The AR-15 Is More Than a Gun. It's a Gadget - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/02/ar-15/all/

<comment><USER2> A few corrections or comments:

McNamara and company forced the AR-15 on the Army (the Air Force was already buying them for guarding planes and the like, a much less demanding duty) because the small arms procurement part of the Army at the time was utterly corrupt, preferring inferior US designs like the M14 (too much operating stuff out in the open, otherwise a great improvement on the M1 Garand) and the M60 machine gun (details on request). They biased tests by e.g. replacing screws holding a rifle together with springs while they had custody of them before the official tests (or at least I've read that about the trials that selected the M14, the AR-10, original big brother of the AR-15, was said to be sabotaged that way).

The NRA never, _ever_ , supported the "assault weapons" ban, with the sole exception of one off-script or trial balloon radio interview with Carleton Heston (take your pick, he and other Western actors cut commercials to support the passage of the Gun Control Act of 1968). This was much noticed in the community because Clinton's AW ban _was the first piece of Federal anti-gun legislation that passed without the NRA's approval_ , however grudging.

" _Accustomed to taking down trophy bucks with a hefty .30-caliber round, they ridiculed the AR-15 as a "mouse gun" and feared that its smaller .223-caliber bullet would only wound an animal, instead of taking it down with a single, clean shot._ "

A bit of an exaggeration, higher energy narrower than .30 caliber (7.62 mm) rounds have long been used to take deer sized animals. Prior to recent tremendous developments in bullet technology .223 was iffy except for smaller critters, it was in fact derived from the .222 Remington, a target and varmint shooting cartridge, at least in the US.

Any correlation with the expiration of the 2004 "assault weapons" ban and the civilian market's response is bogus. It was sufficiently weak that the only effect was an increase in the cost of magazines, and since it had been our issue rifle for a quarter century there were plenty used ones to be had. Otherwise you could buy one as long as you were willing to forgo e.g. a bayonet lug.... I think the big event was 9/11, and the feckless domestic response, e.g. Bush telling us to go out and buy stuff to support the economy. Many people realized they were on our own, at least in terms of initial response, and plenty of subsequent events like hurricanes emphasized that. E.g. there's the saying that "When seconds count, the police are minutes away". After a hurricane for many it will be more like weeks.

That Hello Kitty rifle is real, there are some very nice modern gun finishes that come in many different colors, like DuraCoat which was used for that one and which the article has a photograph of a SHOT Show advertising display for it.

I can't speak to the author's emphasis of all this coming from the gaming "and others who had fallen into the post-9/11, SpecOps-inspired 'tactical lifestyle'" ... but I'll note there wouldn't have been a 1994 "assault weapons" ban if these weren't already popular guns. I personally know they were popular in the '70s, and as Cam Edwards put it, " _The AR was designed in 1957 and sold to the public beginning in 1964. Perhaps we should go ahead and ban that newfangled rock and roll too._ "

Obviously, the "NRA's dire warnings of an Democratic gun grab should Obama win the presidency" were accurate, if the timing was a bit off. And Sen. Joe Manchin is a poser who doesn't know the difference between a magazine and a clip, unless his shooting experience up to now has been with single shot rifles and double barreled shotguns.

<comment><USER3> >Obviously, the "NRA's dire warnings of an Democratic gun grab should Obama win the presidency" were accurate, if the timing was a bit off

I don't see how this is true, unless we massively redefine "gun grab" from "confiscating private firearms that are currently legally owned" to "limiting the production and/or commercial sale of some types of firearms and firearm accessories".

<comment><USER4> A long time Democrat senator in Washington State recently introduced a bill that authorized yearly police inspections inside the home of gun owners - directly in violation of the 4th amendment in the Bill of Right.

That's worse than a 'gun grab' in my opinion.

<comment><USER2> Actually, he's been introducing that bill for years. This is the first time anyone's paid attention to it, because it has a real potential for passing. Or did before this discovery....

This is the only thing that can get "the ACLU" (the national HQ and most but not all state units of it) against "gun grabbing", the realization that it can't be accomplished without gross 4th Amendment violations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's famously statistics-driven Pentagon was > itching to replace the M14, an Army-designed gun that, despite its > successful use in World War II.

With information from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M14_rifle>:

The M14, while "developed from a long line of experimental weapons based upon the M1 rifle" (a semiautomatic rifle which certainly saw widespread use in WWII), did not enter production until 1959. Compared to the M1, the M14 was fully automatic rather than semi-, had a much larger magazine size, shot a different bullet, and was actually significantly lighter -- so even knowing nothing about how the actual mechanism and whatever other properties of a gun that impact its performance were changed, it's safe to say it's not the same gun, and this is a factual error.

The fact that, as someone who has never even seen an unholstered gun outside a museum much less shot one, and has no domain knowledge outside of movies and a single decade-old video game, I could spot this error from a mile away, makes me skeptical about this article. I know this seems like useless nitpicking, but it reminds me of reading mainstream articles about relatively esoteric high tech subjects: in domains I know better, these articles are often so nakedly full of holes and errors that they totally waste whatever argument the author is working towards. So whenever I spot easy errors on topics I know little about, it puts me on higher guard for what else might be bullshit that I don't recognize.

That said, this is a fascinating article, and even with skepticism it has adjusted my perspective on the debate.

<comment><USER6> There are 2 distinctly different "M1" rifles. The 1st type is known as the "M1 Garand" which fires a Winchester .308 (7.62 mm NATO) round.

The 2nd type is known as the "M1 Carbine" which fires a smaller, .30 cal. round.

The M14 fires the 7.62 mm NATO round, the same as the M! Garand.

<comment><USER2> A correction: the M1 Garand, designed before WWII, as issued originally fired .30-06; .308/7.62 NATO is a 1/2 inch or so shorter round, using _much_ improved powder and a 147 vs. 150 or maybe 152 (Wikipedia) grain bullet to achieve the same exterior ballistics as M2 Ball I think. I've read that shaving off 1/2 an inch of overall length (the case was quite long because our powder in 1903 wasn't as good as the German's) allows decreasing the receiver length by about an inch ... but I'm now ashamed to realize I never measured them when I had my Garand and a couple of M14 semi-auto investment cast receivers "just in case" for legal grandfathering.

However, the gun will fire any round with .30-06 or .308 dimensions if the pressure profile is a good match. I had my Garand refurbished and rebarreled in .308/7.62 NATO, and it was quite reliable. The Navy started doing that sort of thing the earliest that I know of, with a sleeve fitted into the chamber (!).

<comment><USER6> I stand corrected. Thanks for setting it straight. I've heard of verified open-sight shots from match-grade M1 Garand hitting targets over a mile distant.

What's the farthest shot you've heard of from credible sources?

<comment><USER2> Nothing even close to that.

Normal Garand match ammo, at least the typical Federal .308 (don't know about .30-06) Sierra MatchKing match loads, are supposed to have real difficultly reaching 1,000 yards. If you want to stay in the envelope it's recommended to go down to, say, 6.5 mm bullets, a diameter where you can get much higher ballistic coefficients, e.g. the .260 Remington and its ilk.

Note this is all stuff I've just read, I've never been at a range that was longer than 300 yards, and almost always 200 or less.... :-(.

<comment><USER6> While not using an M1 Garand, the link below says 2 miles!

<http://www.researchpress.co.uk/longrange/sandyhook.htm>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Why would normal, law-abiding Americans want to own > a deadly weapon that > was clearly designed for military use?

riiiiight. because all the other firearms are designed to open cans and turn off TVs.

<comment><USER8> Also an AR-15 is an assault _weapon_ as opposed to what the military uses, which is called assault _rifles_. Those are fully automatic and much more powerful.

Assault rifles are already banned and the AR-15's you can buy in gun stores don't fit into that category, unless legislators invent things to be considered military... like "military grips" which is basically a pistol grip. Which often doesn't make the gun any more lethal.

<comment><USER9> The assault weapon rhetoric is politically defined. A AR-15 is nearly the same weapon as a Mini-14, which just looks like a normal hunting gun. The features that define a 'assault weapon' were just made up from some committee. The stupid thoughts on that are, if you add a bayonet lug to the gun below, it becomes a assault weapon.

