Aristotle, "On Trolling" - <AUTHOR> http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=6&fid=10293504&jid=APA&volumeId=-1&issueId=-1&aid=10293503&bodyId=&membershipNumber=&societyETOCSession=&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S2053447716000099 <comment><USER2> _for there is no art in what they do._

I couldn't disagree more. There is common trolling and there is sublime trolling. The ability to sow the perfect amount of strife to create real change is a thing of beauty. This goes beyond the tactics of information warfare -- for which trolling has its uses -- and reveals truth to those in ignorance. For most true knowledge cannot be learned by the advice of elders alone, but must be learned through the long and winding path. Many of life's truths are best revealed through fiction.

This essay reads like it fears trolls and their threats to social order. But the way of discord and strife is also true. Did Eris not troll Olympus most excellently with her golden apple? Did she not reveal that divine folly was no less than mortal folly? This is the awesome power that is trolling in a skilled hand.

<comment><USER3> Your comment relies on a misunderstanding of what Aristotle - or his proxie here - means by the term "art". In modern usage, something that has no art to it is base, simple, and requires no effort to achieve. However, art meant something more nuanced to Aristotle (that nuance is why people still make a living arguing over the implications of what he said). For Aristotle, an art was something that pointed to the Good. Politics was the art of governing men, Ethics was the art of ruling oneself. These things involved skill - the skill you allude to the troll possessing, the power to weave webs of words and manipulate people - but also involved something more - an understanding that the purpose of the art was to further a good in some way. When "Aristotle" says there's not art in the troll's activities, he means they do not point to the good, and they will in fact do harm.

PS apologies if this isn't well reasoned, I just got off a plane and am a bit jet lagged.

<comment><USER4> Regardless of what definition of "art" you follow, I feel like trolling as described by labster can certainly be used for good.

Labster himself describes the use of trolling in tricking the reluctant apprentice into learning, or using it to sow strife to further policy making and bring about social change. "Good" is in the eye of the beholder, but I could certainly consider some of those things to be good some of the time.

There is a difference in abusing other people online for entertainment - "common trolling" as labster describes it - and the "sublime trolling" in which he sees art.

<comment><USER5> The only problem is that "sublime trolling" is something he made up. Tricking apprentices to learn, come on.

He's just playing devil's advocate in a not very convincing way.

<comment><USER6> [http://thecodelesscode.com/](http://thecodelesscode.com/)

almost all of these koans are masters trolling students

<comment><USER7> Hah! This was my first thought too. The whole purpose of a koan is to, one way or another, subvert (i.e. troll) your normal thought process so some important truth can be learned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > _And this is how the troll generates strife. For what he indicates is known > to be false or harmful or ignorant; but he does not say that thing, but > rather something close._

Haha, that is naive, or perhaps incomplete. Actually the "worst" trolls simply tell some uncomfortable truth (which isn't false or ignorant, and he who respects truth wouldn't dare call it harmful).

That is to say, sometimes trolls disrupt communities that are formed around "group think", consisting of members who get together just to be around others who think the same way and avoid those who disagree with the shared ideas.

If you surround yourself with others who confirm your opinions, then anyone who busts in with a dose of reality is a "troll".

There are many forms of disruption, with many motivations, that all get lumped into the "troll" category.

<comment><USER9> One need not even tell a truth to troll - one can merely ask a question that has no good answer.

These are my best trolls: "what are the underlying principles that lead you to believe X?" "what evidence - if any - would cause you to hold a different belief?"

It's the best troll, because when folks come up with no answer they usually resort to ad-hominem attacks. That's usually how you know you've raised a very good point.

<comment><USER10> Why would you call that a troll, rather than simple rational enquiry?

<comment><USER9> Mainly because it invites downvotes, ad hominem attacks and general hostility from other parties. For example, this thread from yesterday: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11654161](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11654161)

I don't think that rational inquiry and trolling are necessarily disjoint sets.

<comment><USER10> Once again, Isn't that just another way of saying that people do not like being confronted with the fact that their positions are not actually rational at all, rather than that you are "trolling" someone by so confronting them?

I agree that the linked thread is a good example of exactly this phenomenon, and I think it's actually a far more common thing here than people would like to admit.

<comment><USER8> But that confrontation comprises a good bulk of what is actually called trolling.

There is the aspect that the confrontation is not always in good faith. The troll knows that those people don't like being confronted, and knows that it is not productive to do so. It's done only for the amusement: _because_ those people don't like it.

<comment><USER10> So really you're saying it reduces to the intent of the interrogator?

If you interrogate someone for their irrational beliefs because you are genuinely curious if they are in fact as irrational as they appear, or you're missing something important, this is not trolling, but if you're well aware that they are definitely irrational, and you're familiar with all of the reasons that people come to believe these kinds of things, then this is?

<comment><USER8> No; we can't define trolling by referring to intent. It's a behavior.

The trolling intent does lead to a persistent, repetitive, long-term behavior: pushing the same buttons to obtain the same response.

There may be an agenda behind it: to keep that topic current and frequent in that forum, so that any newcomer to the forum sees mostly that discussion and nothing else.

The troll says: you are irrational in your beliefs, and I will keep stirring that up month after month, so that the forum is replete with exposure of this fact.

There may be some agenda behind it. Sometimes it is explicit or can be inferred (like promoting something). Sometimes it remains hidden.

If someone has a trolling intent, but fizzles away after one round, then we can't externally tell whether that was a would-be troll or someone genuinely curious. The behavior has to define it.

<comment><USER10> > The troll says: you are irrational in your beliefs, and I will keep stirring > that up month after month, so that the forum is replete with exposure of > this fact.

This sounds a lot like the behaviour of someone who is genuinely offended by a certain kind of irrationality which is prevalent in a particular forum, they might not be refuting that irrationality and confronting the holders of it for their personal amusement, but rather a sense of believing that irrationality is terribly harmful and needs to be destroyed/exposed for what it is lest it gain prevalence and support and position to cause further harm.

I view the state and political authority in exactly this light, support for this idea and institution is practically ubiquitous despite its terrible consequences, and when I say so, I am not trying to amuse myself in any way.

It seems by some measure the above would be trolling, because largely, people _really do not like_ being confronted with the facts on the subject.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I love the pseudo-ancient Greek diction. The phrasing, the vocabulary, and the abundance of nested clauses do really remind me of translations of Aristotle. The only way this could be better is if he replaced the references to modern things like Republicans, Democrats, etc. with Thracians, Spartans, and other ancient Greek stuff. At that point you could try to pass this off as actual Aristotle, which would itself be a brilliant act of trolling.

</comment><comment><USER12> Book one of Plato's Republic led to my lightbulb moment: witness Socrates's lilt of annoyance at Thrasymachus's behavior, which is not too far from what is being described here. People have not changed fundamentally in the last 2,500 years.

Reading that amused me to no end. Plato is how I was able to make peace with the legions of Internet message-board nerds. (And observe in myself the traits of a troll, at times.)

> _no one is ever a troll involuntarily or by accident, but only an idiot who > has posted in the wrong thread._

Then again -- was Thrasymachus just "posting in the wrong thread?"

The second lightbulb moment was reading some of Antonin Scalia's judicial opinions. My approximate train of thought: "Whait, am I actually reading this? This is like something I'd downvote on Hacker News. Well, justices are temperamental and opinionated people too, just like the rest of us..." RIP.

<comment><USER13> Yep. It's funny to me that people turn to Medium for life advice, because Shakespeare, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca etc all wrote it down in incredible detail hundreds of years ago.

