask your identities).

The IP(s) of Twitter are also less likely to be blocked, and the protocol itself (HTTP) is probably less restricted than IRC on sketchy networks, and also less likely to be blocked by firewalls and/or routers around infected PC's.

It seems like it is partially a "because I can" experiment, and partially an attempt to adapt and change the way botnets operate (and are thus detected).

The thing, to me at least, is that this seemed to obvious. With all the noise on twitter and spam and marketeers, it would have seemed easier to setup a bot-based Twitter account with a glossy marketeer profile that basically just RT'd other garbage SEO/marketing spam junk. Then, randomly slip in these encrypted commands. Maybe even break the command over a couple of tweets/RTs to make it less obvious. You would have a sort of steganography kind of encryption, with the data hidden in plain sight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What exactly is the advantage of using Twitter for C&C? It's trivial for Twitter to suspend accounts like this (which they already have done: <http://twitter.com/upd4t3>), it just makes their job a little harder.

<comment><USER5> Malware just need a C2 for a day or two and then they mve along to another. The days of clinging on to one source are long gone. Please see [http://www.pandasecurity.com/usa/homeusers/media/press- relea...](http://www.pandasecurity.com/usa/homeusers/media/press- releases/viewnews?noticia=9805)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This was demo-ed two weeks ago at defcon, its probably using the same thing KreiosC2

<http://www.digininja.org/projects/kreiosc2.php></comment>


Show HN: What does your Internet footprint look like? - <AUTHOR> http://www.spiderfoot.net

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here.. happy to take feedback. Also check out the Roadmap at <https://github.com/smicallef/spiderfoot/wiki/Roadmap></comment>


Dependency Injection, Inversion of Control and the Dependency Inversion Principle - <AUTHOR> http://kc.my-junk.info/di-ioc-dip/

<comment> dj-wonk All I can say is that when I write code in Clojure (with higher-order functions), I reorganize code fairly often in these sorts of ways without thinking about the "name" for it (e.g. dependency injection or inversion of control).

I'm less interested in what it is called in other languages (where it seems like you have to really 'work' at it). Instead, I just think about functions, namespaces, and good design; which to me comes down mostly to answering the question "What code is responsible for what functionality and why?"

This is not to fault an article like this, but I find it striking. It reminds me of the point you hear often (e.g. in Russ Olsen's book on Design Patterns in Ruby). Some languages (e.g. Ruby) make patterns (e.g. from Java) so easy that you don't have to think about the pattern any more.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have a lot of sympathy for this way of thinking, especially given that so many of the Gang of Four patterns seem to be complicated ways to do higher- order functions.

That said, all languages have patterns and a shared vocabulary around concepts is essential to a profession. So I'd encourage you to become familiar with the nomenclature of the patterns in the idiom you are programming in.

Finally, the Dependency Inversion Principle is a principle, not a pattern and it is as applicable in clojure/lisp/et al as in Java. That is, instead of thinking of the problem from higher to lower in abstraction, the responsibilities should be organized around functionality and the abstraction of the dependency should live with the code that does the depending, not with the code that is depended upon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> I can't figure out the point of this article. Why does adding one more seemingly arbitrary layer of abstraction help anything?

<comment><USER3> TL,DR: Complex logic depends on data objects declared in your module. Instead of Logic => Dependency, refactor as Logic => Data + Data => Dependency. The code is organized as:

        // What kind of Data Logic processes.
        trait Data { ... }

        // How Data reads from a concrete Dependency
        class DataFromDependency extends Data { ... }

        // Logic
        class Logic(data: Data) { ... }

Whys:

* Trivial testing of the Logic, by instantiating Data objects with fake data. If you ever had to instantiate a DB and populate it with 132 right objects just to test that date conversions work correctly, you know what this means.

* The Data adaptors reduce the semantic surface of the Dependency to what Logic needs. This makes reading and reasoning about Logic easier, especially if Dependency is a "fully featured" library with tens of methods Logic couldn't care less about.

<comment><USER4> In Ruby this sort of thing comes naturally due to its much more flexible metaprogramming features than Java-like languages. Testing frameworks like RSpec and the various Gems that go with it for building mock objects make this very easy and common, without having to restructure the original code or have a bunch of nonobvious names for a bunch of patterns.

I have nothing against Java and still take work in Java, but I think every Java developer would learn a lot from Ruby-like languages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice article, liked it. One more thing that should at least be mentioned so a newcomer could investigate further is the Builder pattern. People start using setters to set necessary dependencies (instead of using constructors) often when they have a lot of dependencies or when multiple different dependencies can be injected. This can be fatal when anyone besides the class creator is going to use it. So the builder pattern can really clear things up a bit and at least hide the messy things (if not making them clearer).

</comment><comment><USER6> The author doesn't seem to understand where to use DI and where to use a Container.

DI is used in the context of library code. E.g. the main business logic code library. This allows you to Unit Test your business logic.

A Container is used at an application level, i.e. the application that uses the business logic library. Maybe you're using a web framework. It's then the web framework that has ownership of the container. I.e. framework + business logic = application.

</comment><comment><USER6> >> There is a second form of Dependency Injection that uses setters instead of constructor injection. Do not use this form.

Why? Personal preference I guess? Constructor injection works fine for low level objects that only take 1 or 2 dependencies, but for higher level business objects that might have a wider dependency reach, constructor injection can become a nightmare.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a section of the article I could have probably fleshed out more broadly, but the original audience was largely made up of developers who rejected the entirety of DI and IoC, largely due to their past negative experiences with setter based IoC containers.

I've answered the problem with setter based DI elsewhere in these comments, but another way to say it is because you've now made the behavior of the system, not just the data, mutable state. Which is harder to reason about, harder to test, and harder to get right in concurrent contexts.

> for higher level business objects that might have a wider dependency reach, > constructor injection can become a nightmare.

Again, I view this as a symptom of bad design. If you have a wide dependency reach, then using a DI container is only allowing you to increase the problem. Using setter DI, which normally compromises the design even more, to supposedly make the design _better_ is suspect.

I think you would be better served by fixing your high level business objects to not have a wider dependency reach, and the dependency inversion principle is one tool with which you can do that.

<comment><USER6> Its normal for higher level business objects to have a wider dependency reach, these are the elements that facilitate the communication between lower level objects. The last thing you want to do is pass around a container as a dependency because you don't want your core business logic to have a dependency on a specific container (the container is a framework thing). Injecting a container would be a sign of bad design.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't intend to imply you should inject an IoC container. Offhand I cannot think of an example of when that would be appropriate.

What I did intend to say is that having a wide dependency reach is a negative outcome, that is usually the result of bad design choices. That high level components have many low level dependencies is precise evidence that the dependency inversion principle has not been followed.

The entire point of the principle is to decouple high level components from low level ones and to flatten that hierarchy so that the components become peers that each own their own abstractions around dependencies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Please excuse my ignorance, but what programming language did author use in examples?

<comment><USER8> Scala

<comment><USER7> Thank you very much!</comment></comment></comment>


Mobile Banks in the Developing World Prove Simpler is Better - <AUTHOR> http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/09/mobile-banks-in-the-developing-world-prove-simpler-is-better.html

<comment><USER2> Why don't we see mobile gas stations?</comment>


The Internet: First Impressions - <AUTHOR> http://samrat.github.com/the-internet-first-impressions.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been making changes to the site, so you can now find the article at: [http://samrat.github.com/blog/2012/03/the-internet-first- imp...](http://samrat.github.com/blog/2012/03/the-internet-first- impressions.html)

Sorry for the trouble.</comment>


Court rules that barring high IQs for cops is not unconstitutional (2000) - <AUTHOR> https://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story?id=95836 <comment><USER3> > But New London police interviewed only candidates who scored 20 to 27, on > the theory that those who scored too high could get bored with police work > and leave soon after undergoing costly training.

It's easy to think this is some weird quirk of police recruiting, but the concept of "overqualified" candidates is common across many job roles. I've heard plenty of hiring managers talk about candidates that they've rejected because they thought they'd get bored quickly and move on.

It sucks for people who have had an impressive career trajectory (or in this case high test scores) but want to shift gears a little to focus on other things like family, hobbies, or just want to avoid burnout.

There's an implicit assumption on the part of these hiring managers that everyone should be working at 100% of their capacity, and that flexibility shouldn't be given to those who want a different balance in life.

<comment><USER4> Police work:

* Pays really well

* Requires you to solve many complex ambiguous challenges

* Requires careful nuanced interpretation of situation

* Requires a high EQ to deal with the entire spectrum of citizens, de-escalate situations, and resolve disputes

* Is civic service adding additional social-proof incentive

And we haven't even gotten to actual detective work and the complexity of solving crimes.