[http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zCHrsykW3qw/UPh- QOaG7jI/AAAAAAAAAH...](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zCHrsykW3qw/UPh- QOaG7jI/AAAAAAAAAH4/np-Obav_IWI/s1600/Mini14.jpg)

<comment><USER8> Lawyers love debating language while detaching themselves from reality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My only problem with this article is the comparison of the M16 to the AR15. They share some parts but not lower receiver. The M16 is a military rifle with the ability to go full auto. The AR15 is a customizable civilian rifle that only shoots once per trigger pull. AR15 does not equal M16

<comment><USER10> Yes, you could modify it, but it is by law different. In fact, try it and you go to prison. They are still not the same.

<comment><USER11> By modifying it, we're talking about disassembling it, drilling a hole through a piece of metal, and reassembling it.

You're telling me that the instant the hacker reassembles the gun, she'll be placed in prison?

<comment><USER12> Drilling the hole, actually, is the crime. Prison requires being convicted of he crime.

<comment><USER11> Right, but before a person is put into prison, that modification has to be discovered, investigated, and the person charged and convicted of a crime.

Meanwhile, the tool appears identical to an unmodified tool from the exterior.

<comment><USER13> The risks far outweigh any possible benefits. Perform the modification. Great. Now you have a weapon which shoots expensive ammunition much more rapidly at worse accuracy, and if you take it to a range, you'll probably get arrested. If you ever get caught with it, you will lose your liberty for some period of time, and for the rest of your life be unable to own firearms.

That's why idiot "mall ninjas" (google the term) like to brag about how easy it would be to convert their gun to full auto, but almost nobody actually does it.

<comment><USER12> Not sure if I'm the idiot mall ninja category here, so I'll point out what I'm trying to do is inject some technical backing into the conversation without much editorial.

I prefer the term "SSDG" or "Space Shuttle Door Gunner", though.

<comment><USER6> Many of these home mods result in a runaway rifle, where it doesn't stop firing when the trigger is released. It only stops when it malfunctions, or runs out of ammo. Definitely not something I'd want an idiot to be carrying.

<comment><USER12> Are there mods beyond a lightning link or installing a FA FCG (which requires drilling a hole in the proper place)?

<comment><USER13> There's the Slide Fire linked elsewhere in the thread, which as far as I can tell is just a mechanical bump-fire assist. Bump firing is a Bad Idea, by the way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> From what I've read, the M16 wasn't that popular in early Vietnam use -- it might have been preferred to the M14 for size, but the AK-47 (AKM or Chinese equivalent, usually) of the enemy was more highly regarded than either. More reliable mechanically, and still more lethal (and less likely to be deflected by light cover) than the M16's 55gr bullet.

<comment><USER15> I was in the Army in the mid-80's, when most of the NCO's and officers were Vietnam vets. The critical importance of keeping your weapon clean was stressed because the M16 was prone to jam. The vets said the AK-47, on the other hand, could be dropped in the mud and still keep on firing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> If it is gear used in a hobby (and shooting is a big hobby for a lot of people), it will have modifications / upgrades sold. Cars and gaming being two big examples.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is a great book about the AK-47, the big "alternative" to the M16: <http://www.amazon.com/The-Gun-C-J-Chivers/dp/0743271734>

The Author, C.J. Chivers, writes an interesting blog for the NY Times where they attempt to ID munitions from the battlefield in Africa, Syria, etc. <http://cjchivers.com/>

</comment><comment><USER17> Interesting read, thanks. I was completely unaware of the whole customization/hobby/gear subculture around the AR-15.

<comment><USER2> Indeed, it's well illustrated by the caption " _Is the iPhone in this picture, taken at this year's SHOT Show in Las Vegas, an AR-15 accessory, or is the AR-15 an iPhone accessory?_ "

And other gun designs are taking more and more advantage of this. The dimensions of the rails are standard so I can e.g. put sights like the holographic EOTech you can see in the first photo on my originally designed in Switzerland, parts from Europe and the US and assembled here "semi-automatic assault rifle".

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I used to think that the most dangerous thing about the AR-15 was that it had the capacity to hold 30 round magazines. I don't have a good opinion of 100 round drums, because they jam too easily.

Then I learned about the Slide Fire [1], a stock that legally gives the AR-15 full auto capability. The loophole is that the stock uses the gun's recoil to pull the trigger again, instead of the gun's internal mechanism doing it.

A good analogy to computers would be an interface that does not allow clicking a button to send multiple requests, but allows a script to click the button much faster than a human would.

[1] <http://www.slidefire.com/>

<comment><USER19> So, the military teaches troops to almost never use full-auto on their rifles.

Why is having full-auto mode so much more dangerous? Seems that in a mass- shooting situation, the person's more likely to blow the whole clip and be out of ammo.

<comment><USER18> In a firefight between two militaries, it is not more dangerous. The danger is that the regular police that only carry sidearms would be seriously outgunned.

<comment><USER13> Not really. The point is that in fully automatic mode, you can blow through a backpack full of ammunition in about a minute, probably not hitting anything because the continual fire and your efforts to control the gun are throwing the barrel all over the place. Now the cops are standing there, they're pissed, and you're out of ammunition. If you were a typical "crazed killer", this is the point where you'd shoot yourself, but you just sprayed all your bullets down the street.

<comment><USER18> Bump firing the rifle would be inaccurate if the shooter went through the whole clip with one or two pulls. This stock attachment allows for reasonably accurate burst firing.

A gunman with an automatic weapon will not necessarily waste all of his ammunition with continuous, inaccurate fire. With very little training, he can learn to burst fire. This capability blurs the line between a military and civilian rifle.

There is a video of the stock in action here [1]. It seems to me that someone with limited training would still completely outgun a regular police officer armed only with a pistol.

[1] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvLt8-Wf7r0>

<comment><USER19> ... so? If someone is well enough trained to fire controlled bursts, they're probably well enough trained to be just as effective double tapping in semi- auto.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> After a couple of hours doing online research, I've found very little supporting evidence for the claim, made by others, and myself, that there were _indeed_ M16A1 select fire rifles which carried the _"Mattel"_ brand name, which, on the ones I've seen, had the logo stamped into the lower receiver group, specifically, on the magazine well.

It was early November, 1982 when I graduated OSUT at Ft Benning, GA, USA (1st Platoon, Echo Company, 7th Battalion, 1st Infantry Training Brigade, AKA "Sand Hill,") and I distinctly remember being quite disappointed that the rifle I first checked out of the Armory had a _"Mattel"_ logo on it. We quickly compared our rifles, and there were some with the Mattel logo, and some with other markings, but we all had a good laugh about "toy" rifles.

Back in '82, in OSUT (One Station Unit Training)all weapons were kept in the Armory, under lock and key, and we'd check a rifle out of the Armory for target practice, do some shooting, then clean our assigned weapons before checking them back into the Armorers, who would raise holy-hell if you had not thoroughly cleaned the aforementioned rifle.

For those who doubt my (and other's) assertion(s) regarding the "Mattel" logo, I had no camera while going through boot camp, and doubt that any of the other recruits had carried a camera while training. Our company Commander was Captain G. Tronsrue, a West Point graduate, as well as an Airborne Ranger. He's on Facebook, and I've conversed with him there. He said that he remembers my name, and that only a few other "Echo Outlaws" had contacted him via FB.

What a walk down memory lane!

<comment><USER2> Heh, I smell a hack at least slightly in the spirit of this article.

I'm not familiar with working on finished (anodized?) aluminum; did the stamp appear to have been applied after the original finish? Were these perhaps refurbished lowers, allowing an armorer perhaps unenamored of the design and/or round to apply the stamp and then properly refinish it? (Were M16s refurbished in such a way?)

<comment><USER6> I couldn't tell you how the marks got there, only that I wasn't the only one who saw M16's stamped with the Mattel logo. I didn't consider the logo thing to be important at the time, it being boot camp, and all that. We weren't "issued" a specific rifle the way we were the rest of our TA-50, we'd go down to the Armory and sign out a rifle, and that rifle wasn't always the same one you used last time. Ft Benning (Sand Hill) was the only place I saw the Mattel stamped rifles, and I highly doubt that an Armorer there took the time to add the logos as a joke. These were old rifles, definitely used condition, but I still qualified Expert using them.

