The euro is a disaster even for the countries that do everything right - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/07/17/the-euro-is-a-disaster-even-for-the-countries-that-do-everything-right/ <comment><USER2> Aren't there negative consequences to having one's own currency when it comes to import? For instance, Greece has a tiny export market and mostly import goods. If they were devaluing their own currency, surely their trade partners would be concerned with dealing with them, unsure what their money would be worth a month from now.

Just look at the ruble in Russia this past winter, it had pretty negative effects for a country that imports a lot of its food.

The article also fails to mention Germany has benefited a lot from the Euro, even through hard times.

Until January this year, the Swiss franc was pegged to the Euro, when it was unpegged, it skyrocketed to become almost the same value as the Euro, effectively halting all export from Switzerland.

I also find the comparison between Finland (pop. 5.4 mil), the Netherlands (pop. 18 mil) and Iceland (pop. 300,000) unfair considering their relative sizes. Surely, it's easier to manage a smaller economy than a larger one.

I must confess, I am no expert, I just believe that criticism of the Euro often tends to be rather simplified. Friedman's commentary (posted by civilian) seems far more "rounded", so to speak. But I will gladly admit that the Euro project is flawed in being a political project rather than an economical project.

Although, Friedman forgets to mention the several nations that use the US Dollar as their official currency as well (e.g. Ecuador, El Salvador and Zimbabwe), surely they have no option at all (unlike Finland and the Netherlands which actually have a say in Euro matters) other than abandoning it.

<comment><USER3> I agree.

I also find it pretty insincere to brush off economic problems with the half- sentence "but those should have been manageable". Aren't there lot of nations with economic problems that aren't managable (in the sense of averting a shrinking economy in the course of a few years), even though they have their own curreny?

Finally, on the small scale, traveling is so much easier if you don't have to worry about currrency. No need to get cash in the foreign currency in advance. No need to worry about exchange rates. No need to worry about your bank adding crazy exchange fees. You can compare price to what you're used to without having to do any mental (or awkward mobile phone) arithmetics. Border regions and travelers profit imensly from the Euro.

This is pretty obvious, but econmics pieces on the Euro routinely forget to mention it.

<comment><USER4> On the other hand, 1 € in Portugal isn't the same value as 1 € in Germany, given the salary differences.

Yet many brands, e.g. H&M, tend to have the same prices for some of their goods.

Which leads to the disparity that we are now suffering from.

<comment><USER5> Your argument is mostly invalid as H&M, for example, has tags in multiple currencies. And as a non-Euro Romanian I can tell you that the conversion rate is not favorable to the buyer.

<comment><USER4> My argument is based on the fact that I have seen such tags with the same price for Germany and Portugal.

It true that they don't do it for most of their products, but that doesn't change the fact I have seen such price tags.

<comment><USER5> My point is that for H&M and similar networks the prices are constant across countries, based on their pre-set FX rate, which is not in the favor of the buyer.

The initial argument would only be valid if prices in different currencies would be smaller in the poorer countries, which doesn't happen anyway, regardless of currency.

<comment><USER4> > The initial argument would only be valid if prices in different currencies > would be smaller in the poorer countries, which doesn't happen anyway, > regardless of currency.

But it does happen, on average H&M products are cheaper in Portugal than on Germany, except for those few cases I happened to stumble on.

<comment><USER6> I think oblio means that even if Portugal is not in the Euro zone with its own currency, it's unlikely to get a better price than now.

<comment><USER5> Exactly. Unfortunately I am not that good at getting my point across :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Lots of propaganda against the Euro. It's going on for a few years now. Especially it's coming from a country which recently caused a world-wide economic crisis.

Actually the Euro is doing a good job, given all these attacks.

Now we read daily about the problems of tiny Greece. Just 10 million people out of 334 million living in the Eurozone. A constant news stream about a tiny tiny problem.

Remember how Goldman Sachs tried to profit from Greece in the Eurozone both ways? Helping Greece to hide its debt, so that it can join the Eurozone and then betting that the outcome would be negative.

[http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/greek-debt- crisis...](http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/greek-debt-crisis-how- goldman-sachs-helped-greece-to-mask-its-true-debt-a-676634.html)

[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/greek-debt- cr...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/greek-debt-crisis- goldman-sachs-could-be-sued-for-helping-country-hide-debts-when-it-joined- euro-10381926.html)

<comment><USER8> The Eurozone has seen zero net economic growth for about 8 years, and has 11% unemployment (13% without Germany). GDP has just finally started to get back to where it was in 2007/2008.

Germany's GDP is where it was in 2008; France is where it was in 2007, with France having ~10.5% unemployment.

Finland has been in an eight year recession/stagnation combination, with zero growth. Their unemployment rate has gone from 7.5% three years ago, to 9.5% today. Their household income to debt ratio has doubled since 2000, to 120%.

Italy has seen three recessions in seven years, with an unemployment rate of 12%.

Greece has collapsed.

Spain has 23% unemployment, Portugal is 14% (and those aren't the U6 equivalent numbers, just the headline).

The Netherlands economy hasn't gotten any bigger since 2007, and they now have one of the highest household debt levels on earth, which will continue to crimp their economic growth prospects severely.

Ireland's household debt ratio is one of the five worst in the world. Their unemployment rate is nearly 10%, which is a six year low.

Austria, Estonia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Lithuania, Latvia have seen zero growth since 2007/2008.

Simultaneously most of the Eurozone countries have seen a significant expansion of household debt over 10 to 15 years, as they try to prop up their standard of living with debt.

The only bump the region has seen economically since 2007, has been via currency devaluation and debt monetization, which has chopped down the Eurozone standard of living by perhaps 20% in exchange for a brief burst of low growth.

I'm not sure by what basis one would judge that it's working well at all.

<comment><USER9> Is that because of the euro, or because the policies of austerities that were chosen at that time?

The problem with the euro is that it is considered as an economic issue, whereas it should be a political one (and it was when it was created, as the first step in an "ever tighter union"). If we European citizens want to keep the euro, we need to deepen the Union.

<comment><USER8> If they went with inflation instead of austerity, all you'd see accomplished is the nominal numbers would climb, while the real numbers would not. That's what we're seeing right now with the QE devaluation of the Euro; pretend growth via dropping the value of the Euro (if you have to drop your currency by 20% to get 2% growth, what you have is not growth).

Austerity and inflation accomplish the exact same outcome, the only difference between the two depends on how they're implemented, and the lies that the politicians get to spin to pretend one is better than the other (politicians in weak economies almost universally prefer inflation, because they can lie and show nominal growth, and tell their citizens that their wages and pensions aren't falling, when in fact they are in real terms).

Take Greece for example. They could exit the Euro and meet all of their _domestic_ obligations - in a debased new currency, that wouldn't actually be meeting the obligations in real terms as the currency tumbled. They'd get to pretend everything was fine nominally.

Inflation instead of austerity is used to devalue the amount of debt held, which is a form of defaulting on creditors. It drops the standard of living, as it steals wealth from citizens by devaluing their real incomes and assets.

<comment><AUTHOR> "devalue the amount of debt held, which is a form of defaulting on creditors"

Which won't work well if the loans aren't nominated in your national currency. This is why currency loans are the real trap when devaluation hits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wish people would stop taking Iceland as an example for pretty much anything. They basically have two industries (Fishing and aluminium) and only 300 000 people, they are a very special case and comparisons rarely make sense.

<comment><USER11> And Eve Online, I guess. 300K is even less than I thought that country has. We (NL)'ve got more unemployed, elderly/retired, children, etc than that. Of course the ratio will probably be about equal, but yeah, can't compare a 300.000 people economy with a 17 million and 5.5 million one.

<comment><USER12> Does Bjork count as an industry?

<comment><USER13> She lives in New York and her label is London-based. If she does count as an industry, it's not an Icelandic one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> How is the Euro different from the Dollar in the US?

I mean, you guys have 51 states, each of them with their own set of specific taxes and laws (just like us), with different commercial strengths and weaknesses (just like us). But we don't hear about Wisconsin being asphyxiated by the dollar value regarding its exportations.

Maybe the fact that we have such a disparity in minimum wages in Europe, where the Northwestern countries (UK, France, Germany etc.) have very high salaries, whereas eastern countries have a sensibly lower wage system.

That's where the BCE and European Parliamentary should start maybe?

<comment><USER15> Because US is fully federalized and is redistributing from the top down (californians and newyorkers pay for the midwest).

The big federally funded programs (military, social security, healthcare, infrastructure) take some pressure off the state's budget.

And because US citizens have less state identity than they identify with US the wealth transfers are easier to bear.

The us citizens that will say "I am American from Colorado(or any of the other 49)" are more common than EU people that will say "I am European from Germany (or any of the other 20+ Eu countries)"

<comment><USER16> The EU has union-level redistribution, especially for farmers, who, as in the US, are heavily subsidized.

US states sometimes get into the same kinds of problems. Look what's happening to Kansas right now, after a big tax cut. There's no escape for a state that screws up. They can't impose capital controls and keep people from moving their money out of state. They can't print money.

If the EU was a full financial union, individuals in Greece would have no problem withdrawing money from banks, because they'd be customers of banks in other countries. US states don't have their own financial systems. It's the combination of a common currency and separate banking systems that's the problem.

<comment><USER17> You can't really compare the redistribution in the States with the Euro area.

If some state like Kansas has problems, automatically, the federal budget cover the increment in social spending and that keep the aggregate demand in that state from going too low.

If some state like Greece has problems, automatically, Brussels make them to spend less in social programs in order to control its spending. The aggregate demand fall and the problems increase.

