Twitter exec for Middle East is also part-time British army 'psyops' officer - <AUTHOR> https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/twitter-executive-also-part-time-officer-uk-army-psychological-warfare-unit <comment><USER2> This is a conflict of interest, which should erode the trust that anyone would have on twitter. The man is simultaneously responsible for editorial decisions, while also serving in a brigade that _" uses social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook ... to wage what the head of the UK military describes as "information warfare"._

Imagine finding out that the executive in charge of editorial decisions for Twitter in Hong Kong, is also serving in the Chinese military's department of "information warfare". As a Hong Konger, you'd have to be an idiot to continue trusting twitter at that point. The fact that Twitter is well aware of this, and didn't see a conflict of interest, makes me question their neutrality and effectiveness as a platform for online discussion.

<comment><USER3> Who has any trust in Twitter?

<comment><USER4> Exactly.

Twitter is not an open protocol for sharing information. _Thats what the internet is for._ Twitter is just an advertising company that allows you to post content in exchange for hosting ads on that content.

Who they hire, is their business. If you don't agree with their (inconsistent and haphazard) editorial policies, just host your content elsewhere.

I think we need to stop giving Twitter so much power over the world by talking about it so much and start creating and using other platforms. Twitter has only 20% market penetration in the US.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Recently the Chinese government ran a full-page ad in a national newspaper explaining "their view" of "the Hong Kong situation." The newspaper got a lot of flack for publishing the ad, but I think neither they nor the Chinese government did anything wrong. Because the sender of the ad was clearly identified people could judge for themselves. While the ad was propaganda it wasn't manipulative or underhanded.

But what is going on these days is that governments are engaging in propaganda where the identity of the sender is shrouded. For example Twitter accounts controlled by the Chinese state pretending to be common citizens. I think such propaganda is not ok and also that it is not only China and Russia doing it but also Western states and states that are supposed to be friendly to the West.

<comment><USER6> > For example Twitter accounts controlled by the Chinese state pretending to > be common citizens.

Problem is that _they are_ real citizens. In China, they're referred to as 50 Cent Army (or 50 Cent Party), because that's how much they're believed to be paid for every pro-government post.

Their engagements are usually not. There are botnets upvoting/downvoting/liking/retweeting stuff, but each and every post is written by an actual human, and there are guidelines as to how they need to respond to different stories. It's not like there's one human in charge of posting to 100s of accounts.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, that is a problem. The situation sounds similar to how the Act.IL app works, an app to counter criticism towards Israel online. The app publishes links to "hot pages" where users are supposed to post comments supportive of Israel and/or do the equivalent of down voting comments negative to it. The app itself is funded and, I believe, run by some Israeli government agency but the users who use it to coordinate are not affiliated with the Israeli state in any way. Just "normal" people who happen to be very pro-Israel, I guess.

So is that underhanded or not? It is not completely different from Amnesty who occasionally sends out emails asking you to sign some list of signatures or to send complaint letters to some third world despot. There are very few rules in this area so it is hard to say what is fair and what isn't. Even if there were, there's no way the rules will be enforced. I'm pretty sure that all these "scandals" are just the tip of the iceberg. The dumb ones are getting caught. More refined state actors (not Russia or China) already have way better methods that Twitter and Facebook can't (or wont!) detect.

<comment><USER7> I can see where you're coming from, but in the Amnesty case it's fairly obvious that the communication originates from a campaign (due to timing if nothing else) and in the Israel case it's not.

Then there's a strong argument to be made that Amnesty gets the moral high ground because their goals are altruistic.

Either way, I think it's an apples to oranges comparison.

<comment><USER8> altruism?! organizations like amnesty and human rights watch, regularly employee people in and out of western governments and are part of the governing western elite. no wonder that while they are always quick to call out and denounce some third world authoritarians, and adversaries of west, they are far more muted when it comes to rights violations by western leaders(even in minority of cases where they don't simply ignore). factually, greatest mass criminals and rights violators of 21st century, are presidents and other leaders of usa and it's allies. but you wouldn't know that, if your sources are amnesty and co.

<comment><USER7> Source? They don't come off especially muted on the USA. On this one page they mention:

* civilian drone-strike killings

* suspension of travel from Muslim-major countries

* attacks on rights of women & girls

* new Guantánamo Bay transfers

* gun violence

* death sentences

[https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/americas/united- states-...](https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/americas/united-states-of- america/)

<comment><USER8> that is in fact extremely muted (and mostly about things that are not in line with ideology of west's elites) compared to their condemnation of 3rd world authoritarians or adversaries of west. especially so because west is now the biggest rights violators, including biggest mass murderers and perpetrators of illegal wars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One thing that mystifies me is why the general population thinks that uniformed PsyOps people are like a real-life version of Kilgrave from Jessica Jones. They're basically the military's version of PR reps; most of their time is spent doing stuff like making fliers and taking photos of bags of rice being handed out. Maybe once in a while they get to blast Slayer at a building of holed-up insurgents. Meanwhile all the HN comments treating this guy like he's using Twitter as a cover to put LSD in the Saudis' water supply or some shit.

<comment><USER10> PsyOps main job is convincing occupied peoples that the occupier is their friend. _One_ of the ways they do that is by taking photos of bags of rice being handed out. They also actively work to spread (dis)information.

<comment><USER11> So, like a PR rep?

<comment><USER12> The term public relations was actually an explicit rebranding of the term Propaganda after it started to develop a negative association in the public eye. Look up Edward Bernays, it's a fascinating bit of history that's not really talked about much.