From what I've been researching, Mattel had a short contract during the late 70's to manufacture M16 rifles for the US military. Unfortunately, I have no credible verification of said contract. Perhaps someone will dig a bit deeper to get to the bottom of this aspect. As for the Mattel Marauder, replica, I had never even heard of it until today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Interesting, the NRA cult trying to infiltrate the "tech" community with this novel yet absurd "lol guns are for nerds because they are customizable" line.

Although there are admittedly a lot of neckbeard libertarian types that this argument would appeal to, I think most "hackers" are interested in building things that are productive and beneficial to society, and do not impose massive societal costs. The marginal social cost of household gun ownership is in the range of $100 to $1800 per year. [http://home.uchicago.edu/~ludwigj/papers/JPubE_guns_2006FINA...](http://home.uchicago.edu/~ludwigj/papers/JPubE_guns_2006FINAL.pdf)

<comment><USER21> First that is a very narrow minded stereo type.

Secondly you attempted to support your stance by research that was done on only 200 counties over 14 years ago. This paper is nothing more then corollary drivel dressed up as research. Their findings are easily debunked, gun ownership has been steady or increasing the last 10 years and homicides have been in decline. Feel free to peruse <http://www.fbi.gov/stats- services/crimestats>.

<comment><AUTHOR> Since this portion of the comments went political, I will post this comprehensive list of Gun Myths I saw posted on reddit.com/r/progun: <http://imgur.com/a/WiikM></comment></comment></comment>


Multi-tenant Java 8 VM in beta - <AUTHOR> http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-multitenant-java/index.html <comment><USER2> Java has had Class Data Sharing (CDS) since jdk1.5, an archive of "standard libraries" shared between all instances. It can be rebuilt with additional libraries, speeding their load and reducing their footprint.

Links to notes on this, [https://plus.google.com/113218107235105855584/posts/K9seVudj...](https://plus.google.com/113218107235105855584/posts/K9seVudjaiU) . Stack overflow q, [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4692076/speed-up- applicat...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4692076/speed-up-application- start-by-adding-own-application-classes-to-classes-jsa)

CDS is fantastically un-isolated and using it is going to be systemwide. You're still running many many java copies, and that is fat in size, ugly and busted in form. Containers like Tomcat exist to solve a near-like problem of being a many-application serving system. This virtualized virtual machine is definitely the first runtime that's oriented to multi-tenant, but if you look around, you can find some it's technical roots here and there.

<comment><USER3> Fantastic for sharing, though the startup time improvement is minor (e.g. I saw 17% improvement). BTW: that SO comment references a pdf that shows how to include your own classes, on pages 61-62 [http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/jp/ondemand/java/20110519-...](http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/jp/ondemand/java/20110519-java-a-1-greg-400531-ja.pdf;) tools link: [http://hg.openjdk.java.net/jdk6/jdk6/jdk/file/tip/make/tools...](http://hg.openjdk.java.net/jdk6/jdk6/jdk/file/tip/make/tools/src/build/tools)

IBM's multi-tenancy gives 3.3 speedup, for HelloWorld - worse for others (maybe if they combined it with CDS?)

BTW: The only way to get instant Java startup is not to startup - use an already running JVM, with the classes already loaded. It's fast. Just leave it in the background til you need it - it's effectively a server. Especially good to invoke javac this way, for lightening compiles (if like me you don't use an IDE).

<comment><USER4> Interesting about keeping a JVM running for compilation. I'm curious about doing just this for my day job but can't seem to find a good explanation. Do you have any resources to point me to?

<comment><USER5> For a persistent JVM, take a look at Nailgun [1].

Additionally, the Drip project [2] uses a swapping strategy, by keeping an additional JVM spun up in the background. It was apparently built because the authors had trouble with persistent JVMs containing old dependencies.

[1] [http://www.martiansoftware.com/nailgun/](http://www.martiansoftware.com/nailgun/)

[2] [https://github.com/flatland/drip](https://github.com/flatland/drip)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does anyone know if .NET runtime is multitenant? Would be great to know about the alternatives (and their future plans).

<comment><USER2> I believe in Mono if one does Ahead-of-Time compilation the bytecode is just mem mapped in and can be shared between runtimes, giving you much of the advantage of this work.

<comment><USER7> There is no bytecode any longer when you do AOT, just plain pure native code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > The main cost of using the multitenant JVM is that tenants are less isolated > than multiple applications that run in separate JVMs. For example, a native > crash in the multitenant JVM affects all tenants.

Does anyone know what exactly is meant by a "native crash"?

<comment><USER9> For example, if a bug in the JVM or an external library causes a dereference of a (C/C++) null pointer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> One permgen to kill them all

<comment><USER11> I think java 8 gets rid of permgen

<comment><USER12> only to replace it with off heap memory iirc. Not sure what the benefit was tbh.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Question: I had the impression that when you had several threads on a Java app this would result in several VMs, is this currently so, was so or it's my mistake and it was never like that?

<comment><AUTHOR> It was never like that. Threads have their own stack, but that's about it. They can access anything anywhere. Hence the current focus on concurrency using immutable message passing mechanisms on the JVM (actors etc.)

<comment><USER13> Or, to be more specific, what are the differences between thread handling under Linux and Windows regarding to the JVM?

Threads in Linux (in general) are separate process that share memory space, in Windows it's different and they're "threads" being scheduled under a parent process.

<comment><USER14> What's the difference? In both cases, threads have their own stacks but share the rest of their address space. Is there a distinction other than terminology?

<comment><USER13> Ah apparently not so much [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3237701/do- threads-create...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3237701/do-threads- created-in-java-behave-differently-on-windows-and-linux)

But I would say you would have definitely to watch for a) thread creation time and b) thread priorities (but for most of the applications these are not a problem)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Money Stuff: The Companies Are in Charge Now - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-17/money-stuff-the-companies-are-in-charge-now <comment><AUTHOR> On a similar topic, there was some interesting discussion in comments yesterday about whether it was good or bad that Microsoft was setting aside money for building affordable housing near Seattle[0].

[0]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18927708](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18927708)</comment>


Do we really need HTML? - <AUTHOR> http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2010/08/do-we-really-ne.php

<comment><USER2> I think you're confusing concepts:

>> I'm simply asking if using an entertainment medium to do your job is such a good idea.

HTML isn't an entertainment medium... you need css, javascript, http, sql, apache, php, flash, linux, (or equivalent technologies) and a plethora of other technologies to run this entertainment medium.

Do we need any of them? Technically speaking, no. You could write markup in lisp, network with ftp and run Solaris on your server. Pragmatically speaking though, you do need _something_ and the technology stack that we're currently using isn't exactly going away to make way for a gazillion ad-hoc domain- specific stacks.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you are confusing a tiny little piece of grass with the field that I am describing. I probably wasn't clear enough.

Instead of listing all the various pieces of technology and how they come together to make a web page, it might be more interesting to ask whether or not the average web experience -- browsers, pages, css, servers, databases, the cloud -- is a good fit for what we use it for.

The point was very clear that I was referring to the common way html is consumed. Not really interested in all the little pieces, at least not for this essay.

One of the commenters on my blog said that I obviously didn't know anything about html, so, for the record, I've written and deployed dozens of web apps. And I am proficient in CSS and SQL and all of that. Very neat stuff. But not germane here. I'm not saying change the stack. If anything, the implication is to vastly simplify the browser.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I'm not following your argument. It seems you're saying that since the "cloud" stack is becoming focused on entertainment consumption, we should use something more focused for business. Is that what you mean?

Out there in the real world, people use Photoshop to do graphics because the cloud just doesn't work for them. Microsoft Word and Excel because they can't afford the risk of leaking documents out. AutoCAD. ProTools. Maia. Powerpoint. Snagit. Adobe Acrobat. Supermarket cash register software, air traffic control software, etc etc.

Use the right tool for the job and all that.

<comment><AUTHOR> No this really isn't much of an anti-tech rant, although it looks like some folks mistakenly took it for that.

Trying to shorten it, there is a huge amount of stuff in the world that you can accomplish with just 3 very simple UI controls. HTML has gone zillions of miles past that. Distraction can become a productivity issue in itself. Perhaps there is an opportunity for a vastly more simple technology interaction experience.

Or -- the iPod did one thing and did it well. That's why it was such a huge hit. Can you out iPod the iPod? Is there further to go down the simplicity path and still keep usefulness? I think there is.

