Indiana man charged with theft for removing police tracking device from car - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/11/21/police-hid-tracking-device-suspects-car-then-charged-him-with-theft-removing-it/ <comment><USER2> If someone drops something in my car, and I unwittingly drive off with it, it is still not mine. But I did not steal it. If the person asks for it back, and I refuse, then I am stealing it.

All the police had to do was knock on his door and ask for it back. If he refused, that's grounds for theft. If he denied knowledge of it (like if it had just fallen off somewhere) that doesn't sound like sufficient grounds for a search warrant, and if the search warrant did turn up evidence of some unrelated crime, that evidence shouldn't be admissible.

I'm no lawyer, but that's what sounds right to me.

(I don't agree that Finders Keepers is a legal basis for ownership, or that leaving your door open means it's ok to steal, or that a bank error in your favor means you get to keep it.)

<comment><USER3> If you hide something on my car to spy on me then it's not reasonable to expect it back if I find it. Charging somebody with theft for something like this is effectively rewarding the police for being incompetent.

One of the worst mistakes in modern government is pretending that the people 'serving' have more rights and privileges then everybody else.

They should have less.

<comment><USER4> I'd settle for experimenting with "same".

If a regular citizen can't plant a bug, neither can police. If police can conduct a stakeout, so can regular citizens. They just have to follow the same process. That might include going in front of a judge and getting a warrant.

If a regular citizen could break up a bar fight, the police should be able to take the same actions. If police can set up a sting operation, so should citizens be allowed.

Obviously, we don't want everybody running around conducting sting operations or traffic stops. So we set some bar for regular citizens that makes it less likely. But police should have to face the exact same bar. The difference is that we pay for their time, training, equipment, etc. If a certain level of training is required before anybody can make a traffic stop, that training should be open for anybody. We just pay the admission and the salary for police to take the training. Regular citizens foot their own bill.

Edit: poor proofreading

<comment><USER5> So which do you think makes more sense: Police are not allowed to arrest people, or everyone is allowed to arrest?

<comment><USER6> Former private security guard here: in our training, we were told that we, as private citizens, could "arrest" someone, if you're willing to sign your name to an arrest warrant. You'd want to have the cops on the way, and be willing to face a false arrest lawsuit for detaining them, so you'd better be really 100% sure you caught them in the act of doing something illegal.

We were also taught it's almost never worth doing this; basically, if someone's shooting people and you're doing an armed job, yes, use your gun to try and stop them or detain them, but if it's just property damage or theft, call the cops and let them do their thing. The risk to you isn't worth it, nor is the risk of a false arrest lawsuit.

<comment><USER7> I think that hints towards freeopinion's point. You, as a private citizen, should have exactly the same legal liability with respect to false arrest as a police officer.

Then the question is, is such a good idea?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> That part doesn't sound right:

> _trackers placed by the government under a warrant are distinct from those > placed by private citizens. Removing a device from a car where it has a > legal basis to be "deprives the police of its use," he claimed, and > constitutes a crime._

You have no way to tell a police tracker from a stawker's one. How can removing it possibly constitute a crime?

<comment><USER9> Had he been made aware of the tracking device, like one is with an ankle monitoring bracelet, then sure, removal is cause for an arrest on theft, destruction of property, etc.

However, since he was not made aware of the device, he has no obligation to be compliant.

If the police were tapping someone's phone and they threw away the phone, for whatever reason, would they be in a similar situation?

If they avoided a human surveillance detail, would they be in a similar situation?

Likely no and no.

So while the police did things correctly, getting warrants, etc, the suspect was still entirely unaware of any need to comply.

The guy should walk.

Edit: addendum

If the device had been labeled "Property of {X} Police, do not remove", then they'd have a better case.

Same way the police are supposed to (but don't) announce themselves before kicking down your door.

You're not more important than the citizenry you serve.

<comment><USER10> They claim that a police tracker is obviously different than a civilian one. Didn't say how. But if it becomes illegal to remove a police tracker, how soon before the civilian ones resemble the police ones?

<comment><USER9> That assumes civilians are aware of what "civilian" trackers look like.

Not a reasonable assumption.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> However you may feel about the theft charge, if you find a tracker on your car, don't take it off. It's an occasion to call the police. Someone is either committing a crime by tracking you illegally or you're letting the police know you found their tracker. Maybe they'll remove it, as once the tracker is known to exist it's useless.

If you want to go the route of civil disobedience and take it off on moral grounds, you can do that too, but you'll probably go to jail. This isn't the first time I've heard of this, the FBI has charged people for tampering with the trackers they've put on people's cars.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2011/05/09/heres-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2011/05/09/heres- what-the-gps-devices-used-by-the-fbi-to-track-your-car-look- like/#539161ee523d)

<comment><USER12> > However you may feel about the theft charge, if you find a tracker on your > car, don't take it off.

Yes, but ...

> It's an occasion to call the police.

If you are a drug dealer it is an occasion to hide your supply extra hard. And use a second car/taxi for your drug dealing while using the compromised car for perfectly legal things like an upstanding citizen.

<comment><USER13> > If you are a drug dealer it is an occasion to hide your supply extra hard.

I suspect he did. Most likely the police planted the glass pipe that was found when searching for the tracking device so that they could obtain permission from the judge for the second search.

<comment><USER14> I upvoted this specifically so the people who still believe in the essential lawfulness of police would have a better chance of seeing it. The slang term is "testilying".

There is low conditional probability that a drug dealer smart enough to locate and remove a GPS tracker would put it in the same physical locker compartment as a crack pipe after taking it off.

Were I the judge, I would be especially wary of "automatic probable cause" objects that were coincidentally found with the search warrant target, namely "drug paraphernalia", "the distinctive odor of marijuana", and "the K-9 unit alerted".

Ask to see the glass pipe they found. Ask to see the photograph of it _in situ_ next to the tracking device. Compare it very closely to evidence taken from previous drug cases. When the cops are unable to back up their bullshit story, throw their whole case out and cite someone for perjury.

<comment><USER15> > Were I the judge...

Your mental model of a typical American judges values is, unfortunately, unrepresentative in the extreme.

<comment><USER14> My mental model of the typical American judge involves a lot of corner- cutting, and disdain for actually _doing the job_ of applying reason and wise judgment to real-world situations, instead of just following a checklist of established procedures and conforming to precedent.

Judges tend to rule in favor of lawyers that do most of their work for them. It's a lot easier to get an order if the lawyer submits a draft order, and the judge can just sign it.

I get it. I also like to slack off and get paid. To be perfectly honest, I'd probably only double-check the evidence if a random number generator said to do it, based on the pre-established sampling rate setting in my judge- automation program.

<comment><USER15> I suppose I misspoke, your mental model sounds accurate XD. I wish there were a mandated evidence double check sampling rate! The point I was making is that I suspect in most courtrooms the rate is effectively 0.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Legally, what is happening when the police put a tracker on a car? It isn't a gift, or a transfer of ownership - otherwise the police retieving it would be theft. On the other hand, the vehicle owner should not be held responsible for damage to a device they don't know about. Does it become lost property?

If the disappearance of public property attached to a vehicle can be used to justify a search warrant, this seems like it would be ripe for abuse. The police could apply for a tracking warrant, wait a week, claim their tracker was lost, and then perform whatever searches they want on the private property.

<comment><USER17> IANAL

My understanding is that it's the Police's property. If you find it, you can probably legally remove it from the car, but you can't keep it or prevent the Police from recovering it.

This might be interesting to you:

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

<comment><USER18> Since you don't know whose tracker it is maybe the best thing to do is "lose" it again. Drop it down the nearest drain so you can plausibly say you never saw it and it must have fallen off.

<comment><USER17> > Since you don't know whose tracker it is maybe the best thing to do is > "lose" it again.

Often, knowledge of surveillance almost completely diminishes its effectiveness. If you know your car has a tracker on it, the police won't get anything useful out of it, because you won't drive to any place you don't want the cops to know about.

Leaving it in place also has the advantage that you don't alert the police that you know about the surveillance.

<comment><USER19> You might need to go to those places, though, and not have alternative transport.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "They sought warrants to search Heuring's home and the barn, alleging that there was probable cause that a crime had been committed — that Heuring had committed theft by taking off the GPS tracker. While searching the barn, they found the tracker in a bathroom locker. They also found evidence of drug use: a glass pipe.

A subsequent search, granted by a judge based on the paraphernalia, uncovered bags of methamphetamine, pills, digital scales and a gun. Heuring was charged with drug dealing and with theft."

Smart enough to take the tracker off the car. Dumb enough to keep it on- location with conviction-worthy drug paraphernalia.

Attach it to a hire car. Keep it moving, but as far away from your illegalities as possible, my goodness.

<comment><USER21> I don't know. Investigators who are willing to stoop to "He stole our tracker" are surely not above exaggerating the evidence they've found.

Why do we even bother with warrants if the police can get around them by tricking you into "stealing" something?

<comment><USER22> It's so we can have the appearance of rights. Same reason why China has kangaroo courts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Whats really troubling here is in the future, the police could get a warrant to track a vehicle, take the tracker off themselves, then go back to the courts claiming there is probable cause the suspect stole the tracker and get the warrant to search for their tracker in the suspects home and parents home...of course searching for whatever it is they really wanted but had no right to search for.

