Apple's bid to stay in the big time (1983) - <AUTHOR> http://www.guidebookgallery.org/articles/applesbidtostayinthebigtime <comment><USER2> Both the Apple III and Lisa were conceived as products for the business market. NeXT was intended to serve higher education. Years later Apple tried to go after the server market with Xserve. If anything speaks to the idea of a company having "DNA", it's Apple's/Jobs' results when taking their eye off the consumer market ball.

<comment><USER3> I agree. Apple /// and Lisa are overpriced for consumers and small businesses. Apple just doesn't understand that while corporate purchasing is the big money, you have to sell your soul to break into it. You need the strippers and steaks and slick salesmen to sell the product like IBM does.

That's why mainframes and the PC XT, as long as they're good enough and carry the IBM label, will dominate the business market. And they are good enough; Apple can't depend on being the only one with a reliable quality product in the market anymore. Being the best tool for employees isn't going to impress purchasing managers.

Apple's products have always appealed to the people that are going to use them. Corporate purchasing doesn't work that way. The people making the decision about what to buy aren't the people that will use the tools.

Apple would be better off setting its sights lower, on academia and consumers. Maybe someday they'll figure that out. I, for one, am excited about the new "Macintosh;" that may be the future of personal computing.

<comment><USER4> Macintosh and Lisa are going nowhere. I'm with Dvorak, there's no evidence anyone wants to use this 'mouse' thing. The company has lost it. Just look at their demo video [1]. How are they ever going to fit a useable computer into a portable book-like format? Where's the keyboard? We're supposed to do computing by touching and gesturing on a screen and talking to some digital assistant? Ridiculous! They need to get back to basics and release an Apple IV that's competitive with the PC, or sell the company's assets and give the money back to the shareholders.

[1] [http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QRH8eimU_20](http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QRH8eimU_20)</comment></comment></comment>


Garry Tan (rantfoil), co-founder of Posterous, on getting traction - <AUTHOR> http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/03/garry-tan-on-getting-traction.html

<comment><USER2> Very insightful interview. However, I'd like to hear more interviews of startups where there is more of a "fight" -- where getting traction is a battle that requires a lot of iterating. Model startups that tend to be interviewed seem to:

a) Come up with a great, simple idea

b) Make the site very clean and simple

c) Launch publicly

d) MASSIVE VIRAL GROWTH! (Of course, more modestly ;))

That seems to go against conventional startup wisdom, where you have to fight tooth and nail for a long time before you start getting traction. These interviews of late are really motivating and awesome, but at the same time, they are sort of demoralizing because the subtext seems to indicate that if you aren't growing super fast from day one, you are almost better off just starting over.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think this story (your a-d) is rare, which I tried to codify in this powderkeg/movement metaphor in a recent blog post: [http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/02/are-you- building...](http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/02/are-you-building-an- empire-sparking-a-powder-keg-or-starting-a-movement.html)

Posterous seems like the typical powderkeg. And at any point there are powderkeg ideas out there waiting to be launched, so a-d can work. Or in other words, some ideas are valuable! (Not to discount execution at all, which is usually a necessary condition.)

Half of my other interviews already, however, have told a different story. Steve Welch and Steve Barsh made cold calls endlessly. Rand Fishkin blogged tirelessly, for years. And Mark Cramer experimented with lots of things before he hit on some success with a Firefox add-on. Wikipedia was also a slow growth story that really capitalized on SEO.

<comment><USER3> Cold calling endlessly, blogging tirelessly, etc - everyone wants the news that it will easier than that! ;)

I know there was a post recently about achievements that I didn't read, but I find achievements (in the Xbox 360 sense) can be a reasonable motivator. Wondering about a service that is almost an achievement list, a to do list with pre-filled actions, to help entrepreneurs work through some of the bland getting-traction things. Third blog entry, 20th blog, Triple Figure Blogging, Got a TC mention, Had a blog entry with 20 comments, Got to 2k page views/day, Had a tweet RTed 20 times, etc.

Obviously doesn't guarantee success, but anything that can encourage someone to stay motivated and pushing themselves would be helpful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just to remind people: It's 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. I recently heard the CEO of OpenTable speak. You know, the HUGE success, publicly traded, etc. Did you know it took them over _10 years_ to really figure it out. Few remember that.

As a reminder, you want to get in the market as soon as possible (a la lean startup) to iterate and learn and look for opportunities and pivot points. That's what we are doing at PackLate.com. We are happy with our progress already, but we are iterating at a VERY high rate of speed, always looking for our next opportunity for even greater traction. Even now, after our last minute vacation rental marketplace has only been open for a month, we see 2 major nearly game changing opportunities for our model that we'll be pursuing. It will take time and we know that. We TRY to have patience.

Steve Barsh CEO, PackLate.com @packlate <http://www.PackLate.com>

</comment><comment><USER5> Garry Tan is truly a force of nature. He's like Samson, but if he cuts his hair, he won't lose his power.</comment>


South African doctor invents female condoms with 'teeth' to fight rape - Colin-DeVries http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/africa/06/20/south.africa.female.condom/index.html?iref=NS1

<comment><AUTHOR> If it can be put in without harming the woman, presumably it can be taken out just as easily. Why wouldn't a rapist just fish it out before assaulting her?

It might work in cases of domestic abuse, but then it also might be seen as a vindictive act (getting him back for something other than forced sex).

Regardless, I hope we can survive our adolescence.

</comment><comment><USER2> Wouldn't this just make the rapist angry, especially if he found out _too late_? Angry rapist could equal dead girl...

EDIT: After reading the article, I see that others think so too:

 _Critics say the female condom is not a long-term solution and makes women vulnerable to more violence from men trapped by the device._</comment>


Computer identifies the most boring day in history - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/8160622/Computer-identifies-the-most-boring-day-in-history.html <comment><USER2> too much onion?

[http://www.theonion.com/articles/good-old-days-traced- back-t...](http://www.theonion.com/articles/good-old-days-traced-back-to- single-weekend-in-194,18210/)</comment>


How China aims to dominate the world of robotics - <AUTHOR> https://multimedia.scmp.com/news/china/article/2170597/MIC2025/ <comment><USER2> Not readable on my iOS devices. I can't scroll down to read the article.</comment>


Analyzing the news: coronavirus is the death rate 2% or more? - <AUTHOR> Lets test the facts presented in the market watch article, https://www.marketwatch.com/story/cdc-there-are-now-53-covid-19-cases-in-us-as-more-diamond-princess-passengers-test-positive-2020-02-24
Sources:
Population 79,000; market watch article above
2%: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/25/what-is-coronavirus-symptoms-wuhan-covid-19 and http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/02/study-72000-covid-19-patients-finds-23-death-rate
I want to understand if the numbers being reported from various sources are correct or not.
Fact coronavirus kills 2% of the world population
Question is it actually 2% or are they under reporting the cases reported?
Cases reported at least 79,000 world wide
Estimated death toll percentage: 2%
Reported deaths: 2622 people
Test A
x is the population of people who are infected
2622 is the reported number of deaths
0.02 is 2% is the reported percentage of infected that die from the virus
x0.02 = 2622
(x0.02/0.02) = 2622/0.02
x = 2622/0.02
x = 131,100
Conclusion: Either it's not 2% or the population is misreported; if it's 2% then the population is 131,000 not 79,000 reported by the news.
Thus given the population differences, we can calculate how much lower the 79,000 is then the un reported number;
60.2%. 79000/131100 = 60.2%
Test B:
Now lets figure out with the 79000 population what the correct death rate is:
x is the percentage of deaths we're looking for.
79,000 is the reported population from the article
2622 is the reported number of deaths
79000 * x = 2622
(79000 * x)/7900 = 2622/79000
x = 2622/79000
x = 0.033
Conclusion: Thus given 79,000 we can reasonably estimate that the media is lying to us (or using bad math) and the death toll percentage is 3.3% of the infected cases.
Conclusion of both numbers:
1. Either 3.3% is the true percentage of people who will die from the virus
2. Or the population of infect is much larger then what is being reported <comment><USER2> You're treating the population as a homogenous mass, indistinguishable from each other. That assumption is not correct. Look at age, existing health conditions, smoking, drinking cohorts and you'll see that certain groups have much higher death rates.