<comment><USER2> I'd say simplifying wouldn't really work in today's world. e.g. enterprise software development: Things like calendar controls, auto-completing fields and sortable paginated tables - which are far more complex than what plain vanilla HTML offers - are client requirements these days.

Sure you can make nice games and distraction sites with the same technology, but then, that's what monitoring sotfware exists for (and like I mentioned in the other comment, I don't think technology solutions are particularly good to deal w/ distractions)

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know. Let's try it.

I'll mock up something with the minimal amount of controls that still accomplishes a useful task, say reading HN, and post it. Shouldn't be too difficult to do.

<comment><USER2> I think the HN UI is already simple enough as it is :)

My point is that clients who pay money often want complex UI elements.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do they really? Or do programmers like complex UI elements and then have trained clients that busier screens are somehow more valuable?

The simplest design is not pencil and paper. It's a neural interface that presents us with only the important information and allows us to think of the answer. The computer then executes it. The next simplest would be a question with a physical button to push for yes/no.

The problem (I think) is that each layer of the OSI stack, each piece of the O/S, each tool vendor, each website out to make a buck -- they're all demanding more and more attention to things that are not important, but distracting. If a neural interface is ever to work, we're going to have to start setting some standards for what's appropriate stimulus and what isn't. Hence the discussion on the extremes of design simplicity

<comment><USER2> >> Do they really? Or do programmers like complex UI elements and then have trained clients that busier screens are somehow more valuable?

Hmm, have you ever dealt with clients? :)

Jokes aside, it might be a combination of both (on a macro scale anyways).

Re: neural interface - erm, if we're gonna talk about hand-wavy vaporware, here's mine: singularity.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


[Infographic] How to Secure Your Mobile App The Easy Way - <AUTHOR> http://joppar.com/mobile-app-security-guide/

<comment><USER2> how did you animate some of the elements in your infographic?</comment>


Police ban Drones from Mumbai skies - <AUTHOR> http://www.mumbaimirror.com/mumbai/others/Police-ban-Drones-from-city-skies/articleshow/41661016.cms <comment><USER2> the said valid concerns are specific to terrorist activities, but one should not forget that these are quadcopters and do not qualify to be a DRONE in the first place. Mumbai and other places all over India have been prone to terrorist acts , most of them were executed using Motor Cycles and Bicycles, have the police then considered to ban any of these. More over the Police are in no authority to impose a ban , the regulations is in the Scope of DGCA or WPC ( wireless commission of INDIA ) . Its a Gun fired in the wrong direction.</comment>


Which would you pick? A million dollars or the skills to get to the million? - <AUTHOR>

If someone put a million dollars in cash in front of you and he gave you two choice.
Pick the million dollars, or pick to learn the skills to get to that million dollars.
While it makes sense to pick skill, would you give up the million dollars so easily? :) <comment><USER2> I'd say that most of the HN community has enough "skill" to make a million dollars. Unfortunately, skill is only part of the equation.

On the other hand, having a million dollars provides a significant amount of runway and/or working capital which is (arguably) more rare than skill.

So I'd argue that a million dollars is a far better asset than the skill to earn a million dollars. A million dollars can more readily earn you another million, it can afford you time to learn whatever skills you might be interested in and it also provides you with the alternative option of never bothering to focusing your effort on making money.

</comment><comment><USER3> If I had a million dollars, I'd have time to develop skill to the next million. No brainer decision for me.

For most people the decision should be easy as well, as a million is life changing money, whereas skill entails risk.

The question might be better as, insta-100k or a chance for a million (skill).

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd rather be lucky than good. One million dollars please.

</comment><comment><USER5> > While it makes sense to pick the skill...

Why does it make any sense to pick the skill? My goal in life is not to make money, it is to do things which mostly unfortunately require money. A million dollars would be a life-changing amount of money, and I could get started on the _real_ things I want to do with my life in the mean time.

</comment><comment><USER6> If the skills came with a guarantee that you would get to that million dollar mark in a certain amount of time then it becomes more interesting. Also, one can be average in their ability to do something, so it'd have to be about fluency in said skill(s).

Stil, I'm not sure which at this moment.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'll take the million. Lots of skilled people out there who are not millionaires.

</comment><comment><USER8> You know what makes it a lot easier to learn how to make a million dollars?

Already having a million dollars.

Not having to keep a steady job or worry about housing or food for a while amounts to a lot of study time.

</comment><comment><USER9> The choice here is between something tangible i.e. million dollars or skills to get a million dollars i.e. a promise which may or may not be fulfilled at some time in future. A bird in hand is worth two in the bush.

</comment><comment><USER10> The mil

</comment><comment><USER11> \- The million dollars.</comment>


Japan's incredible shrinking building - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21406927

<comment><USER2> I'd like to have seen more details about how they're actually doing this.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> More detail: [http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/01/08/news/razing- skys...](http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/01/08/news/razing-skyscrapers- from-the-inside/)</comment>


Fukushima's Radioactive Water Leak: What You Should Know - <AUTHOR> http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2013/08/130807-fukushima-radioactive-water-leak/ <comment><AUTHOR> Fukushima leaking radioactive water for '2 years, 300 tons flowing into Pacific daily'

Here is an updated rt article on the current situation: [http://rt.com/news/japan-fukushima-nuclear- disaster-164/](http://rt.com/news/japan-fukushima-nuclear-disaster-164/)</comment>


Ask HN: How far can you go when disparaging a competitor in your marketing copy? - <AUTHOR>

Hi all,
I'm thinking of building a subscription web app, as a simpler-but-cleaner competitor to an entrenched current service. Every one of the last few places i've worked has used this existing service, so i know there's a huge market, and anecdotal evidence suggests that most people don't really like using it, so i think there's room for a competitor.
I've been thinking that in my marketing copy, it'd be great to position myself as 'the anti-xyz', and comprehensively cover their weaknesses to contrast against the purported simplicity and strengths of my service. In this way, i think i could really resonate with people's current dislike of the existing service, and hopefully build an opinionated fan base of customers.
But i'm worried about legal exposure - would i at any risk of being sued for trademark infringement, libel, or anything else for using my competitors name in my marketing copy and pointing out their weaknesses?
FWIW I'm in australia, and so is the competitor. <comment><USER2> The less accounting guys took a slightly different approach which was to collect what the users hated about their competitor rather than saying it themselves:

<http://weallhatequickbooks.com/>

If your competitor is as well used as you say this might work for you.

</comment><comment><USER3> You'll probably get a better answer from a local startup forum, laws on competitive advertising vary heavily from country to country.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. I think i'll do just that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wouldn't speak negatively of them nor their shortcomings. Instead, I'd focus on positively promoting the benefits your platform offers.

The fact that your benefits happen to solve their problems is just a convenient coincidence.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your response.

I've considered that approach - it's kind of like taking the moral high ground, isn't it? Which is great. However, i think i could really hit a nerve in the marketplace with people who use X but _really hate it_ , and it would position my product brilliantly.

As opposed to 'this product will do X really well'. I think the copy would pretty much write itself if i said 'Are you using X but sick of how complicated it is? I'll do the same job, but in half the time and with half the headaches.'

I'm just thinking this approach, however risky it is, could really be a lightning rod for attention. However i'm really interested to see what others think around here?

<comment><USER5> The point though, is that if they're really feeling that pain, they'll 'know what you mean' either way.

For example, people who hate Java's verbose syntax are instantly attracted to "minimal syntax" and "faster development time" claims, while equating that to their own pain points automatically. Plus, then it seems more like a solution to them than something panning the competition, and endears themselves more to your service without having had to resort.

Simply put, you're likely to get better traction if you don't go negative, and if the pain points you mention are real, you don't need to spell out that you are "less wordy than Java." Just prove that you can get the same output with less work.</comment></comment></comment>


If your software matters, you will write it in C++ - <AUTHOR> http://blog.achrissmith.com/2012/03/if-your-software-matters-you-will-write.html

<comment><USER2> Writer admits (or seems to claim) Fortran is faster than C++. By ignoring Fortan it seems like they admit that there are things outside of what their proof is looking at to take into consideration.

<comment><USER3> Fortran implementations are usually faster than C++ implementations, because the language design allows for certain optimization algorithms to be used, which are not possible in C++, specially due to aliasing issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The argument regarding the VM based languages is not correct. Having a JIT allows you to use dynamic compilation so you can adjust the running code depending on the context. For example you can do heavier optimization for hot code paths. This is something which _might_ give a VM based language an edge.