On paper, all of this should be CATNIP for a wide variety of high-IQ/EQ individuals to join, and raise the bar on the quality of the force. Yes, there is obviously a danger/risk element, and physical requirements, both which would lose some viable applicants. But by and large it SHOULD be a job that attracts interest from highly intelligent members of our society.

It doesn't because of the system problems, because of the rotten nature of the system to its core. Because of the meathead and the existing low-IQ population dominating the forces.

It can be fixed, but it's probably a generational project.

<comment><USER5> > Pays really well

How much do you think police are paid?

[https://www1.nyc.gov/site/nypd/careers/police-officers/po- be...](https://www1.nyc.gov/site/nypd/careers/police-officers/po- benefits.page)

> Starting salary: $42,500

That's in New York City. Ouch.

> may potentially earn over $100,000 per year

And that's what they're advertising as an aspirational possibility! Even a first-year engineer will earn more than that.

You may be able to find some corner cases of some individual police officers getting paid up to $500k. But that's just showing that the very top officers earn about the same as a mid-level engineer at a tech company.

<comment><USER6> New York City is an outlier in combining low pay and high cost of living. Baltimore (Freddie Grey) officers start at $55k, in a city where a nice townhouse costs $250,000. In Minneapolis starting salary for new officers is $55-70k depending on qualifications. Chicago PD officers start at $72,000 after the probationary period. Generous benefits add $20k+ to that figure.

Note the median starting college graduate salary is about $50,000. Median mid- career college graduate salary is $80,000.

<comment><USER7> > In Minneapolis starting salary for new officers is $55-70k depending on > qualifications.

Wonder how their recruiting will be doing now? They will need to raise that a lot to get reasonable candidates now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The test involved is called the Wonderlic Personnel Test, and is a different matter from IQ although the creator of the test claims comparability. A Wonderlic score of 20 is intended to be equivalent to an IQ score of 100 (e.g. the median), although it's questionable how well it aligns with IQ which is tested using a pretty significantly different methodology - <USER2> significantly, completion time is a major factor in the Wonderlic (it is designed to be too long to complete within the short allotted time and the number of questions the candidate completes is a major factor in scoring), which is much less the case for IQ tests.

The use of the Wonderlic is actually surprisingly widespread if you haven't been exposed to the world of industrial psychology. It's supposed to be a good way to screen people for suitability for all kinds of jobs, and there is research to show that people with higher Wonderlic scores are generally more successful in their careers. I do not know of any research suggesting that individuals with a "too high" Wonderlic score are more likely to turn over, although there's certainly a strong cultural belief that this is the case.

The Wonderlic has been subject to quite a bit of criticism. First, it is available in a set of multiple test forms and it is well-known that some of the test forms are more difficult than others, so you cannot really compare scores between test forms like you would expect. There are probably still employers doing this even though the vendor now recommends against. Second, several of the questions are specifically related to uncommon vocabulary, and the questions further date back to the 1940s so a couple of them are somewhat archaic. This creates a strong preference against non-native English speakers. More generally, the Wonderlic is thought to emphasize literacy over numeracy or other areas of intelligence.

Intelligence measurement is a complex topic as many ways have been tried to measure intelligence and it's not always understood how they relate to each other, as they do not necessarily correlate across people. The Wonderlic correlates well with certain intelligence measures and poorly with others, as is often the state of affairs.

<comment><USER9> It's also used by the NFL during the draft

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "OKs" is such a terrible word to use for a court case. The court isn't ruling on "what's okay" it's ruling on what is and is constitutional. Cheating on your girlfriend is not OK. It's also not unconstitutional. Here, because high intelligence people are not a protected class, courts apply something called "rational basis scrutiny." Under this extremely lax standard, so long as the government can articulate a plausible rational principle in support of a policy, it passes Constitutional muster under the equal protection clause.

A better headline would be something like: "Court rules that the Constitution does not require unelected judges to overturn the policy of a politically accountable police department to not hire people with high IQs."

<comment><USER10> Ok, I've attempted to encode that in the title above.

<comment><USER6> Great one!

<comment><USER10> I enjoy the dry de-baiting of a good double negative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have a friend who is quite obviously way smarter than anyone else around. As in: I don't usually explicitly notice how smart people are, but when I first met him it was so plainly obvious to me like few things are.

Anyway: at some point this friend decided all he needed for happiness were books and water, so he quit his law job and spent a year reading. Once that got boring, he decided to hire on as a tram driver, which they were desperately looking for at that time.

He was rejected for this very reason. They have apparently seen quite a few people on this sort of career trajectory, and since the training is quite extensive, it hurt them financially.

A year later, their need had grown even worse, or maybe my friend's dedication made them change their mind. In any case, he was accepted and, after six months of training, became a driver on his own local tram line.

Six months later, he got bored and quit.

<comment><USER12> That made me laugh so much. I've known people like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Here's an online version of the Wonderlic test. There's a "start quiz" button at the very bottom.

[https://beatthewonderlic.com/take-a-free-wonderlic-test- onli...](https://beatthewonderlic.com/take-a-free-wonderlic-test-online/)

I was fairly surprised by it. I've tested well on standardized tests and IQ tests my entire life, so I assumed I would also test well here. Especially since I saw the test was also biased towards verbal understanding, which is my strong suit.

Not so! My score was fairly low. The questions, individually, are trivial, but I ran out of time fairly early on in the test. I think you'd have to be a quick reader and good at mental calculations to score highly on this test.

<comment><USER14> Ditto. I score 98+ percentile on SAT, GRE, etc., but only 50th percentile on this. Ran out of time on question 34 of 50.

I didn't take advantage of scratch paper and pencil, which would have helped. Or pay much attention to the timer. I'm sure I could get my score up, with some work, but not _that_ much.

<comment><USER15> Remember, those were recentered in 1995.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There is a more insidious reason why employers shun people with high IQs for blue collar jobs. High IQ people may become natural leaders and can start unions or organize workers against management in other ways. High IQ people may find ways management is screwing up or quietly breaking some law or regulation or lying to customers and may make a stink. So it is not only a wholesome desire to keep geniuses from getting bored.

Although I shouldn't badmouth those high IQ exclusionary policies. They saved me a lot of grief back when I was young and dumb. You see, once I actually ended up in a Navy recruitment office. Luckily I was not too dumb and "failed" the IQ test upwards.

<comment><USER17> > High IQ people may become natural leaders and can start unions or organize > workers against management in other ways.

Maybe you should take the dogma goggles off ? Public sector unions are pretty common without the "genius leaders" and from what I see police unions are often reported covering for the police officers caught in despicable wrongdoing and obstructing disciplinary measures - they are pretty much the worst example of a union you want to support, along with prison unions lobbying for more incarceration and so on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> During my ARMY service, my Sargent told me there are two types of people: hardworking and dumb, or smart and lazy. He said the ARMY wants its officers to be smart and lazy so they'll get the job done in the least amount of effort, but they want the grunts to be dumb and hard working so they won't question.

<comment><USER19> Sounds like a paraphrase of this classic adage:

> The German World War II general Erich von Manstein is said to have > categorized his officers into four types. The first type, he said, is lazy > and stupid. His advice was to leave them alone because they don't do any > harm. The second type is hard-working and clever. He said that they make > great officers because they ensure everything runs smoothly. The third group > is composed of hardworking idiots. Von Manstein claims that you must > immediately get rid of these, as they force everyone around them to perform > pointless tasks. The fourth category are officers who are lazy and clever. > These, he says, should be your generals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> First and foremost, I have a very high regard for the british coppa.

Right. Onwards. I don't know how coppers think. I appreciate they are engines of the law and officially can't pick and choose (though in fact they can and do, when they can, quite wisely IME). But I could not do a job where I believe arresting someone for something harmless like various drug-takings is causing more harm than not arresting them.

A bad law causes damage by being bad. I could not enforce that. Ergo I could not do that job.

I use drug taking as an example and of course it's not a simple situation, but another one which is perhaps even simpler is - going back quite a few years - institutionalised legal discrimination against gays.

This isn't about drugs or gays, but about enforcing bad laws against your own conscience. I don't accept the view that it's the law so it must be enforced. Until we get better laws this friction must exist. So how do brit cops deal with it? Any here to illuminate?

<comment><USER21> This is an article about the US. The British police forces do not to my knowledge discriminate based on a higher than average IQ.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> He should have been smart enough to get some questions wrong

</comment><comment><USER23> Is IQ even the right test to decide if someone would be good for a career in law enforcement?