[http://theconversation.com/the-manipulation-of-the- american-...](http://theconversation.com/the-manipulation-of-the-american- mind-edward-bernays-and-the-birth-of-public-relations-44393)

<comment><USER13> If you're into documentaries, "The Century of the Self" covers this subject excellently: [https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=century+of+self](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=century+of+self)

<comment><USER14> One of my favorite documentaries! It didn't just give me new knowledge, but re-framed the way I view & process future knowledge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is... tricky. There's two ways you can interpret the situation.

One is that Twitter has a desire to use the information warfare skills directly to manipulate the narrative on its platform. The other is that they recognise external actors are very likely to want to do exactly that, and this sort of hire is a great _defensive_ move.

Twitter will never admit to the former and will always publicly state the latter. I don't think there's a real way to tell what the truth actually is — arguably it might actually be "a bit of both" — and I suspect most people will see this as proof of whatever theory they already believed in.

<comment><USER16> _There 's two ways you can interpret the situation._

No there are 3 ways, the third being that the guy's day job and his reserve role are unrelated. What if he had been say a Chef in the Army and a Chef in a restaurant? No one would think that was weird.

<comment><USER17> So you'd be happy with a high level Chinese party member, perhaps an "ex" People's Army psy-ops guy (or whoever), being in charge of USA's Twitter accounts, for example, because "it's just a job"?

<comment><USER16> Sure people will ask questions but there is a non-zero possibility that it is above board. That is all I'm saying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> You need more than one single solitary account to do psyops on Twitter (I know - I regularly play around with Twitter sockpuppet accounts because I have inordinate amounts of free time to do research on the effects of a campaign, albeit small experimental campaigns :p). Twitter have since made it very difficult to keep an account in good standing if you are suspected of doing psyop-type things like auto-liking specific keywords, 'pouncing' on tweets that have just been sent so that you have the first few replies, constantly monitoring their search feature for specific keywords and engaging with others and spreading some sort of repeated message. Gaming the retweet and like count with several bot-accounts that all use the same IP and useragent will surely get you banned.

I think over the last few years Twitter have done a good job at filtering out bad actors, though like some game of whack-a-mole - bad actors continue to crop up and game Twitter using more novel methods. I suspect the new way of doing psyops is to buy multiple smartphones which all have separate IPs due to a GSM/4G network, and have different and distinct device fingerprints due to different Android versions in use. Then it's a case of constantly feeding the sim-cards with credit (to keep them registered on the network) and if prompted to verify a Twitter account with a phone number, you have a dedicated device for that.

<comment><USER19> > I suspect the new way of doing psyops is to buy multiple smartphones which > all have separate IPs due to a GSM/4G network, and have different and > distinct useragents due to different Android versions in use.

That seems like a lot of enormously expensive trouble to do something that probably could be done a lot easier and cheaper: user agents are trivial to spoof and a sufficiently sophisticated attacker can probably just steal any needed IPs from legitimate organizations using BGP (I understand the hosters used by spammers already do this).

The only benefit I could think of for using actual smartphones is that they'd provide different, legitimate device fingerprinting results.

<comment><USER18> I suppose it could be done a lot cheaper and easier, but don't forget the initial research required to figure out how to do it efficiently. All the trial and error required to create a set of OPSEC rules to abide by as you operate.

In terms of useragents, you are right that they are easy to spoof; I actually meant the device fingerprints aren't easy to spoof (Twitter probably looks at heuristics like screen resolution for example) which is why I would suggest getting a variety of different phones like a mix of legacy Android, newer model Samsungs, iPhones, etc So you have different screen resolutions (which are not trivial to spoof) even different timezones, along with a mix of other unique specs

One caveat to using hundreds (if not thousands of phones) is the cost. I get that. But remember these are the _army_ we are talking about that have a large budget to spend on psyops and can actually pull something like that off. Another caveat to using phones is the lack of dexterity; using a phone is slower than using a desktop environment with keyboard, mouse, et al, although you can extend a phone with a keyboard for faster typing.

<comment><USER20> > I actually meant the device fingerprints aren't easy to spoof

Device fingerprints aren't easy to spoof for the average IT nerd, they are trivial to spoof for NSA.

I know enough that I could probably spoof most websites given a couple of days of research and poking. Now, don't get me wrong, my odds of convincing Google I'm actually two people are basically nil, even NSA might struggle to just manufacture Googleproof identities, but device fingerprints themselves are pretty spoofable.

<comment><USER21> You can spoof device fingerprints, but you can't spoof the top 100 common devices easily.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Great to see a Twitter exec who actually uses the platform!

</comment><comment><USER23> "His involvement with the 77th Brigade was made public when he disclosed it on his page at LinkedIn, the online professional networking site."

Doxing yourself on Linkedin seems like a pretty amateur psyops move.

<comment><USER24> Many reservists are public about what they do. I have my military affiliation in all my profiles. He's not in some kind of secret special forces unit or anything like that.

Ultimately, being a reserve officer is a matter of public record, as you are formally gazetted and there is no point trying to pretend it is secret.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Even if they wanted to, is there anything Twitter could do about the (potential/perceived/choose-your-own-narrative) conflict of interest?

I don't know anything about British labor law, but in the US it's illegal to discriminate, fire, etc. a person because of service in the armed forces, including reserves. I'm pretty sure taking any action on the basis of their role in the reserves would be illegal.

</comment><comment><USER26> And people wonder why so much of the world is distrustful of western media. It's been obvious for a long time that western media corporations are propaganda outlets for governments that hide behind a thin veneer of 'independent' ownership.

<comment><USER27> > outlets for governments that hide behind a thin veneer of 'independent' > ownership.

Considering how much of US media regularly pillories Trump, I'm skeptical that of the claim of government control. I'm certain they do, however, serve as a PR mouthpiece for various moneyed interests.