Doesn't Haskell come out better on certain benchmarks as compared to C/C++?

<comment><USER5> There are some instances of Haskell outperforming C/C++, but this is generally limited to situations where unboxing, strict application and Haskell's type system allow GHC to perform some amazing optimization. In other words, don't expect Haskell to outperform C/C++ in realistic circumstances.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is there anything stopping you from writing a compiler for your language that compiles to C and then optimizing anything that slows down the system?

A bit easier on a hacker than messing with the binary.

You then get the added benefit of not having to touch C++. I know that for a lot of people at least this would be considered worth the trouble alone.

<comment><USER7> No. But that doesn't necessarily help. A straight-forward Python to C 'compiler', which emits the code equivalent to running the VM main loop, has no significant performance increase. You have to do a lot more work (e.g., ShedSkin, Cython) to see better performance.

<comment><USER6> The idea was that you'd hand hack the performance critical parts. And I believe the correct term is transpiler.

(Which can be really useful to have if your language sucks and it'd be easier to edit bad code in a better language. (Or in this case your language is slow and it'd be better to just hack the parts that need to be optimized before you compile the binary.))

Of course; the right thing is to use something like Cython.

After all, if you don't get a performance increase anyway you may as well just hand hack the parts you need to optimize as C modules.

EDIT: I'm aware I called it a compiler in my earlier post. The transpiler comment was in response to you putting "compiler" in quotation marks.

<comment><USER7> I put 'compiler' in quotes because I was thinking of a research project a few years back which converted the Python byte code (parsed by CPython itself) into C code, along with a small bit of peephole optimization. I don't think it's worthy enough to be called a transpiler.

The generated C code is still a stack machine. You could replace that with C code, but if you wanted to program to a stack machine then you likely wouldn't have been coding in Python in the first place.

Part of the nuisance in replacing that C code would be wading through all of the extra code Python generates, just to add two numbers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> OP here. For some reason nobody gets the point that it was a joke. While you could argue about the merits of the statement, the blog post on whole is just for entertainment.

</comment><comment><USER9> "If your software matters, you will write it in C++ "

If you don't know any better. Then please let me know what you are working on so that I can eat in your plate.

</comment><comment><USER10> Great excuse to compile your php application to C++ with hiphop ;-)</comment>


Google Finance getting updated in November - <AUTHOR> https://support.google.com/finance#7534448 <comment><USER2> "updated" is the new way to say "we're killing functionality" without actually saying it. The update, as best they've described, is the elimination of the 'Portfolios' functionality.

Any recommendations for alternatives?</comment>


OpenSSH 8.0 Released - <AUTHOR> https://marc.info/?l=openssh-unix-dev&m=155556000015888&w=2 <comment><USER2> One of my most used programs. The more I use it, the more features I come to rely on, like using sshfs (although it's separate program), scp, ssh-copy-id, etc.</comment>


"Amazing" Camera Tracks High Speed Objects [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Km_3CZBYJZw

<comment><USER2> Incredible tracking capability - Only if the pingpong ball wasn't inked :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I think they may be using the ink for real time image analysis to probabilistically determine the future direction/rotation of the ball.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Here's a camera tracking a tank shell, done years ago:

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7FMki6dlKg></comment>


Hacker behind Collection #1 credential database identified - <AUTHOR> https://cyware.com/news/hacker-behind-collection-1-credential-database-identified-227f4543 <comment><USER2> Oh come on, determining someones 'handle' online is hardly identifying them....</comment>


The 1 Percent Rule: Why a Few People Get Most of the Rewards - <AUTHOR> http://jamesclear.com/the-1-percent-rule <comment><USER2> I love Pareto distributions but I don't like the author's framing of this as an inescapable law of nature. We have control over how society's feedback mechanisms are structured, and while it is foolish to try to reverse an inevitable _trend_ we are by no means required to passively accept, especially when wildly disproportionate outcomes lead to systemic weakness.

It's worth considering that from the cellular point of view, cancer is extremely 'successful.' But at the human level, discovering a tumor is not a cause for celebration, but for anxiety and further investigation. Some tumors are benign, and can be thought of as a mere excess of a good thing causing only cosmetic or minor discomfort. Others are malignant, actively reproducing themselves to excess and pulling all the body's resources towards themselves, disregarding the health of the host body but without creating any sort of value (because of the impossibility of reproducing itself independently of its originating context). A benign cancer is tolerable; a malignant one must be excised or it will kill the host.

(This might seem like a hand-wavey objection, but systems biology suggests that Pareto effects show up in the development of cancers just as in many other natural systems, eg [http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0013803) )

We should not fall into the trap of assuming that just because a social phenomenon instantiates some natural behavior, that it is therefore a Good Thing, aka the naturalistic fallacy. Nature is inherently fractal, and extreme outcomes may be instances of local maxima that are suboptimal from the perspective of the system as a whole.

<comment><USER3> If you look at it empirically, attempts to make wealth equal and/or resentment that a small portion of people have "too much" wealth has led to a lot of misery in human history. We only have to look at Stalin and the USSR, Mao and China, Pol Pot and Cambodia, and more currently Chavez and Venezuala. This thinking has also been responsible for a lot of the anti-Semitism throughout history as well.

I think instead of trying to make wealth equal, we should focus on making people's lives better.

<comment><USER4> Firstly, that is a straw man argument.

Secondly, can it not be possible that both communism and capitalism are bad?

Thirdly, can't we make people's lives better without awarding 40% of the wealth to 1% of the people, and 22% to 0.1% (2012)?

Fourthly, it's not simply about money, because that could be easier to ignore, if it were true that everyone, including those on the bottom, were better off. But money is power. In other words, democracy is thoroughly undermined. All one has to do is see how much money is poured into politicians' coffers and by whom, and for what purpose. Or see that you can't become president without getting $1 billion dollars of "donations" for your campaign. Is it one person one vote or one dollar one vote?

<comment><USER5> _...communism and capitalism are bad?_

Word.

Richard Wolff is asking the right question: How do we distribute the "surplus"?

[http://www.democracyatwork.info](http://www.democracyatwork.info)

I'm chewing on his notions for worker self-directed enterprises. Having used democratic decision making processes with great results, I've been keen to learn what others are doing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article suffers from the just-world fallacy.

        You only need to be slightly better than your
        competition, but if you are able to maintain
        a slight edge today and tomorrow and the day
        after that, then you can repeat the process of
        winning by just a little bit over and over again.

A 1% advantage doesn't mean 1% "better" if it is the result of network effects or historical accident. It's certainly plausible that accumulative advantage leads to winner-take-all effects, but if being "better" was the only factor, Betamax would have beaten VHS.

Succeeding means securing advantage. Those who expect to succeed only by being "better" are doomed fools.

<comment><USER7> _> , but if being "better" was the only factor, Betamax would have beaten VHS._

Betamax was "better" than VHS if you only compare 1 dimension such as "picture quality". However, if one also compares other dimensions such as:

\+ recording time: VHS records 2-hours vs Betamax 1-hour

\+ licensing fee: JVC less expensive than Sony royalties

... to combine pq+capacity+price into a composite score, VHS was "better".

<comment><USER6> Monopolists win through regulatory capture. Are they "better"?

"Better" connotes a value judgment. The author of the article takes the neutral concept of "accumulative advantage" and inappropriately ascribes moral value to it, corrupting the insight of the Pareto principle.

<comment><USER8> One is forward-looking, predicting the outcome (winning) by looking at current data (objective comparison). The article tries to twist this around to be backwards-looking: if it won,it must be better.

Which is a sickening and illegitimate argument.

<comment><USER9> I think the author is trying to explain naturally-occurring feedback loops, not necessarily trying to justify them as a positive thing. Understanding that these are natural phenomena that occur due to hard physical or natural factors is crucial to being able to formulate a plan that accounts for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Taking a principle and lauding it makes not an insight.

There is no rationale given for the 1% rule e.g. why not 10% or 0.1%? There is not statistics behind the 1% rule. Yes there are "the winner takes all" situations but the article neglects diversity and other negative feedback loops e.g. in fashion the winner may succeed only to be swept away by a counter-revolution trend.