I'm half-tempted to do modern translations of those old works and essays.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think we, as hackers, are somewhat lucky when identifying trolls. This is because our projects, our work with computers encourages less ambiguity. For example, if a troll enters a thread and asks a question about why a product doesnt support feature X we can give good, rational answers. If they don't get our message and press forward with their ignorance we can dismiss them as troll.

We, as hackers, as members of communities outside our work or projects (for example, as an enthusiastic invested consumer of Apple, or a enthusiastic FOSS evangelist) where there is more ambiguity in whats true or false are more susceptible towards trolls.

In the first case there is a certainty about reality, and in the second the troll disturbs a fabricated reality based on social dynamics.

For example, if I were to say that you as part of the HN community believes things on faith which are not real or true, but you only believe these things because the community you belong to wouldnt accept you if you went against the group, you be slightly offended. I would be trolling you, but I would also be speaking the truth.

In both examples, trolls are outside the group, and the best way to identify a troll is to examine you and your peers within the group. How do you label the troll, how do you/they discuss the individual? Look at the words - "neckbeard" "basement" "not educated" "pyjamas" "troublesome" "problematic" \- these are all commonly used to further exclude an individual from a group. Trolls can show group dynamics in action.

Codes of Conduct in online communities are all about group dynamics and security and not about making the community more inclusive or diverse. CoCs are anti troll measures.

In summary though - here is a radical idea. Without trolls your group is weaker. Its only by pointing out a threat to a group, by identifying what is not the group that the group is stronger. By fighting against trolls you defend your own investments in the groups and communities (no matter how fake and useless) you belong to.

<comment><USER6> The fact that people still discuss spaces vs. tabs easily disproves your point. Vi vs. emacs? Again, group dynamics in action, and those discussions still end up in thousands of replies.

<comment><USER14> >your point

I made several points in my comment :-)

I imagine you were referring to the first point - that we, as hackers are lucky in our projects and work in that there is often good clarity as to likely questions, but that vi vs emacs means that there is no clarity. I believe that this is not a good example of our work and our close technical projects but rather that you are agreeing with my other points, that it's about social dynamics and people being invested in a certain community. That is, vi vs emacs is about groups, but it's not about trolling. A troll is an individual. An entire other community, whilst helping to define other communities by its opposition cannot be labelled a community of trolls. Most people do not consider 4chan to be a community of trolls, for example. I don't think there has ever been a community of trolls, and if there has, they have never identified themselves as such.

<comment><USER15> Since 4chan was brought up:

Goons and 8chan's /int/, with both groups having a large overlap between each other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I was unaware that people trolled for any other reason than amusement. Is there an estimate of how frequently people troll for calculated (e.g. monetary) reasons?

So my take is that she says trolls act as a kind of solvent to the natural bonds of community, and she lists a few frequently used constructions. I suppose the only beneficial use of trolls and trolling is to destroy communities of little worth. If trolls successfully kill even one terrorist cell, can we really call them evil? (And I'm not trying to troll with that question, I'm serious!)

EDIT: I mean "let's blow up a school bus of infidel spawn" type terrorist, not the "I'd rather not repeal the 1st, 4th, and 5th Amendments to feel more secure" type 'terrorist'.

<comment><USER17> [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1555005/Seven- chil...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1555005/Seven-children-die- as-US-bombs-Afghan-school.html)

Can we really call trolls evil if within a community they counteract group- think, wage a war on cliché, and subvert unthinking and tired stereotyping?

Perhaps Aristotelian virtue theory can help us answer these questions?

<comment><USER18> I wonder, is there a correlation between the telegraph.co.uk article and your comment?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Fwiw, "proper" trolling can be an art form. Done well, it can be a beautiful form of entertainment. Ken M's best (authentic) comments are a great example of this.

<comment><USER20> So can puns, but that doesn't make them socially acceptable either.

<comment><USER21> What, like dad jokes?

> _I have a fear of speed bumps. Im slowly getting over it._

Dad jokes are one of those things were people shake their heads and sigh, as if they're displeased, but internally they're laughing their butts off.

... Or maybe I only think that because I'm a dad?

<comment><USER20> I think that's in the same category.

Sadly, I have an affliction where I can resist no opportunity to pun. Or dad joke.

It's a problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > Trolls <are> not to be fed. But though everyone knows this, everyone does > it; for the desire to be right on the internet is natural and present to > all.

Trolling is fed by frustration, not discourse. Discourse does not have to be frustrating. How you react to it is entirely up to you.

I'd argue there's no such thing as a troll. People aren't all bad or all good. Trolling is a concept of negativity that spreads when given more negativity.

</comment><comment><USER23> A lecture about the same treatise: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ).

Very funny to see that the modern word 'trolling' is used in this translation.

<comment><USER20> Video was a nice find and complements the article well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Non-broken link [http://crookedtimber.org/2016/05/07/aristotle-on- trolling/](http://crookedtimber.org/2016/05/07/aristotle-on-trolling/)

</comment><comment><USER25> Please excuse my ignorance, but can someone tell me where in that article Aristotle comes into play? I did not see any attributed quotes, unless I missed one?

Thank you

<comment><USER26> This is very much in the style of Aristotle's writings. The parenthesized Greek words appear as if placed there by a translator who had to reach for an approximate word in English and wanted to be precise about the meaning of the original.

<comment><USER25> >And indeed trolling is said in many ways; for some call 'troll' anyone who is abusive on the internet, but this is only the disagreeable person, or in newspaper comments the angry old man.

Sorry but if this prose is not Aristotle than where are his quotes? Or is the article simply meant to be written in his style?

<comment><USER27> The article is facetiously claimed to be written by Aristotle and merely translated by a modern scholar, Rachel Barney.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> So, it's trolling if you use a Socratic dialogue to peddle falsehoods, but not trolling if you use it to tell truths? Who is the arbitrator of truth?

I think of trolling more as the method of argument, rather than the content. And in this way, Socrates was a troll. It just so happens that not all trolls are bad. They just have a bad label.

</comment><comment><USER29> Trolling is just subtle abuse by people with sociopathic tendencies

</comment><comment><USER30> Making Aristotle be not "pissed" at troll? O_o

Aristotle like Plato were so convince that being right mattered so much more than ethic that they did not care and resorted to any means to make their points; lying, fallacies, spinning the truth, using auhority (they loved auhthority).

And they would call sophists (troll) anyone who they would consider opposing them and ridicule them.

They were the bulliers of the wisdom.

They were the prominent philosophs lobbying for the Republic because Athenes was a democracy, and rich people was paying Plato to attack the concept of democracy so that the wealthiest could finally rule the city. (which resulted in the fall of Athenes)

Aristotle and Plato were more than trolls, they were assholes.

</comment><comment><USER31> Sounds like Aristotle had a bad day with Socrates.

<comment><USER32> Yes.

This post gives me words to express what I always thought: They killed Socrates for trolling.

<comment><USER17> I read something recently that Socrates was killed because he supported the wrong political faction during a time of conflict. When their enemies gained power they exacted revenge by framing him by accusing him of impiety and corrupting the youth (won't somebody think of the children?). Besides they gave him an out (exile), which he declined so he chose martyrdom and the rest is history as they say. But at this remove, who knows. Can't for the life of me remember where I read that or I'd post a link.

<comment><USER33> I heard it was because some of his students rebelled against the government, took over and ended up acting as tyrants for a certain amount of time. So he kind of got the blame for their actions, as the one who 'inspired' them.