The Euro area is "designed" to be procyclical. And that is crazy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> We (Lithuania) joined recently the Euro zone. Only positive things happening here. Someone just wants to make a profit from EUR/USD

<comment><USER19> One country that joined six months ago is not a very good sample. Things seemed good in Spain and Greece for a few years until they didn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The Euro seems to make no sense unless there is a common government and common economic policy, which Europe lacks.

I'm from Poland and I've always been a big supporter of the Euro, but I recently realized that it can't work in its current form. I would like to see a more unified Europe instead (we have much more in common than we think). Sadly, this is not likely happen mostly due to stupidity (populist and nationalist movements all across Europe).

<comment><USER21> I'm quite skeptical of a European political unification having a net benefit, considering precedents. To mention European cases, East Germany is still far from catching up with the western part (you might be aware of this as a Pole) and the South of Italy, which in the mid 1800s was quite advanced, has never really recovered after being "united" with the North. And we are speaking of regions with a common language.

To make things worse, the linguistic and cultural composition of Europe is much more diversified. This means a much higher friction for internal migrations, which would help balance economic mismatches. Moving say from Italy to Poland or from Greece to Germany to work requires a huge investment in language acquisition.

Another effect of language barriers is the difficulty of a paneuropean political discourse. In this respect, I am quite grateful to Varoufakis for communicating extensively in English and allowing me to access his and Syriza's message (whether I agree with it or not) out of the simplifications and potential distortions of my country's media.

<comment><USER22> China and India had language barriers and cultural differences. By introducing the state language(s) they have solved the problem in one generation. India benefited enormously by giving English the status of the state language. Europe should do it too. (I could hear an outcry of French and Germans..)

<comment><USER23> And rightly so, there are far more native German speakers in the EU than native English speakers. Even French is mother tongue to more people than English.

<comment><USER8> And yet half of all members of the EU don't share a common language they're functional in. That's a drastic inefficiency. The logical means of correcting it, is to standardize on English, which would provide a much greater international benefit than any other language already heavily spoken in the EU.

18% of the EU speaks German natively, versus 13% for English. However roughly 50% speak English as a whole, versus 38% for German. There are 360 million native English speakers in the world, and only 89 million German; with a billion English speakers globally, and only 166 million German speakers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Sorry, this is not true. Germany has had a lot of positive effects from the euro, as have the the people living in these countries.

I remember when we had to exchange money when going for a skiing trip to Austria (about 30 km from us). Now I can just grab some cash and pay in Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Spain, Greece etc.

This is a huge win for me personally.

This is as if someone would say: "The dollar is a disaster even for states that do everything right". Yes, you have spending, corruption etc. But that is true for every currency.

It might be that the Euro changed a lot of things. Some for the worse, most of them for the better.

<comment><USER25> Yes, the Euro has been great for Germany, but that's because they basically control the currency and have forced inflation to an absolute minimum, even though a reasonable amount of inflation would be significantly helpful for Greece, Italy, Spain, and quite a few other Eurozone countries.

So yes, Germany is doing well, at the expense of the rest of the Eurozone.

<comment><USER24> Do you think the rest of the Eurozone would be better of without the Euro?

I don't want to start a flamewar, I'm just interested.

I remember Italy and its Lira (something like a 1000 Lira equaled 1 Mark). Now the prices in Italy are kind of stable (we go there a few times every year). I am no expert but it seems that the Euro brought more stability.

Plus, please don't forget that Germany enforced austerity measures since we got the East back. We have basically been used to them for so long and it kind of saved us during the last crisis. Its more of a lucky side effect I guess...

<comment><USER26> I don't know about the rest of the eurozone, but as a Spaniard I must say that I _do_ think we would have been better off without the euro.

The euro gave us the gun to shoot ourselves in the foot, and we have done plenty of stupid things with it. A few examples:

\- Huge inflation. In a very short timespan (two years maybe?), we went from 1€ = 166pts to 1€ = 100pts in purchasing power value, without an equivalent salary raise.

\- Crazy housing bubble, with an ~100% rise in house prices between 2002 and 2008 (!!)

\- Over-indebtment to pay for stupid things: airports in the middle of nowhere, high-speed trains to unpopulated areas, etc.

\- Destruction of several industries (e.g.: a huge clothing industry)

I could go on but I think this illustrates my point. Again, I'm not saying that this is anyone else's fault. This is what we spaniards deserve because that's what we chose to do with the possibilities the euro gave us. Nevertheless, it doesn't change the fact that we could _not_ have done all these things without it.

Edit: format.

<comment><USER27> For the inflation from day one, that is the same story for every country in the Euro zone that had a weaker currency than the Deutch Mark.

The French baguette went from 1.20 French Francs (about 20 Euro cents give or take at the time) to 1 to 2 Euros depending on the Bakery. That's 500% inflation at best on something that is basically the bread and butter of French diet (pun intended).

The Euro zone should have a unified taxation system to ensure a fair competition throughout the zone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm not a big fan of discussing politics on HN, but as an avid financial reader (in other specialised forums) I'll drop this quote here.

"It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning." _Henry Ford_

Henry was spot on. 99,9% of westerners just don't get the monetary system, and asymmetric monetary unions are starting to extract all the assets from the weakest members/states. A recipe for disaster.

Also, decoupling the € from the $, or even the ¥ is naive. They're one, and part of the very same formula. Neither of these currencies will break-up w/o dragging the others down the abyss. This is the card that former greek FinMin Varoufakis tried to play.

<comment><USER29> I was coming here to comment that I hate the way that a country 'manages' it's finances. Or makes mistakes. Or joins the Euro.

And what I mean by that is that a very small powerful minority entrenched at the top of a countries hierarchy or banking system do things for their own benefit that positively or negatively affect millions of others.

And then the media reports on these actions as if it was a _country_ doing something. And the main reason I hate it is because if you don't understand what happened in the past then you are not able to prevent bad things from happening again or happening elsewhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Lots of fluff in the article over a single question, how does losing the ability to devalue your currency compare over other things gained.

The usefulness of devaluation is highly related to export/import structure and the political ability to make cuts so it makes no sense to fault it all on the Euro (or to assume the loss of being able to devalue your currency makes being in the euro-zone a net loss).

</comment><comment><USER31> Comparing a country that went to bankruptcy in 2008 (short, deep recession => higher growth long term) to two countries which have problems not because of the euro doesn't make any sense.

</comment><comment><USER32> Are they saying that without the Euro, Nokia would have beat Apple?

While criticism of the Euro is not new and may be warranted, the recent times also give me the impression that there is simply way too much room for interpretation in Macroeconomics. So everybody gets to keep their pet theories and nothing ever gets validated.

<comment><USER33> Yeah, it's a rubbish argument. Cheaper Nokia phones still wouldn't sell due to lack of demand. They were already cheap in comparison. And by the time they came up with N9 the app ecosystems for iOS and Android were already well established.

What I also dislike about articles like this is conflating tax increases and government spending cuts under one umbrella of 'austerity'. If for example Finland increased taxes more while Iceland cut more spending, is the recovery due to devaluation of the krona (btw Iceland imports more than exports) or better domestic demand as people had more money to spend? They also claim Iceland did 12x the 'austerity' Finland did, so maybe it helped after all? That's what should be investigated.

That is not to say euro is not to be blamed, but not for the reasons in this article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Yup! Basically the same argument as Milton Friedman made. The examples and graphs are nice though.

[http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/the-euro-- moneta...](http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/the-euro--monetary- unity-to-political-disunity)

<comment><USER35> I don't understand one thing. People keep saying that Milton Friedman "predicted" this. However, what exactly approach to macroeconomics did he prescribed to the political union? Specifically, how did he wanted to deal with regions that have different economic growth? As I understand it, he was opposed to strong government and fiscal policies. So how do you resolve these problems on national level, if you can't have monetary policy and you don't want to have fiscal policy? To me it seems that he didn't really have any better solution.

<comment><USER36> I think he expected that people would move from high unemployment to low unemployment regions. In practice, I don't know how true this is. For instance, even in a culturally homogeneous countries such as England and Germany there are significant differences in unemployment rates between regions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> > Countries can't devalue their currencies or cut interest rates or even spend > more when they get into trouble, and so they stay in trouble.

Not only euro countries can't do that. Many countries with separate currencies have independent bodies dedicated to keeping currency stable. You can't order those bodies to devalue the currency because two main things your economy was doing that were worthwhile became obsolete. They ought to keep inflation target regardless of governments and economy. It's often written into the constitution.

The only country I know that can have their currency devalued according to what economy is perceived to need is USA.

</comment><comment><USER38> The article is correct. A monetary union without a fiscal union doesn't seem to work very well. I should add that the Dutch situation isn't helped by 15 years of mostly right-wing governments that were already in love with austerity, but that only underscores that austerity is pretty harmful to your economy.

The euro could work fine, just not with the current rules. There needs to be some mechanism that compensates for the inequality between the different countries, just like how poorer regions within a sovereign country tend to get extra aid.

</comment><comment><USER39> >Now, the normal way to make up for this would be to cut costs by devaluing your currency, except that Finland doesn't have a currency to devalue anymore.

Keep in mind that this is a zero sum game, in order to devalue your currency the rest have to appreciate. So we have no idea what would have happened if every country in Europe still had its own currency and tried to outdevalue each other. It could even have the potential to start an international race to the bottom.