About the author:

> I'm an author, photographer, and weightlifter. Most people know me because > of my writing about habits and human potential. I've created this weird > "job" for myself where I try to be an advocate for the world's best ideas.

<comment><USER11> It's a rule of thumb, not a law. As the article points out repeatedly the ratios differ from one example to another as you can see from the examples given. The 'rules' are ballpark averages or easy to remember round numbers across many different situations. What's important is to understand the effects that lead to these distortions in distribution.

<comment><USER12> Yes, I find that it's really remarkable, but every time I take a handful of 4-6 jelly beans, there is a dominant color. Sometimes it's blue, sometimes it's red, but there is always a dominant color. It can be 20%-40% sometimes. Remarkable.

I think that I might write an article about this to justify current economic trends and hardships...

<comment><USER11> You really think that each person in society has a random share of wealth? That each season a random team wins the Super Bowl? If that's not what you mean, I'm afraid you're not making your position very clear to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I too can make broad observations about the world, claim that the evidence I find is all pointing to my conclusion, claim that the variations in the evidence are all within the range I have set, and then use this Magical thinking to justify sternly insisting that economic exploitation is "natural."

<comment><USER11> Are you challenging the contention and the reasons cited?

There is no argument in the article that this is good or desirable. Many things in nature are terrible and destructive. But doesn't it help if we understand them? What point are you trying to make?

<comment><USER13> That there is a titanic economic incentive to produce this kind of observation in order to create justifications for the economic order, that anyone who does so with skill will be rewarded, and that drawing these conclusions serves the purposes of suppressing cultural developments rather than being unassailable, spiritual commitment to The Clear Correctness and Fairness of Our Objectivity

<comment><USER14> You're misreading the article if you think he's trying to create justifications for the economic order. What he's doing is arguing that the rewards of those at the top are a byproduct of a defect in competitive processes that make them disproportionately large relative to merit for the elite minority.

I also believe your belief that society rewards those who justify elitism is very misguided. Virtue signalling through displays of altruistic self- sacrifice and support for the underdog rules the day. Playing that game is incredibly rewarding for social status.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My favorite quote from the article:

> Imagine two plants growing side by side. Each day they will compete for > sunlight and soil. If one plant can grow just a little bit faster than the > other, then it can stretch taller, catch more sunlight, and soak up more > rain. The next day, this additional energy allows the plant to grow even > more. This pattern continues until the stronger plant crowds the other out > and takes the lion's share of sunlight, soil, and nutrients.

</comment><comment><USER16> The article downplays the word "consistency". Being slightly better is indeed an advantage, but unless you keep being "slightly better" all the time, the others can outdo you, since you're not the only one trying to move up.

"Use habit to keep being slightly better!" \-- but sometimes "slightly" is not easy to get by simply making it a habit. "Grow userbase 5% week over week", for example. It's easy to get 5 extra users when you have 100. But once you reach 1000, getting 50 probably not easy.

<comment><USER17> The author mentions the importance of accumulative advantage a number of times,not just consistent advantage. The former being a positive feedback loop (that is also a negative feedback loop for competitors).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The comments here seem to point to the fact that the author is simply using a bunch of loosely connected observations to try and make a point more important than it is.

I've found that the article was very useful framework to think about optimizing things. Especially as the author describes how small tiny advantages appear to accumulate over time and amount to giant advantages that is meaningful. Ie. habits, no matter how small but are alightly better, snowballs into a large advantage over many iterations

</comment><comment><USER19> I see how this makes sense in business, real estate, and in nature but I don't get the sports analogy. Where is the accumulating advantage from one race to the next for a swimmer, for example? If the gold medal swimmer eeks out a win by just 0.01 seconds, 5 races in a row, to me those are all independent events not affecting each other so I don't see why there should be any other explanation other than the swimmer is just slightly better than everyone else?

<comment><USER2> If you don't think that gets into the head of the swimmer's competitors then you are mistaken. Further, success attracts success; a swimmer with a slight advantage wins more prize money, attracts the attention of better coaches, gains more fans and so on, all of which may combine to improve performance by just enough to maintain a competitive advantage. All these might seem like extrinsic factors to you but interdependence and interaction are a reality; _pure_ independence is a useful analytical tool, but we dwell in the world of matter, not of forms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> We observed this rule recently and called it the _Pareto Cubed_ principle[1], or the 50/1 rule.

It's even more counterintuitive than the 80/20 rule until you really understand the nature of power laws and unequal distributions.

[1]: [https://www.elitemindset.com/the-pareto-cubed- principle/](https://www.elitemindset.com/the-pareto-cubed-principle/)

<comment><USER21> "n the few activities that are responsible for the majority of your success."

It also suggest normalizing. I.e. If you can identify the 80% of the time where you're under utilized at work by one thing then use that time for something else.

Also, I think this gives insight into knowing when to cut a loss or decide whether something works or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Very well written essay. Had definitely prompted me thinking, and gave me a 'formulaic' way to describe what I would call a 'gut feel'.

my take away from the article, with some elaboration is the following:

a) through out our lives we have 'binary choices' and 'graduated choices. Where 'binary choices' basically a yes/no kind of things. While 'graduated choices' allow shades.

b) the more binary choices present in a given subject of application (eg economics of individual income), the more 80/20 or (50/1) rule hold

c) consistency in making 'right' binary choices, has huge benefits

</comment><comment><USER23> There is an interesting consequence of this. Everybody realized inequality is a bad thing. And thus equalization is the answer. So let tax progressively. What is missing there, and will be missed in foreseeable future is that government equalize mid-manager with retail shelf stoker. Real ones who own and reap benefits are excluded from the process. You can see prove of that everywhere - gentrification haters, bay area protests against programmers. Still elites are never even considered as a main problem. Basically gov policies equalize lower 99%, top 1% is untouched.

<comment><AUTHOR> Elites have enough power to evade equalisation. They can:

1\. Lobby and influence policy. 2\. Shop for a tax effective jurisdiction. 3\. Get the best tax and legal advice money can buy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> If money was distributed in the USA for something that is actually competitive, like athletics, then people of African descent would rule the country, as they seem to dominate this arena, even in venues like golf.

If you look at the wealthiest people in the US, they are people like the Koch brothers, who inherited their wealth, or the Walton heirs, who inherited their wealth, or the Mars children, who inherited their wealth, and so on.

You could also look at others. Bill Gates was born with a million dollar trust fund - his great-grandfather ran National City Bank, his mother was on United Way's executive committee with the CEO of IBM, his father ran a law firm, he went to Lakeside high school (current annual fee: $33,000) which had teletypes and access to a GE mainframe in the late 1960s. Warren Buffett is also "self- made". His grandfather owned a chain of grocery stores, his father was a congressman, he went to UPenn and Columbia. Mark Zuckerberg's parents are professionals, he went to high school at Phillips Exeter (current tuition $36,000, more if boarding there).

The first group did absolutely nothing. They're not really being "rewarded" as the article says. They can just jet from Aspen to Monte Carlo their whole lives, expropriating surplus labor time from those of us who work and create wealth. You can watch the documentary "Born Rich" which was made by one of these people (it's sometimes on Youtube) and is about these people. The second group - 1%ers who made it into the 0.1%, I suppose transitioned from one class to another, and had a hand in codifying how a large number of people worked. Even doing some of the initial stuff themselves - porting BASIC to yet another platform, selling a CPM ripoff to mom's friend on United Way's board, starting yet another social network (and being sued for stealing it), beating the S&P 500 year after year.

This is all helped by a massive mechanism of basically all of society tilted to let this class of what I consider parasites to expropriate the surplus labor time of those of us who work. It's a social relationship - workers work and create wealth, and heirs expropriate our surplus labor time and the wealth we create during it. And use it as a cudgel against us not just in the world of business, and not just in the governments they created and maintained, and the schools those governments run, or the media they created and maintain and to a large extent monopolize, but also other social organizations as well like churches. Through the corporate owned news I learn Trump, an heir and businessman now running the government, this week signed a document which would allow churches to be more involved in selecting who is and is not in government. All goes into each other - you organize the wretched of the earth at the bottom of society to believe in some superstitious fantasies in order to select certain leaders who will be even more vehemently against their economic interests. One part of society flows into another, but it all flows back to the center, which is what we all wake up and do most days - work and production, and the relationship between the worker and those who are parasites on worker's labors and who have the upper hand at the moment.