<comment><USER24> Probably high EQ, superb communication skills, and indicators for independent thinking would be better.

<comment> barry-cotter EQ is bullshit.

> Some historical and scientific issues related to research on emotional > intelligence

> In the past decade, the concept of emotional intelligence (EI) has emerged > as a potential new construct for explaining behavioral variance not > accounted for by traditional measures of general academic intelligence or > personality. EI researchers credit E. L. Thorndike as the first to propose > such a construct when he suggested that social intelligence is independent > of abstract or academic intelligence. The current paper traces the > historical roots of social intelligence and the current scientific status of > emotional intelligence. It appears that emotional intelligence, as a concept > related to occupational success, exists outside the typical scientific > domain. Much of the data necessary for demonstrating the unique association > between EI and work‐related behavior appears to reside in proprietary > databases, preventing rigorous tests of the measurement devices or of their > unique predictive value. For those reasons, any claims for the value of EI > in the work setting cannot be made under the scientific mantle.

[https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/job.317](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/job.317)

<comment><USER25> >> Much of the data necessary for demonstrating the unique association between EI and work‐related behavior appears to reside in proprietary databases

Most of your claim rests on that. That's not saying it's BS, it's saying it's understudied.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The problem is not generally IQ. It's that police officers in the US are such a poorly-trained bunch while simultaneously being equipped with deadly force as a nearly default option. They do not get practice at what they would have to do if they didn't have the weapon, or if their weapon were ineffective at dealing with the problem.

Any new / uncertain situation is to be approached with the technique "pull trigger until thing in front of you falls on ground". Which produces the exactly the stupid result that you think it would. Combine it with the lack of experience (and _fear_ ) of most officers in any really serious situation = the first time ends up being their last.

If you look at police officers who are selected from soldiers who returned from Iraq/Afghanistan, where they've seen some real shit, they don't default to opening fire nearly so often as with suburban never-seen-anything officers. Funny how people who've been to war are _less_ twitchy than someone who's only sat in a car all day for the last year. [1,2,3]. Of course, there are opposing observations / opinions also [4].

Even in other countries, when officers are trained to finally shoot someone (and maybe never have to do it in the end), they do it in a targeted way, stop, see what happened, and decide whether another shot is needed to control the situation.

The problem is not IQ. It's practice.

[1] [https://bja.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh186/files/Publicatio...](https://bja.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh186/files/Publications/IACPEmployingReturningVets.pdf)

[2] [https://www.npr.org/2016/12/08/504718239/military-trained- po...](https://www.npr.org/2016/12/08/504718239/military-trained-police-may- be-slower-to-shoot-but-that-got-this-vet-fired)

[3] [https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2016/08/17/how-can- pol...](https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2016/08/17/how-can-police-do-a- better-job-of-recruiting-officers/military-vets-can-bring-much-needed- sensitivity-training-to-police-departments)

[4] [https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/01/asking-...](https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/01/asking- our-soldiers-to-do-police-work-why-it-can-lead-to-disaster/251380/)

</comment><comment><USER27> I always suspected police hiring in America targeted idiots, likely idiots with a penchant for violence. Now we have undeniable proof. I wonder where else such anti intellectualism is codified into law.

<comment><USER28> "New London police interviewed only candidates who scored 20 to 27", and "The average score nationally for police officers is 21 to 22, the equivalent of an IQ of 104, or just a little above average."

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Shouldnt the UN condemn what is going on in the US? Police ramming protesters, shooting people filming from their own property, and so on reminds a lot about HK protests. Rohynga, Uyghurs, Black Americans, Native Americans are tortured in these 3rd world countries and the UN does NOTHING.</comment>


Star Wars job goes to Toy Story 3 writer - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-20288810 <comment><AUTHOR> Such a fuss made about the acquisition by Disney of Lucas, is it relevant and/or appropriate to submit the news that the writer of Toy Story 3 will be the screen writer for the next Start Wars film?

I worry, I worry ...</comment>


Ask HN: What paid advertising do you do? - <AUTHOR>

I am very keen to hear what paid advertising people are using in their businesses and the level of success you get with them.<p>Also, do you use a company to help you with your advertising (eg. adwords optimization) or do you do it yourself. <comment><USER2> On a cost per lead basis, LinkedIn is by far the most valuable in my experience (b2b software sales), especially compared to display advertising or even Google Ad Words. Twitter Ads (specifically promoted tweets) were also a great source when it came to clicks.

Depending on your business model, some sort of display ad retargeting is also key (e.g retargeter).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I wondered how people were showing ads to me after I had visited their website.</comment></comment>


Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality aren't the same coin. XBox One is defeated - <AUTHOR> Virtual Reality is everywhere in the news.  People are really excited about it. Wallets are open.
Sony has gone hard on VR and it's likely there will be alot of people going with the PlayStation because that's where the VR is.
But where is Microsoft and the Xbox One?  Not only does Microsoft not have a virtual reality device, it has no strategy and no communication that indicates it will ever have VR.
And thus the PlayStation will streak ahead in the next few years. As things stand, in the battle between Xbox One and PlayStation, the Xbox One is defeated.  After all with no possibly for VR, why buy an Xbox?
"But Microsoft has Hololens!" you say.
VR and AR and not "either or". It was a mistake for Microsoft to treat them as two distinct alternatives upon which it should bet this way or that.
The conventional thinking is that there is a battle between VR and AR, and that consumers will choose one or the other.  That's wrong.  VR has already won the hearts and minds of consumers - you need only open the front page of any tech news site and count the number of references to VR to see.
It's possible that Hololens might be a success.  But that is an entirely seperate issue to whether or not Xbox One should have a VR strategy.  Current evidence of consumer interest means that people want VR.  They might also want AR in the form of Hololens, but that is yet to be determined.
Microsoft has a very short window in which to come out with strong support for VR.  Because right now, without a VR strategy the Xbox One has been defeated by PlayStation.
Google Trends: https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=virtual%20reality%2C%20augmented%20reality%2C%20hololens&date=today%2012-m <comment><USER2> Here's an article outlining why VR will fail again.

[http://www.wired.com/2016/01/oculus-rift- price/](http://www.wired.com/2016/01/oculus-rift-price/)

Here's an article on why Sony's will fail and MS is partnering with FB on Oculus.

[http://www.bidnessetc.com/52551-why-sony-corp-playstation- vr...](http://www.bidnessetc.com/52551-why-sony-corp-playstation-vr-is- destined-to-fail/)

Sounds to me like we're about 4-6 years out before VR/AR start to make sense from a hardware perspective.</comment>


How the U.S. military thinks about AI [audio] - <AUTHOR> https://changelog.com/practicalai/72 <comment><USER2> The substantive part of this conversation comes about 35 minutes in, when Allen describes the DoD's five AI ethics principles: that any deployed AI systems must be "Responsible, Equitable, Traceable, Reliable, and Governable." [1].

I think "Responsible" raises some hard questions. Today, any weapons use by a robot might require a responsible human operator to first (remotely) pull the trigger. But what if an adversary allows their robots to fire without waiting for human permission? The first side to do so would gain a critical advantage, and we cannot have an autonomy gap.

Some have raised conerns that in the extreme case, this could lead to a world of machines anonymously killing without attribution. If you haven't, see Stuart Russell's compelling short film "Slaughterbots" [2].

[1] [https://media.defense.gov/2019/Oct/31/2002204459/-1/-1/0/DIB...](https://media.defense.gov/2019/Oct/31/2002204459/-1/-1/0/DIB_AI_PRINCIPLES_SUPPORTING_DOCUMENT.PDF)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CO6M2HsoIA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CO6M2HsoIA)

<comment><USER3> Autonomous killing could be something that needs to be added to international laws of war. The USA already follows restrictions that could give it an advantage in war, but it doesn't because of international agreements. For example, our military has to wear uniforms during war, and we have to follow proportional force that restricts what weapons can be used in response to an attack. Countries largely follow the rules because nobody wants a free-for-all war with no rules.

<comment><USER4> How would autonomous killing be precisely defined? Whenever a machine is designed to kill without an affirmative command from a human operator? Would that include landminds? Maybe it should...

<comment><USER5> There are plenty of fire-and-forget weapons that will attack a _designated_ target autonomously. Some may even be totally automated, like CIWS, if you put them in some paranoid mode.

A landmine is indiscriminate, by that logic anything with a triggerable fuze is autonomous (even a snare trap would be). The difference would be if the landmine chose to explode based on some other factor.

Autonomy and intelligence are not the same thing.