<comment><USER40> When people say devalue in the current context, it is a shorthand for the Iceland scenario. What they mean is: moving off the shared currency (EUR) and adopting a national currency. This generally means a one-off devaluation, because the country moving off it will be weaker, and in their act of moving off the EUR will get stronger, and their new currency will have less purchasing power. [This is not always the case - when people speculate about a German exit, they assume the opposite would happen: strong Mark, weakended Euro.]

What you're suggesting here is a bit different:

      > So we have no idea what would have happened if
      > every country in Europe still had its own currency
      > and tried to outdevalue each other

China has found a round-about way to do this against the US for the last 30 or so years. But it's no longer viable in free countries.

As soon as the state gives citizens access to international financial products, and allows them to move money internationally, it can no effectively control national FX rates. If it were to try it, enterprising citizens would model the real value, and use commodities or similar to arbitrage the peg.

Since the 1970s, there has been a migration of countries moving off fixed exchange gearings to flating economies, driven by this dynamic. Some went willingly (Australia), others tried to ignore the inevitable and found themselves forced to it (UK).

China has seen the writing on the wall on this and appears to be on an arc towards floating the renmimbi. The nationalist lingo about this will the their hope that it will become a reserve currency (what actual value it has to be used as a reserve currency in a well-oiled system is unclear - probably none). The real story is that they have to do it if they want to continue transitioning to a full import/export economy. They're already leaking heavily (look at the amount of US debt they buy to prop up the peg), and that problem can only get worse as their middle class and financial sectors become more confident.

The Euro was a masterful play by German policy makers for maintaining social stability beyond reunification. It works differently to the Chinese mechanism but has a similar outcome: it removes purchasing power from rich Germans, and forces the price down of the goods being produced by poor Germans. Why does Germany still have a strong industrial sector? They chose this over having a strong financial sector. Instead of rich Germans being angry at vast unemployment and benefits in the weaker parts of their own country and thinking about splitting, they have high employment across the nation and get to look down on neighbours instead. But it's not so good for the neighbours. There have been some positive outcomes - the goal of joining the euro has probably had a strong positive effect on good-governance in many countries who had to work hard to join.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> It is the same guy who wrote this — [http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/01/14/b...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/01/14/bitcoin- is-revealed-a-ponzi-scheme-for-redistributing-wealth-from-one-libertarian-to- another/)

</comment><comment><USER42> Shocking, an US newspaper advising against the Euro

</comment><comment><USER43> No it's not. Devaluation != wealth. Say an economy produces only 2 lemons per year and they cost 1 euro, say you devaluate and now the cost 1.5 euro... how much wealth have you created? None, you are still producing only 2 lemons. The real problem in Europe is taxes, a very bad culture for entrepreneurship and, consequently, little to none venture capital. While we do have very competent people technically, we miss totally the business side of things. Italy is a great example of this, lots of stems, very poor business people and no to little venture capital. Then, when you do manage to actually produce something and sell it, you are killed pretty much from day 1 by taxes - more than half of your added value will go to the government.

</comment><comment><USER44> It's such a bad idea. Germany needed to be pressured into the Euro by Mitterand in exchange for Germanys unification. France didn't want a unified Germany with an independent currency.

</comment><comment><USER45> > "That's left Dutch households with a bigger debt burden than anyone else in > the euro zone."

Sure, this is a problem. But it is an unfair comparison if you do not put it against the (much bigger) savings held by the Dutch.

[http://www.cbs.nl/en-GB/menu/themas/macro- economie/publicati...](http://www.cbs.nl/en-GB/menu/themas/macro- economie/publicaties/artikelen/archief/2012/2012-3680-wm.htm)

</comment><comment><USER46> As some heterodox economists predicted[1], the Euro did/does not have the institutional structure in place to withstand a crisis. Since there is no fiscal authority to implement systemic pro-growth counter-cyclical policy, the knee jerk response of the bankers whom make EU economic policy is austerity and the bone crushing scorched earth deflation that results.</comment>


Show HN: SimplYHN a Poorly Written JQuery and JavaScript Hacker News Web Client - <AUTHOR> https://akinventor.github.io/simplyHN/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hello! My Name is Adam. I wrote this web client for a programming class that I am in, but also because I waste too much time on HN. The goal was initially to create a client that reduced consumption, but this will most likely increase my consumption. The code is quite spaghetti as of now, but I am not sure if I will continue development. I would like to implement all the features of the HN website, along with a more modern UI. I guess the big downside is the fact that it all runs off of JS, but there is no getting around that unless I host it myself.</comment>


Ask HN: What's the best way to learn about the blockchain? - <AUTHOR> Every book I've come across is rated poorly for being superficial.
The one I've tried to read most recently (Mougayar's The Business Blockchain) also felt kind of superficial.
I'm interested in both technical foundation and practical/business applications.
Any books, videos, courses, or other resources you recommend? <comment><USER3> Building the minimum viable block chain: [https://www.igvita.com/2014/05/05/minimum-viable-block- chain...](https://www.igvita.com/2014/05/05/minimum-viable-block-chain/)

That's where I would start.

<comment><USER4> >a goal is a dream with a deadline

I love this blog..

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Everything in Bitcoinlandia is fairly superficial, since everyone is trying to sell Bitcoin and make himself rich. So it's like reading multi-level-marketing books.

That being said. What's actually kind of good (with actual technical specifications) is Bitcoin wiki, even when it's slightly outdated; then official bitcoin website; and sometimes bitcoin stack exchange website (but that can become outdated too).

I don't think Blockchain can be disconnected from Bitcoin, and if you do, it's very general and not that specific.

<comment><USER6> Learning about blockchains can certainly be disconnected from Bitcoin. Go read the Ethereum docs for example.

<comment><USER7> There are no uses for turing complete smart contracts. Multisig and nLockTime perform all the same functions with lower risk and greater scalability.

<comment><USER8> Looking forward then to the deluge of DApps coming to Bitcoin using Multisign and nLockTime, just go to [http://dapps.ethercasts.com/](http://dapps.ethercasts.com/) and copy paste ideas to Bitcoin using Multisign / nLockTime, should be easy peasy. Oh yeah, and all can be done with Multisign & nLockTime, so I wonder why Counterparty and now Rootstock are implementing Ethereum's virtual machine, strange.

Wish you and your partner in crime stopped spreading false information and just focused on Bitcoin. It should stand on its own merits not on dishing other projects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Highly recommend the Princeton book and Coursera course as a starting point.

And if you want a compiled list of resources for learning: [https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6CKmAqa1_nzRGVicnlHY1BaaUk...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6CKmAqa1_nzRGVicnlHY1BaaUk/view?usp=sharing)

<comment><USER10> I would also recommend this book. It takes a very practical approach of introducing a problem which exists with the blockchain and then how to solve it. It gets you thinking the correct way. Then if you want, you'll have the basic understanding to dive into the theory and math behind each technology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I assume you have read the the original Nakamoto paper on bitcoin. I will put it here for reference purposes. It is a seminal paper on blockchain and fairly accessible.

[https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf](https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf)

<comment><USER12> and in html: [http://nakamotoinstitute.org/bitcoin/](http://nakamotoinstitute.org/bitcoin/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I highly recommend the Princeton book and associated video lectures as a place to get started. It does a great job of framing things in the context of the wider fields of cryptography and distribute systems research.

[http://bitcoinbook.cs.princeton.edu/](http://bitcoinbook.cs.princeton.edu/)

<comment><USER14> I also recommend this book. I started reading it, figuring I would probably only read the beginning or gloss over it. It was so well written and so interesting that I ended up reading the whole textbook.

</comment></comment><comment> daniel-cussen My understanding of how the blockchain works:

Someone tells a joke based on a prompt. This would be your Genesis block. Then everyone else competes to tell the funniest joke based on only that and the new prompts from the audience.

Repeat until you have an ongoing, hilarious comedy routine that cannot be edited after the fact without being found out because that would ruin the whole routine. It just wouldn't be as funny.

<comment><USER15> +1 for the effort, but no.

<comment> daniel-cussen Absolutely it works that way. Nobody has a formula for coming up with jokes, they usually try different ones until people laugh. Guess and check. Exactly like taking SHA-256 hashes based on the Merkle tree until the hash, taken as a number, is less than or equal to the target.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This has been a great resource for me, especially Andreas's video at the end:

Inserting metadata into the blockchain. [https://medium.com/@bkawk/inserting- metadata-into-the-blockc...](https://medium.com/@bkawk/inserting-metadata- into-the-blockchain-40c0734b203e#.6pqz3zd10)

Andreas M. Antonopoulos: "Consensus Algorithms, Blockchain Technology and Bitcoin" [UCL] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sE7998qfjgk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sE7998qfjgk)

</comment><comment><USER17> I think a good unorthodox start is skimming/looking at Q&A sorted by votes on [1] and [2]. A good book but oriented towards bitcoin is [3]. My company also made an spreadsheet comparing different blockchain approaches [4] to have a high level understanding (e.g. blocks speed, security vulnerabilities)

I work in the field and the most difficult thing is to separate the noise from the signal. On talks with financial institutions and the government, they say they want to use the blockchain but when you ask about how many nodes they are planning to run they came up with one, or doesn't understand the question. Also, there are a lot of use cases that are not realistic because they depend on oracles or there is no way to enforce the smart contract in the real world.