<comment><USER26> Trump is the leader of a single branch of government, meanwhile the Republicans and Democrats have pursued the same neo-con policies for years. Trump is going against the grain with his protectionist policies, so it's entirely predictable that he'd receive criticism from established government officials. Also keep in mind that 2/3 branches of government are still controlled by entrenched Democrats and Republicans.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Another total beatup. This guy is an Army Captain, a very junior officer in the reserves. He has a journalism background, and while on reserve time he is probably pulling his hair out trying to explain what a tweet is to people who were really comfortable with Blackberry, and dealing with RoE and approvals chains that make doing anything more than writting puff pieces about Change of Command ceremonies or HADR impossible.

I only wish the UK and others would get serious about countering Russian / Iranian/Syrian / GCC/Egyptian / Chinese / ISIS bad actors by unmasking their influence campaigns, educating their populace (at schools and whereever old people can be reached), and generally stop being complacent about it.

Also, it's not call psyops now, it's Information Ops (IO), and if the UK are doing anything it will be at GCHQ, not the Pashtun DJs at 77 BDE.

</comment><comment><USER29> If you think it's problematic that a Twitter exec is also a reserve psyops officer, you probably shouldn't think about how many corporate (and nonprofit, and non-federal government) cybersecurity officials at all levels are military reservists whose military role is cyberwarfare.

</comment><comment><USER30> By "Executive", they mean a PR Editor.

</comment><comment><USER31> Is this any different? Maybe it's worse? Previously he was in charge of USA propaganda focused overseas. Now he's in charge of USA propaganda focused on USA residents:

[https://www.npr.org/2019/09/05/758047287/npr-names- veteran-m...](https://www.npr.org/2019/09/05/758047287/npr-names-veteran- media-executive-john-lansing-as-its-new-ceo)

</comment><comment><USER32> Does he get two paychecks?

<comment><USER33> He gets paid the daily rate for his rank (and any applicable modifiers) for each day on duty. So if he spends a weekend at 77 HQ or some training location or other such, on duty, he'll get two days' pay for that (potentially a smidge more if he can claim travel time on the Friday, but you get the idea).

Also, reservists attract a tax free bounty each year if they complete their agreed training requirment.

<comment><USER32> That makes complete sense for a reservist with a day job. I got the impression that this guy is doing his military psyops duty by working at Twitter, thus doing both jobs at once.

<comment><USER19> > I got the impression that this guy is doing his military psyops duty by > working at Twitter, thus doing both jobs at once.

I think the article tries to create that impression, but it doesn't actually say so. Maybe it's just an attempt to make the story more sensational for clicks.

<comment><USER32> I guess today I'm the victim of the psyop, heh.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> In the article they describe them as "Facebook Warriors", does that mean they are exempt from the British Army's basic combat fitness test?

</comment><comment><USER35> Reminds me of Disney, which has long employed DOD Psyops in high positions.

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm thinking he may actually be full time though.

</comment><comment><USER37> This hire was probably an over-correction after the Saudi's got busted with spies inside twitter.

[https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/20/18003644/saudi-arabia- tw...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/20/18003644/saudi-arabia-twitter- jamal-khashoggi-twitter-employee-spy)

<comment><USER38> > The [Saudi-groomed] employee was fired in 2015

> Gordon MacMillan, who joined the social media company's UK office six years > ago [2013]

Er, how does that work?</comment></comment>


Poll HN: How many people have moved from javascript to coffeescript? - <AUTHOR>

And if possible, please state why or why not? <comment><USER2> I've created an actual poll for you: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2683372>

</comment><comment><USER3> Nope. I like my parens, braces and keywords thanks.</comment>


Ask HN: learning web programming vs. tablet programming - <AUTHOR> I am 36 year old with a very well paid and well progressing business career and I am bored to death. The idea of going to the office 9-7 for the next 30 years kills me. And I really believe I have a great corporate job so I now that the issue is having a corporate job.
So I am learning to program, a bit for fun a bit to see if I can start something of my own. The original plan was to learn web programming since I imagined web applications were both fun to develop and the best shot at a start-up. I took up Python and developed a simple file sharing application on Google App Engine (you can see it at myfilesinthesky.com but you don't lose anything if you don't).
Well, thinking about the interface and implementing the programming logic was actually fun. And it took 10% of the time. The other 90% was spent fighting with browsers' quirkiness and with Google App Engine (if I skipped GAE I would have fought with sys admin so not better I suppose). And that was teeth-cringing.
So I am not really sure web programming is that fun after all and the next step would be now to learn javascript to start doing browser-side wizardry which from what I'm reading around looks like as teeth cringing as it gets (ok, cobol programming is worse, I am sure).
And then I read Paul Graham's essays on tablets - paulgraham.com/tablets.html - and I am thinking now that ipad programming can be still promising business wise but much more fun since you have full control of the device and building native apps. No more need to get crazy with browser UI and sys admin stuff!
Before I spend the w.e. of the next six months learning C, obj-C and Cocoa, let me ask you, what would you advise to an aspiring programmer, learn web programming or dive into tablet programming? <comment><USER4> I would advise you not to go looking for what others think you should do but to start looking at this from a 'problem oriented perspective'.

Find something that you would like to have but that is not currently available and then build that, that in turn will decide for the platform and associated toolchain.

It is much better that way because you can't really make the case for what is 'better' for an aspiring programmer, web programming, tablet programming or any other 'kind' of programming per se. It all depends on what you want to achieve and programming is just a means to an end.