<comment><USER6> Well landmines can discriminate by atleast weight and magnetism. I think they can also count the tracks and blow up later if they want to

<comment><USER7> The action is however caused by a human who mined the area, its just delayed, similar to how a grenade has a delay after the human activation, before it explodes. You can make the same distinction with an automatic gun or turret. You position it in an area in which you decide to kill anyone in it.

Autonomy gets truly dangerous because you dont need to create death zones and no mans land. They are not a less violent version of just bombing the area. They can run considerations and decide by themselves who to kill and with this, their usage outside of active front lines will be considered. And with that, the people deploying them give up the decision and delegate it to an algorithm or worse yet, a trained black box. Reality will be to have completely unaccountable killers bots flying over countries who cant defend themselves against foreign aggression.

This stuff has absolutely horrible potential and i find it prudent to shame and cut out anyone with a sufficient lack of a spine to work in this area. As unpopular as it is to consider the impact of the technology you are developing, it is taught for a reason in a CS degree. This work has the potential to screw over humanity for a while to come.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The sound design on this podcast is awful. Interesting podcast, but the music is way too loud and doesn't fade in or out at all. the mic of the host seems to occasionally tear as well.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I try to tell you guys about multi-million dollar opportunities to save lives available for the next 10 days and I can't keep it on the front page, even with dang's help (1). By comparison, I can't keep this softball podcast off the front page. Please, tell me you're more interested in saving lives than kibitzing.

(1) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22050285](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22050285)</comment>


Meteor Raises $20M to Build the One JavaScript Stack to Rule Them All - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/19/meteor-raises-20m-to-build-the-one-javascript-stack-to-rule-them-all/ <comment><USER2> Previously discussed here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9569799](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9569799)

</comment><comment><USER3> It seems like a lot of these real-time capabilties should be part of the database layer, _à la_ RethinkDB and its model of continuously pushing query results as they're updated.

This way, you're not locked into one JavaScript-based application development framework.

<comment><USER4> But you can't have clients directly connecting to the database, their sockets still need to flow through an application layer where you have your business / application logic. Unless you start putting application logic into the db?

<comment><USER5> Shouldn't business logic reside in DB inside stored procedures ?

<comment><USER6> Only if DB runs JS. ;)

<comment><USER7> [http://developer.marklogic.com/features/javascript](http://developer.marklogic.com/features/javascript)

(Full disclosure: I work at MarkLogic)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a bit tangential, but I really don't get the value of using the same language on the client and the server. The advantages I see would be:

1) You need to know / be comfortable with one language less

2) During development, you can easily move functions back and forth between the client code and the server code, progressively deciding what will be computed on the server and what will be computed on the client

3) You can generate, exchange, and execute code in real time between the client and the server

 _but_

1) I don't know any programmer who's both competent and monolinguistic.

3) is of course insane for security reasons

2) I used to think this would be a thing, but once you take the approach of making the client a GUI to an API, this doesn't tend to happen. It's generally very clear what's going to be server side and what's going to be client side.

<comment><USER9> agree on 1 and 3.

As for 2, I think it makes sense. You can pre-render your GUI on the server side, so that clients get served proper html rather than an empty pile of js, and then have the same codebase take over on the client side, single-page-app style, just talking to the backend to fetch data.

<comment><USER8> That sounds good, but it only means that you have to be able to execute the client code on the server. You locally (i.e. on the server) simulate a client connecting and doing some rendering, then send a continuation to the real (remote) client.

Also - does Meteor do anything remotely like this? I doubt it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If it's not going to be Free Software, who cares? I've seen so many people, projects, and companies burned by choosing a proprietary framework.

<comment><USER11> Uh, it's MIT licensed. That's about as free as it gets.

<comment><USER12> Except of course for, actually free. Like, unlicensed.

<comment><USER13> Correct me if I'm wrong but things are copyrighted by default, being the creator the owner of the copyright. Unlicensed == copyrighted and therefore not free(libre).

<comment><USER12> That can't be right - what's the point then of the copyright symbol and statement in every copyright work everywhere? In the US at least.

<comment><USER13> Go for instance to [http://www.gnu.org/](http://www.gnu.org/) in the footer you'll see that copyright symbol. "Copyright © 1996...2015 Free Software Foundation, Inc"

The symbol it's about being explicit about who owns the copyright. The owner of the copyright can then decide which license to use. Or not use any. But choosing not to license doesn't make you lose the copyright nor makes the creation free(libre).

<comment><USER12> The US govt thinks otherwise. They insist that only by registering a copyright can you protect your work in court. Any 'poor mans copyright' techniques are never useful in court.

<comment><USER11> That's not true. Registering the copyright allows you to sue over it (but you don't have to register immediately, just before you sue!). Also, registration prior to infringement allows recovery of statutory damages (e.g. big $$$).

But don't take my word for it, listen to the federal government:

"Copyright protection subsists from the time the work is created in fixed form. The copyright in the work of authorship immediately becomes the property of the author who created the work. ... The way in which copyright protection is secured is frequently misunderstood. No publication or registration or other action in the Copyright Office is required to secure copyright. See the following note. There are, however, certain definite advantages to registration. See Copyright Registration on page 7"

[http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ01.pdf](http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ01.pdf)

<comment><USER12>
        "Registered works may be eligible for statutory damages and attorney's fees in successful litigation. Finally, if registration occurs within five years of publication, it is considered prima facie evidence in a court of law"

[http://copyright.gov/help/faq/faq- general.html#automatic](http://copyright.gov/help/faq/faq- general.html#automatic)

<comment><USER11> That's what I said. None of that has anything to do with the _actual copyright status of a work_.

<comment><USER12> Hm. The fictitious 'actual status' might be less interesting than the actual legal standing, right? I'd follow my lawyer's advice on this one (register early).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have been hearing about Galaxy for around 2 years, looking forward to seeing it shipped and in users' hands.

</comment><comment><USER15> Why has this been re-posted?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9569799](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9569799)

<comment><USER16> Why you re-post the re-posted post below?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why is this back on here today?

<comment><USER18> Yes, I'm wondering that as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> if(Meteor.isServer)... uhm, no thanks.

<comment><USER20> No one would actually use this in production code. It is a useful convention for examples so that you can tell you are in server or client code. Occasionally it might be useful in a function that only has a slight deviation in behavior on the server, although usually you would wrap that difference in a function that is implemented separately in client or server only libraries.

In application code you would put all server-only code in the server directory and that code is excluded from the client code, same for client only code. In plugins, you specify which files are included in the client and server explicitly.

<comment><USER21> I've seen enough code to know that if it's in an example, it's in production.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The reality of javascript is different in browser and server (node/io).

While I find that meteor was fun to work with, we ultimately opted for plain- old express + backbone. I think it's abstraction is more of a disservice. It adds a lot of magic and unknowns to the picture.

After a few months, the initial value of having the unified codebase is exhausted, and you're left with the technical debt of having already adopted their libraries and conventions.

It's not really accurate to say that meteor allows you to use any library, you are adopting their conventions. In the end - using a single unified codebase in JS involves going against the grain in many aspects (I can elaborate if you like)

<comment><USER23> Please do elaborate. I'm in the middle of building of my first Meteor app and would love to hear your perspective about it.

<comment><USER24> He replied below</comment></comment></comment>


Why Your Kids Shouldn't Go to Harvard (even if they could get in) - <AUTHOR> http://www.martynemko.com/articles/why-your-kids-shouldnt-go-harvard-even-if-they-could-get-in_id1247

<comment><USER2> I agree with this for the not-quite-Ivy schools where financial aid is largely non-existent, but given the incredible financial aid programs at many Ivy League schools I don't think this advice is well thought-out. If you are middle class, say earning $80k per year, I doubt you will pay more than ~$8k a year for your child to go to Harvard. The article does not address this, and explicitly says you should not consider these if you learn less than $40k (yet you pay nothing at Harvard if you earn less than $60k, I believe).

</comment><comment><USER3> Hopefully others pick up on this fact, but this article must have been written circa-2000. The Canadian dollar hasn't been as low as .69 (mentioned in article) since at least late-2003, as far back as yahoo/google finance go. The latest references are 1999.

I'm also going to disagree with what the author says. I go to an ivy-league school, and there are two things that make all the difference: the caliber of students, and the atmosphere of hard work. Of course there are smart people at every school, as Author writes in describing Honors programs. But the concentration is just incredibly high at Ivys. Any random person you run into or work with is most likely brilliant in some way or other.

Atmosphere of hard work - Being surrounded by many high-achievers, you just can't help but push yourself to work harder, achieve more, etc. As long as you're in touch with yourself to avoid burnout, I love this atmosphere because it pushes me to accomplish more than I would were I surrounded by a bunch of people who just want to drink all day every day (of course there are those students, but they're in the minority.)