[1] [http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=votes](http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=votes)

[2] [http://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=votes](http://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=votes)

[3] [https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Bitcoin-Unlocking- Digital-C...](https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Bitcoin-Unlocking-Digital- Cryptocurrencies/dp/1449374042/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1474737627&sr=8-1&keywords=Mastering+Bitcoin+by+Andreas+M.+Antonopoulos)

[4] [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DQ770nGnHfJOoRSqTLmI...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DQ770nGnHfJOoRSqTLmIkhuVK5CAbs- Fgqb6UoGMfVM/)

</comment><comment><USER18> Stanford CS 251: Cryptocurrencies, blockchains, and smart contracts

[https://crypto.stanford.edu/cs251/syllabus.html](https://crypto.stanford.edu/cs251/syllabus.html)

</comment><comment><USER19> 21 has some fun tutorials. [https://21.co/learn/](https://21.co/learn/)

The intro to bitcoin concepts is great place to learn about blockchain.

[https://21.co/learn/introduction-to-bitcoin- concepts/#introd...](https://21.co/learn/introduction-to-bitcoin- concepts/#introduction-to-bitcoin-concepts)

</comment><comment><USER20> I would suggest the book "Mastering Bitcoin" from O'Reilly. I don't have extensive experience on the issue but what really worked for me is that the book provides code examples (in Python and C++) that help get a better grasp of the technology.

<comment><USER21> This. Andreas' book is awesome. It will give you a high enough level to understand all the moving parts, then it deep dives into how they all work. A+++ will buy again.

Once you've read Mastering Bitcoin, install the reference implementation, and start playing with the API while pointing to the testnet. When you get stuck, look to the Bitcoin reference documentation... it's pretty good too.

Happy hacking

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Probably too basic for original poster but this post by Michael Nielsen helped me with the basics of the bitcoin protocol. [http://www.michaelnielsen.org/ddi/how-the-bitcoin- protocol-a...](http://www.michaelnielsen.org/ddi/how-the-bitcoin-protocol- actually-works/)

<comment><USER23> That's the one I was going to recommend

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Set up a full node at home and run it for a while. Turn on logging and watch the messages there.

You'll need (at present) about 80 GB of disk space to hold the blockchain. The full node client will download it for you or you can torrent a recent snapshot of the blockchain and then synchronise from there (quicker).

The software you can obtain from here:

[https://bitcoin.org/en/full-node](https://bitcoin.org/en/full-node)

Or you can use git to pull the source code from GitHub and compile it yourself. I've done both, and found the developers on GitHub friendly and responsive to pull requests, even helpful to a newbie submitting a first pull request.

Beware that running a full node _will_ try to eat all your upstream bandwidth. It takes a few days for the Bitcoin network to notice the existence of your new full node, but the number of connections will grow (others asking you for pieces of the blockchain, as well as transaction verifications). You can learn a lot about the Bitcoin ecology this way.

</comment><comment><USER25> This book is insidiously useful. I went from not getting it at all to getting it more or less completely. Includes code interacting with the blockchain in a wide variety of ways.

[http://chimera.labs.oreilly.com/books/1234000001802](http://chimera.labs.oreilly.com/books/1234000001802)

<comment><USER26> "Insidiously"? Now I'm really curious if that's a typo, or the book is treacherous in some fashion.

<comment><USER25> No, I'm just fond of using that word to mean "extremely" despite that not being a common usage. I'm from the north east, so to me it registers the same as saying "wicked" to mean "extremely", like "wicked cool," which is a regional thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I've found that getting a wallet and sending some Bitcoin is a great first step. This course introduces Bitcoin and also surveys an array of other decentralized, blockchain projects: [https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/bitcoin-decentralized- te...](https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/bitcoin-decentralized-technology) (caveats: self-promotion, pay-walled, but the free trial allows you to watch 95% of it).

Bear in mind that the word "blockchain" is an evolving word; almost every definition I've read differs. Some see it as barely different than a distributed database that doesn't allow deletions. Many others see it as paradigm shifting.

<comment><USER7> Blockchain is now a buzzword that means 'good database'

<comment><USER28> People aren't going to magically sell Eth and buy Bitcoin just because you're spamming the Hacker News thread, Chris.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I liked this for a technical introduction: [http://www.michaelnielsen.org/ddi/how-the-bitcoin- protocol-a...](http://www.michaelnielsen.org/ddi/how-the-bitcoin-protocol- actually-works/)

</comment><comment><USER30> Read the original Bitcoin paper, it should take no more than two hours even if you're not technical; [http://genius.com/Satoshi-nakamoto-bitcoin-a-peer-to- peer-el...](http://genius.com/Satoshi-nakamoto-bitcoin-a-peer-to-peer- electronic-cash-system-annotated/), once you understand what a blockchain does you'll probably want to know more about smart contracts [http://about.smartcontract.com/#defining-a-smart- contract](http://about.smartcontract.com/#defining-a-smart-contract), since their decentralized data/transaction storage capabilities enable the decentralized computation which has the capacity to replace 90%+ of computable contracts ([http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GAC15_Technological_Tipping...](http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GAC15_Technological_Tipping_Points_report_2015.pdf#page=24)) which are currently in silos, much like what we had with various data before the internet

</comment><comment><USER31> Hi m52go,

I have a blockchain/bitcoin tutoring service at www.blockchaintutoring.com. I did a Show HN but didn't get a single comment :(

I'm a programmer myself, but my target market is not the typical HN user. I'm looking to teach more business types and people in the law profession, for example. I'm preparing a small course plan to help people get from 0 to knowledgeable. The course will certainly be a bit technical, but I would not cover for example the pros and cons of the blocksize debate unless someone asks for that information.

I invite you to contact me, either through my website's contact form or the email address there provided. We can chat, and then if you ever choose to use the service, it's going to be at a discount for HN users. Your questions will definitely help me tailor my offering.

<comment><USER32> What email? Sent a message on your form, your form has no progress bar / feedback after submit and does not load on chrome mobile. See my message below on this thread.

<comment><USER31> Hi Adam,

You can find my email just under the "Contact Us" heading. It is bitcointutoring~at~gmail. I have received the message you sent me through your form, and am writing you a reply. The form confirms the email was sent by writing "Success! Message received." in green under the form. I agree it is not so evident.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Capability-based Financial Instruments: [http://www.erights.org/elib/capability/ode/index.html](http://www.erights.org/elib/capability/ode/index.html)

Although this paper does not directly address the blockchain, I believe it and the thesis below are at the root of the concept. (If you want to go down the rabbit hole, check out the references page of the above paper). Fair warning, the above paper is from 1999/2000 so obviously much has changed, but still worth reading.

Robust Composition: Towards a Unified Approach to Access Control and Concurrency Control by Mark Samuel Miller:

[http://www.erights.org/talks/thesis/](http://www.erights.org/talks/thesis/)

</comment><comment><USER34> If you are interested in the technical implementation of it, I did a very basic version of a Blockchain in Go a while ago.

[https://github.com/izqui/blockchain](https://github.com/izqui/blockchain)

</comment><comment><USER35> Newb question: Why do people refer to it (these?) as _" the"_ blockchain?

<comment><USER36> It depends on the context.

Ethereum is a platform that uses a blockchain to build and record consensus. Conceptually, the blockchain is a technology underpinning each cryptocurrency. Across the many cryptocurrencies in use, there are many blockchains keeping track of who owns what.

It is never correct to refer to a capitalized "Blockchain," or refer to it singularly without articles (a or the), imho. We don't refer to other data structures that way, like a priority queue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> 1) Read the original blockchain article: [http://szabo.best.vwh.net/securetitle.html](http://szabo.best.vwh.net/securetitle.html)

2) Longest lecture Nick Szabo, inventor of blockchains, ever gave was in the money museum in Zurich: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWuN2R2DC6c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWuN2R2DC6c)

3) Study the original source code (bitcoin version 0.0.1).

4) [https://github.com/bitcoinbook/bitcoinbook](https://github.com/bitcoinbook/bitcoinbook)

</comment><comment><USER38> Honestly your best bet is to read everything Gregory Maxwell has ever written.

</comment><comment><USER39> Start here: [https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/tree/master/src](https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/tree/master/src)

and [https://bitcoin.org/en/developer- documentation](https://bitcoin.org/en/developer-documentation)

papers- [http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/bitcoin/](http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/bitcoin/)

</comment><comment><USER40> I wrote a piece for Linux Voice on how bitcoin works a couple of years ago. It's obviously focused on this particular blockchain, not the principal in general and it's a couple of years old now. I tried to give a good overview for techincal people : [https://www.linuxvoice.com/bitcoin/](https://www.linuxvoice.com/bitcoin/)

</comment><comment><USER41> Annotated Bitcoin paper (which also talks about Blockchain) - [http://genius.com/2683791](http://genius.com/2683791) Digital Currency MOOC [http://digitalcurrency.unic.ac.cy/free-introductory- mooc/](http://digitalcurrency.unic.ac.cy/free-introductory-mooc/)

</comment><comment><USER42> [http://www.righto.com/2014/02/bitcoins-hard-way-using-raw- bi...](http://www.righto.com/2014/02/bitcoins-hard-way-using-raw- bitcoin.html?m=1)

^ Following along with this helped me a lot. Bitcoin is a rather large onion, but, as others are saying, implementing parts of it is the only way to go.

</comment><comment><USER43> I found the various interviews on Software Engineering Daily informative. There's probably more than revealed by a naive search, but it's a start:

[http://softwareengineeringdaily.com/?s=blockchain](http://softwareengineeringdaily.com/?s=blockchain)

</comment><comment><USER32> I was working on this service. Teaching blockchain bootcamp courses online. I found a few instructors. Just need go figure out the MVP. Are you in NYC? Check the landing page [http://studioblockchain.com/](http://studioblockchain.com/)

</comment><comment><USER44> [https://www.google.com/search?q=site:economist.com+blockchai...](https://www.google.com/search?q=site:economist.com+blockchain)

</comment><comment><USER45> If you enjoy more of a hands on approach, try getting a miner setup for some new coin. You'll learn a ton in the process.