<comment><USER24> It has always been possible to fabricate evidence. What's troubling to me isn't the behavior of the police (who have done much worse) but the judge, who approved the warrant on ridiculous grounds, even though the judiciary is meant to be a check on the power of the executive.

<comment><USER25> > even though the judiciary is meant to be a check on the power of the > executive.

Yeah, that hasn't really been working out for us.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This may be a bit of an exaggeration, but there are some implications to IT. May running malware removal tools (or antivirus software in general) be theft? Was the malware planted by a government agency? By your government? Under a warrant? Better don't touch at all?

(The entire matter is highly absurd.)

</comment><comment><USER27> This is the interesting statement to me:

> "But something is left on your car — even if you know it's the police that > are tracking you, you have an obligation to leave it there and let them > track you?"

If you can compel someone to leave surveillance on private property, where does this precedent make a distinction. Could they leave surveillance cameras in your home and compel you to leave them there?

<comment><USER28> At this point how does the 5th not play into this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> At least one Justice gets it. The original judge shouldn't have issued the second warrant. First of all, what law was broken by remove the legally placed device? (The fact that it is different than a consumer device sounds be immaterial) second, isn't possession 9/10s the law? It is on his car, he should have a right to remove it. I would also be concerned with the police planning an active device on the car. This will definitely set a dangerous precedent.

</comment><comment><USER29> Lots of hypotheticals, fun reading here.

My thought: Isn't there something about bearing witness against yourself? In America you're not required to do so. Isn't removing a tracking device something like pleading the 5th?

Others suggest you should return it to the police, but it seems to me there are way better approaches to that than handing it over.

Its a tracking device, right? They're going to find it, wherever you put it (except in a locked metal cabinet of course).

So leave it by the side of the road - they'll see it quit moving, find it, assume it fell off. Maybe try again, put it back on your car.

Next time, maybe leave it outside town in a muddy drainage ditch? Imagine the sap who has to go in there to get it.

All sorts of fun could be had. Leave it in a bank lobby. In Victoria's Secret under the discount table. In a trash can at the zoo. Behind the Police station where they keep the idle tracking devices. In an abandoned building. Under a parked police car.

So many better ways to deal with this problem, it could hardly be called a problem at all. Its a challenge!

<comment><USER30> Installing the tracking device requires a warrant, meaning it's classified as a "search," not as testimony. It's 4th Amendment territory, not 5th Amendment.

If removing the tracking device is pleading the 5th, then putting the tracking device on at all would be a violation of the 5th Amendment. You can philosophize a testimonial aspect into almost anything, but the courts take a more narrow view of what gets protected by the 5th.

<comment><USER29> To continue hypotheticals, once you know its there it becomes a voluntary act to continue. You have to continue to (allow) reporting of your location. That sounds more like 5th territory.

Anyway I see its not speech, so not testimony.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Disgusting abuse of power manages to catch a criminal. Is that our only metric for success now? Putting people in prison? Might as well shred the constitution, apparently we're ready to burn everything it stood for to prevent people from getting high.

I know I sound dramatic but it is honestly impossible to overstate how damaging to privacy rights and how much horrific police militarization can be directly and indirectly laid at the feet of the war on drugs.

<comment><USER32> >Is that our only metric for success now? Putting people in prison? Might as well shred the constitution

You just threw that straw man straight down a slippery slope.

>apparently we're ready to burn everything it stood for to prevent people from getting high

This falls under "punching Nazis". Do you want some guy going around punching people? No, of course not. But if he's punching Nazis, then hey, let him do his thing, man. Same logic here, except it's "tracking meth dealers".

>I know I sound dramatic

I was thinking "moral grandstanding"

I'm okay with the police catching a meth dealer and putting him away. Good job. Keep up the good work.

<comment><USER33> What straw man? What slippery slope? That's literally what's happening here, and it's the argument you're making: "this man is a meth dealer, so the ends justify the means".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Soon:

"Indiana man charged with theft for removing drugs planted by police"

</comment><comment><USER35> "Deputy Attorney General Jesse Drum argued that the deputies had not acted in bad faith"

Is it typical for DAs to have lacking judgement? I know we hear about the bad ones but whenever any kind of insane police stunt appears in the media the DA is always on the police's side. I thought the judicial branch was supposed to be separate and neutral from the executive branch.

<comment><USER36> The DA is in the judicial branch?

<comment><USER35> Is it not? It's the lawyer appointed by the public.

<comment><USER37> Not an expert, but I'm pretty sure the DA is part of the executive branch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> By this logic, with a simple warrant, the police could place a big, obvious microphone in the middle of your living room, label it "Police surveillance mic", and you would be forbidden from removing it.

I find _that_ much more troubling than any technicalities around 'did he know it belonged to the cops'. Just how much obedience can a simple warrant coerce out of supposedly free citizens?

<comment><USER39> Just stick an Amazon or Google logo on it and people will buy it and place it themselves..

<comment><USER40> But that also lets me order more Doritos hands free!

<comment><USER41> I wonder if you could eat doritos hands free too? Could you have a dorito launcher that would hit your mouth every time?

On the other hand, it might be risky to combine voice command with dorito's launch since they both use the same orifice for I/O.

<comment><USER14> I eat Doritos and Cheetos with chopsticks. It keeps the flavoring detritus off the fingers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> > [Deputy Attorney General Jesse Drum] said trackers placed by the government > under a warrant are distinct from those placed by private citizens. Removing > a device from a car where it has a legal basis to be "deprives the police of > its use," he claimed, and constitutes a crime.

That argument doesn't make sense if the suspect doesn't know that it belongs to police. Presumably, the suspect wouldn't have known in this scenario, and chances are a meth dealer has non-law-enforcement entities after them in addition to the police. It could've just as easily been a disgruntled "customer" or competing dealer who placed the device.

If I see a tracking device on my car, it's getting removed. For me, that'd mean contacting the police and asking them to look into it, but I'm sure plenty of people would simply remove it themselves. Why would that be a crime?

</comment><comment><USER43> Im a bit confused, at the point the police attached the unmarked tracking device on the suspects vehicle, did the suspect not obtain possession rights to the tracker? If not can the police just attach a device to you vehicle then charge you with theft immediately? How did the removal and subsequent storage result in theft if the device was already in the suspects possession?

</comment><comment><USER44> All debates aside, who finds a police tracking device on their car and continues to maintain a large stash of meth and paraphernalia?

<comment><USER45> Someone who's very addicted. Addiction clouds judgement on ways that are very hard to emphasize with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Let's check some scenarios: 1) Police puts a mic inside your house, you step on it, and destroy it. Is it ok or not?

2) Police puts a mic on a guy who comes to your house, you find it, and destroy it. Is it ok or not?

3) Police puts a nano-mic (nano-gps) on you, you find it, and destroy it. Is it ok or not?

My answer to all of the above is that anything put on your property without you knowledge is up for grabs and destruction without further notice. Hour, car, or body is irrelevant.

<comment><USER47> If someone puts a car or a body on your property, do you destroy it?

<comment><USER48> If someone dumps a trash on your property do you take it out?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> There is a law in South Africa called "Die Mandament van Spolie" or otherwise "spoliasie". It is _not_ the same as spoliation in English; spoliation is the spoiling of evidence.

 _Spoliasie_ , however, means that you can't take away an existing right, an existing usage by someone, without somehow proving through the process of the law that that person is not entitled to that right.

A good example of this is an access gate used by multiple people. If you change the lock or remote, and someone else uses the gate—rightfully or not—then you are at risk of transgressing this feature of the law. Interestingly enough, there has been a case where the gate was electronic and a case where the gate was manual and in the two different cases the judges actually ruled differently in the two cases. One case of changing access credentials without giving access to other users was "spoliasie" and one wasn't—obviously also complicating subsequent interpretation of the law.

In fact, since you cannot take the law into your own hands, a thief could theoretically after having stolen your car and if you take back the car somehow, sue you for spoliasie. The key here is that the _police_ is supposed to go and apprehend the suspect and bring back your car.

Of course, practically, such a case would never go to court. But before you think the "theory" of this is crazy, consider this: How do you know who has a right to usage of which items and personal properties? In fact, maybe you lent the "thief" your car (and maybe the "thief" is even your friend) and suddenly you decided you didn't like this friend anymore and called the police and told them this person stole your car. Maybe it's a silly example, but the point is that it's tricky to just impede existing usage without proper consideration.

The principle is that an existing right should be respected until shown to be an unlawful usage and hence not a valid right. By the way, IANAL.

</comment><comment><USER50> Previous discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21568362](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21568362)

</comment><comment><USER51> The real problem here is that the police and courts can charge people with frivolous crimes like this and there are no consequences on their part. This poor guy now has to hire a lawyer, waste his time and money, go through the court system and hopefully get this thrown out. If the judges, prosecutors and police were held accountable maybe things like this wouldn't happen, but it won't be in my lifetime.

</comment><comment><USER52> _I agree with the vast number of comments about how unjust this is and I strongly suspect the police messed up by applying for the house search warrant using such a flimsy charge, instead of, I dunno, maybe just applying for a warrant to search his home using the same CI who got you the car warrant? Still wrong, but at least less dumb.