<comment><USER17> I imagine he doesn't get called a gadfly for nothing. The only Platonic dialogue I can stand is The Symposium because Socrates' method of interrogation is elsewhere too annoying†. Maybe instead of "don't feed the trolls" we should say "don't feed the gadflies".

† Having said that, I recently got out of the library Heyting's _Intuitionism: An Introduction_ and it's in fictional dialogue format initially which irritated me no end. (So maybe it's not Socrates but the form!) I guess I don't appreciate it as a teaching method but I can see why it is used especially if otherwise there would be a lot of back-and-forth question- response type segments in the text. _Not a fan_ :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> sending a drawing of a spider to pay your bill is what I would call art when it comes to trolling

</comment><comment><USER20> This is very well written, it reads like Aristotle indeed.

</comment><comment><USER35> "of all merely asks a simple question about the evidence for climate change"

i am working on 'an investigation into the sex life of sterile coat hangers with particular reference to climate change' myself.

</comment><comment><USER36> Noone else noticed the slight dissonance of reading something like this on an academic journal? Knowing nothing of the context here, it certainly sounds like an interesting story

<comment><USER37> I find it refreshing that there is a place for humor in otherwise "dry" contexts, such as academic journals. After all, the joke is obvious to the intended audience, or at least ought to be, and gets published for its own sake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I like the Greek word comments, they greatly help my understanding of the meanings (I'm Greek; Greek words have more nuance).

</comment><comment><USER39> Speaking of trolls and Ancient Greece philosophers...

When you troll your community so bad they sentence you to death by drinking hemlock.

<comment><USER40> Socrates is mentioned in the article, as an example of not-a-troll.

<comment><USER39> Mentioned as not being a troll for "telling the truth"...

Right, because "truth" is a completely not subjective concept.

Aka: "it's only trolling when I disagree with the opinions being expressed"

<comment><USER40> _it belongs not to the serious person to be a troll but to the one who lacks education_

<comment><USER39> Among the maxims on Lord Naoshige's wall there was this one: "Matters of great concern should be treated lightly." Master lttei commented, "Matters of small concern should be treated seriously."</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Understanding the latest Rails benchmarks - <AUTHOR> http://blog.plataformatec.com.br/2011/02/understanding-the-latest-rails-benchmarks/ <comment><USER2> I generally avoid scaffolding, and I only suggest it to others as a learning tool. I prefer to have tight control over the code thats going into the application, and the typing it saves me seems to be outweighed by the extras I have to remove/prevent.

Am I in the minority here?

</comment><comment><USER3> Would have been nice to see the jruby boot tests using nailgun (<http://kenai.com/projects/jruby/pages/JRubyWithNailgun>) to remove the jvm startup times from the results.

<comment><USER4> My experiences with nailgun have been mixed for rails development. Nailgun doesn't search & parse all the ruby libraries found in your Gemfile, or included as part of the rails startup time, so rerunning "rails generate x" doesn't seem to help the startup time at all.</comment></comment>


Introducing the C++ Lambda Runtime - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/introducing-the-c-lambda-runtime/ <comment><USER2> Sorry to moan but the front page has four AWS lambda language stories. Can we consolidate them to one?

<comment><USER3> Careful. I posted about the insane amount of Amazon spam yesterday and the Amazon employees who post all of this stuff downvoted me hard.</comment></comment>


Austrian government seeks to eliminate internet anonymity, with severe penalties - <AUTHOR> http://derstandard.at/2000101677286/Government-Seeks-to-Eliminate-Internet-Anonymity-With-Severe-Penalties <comment><USER2> It is surprising. Even here, in Russia, we don't have such laws working yet. And I wonder, what Austrian authorities are going to do with foreign platforms like Telegram, which are unlikely to comply? Russian government has been trying to block Telegram using DPI for a year and didn't succeed.

What about Twitter? Reddit?

> In addition, web platforms would be required to appoint a liaison in Austria > who would be responsible for making information about platform users > available if it becomes necessary. If this person does not ensure that the > regulation is followed, he or she could be punished with a fine of up to > 100,000 euros.

This will just put foreign platforms, who will ignore the law, into an advantageous position compared to local platforms. Users might switch to foreign platforms that don't require identification.

<comment><USER3> > _This will just put foreign platforms, who will ignore the law, into an > advantageous position compared to local platforms. Users might switch to > foreign platforms that don 't require identification._

Doesn't really matter, as those things move the Overton window.

Tomorrow, when the US, China, and EU adopt similar laws, there wont be any "foreign services" to use.

<comment><USER4> What a scary idea. I want to say that its unlikely to happen but with the political climate right not...

Anybody got an ideas, on what we are supposed to do when that happens

<comment><USER5> People are very adaptable and will consider all that things new normal. XIX century Americans would consider an income tax in a peacetime grossly inappropriate, creepy and a violation of their dignity after all.

<comment><USER6> And the more or less permanent state of war we find ourselves in could also be considered a new normal we've adapted to that XIX century Americans would find creepy and grossly inappropriate.

<comment><USER7> No, the US was at war for essentially the entirety of the 19th century.

<comment><USER8> Pretty much, the US has always been at war. I mean, they used to have a War Department, which got renamed Defense Department for PR.

<comment><USER9> Not really that's OTT hyperbole

<comment><USER7> No, it's pretty accurate. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Uni...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_United_States)

<comment><USER10> We've only had 21 years where we haven't been at war. [https://www.globalresearch.ca/america-has-been-at- war-93-of-...](https://www.globalresearch.ca/america-has-been-at-war-93-of- the-time-222-out-of-239-years-since-1776/5565946)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In case anyone wants to know how this should work, this is the explanation by the minister:

There are "technical possibilities where software can run on the backend that can immediately identify: Does the registered mobile phone number match the name and address or not?" \- derstandard.at/2000101678440/Minister-Bluemels- Ominous-De-Anonymization-Software (from [https://derstandard.at/2000101678440/Minister-Bluemels- Omino...](https://derstandard.at/2000101678440/Minister-Bluemels-Ominous-De- Anonymization-Software))

Translating it as "backend" is very friendly as he literally said "a software in the rear end".

<comment><USER12> it won't stop people getting multiple sim cards and registering those under different names

<comment><USER13> To get a sim card (even prepaid) in Austria you need to provide a valid ID/passport. If it's not an Austrian/German/Swiss ID you will need to go in person to activate your sim card. This would make it really difficult for someone to manage a few accounts.

<comment><USER14> You can buy sim cards on amazon from other EU countries.

<comment><USER15> So tell me how this will work. Will you swap SIM cards just to post anonymously sometimes and let the telecom providers (among others) find out what your other SIM cards are through your device ID? Or will you get a SIM card from another country to use exclusively and pay roaming costs / live with a worse data plan in Austria?

People apparently forget that telecoms providers cooperate with authorities, new legislation is planned for this too.

<comment><USER16> Roaming costs are basically non-existant these days in the EU.

For me it is cheaper to use internet through roaming than buying local plan.

<comment><USER15> > _Roaming costs are basically non-existant these days in the EU._

Data plans can be limited for other countries, even within the EU (and frequently are), i.e. if your prepaid contract allows 5GB monthly data transfer for free, the provider might limit this to 500MB for roaming and beyond that limit, you can pay a hefty fee per MB.

In general, prepaid cards aren't famous for having a generous data plan...

<comment><USER17> Giffgaff in the UK gives you 20GB for £20 on pay as you go, and it can be used up to that limit anywhere in the EU. And you don't need a passport to get a simcard either.

<comment><USER18> > giffgaff runs on the O2 network

Eh, no thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Could anyone shed some light on which problem this is supposed to solve exactly and what triggered it in the first place in Austria right now?