</comment><comment><USER46> [http://bitcoin.ninja/](http://bitcoin.ninja/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Blockchains are just databases rebranded to be something interesting when cryptography is applied. There's no magic to keeping transactions in 'folders'. Database journaling, and message signing has been performed since the 80's (or older)

<comment><USER47> Your statement is lacking in a few ways, so to correct you in simple terms...

a database contains data that can be deleted and/or overwritten. Other than examining changelogs and reverting changes according to 'external requirements', a database is a non-auditable pot of changeable information. A blockchain cannot be re-written without a "hard fork" of the network that makes it exist. It is that simple. Consequently,you can also easily audit a blockchain or any part (wallet) of it. To audit a database is not impossible, but auditing a ledger is entirely simpler.

Banking people throw "blockchain" around as a buzzword without necessarily understanding the total difference in the way they operate compared to databases. The fact that the blockchain is a ledger is best demonstrated to them by the notion that a printed bank statement is a 'de facto' ledger of the transactions on a single account. Banks have always told customers that keeping printed (usually monthly) statements is how a permanent record is kept of your transactions. This is because they routinely wipe system transactions to avoid the storage and security costs of keeping a copy of the data. I have bank statements on paper going back to my very first bank account and transaction. They take up a great deal of physical space, but they do represent a permanent and uncontestable history of my finances. They are my personal paperblockchain. If only banks had been willing to keep everyone's transaction data in perpetuity then I wouldn't have boxes of paper in my attic. But that would be hugely impractical and costly. Blockchains for every account are feasible, but not on the horizon given the state of current cryptography and the huge data costs.

Banks trying to get into blockchain tech are only looking at high level intra- bank functionality, which would be well served by a new system, especially given that they don't trust each other but have historically agreed that they should, and pragmatism has cemented the system. A new system is absolutely needed.

rebranding is hardly the point. Blockchains exist as something entirely novel and challenging to legacy database structures. The folders you refer to - <USER2> you mean cryptocurrency wallets? The wallets where people can be their own bank? They are just blockchain 1.0 btw.

<comment><USER48> Did you read what he wrote ?

Database journaling ? Keeping things in folders ? what you have just described.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> as others have mentioned, the princeton course videos + _homework exercises_ are a great entry point. also read satoshi's paper and then other resources

</comment><comment><USER50> Learn elliptic curves.

</comment><comment><USER51> Read the Greek guys open source book.</comment>


Societal Complexity and Collapse – Interview with Joseph Tainter [audio] - <AUTHOR> http://omegataupodcast.net/2015/10/184-societal-complexity-and-collapse/ <comment><AUTHOR> I found the interview so inspiring that I had to set up an awesome list for all things Antifragility.

Please feel free to send pull requests:

[https://github.com/antifragility-corps/awesome- antifragile](https://github.com/antifragility-corps/awesome-antifragile)</comment>


Open Repos: a free product to aid open source development - <AUTHOR> https://www.gitclear.com/blog/introducing_open_repos_a_free_product_to_aid_open_source_development <comment><USER2> This is going to get confusing with the OpenRepos.net package repository, which is completely unrelated.

<comment><USER3> My first thought as well. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> No body text visible with JS turned off and "Reader Mode" is disabled.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for letting us know. We're embedding a note to become the blog page, so presumably reader mode isn't hip to that. Curious if you can get it to work from this page (the note that is source of the blog)? [https://public.amplenote.com/28y8CL5tsLYsGPN6HUguMpJF](https://public.amplenote.com/28y8CL5tsLYsGPN6HUguMpJF)

Edit: Actually I'm pretty sure this alternate page also uses JS, so if JS is turned off, it's probably not going to work either. Not sure off the top of my head how to work around that.

<comment><USER4> > if JS is turned off, it's probably not going to work either.

Yep. I can see the header and footer but no body content, and also no reader view on that site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very confusing. A free product??? An AI solution to measure how the development of SW progresses and who contributes how much?

<comment><AUTHOR> As the blog author, you can believe I struggled to distill Open Repos down to a concise soundbite. What makes it hard is that we've built it cover many bases, and we're hoping that customer feedback will lead us in the directions that are most valuable. Here's what it is so far:

* A free product

* A product that collects per-release statistics such that A) maintainers save time summarizing their release B) devs who are evaluating a lib upgrade can hone in on the specific difference between their version (e.g., 1.0.1) and the current version

* A product that makes it possible to browse through all the commits being made to a repo in visual fashion (i.e., to learn code style or stay in the loop on changes) and to discover repos where interesting code is being written

Per Michael Seibel's recent recco on Twitter, this isn't an AI solution and we're not an AI company. Approximating code evolution is hard enough without it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I really enjoyed the sparkling prose, reminiscent of Warren Buffett and Jeff Bezos.</comment>


Crypto Is Over: Paris Fintech Summit Returns to Disrupting Banks - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-03/crypto-is-over-paris-fintech-summit-returns-to-disrupting-banks <comment><USER2> The general consensus in the crypto community is that everyone is ok with these types of companies and people leaving crypto.

People came into crypto to get rich quick and now that the hype is gone, those people are going to chase another wave, leaving the rest of the community to build (or at least attempt to build) real products that people want to use.</comment>


What.cd database(without torrent files) finally made available to public - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/XanderStrike/whatcd-browser <comment><USER2> Without the tracker and the torrent files, most of the value is gone. Its akin to a store with amazing variety and labeling, but the items themselves are a faint ghost of what they used to be, and reaching for an item gets you a handful of air.

I really miss What.cd, despite it being a nightmare to maintain a ratio on, it was the musical world's version of the Library of Alexandria. When it was snuffed out, one of the few beacons of cultural knowledge disappeared forever :(

<comment><USER3> What was built can be rebuilt.</comment></comment>


Make yourself someone people want to work for - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@keegan_71415/make-yourself-someone-people-want-to-work-for-e318dbe60fbc <comment><USER2> "However, when you ask tech leaders' colleagues for their assessment of the leaders' growth orientation, they tell a different story...." I enjoyed this piece for how it highlights our blind spots. No one wants to see themselves as stubborn, haha!</comment>


Show HN: CodeOwl – Organize your notes, todos, and code snippets in one place - <AUTHOR> https://codeowl.io/ <comment><USER2> Nice. I'd suggest automatically adding a todo list that had tasks about discovering all the features when a new user first loads the app. Having an essentially blank screen is going to cause a lot of users to bounce.

Also, I'd set

        .workspace { overflow: hidden}

as I'm getting a double scrollbar in Chrome (Windows 10).

<comment><AUTHOR> great idea ! to start off with a pre-filled todo list Thank you

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Good stuff. I could see myself using this. A few bits of feedback:

\- Notes should be clamped to screen. There seems to be no limit to how far off screen I can drag something, after which I cannot bring it back (unless I create another note).

\- It would be nice if there was some way to snap the notes along a grid so that it's easier to arrange things neatly.

\- Collapsible notes would be nice (e.g. collapsing the note so that only the header is visible). Right now each tab has a very limited amount of space.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome feedback , we were unsure between complete free-form and a grid system but seems like many people prefer a more rigid grid

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice application, thanks.

There really needs to be a way to change the order of to-do's.

What happens to deleted to-do's? Gone forever?

Also CodeOwl combined with graphviz (as shown here- [https://zwischenzugs.com/2017/12/18/project-management-as- co...](https://zwischenzugs.com/2017/12/18/project-management-as-code-with- graphviz/)) would be very cool- to-do list -> dependency diagram with colours updating as items are checked off...

</comment><comment><USER5> Congrats on launch!

A call to action could be useful. "Welcome to CodeOwl! Create your first note/link now."

Looks nice!

</comment><comment><USER6> No privacy policy, no about page. No info on who's actually behind this. No contact info whatsoever. Why should I register for an account or input any of my data?

</comment><comment><USER7> Any possibility of allowing self-hosting? Would be fantastic to run on my local dev server.

<comment><AUTHOR> as of today , we only implemented the cloud version running with firebase on the backend , but a localhost solution is definetly in the works. I can send you an email once a localhost version is ready -- stay in touch firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Really cool. Like others have mentioned, tiling would be great. Free form isn't bad though, maybe make a toggle between free form and tiling?

<comment><AUTHOR> This might be the best solution .. we will check the feasibility of it

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thank you all for the great feedback you have given me. Please join the CodeOwl subreddit to stay in touch, I will be posting updates over there for all the features requested in this thread !

[https://www.reddit.com/r/codeowl/](https://www.reddit.com/r/codeowl/)

Happy Coding

</comment><comment><USER9> Bug report: When I add an invalid link (Like "123") to the Links widget it sends a request to "publicApi/links" which hangs for a few minutes before failing.

It looks like you're requesting the URL server-side to provide a preview, you may want to validate the URL before making the request, or catch invalid requests.

<comment><USER10> Also, just implement a give-up after 3-5 seconds. If a sever can't respond in that time, why bother (not worth the resources).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> To the CodeOwl developers: How did this Show HN work out for you?

What kind of traffic did you get to your site? Did people give it a solid test-drive? Did they offer good suggestions, find bugs, etc?

Thanks.

<comment><AUTHOR> We got quite a bit of traffic , and the target group is perfect for codeowl, also the feedback has been overwhelming and mostly positive. I think Show HN is a great idea for dev tools

<comment><USER11> As someone planning to do a "Show HN", understanding what "quite a bit of traffic" means, would be helpful. Can you could divulge more details? Happy you got positive feedback. Seems like a good idea for a tool, and nicely implemented. Thanks.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess it's all relative , but we recieved about 7200 unique user sessions in 2 days from HN. Let me know when your Show HN is published :)

<comment><USER11> Thanks. That's helpful.