Also consider that some infected people do not show any symptoms. The diagnostic kits are limited and take time to process. When a cluster of people get symptoms, they overwhelm health services. All of these issues and others combined can cause chaos in an undefined way. The most harmful effect is loss in faith in society and the economy as we collectively regress to a scarcity mindset.

</comment><comment><USER3> Last week I did some napkin math on numbers published and came out with a 2.5% death rate. I assume gathering statistics globally can be difficult since each jurisdiction may count/report numbers differently and have different detection methods.

Watching the (US) news this morning, they reminded that elderly and people with heart disease, diabetes, poor lung function, etc. are a lot more susceptible. I think I heard the normal flu death rate is still higher, would be interesting to see actual numbers on that although I'm not concerned enough to research.

</comment><comment><USER4> Too much news is learned from neighboring countries that they need a lot of mobile cremator cars. If they can know the SO2 produced by a day's combustion or the local Chinese should visually know that it will be more than expected. fiy: [https://nypost.com/2020/02/08/chinas-culture-of-lies-has- hel...](https://nypost.com/2020/02/08/chinas-culture-of-lies-has-helped- spread-the-coronavirus/)

</comment><comment><USER5> It is very worse to asians.

4x times more deadly

<comment><USER6> Genetics are influential on this kind of cases. I am not an expert on this but it seems like the problem is how fast it spreads not the dead rates?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Does anyone have any feedback?</comment>


Golden Rules for Making Money 2.0 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.roninapp.com/2008/09/23/making-money-1880-vs-now/

<comment><USER2> Learn something useful -> Learn Scala or Erlang on the side.

P. T. Barnum just turned in his grave! He said USEFUL! If you said "learn to write SQL instead of abstracting stuff through a framework" or even "learn to mix cement and lay formwork" - THAT would be useful.

Erlang, Scala (or dare i say it), Lisp - possibly not so much 'useful' as an academic pursuit.

<comment><USER3> Are you sure about this? Erlang for example . . . seriously, consider what Erlang is best at and then consider where hardware is headed in terms of processors . . .

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Trivial enough to be useless.

<comment><USER3> I agree. It would be great to see an analogous article written by someone knowledgeable in both business and technology.

Interesting thing for me personally is that I have often wanted to read an updated - so to speak - version of that fine little book by Barnum.</comment></comment>


Driven: Shai Agassi's Audacious Plan to Put Electric Cars on the Road - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/cars/futuretransport/magazine/16-09/ff_agassi <comment><USER2> This story is inspiring.

Having the opportunity to apply your business & technical knowledge, after a start-up, to something that really will change the world.

</comment><comment><USER3> That kind of stories, while HN off-topic, makes me feel better.</comment>


Automattic's Coed Poet – Because You Make Things With WordPress - <AUTHOR> http://build.codepoet.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Uff, typo in the title although a surprisingly nice one … :)</comment>


Design With Intent - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/makeramen/design-with-intent <comment><USER2> Wow, this was very cool! I'll probably be looking all over the mall, my campus, etc for the rest of the summer until classes start again and I'm swamped by the algorithms and data structures class.

Anyone have any more design or like links/articles/discussion?</comment>


The Zimbu programming language, by vim author Bram Moolenaar - <AUTHOR> http://www.zimbu.org/ <comment><USER2>
        * It has to be as fast as possible, so interpreted languages are out.
        * You don't want to micro manage memory, so C is out.
        * You don't want to require programmers to have a degree, so C++ is out.
        * You want fast startup and not depend on a big runtime, so Java is out.
        * It has to run on most systems, anything with a C compiler, so D is out.
        * You want to have fun making something new.
        No existing language really meets these demands, so let's create a new one that does.

Actually, Lua meets every point except the last one...it's byte-compiled, garbage collected, refreshingly free of exceptions-to-exceptions-to-rules you have to memorize, it starts _and compiles_ faster than many other major contenders start, it runs on literally anything with an ANSI C compiler, and it's been in production use for over 15 years.

I use Emacs, but a Lua-extended vi could be _very_ nice.

<comment><USER3> Several Scheme implementations as well as some lesser-known small Lisps qualify.

I think writing a new general-purpose language is something every programmer should try at least once, but don't fool yourself; there's probably an existing language that does what you want.

Now, back to work on that language idea I can't get out of my head involving pervasive generic functions....

<comment><USER4> chicken scheme is the only other language I can think of that compiles to C code.

He is not making an interpreted language. It compiles down to machine code that runs directly; not vm bytecode.

<comment><USER5> Ikarus Scheme compiles r6rs to native code. <http://ikarus- scheme.org/index.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think making the keywords all-caps is a mistake. Capital letters draw the eye -- all-caps doubly so, and at the expense of readability.

Anything in all-caps had better be pretty damn important for the programmer to read. And while keywords are vital to the compiler's understanding of the program, they are arguably among the _least_ important text for the programmer to read, as they can generally be inferred from visual length, placement, and formatting.

<comment><USER7> Keywords are punctuation for programs. Keywords in capitals are shouting the punctuation out instead of the words. So just as you say, keywords in capitals are the equivalent of you writing:

 _I think making the keywords all DASH caps is a mistake PERIOD Capital letters draw the eye EMDASH all DASH caps doubly so COMMA and at the expense of readability PERIOD_

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> From the description, it seems like this project has the same goals as Gnome's new language, Vala:

<http://live.gnome.org/Vala>

Given the syntax choices, the main advantage I see in Zimbu is that creating a new language is more fun than porting an existing one.

<comment><USER9> For me the goals of zimbu look very much like the ones of ooc (it was mentioned a few days ago <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=882864>) and ooc looks much nicer than zimbu.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ouch, unbalanced curly brackets to end blocks? Maybe it's something like significant indentation (python) that will become natural once used. On first presentation though it sure seems scary.

<comment><USER11> I actually thought that was the neatest thing about this proposed language. I didn't get too excited about any of the design goals, but regarding syntax, this seems pretty original.

It allows for less syntax, which is a win for readability and also less boilerplate tokens, but still gives you a little freedom to mess with your indentation, unlike python. It means that (true) lambdas wouldn't be a syntactical enigma like they would be in python.

I don't think that you would need to use "}" to end a block though, since it looks like its missing the opening bracket, but maybe double semicolons would work, since they apparently aren't used elsewhere:

        MAIN()
          IO.write("Hello, World!\n")
        ;;

To be honest, the syntax that I have found to be nicest on the eyes so far has been Io:

        whois := method(host,
            socket := Socket clone setHostName("rs.internic.net") setPort(43)
            socket connect streamWrite(host, "\n")
            while(socket streamReadNextChunk, nil)
            return socket readBuffer
        )

taken from [http://www.iolanguage.com/scm/git/checkout/Io/docs/IoGuide.h...](http://www.iolanguage.com/scm/git/checkout/Io/docs/IoGuide.html#Primitives- Networking)

<comment><USER12> `True lambdas' are overrated. The Python way is just fine. If you want to do anything that needs two lines, you are probably doing something complicated enough that this function deserves its own name.

<comment><USER2> ...it wouldn't be as big an issue if Python's closures and scoping weren't problematic as well.

<comment><USER12> As far as I know Python has true lexical scoping for functions, if not for blocks. (They used to have very limited scoping ages ago.)