Have there been any issues caused by anonymous posts recently? Maybe I'm just living under a rock, but my feeling was that the main issues we're currently facing stem from political distortion caused by populism misusing platform mechanisms to spread misinformation. I don't see how this is supposed to help.

<comment><USER20> This was triggered by a defamation lawsuit where a former female MP was being harrassed via facebook, made the harassement public via twitter, and subsequently sued by the owner of the facebook account. She lost the lawsuit and was ordered to pay damages. The court found that the owner of the facebook account is not necessarily the harasser, so making the harassement public is libel.

Of course this case was only a welcome trigger to implement some law to cause FUD. Austrian government is completely illiterate in all things regarding internet, but in this case (and the case of the copyright directive), I would go as far and presume malicious intent (not just stupidity).

<comment><USER21> That seems like an absolutely nonsensical outcome from the court. Does anyone have the court transcript? (yes I'm aware of the risks of reading machine translated legal German, but it would be interesting to know)

(I see that Facebook's ineffective harassment policy is at the root of this again)

<comment><USER22> The decision was apparently invalidated by a higher court and the trial has to be repeated: [https://www.zeit.de/gesellschaft/zeitgeschehen/2019-03/sigri...](https://www.zeit.de/gesellschaft/zeitgeschehen/2019-03/sigrid- maurer-politikerin-gruene-gerichtsurteil-nachrede)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The article states a number of laws this proposition is most likely to conflict with. I very much doubt it will hold in court, and certainly someone will sue. I guess it won't even land at the European Court of Justice (ECJ).

But even if I'm right, it still damages the public discussion on privacy and civil rights. It is one of many steps pulling public opinion in a frightening direction.

</comment><comment><USER24> It's not the only attempt of the current government of Austria to do something against privacy on the internet.

\- There is the idea of a tax called "Digitalsteuer": A tax for internet companies which didn't pay taxes for some reason. However, it is estimated this would make only some million dollars (~25 to 30/year). At the same time, it could lead to too much surveillance because somebody would have to save the address and location data of Austrian users somewhere. [https://derstandard.at/2000100880156/Kritiker-befuerchten- du...](https://derstandard.at/2000100880156/Kritiker-befuerchten-durch- DigitalsteuergesetzTotalueberwachung)

\- And the "Überwachungspaket":

-> you need to register prepaid sim cards

-> limitation of the secrecy of letters

-> data retention by ISPs etc [https://epicenter.works/thema/ueberwachungspaket](https://epicenter.works/thema/ueberwachungspaket)

</comment><comment><USER25> "Results show that in the context of online firestorms, non-anonymous individuals are more aggressive compared to anonymous individuals"

[https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0155923)

<comment><USER15> This legislation is not about "aggressive behaviour", it's about criminal conduct. While I can't comment professionally on the validity / reproducibility of this research (looks bogus to me, they only examined comments on an online petition platform, not FB and news sites where all the crazy people are[1]), anyone who'd claim that criminals don't prefer to be anonymous or that perceived anonymity has a negative effect on criminal behaviour, would surely be laughed out of academia.

Besides, the anonymity vs. other users will not be changed, we're not talking about a "visible real names" policy here. You can still use nicknames, just the forum operator has to store your real name.

[1] _The final dataset includes 532,197 comments on 1,612 online petitions. There were a total of 3,858,131 signatures over the 1,612 petitions between 2010 and 2013, with detailed information about the wording of the comment, the commenters, the signers and the petition._

<comment><USER26> Putting 2 innocent people through systems designed to assume they are guilty is worse than 1 guilty person being able to be anonymous. Look at what the TSA has done. They've wasted so much time and created a massive invasion of physical privacy (i.e. someone touching your private parts in public) and not only did they never catch anything, they fail 90% of penetration tests. There is some positive intent here but in the real world this is obvious to cause more harm than good. I don't know if it is hubris or ignorance to not see how easily this will be manipulated and have negative externalities. You don't jail your whole population because of 1 bad apple.

<comment><USER27> I see two options going forward:

\- Filters, Article 13 style. Youtube, Facebook and Co have to ensure you can only post legal content

\- Accountability. A justice system is able to drag you into a court when you've done something illegal.

We tried safe harbor and it was a nice compromise, but youtube added ContentId for a reason and it also certainly doesn't seem to help against hate speech. I prefer we keep judges assessing what is allowed and what isn't, instead of shifting this burden onto companies. If that requires Know Your Customer laws, then this seems like an acceptable trade off to me.

<comment><USER28> What about doing nothing? Is the status quo intolerable? Will it become intolerable if things continue on their current course? If you believe this, why do you believe it?

The problems of upload filters have been discussed here in depth and the consensus seems to be that they would have massive collateral damage. Removing anonymity creates severe problems for freedom of expression. Consider, for example the buffer anonymity provides from strategic lawsuits against public participation.

What current problem is so bad that solving it is worth the costs of either of those solutions?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Laws like this one and the recent anti-crypto law in Australia have me really worried for the future of small, privately owned sites. If laws like these continue to pass, it's going to become more and more difficult for small sites to navigate the legal regulations around running a web application. This, in turn, will discourage people from building their own web applications, which will lead to a decrease in overall innovation in the online space.

The conspiracy theorist in me is starting to see these laws as some sort of ploy by the big players(google, amazon, facebook, etc.) to create a sort of monopoly on the internet by making it so difficult to enter the web application space that only large companies with massive amounts of resources can even play the game.

As someone who is currently working on a new art sharing platform that will include discussion threads, I'm starting to get worried about needing to comply with these types of laws. Not that I would comply, as I believe one's internet experience should be as anonymous as one wants it to be.

It's a real shitty place to be. I hope this law gets shot down and all future laws in the same vein don't gain traction.

</comment><comment><USER30> The funny thing is, they have a threshold of 100.000 users that must be registered at the site.

So a site like unzensuriert.at (like breitbart in the US) which is a right leaning / government favourable website will not fall under such a law and won't get penalties.

<comment><USER31> So, will a site maintainer simply remove the older accounts that have not accessed the site in a while, to keep number of accounts below 100 000?

<comment><USER30> I wonder what will happen if somebody motivates a lot of people to register on a site, to push them over the threshold.

It may also be possible to split your forums to different sites / domains if you reach the thresold.

Anyhow I can't see how this will play out in real life and I hope our president will step in and prevent it from happening at all.

<comment><USER25> So distributed social media communities like Mastodon will not have the problem?

<comment><USER30> I guess not, since there is no single entity/company which holds 100.000 users.

But I am 100% sure, our current government would never ever grasp the concept of a federated social network and probably just try to ban it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> You wonder how long before this becomes the default law in most western countries. We are slowly destroying the Internet and what it has given us.

</comment><comment><USER33> To preserve the anonymity of the source of my own ideas, I might write every tweet/post like so:

"A friend of mine says, 'Woke politics are getting absurd.'"

I wonder if this would be violation of the law...

<comment><USER34> That reminds me of SWIM [0] from the drugs forums back in the day

[0] Someone Who Isn't Me. I believe it was an attempt to avoid admitting to illegal things. It was mandatory to use SWIM instead of the first-person on some forums.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Today I was driving around beautiful spring-time Vienna, and I happened to stop at a traffic light as Chancellor Kurz, sitting in the passenger seat of some 2019 rich-car convertible, also happened to stop in the lane next to me.

He gave me such an evil glare, it was astonishing. So I glared back at him.

In real life, I found him to be as loathsome a creature as in media. Perhaps, fatter than I thought he was.