My app, if you care to take a look now:

[https://ixberg.com/#/invite/2018-hn-1](https://ixberg.com/#/invite/2018-hn-1)

(anyone reading this can try this as well)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Nice tool. I would make urls just clickable and hyperlink them. CodeOwl may not have access to everything I paste there and some urls may be broken if you don't have access.

</comment><comment><USER13>
        CodeOwl is not yet supported on small screen resolutions :(

        ...

Running in w3m on FreeBSD, decently large screen :)

<comment><AUTHOR> ouch

<comment><USER14> on a macbook pro 13.3 inch (2560x1600) if I resize the browser (Firefox) a little, the right side of the header (Share, login) becomes hidden.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looks nice, but I'd save everything to local storage when it's not saved to the server. I expected it to be still there when I press F5.

Also, when you are dragging an item, make sure it get's the highers z-index, you don't want the tile you are holding to appear below another one while dragging.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like the localStorage persistence ! you can expect this feature to be there soon , thanks for the feedback

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I love it, a small project space manager.

But what does it use for storage? Do you have a backend or is it all browser storage? I assume backend since Firefox never prompted me about using browser storage.

Reason I ask is that all free things come to an end. Just like Taiga.io, which I used before for minor project management.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am using firebase for storage currently the model is completely free , once you create enough dashboards you can request extra space also for free ( for all early adopter and for the foreseeable future )

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is exactly the kind of application my life needs! I've been using the Notes section of the toolbelt of Sublime.

edit- autosave would be great though. I made all these notes, then left for an hour (without saving), when I came back the page refreshed itself and everything was gone.

<comment><AUTHOR> glad you find this useful .. this came about after years of frustration as a dev

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Very cool man. I could definitely see myself using this. Is there a mode to set new notes to tiling mode rather than down a list? Something similar to [https://i3wm.org/](https://i3wm.org/)

<comment><AUTHOR> This seems to be the most consistent feedback we've had so far, so you can definitely expect tiling mode to come soon

<comment><USER17> No worries man. I love the initial site and concept. I can't wait to see more of it. I will show it to my team next week. I'd love to save screenshots and an autosave, I'm pretty forgetful.

I will continue to use it and give you guys feedback. Nice work!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Random bug: All panes seem to accept pressing <enter> as valid input. The URL pane seems to spin forever if you just press <enter>.

Neat though, agreed with adding a todo to help the user navigate their first time through.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting, thanks for reporting !

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Feature request: Search. If I don't have the ability to search search through all my Notes/Todos/Code/Links, then it's kinda useless to me. I like it a lot, though. Thumbs up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Search is a feature we are working on for the next update

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Looks interessting. Is there an export?

Kanban might also be something to strive for. This should be easily implementable by just adding a column- or grid-layout with title-element at the top, per tab.

<comment><AUTHOR> export sounds like an awesome feature to add .. I guess the format of the exported data is something I'd have to think about

<comment><AUTHOR> any format in particular ? .. JSON would be the most natural , XML is possible .. plain text probably the most useful

<comment><USER20> Whatever would be simple and stable. So yaeh, JSON seems to be the obvious choice. I guess Firebase or your web-framework is already using it internally?

Export is the natural downfall of every cloud-solution. Because if people have no way to get their data, many will not bother to bound with a closed up tool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I really like this and can imagine using it regularly. Do you have any plans to support more color options in the future?

<comment><AUTHOR> do you mean color for text , or for the widgets themselves .. we do plan on creating a dark theme , as well as adding more coloring options to the widgets

<comment><USER21> I meant both the widgets and the text: I tried changing the color of the widget to grey and with the default text color it was very difficult to read, but I didn't see any way to change the color of the text.

Having the option to change the theme of the entire app or dashboard would be very desirable as a feature, at least to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Very cool. Be nice to have it as a Chrome plugin just to open it quickly, or have it there all the time as a new tab.

<comment><AUTHOR> We were thinking of making a desktop client for codeowl , but chrome plugin might be even easier

<comment><USER23> Not just chrome. Some people use Firefox ;)

I tried it, it's promising. I'd like a desktop app/ browser plugin version too, I think. But don't take just my word for it... I'm not sure I'm a good client for this sort of app (e.g. I don't pay for Evernote, just use it within their "free" limitations)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Where is my Clojure syntax highlighting?

<comment><AUTHOR> Clojure syntax -- noted

<comment><USER25> While calling out languages - rust.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Sounds very interesting. Out of curiosity, why would I use this over, e.g. Org mode?

<comment><AUTHOR> I would say the most obvious difference is having all your notes / dashboards in the cloud, accessible through a web-browser, and being able to share them with others through a url

<comment><USER27> That would be so cool to have for Org mode, a version of emacs that runs in the browser where you can cloud-edit your org mode files.

<comment><AUTHOR> very interesting .. I will be looking into that ! thank you

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> nice work!

I couldn't figure out how to exit the full screen interactive code view.

The button to delete a todo and "check" a todo are pretty close together, easy to click the wrong one. maybe move the check to the left side of the text?

adding links is really slow.

</comment><comment><USER29> Hey @charbz great project! How can I get in touch to provide some feedback?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you ! feel free to write me on firstname.lastname@example.com your feedback is much appreciated

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> nice work, looks very polished from the outset.

Couple of things: \- Items don't reflow when you remove them? I only added loads of notes and removed the top two, but the rest stayed off the screen.

</comment><comment><USER31> How do you search stuff you've save?

</comment><comment><USER32> Can tabs not be renamed?

<comment><AUTHOR> tabs can be renamed , simply click on the tab and change the name

<comment><USER32> Got it, must have not done that to start with!</comment></comment></comment>


Samsung and Google "smuggled" Nexus S onto the Shuttle's Final Mission - <AUTHOR> http://www.i4u.com/47150/samsung-and-google-smuggled-nexus-s-shuttles-final-mission

<comment><USER2> "The Nexus S is the first commercial smartphone certified by NASA to fly on the space shuttle and to be cleared for use on the International Space Station (ISS)."

Am I missing something? I'm sure two iPhones were up there as well.</comment>


The Social Disease - <AUTHOR> http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2011/01/the-social-dise.php

<comment><USER3> Very interesting article, but I can't agree with the proposed solution - <USER2> even the premise that there needs to be a solution.

The web is a big place, much like the rest of human culture, and there's no clear evidence that it can't both be a dance hall for most and a library for others. Culture has had that problem for millenia, and we have developed numerous mechanisms for coping with it. There have been countless books written over the centuries, and even more lately, so how come I can consistently find sources of the best literature written by man? The same mechanism, curation and word of mouth in circles that care about quality, will apply in the future, as it did in the past.

Your retort to this might be, "but most people don't have access to this curated content supply, they're stuck with the manipulative garbage produced for the masses". But that's always been the case, and it's not specifically an internet problem. Different people have different value-needs. Not everyone wants to read Dickens. Some people really just want to read Mills&Boons. The same is true on the web.

<comment><USER4> There is a solution - wait.

Artificial popularity without the engineered quality to back it won't stand up to the test of time. People are fickle and will tend to jump to the next thing that catches their attention, but the sort of thing that remains strong after the promotion machine has shut off probably has something real going for it.

FWIW, Google pointed me to a "top 40" chart from 1911: <http://tsort.info/music/yr1911.htm>. I'm probably outing myself as a cultural ignoramus here, but the only name I recognize on that list is Enrico Caruso.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Quantity has its own Quality" has evolved in the modern age as "Famous has its own authority". I don't think this is particularly different from any other time in history, but with all the voices you can certainly hear a wider range of opinions from people who would not have had a pulpit for other areas in the past. For example, in the 1970s a sports reporter would be reporting on that subject and I would know nothing about their personal politics. Today, famous in one area gets your opinion heard in multiple areas (e.g. politics).

The best thing about this from a publisher point of view is that candy sells. It doesn't require a fact checker or any real investigation to just "report" on what personalities said. Cheaper content that can be thrown up quick and SEO'd to death to insure some profit. Many people on this board have this very problem with certain tech blogs.

Combine this with the "them over there" syndrome where too many people think that groups they don't belong to are simpletons and it is a group to blame instead of individual actions. So we get 140 character or less slurs against broad groups of people, or we get two pundits from different groups to yell nothingness on a channel and call it debate. Its cheaper, louder and gets eyeballs. Nothing new really, just faster these days.

The example that really bothered me the most was the whole health care debate. All the 24 hour news networks, yes all, put pundits on and let them scream. No need to even leave the studios. Even when the bill's text was available no network really went through it on air to explain what it meant. It was important, but not enough to read. Heck, some investigative journalism about how government run health care that exists actually works in the USA (e.g. the VA and IHS). Heck, I don't think I saw one newspaper that reprinted large parts of the bill with annotations to explain what it meant. Once again, nothing new just more voices.

I'm not sure there is a tech solution. It would require some way to find authority in an area and do basic fact checking. You can't just say NPR is good (they missed at verifying things this weekend) or Fox News is good (knowing when poles were actually closing in Florida in 2000 would have been a good fact to verify). I'm not even sure you could make money printing a report of only facts around a subject. I get the feeling a self tagging scheme might work (trust this guy for sports but ignore him for everything else). Twitter and Facebook really don't have tools for people to follow based on subject and ignore on others. A very hard and old problem.