What do you mean?

<comment><USER2> In Python 2.6:

        def acc(x):
            foo = x
            def closures_are_broken():
                foo += 1
                return foo
            return closures_are_broken

        def acc2(x):
            foo = [x]
            def closure_with_workaround():
                foo[0] += 1
                return foo[0]
            return closure_with_workaround

The former is an error ("UnboundLocalError: local variable 'foo' referenced before assignment"), the latter is a workaround by manually boxing the variable in a list. I'm not sure why that works, but it's rather ugly.

The same, in Lua:

        function acc(x)
           local foo = x
           return function()
                     foo = foo + 1
                     return foo
                  end
        end

<comment><USER12> Oh, yes. You are mutating variables. You shouldn't do that anyway in a functional setting.

Python's syntax forces the language to guess whether you want to make a new variable or use the variable of the same name from the outer scope. The heuristic they have, says that if you assign something to the variable, you get a new one by default. You can declare

      global x

before to assign to the variable in the outerscope.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _It has to be as fast as possible, so interpreted languages are out. You don't want to micro manage memory, so C is out. You don't want to require programmers to have a degree, so C++ is out. You want fast startup and not depend on a big runtime, so Java is out. It has to run on most systems, anything with a C compiler, so D is out. You want to have fun making something new._

If you remove his last requirement I think lof of languages still qualify. Effeil for instance, and maybe OCaml.

<comment><AUTHOR> I can understand why Bram wants to target C. Vim runs on almost every operating system and architecture. Right now that's only really possible with C-targeted languages, languages with portable VMs/intepreters written in C, and (to a slightly lesser extent) C++.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Uh... so exactly why should I stop using C, Python or Java (which are mature, distributed and have a lot of libraries) for a language which does not offer advanced new features, about no libraries and also features some... akward syntax? (Don't get me wrong, I can live with syntax with is not C-like, or python-like, but unbalanced braces are certainly just akward).

<comment><USER15> Read the article, he explains why.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Moolenaar is one of my biggest heroes in the software world. He created a tool (vim) that is probably on the short list of great free software... one that has catalyzed the creation of so many other tools. And he did it in the name of charity, to raise money for a children's clinic in Uganda.

If I end up having one tenth of the positive influence on the world as this fellow has already done, I'll count my life successful.

</comment><comment><USER17> As much as I love Vim (and I use it all the time), I truly hate it's scripting language. I think Bram devote his time to improve VIm.

<comment><USER18> Perhaps Bram could devote his time to improving vim's scripting language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> From the inspirations page (<http://www.zimbu.org/design/inspiration>), he's "avoiding" on of the best features of ruby:

      Avoid:
        * expression by itself is return value, causes mistakes.

<comment><USER2> This has a _massive_ impact on the language semantics, and should not be decided lightly - it strongly pushes it towards nested statements, rather than imperative steps with a result. Not as clear a distinction as pure functional vs. imperative, but with much of the same design baggage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> "Suppose you want to write a new program, something like a text editor."

Then I open up the GUI builder for almost any language, throw a pre-built text box in place, and press compile. Next?

Not arguing against the language itself. It's just that using "text editor" as a use case is about as descriptive as starting with "Suppose you want to write 'Hello World.'" It doesn't tell you anything about what the actual requirements are. Compiled isn't necessary to build a text editor. Java isn't excluded. Etc.

<comment><USER21> While you are right that a text-box is a bad example of a programming language, what he is talking about is a text editor.

A text box is _not_ a text editor. After all, take a look at Vim or Emacs. They have their own languages, syntax highlighters, language analysis tools, GUI and ncurses tools, etc... A goodtext editor is a huge piece of software - millions of lines of code (I think), perhaps, in the case of Emacs.

Although I do agree with you - good examples are important.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm really impressed that Boo is mentioned as an influence. Don't see the ideas there, but I'm glad to see it spreading in some way.

</comment><comment><USER23> If you appreciate the goals and design rationale of this language you should check out freepascal (<http://www.freepascal.org>) which fulfills similar needs and is mature with an active community.

</comment><comment><USER24> As fast as possible is premature optimization in most cases. Python still wins.

</comment><comment><USER25> Ouch, it burns the eyes.

<comment><USER3> This doesn't really contribute anything. How about "I think the all-caps keywords and unmatched braces are ugly" or "parallelism should be considered a requirement in a new application language and highly-stateful Java-style OO doesn't really seem like a good way to accomplish that"?

<comment><USER12> Thanks for giving good advise to a down-voted comment. I guess we should do that more often.</comment></comment></comment>


Command Line Tools for Developers - <AUTHOR> https://www.toptal.com/software/best-command-line-tools <comment><AUTHOR> PathPicker is a new tool I discovered from this article.

From their GitHub page:

PathPicker accepts a wide range of input -- output from git commands, grep results, searches -- pretty much anything.After parsing the input, PathPicker presents you with a nice UI to select which files you're interested in. After that you can open them in your favorite editor or execute arbitrary commands. [http://facebook.github.io/PathPicker/](http://facebook.github.io/PathPicker/)</comment>


Amazon admits that employees review "small sample" of Alexa audio - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/04/amazon-admits-that-employees-review-small-sample-of-alexa-audio/ <comment><USER2> I wonder why Bloomberg deleted this tweet [https://twitter.com/socal_crypto/status/1116124732884230145?...](https://twitter.com/socal_crypto/status/1116124732884230145?s=21)

</comment><comment><USER3> Discussion here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19629513](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19629513)</comment>


Literate builds? - <AUTHOR> http://jenkins-ci.org/content/literate-builds-wtf <comment><USER2> This sounds pointlessly complicated compared to just a shell script with comments that does the same thing.

<comment><USER3> If your build commands are so complex that you need a shell script, go write the shell script and then in the README you tell the users what shell script to invoke and any required parameters. The point is that you always will have a README where you say "run this command to build". At its most basic this formatting is exactly as you would format such a README. It also supports more a complex series of commands, but for the 90% there will just be one command in the "How to build" section

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It looks like these guys are picking up ideas from the travis-ci.org project, which uses a ".travis.yml" file for configuration-

[https://github.com/tedivm/Stash/blob/master/.travis.yml](https://github.com/tedivm/Stash/blob/master/.travis.yml)

This has huge advantages, especially in conjunction with things like git or github. With travis ci it's trivial for testing to be setup on new branches or even forks. We use Jenkins at work, and I'm excited to extend that level of functionality there.

<comment><USER5> Yea, this seems overcomplicated for something that can easily be smacked into a .travis.yml file with simple syntax.

Dream result would be what happened with RVM and RBenv merging their simple "select ruby version" files in that Travis, CircleCi, Jenkins etc. all agreed on a generic .build.yml file syntax and we could just use that.

<comment><USER6> While a standard .build.yml file sounds nice, I'm not sure we understand the problem well enough to figure out what the optimal syntax would look like. This matters because the syntax has large implications for 1) how simple your build process is 2) how much overhead your CI system can take care of, for you.

For example, at Circle, we're still experimenting with yml syntax for user- specified parallelization commands. Each different syntax we've looked at has different implications for what kinds of problems are simple, and what kinds of problems are expressible, using the syntax.

So yes, standards, but not yet :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you don't like the sound of

"The literate plugin adds an Action to all Free-style projects that allows exporting these XML configuration snippets in a .zip file for unpacking into your project's source control."

then you might enjoy CircleCI ([https://circleci.com](https://circleci.com)).

We've always believed in understandable configuration checked into source control, with sane defaults and configuration over convention. The configuration ([https://circleci.com/docs/configuration](https://circleci.com/docs/configuration)) is sane and human readable in yaml, yet incredibly powerful, and allows you set up a simple config in 5 minutes, and a complex config in an hour.