I hope I can continue to report such things on the Internet in the future.

</comment><comment><USER36> _If you try to ban the future, it will just happen elsewhere._ \- Paul Graham (2017)

... via [http://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup](http://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> There is also an interview (unfortunately in German, but automatically translated subtitles are available) with the minister who is responsible for the bill: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Sm7Q1bjW5o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Sm7Q1bjW5o)

<comment><USER11> Asked by the interviewer if this isn't the same as asking bar owners to check the ID of every visitor just in case a bar fight breaks out, the minister answered:

"Das ist ja ein Blödsinn, was sie da reden" (This is total nonsense you are talking about)

<comment><USER37> Blödsinn is pretty much what this law is about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> More information asymmetry. The government can know about you but you can't know about the government. To ask this the government must be perfectly transparent and by that contradict the definition of government

</comment><comment><USER39> There was a point made where an opposing lawmaker said that foreign companies like Facebook would not bother to comply. Ha! They will all love to have your real name and address confirmed, they will be more than happy to oblige. It would make many things easier, and allow them to monetize you much better.

So strange, this seems to be the exact opposite of the trend in the USA where the public desire is moving towards requesting these companies to allow us to be anonymous. Just like...Europe? What's going on in Austria?

<comment><USER40> Europe is big on protecting your privacy against private entities. But the government is another matter - it's almost as if the presumption is that it's valid for it to _hold_ such data on the flimsiest of reasons, and it only becomes abusive if used for some sinister purpose. The possibility of such abuse in the future is not considered a valid justification to prevent data collection.

Conversely, in US, we place a lot of emphasis on preventing the government from collecting data that it _could_ abuse, but then largely ignore the same issue with private entities.

(Note, I'm not saying that it's universally true in either place, only that it seems to be the majority consensus. There's certainly plenty people vocally dissenting from it.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> > service providers on the web only have to obey the laws of the country in > which they are situated ...

What does it mean for an internet site to be situated somewhere? What country is that?

For example, [http://dreadditevelidot.onion](http://dreadditevelidot.onion). Where is it situated? It does have an interesting discussion forum. It certainly has rules. Is it now supposed to appoint a liaison officer in Austria (and 200+ other jurisdictions)?

</comment><comment><USER42> The fact that they're calling it "digitales vermummungsverbot" already tells you everything you need to know: There is no real rationale here, besides a political stunt of the right-wing government to curry favour with the right- leaning parts of the populus.

The original "vermummungsverbot" is a law to prohibit people from wearing a veil in public. The pretense was that people hiding their identity were by definition a security threat to the law abiding general public. The political effect was that xenophobs liked the idea of a law that was opposed to certain aspects of islam. The reality is that the law has no effect, since there are almost no people in Austria would would want to wear a veil in public in the first place apart from maybe the odd female tourist visiting from Saudi Arabia.

The idea now is that the same should apply to the digital sphere.

My guess would be that they know full well that it's never going to pass into law and make it past Brussels. But to them it's a win-win. Either they get a law that appeases the right-wing populus. Or Brussels stops them, playing into their anti-European narrative, which would also gain them political capital.

</comment><comment><USER43> So Austria is to become Internet Annex No. 2, second to China. Three cheers for democracy!

</comment><comment><USER44> Related: UK and NL secret services no longer share data with Austria b/c Russia ties [1]

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19701958](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19701958)

</comment><comment><USER45> Such law exists in Belarus, and mr.Kurz (Austrian chancellor) recently visited it.

</comment><comment><USER46> The comparison to the real world is rather flawed, especially in countries like Austria. For instance your not required to show an ID when buying groceries, buying alcohol or entering a bar.

Identification is on demand, not mandatory.

</comment><comment><USER47> There's already the Handy Signatur ([https://www.handy- signatur.at/hs2/](https://www.handy-signatur.at/hs2/)) - a way to digitally sign official documents using your smartphone ('handy'). The only way to obtain this is to have your ID and phone number registered with the authorities. It's convenient, but it's also a system that removes any possibility of anonymity.

I imagine this kind of digital signature will be mandatory when signing up for the internet services described in the article...

</comment><comment><USER48> If anonymity is made criminal, only criminals will have anonymity.

</comment><comment><USER49> On reading the headline my first thought was "That's fine just as long as it applies to everyone" and then I see that it's just a measure to control people.

Eliminating anonymity should be done through measures that amount to enforcing traceability at fundamental technical levels - that will affect everything from spam to fraud. But simplistic things like this just require people to identify themselves, which is just a form of social control.

</comment><comment><USER50> If there was ever a time to be in the VPN business, its now.

<comment><USER51> I wish geeks realize that VPN is not the solution for stupid/doubtful laws. They should not exist in first place.

<comment><USER40> If the majority genuinely want such laws, what's your solution?

<comment><USER52> If the majority has become tyrannical in their thinking toward the minority when it comes to human rights, then get the hell out of the country or jurisdiction in question if you can. Especially if it has moved beyond the initial typically mostly benign stages.

Authoritarianism and aggressive statism broadly, generally prompt opportunistic brain drain for exactly that reason.

The US poached enormous amounts of talent from backwards, regressive European nations for more than a century previously.

<comment><USER40> Problem is, eventually you run out of places to run away to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Anyone outside austria who needs a developer (C#, Java, full stack webdev...)? I think i don't want to live here any more..

</comment><comment><USER54>
        Users of online forums in Austria will have to provide
        operators with their true identities or risk fines that
        could run into the millions.

How trustworthy is a publication where the very first sentence of an article is nonsense?

Users do not risk being fined millions. The webmasters will.

<comment><USER55> The original German version has it somewhat right by just associating potential consequences after an indent. This is just a case of lost in translation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> In practice (particularly in europe and particularly the current regulatory MO) regulating the internet will often be deeply linked to de-anonymizing it. It isn't necessarily that way, but it is where the ball rolls by default, atm.

A lot of the financial regulations of the past decade have been heavily identity oriented. Companies/banks need to ID customersID the origin/destination of funds, etc.

Gambling has recently become more regulated in a lot of european countries. Similar story. ID customers (mostly for age, but also aml). ID where the money is coming from. Take all reasonable steps to find out if a customer is has more money than they should have, is a thief, gambling addict, etc.. In practice, this they request customers' passports, bank statements, payment slips... while at the same time pay for services that estimate customers income, review social media profiles, and such.

Even GDPR, which I think did some to improve data security and a lot to reduce data selling, requires (in practice) most websites to keep of track of users' consent, which means keeping track of user identity, to some extent.

I have a bad feeling about the current political drive to "regulate" more. There are certainly problems that need solutions, which are likely regulation. But, the details matter a _lot_. We don't want the default regulations.

</comment><comment><USER57> Non-Banner-Happy Version: [https://www.thelocal.at/20190410/austria-mulls- user-registra...](https://www.thelocal.at/20190410/austria-mulls-user- registration-for-online-platforms)

</comment><comment><USER58> Just assert that it is unfairly harmful to some minority group, problem solved.

</comment><comment><USER59> In the US we have a little freak-out every time a private entity like the Blizzard gaming forums or Google+ does this. I cannot imagine the shitstorm if it was attempted on a national level.

<comment><USER15> We have to blame the clickbaity headline for this, but you too misunderstood that this isn't about de-anonymizing users' profiles for the general public. Nicknames are still allowed, but the forum operator has to verify your ID at registration. Just like Blizzard knows your real name from your subscription details.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Not North Korea, China or Turkey ... Austria. What a shame.