That said, if you find a GPS tracker on your car, which you take off and keep in your house full of drugs, it might be a bit late for you. I'm not suggesting the police used the GPS tracker to locate him, but who would keep a device like that, even if you were _fairly* sure it was off? Park next to a city/police/firefighter/EMS vehicle and stick it over there. Or just chuck the thing on the side of the road and be done with it.

This is a fairly rural area, but I suspect in a larger city the police wouldn't even need a GPS tracker to maintain a rough idea of your comings and goings. They'll just scan the license plates ~20+ times a day as various police vehicles drive by, and use that data to build a map of your travels.

</comment><comment><USER53> If you find something like that, you put it in a box and mail it back to the police.

Be sure to include an invoice with a hefty charge for shipping and handling.

<comment><USER54> > _Besides, Keating said, there was no indication that it belonged to law > enforcement._

How do you know where to mail it?

<comment><USER53> Local police. If they send it back, you keep any paperwork and throw it away, since now you have proof that you tried.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Can the police now run up and strap a camera to my forehead, compelling me to leave it there, allowing them to observe my movements, and charging me with a crime for removing it?

I guess when this happens I have to drop it off at a police station. TIL

<comment> m-p-3 They can with an ankle monitor, the camera implies a more invasive privacy situation though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> A _long_ time ago, there was this thing where businesses would mail you something that you had in no way asked to receive. They would assert that you bought it if you didn't mail it back. (The mailing came with paperwork asserting this.) I forget whether it was due to court cases or legislation, but that doesn't fly anymore.

I wonder if that provides any kind of precedent for this case?

</comment><comment><USER56> So I guess just bake it in an oven then put it back?

Or if it's magnet mounted, clip it on the catalytic converter for a couple of trips.

</comment><comment><USER57> A label reading "Property of XYZ Law Enforcement Agency. If found, please return" on the device, plus a failure to return it IMO is the bar to make a theft charge in this situation.

</comment><comment><USER58> I'd make the argument that it was a gift; it was freely given and on my property. They knowingly transferred it to him.

</comment><comment><USER59> Obvious solution, return it - stick it on a patrol car. They can chase their own tails.

</comment><comment><USER60> Law enforcement considers the Constitution as damage to be routed around.

</comment><comment><USER61> UK Security Intelligence Services, will use school reports, NHS records for surveillance purposes on everyone and have been known to carry out operations on primary school age kids, which the kids wont know about until later on in life.

</comment><comment><USER62> Wonder if an argument is to be made that this is entrapment

</comment><comment><USER58> I would make the argument that it was a gift.

</comment><comment><USER63> sounds like a good time to trade out your vehicle for something else, a rental maybe.

</comment><comment><USER64> all the evidence should be inadmissible

</comment><comment><USER65> Put a faraday cage around the tracker instead

<comment><USER66> To 'protect it from rain and road debris' of course /s</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Would anyone use an API for sports data? - <AUTHOR> I'm brain storming for a personal project. It would be similar to http://sportradar.us and be an api for sports stats. <comment><USER2> To practice my R skills (I wanted a different dataset to play with) I took an online class from EdX taught by BostonU baseball guru Andy Andres. They talk a lot in the class about sabermetrics and the data sources you can get. The public stuff (either free or through paid sources) is a fraction of the data that the clubs get and use for their own internal use. Things like wind on the field, each pitch speed, where it went in the strike zone, etc. are not released out.

So you have a tough climb to get access to that data without getting the clubs to give it up. But if you build it the fans will come :) there is an amazing number of people that live for the little nuanced data.

For those of you interested in Sabermetrics or think you'd like to know more about baseball stats, I highly recommend Andy's class.

</comment><comment><USER3> I do use APIs for sports data, but I pull that data from existing places. Unless you have some impressive connections or a _lot_ of time on your hands, you're probably not getting data with the same detail as, say, baseball's Sean Lahman or Retrosheet (or commercial options like the data that underlies Synergy video tagging for the NBA), and specialty stuff like SportsVU data (again NBA) is not exactly easy to come by without dropping All Of The Money on a license. I can't speak to the NFL or NHL, but I know datastores exist with accessible APIs and very good data sources.

This is a pretty mined-out space. Might be fun (and if so, go for it!), but I don't know how applicable it would be if you're looking to build it for others to consume.

<comment><USER4> Do you mind sharing some of the existing data sources / API's you are using?

<comment><USER3> I don't operate in this space professionally at this point, so I steer clear of the paid options, but everything I listed in that post is a decent starting point. For pure statistics in other sports the Sports-Reference APIs are fine (though I'd rather pull down the data, and the Lahman database is better for baseball); I don't have any good play-by-play data for the NBA aside from commercial sources. I used to have some affordable, but kinda crappy, NBA play-by-play/shot-chart data, but if you're interested in that I'd just be ready to open the wallet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Let me know if you need any help. We built a machine learning service called hopdata and I have been looking for a sports API to link into so we could do something similar to fivethirtyeight. [http://www.hopdata.com](http://www.hopdata.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds good. What type of data would you want to get from a sports data api?

<comment><USER5> At this point, I had it in my mind as a broad and large undertaking, we would really need to dig into what information is available. For instance, if we look at baseball, we could make predictions based on historic outcomes and real-time scores but it would be much better the more granular we can get. Current score, current inning, current outs, current count, which players are in the outfield, who are the next 9 people to bat, who is pitching, which ballpark, the weather...

<comment><AUTHOR> That makes sense. I feel like the more granular and real time you can get, the better

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Would be fun to have something that easily imported into pandas or another decent data platform so one could run some simple regressions/data science on it. Might be able to get some peoplease to help out if you open sourced it on github, or something similar.

<comment><AUTHOR> I never thought of this. What other data platforms are out there and what is the most popular or widely used in your opinion?

<comment><USER6> Most of my stuff is in numpy/scipy, so that sort of array would be great (they are C arrays under the hood, so pretty fast).

As you can tell, most of my work is in python. But R is absolutely huge, so providing an interface to that would certainly be handy to most.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Absolutely. I have a couple of sports apps [0] that use both scraped web data and a hidden API to get realtime baseball game information. One of them won a sports hackathon a couple years ago (sports radar was a sponsor).

From what I recall, sports radar is really expensive because they have people manually entering data all the time. If you could find a happy medium where your data is close to real-time but doesn't require a lot of manual work, you could keep your costs low and prices affordable for small app developers.

I'd suggest targeting mobile developers and not just fantasy/daily fantasy. I'd love to work some more up-to-date questions in my sports trivia app. Example: "What had the most rebounds in Warriors/Cavs game 1?"

[0]

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hat-trick-daily-sports- trivi...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hat-trick-daily-sports- trivia/id722427984?mt=8)

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/on-deck-baseball- alerts/id91...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/on-deck-baseball- alerts/id911024857?mt=8)

<comment><USER8> How far off are we from using machine learning to gather data from video, removing the manual entry cost?

<comment><USER9> You're probably better off with an OCR system that's configured per channel display format, rather than an ML solution. ML systems require training regardless of effectiveness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don'n really see the point of the question. I doubt you hope to find out there is a significant consumer-base in need, for reasons already mentioned, so are you asking if it's useless? I would say no, because making data accessible always is good.

Personally, I don't care the slightest for stuff like football, hockey or whatever, but I remember struggling to find comprehensive data-set on human physical abilities, such as results in light&heavy athletics, which would include year, age, measurements and all other stuff that might be potentially interesting when analyzing something like that. Data on not-mainstream events is especially hard to find, which is a pity, as it is potentially even more interesting, because olympic athletes are obviously less human-like.

</comment><comment><USER11> Definitely! Thinking about building a natural language query API over sports data, similar to Statmuse [0], but the whole thing kind of depends on having data in the first place.

[0]: [https://www.statmuse.com/](https://www.statmuse.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> What type of data would you be looking for?

<comment><USER11> Individual player and team stats, probably at a per-game resolution, would be ideal. Relational works great but any format could work. Additionally, a join table of player-team memberships over time (per season?) would be useful for visualizing timelines. Bulk data downloads could also be useful, since the tool I'm envisioning wouldn't depend so much on real-time data as the ability to explore past trends.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I currently use sportradar. People will definitely use a sports data API -- but you would have to beat sportradar somewhere (either on developer experience, price, accuracy, feature set, number of sports covered, etc...) to make a viable business out of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's what I was thinking. The easiest way to beat them would be price and developer experience. The price tag of the data is a little pricey and the docs seem hard to understand.

What are the biggest short comings you've found with the service?

<comment><USER12> You probably won't beat them for B2B. The service is good but not great, but the switching costs are too high that even if your service was better in some way you wouldn't win any customers. They're competent and get the job done and with B2B if you have an existing foothold that's normally enough.

The service is definitely too expensive, the data is occasionally wrong and I have to hound them to fix it, and the developer experience is surely lacking, but at the end of the day a working JSON API of sports data is a working JSON API of sports data, all the other stuff is just noise.