<comment><USER8> We tried Circle but even though their FAQ states to contact them if your tests require more than 1GB RAM, they can't actually do anything to give you more RAM, even if you're willing to pay.

Back to Jenkins we went...

<comment><USER7> Right, exactly!!

When you build something to work for everybody, you make something that's not really great for anybody. That's Jenkins.

Instead, we built Circle to be amazing for a small set of people (web devs deploying to Linux). If you don't fit into that group, use Jenkins.

As time goes by, we're expanding our delightfulness to other groups of people (we only supported Rails at the start, for example).

In that vein, we're rolling out the feature to give you more than 2GB of RAM at the moment, so soon you'll be in the group that can have the delightful experience too :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is based on Don Knuth's Literate Programming: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literate_programming](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literate_programming) \- but applied to build scripts.

(Readme is docs + executable)

</comment><comment><USER10> I think one useful feature might be the ability to export existing Jenkins build jobs to the README files. Some ppl might be more comfortable with Jenkins interface rather than writing the README files from scratch.

</comment><comment><USER11> Congratulations! You have invented the Makefile.

<comment><USER12> Make files aren't usually literate.

<comment><USER13> "Oh yeah? And who made you the _literati_?" :)

Totally correct, actually. Makefiles are the cruft of ages distilled through a minimum of ten little-understood tools of the ancients, classically employing a minimum of four distinct languages. Some replacements have been popping up of late... _scons_ seems nice.

<comment><USER14> I'd love more details on your comment. What ten little understood tools and what four distinct languages?

<comment><USER13> Haha. It was more in jest as a caricature. You know... _sed_ and _awk_ are usually in there somewhere. _bc_. Some formal grammar from a parser generator or other. Maybe some document build system. Plus the core language(s) of the source code. Some obscure shell indirection or trickery. And _perl_ , for good measure.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Inside the sordid world of America's for-profit colleges - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/nov/09/fail-state-documentary-for-profit-colleges <comment><USER2> When I first started teaching in higher education the implied client was society at large. It was my duty to ensure that those who passed knew the material sufficiently well. This was when a student's tuition paid for 1/3 of the cost and the government funded the other 2/3.

Now it's the other way around. Now the student is the client. Now I no longer think it's my duty to ensure that those who pass know the material. It's my duty to keep enrollment up because we need the tuition dollars. I'm constantly hounded to increase my passing rate. No one who matters to our funding cares about people knowing the material they are supposed to be learning.

In the last assignment for the algebra course I'm teaching a student changed all fractions in a weird inconsistent way. For instance they changed 3/4 to 34 but then changed 5/7 to 75. No apparent rhyme or reason. This is the type of person we recruit and the type of person I'm supposed to pass.

The for profits are bad but we aren't much further behind.

<comment><USER3> At my current institution a new lecturer got a chewing-out from the departmental chair because the pass rate in an introductory class was too low. The institution managed to keep enrollment constant but had to drop admission standards markedly this year to be able to do so. Other faculty members noticed the poor performance of the incoming freshman class compared to previous years as well.

New kid came fresh from a PhD program at a credible university and thought the purpose of a university lecturer was to teach to a minimum standard. The naivete!

This is at a large state school in the Southern US.

<comment><USER2> Ha. I've told new hires that one thing they must keep in mind is that this job is not about teaching.

<comment><USER4> As Robin Hanson has said, school is not about learning [1]. Increasingly it feels that higher education is becoming a cargo cult, a coming-of-age ritual where you jump through certain hoops in order to be awarded a piece of paper which then gives you access to jobs.

[1] [http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/08/school-isnt-about- lear...](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/08/school-isnt-about- learning.html)

<comment><USER5> IMO there is a difference between K-12 and higher ed.

K-12 is actually more about enforcing cultural norms of dilligence, punctuality and ideally some civic norms.

Higher ed (paraphrasing Peter Thiel) is a mix between insurance and a tournament. It is _supposed_ to ensure a basic living standard. But it's also a competitive tournament where the high prestige colleges grant access to higher pay/prestige careers.

<comment><USER4> Agreed that Hanson focuses on primary education in that article. I could've sworn he has written similarly about higher education but couldn't find anything relevant by quick googling.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, Hanson has similar thoughts on higher education:

[https://www.businessinsider.com/is-college-a-waste-of- time-a...](https://www.businessinsider.com/is-college-a-waste-of-time-and- money-bryan-caplan-2018-2)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The for-profit education model would work much better if there were no special class of "student" loans, and instead the loans offered were normally dischargeable in bankruptcy. This would cause colleges to charge manageable tuition and bankrupt the colleges that produced graduates unable to pay.

The current situation of student loans is a racket, and for-profit universities like Corinthian exist specifically to fleece the government. Destroying the lives of their students is a byproduct.

<comment><USER8> If students can discharge their loans in bankruptcy, then what stops this from becoming standard practice on graduation day? After all, a student has no assets to auction off. The education they received cannot be taken away from them.

<comment><USER9> They were dischargeable in bankruptcy until 10-15 years ago.

I don't believe declaring bankruptcy on graduation day was ever a standard practice, nor do I see why reversing the discharge exception would change that.

By and large, people intend to repay debts they incur, and they don't want to deal with the 7 to 10 years (not sure of exact duration) of bad credit that results from bankruptcy if they can avoid it.

Having difficulty buying or leasing a home or car without paying the total cost up front, inability to get those jobs where a credit check is involved, etc... that will never be standard practice by choice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I can't begin to describe how corrupt these institutions are.

A few years ago, I had to (for stupid work reasons) take an official test to get a Cloudera certification. I went to a for-profit university testing location to do so.

It was one of the big chains.

While I waited and waited for the grossly incompetent staff to get the testing machine working, I sat and listened to students coming in to an office concerned with payment. The door was wide open, and I could hear the conversations clearly.

People who weren't equipped to a level of waking up on time, let alone getting to class, were trying to stop attending classes and leave. They were repeatedly goaded and told that they should stick with school, despite the fact that there was zero chance these folks were going to be able to get jobs with these bullshit degrees.

All financed by US taxpayer subsidized loans that aren't covered by bankruptcy. Truly depressing and made me sad.

</comment><comment><USER11> On its face, some entities just oughtn't be for-profit. The evidence for, and obvious risk of, perverse incentives going totally bananas is just too high.

\- Educational institutions

\- Hospitals

\- Fire departments (i don't think these exist, at least not yet, but the idea comes up in Discworld)

<comment><USER12> I can't say that I've ever seen the word "oughtn't" before. I get that it is a contraction of "ought" and "not", but it seems more difficult to say and the same amount of characters.

<comment><USER13> Seems familiar enough to me (as a UK reader). Some dictionaries suggest it has become rare in North America, however.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm also highly aware of how much UK higher education has changed. Warwick University for example has grown enormously and advertises heavily, relying on attracting overseas students and research grants.

The bigger question in my mind is whether this is inherently 'bad'. The Academy of Art University in San Francisco was founded as the Academy of Advertising Art by Richard S. Stephens in 1929 as a vocational training. Like Warwick in the UK AofA Uni is now enormous (biggest property owner in San Francisco) and attracting foreign and out of state students.

There seems to be pretty low barriers to entry (except high prices) to attend AofA and be taught about the arts. Whether this is a good use of time and will lead to a career is highly debatable. I wonder about the regulatory aspects as these giant institutions become an important part of local economies and seasonal housing, and whether the money gets in the way of the academic realities

<comment><USER15> I feel like the difference lies in that Warwick (and some other UK universities who do the same thing, including my own) do still have a relatively high barrier to entry that sets them apart from the American for- profits.

Not to say that Warwick & other institutions aren't as for-profit as places like Corinthians, but they definitely manage to get away with it by still maintaining academic excellence.