Also, under the hood all 'kinds' of programming are essentially equal (in spite of many religious arguments to the contrary), it's in the end just a way to very specifically tell a computer what you want it to do and in that respect any programming will serve as a way to get better at every other kind of programming.

The more you do it, the better you get, just like with every other skill.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER5> Learn C, then decide.

1\. If you like programming logic puzzles then you will enjoy programming in C. In C, everything is a number, memory address, or byte array. So every "while" loop you write is a new logic puzzle! But seriously, the things that people tend to gripe about (pointers, segfaults, etc.) won't affect you if you are good at logical reasoning and learn your way around a debugger.

2\. Learning C will teach you what's going on "under the hood" and make all other programming seem easy. For some reason people like to say the JavaScript or Ruby are great "beginner's languages," but I disagree. I think you should learn to drive stick shift first and then graduate to automatic. Too many people learn automatic and then think stick shift is unnecessary. Then when their friend with a convertible gets drunk at a party, nobody can drive home, and everyone has to sleep on the floor. If you know C, you will be the hero of the party, and if something deep inside the system breaks or there's a seemingly insoluble performance problem, you'll be the guy everyone turns to.

3\. I see a number of growth fronts for C programming.

A. Tablet programming. If you're not just writing Babe Alarm Clock apps and want to get the most out of limited hardware, you will want to know C. You might only write 5% of the app in C, but for critical logic paths, it can make the difference between an app that feels like a prototype and one that feels like a magic show.

B. Desktop programming. The Mac App Store will completely change the economics of desktop software development. You'll be able to get a program in people's hands (and money in your bank account) with minimal expenditures on sales or marketing. This opens up a lot of potential for innovation and the creation of new vertical markets that people didn't think existed. Microsoft will probably follow suit with an App Store before long. For desktop programming on Mac or Windows, you will want to know C because:

\-- As with tablet programming, sometimes you need to write a critical logic path in C to get the responsiveness that users expect.

\-- The number of open-source libraries out there is large and continues to grow. In most cases, knowing C lets you take advantage of them, even if only to write a binding for some other language. In many cases you will be able to write a great program just by slapping a pretty face onto an LGPL library or two.

\-- GPU programming (OpenCL, DirectCompute, CUDA) looks to be an area of large potential growth, and as I understand it the APIs look a lot like C. For certain kinds of computations the GPU has 50X the throughput of the CPU. That's like going from a 66 MHz Compaq with a Turbo button to whatever 2GHz workhorse is sitting on your desktop right now. The ramifications for scientific computing are large; many programs designed around a "click and wait" paradigm can be rewritten to be fully interactive. There's a lot of potential for disruptive innovation here.

C. Server programming. The web still has a lot of growing to do, and fast- growing web companies need folks who know C. Most people will tell you that for web programming you just need PHP or whatever, but when the going gets tough, you're going to bust out some C. When I was on the server team at a fast-growing chat company, nominally I just needed to know PHP and Perl, but I found myself needing C in order to: 1. Fix a bug in Memcache that was horking our graphs 2. Fix up the prediction algorithms in RRDtool 3. Write a PHP extension for monitoring CPU time on Windows. I couldn't have done any of those things without knowing C. If you want to be at a company that uses the latest and greatest open-source server technology, at least somebody will need to know C when you run into the programs' problems or limitations.

D. Web programming. This is still several years off, but the Google Native Client is on the horizon:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Native_Client>

If it takes off, we're looking at a lot of desktop C/C++ code that will need to be adapted or rewritten to run in web browsers.

4\. If you're hoping to be "very well paid" (esp. starting out at age 36) knowing C is a good strategy. First, it sets you apart from the stack of resumes touting Cocoa and jQuery knowledge. Second, knowledge of C is an excellent way to get involved in open-source and have your contributions widely used (and your coding skills validated). As a former boss of mine said, there are basically two paths to the major leagues in software development: first is to go to the right schools and get recruited into the right companies, and the second is to contribute to open-source. The most popular open-source projects are all written in C.

On a personal note, I've had to learn a dozen or so computer languages at various points and I find C to be the most satisfying. It's a difficult language compared to most, but if you know it, like it, and get good at it, you can let other people worry about bullshit like CSS workarounds and concentrate on getting the most out of a computer. Knowing C will seem completely unnecessary as you get started on any idea, but as soon as you start thinking any of these thoughts:

\- "I've done everything, but it's still not fast enough" \- "I've done everything, but it still eats too much RAM" \- "If only I could use this library" \- "If only I could use this system call" \- "If only I could fix this bug"

...then if you know C, you will be the hero of your own party.

</comment><comment><USER6> Go for the tablet using ONLY native Objective C. Don't use PhoneGap.

It will be a good learning experience, you will be able to instantly test the code, and there are no two ways about it. Few hacks or tricky stuff. It's a pretty straightforward platform.

Also, you can easily earn money with this, and the money is purely passive. No server administration, etc. You can finish it, put it in the store and run off for the next year.

Also, you learn about memory management and device constraints.

If you want something even more interesting, consider a use-case like using a tablet to control some hardware (like a lightbulb).

<comment><USER7> _Also, you learn about memory management and device constraints._

Didn't know that a tablet platform will have device constrain with so much processing power at hand. Will someone enlighten me about the amount of low level stuff (memory management and thinking about rams and disk space and the likes) goes into writing software for iPad or even an android and iPhone.

<comment><USER8> > Didn't know that a tablet platform will have device constrain with so much > processing power at hand.

These devices (Android/iOS devices) are fairly limited in power when compared to your average laptop or desktop.

For the iPhone and iPad, there's not much low-level stuff you'll normally worry about. Memory management is pretty easy to understand. In most cases, if you follow a few rules of thumb, you'll be okay.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think the keyword here is "fun". You're "bored to death". You don't want a programming career that will too bore you to death.