The proper way to beat sportradar would be to find a way to pursue a B2C model instead of a B2B model. i.e. instead of 3k a month to license the data if there was some way to pay $25/month for a similar experience you might be able to capture a much larger market share that sportradar prices out. If you could get college kids hacking on sports stats to use your service because it's the only thing they can afford you might be able to grow that into something.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah thats what I was thinking, a very low entry point. I don't see any problems associated with only charging $15-25/month to access the data.

One thing that I have been wondering is, how do I get away with using the data without the leagues intervening? Or do they not own the data because the stats are publicly accessible

<comment><USER12> You can use the stats without the league's permission for sure. Check out [http://www.bitlaw.com/source/cases/copyright/nba.html](http://www.bitlaw.com/source/cases/copyright/nba.html) if you want the actual legal grounds for why you can use stats.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Depends on exactly what you're setting up.

If you're doing the collection, and making that data available - I would be very interested. If it's the framework to do collection myself - not so much.

Looking forward to more details!

<comment><AUTHOR> I would be doing the collection myself and making the data available.

<comment><USER14> Have you looked into what the MLB, NFL, NBA, etc would do to block you? While they have no legal protection of facts, you can't copy their facts from them and hope they won't come after you.

<comment><AUTHOR> No I have not. But is there any way for them to know if a fact was copied from them or not? If Steph Curry made 10 out of 11 field goals in a game. How would they know if I watched the game and found that data out or looked on their website?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Once in a blue moon I get the urge to run some analysis or another on sports stats, but I almost inevitably end up having second thoughts when I realize obtaining good data is going to be an ongoing chore.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah i feel like obtaining historical data will be easy but staying up to date is the real challenge

<comment><USER15> On the upside, the existence of that friction definitely points to a gap where value can be added. Another likely source of friction where you can add value is the work anyone working on multiple information sources (whether this is several databases/apis for one sport, or for different sports altogether) has to do to integrate multiple services and data models. If you can identify some people who are doing that work in the first place, you can probably make a business case for how you can simplify their application and give them a single interface/API for all of that data.

I'll also echo the suggestion from @scottrblock on the potential usefulness of various metadata. If all you have are game statistics, while people can obviously do lots of novel analysis on the data, it's fairly obvious what the "use" is. With a wide spectrum of metadata, you might end up simultaneously creating something of value to someone analyzing the effect of weather on different sports/teams/players and for hotel chains trying to set prices based on the historical attendance for all sporting events within 50 miles.

If you could create a revenue model that supports delivering the service both to continual high-volume business users and to users just using the API occasionally to support an analysis project, perhaps it's possible to pass revenue downstream to other data sources. Granted, this adds a number of administrative problems (people submitting data collected/generated/sold by other parties as their own to collect revenue on it; getting low- quality/falsified data; etc.)

* I wasn't aware of stattleship or sportsradar before this thread; no idea how well they cover these.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> [http://developers.stattleship.com/#introduction](http://developers.stattleship.com/#introduction)

<comment><AUTHOR> Seems like what I was looking for but I wonder how robust their data is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I was looking for an API for NCAA bowl game results for a simple app to coordinate a family pool that we do every year and I couldn't find anything that would cost less than several thousand dollars (I probably wouldn't pay anything really). I just created a dashboard to enter the scores. If something was available I'd love to tie into it.

</comment><comment><USER18> Yes indeed. I have an ongoing project with college football and I was surprised nothing good for this actually exists.

Correctness and comprehensiveness is probably more important in my mind than having the information immediately. I'd wager most people around here would want to use it for training data rather than any sort of real-time system.

<comment><AUTHOR> What time of data are collecting in your system if you don't mind me asking

<comment><USER18> I was just trying to start with really simple things like all of the weekly game scores and what rank the teams held at that point in time. I was surprised no one had this and I just had to write a scraper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> ESPN had an API for a while, but, it didn't provide scores (they were getting the scores from a third party).

I've been looking for something like this for one of my personal projects, but, haven't really had the time to spend on it recently.

<comment><AUTHOR> Besides scores, what other data would you look for?

<comment><USER19> Upcoming Games, player stats, feeds of player photos.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Wouldn't files be much, much easier to work with? Or do APIs enable you to regulate consumption since the data is so expensive?

<comment><AUTHOR> APIs allow anyone to request and use the data without have to host all of the data. At least thats what I was thinking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Very much so. Especially if it pulled in other tangental data such as weather at the time and location of the game.

<comment><AUTHOR> So stats and meta data such as weather, location, and time are what you would look for?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> My company uses such services in other sports. They are professional punters.

I imagine William Hill etc would find it useful

</comment><comment><USER23> Stats, LLC is another example.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do they have a publicly available api though? It seems like you have to contact a sales rep just to get access.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I would build a REST client for it and pipe all the data to /dev/null.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah thats what I was thinking. A rest api to interface with all of the data

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Hedgefunds?</comment>


Ask HN: How do you define market size when creating a new catogory - <AUTHOR> We're creating a new type of media and solving the issues consumers face when taking quality photos and video.
Instagram solved the problem of making photos captured on mobile devices attractive by creating filters.
We're solving the problem of failing to get the best angles or failing to capture the context you want to capture and resorting to selfie-sticks, drones, or just accepting that the photos you take are limited to the fixed frame of what is captured by the camera.
We are looking at all sorts of adjacent markets to define our market size, such as Volumetric Video, etc.
I'm trying to think of something like GoPro, and before Action Camera's were a thing, how would they have defined that market size to an investor?
Any suggestions? <comment><USER2> The dirty secret here is that all of these projections are a combination of utter bullshit, smoke and mirrors, wishful thinking, and bad statistics. And everybody involved on both sides knows this. The key thing, from what I can tell, is that you put the effort in to come up with numbers that look vaguely realistic, but yet sell a story that is investment-worthy.

All of that said, if you really want to try and do some kind of semi- meaningful estimation, I'd suggest reading _How to Measure Anything_ by Douglas Hubbard, and then think about what data you _do_ have access to, and what _n_ th order effects you can use in a model, and what analogies you can construct.

For example... if you're creating something completely new, for which you really have no way to estimate demand, do something like this: Start with the population of the geographic region where you intend to sell your product/service... let's say it's the US, and the product is potentially of interest to all adults. That's around 327 million people or so.

Now, figure out what existing "thing" is closest conceptually to filling the same niche as your "thing". An example might be when TV was invented, they could have used radio as an analogy. This is not precise, but it doesn't have to be. Find the market penetration percentage for the analogous item, and assume approximately the same percentage of people would want/need what you're selling. Do the math, and call the output your Total Addressable Market[1].

If you can't find something that's a good analogy (or a bad analogy that's not so bad as to be completely unusable) then you could try other ways to get an approximation of the potential demand. It's old-school and potentially expensive, and probably not very accurate, but you could try a survey of the relevant population. You could also do the "landing page only" thing, run highly targeted ads, and see how many "conversions" (sign-up for your launch mailing list, etc.) you get and approximate from that. You could do pre-sells where you actually sell the thing before it's built. If you're confident you can ship, this could be good because it gives you $$$ to work with. But if you spend the $$$ and don't ship, giving out refunds could leave you fucked.

Anyway, there's a lot of stuff out there on this. Jump on Amazon and find a used copy of an old "marketing research" textbook (or get it off a pirate e-book site) and read through that. There is some semi-legitimate stuff you can do, but don't obsess over trying to get "real" numbers. Something reasonable, combined with bullshit, smoke and mirrors, wishful thinking, and bad statistics should do the trick.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_addressable_market](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_addressable_market)</comment>


Algorithms, Key Sizes and Parameters - 2013 Recommendations [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.enisa.europa.eu/activities/identity-and-trust/library/deliverables/algorithms-key-sizes-and-parameters-report/at_download/fullReport

<comment><AUTHOR> Via Sandy Harris on Cryptography list via [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/31/most_security_protoc...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/31/most_security_protocols_insecure_suggests_enisa/) via [http://www.enisa.europa.eu/activities/identity-and- trust/lib...](http://www.enisa.europa.eu/activities/identity-and- trust/library/deliverables/algorithms-key-sizes-and-parameters-report)

The report summarises common crypto primitives and protocols, gives recommendations on what is suitable for legacy use, and what should be used in the future. It's nicely written, but given the scope necessarily limited (there are obvious omissions in the discussion of block ciphers for example). Also, curiously, they don't say much about EC choice ("using a curve specified in a standard is best practice") - but then the word "snowden" doesn't appear in the document either; perhaps it was completed earlier?</comment>


Show HN: Scaling corporate anti-racism donations to the average household - <AUTHOR> https://donations.exposed/ <comment><AUTHOR> The big donations that some corporations have made to combat racism have made many people feel that their donations can't make an impact.

We've scaled these donations from corporate profits to household incomes, putting into perspective how much of an impact companies have made. We also made it easy to see how your contribution will stack up against these well- known brands.