</comment><comment><USER6> The browser solution is a nice idea, but it'll never work. There's too much information out there to consume in a million lifetimes, so even with a fancy browser-side solution, how will you find anything? And if you do find something somehow that's amazing quality, then what? How will your coworker who could really use that one specific tiny drop in the ocean of content find it? Will you recommend it to them? Vote for it? As soon as you introduce any method of filtering content whatsoever, it will be reverse engineered and gamed so that the quality stuff will no longer be synonymous with the popular content. Don't believe me? Look at Reddit, and increasingly, HN. this problem is ultimately not solvable in a scalable way without strong AI.

</comment><comment><USER7> The issue of "mass-man" affecting the society has been well described in Ortega y Gasset's "The Revolt of the Masses"

<http://www.pinkmonkey.com/dl/library1/revolt.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER8> I feel dirty up voting this one.

</comment><comment><USER9> How about this for an idea.

\- The problem, search engines help you find things that are popular, not things that are good (in your opinion)

\- The Solution, create a public profile and start listing things you like. You are placed on some complex graph based on the things you like. When searching, results are filtered by the popularity of a site, based on your proximity to other users and their likes.

</comment><comment><USER10> The influence of popularity, or collective opinion, is something deeply evolved into us. That means it cannot be all bad, and is probably quite good, perhaps strongly so. It seems related to our tendency and capability to cooperate, and that is certainly very important and valuable. So seeking to eradicate or abandon it does not seem the right basic route.

Is not the real problem one of deception? It is not that we confer our opinions, but that some people, or organisations, are supplying bad information, and getting away with it. This looks more like the target to address . . .

</comment><comment><USER11> His solution sounds more like a surrender: just give up on trying to organize data.

</comment><comment><USER12> Multiculturalism has _utterly failed._ <http://goo.gl/CvDz></comment>


Researchers Find Critical Backdoor in Swiss Online Voting System – Motherboard - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/zmakk3/researchers-find-critical-backdoor-in-swiss-online-voting-system <comment><USER2> I couldn't find anywhere what was actually asked to the "professional" programmers on freelancers.com, but I suspect that a compensation of €100-€200 for what is seemingly a two-three days work _somehow_ didn't actually attract the top programmers around.

It seems to me that there is a lot of bias deriving from a "you pay peanuts..." approach.

<comment><USER2> Ooops.

Posted on the wrong thread.

It was meant to go here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19382542](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19382542)</comment></comment>


Is Google lying about total number of results? - <AUTHOR> https://www.useloom.com/share/0a12b65af22a48ad84eac2a02119b3e7 <comment><USER2> Yes. Often they initially claim that there is many thousands of results but when you get to page 5, it now claims that there is only 47 results (for example).

<comment><USER3> Do you also consider it a lie when postgresql's planner starts a query by assuming that it'll deliver thousands of rows, but once it's run the query to completion there are only 47?

Postgresql does that because the initial number is based on samples and statistics and heuristics, and is produced by the query planner as a side effect of making the query execution plan. I imagine Google, too, has a query planner.

<comment><USER2> I agree with you but from my experience, the total number of results if almost definitely inflated... either that or it is completely meaningless. (ie: about the only time that the result count is not inflated is when there are 0 results and I have never seen them underestimate)

<comment><USER3> There's a good reason to expect that it usually will be an oversestimate. Two reasons actually.

One, google has a strong incentive to avoid underestimates: Underestimates have a fairly high risk of causing RAM/CPU problems since the actual work that must be needed is higher than estimated, and that's an evil ugly problem when processing input from potentially malevolent anonymous users on the net.

Two, the simplest algorithm to compute the estimate is one that'll overestimate if you choose a good combination of search terms, such as two words that hardly ever occur together. The planner's statistics will know how common each search term is, but may not know that this particular combination is very rare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> no, I don't think so. researches are following algorithms no matter what the word searched is but some results might be excluded form the search according to some specific settings.</comment>


Nurses Launch Campaign to Alert Public to Dangers of Medical Technology - <AUTHOR> http://www.nationalnursesunited.org/press/entry/nurses-launch-new-campaign-to-alert-public-to-dangers-of-medical-technology/

<comment><USER5> I don't think RNs need to feel threatened. If anything, medical technology will enhance their status and make doctors more dispensable. Nurses are the ultimate interface between the medical system and the patient.

Right now, there is a trend to allow NP (Nurse Practitioners) a greater autonomy in what they can do. While they still work under the authority of a physician, that's becoming more and more of a rubber-stamp.

More and more doctor activities can be replaced with an algorithm. Diagnoses are made before even seeing the patient and only rely on data from nurses and EMRs. That's the territory of software right there. (Of course this is not to say docs are obsolete, but their work can shift to research. And (at least for now) surgery remains more cost-effective if done by docs than by robots.)

<comment><USER6> I think you're being far, far too gung-ho about the demise of doctors. Their presence might be at risk over 50-100 years, but for the foreseeable future technology will act primarily as an aid, not as an independent decision maker, and time saved for medical staff will just be reallocated to other clinical tasks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Medical professionals have used FUD(fear,uncertainty,doubt) and requiring very high burden of proof(trying the technology for a very long term, even though preliminary results show favor ability) for ages as a tactic to scare the public and politicians from accepting innovation and change.

I wonder, what are good tactics to fight such efforts ?

<comment><USER8> I'd start by highlighting the truth at every opportunity, which is this:

Medical mistakes kill an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 Americans every year[1], making it the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer[2].

"Frank from IT" isn't killing those patients - doctors and nurses are, largely through really stupid stuff like failing to wash their hands adequately, leading to hospital acquired infections.

[1] Journal of Patient Safety [https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/781687-john- james-a-...](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/781687-john-james-a-new- evidence-based-estimate-of.html#document/p1/a117333)

[2] CDC [http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of- death.htm](http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm)

<comment><USER9> That's where you're wrong. The user interfaces to so many medical devices are tacked on, almost as an afterthought. The devices are made by hardware people, and the software people never get a look-in (as usual). They're messy to use and make it easy to do Bad Things, and the testing (though generally better than a web-app) is still frequently lacking. The canonical example is the Therac-25, which killed a number of people after a software bug blasted them with massive amounts of radiation. These problems still happen now - <USER2> modern radiotherapy machines are still capable of delivering horrendous doses, but the biggest killers now are infusion pumps - which have many different, confusing interfaces which make it easy to make big mistakes really quickly (55,000 adverse events, 710 deaths over the course of just five years).

The regulators are incompetent or captured, and the nurses get blamed for the fatalities.

[http://cs.swan.ac.uk/~csharold/cv/files/IHCIkeynote2013.pdf](http://cs.swan.ac.uk/~csharold/cv/files/IHCIkeynote2013.pdf)

Yes, medical mistakes are problematic, but to say it's generally the staffs fault is a gross oversimplification. If it's because staff aren't washing hands, it's because the operational procedures of the industry are bad.

Just to be clear, those 200,000-400,000s aren't all things like washing hands. They occur when there are misdiagnoses or when an inappropriate form of care is chosen, as well. Which is probably the vast majority. Doctors and nurses aren't going to get better - medical training is already some of the most rigorous around, and the bad ones usually don't make it.

What does make a difference is making things easier for them - <USER3> devices, better analysis, better operations procedures. Trying to place some kind of blame on doctors and nurses for killing their patients (in the abstract statistically-large-number-of-people-died case) is stupid - if it happens everywhere, it's the system's fault and not the individual's.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There is no criticism of algorithms in this article at all except saying "they are unproven".

I want to be treated by FRANK. A computer might very well be inferior at first, but there's no reason it would suck as bad as portrayed in that substanceless ad. And it could easily be better on some things where statistics matter (and doctors are horrible at them.)

Sad to see them lose their jobs, but I would care more if I could afford them in the first place.

<comment><USER11> The article addresses you concern about the affordability of health care:

 _" Cutting costs is now seen as the prime directive in health care. Unwilling to reduce their profits or limit excessive pricing practices, the means to limiting expenses in the healthcare industry is by restricting or rationing care."_

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Very light on substance on how algorithms really destroy medical care, but heavy on how it destroys jobs in the field. Not that this doesn't suck for those affected, but let's be clear about the intentions here.

Edit: original title was "Algorithms Destroying Medical Care"

<comment><USER13> Also, the hospital "market" has seen massive consolidation / mergers, so the smarmy finance character might be his own separate problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> While it doesn't invalidate the concerns in this article, I was reminded of an article by the New Yorker I read a while ago on the importance of using checklists (and, by extension, technology) in health care. It's been submitted before:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3360098](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3360098)

</comment><comment><USER15> Perspective: [http://www.tuxradar.com/content/karen-sandler-full- interview](http://www.tuxradar.com/content/karen-sandler-full-interview)

</comment><comment><USER16> As the HN guidelines ask, please do not editorialize titles. (The submitted title was "Algorithms Destroying Medical Care".)

<comment><USER17> This guideline has been ruining HN discussions for a very long time. There should be a way for a submitter to explain why the submission is relevant and what is offered as a discussion topic. The only place to do that is in the title. And the solution has been suggested a million times - keep both the original and moderated titles and let people choose which one to see - <USER4> plans to implement something along these lines, preferably soon?

PS. Just look at this very submission. "Algorithms ..." version would've made me read through the linked page, because it clearly identifies the relevant part of it. But seeing the "Nurses ..." title and skimming through the opener makes me think that this is some sort of US-specific content that just happens to be of a great local importance.