If you don't enjoy web development, do something else. The tablet could be one way to go, but there are many many others, I don't want to give any specific advise, as different people are attracted to different things.

Find something you really enjoy (which in itself could take a long time - <USER2> you're not sure now, you could dive into one field for a while, see if it's for you. If not, move on).

It might sound odd (and people might disagree) but I say don't focus on what's business wise. Focus on finding something you love doing.

Best of luck!

</comment><comment> Su-Shee Learn both of it. And C is something to know anyways.

Fun in programming is about doing different things, exploring technology and deliver a well-rounded project.

Also, you chose another field which is rather heavy on the GUI side - you will soon realize that ALL GUI done right isn't really something done effortless. It takes much work. Everybody wants to USE good user interface (be it GUI or command line or API-wise) - but few people really like to CREATE them...

And: Web GUI and developing for tablets/touch-based devices are really just two sides of the same medal - what if you need to make a tablet/touch-able Web GUI?

Accept that browsers are strange beasts and get it over with with good frameworks and you'll be fine.

Or choose the middleware or database-side of Web programming - also two good options.

And also learn that "6 months to learn X" literally means nothing in the programming world - there's ALWAYS a "6 months to learn X" ahead of you. Even if you already know a handful of languages very well, have 2 decades of well groomed experience - there's always a subject you know next to nothing about and 6 months isn't really a long period to learn something fundamentally new to you.

Those 6 month will never go away and there is no point you're working yourself up to and then just stop and "be a programmer" :)

</comment><comment><USER10> _"Well, thinking about the interface and implementing the programming logic was actually fun. And it took 10% of the time. The other 90% was spent fighting with browsers' quirkiness and with Google App Engine"_

Yes, you characterize web development correctly. "The web" is a great idea, but web programming the way is currently is, is an enormous pain in the neck (and I'm putting it mildly). I don't foresee this becoming any better in the near future, because instead of reinventing the browser and the outdated models that come with it, we keep tacking things on to it.

So if your goal is to be "not bored", my advice is to look elsewhere. Well, you may not be bored doing web programming, but you will definitely tear out your hair in frustration, as you already found out. It won't really get any better as you learn more; just more complicated.

(That said, I do have great respect for people who do this for a living. I'm not sure if I would be able to do it for any extended period of time.)

Tablets are a different story, development-wise. It isn't necessarily easier, but it's different, and it's more like "real" programming, rather than figuring out what breaks in which browser and how to fix it, or wasting hours tweaking your CSS. There are drawbacks, however. For starters, your audience is limited. If you want to develop for iOS, you'll have to pay the Apple tax, and go through their approval system if you want your app to show up in the app store. Android imposes fewer restrictions, but it's more in flux, and good tablets that run it are pretty hard to find. All these are things to take into consideration.

Personally I am heading into the direction of tablet programming, although the field isn't very mature yet.

</comment><comment><USER11> First of all, congrats!!! Most programmers never actually release anything on their own. You should be proud.

>> Well, thinking about the interface and implementing the programming logic was actually fun. And it took 10% of the time. The other 90% was spent fighting with browsers' quirkiness and with Google App Engine (if I skipped GAE I would have fought with sys admin so not better I suppose). And that was teeth-cringing.

welcome to programming. programming is the gentle art of staying sane while dealing with the stupid choices of the programmers that have come before you (when you do this long enough, you will start to appreciate the difficulty in making good programming choices.) the deeper your knowledge of a given stack, the less pain you will experience. What's that old saying? "An expert is someone who has made most of the common mistakes in their field."

Some platforms are better than others, targeting one platform is always easier than targeting multiple platforms with the same codebase.

However, iOS programming is far less instantly-rewarding than web programming. It also requires a deeper understanding of the way computers work, because the resource-constrained device does not play well with high-level languages.

I suggest that you learn c, obj-c and cocoa because it will make you a well- rounded programmer. after 6 months, you will then know if you like low-level stuff or web stuff better. if you want to be doing the next thing for 20 more years, it is worth 6 months to determine what fits you best in an empirical way.

Check out <http://www.phonegap.com/> you might like it.

p.s. In ui design for the web, put a link to do the thing whenever you talk abotu the thing. for instance, on your home page you say 1. Log in or sign up. you should have those words be the same link as in the upper right. similarly, when you say upload on the left, you could also just have a big upload screen if the user hasnt uploaded any files yet.

</comment><comment><USER12> Programming for both is hard in different ways. With web programming, you can generally throw together arbitrary designs quickly but once it works, you have the second half of the work ensuring it works everywhere. With device programming, you have an easy path to the platform defaults and a more difficult path to arbitrary designs but (particularly on the iOS devices) once it runs, you're pretty much done.

The hardest part of web programming is getting consistent results out of CSS, particularly since this is generally non-repeatable. The best solution is to use a CSS preprocessor (I recommend sass/compass) and up the abstraction a level so you CAN repeat the solutions.

Javascript is comparatively stable. There are the same number of quirks/variations in the raw browser APIs but the libraries are to the point where they fill in the differences. I don't recommend programming a general use site without a library. Most of the work in building the lib is shimming+testing the differences between browsers, not doing the raw library design+construction.

The trick to client side wizardry is modularization. You need something like Sproutcore, YUI3, Backbone, or Knockout to do modules/KVO otherwise things get out of control as your app size grows. It's a boring trick, but it's the trick. All flashier tricks (and there are hundreds) are easy to copy, you look at the source and pull out the interesting bits.