We've open sourced the project as well, check it out here: [https://github.com/jamrants/donations](https://github.com/jamrants/donations)

</comment><comment><USER2> This is really awesome! It can be really difficult to visualize and understand large numbers - this is a perfect way of truly understanding what large sums truly mean to corporations. Plus, it makes individual donations feel a lot more meaningful.</comment>


Owners of a free press must be committed to its vital role - <AUTHOR> https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/04/10/owners-of-the-press-must-be-committed-to-its-vital-role/ <comment><USER2> Isn't it peculiar how this is only a thing to consider depending on which way the political winds blow? I wonder if this will still be such a concern when the winds change...I'll not hold my breath though.</comment>


Karma Inflation: Why Comment Karma is More Valuable than Submission Karma - <AUTHOR>

First, more people are going to read just the articles, and up-vote just the articles.
I feel that every up-vote toward a (usually) third-party's work gaining users the same karma as comment up-votes is somewhat broken.
Anyone agree and/or have thoughts on how to fix it? <comment><USER2> Perhaps the best way to fix your problem is to stop worrying so much about karma. ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> So you think that karma has no benefit to the quality of the community? I'd love to see more high quality comments on HN, and an optimal karma system can help.</comment></comment>


Google rushing out Android 4 "Ice Cream Sandwich" to counter iPhone 5 - <AUTHOR> http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/08/09/google_rushing_out_android_4_ice_cream_sandwich_to_counter_iphone_5.html <comment><USER2> Hopefully Google learned their lesson with Honeycomb and its futile attempt to beat the iPad 2 to market. The iPhone 5 is going to have massive sales and publicity no matter what; it's not worth rushing ICS.

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe I'm missing something, but what is the point of this? Why sacrifice the public perception and stability of your project in order to duke it out with a polished release from your competitor?

</comment><comment><USER4> I like how they point out that they are rushing the ice cream sandwitch.

The fact is that android is on a 6 month release circle. According to <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_version_history>, the latest phone version bump was on 6 December 2010, and for tablets the initial release was on 22 February 2011. If you ask me, it's not rushing, they're late.

</comment><comment><USER5> Applesinsider.com reports that Google is rushing their next mobile OS while Apple is waiting and not rushing their next mobile OS.

</comment><comment><USER6> Rushing? What could possibly go wrong?</comment>


Medical Unit at Melbourne Hospital Hit by Ransomware Locking 15k Patient Records - <AUTHOR> https://www.itwire.com/security/86113-melbourne-medical-services-group-hit-by-windows-ransomware.html <comment><USER2> No backup?

With a proper backup, it should be capable of a complete system wipe and restore within several hours. And that's a lot faster, cheaper and simpler than having to deal with random cyber terrorists (or a catastrophic system breakdown due to electricity supply surges).</comment>


Darpa creates prosthetic arm that "feels" - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/500572/this-mind-controlled-prosthetic-robot-arm-lets-you-actually-feel-what-it-touches/ <comment><USER3> This [1] top of "Restoring Active Memory (RAM) - The end goal of RAM is to develop and test a wireless, fully implantable neural-interface medical device for human clinical use.." [2] and the Sci-fi future will be here.

[1] [http://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2015-09-11](http://www.darpa.mil/news- events/2015-09-11)

[2] [http://www.darpa.mil/program/restoring-active- memory](http://www.darpa.mil/program/restoring-active-memory)

</comment><comment> d--b Can I use this to have 6 arms?

<comment><USER4> Which combination of right and left?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well...my mind's blown. Astounding technology advancement.

</comment><comment><USER6> Maybe a bit more likely to arrive on the consumer market are EEG devices (non invasive) that can do more than detect that you've blinked or squinted your face...

[http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/136446-darpa-combines- hum...](http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/136446-darpa-combines-human-brains- and-120-megapixel-cameras-for-the-ultimate-military-threat-detection-system)

There is a broad scope of work surrounding the use of such signals like the P300(& related ERPs) combining in mobile contexts, eye tracking, etc.

In effect, all this potentially could make it very difficult to hide certain things like recognition processes (I know the photo of that place/person) or anything connected with attentional orientation (e.g. that XXX rated advertisement in the corner of the screen captured my attention).

A google scholar for search for "rsvp eeg p300" or a look at work from some previous/currently darpa funded labs like LIINC show some of this early work under way... [[http://liinc.bme.columbia.edu/mainTemplate.htm?liinc_project...](http://liinc.bme.columbia.edu/mainTemplate.htm?liinc_projects.htm)]

If one can get the gist of what various neural signals can index here from browsing through the literature, it's not too difficult to see Orwellian type applications that could be built. I'm thinking along the lines of airport security screening your brain to see if you recognize certain types of information such as recognizing a bit of a weapon somebody should not recognize or an instrument that might be used in a drug lab.

Putting issues like signal-to-noise and other confounds\limitations aside some scary applications can already be built and deployed with the most basic of available signals.

tACS, tDCS and similar techniques ("putting stuff in") are development and have been shown when used with careful timing and electrode selection that certain ongoing processes in the brain can be tweaked. [[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24998643](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24998643)]

Before we go worrying about having probes shoving into our brains, I would begin to worry about the more practical implications and privacy concerns surrounding many of those cheap EEG platforms that everybody - <USER2> potentially - wear. E.g. Sam wears an EEG for attention monitoring in the workplace but with some basic eye tracking (via EOG) and coregistration with eye fixations/movements we can begin to figure out everytime he looks at Michelle's chest he and the 20 other people he works with have a 'P300' response. You get where I am going with this....

Example patent: [http://www.google.com/patents/US7376459](http://www.google.com/patents/US7376459)

</comment><comment><USER7> Big Boss

<comment><USER8> Is the top picture actually the DARPA arm without it's `skin` or is it a render of Big Boss' arm from Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain? It looks very similar.

Edit: Ah, the caption says DARPA, sorry :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Rarely have I felt so conflicted. The path towards relieving human suffering also leads inexorably to erasing human autonomy. Every increase in human control of neural-interface medical devices risks a corollary magnification of medical-device control of human neurons. Yet the relevant companies make no attempt to screen for this risk, guaranteeing that, if present trends continue, it is only a matter of time until artificial cerebrates penetrate the boundary! I repeat - PENETRATION INEVITABLE!

<comment><USER10> I'm not sure why you're being downvoted because what you say is true. If medical devices provide a two way path of communication between the brain, then it is certainly true that there is a risk of manipulating the human brain directly with not-so-friendly intentions.

<comment><USER11> Downvoting should be used to indicate relevancy. The comment is obviously relevant.

They downvote because most are still little boys and girls just exerting their right to downvote, not intending to use it for it's real use.

<comment><USER12> FYI the founder of this website has said that downvoting a comment to show disagreement is perfectly fine by him, not just for irrelevant/spammy comments.

Personally I've downvoted you for the tone of your comment not for the fact that you expressed disagreement with people downvoting the parent comment.

<comment><USER11> Yep, it's perfectly fine by me too. Not that downvotes or upvotes mean anything. My comment was not serious at all, just a little bit of provocative commentary.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A bank persuaded Twitter to delete my tweets - <AUTHOR> http://uk.businessinsider.com/bank-of-america-merrill-lynch-persuaded-twitter-to-delete-my-tweets-2015-12 <comment><USER2> also [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10783012](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10783012)</comment>


Show HN: What our Intern did in a day - <AUTHOR> https://app.verelo.com/map

<comment><USER2> Tim = INTERN GOD.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hes been very productive!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> its a more or else empty page on Chrome / OSX</comment>


One Weird Trick for Keeping Female Employees from Quitting - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/03/study-women-30s-leave-jobs-because-money.html <comment><USER2> "Don't assume we want to become mothers. And if we already are mothers, don't assume that we'd rather have fewer hours or responsibilities. "

This isn't just an assumption. Pretty much every woman I worked with that became a mother, cut their hours, and focused less on their career and more on their family. This isn't a bad thing, but on the flip side, you can't expect to get paid the same amount (or get as many promotions) as someone who is willing to work many more hours.

"young women identified finding a higher paying job, a lack of learning and development, and a shortage of interesting and meaningful work as the primary reasons why they may leave."

You could replace 'women' with pretty much anyone in this situation. I'm not a woman and I have left jobs for all of the above reasons.

"You could work with them to develop their skills and use their talents in interesting, meaningful ways"

I'm getting fatigued by special treatment and double-standards that are becoming acceptable. The only way to succeed is to find your own interest in your career. An employer can't develop your skills, you need to take responsibility for this yourself.

"You can default to paying them even more money, and you just might get lucky and have them stick around a while longer"

So women should get paid more than men for simply being a woman? Why isn't this considered sexist?

"PAY WOMEN MORE. Pay us what you pay our male co-workers who do similar jobs"

This narrative keeps getting spun, but there have been numerous studies on pay and women in the workforce and when you compare similar jobs, hours, educations, and skill levels, women get paid around the same as men.

Logic says that if pay were this different, we would see entire IT companies staffed with women. Companies are always trying to reduce costs. This just isn't happening.

It happens in other industries where companies know they can hire illegal immigrants and underpay them.

Why does 'diversity' have to be just another form of sexism?</comment>


Show HN: Headless Kubernetes on 15 Raspberry Pis boot in under 8 minutes - <AUTHOR> https://firstname.lastname@example.com/headless-kubernetes-on-15-raspberry-pis-boot-in-under-8-minutes-808402ea2348 <comment><USER2> Interesting idea. Wonder how much extra work would be involved to get them to network boot instead of messing with sd cards.