<comment><USER61> Austria's politics is presently dominated by (far) right wing populism. This isn't really all that surprising in the context of a right wing authoritarian state.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Certainly comes with massive privacy leakage

</comment><comment><USER63> Has cracking down on internet freedoms ever lead to anything other than brain drain?

</comment><comment><USER64> That is going to be very hard to implement; arguably impossible.

</comment><comment><USER65> I don't understand why there's so much racism in that tiny nation. Almost every time I cross the border into Austria, the police flags me down and asks for my passport. I'm Austrian citizen, born and raised but a person of colour. Even though I speak German fluently, authorities always speak in English to me. It gave me so much anxiety that I moved to the UK and noticed that I'm treated with much more respect and opportunities.

Austria is a beautiful country and most people are nice but man..some people can be very small-minded there. The news would make you believe that the UK is this backwards right-wing nation because of Brexit but you'll never see a muslim of Pakistani descent as mayor in Vienna or people of colour in the Austrian parliament and that's honestly very depressing.

<comment><USER66> How is it related to the topic?

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Be still my beating heart.

I misread this as for Australia and while I wouldn't put this past the current right-wing government they are coming into an election.

But it's for Austria.....so....while I'm not affected I'm still annoyed.

<comment><USER68> I misread as Australia too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> How can you fine someone who is anonymous?

</comment><comment><USER70> so what will be the next 'internet' ?

<comment><USER71> Peer to peer connections are increasingly looking like a solution to me, google,apple all have research ongoing on how to have private intranets between mobiles in an area.ipfs could be extended for such usecases too.

couple that with self hosted(or maybe companies do it for you for a fee) mobile base stations to extend the range of that intranet for coverage that is actually free of government snooping/supervision while simulataneously being truly local and a signboard of things happening in your area.

of course they could try and ban that but unless you actually train cops to roam around with wifi packet sniffers i doubt it would be very enforceable.

<comment><USER72> peer to peer connections flow over infrastructure provided by companies who provide you, the internet. good luck to have that up and running as 'next internet'. ... it's something you do on the current internet :S

<comment><USER70> HTTP over SARCASM RFC 443

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> It will fail.

</comment><comment><USER74> like people can actually breath while being spied by multiple big brothers.

</comment><comment><USER75> Doubtless the Chinese Authorities could offer useful advice on implementation.

</comment><comment><USER26> Is this Austria or North Korea? I'm appalled by this idea.

</comment><comment><USER76> Laws like this are long past due. This particular law may not be the best implementation but governments do need to take action to provide their citizens with a real public square online.

Excluding fake and paid users (without a declaration of who is paying them) from that space and protecting free speech in that space is essential to having a public policy discussion.

Private corporations have not done this, and probably never will, so government is the only option left.

<comment><USER77> The government may and should provide their citizens with a public square online, but neither do they need to take away anonymity on existing squares, nor does the public square need to be non-anonymous. The concept of being able to go out on the streets, make mistakes, and have them be forgotten is old and integral to public spaces IMO.

<comment><USER76> Yes, I agree with this.

I think that governments should provide a verifiable digital ID the same way they provide physical IDs and that they should provide communications platforms that allow people to communicate with these digital IDs in a way that protects their rights the same way that they provide mail service.

I do not think that governments should be regulating/banning activity on private platforms but should be offering an alternative where private platforms fall short. This is really nothing more than bringing existing government services (ID, mail, voting, parliaments) fully up to date with digital technology.

There is a big gap right now where governments don't understand what they should be doing or are incapable of doing it. They recognize the need for action because they see that things are going wrong but are not proposing or implementing the correct solutions yet.

<comment><USER78> WTH has this to do with mail service - which inherently allows anonymity for the sender? If anything, analogous to this law, no one would be allowed to send a letter without ID (which also means goodbye post boxes, I guess).

Oh, and if we want to extend the analogy - with current and pending legislation, the mail service would be liable if anyone breaks the law via mail...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Pulling the rug out from under an internet protocol - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20180611-00/?p=98965 <comment><USER2> Was ist RealPlayer? In which version of Media player did they do that?</comment>


Google allays PRISM fears with automatic encryption for Cloud Storage - <AUTHOR> http://www.itproportal.com/2013/08/16/google-allays-prism-fears-automatic-encryption-google-cloud-storage/ <comment><USER2> No matter how many times it's encrypted, if it's encrypted solely with keys that Google generates, then it's insecure with respect to stuff like PRISM. What good is locking the door when you can simply give a spare key to someone else? Granted it's a decent feature to protect your data from the run of the mill script kiddies, but I don't see how this allays a single PRISM concern if theyre generating all the keys.</comment>


Ask HN: Has anyone here gone back to school for something non-CS? - <AUTHOR> Just curious. I am very interested in physics right now and archaeology. To the point where I want to get a degree in one of them, minor in the other. <comment><USER2> I went back for a business management degree so I can mix IT and business managements skills together.

I heard Steve Jobs did the same thing, so I thought it might work for me as well.</comment>


A modest proposal: the Continuous Client - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/26/a-modest-proposal-the-continuous-client/ <comment><USER2> Now that someone mentions it, I'm surprised that Chrome OS doesn't already do this.</comment>


Ask HN: what do you think about my mobile portal? - <AUTHOR> http://www.gmbhnews.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://www.gmbhnews.com> is my mobile news and website portal targeting all smartphones (iOs, PalmnOs, Android, WM, Blackberry, symbian...and more) and webkit based browsers, care to take a look and give me your feedback?</comment>


How to Cheat on Taxes in China - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/11/opinion/how-to-cheat-on-taxes-in-china.html <comment><USER2> That company can easily deny had ever hired the author as an employee, because technical he was never on the payroll and his pay had been disguised as company expenses.

Due to family reason I had worked in China for sometime and had my fair share of tax _ahem_ 'optimization' experience. Trying to get fapiao (literally 'printed receipts' in Chinese) on every single item is tiring and cumbersome, let alone a lot of business establishments try not to issue one for obvious reasons.</comment>


Show HN: Managed Gitlab Runners – Speed Up Your CI/CD Pipeline - <AUTHOR> https://gitlabrunner.com <comment><AUTHOR> Maker here. As my team and I moved to GitLab three years ago, the same question came up again and again: How do we speed up our CI/CD pipelines?

After setting up countless custom GitLab Runners for years, I am happy to share gitlabrunner.com which should make setting up a runner a piece of cake.

Looking forward to your feedback!</comment>


Do real developers use UML and other CASE tools? - <AUTHOR> http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/54666/do-real-developers-use-uml-and-other-case-tools <comment><USER2> These tools serve 3 purposes:

1\. To make theory more closely match practice that already works. This gives teachers something to teach.

2\. To make someone who doesn't know what he's doing appear as if he did. This gives consulting firms profitability.

3\. To help organize the System Development Life Cycle (waterfall process) of very large projects. This gives someone who knows what they're doing a few more tools in their toolbox.

My take? If you've really found good use for tools like these, then your project is probably too big. Break it down into smaller pieces, build a prototype for each piece, get feedback, and refine. It's not how quickly you appear to get started; it's how soon you deliver something of value.

<comment><USER3> I wonder if you would dare say the same on other engineering blueprints.

<comment><USER4> Good things are not designed in this fashion. I'm sure everyone else in the aviation industry used the uml equivalent, I'm pretty sure the skunkworks teams do not.

<comment><USER3> It was hard for the skunk works teams to use UML for a long time since it was only published in the late 90's, but what makes you so sure they are not using it now? or do you have a survey of which "good things" are not designed in this fashion?