I'm a devoted frontend developer. Dealing with browser quirks is annoying but I think the web is the healthiest platform available and I like not being a sharecropper.

</comment><comment><USER13> Well, thanks to software like PhoneGap and Javascript/CSS libraries like jQuery mobile (and many others), writing a "tablet app" is much the same as regular web development.

You can create an app with a native look and feel with pure HTML5/Javascript/CSS, and you can build it as native apps for iPhone and Android, and have it hosted on their app stores with the same codebase.

For platforms that doesn't offer app stores, you can just provide them with an URL to your app so they can use it in a regular browser (also using the same codebase). The development process can also be simplified, since you can do much of the development with a browser, compared to re-compiling for each iteration of development.

There are of course some applications that aren't suitable for being run in a browser, but in many cases you can, and being able to share codebase between all these platforms seems just great.

Arstechnica released their iPad app a month ago, based on HTML5/CSS/Javascript and built with PhoneGap, and they explain very well how and why they did it that way: [http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/11/introducing-the- ar...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/11/introducing-the-ars-technica- reader-for-ipad.ars)

I would definetely learn regular web development, and not lock myself down to a single platform. Especially with these cool tools like Phonegap.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is a difficult choice to make because we're at an interesting crossroads in application programming. My gut feeling is that web programming will win in the long-term - there's so much competition between browsers now that the pace of innovation is faster than ever. There's still a long way to go though.

Web programming is great once you surrender to the fact that frameworks are the way to go. At first, yes, it's essentially magic. But once you get experienced and you delve deeper into the framework you can assimilate the (hopefully) insightful design choices made by the developers. If you choose web programming, I would highly recommend the Sencha frameworks: Ext JS 4.0 is out soon and Sencha Touch is looking very promising.

On the other hand: the iOS stack is mature, well thought-out and will teach you good programming practices. It's also where the money is right now - <USER3> iPhone/iPad shop I know here in the UK is literally struggling to recruit. I see it as a bubble akin to early web development; a lot of companies jumping on the bandwagon just to have their own 'app'. You've also got to choose whether to learn Android or iOS, which is a whole other discussion!

I'm honestly not sure what to suggest. Personally I'm an experienced web developer learning iOS development and it's been fun so far.

</comment><comment><USER15> A big part of the fun of programming IMHO is seeing the results of what you are writing. I try to center my workflow around that – always having my app buildable, working in small increments, changing what feature I work on as soon as it starts to bore me. Being rather new to programming, a lot of common issues can be real problems for me (e.g. xcode build settings). Be sure to standardize your debugging process. What helps me most is starting to write a question on stackoverflow and thinking what people would need ask me (did I check X? What Y returns?).

Regarding your main question, web seems more fun to me (I've done both a bit). You can iterate faster and push updates more often. Surely I hate having to mess with the server, but generally I set it up and need not touch it for another couple months.

</comment><comment><USER16> Web programming, specifically taking advantage of all of the APIs HTML5 provides.

All existing tablet devices are very friendly to HTML5 having all being built off of webkit (Android and iOS). So you can kill two birds with one stone and not have to worry about IE compatibility.

</comment><comment><USER17> Learn what you are most interested in. If this is gonna be the next 30 years, it really matters little if right now you learn language X or language Y, you'll have to keep learning anyway.

</comment><comment><USER18> You should start by purchasing a mouth guard, since if Javascript makes your teeth "cringe" then you're going to need it for every other kind of programming you attempt.

What I really mean by that is you're going to need a great deal of patience and perseverance to get good at any kind of programming, and even when you do get good at it, you're still going to end up battling things that have nothing to do with the programming language you choose (like browser compatibility issues, bugs that are other people's fault, bugs that are your fault that take you 7 hours to track down, etc.)

It's easy to enjoy things you are very good at, but to get there, you're also going to have to enjoy not being very good at all.

To answer your original question, if you are seeking to participate in an exciting new field, work on the tablet programming. If you want something where you can accomplish cool things with relatively few headaches, stick with Python but drop GAE and go with "normal" hosting.

</comment><comment><USER19> Cobol programming was actually not teeth-cringing at all. Boring, tedious, even mindless... yes. But you were working in a top-to-bottom stack from one vendor, with pretty much one standard set of patterns to learn and follow.

</comment><comment><USER20> It depends of what you want to do.

IMHO it is really stupid trying to do what makes old standard programming shine(c, c++,python{this could be used to program web too}) with web programming, as it it not good idea to use old languages to manage documents and information(in which web programming shine).

You will find people that only have experience with one of those camps that will tell you that you only have to know one of them(when you only have a hammer see every problem as a nail.)

So I recommend you: first understand where you want to go, then learn the best tools for getting there, not the other way around.

</comment><comment><USER21> Big share of 'fun' in programming comes from exploration (the other big thing, at least for me, is watching how something cool emerges from vast nothingness of void, even if my creature looks like Frankenstein's monster); be brave and courageous, try everything, have a look and feel of the bleeding edge of technology.

Other than that, avoid MUMPS :)

</comment><comment><USER22> Learning a bit of system administration and renting a vps is probably better long term.

I'd say tablet to the original question, but Android. In time it will spawn a much bigger ecosystem then Apple can or wants. Java is much cleaner then it's painted, and in time all the jvm languages will be useful on Android.

</comment><comment><USER23> I suggest trying to learn platforms and technologies that apply broadly, at least to start out. That typically means standards - HTML(5), CSS, Javascript, etc. If you create something of value, you will want it to run on the broadest set of platforms/devices possible.