That's not to say an Ivy is always worth it. Rather, I think you can't make a blanket statement about whether it's appropriate or not. For some it will be, for some it won't be.

</comment><comment><USER4> There is no date on this post. Best I can figure it was around 1999 (he mentions 1 USD = 0.69 USD, and his latest reference is a study about graduation rates from 1999).

He concludes that UCLA is a great deal on education at state school prices. This may have been true in 1999 (that's the year I started at UCLA), but I would definitely check the numbers before sending children to the UC system these days. They have hiked the price multiple times in the last 14 years, and it's starting to graze the price level of expensive private schools.

</comment><comment><USER5> I agree with his premise of finding many good educational options (many better than Harvard) at schools that are less expensive.

It also made me think that may be that those that would benefit the most from going to Harvard are those who can't get in :-)

It seems to me, much more than a good education, what Harvard offers is the possibility of very good connections. That can be extremely valuable even though is isn't about the quality of education at Harvard.</comment>


Mozilla VPN Goes Live ... But Not for Linux Users - <AUTHOR> https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2020/07/mozilla-vpn-goes-live-but-linux-users-arent-invited-yet <comment><USER2> Wireguard has inherent privacy problems compared to other VPN solution. Does Mozilla address this problem? Because the standard implementation is not anonymous.

It is fast with some disadvantages...

<comment><USER3> > Wireguard has inherent privacy problems compared to other VPN solution

What privacy problems does Wireguard have, compared to other VPNs like OpenVPN or IPSEC ?

<comment><USER2> The server needs to store the IP of the user for extended periods of time to offer the speed benefit. Some providers have workarounds though and of course they could still log access with openvpn too.</comment></comment></comment>


During its next flight, SpaceX wants to try returning booster to land - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/12/during-its-next-flight-spacex-wants-to-try-returning-booster-to-land/ <comment><USER2> They've been wanting to do this for a while--it is not a reaction to Blue Origin's recent landing, which is something that might come to mind seeing an article like this so soon after that landing.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> They've been hitting the barge, I'm guessing landing on something stationary should present _less_ of a challenge ?</comment>


Open for everyone - <AUTHOR> http://blog.svbtle.com/open-for-everyone <comment><USER2> Dustin is a little too late on this one. Medium came along and scooped up whatever chance Svbtle had of becoming accepted by the masses. It should have been open from the start, Dustin's elitist attitude got in the way and I think it's only a matter of time before Svbtle dies.

<comment><USER3> If you pick software based on your opinion of the attitude of the authors, rather than its actual qualities, you're going to make a lot of mistakes.

Do you have any opinion about Svbtle itself, incidentally? Have you tried using it? What do you feel are its advantages and disadvantages compared to Medium?

<comment><USER2> I would like to clarify my comment as some people has misinterpreted what I actually meant. I think Svbtle is great, but at the same time, how is it any different to that of other blog platforms that tout themselves as having a clean interface for writing content? We have Medium, Ghost, Tumblr and even Quora. The competitive edge that Svbtle had was its exclusivity, an edge they've now lost by opening it up.

I wasn't attacking Dustin Curtis, I don't know him, I know of him and I have no problem with him whatsoever. I think people are too quick when it comes to interpreting the intent of someone else's words. But that's understandable as gauging intent of words without the voice can be very difficult and easy to misinterpret, especially on the Internet and a site like Hacker News.

What I meant by elitist was a blogging platform that only allowed people that Dustin or whoever else hand-picked and determined were good enough to be allowed to use and publish on the Svbtle platform is in my opinion quite an elitist thing to do. "I think you're good enough to use my website" it's like a tech company like Apple choosing who gets to use their products and who doesn't based on how they look or where they live.

At the same time, it's Dustin's right to choose who uses Svbtle, it was a unique take on blogging when it made its debut and its his darling. I won't judge him for it, but I standby my choice of words calling his approach an elitist attitude. That's just my opinion, don't hate on me for it.

I haven't used Svbtle long enough to form a substantial opinion as I already use Medium and am active on Quora, but what I've seen is quite nice. The interface is great, I've always been a fan of the overall aesthetic of the site from day one. I've got nothing bad to say about it. It's just another blogging platform to me, a well-built one.

However, I don't think Svbtle has any competitive edge left to compete with other established players in the competitive blogging platform niche. It's an overdone thing, even Ghost has failed to live up to its own hype as a blogging platform because people are used to the likes of Wordpress and don't want to use something new and unknown. Perhaps if Svbtle were to open source itself like Wordpress they might be able to compete in the space.

I believe my comment was mostly fair, I am sorry if I offended anyone, but honesty is the best policy. If I called Dustin Curtis a fat elitist slob then maybe all of the disdain in the comments beneath me would be warranted.

<comment><USER4> > Dustin's elitist attitude

> I wasn't attacking Dustin Curtis, I don't know him, I know of him and I have > no problem with him whatsoever

Not sure how this could be interpreted in any other way whatsoever. Your other points are very fair.

<comment><USER5> Elitism doesn't need to carry any sort of value judgment. You don't allow homeless people in your house, do you? That makes you elitist for a slightly broader definition -- you share the company of employed/housed people only. What else do you call a policy of only allowing hand-chosen authors to use a platform you've publicly touted? Selective, I suppose.

There's also the matter of Dustin Curtis' negative reaction to the creation of WP themes and other Svbtle lookalikes, which many people felt was undue/misplaced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _Open for everyone_

My first question is: "who is this for?"

The interface, and experience look great. But who needs this? Who is pulling out their hair looking for a new hosted publishing platform that they don't control?

Maybe this is a "hair-on-fire" (Patio11) problem for some folks - but I couldn't tell from the blog post.

I think this is a mistake a lot of us make when we're marketing, writing about our products: we go through the features, but don't identify who the product is _for_.

<comment><USER7> It's for the intersection of people a) who want a blog and b) who want a website with a good design.

Medium beat Svbtle to the punch, though.

<comment><USER8> Medium wants you to have a Twitter account.

<comment><USER9> Wouldn't most modern writers have a Twitter account anyway? If you're publishing your piece online wouldn't you want everyone to see it?

<comment><USER8> If you already have an audience, maybe, but if you don't, then it's just an avoidable restriction.

<comment><USER10> > _an avoidable restriction_ //

How does having an account restrict you, in the context of being a writer wishing to publicise your work?

<comment><USER11> It restricts Medium to people with Twitter accounts. Contrary to popular belief, not everyone has one.

<comment><USER12> You can get them for free, using a throwaway email and fake identity if wanted. Why is it preferable to get a Medium account?

<comment><USER11> Because you'd have to deal with one less party (trust, security, reliability, support).

If you aren't already a Twitter user, it's simpler to have the option of making a Medium account.

<comment><USER13> If given the choice between two options, ceteris paribus, I'd choose the one without the Twitter account restriction as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Oh thank god! Before this, I had nowhere to post all my brilliant thoughts except medium, blogger, wordpress, posthaven, quora, facebook, google+, livejournal and myspace.

<comment><USER15> Don't forget Obtvse! [0]

[0] [https://github.com/natew/obtvse2](https://github.com/natew/obtvse2)

<comment><USER16> So 'acvte' is still up for grabs?

Also, did you really just index your citations by zero? :)

<comment><USER17> Can't resist to add this: "Should array indices start at 0 or 1? My compromise of 0.5 was rejected without, I thought, proper consideration." — Stan Kelly- Bootle

<comment><USER16> Relevant: [http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/EWD831....](http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/EWD831.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _Svbtle's dashboard is designed to work the same way your brain works. It encourages you to dump ideas, links, and thoughts into a flow of draft posts, and then makes it easy to slowly sculpt those ideas into publishable articles. It just feels natural._

This isn't the type of marketing copy that makes me want to use the product, and in-fact drives me away from it. Contrast with Medium's more neutral, objective copy: [https://medium.com/p/8d615d86ac04](https://medium.com/p/8d615d86ac04)

<comment><USER18> Why does the copy drive you away from it? Serious question since I didn't think one way or the other about it.

<comment><USER19> I don't feel it as strongly as minimaxir apparently does, but the copy bugged me in the way a lot of products focused on the Apple core audience do. It's impressed with itself and encourages you to be impressed with yourself as well.

Personally, I prefer a more matter-of-fact approach. The less bullshit I get in a marketing pitch, the less I worry that they need to bullshit me to cover up for issues I haven't yet discovered. But then, I'm not in Svbtle's target market; I'm very unlikely to use a hosted platform to publish.