<comment><USER14> You could make the argument that the ivy league is 'for profit' but their qualifications will typically get you a career to pay off your massive student loans...it's the quality of what's being sold that is the interesting element here, I'd suggest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> As a former employee of one of these (quite famous), the curricula are oftentimes relatively good, with an emphasis on practical skills. But it's difficult for me to see them as a good thing given the issues marked out. Many of them take lots of government money (through GI bill etc) as well

</comment><comment><USER17> "For profit" College is fine. No one is making you give your money to them. Especially when you could attend a much cheaper community college in the middle of nowhere for a 1/50th of the price.

"Government subsidized loans" given to people which no creditor would rationally give you money are the problem. Who would honestly lend you $175k to receive a music therapy degree and hope for a return on their investment? I'm not to say that such degrees could not be a satisfying career path for an individual, but the "fund everyone" program in the USA is the root issue.

</comment><comment><USER18> In the middle of this entire mess sits the federal government with its interest payments, payment deferments, and loan guarantees.

Loans are made to people who not only have no business going to college, but have no business taking out a life-altering loan as their first step into adulthood.

Everyone is affected by this problem, as the flood of easy money has contributed to the steep rise in tuitions across the country. The result is a vicious cycle of inflationary bubble economics.

Here's hoping the documentary covers this angle.

</comment><comment><USER19> I worked at a call center for a random online for profit uni as one of my first jobs.

Quickly saw we were calling random leads generated by click bait ads like "become a swat expert" or enter to win type stuff.

We would call people who had no idea they had signed up to get called and push them to "further their education and future".

First priority was to check to see that they could get a loan. Then aggressively get them to sign up for school.

I had access to the online courses and they were absolute trash.

Complete racket based on federal funding.

</comment><comment><USER20> Couldn't you start a small for-profit uni that uses all the tactics described in the article to recruit students, but then pay teachers to deliver a _high quality_ , practical education?

You'd get all the benefits of the loan lock-in. Your grads would have a higher likelihood of getting a decent paying job that would pay back the loan in a shorter time. Then you could aim your collections aholes at your _dropouts_ and use the loan lock-in as leverage-- either they keep getting their part- time wage garnished or they finish the program so they can get a higher paying job.

<comment><USER21> The main problem as I see it is the dynamic that "if you pay, you pass". I've seen first hand the unwillingness to fail students who have done no work and have zero aptitude or willingness to learn. And that's just the lazy ones. I'm not even including the students who tried but will do poorly. They all get passed! I've only seen one person be failed, and it took several months of investigation before it happened. They didn't attend any sessions or lab project work for months, but they didn't want to kick them out because they were a rich foreign student.

This clearly devalues a university education for those who do work hard and succeed. And it also devalues the institution for its lack of intellectual rigour and enforcement of strict standards.

I would be more than happy for paying students to be held to strict and high standards, but having money be a big part of the equation seems to have corrupted even well regarded universities. (My perspective is from the UK universities; when the courses were completely funded by the government through local education authorities, they didn't have a problem with giving mediocre or bad students the boot, but today it's nearly impossible.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Is this really a problem? America seems to place far more importance on the freedom of an individual to scam or fleece other people, rather than on protecting people from their own weaknesses.

Scammy for-profit colleges seem like one of dozes of byproducts of this mentality and there's no reason to think Americans would like to have it any other way. In fact, it often seems to me as if Americans reserve extra respect for these scammers for being so good that they're able to convince and con so many people.

<comment><USER23> You're right that we seem to have extra respect for these scammers. After all we did elect one President.

<comment><USER24> Haha good one!

<comment><USER23> I wasn't even trying to make a joke. The guy literally had to pay a $20 million settlement for the fraud around "Trump University."</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Gists for everything else - <AUTHOR> https://snippus.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone, dev here. This started a personal tool but I thought it would be cool if you could browse other people's snippets. I don't spend much time hacking on this anymore but feedback would be appreciated</comment>


Ask HN: What TLD do you use for local development? - <AUTHOR> I've heard all sorts of reasons against using .local, .dev or .app. Is there a definitive standard for this?<p>What TLD do you use for local development? or do you just forgo the domain all together and use your local IP? <comment><USER2> I use ".test" to respect RFC-6761 [1] which reserves four TLDs: .example, .invalid, .localhost, and .test; as many of us already know ".dev" is owned by Google [2] and both ".local" [3] and ".app" [4] are reserved for the root zone so it doesn't makes any sense to use any of them for local development. So I use ".test" for my personal projects and ".[company]" for projects related with my job.

[1] [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6761](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6761)

[2] [https://icannwiki.com/.dev](https://icannwiki.com/.dev)

[3] [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6762](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6762)

[4] [https://icannwiki.com/.app](https://icannwiki.com/.app)

<comment><USER3> .local is reserved, but not for delegation in the root zone. RFC 6762 reserves it for Multicast DNS on a local network.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I use a subdomain of a domain I own, such as internal.example.com

I can then run a BIND instance with internal.example.com as a root, then map all my services to their own domain if need be.

This is a little overkill for a one man shop, but it's a nice little home development setup.

The one thing you need to configure, if you want it to work out of the box is that your DHCP server needs to send back the IP address of your local BIND service for DNS, else it won't work right and you'll need to manually configure it every time.

An example of where this worked well for me was when I was using one nginx instance to run snapshots of all my clients websites. With nginx, you can set up "virtual hosts" which map a hostname to a configuration block. You could also just edit your /etc/hosts file to accomplish the same thing I guess.

<comment><USER5> I do something similar. My home network's recursive DNS server is a local install of Unbound. Setting local overrides there is very easy, though I don't use it in a hierarchical format. (Unbound refers to these as local-data.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I use .dev of course! I realize that .test is the sensible choice, but there's some odd WordPress/Serialization benefit to keeping the TLD length the same.

Google bought it up, and I've never seen it in the wild, so it works well for me.

<comment><USER7> Ha I actually know what you mean, php serialized data having string length as a parameter always confused me

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I edit my host file and use .dev for specific domains, if you configure a web server to said domains it'll route you to the right folder as well (edit: Virtual Host). Though I typically use Vagrant or VirtualBox to test my environments off a 'remote' server.

</comment><comment><USER9> Are there any issues with just using something like `localhost:3000`?

<comment><USER10> 1) Subdomains. If you're app utilises subdomains, you need to use a TLD.

2) Integration with development tools like [http://pow.cx/](http://pow.cx/) or [https://github.com/puma/puma-dev](https://github.com/puma/puma-dev) allow you to automatically startup and shutdown apps. This is useful when you're juggling multiple apps.

3) Security. Using a standard domain/port for local development opens you up to exploits like [http://benmmurphy.github.io/blog/2016/07/11/rails- webconsole...](http://benmmurphy.github.io/blog/2016/07/11/rails-webconsole- dns-rebinding/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I remember a tile back in early the 2000s when we had a quite nice setup of local dns servers that had internal only zonefiles that resolved names like service.company.local to the internal/dev versions of service.company.com.

Worked quite nicely until the Mac users upgraded to a version of OS X which included Bonjour...

There days Mac OS X does a pretty nice job here all on it's own - this machine I'm typing on here happily answers as Iain.local to the internal network... (For some not-worth-my-time-to-debug reason, our Netgear NAS is a whole lot less reliable with it's Bonjour/zeroconf .local name...)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I heard that bonjour messed up .local, although isn't that meant to be reserved for actual local nets or something?

<comment><USER12> It's reserved for multicast DNS, which is what Bonjour uses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> You can modify your /etc/hosts to point to localhost and that does the trick without having to go through a TLD or care if the domain is taken.