<comment><USER3> I actually thought about this first! Doing a PXE boot, but wanted something easier to replicate in a guide for other people in the community.

But the reality is it wouldn't be too difficult. Something like this: [https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberry...](https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/bootmodes/net_tutorial.md)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very cool. So you have two SD cards, one for infra nodes and one for worker nodes, is that right?

<comment><USER3> Correct. One for master nodes. One for worker nodes.

The code is all the same on the SD cards just conditional logic depending on the type.

<comment><USER4> So if I buy four Raspberry pis and plug Infra sd in 2 of them and worker sd in the other 2 and connect them all direct to my router will it be a working Kubernetes cluster with ZERO additional setup?

<comment><USER3> Correct. That's what I meant by headless, but I think that's probably confused people with trying to call "kubernetes" headless. My bad.

As long as you follow the guide with setup then that's right.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


In Unix, what do some obscurely named commands stand for? (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://kb.iu.edu/d/abnd <comment><USER2> Some of these seem fairly intuitive once you learn the origin - others, like "biff", you'd never guess.

> "I can confirm the origin of biff, if you're interested. Biff was Heidi > Stettner's dog, back when Heidi (and I, and Bill Joy) were all grad students > at U.C. Berkeley and the early versions of BSD were being developed. Biff > was popular among the residents of Evans Hall, and was known for barking at > the mailman, hence the name of the command."

Considering the command is used for mail notifications, it's actually quite clever.

</comment><comment><USER3> > cat > Catenate

TIL the words concatenate and catenate exist, although they seem to have almost the same exact meaning

<comment><USER4> The dictionary defines it as "link together in a chain or series", but in practice on many UNIX systems it's come to mean simply, 'write to stdout' which unless you get into redirection, is just a user's terminal.

I get that the big metaphor was 'small pieces, loosely joined', but this one has always seemed half-baked to me - e.g, it's often too small to be useful without a bit more effort by you, the person typing things.

<comment><USER5> I'll have you know I had to use cat and tac in the way they were intended a few days ago.

I can't remember for the life of me why, but I was shocked.

<comment><USER4> Huzzah. You win this round.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Biff was Heidi Stettner's dog, back when Heidi (and I, and Bill Joy) were > all grad students at U.C. Berkeley and the early versions of BSD were being > developed. Biff was popular among the residents of Evans Hall, and was known > for barking at the mailman, hence the name of the command."

For those who are into history, if you want to visit historic Evans hall, where a lot of the early BSD work was done, do it quickly.

They want to tear it down soon. They are already working on plans for replacement and it will be the highest priority building project at UC Berkeley when new construction funding is released. Sadly, the building is seismically unfit.

<comment><USER7> It's also the ugliest building known to man (and I believe the Unabomber taught there!)

<comment><USER6> > It's also the ugliest building known to man

It's a brutalist masterpiece, that's for sure.

> (and I believe the Unabomber taught there!)

That is a common myth that even the University pedals, but turns out it's impossible. He taught at Cal in 1969 and the building was erected in 1971.

Turns out he actually taught in the temp buildings the math department was in when the built the building, which have since been torn down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I didn't know grep! I've seen grep used as a verb enough times that the word "grep" just intuitively seems to describe what it does: grep things.

I was hoping dd would be listed.[0]

Edit: digging a little deeper into [0], there's a Unix Acronym List linked [1]. There seems to be various definitions for dd. One definition says that dd stands for copy and convert, but since cc was already taken for the C compiler, dd was used.

[0]: [https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/6804/what-does- dd-s...](https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/6804/what-does-dd-stand-for)

[1]: [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.unix.misc/LbLTa...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.unix.misc/LbLTa00Jnvg)

<comment><USER9> Isn't dd "disk duplication"?

<comment><USER10> It's actually "convert and copy" but the command name `cc` was already occupied by "C compiler", so they just incremented each letter to `dd`. `dd` can convert-and-copy any device, not just disks.

<comment><USER11> As can be seen at [https://unix.stackexchange.com/q/6804/5132](https://unix.stackexchange.com/q/6804/5132) , this wrong answer is still more popular than the right one that is supported by Dennis Ritchie. A salutary lesson in believing things to be true because they seem humorous or are popular.

<comment><USER12> Forgive GP for not knowing which Bible to read and at whose altar to prostrate themselves. Like every religion Unix has its goyim and infidels that need to be flogged and flagellated so they can achieve proper enlightenment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> On my Ubuntu laptop, egrep is just a script that calls grep with -E. Did egrep absorb grep? Is the old grep still commonly installed with any distributions?

EDIT: and fgrep also is a script that calls grep, with the F argument.

<comment><USER14> The GNU tool-set merged all three into grep, and kept the fgrep and egrep names for backwards compatibility. This is described in the man page in this manner:

> In addition, two variant programs egrep and fgrep are available. egrep is > the same as grep -E. fgrep is the same as grep -F. Direct invocation as > either egrep or fgrep is deprecated, but is provided to allow historical > applications that rely on them to run unmodified.

<comment><USER15> That sure sounds like GNU. Instead of building tiny tools that each do one things, just make one big tool that can do a bunch of things depending on which of a hundred flags you use. Not to shit on GNU; I use GNU/Linux on all my own computers. But I notice that a lot of GNU software suffers from severe feature creep.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> For anyone interested in the history of UNIX development, Brian Kernhigan's "UNIX: A History and a Memoir" is a quick and enlightening read. I loved the history, and I came away with a better understanding of today's cli environment as well.

[https://www.amazon.com/UNIX-History-Memoir-Brian- Kernighan/d...](https://www.amazon.com/UNIX-History-Memoir-Brian- Kernighan/dp/1695978552/)

<comment><USER17> I found the title a little misleading. A better title might have been "A History of Bell Labs Center 1127".

A large chunk of the book is anecdotes about the people who worked with Mr. Kernhigan, most of which are delightful. I highly recommend the book. There's a huge section on how they had to hack the hell out of their new printer to get it to work properly. Printer drivers have been crap and the hardware cursed since the invention of printers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Fascinating, never knew the biff one.

<comment><USER19> Could it be this was the name inspiration for Mutt?

<comment><USER13> 'As development progressed, features found in other popular clients such as PINE and MUSH have been added, the result being a hybrid, or "mutt."'

[http://www.mutt.org/](http://www.mutt.org/)

<comment><USER20> It's great to have a list of what things stand for, but someone needs to make a list of all the puns! A few more that I can think of:

more -> less

pico (pine composer) -> nano

sh (Bourne) -> bash (Bourne again)

yacc -> bison

<comment><USER21> Could vim be considered a pun? It's just vi improved, but vim itself means "energy / enthusiasm"

<comment><USER17> Vim used to include a line from Sherman and Sherman's song:

       The wonderful thing about tiggers
       They're loaded with vim and vigor

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> the-dude Is YACC considered a command? Yet Another Compiler Compiler IIRC.

<comment><USER22> Sure, why not. And unlike roff/nroff/troff it actually made it into POSIX. yacc is part of the optional C-Language Development Utilities command set: [https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/y...](https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/yacc.html)

<comment><USER23> And it bears mentioning {n,g,t}roff is a reference to RUNOFF, a CTSS formatting program which later made it into other operating systems at least by name if not an actual port. [1]

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

I always thought it was quite clever that the macro switch to roff is -m and therefore to format man pages, you run roff -man. Publishing my resume in man format didn't get the reaction I thought it might. Most people just asked for it again in some other format and only one or two people only ever got the joke that a UNIX sysadmin's resume was in -man format.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Perl is "Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister" [0], but don't tell anybody ;-)

[0] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perl#cite_note-63](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perl#cite_note-63)

</comment><comment><USER25> dvd as an abbreviation for Dasvidaniya, which in Russian means goodbye. Dasvidaniya is actually two words, not one: до (until) and свида́ния (meeting / date). So literally it means "until the next meeting". Dasvidaniya is a formal way to say goodbye and should be used with people you don't know and those older than you.(Cribbed with Google's help from learnrussianwords.com.)

dvd removed files in Unix Version 6 and earlier. If memory serves, it operated directly on the file system data structures and was useful for recovering when the file system got "stuck".

<comment><USER26> Share any references if you got them.

I checked [http://man.cat-v.org/unix-6th/](http://man.cat-v.org/unix-6th/) \- nothing shows up.

This reminded me of the `clri` command which deletes an inode by number, reclaiming it if it is unlinked in the filesystem, if I remember correctly.

<comment><USER11> dcheck, icheck, and clri were in 6th Edition. You can read about them in the Fielder and Hunter book on AT&T Unix System 5 Release 4, which describes them as "antiques" that one should only use if one's Unix has no fsck. (-:

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> "cu" was before my time, I've never used it. But it's still there on my Mac.

I can never remember whether "bc" or "dc" is the program I want when I think I might need a little calculator.

</comment><comment><USER28> How about rn (read news (i.e. Usenet)) and then trn (threaded read news)?

</comment><comment><USER29> tac is cat spelled backwards it prints the contents in reverse order.

<comment><USER30> How is input to a pipe reversed?

<comment><USER31> By saving all the input in memory (EDIT: or to a file, as another comment points out) until EOF, then writing the lines out in reverse order.