<comment><USER20> _...the copy bugged me in the way a lot of products focused on the Apple core audience do. It 's impressed with itself..._

Definitely! Having just got back from watching the X Games, the comparison that springs to mind is that this sort of thing bugs me the way any opinion column published in any Aspen CO newspaper bugs me. "When I think about how perceptive and fortunate I am to have chosen to live in such a wonderful community..."

<comment> hippee-lee Maybe it's a Colorado thing? It reminds me of the same coffee shop conversation I used to overhear: 'I just love living in Boulder, it's so diverse.' Said by white person to other white person on a day I went only saw white people on the way to the office with all white people before I went home to a largely white community.

I'm sure they were great people and I loved my neighborhood in the suburbs but it and Boulder were anything but diverse from an ethic or cultural point of view.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The level of dismissiveness I'm seeing in the comments here is really discouraging, and I'm disappointed to be a part of this community. In a community of startup founders fostering new ideas, I haven't seen such close- mindedness. I appreciate what dcurtis is trying to do, doesn't matter if I agree with it or not.

The kudos concept is different, the fact that people are writing him emails and tweets about decrementing their counts for a meaningless number is petty.

The "Elitism" invite-only being such an issue is silly. HN and reddit started with small groups of people that weren't connected to a larger social sphere, so they slowly grew organically with the content they wanted. Google does invite-only for their projects (Gmail, G+, etc) as a way to both fix issues early with minimal user impact and to scale properly. Medium did the same thing. To say the dcurtis should've made it open for everyone at the beginning is disingenuous. Curating a small community and taking feedback from them, along with having readers connected to a larger social sphere (HN) means it can grow slowly while focusing on its core users, especially as a side project.

Appreciate what others are doing, even if you don't agree with it. Don't follow the herd. Just because Medium opened its gates doesn't mean they're the end-all be-all of blogging. I made a svbtle account because I want to see how they evolve and capture what Medium is missing.

<comment><USER22> It's conscientiousness, not close-mindedness.

If you find petty that people complain about non-intended kudos, by the same logic you should also find petty to have introduced such a pointless anti- pattern in the first place.

Besides, kudos are not that different from karma points or likes. Knowingly adulterating such a crucial signaling component of an online community is short-sighted and needlessly detrimental.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I did not mean to give you a Kudo. I don't care for that button interface. Unless I can undo it, then I like it.

<comment><USER24> It's interesting how much such an utterly irrelevant thing annoys me. There's really no reason why accidentally making a number increase by one should matter, but I suppose it's the fact that the site is falsely representing it as a deliberate action by me.

<comment><USER25> There isn't "really no reason" why it's annoying; it's exactly as you said: the site is falsely representing your upvote as a deliberate action. And your action changes a number, labeled "kudos", seen by all future visitors to the page, so your action ends up implying endorsement of the page to future visitors. That's why the kudos feature annoys me – it falsely represents the page to be popular, but rather than just completely making up a number of kudos like a normal liar, it ties the number of kudos to the actions of unwitting page visitors. That gives the author plausible deniability that it's _possible_ that that many people really did like the page, though in fact that is very unlikely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> "Open" for use but not for inspection / modification / sharing… It's like all sorts of SaaS: it's a lock-in, a jail, that is open for you to enter. Ok, that's a bit harsh. But still, we've got lots of good tools like this, we don't need another proprietary thing. It looks nice though, would be useful if it were fully FLOSS.

<comment><USER27> Don't blame svbtle. It's the monetization strategy of the Internet, and has been for 20 years.

<comment><USER28> I can and do blame them for (apparently) not having an export function.

<comment><USER29> They do offer a way of exporting, and in a standard format: an Atom feed. Any blog engine worth its salt should allow you to import them.

<comment><USER28> Not quite the same.

The atom feed will represent the compiled and rendered end content. If I have, say, source code snippets, that leaves me in a position of needing to parse out the original code so I can redo it in whatever new highlighting syntax my new blog uses. I might end up with resized images instead of originals, etc etc etc. It's not a real substitute for a proper backend export.

This is why I'm such a huge fan of Octopress and nothing has been able to pull me away from it. Everything's in a git repo. Backups are one command. All my original text is safe in Markdown format.

It might not look as cool as Medium or Svbtle, or have all the features, but it's relatively easy to use, and more importantly immune to platform lock-in.

<comment><USER29> Fair enough. I actually use a static blog generator myself (Pelican[1]), but I write so rarely that I hadn't considered those issues.

[1] [http://blog.getpelican.com/](http://blog.getpelican.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> What about this should compel me to give all my content to someone else? I understand the argument that they're entering in to a crowded space, and I see how they believe that they're the best.

But really, I'm just going to put all my stuff on someone else's servers and wait for them to be acquired and shut down? It is 2014 after all. How many times has this happened?

<comment><USER31> The custom domain is probably the best escape hatch, and an advantage over Medium – ultimately you keep ownership of the pointer that is your brand, and that lets you really move your content (even if there is no export yet).

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Anybody else get invited a few weeks back and now feel the pang of no longer being in an exclusive club? I need a hug.

Aside: I think this is a great blogging platform that turns quite a few people away because of Dustin's bravado.

<comment><USER7> In my case, the "exclusive club" of "thought leaders" itself turned me away from Svbtle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I hate blogs without dates. A good blog article is dated properly when it was created and revised. If you want to promote a _new_ blog platform, better date your blogs properly.

<comment><USER34> I emailed Dustin about providing more emphasis on dates just yesterday and this was the response I got.

> We want to encourage people to write stuff that has lasting impact. I think > dates can just add an extra piece of messy context for some articles. What > kind of increased emphasis do you want to see?

The more I though about it, the more I realized my desire to see dates is because that is what I know. In retrospect, the best writings I've read didn't need date information to make them impactful and I admire Svbtle more for standing out this way.

<comment><USER33> I completely disagree with this point of view. I often feel that many blog articles intentionally leave out dates because they want to feel "fresh" or they pretend that they came up with some great ideas first or they want the convenience/unaccountability of fixing mistakes in previous revisions. And that is a cheating. If your ideas are fresh and timeless, they will speak for themselves.

Further, even if you constantly have amazing ideas, not all of your blogs are timeless.

Dating is not a messy context. Dates add to journalistic integrity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> If svbtle isn't quite right for you, check out Silvrback: [https://www.silvrback.com/](https://www.silvrback.com/)

It's similar to svbtle in its simplicity.

<comment><USER36> Pretty happy Silvrback user here, but I do kind of miss the "quick idea" interface from svbtle (wp version in my case).

How well has Silvrback held up under heavy load?

<comment><USER35> Silvrback performs well under stress. It's setup to autoscale when a traffic surge is detected so the platform can easily handle articles making the front page of HN. Unicorn and memcached also really help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Honestly, when Svbtle first came out, I thought it was really cool and I wanted to use it.

Now I use Medium and I have no interest in it — and most people I know (who blog) do the same these days.

<comment><USER34> I have been using svtble for a few months now and when asked by a friend how it is different from Medium, I created an account on Medium to see for myself. I personally prefer svbtle's dashboard as I feel it's much smoother than Medium with the flow of: idea > draft > published. Svbtle is also less focused on images and commenting. These small details are preferable to me but to each his own.

<comment><USER38> When I checked out Medium, they had no Markdown support and very limited formatting options. Not good for code examples. Also no option to use your own domain.

Also I think that the copyright is (better) protected on Svbtle. All in all it seems like a better option to me.

<comment><USER37> _> Also I think that the copyright is (better) protected on Svbtle._

Why?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Instead of svbtle, they should have named it pretentiovs.

</comment><comment><USER40> Wasn't part of svbtle's appeal being one of the few people to "have a svbtle"? When it first came out - it was beautiful & part of the cache was that only a few people got in.

It was super popular for a few months - then fell off completely. Seems strange that the one main differentiator for the network has now been removed.

<comment><USER41> "catch" or "cachet"

<comment><USER40> Sorry - caché

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Am I the only one annoyed by the spelling of the site? I can't figure out if it is a misspelled "subtle" or Silicon Valley Beetle or something... How is it pronounced?

<comment><USER43> In Latin they wrote V for what we today would pronounce U.

During the American Renaissance, architects used the old latin alphabet, which had no U. That's why you see things like PVBLIC LIBRARY in old cities. Eg: [http://i.imgur.com/p4RS9My.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/p4RS9My.jpg)

So, "Svbtle" is "Subtle" and "Bvlgari" is "Bulgari" etc.