And besides what is the relative share of skunk works type teams from the overall software development market?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ok.

UML does NOT equal CASE. Yes, you can use MDA and other techniques to somehow convert UML and OCL into a quasi-CASE tool, and there are lots of folks excited about UML as part of a code-generation tier, but UML is a specification for drawing technical diagrams. That's it.

UML is also not a methodology. Yes, there are methodologies that rely on bits of UML but that's a one-way association. You can use UML all the time and never do a bit of any kind of methodology.

UML is also not for large projects. Yes, it helps to diagram things instead of writing them out, especially if you have 100 developers or more. But drawing things can help teams as small as two people. Heck, drawing things can help a sole developer.

You need to be clear about the question if you would like to get a meaningful answer. UML is for drawing pictures in a consistent way. So is the question "Do real developers draw pictures consistently?" Because in my teams, we use UML when we need to sketch out things so that everybody has some baseline to understand what's being drawn. It has nothing to do with generating code, completing a process, or being part of some huge team.

I liked this comment: _If a diagram takes more than 5 minutes to sketch on the back of an envelope it is generally too complex_

I might extend it to 15-20 minutes, but the gist here is correct, at least for small teams. Different story entirely with large teams, though. With a large team, having a visual roadmap of where things are and where things go is hell of a lot better than trying to type it up in a Word document or teach people by random story-telling. (It should still be pretty simple, though. The purpose is communication, not documentation or showing people how detailed you can make something)

</comment><comment><USER6> I prefer to use UML as an _output_ language, never input. It's good to come to foreign codebase and generate visual presentations of its hierarchy and flow graphs.

As an _input_ language, created by hand? No, not really. It's mostly something for java/.net architecture astronauts: often used only once, to generate the cruft that will be the project directory hierarchy, but it's brittle and grows quickly out of touch with code & documentation.

</comment><comment><USER7> As a fake developer (i.e. PhD student in Computer Science who did very little programming) I used UML, MOFF, and other such tools extensively. I've worked on the GME from ISIS at Vanderbilt and Ptolemy from CHESS at Berkeley. The one point that my thesis advisor - Janos Stipanovitz - made brutally clear whenever we were discussing Model Integrated Computing was that the value is not in building a better IDE that makes programmers more efficient. The value is in building analyzable frameworks that you can use in safety critical systems to show that your system adheres to the safety specification that you have to meet. So, I don't think there are any programmers who would benefit from these tools, but they absolutely do benefit system engineers building fly-by-wire airplanes, nuclear reactors, Mars rovers, etc...

Now, I am starting to work on a web-ap with a designer and I find that State- Charts are a great way for us to spec out the application. We're not trying to generate code from these but my partner is such a visual thinker and learner that State-Charts are a much more appropriate way for us to communicate than a spec written in English.

<comment><USER8> Would love to see an example on how you use state charts to document web applications. Thks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> These tools serve two, very useful, purposes that aren't often readily apparent unless you have to use them.

1) Organize complexity. UML, for example, is extremely useful as a _language_ capable of describing complex information systems -- just like the periodic table organizes chemical elements or the biological classification taxonomy organizes life -- or perhaps a better analogy are skeletal formulas in chemistry and life sciences.

You can probably get away with not using this language on small projects, maybe less than 10 people and under a quarter million lines of code. But on larger projects, 300 developers on one project spread over a continent and tens of millions of lines of code, some kind of formal organizational method becomes a necessity. Ad hoc diagrams just don't really cut it. You'll be glad to know that UML is not just stick figures anymore, some of the other diagrams do a much better job at modeling and organizing deeper into the design than others.

But like I said, the utility doesn't really become apparent until you deal with this kind of scale.

2) Communication. Similar to the above, but distinct. UML also provides a lingua franca for communications between business people and tech people. It forces business users to apply a rigid logic to their requirements (which can often become contradictory if not controlled by some kind of formal framework) which aids in communicating with engineering staff and forces engineers to stop talking about code and to talk about higher level abstracts that are more easily relatable to business people. The ability to actually communicate between these two parties has been extremely powerful.

In smaller organizations, the business people are quite often the tech folks as well so this isn't as necessary to have. But in most traditional companies, business folks have almost no way of communicating with the engineers in any constructive way without something like this.

</comment><comment><USER10> On first look UML looks like the "proper" way of building software, but it really isn't because software changes way too much while it's built. It's like planning out a road-trip to the minute - it won't hold up. Some compare UML to how architects use blueprints to build brick-and-mortar stuff, but concrete walls and ceilings don't move midway like software does (figuratively speaking).

IMO software process is all about controlling complexity. When the problem is small, our human mind can come up with ingenious solutions no computer can match. So it's better to break down the project into small, modular, and testable components rather than try to overcome the complexity with fancy plans that will start breaking down the moment you start implementing.

UML could be useful for documentation purposes though, giving a bit more info than say Javadoc. But that will come after you write the software, not before. There are some tools that claim round-tripping (i.e., you write your UML, the tool magically generates code, you edit the code, and the tool magically updates the UML to stay in sync). I tried a few and found them too painful to use.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm distrustful of people who make lots of diagrams; it indicates to me that they may not actually know how to create the thing they're drawing, and thus lack the capacity to make truly sound decisions about it.

I've found UML-y diagrams to be useful it a few cases:

1\. When sketching out an object model in a statically typed language, it helps to see the whole thing at once. The class diagram tool in later versions of visual studio is a nice compromise between functionality and usability for this case; it's easy enough to generates the code, but it's easy to ignore the diagram and do real work when you're ready.

2\. When talking about system interactions with people via email, sequence diagrams can be useful. <http://www.websequencediagrams.com/> is by far the fastest and easiest way I know to make them; trying to use a GUI tool is an exercise in frustration.

3\. If my system has some internal structure I want to draw for people, I output graphViz data and let it draw the picture for me. Pictures generated in this way are always up to date.

I don't know that I've EVER kept a diagram around as a piece of documentation; they're invariably wrong after a short amount of time. In fact one of my favorite things about the visual studio diagrams is that they break if you change the code out from under them.

</comment><comment><USER12> UML and case tools were all the rage 5-10 years ago, but have fallen out of favour with the rise of Agile methodologies. I have a feeling* that the teaching of software engineering at university lags about that same distance behind current industrial practice. So in another 5 years time I'd expect universities to have largely abandoned teaching UML except for in certain niche classes.

* I don't have any facts to back this up, it's really just a guess.

<comment><USER13> Keep in mind that many parts of industry itself lag 5-10 years from the leading edge of industry. And the parts of industry many universities track-- i.e. the large firms that employ graduates by the dozens--are not the companies on the leading edge. This is probably more the case for your middle tier state universities than for Stanford or something, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I used a lot of diagramming tools (just out of my head):

      Flow Charts (later criticized for encouraging GOTO)
      Syntax Diagrams (similar to BNF/EBNF grammars)
      ERD - mainly database stuff
      UML - complex C++ systems and recently for Erlang gen_servers
      MSD - message sequence diagrams
      StateCharts(and FSM diagrams in general)

They are all useful for documentation or for meetings as a communication tool.

When working on huge waterfall projects in C++ I just wrote the code stub first and then run reverse engineering tool for UML class diagram generation - it's easier than drawing the diagrams yourself.

The problem with UML class diagrams may arise in large organizations, when Architects can be tempted to put many small rectangles on UML class diagram, frequently forgetting, that each such rectangle can be days or weeks of work for a programmer to fully implement, debug and test.

FSM and MSD are especially useful, even for non-OOP languages like Erlang/OTP.