Of course, several centuries ago it was the royal families who had the upper hand on the poor and the workers and the merchants, so these things seem to shift around as history marches on.

</comment><comment><USER25> After reading such an article it is easy to see this pattern everywhere. And, sadly, it is also easy to see all the areas where I am in the group of people who come in close second. With the article in mind it would seem rational to quit endeavors of those kind cold turkey. In reality, it's not so easy. Maybe you don't want to give up b/c of all the time you've invested or b/c you're really passionate about what you're doing or maybe some fellow people still keep encouraging you and don't want you to stop...

This makes me wonder whether there is a good general exit strategy for those situations. That is, a method to reorientate as quickly, painlessly and promising as possible. I worry that's a too abstract way to think about it, though.

<comment><USER11> The other way to look at it is that, in many situations in life, by improving your competitiveness by only a few percent you can often reap much bigger rewards. In the Olympics that's really tough, but in most people's lives the bar you're trying to beat is just that set by the environment you happen to be in. Being a bit better prepared, paying a bit more attention, working a bit harder can over time have outsized cumulative effects. We don't live in a perfect world, but how prepared we are to do well in it is up to us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I love how the "80/20" rule gets stretched so often that in this article it talks about hyperdominate trees that take up 50% of the Amazon. So 80/20 can go anywhere form 99/1 to 50/50\. What an interesting "pattern"

<comment><USER26> You're reading the numbers wrong, there is no stretching. The 80/20 rule means that 80% of resources is controlled by 20% of participants. Applying the same ratio to subgroups, you also get that 1% of participants control about 50% of the resources, as for trees in Amazon. The 80/20 number is just nice and commonly used because it adds up to 100.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm not convinced his explanation is correct. Power laws appear in many places besides economics and biology. Even in places where there is no concept of competition. For instance, the distribution of word use in the English language follows a power law. Words don't exactly "compete" for use and there is no reason to expect a power law there.

It seems like they appear almost everywhere. I have yet to find a satisfactory explanation of why!

</comment><comment><USER28> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gospel_of_Wealth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gospel_of_Wealth)

</comment><comment><USER29>
        > one of his lasting legacies
        > was turning economics into a
        > science rooted in hard numbers
        > and facts

Objection

</comment><comment><USER30> One mechanism explained by Piketty.

Rate of return on capital is higher than wage growth.

So the wealthy get richer at a faster rate than the average worker. This amplifies inequality.

[http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/pikettys- inequali...](http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/pikettys-inequality- story-in-six-charts)

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm guessing a power law applies to what percentage of the elite are killed during any given revolution throughout history. Nonetheless, I'd still like to prevent revolutions; and I don't think revolutions being associated with a power law makes them inevitable or immutable.

</comment><comment><USER32> The "winner takes all" reminded me of this article I thoroughly enjoyed [http://nautil.us/issue/44/luck/dont-tell-your-friends- theyre...](http://nautil.us/issue/44/luck/dont-tell-your-friends-theyre-lucky)

</comment><comment><USER33> This has an interesting application in software and machine learning.

Traditionally it's been easy to expand into a software market if you can come up with a superior product, but when you are playing with AI and competing on having a superior dataset, size and existing advantage starts to matter a lot more.

<comment><USER34> Which is the whole reason why open-AI is so important, and likely will fail. Once Google or Facebook or Amazon start the AI ball rolling, the inequality will explode in their favor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Pareto distribution does not imply "winner take most", the #1 spot is usually far less than 50%. The 1-2-3 podiums cartoon is similarly inaccurate.

</comment><comment><USER21> Econ is full of principles like this. This was well written.

<comment><USER36> Its full of principles like that, and _for an economic discussion_ makes an average amount of sense -- which is one of the reasons economics isn't actually science.

<comment><USER37> It's not a natural science. If you restrict sciences to whatever you believe a natural science is, you'll kick out some useful, predictive and fruitful subsets of the natural sciences out too.

So maybe we should let that old meme "if it's not done in white lab coats, it's not a science" die.

<comment><USER8> Sure that's fine. Economics still isn't science, even by the relaxed definition.

<comment><USER2> Get over yourself; that's like saying Newton wasn't a good scientist because he was wrong about a lot of things. Economics, like sociology, is a young discipline that yields a lot of mistakes and goes down a lot of dead ends because it gropes towards an understanding of _hard problems_.

Criticizing economics is entirely valid. Pissing on it is not.

<comment><USER21> I think economics is in its vast infancy. It studies a highly complex system after all. It's constantly in danger of being coopted and manipulated toward ideological ends, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> All he is doing is explaining positive feedback loops...

<comment><USER26> Not true. A positive feedback loop would result in a monopoly, i.e. one person having all the wealth, or only one type of tree in the rainforest. We don't see that, instead there is a equilibrium distribution.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Railscast series? - <AUTHOR>

Is anyone aware of a RoR screencast series along the lines of Teach me to code's Twitter clone tutorial. It was amazing. <comment><USER2> Railstutorial.com</comment>


Robot CHIMP Tank. CMU's Darpa challenge entry - <AUTHOR> http://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2013/march/march12_chimprobot.html

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a really cool blend of tread mobility and end effector mobility. I could actually see something like this tele-operating mining equipment on an asteroid or something.</comment>


In Love with LÖVE - <AUTHOR> http://an.ton.io/blog/articles/2013/01/27/in-love-with-love <comment><USER2> I am confused by the fact that this blog post seems to link to all the competing frameworks he discusses, but never links to LÖVE itself. Seems an odd choice given that the word is going to produce a bunch of unrelated google search results...

For reference: <https://love2d.org/>

<comment><USER3> Sorry about that. I was clearly so proud of myself for getting my keyboard to do the two dot thing on top of the Ö that I forgot the most basic link of all. Updated now.

<comment><USER4> for the curious - Option+u (for umlaut) then the letter you want, so in this case O. result: Ö

If you're new to OSX I highly recommend playing about seeing which characters are possible. Hold Option and try each key, then Option+Shift and each key. Comes in handy for typing things like ©2013, 20˚, 2π and LÖVE

<comment><USER5> Or, just hold down the O key and check out the variations available to you.

<comment><USER4> on iOS, yes, that's correct. Try it on OSX however and all you get is a line of Os :)

<comment><USER6> Not in Lion - by default holding down a key will bring up the accent menu. You can turn it off by following this [http://osxdaily.com/2011/08/04/enable-key- repeat-mac-os-x-li...](http://osxdaily.com/2011/08/04/enable-key-repeat-mac- os-x-lion/) (though I've found it more useful to keep it on).

<comment><USER4> cool, thanks, didn't know that :) Unfortunately I'm stuck on 10.6 here as this machine's too old to upgrade. Tested it and everything before I replied, just in case I was wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Does Lua have "crappy scoping"? My understanding is that it has full lexical scoping. And somebody normally liking Python is in no position to complain about bad scoping rules!

I haven't used Lua myself, but I'm impressed by the design: it seems like an elegant version of JavaScript minus most of the really obnoxious JavaScript warts.

The tables and metatables seem particularly great: they look like a simple, elegant version of prototype-based inheritance without some of the problems JavaScript suffers. It's certainly simpler _and_ more expressive than a class- based system.

Also, Lua is well known for having coroutines that are done correctly. That's probably not immediately useful for complete beginners, but it's certainly a nice feature when you get to it.

<comment><USER8> It does have full lexical scoping, however "global by default" is good for scripting, questionable for standalone programming.

I general yes Lua is a great language, I have a lot of fun writing in it. But it does have its warts (though fewer than Javascript).

<comment><USER9> For what it's worth, you can use the local keyword to limit the scope of variables.

<http://www.lua.org/pil/4.2.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For the folks who struggle with Lua's language design: try thinking of it like Crockford's Good Parts of Javascript with a slightly different syntax (and arrays/objects rolled into one, the table). Generally speaking, once you've moved past the default indexing from 1, that analogy works out pretty well -- even down to how to set up more object oriented designs (js prototypes and Lua metatables/metamethods are rather closely related ideas).

LÖVE is a very fun engine, much easier than PyGame to get going - in both setup and development terms.