It's not really possible to do in a stateless/streaming way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> _fdisk_ \- it wouldn't be polite to expand this, but suffice to say it's onomatopoeic if you get the syntax wrong (source: been there, done that).

<comment><USER33> iirc linux fdisk was named after the dos (cpm?) utility of the same name, and so isn't really a unix command.

<comment><USER11> MS/PC-DOS 2 is when fixed disc partitioning came along.</comment></comment></comment>


Plugins you should put in your vimrc - <AUTHOR> http://www.vimninjas.com/2012/09/03/5-plugins-you-should-put-in-your-vimrc/

<comment><USER2> I recently "declared vim bankruptcy" and rebuilt my vimrc from scratch. I want a full-featured vim, but I want to keep it responsive.

There are many fancy presets out there <https://github.com/skwp/dotfiles> <https://github.com/carlhuda/janus> <https://github.com/spf13/spf13-vim> <https://github.com/vgod/vimrc> but they freak me out. They turn vim into a singing, dancing, syntax/spell checking, indexing, buffer Whack-a-mole. My philosophy is that vim shouldn't do anything behind your back, but it should do great things if you ask.

      * Jumping to definitions
      * Finding all uses of a symbol in a repo
      * Running things
        + A test
        + Code in a repl
      * Git blame, diff
      * Summarizing methods in open file
      * Navigating my (rails) app

When putting this together, I found Vundle to be the easiest package manager. Just specify any desired vim plugin github repos in your vimrc and let the :BundleInstall, :BundleClean etc commands do the rest.

I used the standard plugins for most of the stated objectives, but there are places where I found some tricks. The coolest trick is running external programs without locking vim. You can send commands and selections to a tmux terminal using Vimux: <https://github.com/benmills/vimux> After wrangling with running vim under tmux, I discovered that the vimux plugin works in MacVim too when tmux is running alongside.

The thing I run most often is tests. In Rubyland people advise using Guard, which runs tests automatically when test files change. However this goes against my "don't do things behind my back" philosophy. Vim-turbux is more my taste. It extends vimux to run cucumber and rspec tests with the press of a key: <https://github.com/jgdavey/vim-turbux>

The next area where most megadotfile presets are lacking is finding the uses of code. Finding code definition is pretty well handled by exuberant-ctags and vim-rails, but finding code uses is trickier. The cscope utility does this, but its language support is limited from what I could tell. Another contender is GNU global. Its setup is...interesting: [http://simple-and- basic.com/2008/10/using-rtags-ang-gtags-fo...](http://simple-and- basic.com/2008/10/using-rtags-ang-gtags-for-coding-ruby.html) I couldn't get it working and the GTAGS files it generates cluttered my repos. I cheated and just mapped a key to do :Ggrep (git-fugitive) on the current word. While cscope or global would give the finest results, a massive grep comes close. Let me know, anyone, if you've gotten the tagging systems working better.

My work in progress is here: <https://github.com/begriffs/dotfiles> I'd appreciate any criticism; I have lots to learn.

</comment><comment><USER3> I prefer CtrlP to CommandT, since it does not requires external programs.

<https://github.com/kien/ctrlp.vim>

<comment><USER4> As others have said CtrlP is slower; but not having the Ruby dependency makes it _far_ less of a headache to install on Windows, should you ever find yourself on such a machine.

<comment><USER5> Installing command-t is fairly easy on windows. Just compile as instructed with latest ruby 1.9 + devkit and replace gvim.exe with the one specified in this page <https://wincent.com/comments/6544>.

<comment><USER6> That's a perfect example of something that is both easy AND a headache. It's not certainly difficult to do, but I don't want to be replacing my gvim executable with one provided by an anonymous forum user just to make one script work. Ignoring the potential security issue, what happens when I want to upgrade vim, or run another script that's similarly "easy" to install on Windows?

I can't speak for other vim users, but I haven't had a lot of luck with distro versions of vim and Ruby/Python extension scripts on Linux either. After fighting with it for a while, I ended up just declaring my .vimrc to be a VimScript-only zone. It sucks losing Gundo and Command-T and a couple other great plugins, but it's done wonders for my sanity, and everything works well on Windows as a bonus.

<comment><USER5> Well the forum is not actually an anonymous forum, the site owner is creator of command-t plugin. When I encountered crash after installing command-t after upgrading to 7.3 almost 1.5 years ago the first google search led me to that page (now first result is this page [http://chrislaco.com/blog/gettimg- command-t-working-on-windo...](http://chrislaco.com/blog/gettimg-command-t- working-on-windows/), even better with instruction).

I also had no problem installing it in Ubuntu/Mint. Just removed vanilla vim and installed vim-gtk and then compiled command-t.

Command-t is actually my only non-vimscript plugin in my plugin list, and it is rightfully so :). I tried to cope with CtrlP, but it feels too slow for me for large collection of files. Also its fuzzy matching is not on par with command-t. I have actually no problem to take this _little_ hassle to install command-t for performance consideration :).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Any vim plugin post that doesn't contain Vundle is incomplete, in my opinion. How else are you going to manage all these plugins?

<https://github.com/gmarik/vundle>

<comment><USER8> This, a hundred times over, after using vim for 4 years full time (e.g. pretty much 8 hours a day, and who knows how long before that intermittently) I finally took setup vundle, it was so worth all of the 600 or so seconds it took to get working.

<comment><USER7> Ten minutes is overstating it, even. I just downloaded the thing, pasted the other thing into my .vimrc, done.

<comment><USER8> I had to weed out all the crap that I had accumulated in ~/.vim/ over the years :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Every time an article like this comes up, snipMate seems to be mentioned. This particular author even pointed to the old repository which appears unmaintained and has not had a check-in for two years.

Where's the love for UltiSnips? [1]

UltiSnips is actively maintained and well documented, not to mention supporting many more features, such as Python interpolation. More info at [2].

[1] <https://github.com/SirVer/ultisnips>

[2] <http://fueledbylemons.com/blog/2011/07/27/why-ultisnips/>

<comment><USER10> +1 for ultisnips, definitely the superior option when it comes to templating.

<comment><USER11> I just installed it. It's pretty good. The docs aren't great though. I hate sitting through screencasts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My favorites:

      * pathogen [1]
      * PreciseJump [2]
      * MRU [3]
      * scratch [4]
      * xptemplate [5]
      * renumber [6]

[1] - <http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2332>

[2] - <http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=3437>

[3] - <http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=521>

[4] - <http://www.vim.org/script.php?script_id=389>

[5] - <http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2611>

[6] - <http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=189>

<comment><USER13> Use vundle instead of pathogen - it installs the plugins for you, so managing them in source control is much easier. Lines in a vimrc are much less of a headache than git submodules etc.

<comment><USER14> > Lines in a vimrc are much less of a headache than git submodules etc.

I disagree. This may be true if you don't understand git submodules, but git submodules are not hard to understand with just a little effort. Once understood, git submodules are very easy to work with.

Also, this may be just a personal quirk, but I'm not very fond of managing vim from within vim. It would bug the living daylights out of me to load vim just to update my plugins. I'm probably the only one who feels that way, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Have to agree with the author about his picks. Excluding a couple programming- language specific plugins the only other ones that i'd include on a longer list would be:

EasyGrep - A nice quick way to search for arbitrary text when ctags/cscope doesn't have the answer. <https://github.com/vim-scripts/EasyGrep>

QuickFixSigns - Show marks associated with each line in a buffer. Also shows lines that have been changed from what has been committed to Git. <https://github.com/vim-scripts/quickfixsigns>

Would be interested to know what others have to say about SuperTab since i'm thinking of giving it a try. <https://github.com/ervandew/supertab>

<comment><USER16> Definitely give supertab a shot. It's recently become one of my favourite plugins and now I'm tabbing religiously

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I clicked the article thinking "Please, don't say Surround, Cmd-T, snipmate or Buffer Explorer".. These are amongst the most popular plugins for Vim and every week there are blogs saying exactly the same thing.

Note: I have nothing against this blog in particular.. but please, upvoters, try to upvote new stuff.

<comment><USER9> I agree.

But, I must say: no matter how repetitive these articles, I pick up something new in the HN comments every single time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Emacs versions to check out:

Surround: wrap-region (<https://github.com/rejeep/wrap-region>)

Command-T: ido-mode with ido-find-file

snipMate: YASnippet

Syntastic: flymake

Buffer Explorer: ibuffer

<comment><USER19> I actually tried really hard to get ido-mode to recursively search files under the current directory, but I was never successful.

Is there some really easy modification I have overlooked? Because that is one of the major advantages CtrlP or Command-T have - and trying to use <https://github.com/emacs-helm/helm> with <https://github.com/bbatsov/projectile> turned out to be by far too slow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've moved to ctrlp over Command-T as it's pure Vimscript. Feels even faster than Command-T to me:

<https://github.com/kien/ctrlp.vim>

<comment><USER21> How many files is the project you try it on? CommandT is faster for me, but only noticeably on large projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Before snipMate came in 2009, snippetsEmu was already out there, since 2005! It's true though, that snipMate may seem more robust.