U and V have a long complicated history. If you'd like to learn more: [http://medievalwriting.50megs.com/scripts/letters/historyuv....](http://medievalwriting.50megs.com/scripts/letters/historyuv.htm)

<comment><USER42> Ah, that makes much more sense... especially considering the site. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I got "invited" to svbtle a year and a half ago, and I have ever since used and quit it. I hated (and still do) the fact that somebody else had absolute control over what my blog looked like, and what changes I made.

Nothing so intriguing about it, really.

Edit: Also, the sign up page itself has a confusing user interface.

</comment><comment><USER45> This would have been more welcome if there wasn't such jerkishness by Dustin at the launch/shortly after the launch of svbtle.

</comment><comment><USER46> I always thought the quality of the article was more important than the quality of the blogging engine.

<comment><USER47> It is. That's why dcurtis kept it so exclusive for so long. Svbtle now has a reputation for quality and can offer you the halo effect (for the time being). Surprised he isn't charging anything for it though. Quality will surely go down and dilute the reputation of just being on Svbtle.

</comment></comment><comment> vertex-four I figure everyone's gone over Svtble's theme before, but... it's absolutely horrible. Grey (#4d4d4d) on bright white is painful to read.

</comment><comment><USER48> Sorry mate, don't care anymore! Cheers for thinking about us small people now.

</comment><comment><USER49> So was the elitism just clever marketing?

<comment><USER50> Not _that_ clever... svbtle is an anti-brand now, like Upworthy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> After reading this post I completely understand the value in svtble. The key here is a super easy interface to thought dump, and an easy way to turn the thought dump into a published blog post. I have tons of these in my notes/sms/facebook etc, but they never get shared publicly because there's no natural transition / lack of time to thoroughly research. I'd encourage you to push an iPhone app soon, and it needs to open up and get me typing instantly like iOS notes

</comment><comment><USER52> I thought you were already open for everyone?

Oops.. I was using wp-svbtle all this time. Ah well, same thing to me :)

<comment><USER4> You take pride in stolen design? That's strange.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Over the weekend, I worked on a Chrome extension (Youtube.md: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/youtubemd/akjklake...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/youtubemd/akjklakeodbdkmcligjlmaoihkfinegl)) that lets you embed Youtube video image easily in markdown format. The allows you to generate markdown code for Youtube video image and links it to Youtube video, when Youtube video URL is given. Note that this will not actually embed the video. Instead it will display an image from the video.

I know Svbtle supports embedding Youtube videos, but I thought this would be a good thread to mention this extension in case some people use some other system.

</comment><comment><USER54> I like the functionality, I'm ambiguous about the design, there where a few times where I had to stop and really think about the UI to figure out where I needed to go or what I wanted to get back to.

I also (and this is purely a personal thing) find that much whitespace like staring into a lamp I suspect I'd be using something like stylish in short order (might be nice to have something like a night mode, readability does this really well see here.. [http://i.imgur.com/dTMrqId.png](http://i.imgur.com/dTMrqId.png) )

That it handles zooming really all the way up to an insane level is great (I'm 34 this year and my eyes are crap..) and it looks _really_ nice on my old Nexus 7 1st gen.

Kudos :)

</comment><comment><USER55> _the core of what writing is really about–sharing ideas, naturally_

This sentence might not be true. Writing is partly about sharing ideas and partly about discovering them. In an essay at least, most of the ideas reveal themselves after you start writing. And half of those you start with turn out to be wrong. So you want to keep writing until you bump onto the right ones. It's figuring out the truth you're after. Sharing something untrue isn't as valuable.

If you had a writing tool good at getting you to share and one good at getting you to write, the latter could be a better tool.

That's not to say Svbtle does a bad job at getting you to write. But the distinction is important enough for any writing tool to consider.

</comment><comment><USER56> Knew the writing was on the wall since I got an invite a couple of weeks ago :P

</comment><comment><USER57> One thing that's bothering me about the svbtle interface is the crazy contrast. Especially all of the white on the background, when I'm thinking I prefer lots less noise in my environment.

In svbtle, there is a lot of really bright and really dark areas, and I find this to be very distracting and annoying. Ideally for me, the whole website would be a lot darker and the text and boxes would be just bright enough to be visible, not full white but a more tame grey.

</comment><comment><USER58> Svbtle's great for some people and Medium's better in some ways. It's like comparing Blogger with WordPress. The future is in content-centricity and interface-simplicity. Let's appreciate these guys for leading the frontier.

PS: This one is more in tune with how the brain works. Pretty radical idea for a writing interface. [https://vimeo.com/66995098](https://vimeo.com/66995098)

</comment><comment><USER59> The best thing I did in my life was to move out of these kind of blogging services. I preffer the freedom of my hosting machine, and the beauty of Octopress.

</comment><comment><USER60> I was a bit shocked that I got invited to Svbtle back in September of last year after not being 'worthy' of being in the early limited exclusive access. ;-)

[http://callthejury.com/so-many-blogs-so-little- impact](http://callthejury.com/so-many-blogs-so-little-impact)

TLDR: If I was invited to Svbtle then it isn't a good sign.

</comment><comment><USER61> I miss Posterous. R.I.P.

<comment><USER62> I am not much aware about posterous, how different was it as compared to posthaven ?

<comment><USER61> Well it was free, but the killer feature for me was media handeling.. it would take just about anything you threw at it and form it into a blog post. Sound file? It would upload to soundcloud and drop the player right in your page. Video etc.

You could email everything too, so a zip file full of images and a quick paragraph in email would get formatted as a nice blog post with photo gallery.

Everything (mostly) just worked and was awesome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Honest question: How does svbtle make money?

</comment><comment><USER63> Really kind of frustrated with this.

Svbtle used to self-identify your work as selected to some extent. Now, what's the differentiator between your work and everything else?

Don't say "content" please. That's obvious. But a link was more dependable to me if it was from Svbtle. Not anymore.

</comment><comment><USER64> Too late. Go get a medium.com account or install your own Jekyll/Pelican/Ghost in 5 mins.

</comment><comment><USER65> I am a little bit out of touch regarding the who's who in the web publishing business but this reminds me of Six Apart. Are the svbtle guys planning to release their Typepad code in the future for anyone wishing to install it on their own servers ?

</comment><comment><USER66> Markdown only? That's not "getting out of the way", it's limiting the ways of expression. Getting out of the way is providing simple defaults, why not depraving those who need more tools (HTML/CSS) of richer features.

<comment><USER67> HTML is part of the "specification" of Markdown. And you really want to "spice up" your markup with CSS? I'd rather spent the time on content.

<comment><USER66> I'd say you might want to spice up HTML with CSS if you want to achieve anything like font styling, positioning and so on. Spending time on content doesn't substitute spending time on presenting it the way you want. Blogger for example allows doing all that.

A very simple and practical example where Markdown offers no help: how can you change rtl and ltr directions of the text without CSS?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Just trying this out now. So far I quite like they way they make it super easy to stub out ideas for blog posts. I just stubbed out 15 post I want to write and can now go back in and finish them when I have time.

</comment><comment><USER69> So, what should I use as my blogging platform? I mean, right now I'm using a platform that uses Dropbox and I fear it might go away anytime soon.

There are a lot of options right now... Any ideas or suggestions?

</comment><comment><USER70> I'm starting to think people like saying stuff far more than listening. Maybe we should stop encouraging products/software that promotes that attitude?

</comment><comment><USER71> The signup UI is the worst: [http://imgur.com/fD224S2](http://imgur.com/fD224S2)

</comment><comment><USER72> Can you earn add revenue from your content?

</comment><comment><USER73> I would use Medium, except that requires various nefarious looking permissions about my twitter account.

</comment><comment><USER16> Is the platform open source?

</comment><comment> o0-0o Do they still hold your post for around a month before it's published?

</comment><comment><USER74> My only question - how did this reach #1 on hackernews? Bribed someone? :)

</comment><comment><USER75> What would be the advantages of using this over static site generators?

<comment><USER76> The UX isn't an utterly terrible developer workflow?

I write code all day. Git is awesome, and you can pry Vim from my cold dead hands. But Jekyll is fiddly and doesn't really match my preferred writing workflow.

Ghost workflow: Visit URL, mash password manager (occasionally), click "new post" and start writing. Change the title whenever I feel like it. A live preview of the post appears on the left, and I click publish when I'm done. Click a little button in the UI to view the finished post on my site.