</comment><comment><USER24> I say build what interests you, regardless of the platform. That is the only way to stay focused. Building what you think someone may like probably wont work unless you are more disciplined than I...</comment>


Russian Involvement in America's Race Wars - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/10/russia-facebook-race/542796/ <comment><AUTHOR> _During the Cold War, the Kremlin similarly sought to plant fake news and foment discontent, but was limited by the low-tech methods available at the time. "Before, the Soviets would plant information in Indian papers and hope it would get picked up by our papers,"_</comment>


Penny SMS - <AUTHOR> http://www.pennysms.com/ <comment><USER2> You need to drop a little bit of money and get this going over SSL. I (and neither should anyone else) give out my email, real name, phone number, username and password over a non-SSL site. I'm really interested in checking out your service but this is a show-stopper.

<comment><USER3> What's more worrisome is that the API key is sent out over http on each call...

<comment><AUTHOR> SSL enabled for web front end and the api.

<comment><USER3> Nice! That makes me and I'm sure many others more comfortable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> How will you prevent API key spoofing? Capture that XML-RPC request, and voila, security breached until customer complaint.

<comment><USER5> https ?

<comment><AUTHOR> SSL enabled now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> My new little project aimed at taking the complication and expense out of programatically sending SMS messages.

<comment><USER6> How do you manage to provide such a low rate?

I also can't seem to find the TechCrunch mention that's claimed at the bottom of the front page. Can you provide a link?

<comment><AUTHOR> Penny SMS is the API from a site I built a few years ago, www.ohdontforget.com.

TC mentioned it here: [http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/27/mobaganda-a-dead- simple...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/27/mobaganda-a-dead-simple- invite-site-built-on-googles-app-engine/)

CrunchBase Profile for ODF: <http://www.crunchbase.com/company/ohdontforget>

My CrunchBase Profile: <http://www.crunchbase.com/person/jason-stirman>

I wanted to use the press mentions for ODF, since it's the exact same technology, which is why I mentioned "The PENNY SMS technology has been featured on"

Does it come off as bad form?

<comment><USER7> Bad form? Nah.

How do make money with such a low rate?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3>
      import xmlrpclib
      s = xmlrpclib.ServerProxy('http://api.pennysms.com/xmlrpc')
      s.send(key_txt, email_txt, phone_txt, "hello")

That gets me "S:M:hello" on my phone... but good enough for my purposes (server notifications, etc, backed up by a more reliable method already in place..).

Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER8> So is the real service the ability to receive responses? Can't you send SMS messages via email for free already? I guess the ability to send messages without knowing the carrier is pretty useful.

I've used sources like this in the past to send SMS messages: [http://www.livejournal.com/tools/textmessage.bml?mode=detail...](http://www.livejournal.com/tools/textmessage.bml?mode=details)

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem Penny SMS solves is, without knowing the carrier, it is very hard to figure out where to route the messages to, since someone may have switched cell carriers, even multiple times, but retained the same cell number.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've gotta say, I'm really curious how you're getting your rate. :)

</comment><comment><USER10> sometimes carrier in my country have good deal for sending sms, like 0.1c per message for gsm. $1 unlimited for cdma, etc (caveat: only within-carrier, far more expensive across-carrier)

the thing is i can't have 4 or 5 digits short sms number; however, that didn't stop me either :d

for gsm, i use gnokii, iterating on a list of number with corresponding message is all needed

for cdma, it's a bit harder since no open source program is ready-to-use-out- of-box ... basically it boils down to sending `proprietary` at commands to /dev/bla (whatever dmesg spits) or port comm (if the cdma modem only has windows driver, forcing you to)

my only gripe with sms is it's 'serial' in the sense i can't 'broadcast' -- that's it, i can only send 1 sms per say 6-10 seconds (depends on how busy the network is)

there's no handshake? so there's no way for me to know if the recipient gets it ... and sometimes they get 'empty' sms ... maybe the carriers' mechanism to block spam _shrug_

that's all i know about sms, i don't know about sms-center, maybe if one has access to it, s/he can broadcasts sms just like email

if someone knows more / better, please enlighten me thx

</comment><comment><USER11> Any plans for receiving SMS messages?

<comment><AUTHOR> You can view replies to the outgoing messages, see the 'from' field description here: <http://www.pennysms.com/docs>

As for routing them back through SMS, we could do that, but thought being able to field replies via email would be more convenient.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Interesting, signing up for a key.

I don't understand how your per-month & after-the-fact billing model is feasible if you factor in per-transaction costs?

</comment><comment><USER5> I guess this is USA only?

<comment><AUTHOR> North America for now, working on expanding asap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> 1 penny still sounds expensive for 140 bytes of data.

<comment><USER13> It is but the telcos don't operate in a free market. Additionally, the GSM standard puts SMS messages in a low-bandwidth channel, increasing scarcity. Of course, there are technical solutions to this problem but fixing the problem is tantamount to slaughtering a cash cow and it's not done.</comment></comment>


A Simple Bash Script to Find Your Forgotten TODOs - <AUTHOR> https://spin.atomicobject.com/2019/07/17/script-find-todos-code/#.XS8eSdFwrY0.hackernews <comment><USER2> There is a package for emacs that does this. It collects all of the todos in your current repo and puts them in your status buffer in an actionable way.

[https://github.com/alphapapa/magit-todos](https://github.com/alphapapa/magit- todos)</comment>


OS X 10.9: A downward spiral or a new hope? - <AUTHOR> http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/apples-os-x-10.9-a-new-hope

<comment><USER2> I think a lot of technical mac users would be better off at least trying a switch to Ubuntu or one of the minimalist variations thereof (xubuntu). A lot of the reasons those people switched to OSX are evaporating and Linux as a desktop or laptop development environment has improved hugely. If you're using vim or sublime you don't even need to change your editor.