Contents of /etc/hosts:

127.0.0.1 domain.com

127.0.0.1 subdomain1.domain.com

127.0.0.1 subdomain2.domain.com

<comment><USER14> I run a local dnsmasq server, and just have the resolver for the 'dev' TLD point to that. This way, _any_ .dev URL always points to my local machine. I just configure it in Nginx and I'm good to go.

<comment><USER13> Running a local DNS resolver for local development seems like an overkill. You have to have the resolver and nginx properly setup and constantly running (not that it's a issue)

<comment><USER15> My old router, ddwrt, has this out of the box. My new router, pfsense, has override settings, tho not sure through what daemon that is configured through. I also run a windows domain with DNS. There are many ways to do it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I personally use ".vm"

I run a vagrant box on my Windows machine - so ".vm" describes what I do very well.

And unless a new country is formed, there will never be new 2 letter TLDs.

<comment><USER17> There are new country code domains occasionally.

The last was in 2010, adding BQ.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I use a subdomain and run it in the form of dev.<myactualdomain>.com . I add a record to my /etc/hosts file to redirect it to 127.0.0.1. This also means for https stuff I have a valid certificate to use as well. One more note. I almost never run anything on any port other than port 80/443\. Any application I work on generally has nginx sitting in front of it with a simple proxy_pass rule.

</comment><comment><USER19> I still use .dev for the majority of sites, I'm pretty pissed that Google was allowed to appropriate it! It has so far bitten me on the ass once when a CDN was involved (the CDN resolved it to Googles servers so the failure wasn't detected - causing numerous invisible problems).

I think I will probably go along the route of assigning a domain to my local network

</comment><comment><USER20> I have historically used .local despite its use with the Multicast DNS Standard. I have not encountered any technical issues with its use.

If my devices were on a network accessible from the outside world, I would have used my ghostfreeman.net domain and submasked all of those projects. However, these resources can't leave the network.

</comment><comment><USER21> I just use a subdomain of a domain I own

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you actually set the A record for it, or do you just set it up in /etc/hosts? Seems risky if it's the first.

<comment><USER15> Why risky?

<comment><USER22> You're needlessly exposing private information about your system to the public, which an attacker can use to learn about the structure of your setup, or to appear more credible during a social engineering attack.

And if the IP of the development system happens to be publicly routed, attackers might reach and infiltrate a probably insecure development system.

<comment><USER15> Ah yes I would agree. However, you're best off using a local dns server to route to a private subdomain. It is handy to use a public facing IP to also point towards your service though, if, and only if, you want it web accessible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I use .docker because I use dinghy for all my development ([https://github.com/codekitchen/dinghy#dns](https://github.com/codekitchen/dinghy#dns))

</comment><comment><USER24> Since no one has mentioned this one yet, I use '.loc' throught /etc/hosts

Each dev on the team use the same .loc domains but the IP may be different depending on the IP the Docker interface is assigned.

</comment><comment><USER25> One trick is to use non-routable (e.g. 192.168.0.0/16) IP addresses with DNS records for subdomains of your company's domain name, e.g. devserver123.mycompany.com routes to 192.168.100.123

<comment><USER15> This gives insight to your internal network structure to the public. It's better to run a local DNS server for internal use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I use .lan

</comment><comment><USER27> local.<domain of site i'm working on> set in my hosts file

Or just "localhost" if it's a personal project with no domain

</comment><comment><USER28> .bingo has been great.

</comment><comment><USER29> It doesn't matter. Use anything fake/non-public.

<comment><USER30> On the contrary, it does matter. What if you used [random].com and someone registered it? Presumably you'd use a different TLD and the chances are slim, but it's still best to use a correct test URL.

<comment><USER29> The chances would not be slim. They'd be zero, because you'd be using a fake TLD.

<comment><USER30> .dev used to be a fake TLD, as did .local. Both now exist.

Don't assume what doesn't exist now won't exist in the future. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I use whatever domain I like + .lvh.me -> 127.0.0.1

</comment><comment><USER32> lvh.me for non-public addresses where I want to test subdomains

ngrok.io when it needs to be public

(yeah, I know those aren't TLDs, but I rarely use any when developing TBH)

<comment><USER22> > lvh.me

This looks interesting, but how would one ever find out about this?

<comment><USER32> Good question. I can't remember where I heard about it, as I've been using it for 3 or 4 years ... Hartl's Rails tutorial perhaps?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> local.<mydomain> set it in my hosts file.

</comment><comment><USER34> I use dev.projectname.com

</comment><comment><USER35> 192.168.1.2 FTW!

<comment><USER36> IP address are NOT TLD's.

<comment><USER37> A digit is allowed to be a TLD, and is easy to type[1]. UIs will probably treat an all-numeric address as an IP though.

[1] [https://cr.yp.to/djbdns/dot-local.html](https://cr.yp.to/djbdns/dot- local.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> lvh.me</comment>


Continuations and Exceptions - <AUTHOR> http://neilmitchell.blogspot.com/2014/08/continuations-and-exceptions.html

<comment><USER2> The book Lisp in Small Pieces covers a lot of how these can interact, and some of the choices that can be made.</comment>


Indie Artist Struggles with Branding So You Don't Have To - <AUTHOR> http://dinofarmgames.com/indie-artist-struggles-with-branding-so-you-dont-have-to <comment><USER3> This is a really interesting glimpse into the ethereal world of marketing and art direction, but I'm not sure if I agree with the conclusions. If anything, it points to the fact that every branding decision comes with a set of tradeoffs; for example, while the new logo might be more symbolically representative of the game and more cohesive in terms of the angles, the 2nd logo's unboundedness makes the game seem less corporate and more playful. Logo #3 just screams "Hearthstone wannabe" to me, while logo #2 is much more like something I'd want to play. (Thumbs up for the European Aero mockup, though, that made me chuckle!)

(Incidentally, branding aside, this article piqued my interest in the game. Is it worth a play?)

EDIT: For more excellent graphic-design-related content like this, check out Valve's DotA2 art guide: [http://media.steampowered.com/apps/dota2/workshop/Dota2Chara...](http://media.steampowered.com/apps/dota2/workshop/Dota2CharacterArtGuide.pdf)

<comment><AUTHOR> (I am not affiliated with Dinosaur Games in any way. Just a fan of the game.)

> (Incidentally, branding aside, this article piqued my interest in the game. > Is it worth a play?)

I've been playing the game on and off for a month or so (since their A Pixel Artist Renounces Pixel Art post went viral). I think it's really nice. From what I've read they wanted to create a game with simple rules and lots of emergent complexity, and they definitely succeeded with that. Even without a story mode, it's quite engaging, and self-balancing (the difficulty level rises the more you win but goes down again if you start losing too much). There are still a few flaws, but nothing jarring, and I think the developers are aware and are still actively improving the game. I'd really like to see their ongoing Kickstarter to succeed (which would add an actual story mode and some other things), but unfortunately it's not looking promising so far. With or without the story mode, definitely worth a shot!

<comment><USER4> Quest Mode is happening either way, it just might take a little longer...or a lot longer. However, we really believe in it. Personally, I'm really excited for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm a bit lost. I enjoyed the coke and Apple discussions and their clear emphasis on experience and clarity of product, but he (she?) then just ignores it and goes for a mess of a cube that represents a hex grid where you push monsters into water and ...

I read 1/3 of the article and still do not know what the darn game is nor why they have three really similar logos, nor how the logos seem to be at odds with the in-game designs and themes themselves. and the German version?

so, branding is hard. that's my take away.

edit: so I reread it a bit more carefully... much better.

the confusion is, well if not intentional then at least faithful to his learning curve. one thing that stands out is that the name and brand must convey the mechanics of a game. which I had not thought of before but does seem accurate. angry birds is always with a catapult.

I am wondering if that applies outside of gaming - and if so what?