Check also pkrumins' Vim Plugins You Should Know About:

<http://www.catonmat.net/blog/vim-plugins-surround-vim/> <http://www.catonmat.net/blog/vim-plugins-repeat-vim/> <http://www.catonmat.net/blog/vim-plugins-matchit-vim/> <http://www.catonmat.net/blog/vim-plugins-snipmate-vim/> <http://www.catonmat.net/blog/vim-plugins-a-vim/> <http://www.catonmat.net/blog/vim-plugins-nerdtree-vim/> <http://www.catonmat.net/blog/vim-plugins-ragtag-allml-vim/>

</comment><comment><USER23> One of my favorite plugins that hasn't been mentioned so far is vim-powerline <https://github.com/Lokaltog/vim-powerline>. It makes Vim have a really polished look to it, and more important: tells you which Git branch you're currently in.

<comment><USER24> For me, vim-powerline gives a much stronger visual indicator of the current mode. Changing the color of the whole statusline really stands out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Wow, another post with the exact same plugins as all the other posts.

These are all the 13 plugins currently sitting in my bundle directory:

* AutoComplPop

Provides auto completion. I like/need auto completion less and less, these days, so this one is on its way out. I tend to deactivate it and use my old custom mappings for omni completion instead.

The no plugin way:

        inoremap ,, <C-x><C-o>

* Commentary

Toggles comments.

The no plugin way:

        0i//
        :s+^//++

* CtrlP

Super sleek fuzzy file/buffer/tag navigation. I love it.

The no plugin way:

        :e filename
        :sp *na<tab>
        :vs **/fi<tab>
        :sb *na<tab>
        nnoremap <leader>ls :ls<CR>:sb<Space>
        etc.

* DelimitMate

Automatically adds the second "')]}.

The no plugin way:

        inoremap { {}<left>

* EasyGrep

Handy cross-files/buffers search/replace. More convenient than the default mechanism.

The no plugin way:

        :vimgrep <cword> *.js | copen

* InsertImg (customized)

Inserts an <img> tag with the correct width and height.

* SnipMate

I use the old one as it does everything I need without any problem.

The no plugin way:

        :help abbreviations

* Sparkup

Uses CSS syntax to quickly create large HTML layouts:

        div.aclass*5 > p{lorem ipsum} + img.anotherclass[src=/images/img.png]

* Surround

See the article. This one is almost a good reason in of itself to switch to Vim.

* Syntastic

Syntax checking of many languages on the fly. Super handy.

* Tabular

Because I like my code neatly aligned.

* Visincr

I actually don't use this one much but it helps a lot when I need to write lists of numbers/letters.

* Word-Column

The new kid on the block. Provides a text-object for columns.

and the 14th, currently testing:

* EasyMotion

</comment><comment><USER26> Thank you for showing how to use the plugins, most of these articles don't.

I looked at the rest of the site, bookmarked!

Can I make an article suggestion though? I'm a new(ish) vim user that is always on different systems. I need a way to quickly install/remove my vim settings and plugins. A tutorial how to do this would be awesome.

Take for granted vim and git are already installed, my ideal workflow would be something like this:

git clone git://blah.blah/my_settings.git ./my_settings/install.sh

Now I can run vim and my whole environment will be ready. If I make any changes I should be able to run git push to update the repository. Then I could run remove.sh to clean everything up.

Is there a system like this out there already?

<comment><USER7> As I posted above, there's Vundle:

<https://github.com/gmarik/vundle>

You just copy your .vimrc over and Vundle installs everything.

<comment><USER26> Vundle seems like it only takes care of the plugins. I'm looking for a vim install system, like Python's setup.py.

<comment><USER9> The rage these days seems to be to keep your own dotfiles repo, complete with some kind of install mechanism.

My own is here [1] but it covers my whole homedir, not just VIM. I use Rake tasks (originally inspired by @holman, I believe) for install / update / clean.

There is a bootstrapping problem when using Vundle with many plugins [2]. The only way to have your Vundles install cleanly the first time is to split up .vimrc into two separate files, which is what I have done.

[1] <https://github.com/anthonywilson/dotfiles>

[2] [http://www.gmarik.info/blog/2011/05/17/chicken-or-egg- dilemm...](http://www.gmarik.info/blog/2011/05/17/chicken-or-egg-dilemma)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> <https://github.com/davidbeckingsale/writegood.vim>

The Writegood scripts can be handy if you write non-fiction prose in Vim.

A strange synchronicity: I came across the page at

[http://matt.might.net/articles/shell-scripts-for-passive- voi...](http://matt.might.net/articles/shell-scripts-for-passive-voice-weasel- words-duplicates/)

and duly copy/pasted the bash scripts and ran them over some text files. Quite useful. Then I saw this thread and wondered if anyone had done a vim plug in for them. And davidbeckingsale has.

</comment><comment><USER28> I already happen to have these in my setup; if you're a git user I highly recommend fugitive.vim too.

<https://github.com/tpope/vim-fugitive>

<comment><USER29> I tried to incorporate it in my workflow several times, but usually I end up <C-Z>ing the Vim process and commit, branch etc. via the command line. I understand that Fugitive _might_ help resolving merge conflicts, but this is really just a small percentage of my daily Git workflow.

Maybe, there is some deeper sense in it that I haven't grasped yet?

<comment><USER30> That's what I do, too. I keep it around for :Gblame.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> OTF isn't mentioned often but is extremely useful if you have to work with log files on a regular basis.

It allows you to define up to 10 search terms and highlights them in different colors, making it easy to see patterns of output in logs.

It doesn't sound that amazing at first but is worth trying if you herd log files for a living.

<http://vim.sourceforge.net/scripts/script.php?script_id=634>

</comment><comment><USER32> Among the things I personally couldn't do without these days snipMate, which is mentioned in the article. Then there's clang_complete which made me very happy. Finally a _compiler-based_ auto-completion for C in vim. Last but not least there's fugitive. That's really most of what I need since vim already provides a lot of useful features by itself.

</comment><comment><USER33> I agree to these five, and add:

* matchit - extends % functionality to support HTML/XML tags and also functions, blocks, conditionals in many languages.

* Supertab - tab completion done right.

* Tagbar or Taglist - code tree browser.

</comment><comment><USER34> Nice to see another VIM article on Hacker News.

</comment><comment><USER35> Very useful, thanks. These days I changed double quotes to single so many times and this comes just in the right moment!

</comment><comment><USER11> installing snipmate through pathogen is still a dark art

<comment><USER25> 1\. Download

2\. Unzip in ~/.vim/bundle

3\. Done

How is that "dark art"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is perfect since I'm just starting with vim.

<comment><USER37> In my experience, it's better to spend a long time playing with Vim, and then look at plugins. There's a lot that Vim does out of the box without any additional tools, and spending time learning to use (some) of it without trying to make it more like another editor is the only way you're going to get better at it. Learn about buffers and how to manage them before using BufExplorer. Learn the (many) movement keys, and insertion, append, replace, substitue, change, options before you use Surround.

It may sound odd, but learn to use the tool by itself before you try and plugin anything else, otherwise you'll just get lost.

<comment><USER38> I disagree. As someone who started using Vim recently, the issue wasn't learning modes/key sequences as it was just reaching feature parity with my previous editor (note that doesn't mean "acts like my previous editor", just "is at least as capable as my previous editor"). If I can't open files really quickly, I feel lost and upset, so I took care of that very early in the learning process by setting up CtrlP. Same with some other plugins.

More generally, to me, the features that happen ship with Vim aren't special. I want the best editor for me, which might require features the builders of Vim didn't want to include. Vanilla is just another flavor.

<comment><USER25> That's why you need to learn Vim without plugins. Vim can "open files really quickly":

        :e *ba<Tab>
        :vs ../**/fo<Tab>

I love CtrlP but you can go a long way without any plugins. It just takes some time and effort.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> So.. we like Vim now?</comment>


Ask HN: We're launching a platform for Government-solvable problems - <AUTHOR> Hi guys, we're a team of small entrepreneurs from Europe and we're soon launching a platform that we believe will help the future of democracy.
It's not a short story but we'll try to sum it up.
After building some products that did not succeed the way we hoped, read some books and tried to find some fundamental truths, we believe we finally figured out how to start this.
What if we apply the lean methodology (and some established economic concepts of goods/value/skill) to finding problems and solutions that our own governments would have the power to solve?
We base our idea on some basic assumptions:
1. We choose those who govern us. 2. The chosen ones have made some promises during their campaigns. 3. After they get elected they try to solve some of the problems they promised. 4. They sometimes fail. 5. If they succeed, not everybody's happy.
Our first level assumptions current end here.
Second level assumptions:
1. We vote hoping that we like some of the solutions to some of the problems. 2. Not all solutions to problems affect us directly. 3. Not all problems that other voters have affect us directly. 4. Sometimes we vote so the other guy does not win. 5. The elected do not know all the time what niche problems some of the population is facing. 6. Most voters do not know what problems people living in other parts of the country have.
Continue reading on pastebin (we had too many characters): http://pastebin.com/bRGNhbhb
- Just Startup Things <comment><AUTHOR> We're also on reddit:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/5l6fdt/were_launc...](https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/5l6fdt/were_launching_a_platform_for_governmentsolvable/)?</comment>