Jekyll workflow: Open a terminal. Create a new file named with the current date and the post stub. Half the time I don't know what either of those are off the top of my head. Open Vim. Type out the post metadata block. Inevitably get something wrong. Type post. Tab to the terminal and start Jekyll's server. Navigate to local server URL in browser. Alt tab back and forth between browser and editor, hitting F5 every time I want a new preview. Rename file with new stub (optional). Git add, commit, and push. Navigate to my public site in browser to make sure everything came out OK. Mash F5 a few times because Github Sites hasn't compiled it yet. Delete the "We compiled your site!" email from my inbox.

Note that Ghost requires much less prep; the majority of my time in Ghost is just editing my post's text. Jekyll has a larger lead in time to editing, and while editing I have to switch back and forth between my editor and the browser for a preview. Jekyll requires more effort doing busywork that isn't writing. I found my output dropped way off after I switched from Wordpress because the barrier to starting a post was higher.

<comment><USER77> If you host your jekyll blog on github, then creating a new blog post is as simple as logging into github and going straight to your blog repo. You can create a new file and edit straight from there. The blog is rebuilt on each commit.

<comment><USER76> Oh, nice. iirc, I tried it when online editing first appeared on Github, and it was a bit finicky about rebuilding the page afterwards. Good to hear it works now.

I used prose.io for a while, but ran into a few cases where the preview didn't match what Github generated. It looks like there's a whole new interface since the last time I used Prose, so perhaps that's not an issue anymore. It supports image uploads now, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> What, another signup form to fill out? Give me a break..

</comment><comment><USER79> You can follow this discussion using the new HN Search: [http://hn.algolia.com/follow/7138444](http://hn.algolia.com/follow/7138444)

</comment><comment><USER80> The form field design is crazy distracting!

</comment><comment><USER81> Hey, this is fantastic. Kudos</comment>


The Lonely Story of MongoDB versus the World - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/mongodb-world-2017-lonely-story-versus-john-de-goes <comment><USER2> what's the alternative?

<comment><AUTHOR> Almost every relational/SQL database supports JSON natively by now. In case of PostgreSQL you can even choose between raw data dumping JSON with slow lookup or parsed JSONB with fast lookup, see

[https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/datatype- json...](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/datatype-json.html)

From there you can extract data into relational tables and dig into 40+ years of SQL knowledge/tools for complex cross table analysing/manipulating/exporting/etc. If you don't need this, fine. Nobody forces you. There are some cases like Let's Encrypt where a dumb, fast schema- less datastore makes sense.</comment></comment>


How wet-suit pioneer Jack O'Neill shaped surfing culture - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/travel/article/How-wet-suit-pioneer-Jack-O-Neill-shaped-6431340.php

<comment><USER2> Interesting, both this article and entry on Wikipedia say he invented the wetsuit, though the body glove article says they invented it too. (Using the word "practical".)</comment>


Ask HN: IDE that provides text formatting - <AUTHOR> This is kind of a weird use case for an IDE, but does anyone know of a good IDE (or editor) for taking notes? All my files will be text files, and I want the ability to format text (e.g. change font size, underline or emphasize text, etc.), but would like to use an IDE or code editor because they provide really useful features (like hotkeys for searching through files or searching file names, which is really important to me for quick navigation). Any ideas or suggestions? The current hack I use is using more text to add visual emphasis (like a row of "=" to delineate sections in my notes). <comment><USER2> How about Eclipse with a Markdown plugin, or - if you do a lot of math heavy stuff - a TeX plugin[1]?

I use the latter for taking notes in Eclipse and it works pretty well for my purposes, although that does imply the overhead of learning TeX if you don't already know it.

[1]: [http://texlipse.sourceforge.net/](http://texlipse.sourceforge.net/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm a pretty satisfied boostnote ([https://boostnote.io/](https://boostnote.io/)) user. Has the added benefit of being free and open source.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is there any documentation on how to use it?

<comment><USER3> Markdown cheat sheet: [https://github.com/TobseF/boostnote-markdown- cheatsheet/blob...](https://github.com/TobseF/boostnote-markdown- cheatsheet/blob/master/README.md)</comment></comment></comment>


WARNING These VPNs might be leaking your email messages - <AUTHOR> https://vpnpro.com/blog/these-vpns-might-be-leaking-your-email-messages/ <comment><USER2> I seem some unreliable VPNs here and I'm not even shocked about this. People use VPNs for a reason and want them to be reliable and trustworthy, they don't want their emails and details to be scraped. Also, Google, the most unreliable and unsafe email provider ever</comment>


SpaceX Launches Capsule on Historic Space Station Trip - <AUTHOR> http://www.space.com/15805-spacex-private-capsule-launches-space-station.html <comment><USER2> I watched this live with my daughters. The fact that they wanted to wake up in the middle of the night to watch a rocket launch...priceless.

<comment><USER3> I watched it with mine, granted, she's only 7 months old so didn't have much say in the matter (it was a reasonable 8:44am here).

Was good to finally be able to put some context to the "Zoom zoom zoom, we're going to the Moon" song that I always sing her :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Please don't link to space.com. It's an ugly site that messes with the Back button so you can't get out.

Alternative: <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18154937>

</comment><comment><USER5> From _pusher robot_ on Ars Technica [http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/05/spacex-dragon- takes-f...](http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/05/spacex-dragon-takes- flight/?comments=1&post=22880359#comment-22880359)

      Space-bound and down, loaded up and trucking
      We gonna do what they say can't be done
      We've got a long way to go, and a short time to get there
      I'm space-bound, just watch ol' Falcon run!

      Keep your eyes fixed on the guages, son
      and never mind them shakes
      Let it all hang out, 'cause we got a run to make!
      Folks are hungry on the station and our hold is full of rations
      And we'll get 'em up, no matter what it takes!

      Space-bound and down, loaded up and trucking
      We gonna do what they say can't be done
      We've got a long way to go, and a short time to get there
      I'm space-bound, just watch ol' Falcon run!

      U.L.A. will try to ground us
      That crusty old cartel
      And they won't stop 'till we bid them farewell
      So you got to build 'em, you got to try 'em
      You got to keep those rockets flyin'
      Just set that throttle wide and give it hell!

      Space-bound and down, loaded up and trucking
      We gonna do what they say can't be done
      We've got a long way to go, and a short time to get there
      I'm space-bound, just watch ol' Falcon run!
      I'm space-bound, just watch ol' Falcon run!

</comment><comment><USER6> Why are these rocket launches always at night? Any particular reason for this?

<comment><USER4> Rocket launch time is largely determined by the eventual orbit: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_window>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Anyone know what the cost of this launch was vs the Soyuz/Progress?

<comment><USER8> $54M, well if they had charged someone for it they would have charged them $54M for the launch according to their price schedule [1].

I don't believe the Soviets publish prices and sadly NASA does not separate the cost of resupply from the crew replacement missions. [2]

[1] <http://www.spacex.com/falcon9.php>

[2] [http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2007/apr/HQ_C07-18_Roscosmos...](http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2007/apr/HQ_C07-18_Roscosmos.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> AWESOME!!!</comment>


Moonstruck: How moon phases affect life on Earth - <AUTHOR> http://aeon.co/magazine/science/how-moon-phases-affect-life-on-earth/ <comment><USER2> If you're curious what part of the lunar cycle you're seeing, when you see a crescent moon, there's a trick French schoolchildren learn -- a moon like the curve of a "p" is in the "première" (first)/growing/waxing phase.

A moon like the curve in a "d" is on the "dernière" (last)/shrinking/waning phase.

Personally, I somehow spent the first few decades of my life assuming that a crescent moon always curved the same way; though if I'd ever paid attention to the actual moon it would have easily shown that was nonsense. :/</comment>


EggCartel is a hyper-local Craigslist - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/28/eggcartel-eggdrop/

<comment><USER2> This is silly -- mobile furniture or computing hardware sales? Are there really people that can't be arsed to sit down on craigslist and browse their city for a new chair, but instead randomly buy one while walking about the financial district? Is there some use for this I can't see?

<comment><USER3> Suppose you live in New York City, you don't have a car and you want a new chair. It is difficult to go get a chair that is very far away, and if it less than, say, a mile a way and not a huge chair, you could carry it home. But when I open up Craig's List, I see chairs from around the city, and have to try hard to find one close to me. This makes it a lot easier.

<comment><USER2> You clearly don't live in nyc.

NYC craigslist is covered w/ $20 - $50 guys w/ trucks who show up and move furniture / whatever for the agreed upon price. And there's always cabs. Seriously, it's not a big deal.

<comment><USER4> i don't know if i agree with this. I see your point, and it's valid. However, living in NYC I became accustomed to getting anything I wanted within a 5 block radius. Or at least, if you can get it within a 5 block radius, the convenience factor is so so much greater than going crosstown or something and/or hiring a mover.</comment></comment></comment></comment>