My second takeaway - no surprises. get what you expect.

my third takeaway - much much better with characters in it. waaaay better

</comment><comment><USER6> >You know what? They're absolutely 100% right... The end result turned out to be kind of a mess in terms of a unified palette.

Kudos to them for listening to the feedback. It's too easy to ignore such complaints and instead rationalize away why you're not going to make any changes. I imagine a rework is going to be a lot of work.

I'm not totally convinced that the new logo is a grand improvement, but the "official palette" is quite sweet. Really makes me want to pick up the game.

</comment><comment><USER7> this is some pepsi logo level of rationalization here.

<comment><USER8> Some criticisms were valid, like the unbounded negative space not working when placed on some images, but the new logo is less friendly, harder to read, and looks like it was designed to be printed on a sticker.

I started getting that 'pepsi' feeling with the angle heirarchy stuff started...

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Unsolicited feedback:

At first glance, I read the logo as AURD rather than AURO, and I still had a bit of cognitive effort to remember that it's an O after finishing the article and scrolling back to the top.

Could be because I saw the old logos first, which seem far closer to D's than O's and so I was anchored to AURD, but might be worth testing with new players?

</comment><comment><USER10> Hey, this is the pixel art renouncing guy. A large part of your brand is that you're obsessive over high quality artwork. You didn't rebrand either - <USER2> created new artwork, actually furthering the current brand. Most of what you're discussing is about creating a cohesive art style.

</comment><comment><USER11> is this like a sup'd up version of Hoplite?

because I'm into that.

dunno if the brand stuff matters that much tbh, but I'm all for more Hoplite.

<comment><USER6> Similar. I love Hoplite as well. I was reading this review and it was making the comparison to Hoplite: [http://toucharcade.com/2015/02/18/auro-a-monster- bumping-adv...](http://toucharcade.com/2015/02/18/auro-a-monster-bumping- adventure-review/)

In general, if you like Hoplite, try to pay attention to the roguelike genre. Hoplite and 868-HACK both started as entries into the 2013 Seven Day Roguelike challenge (which was my first time entering). You're bound to find more stuff you like there. [http://www.reddit.com/r/roguelikes/](http://www.reddit.com/r/roguelikes/)

<comment><USER11> huge rogue-like fan. spent too much time with binding of isaac, wayward souls etc.

never seen that subreddit tho, thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Firms that both in US and London and do L-Visa transfers - <AUTHOR>

I am a European citizen and I want to move to the US.
How to find startups / firms that operate in London and US and are willing to do a L-visa transfer?
I know that Cloudflare offers this: If you start working for them, they promise that after a year in London you can transfer to SF. <comment><USER2> The L-1B visa (for inter-company transfers) is meant for employees with specialized knowledge. Being a computer programmer should not qualify. USCIS has begun to enforce the laws in recent years, so I wouldn't count on slipping through the cracks.

For example, here is a blog post about a law firm complaining about the law being enforced:

[http://blogs.ilw.com/entry.php?5944-To-L1b-or-Not- to-L1B-Dif...](http://blogs.ilw.com/entry.php?5944-To-L1b-or-Not- to-L1B-Difficulties-with-the-L-1B-Specialized-Knowledge-Visa)

<comment><USER3> The author of that blog post has an incentive to make the process seem as difficult and complicated as possible. After all, the more scary it seems, the more likely you'll pay them for assistance.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Being a computer programmer should not qualify."

Doesn't Microsoft use a L-visa to put people first into Canada and then transfer them to US?</comment></comment></comment>


How a Relationship Dies on Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/09/how-a-relationship-dies-on-facebook.html

<comment><USER2> Relationships die for a lot of reasons. Facebook could just be that cathartic destination of our love-anxieties. It's a convenient target, organizing memories and suitors and character in a psychologically-exploitative document.

I don't think Facebook generates envy, or even facilitates it. It just organizes it. I think if you feel envy and jealousy you're going to spread it out among lots of anxieties or maybe focus it on Facebook—not necessarily experience more of it.

Besides, think of all the healthy interactions we get from Facebook. It lets the folks who have a hard time selling themselves in real life advertise their character in an uninhibited way. We get to advertise the pretty sides and the ugly sides of ourselves, if we choose.

It's like any form of expression. Generally good I think. Though I did read lately that learning how to broadcast is not the same as learning how to converse, and maybe that's the root poison. It is fundamentally about selling yourself and sharing a lot, which isn't always a healthy thing.

Especially for relationships.

</comment><comment><USER3> _Nineteen per cent of teens have posted updates, photos, or other content that they later regret sharing, and seventy-four per cent have deleted people from their network._

I don't really know what these numbers are supposed to show. I've shared content that I've later regretted sharing, but it wasn't a lot of regret. If someone had asked me that question in a survey I would have probably answered yes, but it wouldn't really mean anything.

I've also deleted people from my network, but that was because I didn't really care about them. I can't really find any important information in these numbers

</comment><comment><USER4> I deleted my FB account a couple of years ago for many of the reasons cited in the article. There is, however, a social cost to not being on FB, especially if your social circle is not technologically adept. A salient example: An old friend of mine (like many people, I gather) has gradually slipped into a mode where she uses FB exclusively for electronic communication. She no longer checks her email accounts. She only uses FB messaging and FB status updates to keep in touch with her friends. In today's "simplify your life" culture (which I think is a good thing, generally) she has pared down her electronic footprint to a single service, FB. Recently I discovered through a mutual friend (over email) that my friend's mother is basically dying of cancer, she has travelled back home to be with her mother, etc etc. I didn't know any of this because I'm not on FB, and FB is where my friend chose to inform everyone, keep everyone up to date on progress, appeal for donations, organize social events, etc. Sure, I could be in touch by telephone, and obviously I wasn't ... but what if your friend(s) are not really phone people? I guess the point of this comment is, what if your friends are FB people? If you choose not to be, there is a social cost. Having said all that, I still will not establish a (new) FB account. (I presume despite deleting it, my old one still exists somewhere in the bowels of their servers)

<comment><USER4> downvoted? seriously? perhaps it would be informative to explain why? in all seriousness, I'd like to know

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I closed my fb account two or three years ago, at a point when I was really virulently anti-fb. I still haven't re-opened it, but I've mellowed a bit--not that I approve of it, really--it's a disgusting panopticon at best--but it's at least sufficiently obvious that it's hard for me to feel like anyone hangs out there without understanding what the basic dynamic is.

Now, articles like this don't make me feel bad for the kids who 'have to' use facebook (not that they don't; it sucks being ostracized, we all know). Really, they make me remember this talk by Steve Yegge[1] about how stupid it is that so many smart people spend their time working on cat pictures.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKmQW_Nkfk8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKmQW_Nkfk8)

</comment><comment><USER6> Anyone else sick of these high-brow publications staffed with greying gen-xers trying to "understand the youth", "the shifting nature of our relationships", in this "crazy digital age". It seems every week there's a new Salon, NY- Times, Newyorker, etc half-baked stab at trying to catch the youth zeitgeist and define it. It was interesting a few years ago when social networks were new, but this is so well worn. Is culture plateauing or something? Stop being so heck-darn lazy.

<comment><USER7> You put quotes around several phrases that are not used in the featured article. I suspect you do not understand this punctuation mark.

<comment><USER6> Welp, your suspicions are wrong friendo:

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

<comment><USER8> A scare quote is still a quote: _Scientist X says that "nuclear radiation" is "harmless"._

If you're not actually quoting somebody, the term of the art is "making up shit".

<comment><USER6> Wow, I love how you're so concerned about my grammar. But you're wrong, homeboy. If you actually read my comment, you'd grok that I was actually addressing a tired theme within the body of recent socio-tech think-pieces, as opposed to directly quoting the article. The scare quotes (which I have ironically employed) relate not to a direct citation, but allude to an over- arching theme. I fail to see how this would not be obvious to somebody with the barely the collective IQ of 11 physical education teachers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't really think the film showed that social networks are a brand new way of social interaction. Certainly, it can be used that way. But jealous lovers went through their significant others' letters just as well. People half-paid attention to telephone conversations. Social networks are just another arena for those kinds of human interaction to appear.