If you learning new grammar or writing parsers - Syntax Diagrams can be useful too.

In recent years I just switched to using web-based and offline tools to generate diagrams from text (GraphViz/dot/msd/ditaa/etc.)

</comment><comment><USER15> You could think of a hierarchy of programming approaches:

1\. Waterfall 2\. UML/OOA&D/RUP/Iterative 3\. Agile 4\. JSC

These are listed in decreasing order of ceremony. You can find "real" developers, somewhere, using all four of these.

A better question might be, at least in this community "will UML be useful for my startup". My answer to that question is "check out state diagrams and sequence diagrams and leave the rest behind" and use some form of Data Flow Diagrams.

In a very young project, it is likely that you will need to throw out the code you have written and start over. The less ceremony (translating to time) you put into the stuff that you throw out, the better off you are. If you are working in a category 5 CMM outfit, then that is a whole other story entirely.

By the way, methodology #4 (JSC) is Just Start Coding.

</comment><comment><USER16> I used to use these tools much more extensively when working in more formal, water-fall-ish, slow, more arcane development environments; nowadays I use UML only for documentation after the fact. Specifically, the only place I use UML is after feature X has been implemented and tested, and if it is reasonably complex where just reading the code and tests can get you there, but a couple of high level visuals with some text that describe design rationale would get you there much quicker...well then, I try to be a good netizen and jot that info down. Can't tell you how many times people have thanked me for that. That said, UML is a lot easier to do this with vs. any other visual tool. It is standardized, and most people can read it fairly easily. On a side note, I've found Sparx Enterprise Architect to be the best tool out there for UML.

</comment><comment><USER17> I wonder where the asker's degree is from. With the exception of entity- relation diagrams in my Database course, my CS degree didn't touch any of the things he mentioned (I haven't even heard of some of them). Even my DB course didn't focus much on ER diagrams; a significant chunk was over relational algebra.

<comment><USER18> There was one professor I had to deal with that required a UML for every assignment, sometimes the UML was to be turned in before you got assigned the code. In either case points would be docked if your UML didn't match your code.

Solution? I coded all my projects before the UML deadline and turned in a screenshot from XCode's UML generator.

(I had him for 4 classes using Java and C++)

<comment><USER19> That's how I got through all my uni assignments that required UML. I just hacked it together in the agile style and then generated UML diagrams in svg after the fact.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Business consultants need UML to communicate with Tech guys.

</comment><comment><USER21> I think it is difficult to get fair answers to this kind of question, because mostly people who use UML will answer. All those developers who never use UML probably do not know enough about it to feel confident criticizing. Or they just find other discussions more interesting.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm currently doing a computer science (& maths) degree and within the CS department there's two main degree schemes: information systems, and computer science.

The latter is programming, i.e. the more technical side of things. The former is more about the IT/business consultancy side of things.

The former group hate programming, but there's a large emphasis on UML and other such 'design' 'tools' within their course.

We (the computer scientists) never tend to use UML or CASE tools though.

So yeah, I have no real World development experience yet (other than helping out in a couple of relatively big online projects), but it does seem to me that programmers ('real developers', as the title puts it) don't use UML and other such 'tools', whereas the IT consultancy side of things tend to use them.

</comment><comment><USER23> Web developers, not really.

<comment><USER8> What do they use?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Personally I don't. I started off with data flow diagrams and similar top down design methodologies which I'd been formally taught, but it's very difficult to keep your software and your diagrams in line and over time the diagrams become more and more spaghetti-like, to the point where they're no longer useful.

The best methodology seems to be the unix-like approach of dividing the problem into small self-contained programs for dedicated tasks which are then strung together as needed. This allows development to proceed in a flexible way, without having to waste a lot of time re-drawing impossibly complicated diagrams. Instead of a hierarchy of programs you can think of this as being an ecosystem of programs.

</comment><comment><USER25> Not really. Generally speaking, some projects use a few of them for some communication, but generally speaking, they're not used anywhere to the degree they're portrayed they are in classes.

That said, I've seen them on white boards (and drawn them myself) or tossed some in documentation occasionally, but they're relatively rare.

</comment><comment><USER26> Heck, I've never heard of them, let alone used them.

</comment><comment><USER27> Real developers use the best tool for the job.

<comment><USER28> Except for all the times when Real Developers have to use tools which may not be the best due to various constraints but they go ahead and do it anyway because they're Real Developers and not Magpies looking for shiny objects.

<comment><USER27> Wouldn't that then be the best tool? Maybe not the best tool from an outside standpoint, but given the circumstances.

<comment><USER28> True. Agreed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The answer is NO.

</comment><comment><USER30> I would say yes; alot in places where security is key. These types of model are also generated when doing different types of analysis as well. Day to day use not alot but when you getting familiar with something its priceless.

<comment><USER7> This is a great point. We always focused on safety critical applications when I was in school but security is another area where having a clear and consistent architecture is a hard requirement. This is a great example of an area that would benefit from having an analyzable framework in place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Getting my masters in computer science was the only time I ever used those tools (thankfully). It was somewhat helpful to learn a few of the UML diagrams as they are referenced in design pattern books, etc. - but I've never had a desire to create my own diagrams, let alone use a tool to create them for me.

<comment><USER32> To me, being familiar enough with UML to sketch efficient and consistent diagrams on a whiteboard or whatever has justified the time spent learning it. I don't care about absolute correctness, but just having the reserve of ideas to draw from when you are trying to communicate a complex idea to a group of people has proven valuable to me throughout my professional career.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is a funny topic. The best developers generally solve a problem by using high level abstractions. They would usually (in my humble experience) make some drawings on a piece of paper or a white board, before writing any code. UML&Co tried to teach average developers this method, but lost focus, bloated and are hated by real developers nowadays.

BTW this is the best book on UML and software design I've read: [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/020169946X?ie=UTF8&tag=...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/020169946X?ie=UTF8&tag=arbeidsgivere-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=020169946X)</comment>


Uber driver stabs passenger 5 times for disrespecting vehicle - <AUTHOR> http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/uber-driver-stabbed-passenger-5-times-in-bloomfield-township-police-say <comment><USER2> Coming into this article, I was imagining a drunk passenger who belligerently made fun of the driver's vehicle. Instead:

 _> The victim tapped on the window to alert Allemon that they were entering the vehicle. Allemon felt his vehicle was disrespected when the victim tapped on the window._

Yup, from this side of the story, it does sound like the driver is unstable.

</comment><comment><USER3> Taxi drivers have been assaulting their customers since forever. Same applies to passengers assaulting or cheating their drivers.

Now there is a global brand to anchor to and make this news. If it were Acme Cabs in Middle of Nowhere this story wouldn't run.

On the other hand it is useful to consider how a company with Uber's scale could/should do a better job of reducing the frequency that these events occur. They'll unfortunately never be fully eradicated but you'd expect there's an opportunity for continual improvement.

<comment><USER4> The bigger the pile of money the bigger the payday for lawyers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> As if I needed another reason to despise Uber. It seems they don't bother to screen for psychopaths.

<comment><USER6> I don't think it is safe to assume this driver had a history of irrational behavior. If the driver had a record of irrational behavior and uber still 'hired' them, then I think you have a case, but I don't see that being true.

<comment><USER7> This also sounds very dressed up. The reporting is written in a way that puts no fault on the passenger but I'd be _very_ surprised to find out an altercation like this occurred without some confrontational words being exchanged.

I wonder if the passengers' side of the story gets more weight in the article because there are two witnesses.</comment></comment></comment>