<comment><USER11> Indexing from 1 and 0 seem to me to reflect two different equally valid viewpoints. Offsets against a base address in memory (the C family) versus labels for boxes (Lua and friends). Naturally, stating from a base address, the offset is 0. Equally naturally, if you're labelling boxes with numbers, you number the first one "1". For Lua, given the tables are also at the same time hashes (with explicit labels), treating them as numbered boxes makes sense.

<comment><USER12> I think also the construction of the for loop makes it more natural. Lua is "for i = i, n" vs the more complex and off-by-1 prone "for (i = 1; i < n; i++)" where you need the less than vs an equality.

<comment><USER13> If your for loop is for a 0-based language, it's wrong because it starts with 1.

If it's for a 1-based language, it's wrong because it compares with "<" and not "<=".

So, I guess that proves your point that it's error-prone. :)

In C, the idiomatic way is (as you surely know) "for(i = 0; i < n; ++i)".

<comment><USER12> typo, the second one was supposed to be 0 based... although that shows how off by 1 errors occur.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The only problem and it's really a very tiny problem, is that the library community has settled on a fairly... purile naming convention.

Beyond that it's a fantastically easy way to get started writing a game.

<comment><USER2> I don't know if I would call it tiny; looking at the library naming convention it doesn't seem to be far from the controversy around 'pantyshot' a while back: [http://www.zdnet.com/blog/violetblue/when-software- offends-t...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/violetblue/when-software-offends-the- pantyshot-package-controversy/509)

Though I would assume most library authors are not necessarily attempting to be offensive, not the greatest culture to construct around your toolset regardless.

<comment><USER14> As biased as I am (very), I'm not sure how this applies, none of the library names I know suggest anything sexist, or otherwise offensive. Now, as for whether naming libraries after sex acts, and possibly body parts, is a good idea, well, does it matter? Worst case it makes your conversations more fun.

<comment><USER15> Asking a co-worker about the AnAl library could elicit a chuckle, or it could be an example of what alienates female programmers from the game industry. It isn't inherently a big deal, but in the hands of the immature and can easily go from funny to uncomfortable.

<comment><USER16> If the sexual funniness stems from the library the team is using, then the awkwardness can be addressed in a team meeting well in advance. Perhaps resulting in a only-one-joke-a-day policy or changed pronunciation (e.g. AnAl like "analgesic").

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > _I had seen this about 6 months ago but dismissed it because the programming > language, Lua, looked weird and I'd never heard of it._

This what surprised me most about the post. Lua is not especially strange, by any means, and also fairly well known. Obviously, its hard to compare my experience with his experience, but nonetheless I was quite surprised he said something like that.

<comment><USER12> It is not alas that well known, although much more so in the last few years. It has reached number 20 on github though now. A lot of people use it but do not really talk about it much, eg in game development.

<comment><USER18> Probably doesn't help that most of the code is tied up in scripts for games, and public development is hosted in places like curseforge and wowinterface.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Just going to link one of my favorite libraries for LÖVE.

<https://github.com/kikito/middleclass>

<comment><USER16> What makes it your favorite?

<comment><USER19> Not the favorite, just one that I enjoy. When looking for a simple OO implementation, middleclass works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Something else, that while not a game engine, was built to bring the the BASIC experince to modner machines is Hackety Hack <http://hackety.com/>

</comment><comment><USER21> This isn't directly related to the blog post as it's about stuff available on OS X, but if you're on Windows I can very much recommend checking out Construct 2 by Scirra[1]. They have a pretty fantastic HTML5 game engine and an editor (and the whole "no programming required" is really just marketing - even though it uses a "visual" event system you still need to understand programming concepts like loops, conditions and such in order to make effective use of it). They have a feature-limited (no other limits though) free edition available for it too.

[1] <http://scirra.com>

</comment><comment><USER22> My 12 year old (going on 13) also started with Mindstorm. Then we dabbled in MIT battlecode (Java). I taught him some Python and he did Udacity Python intro class on his own. Then he discovered Ogre (C++) and has been obsessed with it ever since. I remember giving him an 20 minutes intro to HTML a couple of years ago and that was all he needed to start playing with web pages. A young mind seems particularly adept at absorb ing artificial languages. Don't underestimate your children.

</comment><comment><USER23> Take a look at <http://defold.se> \- It uses LUA (I'm not the biggest fan) but offers a nice editor that is very useful for most 2d games.

</comment><comment><USER14> It's too bad he doesn't do a thorough comparison, I'd love to hear what he likes so much about Pythonista, for instance.

With regards to the "crappy scoping", I can only assume he didn't read up properly, especially since both the globals and locals mentioned right after do exist.

</comment><comment><USER24> Wait until he tries out MOAI. If he loves LÖVE, he's going to be falling over himself to have an affair with MOAI .. ;)

<http://getmoai.com/>

<comment> adam-a One of the great benefits of Love, in my opinion, and something that sets it apart from a lot of comparable game frameworks, is the open source and free nature. It really encourages sharing and open (not obfuscated) code by having the default packaging for your games just a zip file of the source and assets.

Moai, compared, is probably a richer framework but seems fairly closed. I'm also slightly confused by the paid for cloud component. Is this necessary for making games? What part, or how much of Moai is free or open?

<comment><USER24> MOAI is open source under the CPAL license, and contributions from the community are folded back into mainline regularly.

Check out the license here: <http://opensource.org/licenses/cpal_1.0>

The cloud is an additional service, which you are not required to use - but is there if you do need it. Its one small point of confusion in the MOAI world, that people think that MOAI Cloud is MOAI itself, but thats not the case. Its just an additional service that can be utilized by users of the MOAI SDK, if they want it ..

<comment> adam-a Thanks for information. Yes, the Moai is slightly confusing, it's not obvious to me that there is a full SDK available and usable without paying for the cloud component. I might check it out in fact, I have been looking for a cross platform game toolkit, I skipped over Moai before because I thought I would have to pay to use it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Polycode is about to get released: <http://www.polycode.org/>

</comment><comment><USER26> his comment on gosu made me sad. as a big ruby fan, i run into the "framework looks wonderful, but due to installation issues i cannot in good conscience recommend it to a beginner" far too often. the one-click installer projects for windows and osx are going a long way towards fixing this, though.

<comment><USER27> I cannot recommend ruby for any desktop applications that you intend to distribute to non-tech-savvy users.

Sure there are ways it can be done, jruby + swing and shooes or monkeybars etc but they all have big drawbacks compared to "Just Works" languages.

[EDIT] Having said that, the releasey gem used by gosu looks interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I found out about LÖVE about 2 weeks ago. It looks a bit like "flash done right". I haven't done anything with it yet, but it looks cool for interactive multimedia content.

<comment><USER29> Yes, unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any easy way to run the games in a browser which would probably be the killer app for this.

<comment><USER30> A talented hacker, ghoulsblade on GitHub, cobbled together a web player for LOVE: <https://github.com/ghoulsblade/love-webplayer>

Here are some demo applications converted to HTML5/WebGL: <http://ghoulsblade.schattenkind.net/love-webplayer/>

<comment><USER28> awesome!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google, Microsoft Diverge on China Censorship (2010) - <AUTHOR> https://redmondmag.com/articles/2010/01/15/google-microsoft-on-china-censorship.aspx <comment><AUTHOR> \- 29 years ago today, the Tiananmen massacre unfolded

\- Chinese government linked to largest DDoS attack in GitHub history

\- Microsoft bought Github</comment>


Nao robot performs Judson Laipply's "Evolution of Dance" - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-hardware/video-friday-#.UABkiiLocCU.hackernews <comment><USER2> What's really interesting are the few gymnastic steps that the Nao cannot yet do, e.g. leaving both feet to a prone position and back up to its feet. That gap shows how the steps are fine-grain preprogrammed joint articulations. I would like to see the motion planning developed to the point where the robot is given gross trajectory targets and uses a self-awareness and self-balance mechanism to automatically supply the fine-grain joint articulations.</comment>


All Your Tomcat Are Belong to Bad Guys? - <AUTHOR> http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/all-your-tomcat-are-belong-bad-guys

<comment><USER2> Another clickbait title. All the article describes is a JSP with a backdoor, and maybe some worm-like features.

I think all the "X is a Brand New Malware!" type articles, especially those from vendors with skin in the game, are just propaganda. "Yes, you Linux people need to run Symantec, too!" I suppose that's true for Windows malware, but it's a lot more out in the open for Linux malware.</comment>