What the film did strike me is about how fundamentally society is getting tied to the internet. These kids have their entire social life connected to each other through technological proxies. People are on computers over ten hours of day, regardless if it's part of their occupation or not. This seems unhealthy.

</comment><comment><USER10> I deleted my facebook account about 5 years ago and I haven't regretted it for one day. From my perspective the people that use facebook are weak. They use it because other people tell them to use it and no other reason. If they don't see that then they are even weaker.

Companies that brand through facebook are worse. The company is such a bad one that the only way it builds its customer base is by appealing to these people.

The whole thing is depressing.

<comment><USER11> It's a communication tool, just like email, phone and letters. "Using" it does not have to mean you're on it for hours a day. My main purpose for using it is to keep in contact with people who live far away from me, and to organize meeting up with people who live near me. I find it strange that you think that makes me "weak."

<comment><USER12> > It's a communication tool, just like email, phone and letters.

Except that it's a public company that makes money selling your data to advertisers. It's a very important difference compared to letters, phone or (to a certain extent) email.

<comment><USER13> Except it doesn't actually sell your data to advertisers. It gives advertisers the ability to target people with certain types of data for a limited amount of time. They don't deliver your data to them.

<comment><USER14> I sincerely hate the term "selling data". No one "sells data". It's a term I think people use because it sounds scarier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Do companies ever release linguistic guidelines?

Do you have "a facebook?" A facebook page? A facebook account? A facebook profile?

People don't "friend my facebook" they "friend me on facebook," so is it "a me on facebook?"

Twitter? Twitter page? Twitter account? Twitter profile? "Check out my twitter," but do people say "I have a twitter?"

GitHub? Do people say "I have a github?" Check out my github? Check out my github account? Follow me on github? Follow my github account?

Didn't all this start with myspace? Is it a my myspace or a myspace? Do you have a myspace or a myspace page or a my myspace page?

Is every sentence in this post a question? Isn't it exhausting?

<comment><USER16> Lego tries to get people to call it's toys "Lego bricks" rather than "Legos" but I think this has not really been successful.

<comment><USER17> People who are legitimate Lego experts know better than to call them "Legos". These guys are being touted as Tech Gods who Have Something Important To Say To Their Generation.

While it may be a little bothersome to hear a random person call them "Legos", it's not the same as hearing a self-proclaimed expert call them that.

<comment><USER18> There are legitimate Lego experts? Also, I don't think I've met a single human being in person who _doesn 't_ call them Legos.

<comment><USER19> I'm British and until American TV I'd never heard anyone call them 'Legos'

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Ah yes, this sort of thing.

Facebook, like the internet, like blogging, like twitter, like crowdfunding, like videogames, like books, like e-commerce, is not some crazy new universe, it's just a medium where human beings can do what they've always done, but perhaps in different ways. It doesn't change the underlying capability of humans for good or ill, nor does it force humans to act differently.

If a drunk person initiates a fistfight with someone else in the parking lot after a football game most people are likely to place this event into the proper context, to put the responsibility on the individual primarily. But if the same thing were to happen under "more unusual" circumstances suddenly all logic flies out the window and people are more inclined to think those circumstances are somehow intimately related to the altercation. If someone kills someone over a video game, if people get into a scuffle after they run into each other on segways, or if some other drug is involved than alcohol, suddenly personal responsibility takes a back seat and moral panic rears its head. If a newspaper gets a story wrong that's one thing, if a blogger gets a story wrong suddenly it's a condemnation of all of internet journalism to its core. And here we have an example of people behaving badly and participating in perhaps human kind's oldest pass-time: horribly broken relationship behavior. And yet somehow all of this is special and unique and new because it happens on facebook, as though all of human history preceding facebook had been a bland parade of utterly normative relationship behavior.

People are weird, sometimes in a good way sometimes in a bad way, and when that weirdness becomes evident on a new medium it implies nothing about that medium other than that it allows humans to act like they've always acted.

P.S. This doesn't mean I think facebook is "good". There are lots of legitimate and even fundamental reasons to dislike or even hate facebook, but this narrative is not a particularly good critique of the platform.

<comment><USER17> See also: "Internet predators". Sure, they exist, and you need to teach your kids to be safe, but the depressing fact remains that most predators are found in malls, churches, schools, parks... but those things are not as conducive to mass hysteria.

<comment> mkr-hn Do you have data on this? Everything I've heard tells me most people like that are someone the victim knows.

<comment><USER17> You're right. I should have included "in the home" in that list. The same is true for murder victims, I believe. But Internet predators and random serial killers make more exciting TV news stories, so that's what we hear about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Facebook draws the line between hominids that are serious about personal development, professionalism, the future, and those who are potentially unmindful, postwhores, where each, as with all things, exists on a spectrum waiting to be grokked by neuroscientists.

It's a proverbial turning on of a light-switch to see what is a roach and what is a fixture.

</comment><comment><USER22> "Facebook exposes everything and nothing about you at the same time, whereas with Chatroulette you can hide behind the nonentity of it. It's that kind of danger that's necessary for honest conversation."

I think this quote nails the problem of Facebook. Facebook pushes social interaction further away from genuineness and honest discourse we long for. Posting pictures, statuses, etc are carefully constructed user activities to fish for "likes" or "comments". It just seems frivolous and fake. Facebook tries so hard not to be seen this way. If you watch some videos previously released by Facebook introducing Timeline and stuff, they try so hard to be like the real photo album filled with photos taken with 35mm camera you and your family kept for decades. If this is what they are striving for, why do they still attempt to reduce human response to a "like".

Sure, this is not just a problem of Facebook. Even in real life, it is hard to make real connection with people. But at least in real life, there's some level of spontaneity. We can't always think ahead about what we are going to say or how we are going to react to the interlocuteur which brings out some genuineness in human interaction. Making meaningful lasting connection in real life is hard as is. Facebook push a person further down into the trenches of disguises and fakeries in dealing with people.

Just today, I wrote about why it's difficult to have an honest opinion about something online. ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6386647](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6386647)) As a response to the problem, I created Dmtri ([http://dmtri.com/](http://dmtri.com/)). I hope HN users check it out. Feel free to comment what you think about it.

<comment><USER11> Of course I want responses if I post a picture on Facebook. It's exactly the same when I show a picture to a friend out in the world: I want a response. I have something I want to _share_. This desire does not become magically "bad" just because it happens online.

I have family and friends who live far away. I don't have the opportunity to visit them as much as I would like. If it was not for Facebook, I wouldn't see these pictures, or find out about events. The obvious counter to this is, "You would probably visit them more." I do not think that is true. Because I am able to find out what is going on with them on a regular basis, they stay in my mind, and I miss them more, and I want to go visit. I think that without Facebook and the ease through which I can maintain connections, these relationships would fade.

And the obvious response to _that_ is that the relationships weren't that strong to begin with, which I also don't think is true. Maintaining friendships over distance can be awkward for people who don't have a history of talking on the phone, or expressing themselves through text.

Spending an inordinate amount of time on Facebook is bad. But this notion that using it _at all_ is bad seems silly to me. People used to say similar things about phones.</comment></comment>


Say 'hello' to CISPA, it will remind you of SOPA - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57413627-93/say-hello-to-cispa-it-will-remind-you-of-sopa/

<comment><USER2> CISPA is flawed but doesn't have most of the provisions that SOPA contained. I wish the folks agitating against it would at least read the bill. (The other pending cyberintelligence bills are probably better than CISPA, though.)</comment>