<comment><USER16> You say "ruining"; I say it's one of the best design decisions PG ever made and that it plays a critical role in establishing the character of this site, which is to focus relentlessly on content, keep distortions and spin to a minimum, and ask readers to engage with articles for themselves.

> The only place to do that is in the title.

That's obviously untrue. You can post a comment to the thread.

> the solution has been suggested a million times

There are countless suggestions, but rarely for the same thing, let alone "the solution".

> any plans to implement something along these lines, preferably soon?

I doubt it, because the guideline is exactly in line with the values of this site, as I described above. Any proposed change needs to take that into account. Very few do. For example, you seem not to consider it.

I spend a lot of time thinking about the quality of the front page and, in my opinion, few things would make it worse than opening titles to editorial spin. It would certainly change HN dramatically, and almost certainly disastrously.

> Just look at this very submission

Indeed. The rewritten title was a severe distortion. The story is a campaign by a trade association to protect its interests. "Algorithms destroying medical care" hits the trifecta of a bad title rewrite: it's editorial spin, it's linkbait, and it's misleading [1]. It's a sensational claim that requires evidence to establish, which the existence of a political campaign falls far short of. (I'm personally sympathetic with the campaign, if that matters.)

As long as we're talking about this, it should really be pointed out that I posted a comment saying that we'd reverted the title and what the submitted title was. It's reasonable for people to want to see a trail of what was changed; for now, we've been posting those at the bottom of the threads.

1\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7797166](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7797166).

<comment><USER17> Jeez, Daniel. You obviously has a strong opinion on this subject and you are simply not listening. What I mentioned is a simple solution to a major (if not _the_ ) moderation issue that HN has that will work for _everyone_. What you are defending is an approach that works for some cases, but fail in many.

      <edit>

For one, by editing a submission title you are effectively putting words in submitter's mouth. That in itself is already an ethically questionable practice. I had a title on my Tell HN post changed and I was absolutely totally pissed by that. If you change a title, then do everyone a favor and put your own name next to it.

For two, I happen to actually care for what particular angle the submitter had in mind when posting a link. This is not a Reuters, this is a discussion place and every discussion has a starting point. You change "Algorithms" to "Nurses", you change the point. You do it halfway through the discussion - congratulations, you just f#cked up the whole discussion. This is what I meant by "ruining". Who the hell cares about eventual consistency of HN archives if one can't readily understand the context of what's actually people are talking about _now_.

      </edit>

Try this - say, HN adds an option of keeping the original title. Let's further assume this is not a default. Can you please explain how did you arrive at "It would change HN dramatically, and almost certainly disastrously"?

<comment><USER18> > For one, by editing a submission title you are effectively putting words in > submitter's mouth.

If that's the case, isn't editorializing the title putting words in the mouth of the article writer?

<comment><USER17> No, of course not.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why so many research papers are so hard to understand - <AUTHOR> http://nathanmarz.com/blog/research-papers-hard-understand/ <comment><USER2> I really don't think it is necessary to bring in deliberate obfuscation as an explanation. The fact is that writing clearly is _hard_. It takes work. And tenure/promotion/etc. decisions are often made on output, not on clarity.

So, say I'm a researcher. I've written a paper. It's a mess. I can put some more time into it, rewriting it to be more understandable, or I can use that time to do research & writing for another paper. In the former case, I get one clear paper; in the latter, I get two unclear ones. The people on my tenure committee are going to read my publications list, but not the papers themselves. Which scenario makes me look better to them?

<comment><AUTHOR> My post is somewhat tongue-in-cheek :) The main point is that the incentive is there to wrap uninteresting research in terminology and complexity - so if the incentive is there, you wonder if anyone does it deliberately. I've read a lot of papers which were difficult to grok but ended up being remarkably simple.

<comment><USER3> Another factor is that reviewers are sometimes inclined to reject papers that are too straightforward: if the final result is so simple, is the work really novel or interesting?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Another contributing factor is that most papers target an expert in the field, so a lot of information is missing that is critical for people outside the field. When you try to read a paper outside your field, the missing bits of context and information make it really difficult to understand.

<comment><USER5> Extending that, is the fact that clarity is relative to your audience. Specialized jargon that is opaque to the layperson is also (ideally) far less ambiguous than everyday language. If you're familiar enough with the jargon, technical writing isn't just more concise, it's also an actual increase in clarity due to the precision.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I disagree. I am a late-stage PhD candidate in CS, and I cannot stress the importance given to quality writing in academic circles. All of us know that clear, concise writing plays a large part in getting your paper accepted, and we're repeatedly told that if a reviewer did not understand something in a paper, the fault should be assumed to be with the writing. Strunk & White's "The Elements of Style" is a permanent fixture on most grad student desks.

My point is: if you're reading a reputable CS paper published at a top conference, it is less likely to be hard to understand due to writing flaws than due to the complexity of subject matter. Journals are a different beast, but most good CS papers get published at conferences anyway.

</comment><comment><USER7> Not many people have mastered the skill of simple writing.

</comment><comment><USER8> the SCIgen example he cited at the end of that post is an extreme straw-man ... it was accepted into a fraudulent conference without receiving any peer reviews. the more reputable the conference or journal, the harder it is to BS the reviewers with obfuscation.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think it's important to recognize that the truly interesting and useful research papers are hard to understand, too.

It's not supposed to be Harry Potter, and if you don't actually sit down and work through the steps on page two, you have no right to complain that page three is hard to understand. Feynman had a nice anecdote to this effect in 'Surely you're joking'...

Some of the most useful research papers I've come across have taken months for me to actually understand.

<comment><USER10> Yes, but Feynman only started with his approach after he got tired of trying to explain to journalists in easy term what he did. (Or was it so?)

<comment><USER9> Nope. Here's the anecdote, cut'n'pasted since I can't direct-link to it:

> During the conference I was staying with my sister in Syracuse. I brought > the paper home and said to her, "I can't understand these things that Lee > and Yang are saying. It's all so complicated."

> "No," she' said, "what you mean is not that you can't understand it, but > that you didn't invent it. You didn't figure it out your own way, from > hearing the clue. What you should do is imagine you're a student again, and > take this paper upstairs, read every line of it, and check the equations. > Then you'll understand it very easily."

> I took her advice, and checked through the whole thing, and found it to be > very obvious and simple. I had been afraid to read it, thinking it was too > difficult.

<comment><USER10> OK. I thought of another anecdote. The one where he gets his Nobel Price.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In Biology, most of the paper seems to be spent explaining why the new result is relevant and how it differs from previous work. It's usually dry as a bone but I wouldn't call it obfuscated. Readers should probably have Wikipedia handy for defining terms.

Long papers tend to have a heck of a lot of research. A short paper could be about a single experiment, but often a writer will publish a larger body of work in one paper. Value added, I suppose.

</comment><comment><USER12> I agree with this. I've read so many 10-15 page papers that could have been explained more succinctly and clearly in an average length colloquial blog post. Researchers come up with some dumb unoriginal idea and dress it up so it looks complicated and new. Getting your paper accepted is not always about quality.</comment>


Ask PG: Could we have the SOPA censorship label up on HN's logo today? - <AUTHOR> http://americancensorship.org/ <comment><USER2> One of the few sites where people _really_ care about this issue and half the comments in this thread are people wondering why we should even bother. I'd laugh if I wasn't so disappointed in you.

</comment><comment><USER3> Doesn't that just beg everyone to submit SOPA stories to the site? Have we learned anything at all new about SOPA in the past 24 hours?

<comment><AUTHOR> Read benbsholz's comment (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3243628>)...

It really doesn't hurt to remind people about this and make sure they take action. The future of open source software is at the core of HN, and it could really get affected by this legislation.

<comment><USER3> Is that a "no"? Because (if it wasn't obvious) that's what I suspect to be the case about these SOPA stories: that they tend to contain little if any new information about SOPA.

<comment><USER4> Getting people to watch the stream is enough. Check it out if you haven't.

<comment><USER3> The stream is a great HN submission. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> if google, yahoo, ebay, reddit, mozilla, zynga, AOL, twitter, facebook, linkedIn, etc can do it then i can't see why HN (being all about dev and startup community) can't do it.

<comment><USER6> "If ... can do it"

Of all of the above companies you listed, as of right now, it's only on reddit.com

<comment><USER7> <http://boingboing.net/?p=129579>

Check out the logos at the bottom.

<comment><USER6> The "can do it" refers to the question "could we have the SOPA censorship label up on HN's logo today?" (Similar to what was done at <http://www.avc.com> for example.)

The comment I am commenting on says:

"if google, yahoo, ebay, reddit, mozilla, zynga, AOL, twitter, facebook, linkedIn, etc can do it then i can't see why HN (being all about dev and startup community) can't do it."

So "can do it" doesn't refer to signing a letter (which can't be done now anyway) it refers to putting the censorship label over the logo. The majority of the companies mentioned did not do that which was the point that I was making.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Put down that book citizen, there are copyrighted words in there that you haven't paid for yet. Dont make me taze you.

It's coming, sooner or later, the only thing we can do is fight it like alcohol drinkers did with prohibition.

</comment><comment><USER9> Could we _not_ turn HN into an activist site? Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER10> Why?

<comment><USER11> Because the ideas behind freedom of speech and 'routing around damage' are the main reasons behind the Internet's success.

<comment><USER10> I don't see what exactly changing y18.gif would accomplish...

Happy feelings? Seems like you're preaching to the choir.

<comment><USER4> I have been reading about this all week, but having a banner on my Mozilla home page reminded me to write my congressmen. I can't hurt to remind people about this -- especially considering the impact it is going to have on the users of this site.</comment></comment></comment></comment>