<comment><USER3> I don't think Linux has gotten any better on the desktop since 2007 or so. Hardware support still isn't perfect, sleep/wakeup still isn't perfect, battery life is still lower than on OS X/Windows, 3D acceleration is still iffy. It's a total disaster.

<comment><USER4> [citation needed]

I've never had problems with sleep/wakeup (except bugs in the firmware). Battery life is equal if not better than under windows. Developers rarely need 3D acceleration, and for most webgl demos and games the intel open source driver does just fine.

<comment><USER5> I don't think you can disprove anecdotal evidence with more anecdotal evidence.

<comment><USER2> If the claim is "it sucks universally because of my anecdote," "it works fine in my anecdote" is actually a perfectly valid rebuttal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If Apple needs a better filesystem, they should consider HAMMER from DragonflyBSD. It's BSD-licensed, unencumbered by patents, and way more sophisticated than HFS+.

</comment><comment><USER7> oh, the irony. one line he says that he's a clever user that understands business, the other line suggests that what apple should do is change the filesytem. can you picture it? tim saying "one more thing to excite you" and announce a new filesytem instead of, say "Siri on your desktop"? I image 95% of the user base thinking "you updated the WHAT?!"

<comment><USER8> Which is why it is better to explain the benefits, not the features.</comment></comment>


Pow.js - Algorithmic sunburst generator via CSS, canvas and jQuery. - <AUTHOR> http://obadger.com/pow/ <comment><USER2> Are you familiar with Pow? <http://pow.cx/>

It also happens to be written in JavaScript

</comment><comment><USER3> It's cool, but makes Chrome laggy and slow to scroll :/

(Latest version on OSX Lion)

<comment><USER4> Yeah, it's probably the gratuitous secondary sunburst being drawn into the background of that demo page. That's a pretty big PNG image (i.e. the size of your viewport) being generated. For smaller uses it shouldn't be an issue, but gratuitous use will definitely cause performance problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looks rather interesting when you tell it to do 1000 rays.

<comment><USER6> I liked 100000 better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very nice. Forked!

</comment><comment><USER8> If you only have one element, then why does it require jQuery?

Is learning this one simple API call too hard for people?

      document.getElementById()

<comment><USER9> It does more than just selecting an element. It also finds an inner element to do the burst from, grabs OuterWidth, and sets css.

While it is possible to do these without jQuery, you could say that about any jQ plugin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Pretty cool, but originX and originY don't work in this example (Last Chrome / Windows 7) and the fact that you generate base64 enconded images on the fly instead of using canvas (or svg) renders this unusable for animations.

<comment><USER4> originEl if present overrides originX/Y. It wouldn't be too hard to build a similar tool that absolutely positions a canvas within an element, but there's a tradeoff in complexity. Setting a CSS background is a nice, simple approach.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Build apps from android device - <AUTHOR>

Are there any android apps out there that allow you to create, deploy, & install simple apps onto the android device it was created on? <comment><USER2> You might be able to use one of the cloud ides for this stuff - [http://c9.io](http://c9.io) [http://nitrous.io](http://nitrous.io) etc

</comment><comment><USER3> aide is pretty sweet it also has interactive development training so its also a great way to learn to write android apps</comment>


Please get your parents off Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://markosaric.com/off-facebook/ <comment><USER2> College Humor had a bit that called Facebook "The Site That Commits Treason & Tells You What Your Parents Are Doing". They (and the author here) aren't wrong.

But what am I supposed to advise them to use?

The article doesn't make any suggestions on alternatives. It links another article he wrote, which also doesn't suggest anything.

* Instagram is picture focused, which doesn't fit with 90% of my parent's posts.

* Twitter is public by default, which is less privacy than the soft-wall provided by FB "Friends". Maybe everyone could use private twitter accounts.. But the article argues

> "It (FB) is a megaphone and an amplifier of extreme views, easily disproven > conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, superstition, magic cures, > disinformation, controversy and hyper-effective propaganda."

If that's true of Facebook, it's certainly in abundance in twitter!

* Maybe Mastodon? They don't want or need to understand federation. None of their friends use it, so they can't keep in touch with their old co-worker from 3 jobs back.

* Discord/Telegram/Signal/Wire - They're all intended for live/dynamic use, while FB excels at async. Sure, you can go back and reply to old things, but that's not the intent or way things are typically used.

* The best I can think of right now is regular old Email.. It's pushed-based, and sends to exactly who you want it to. It handles comments (replies) and it can embed pictures/links/etc.

<comment><USER3> Is it really the fault of the platform? I despise Facebook, and do not use it, but the root of the problem, IMO, is that people are dumb. We'll never change that - some people are always going to be dumb. Humans have been doing dumb things in large numbers for a long time - witch hunts, public stonings, The Crusades...Facebook just virtualizes their presence. Blaming Facebook for the 2016 election is my favorite form of misdirected ire. The real problems lied in people manipulating people. That could have been done with billboards, TV ads, newsletters, or phone calls just as easily. We're still learning how to deal with the ability to communicate with one another instantly over large distances, as a species. I do think we're in a valley right now, where stupidity reigns over all, but believe that will change eventually.

<comment><USER4> Somewhat agreed, but Facebook is also not doing anything to curb the stupidity. They could very well ban whoever posts obvious misinformation or scams and anyone who is repeatedly caught sharing such content, but they don't because behind the scenes these same stupid users are probably the most profitable for Facebook because they're more likely to click on ads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Older people are less likely ... to be able to understand the difference > between legitimate news and lies

Why do you think older people are more foolish than younger people?

This is so patronising! I'm wouldn't dream of telling my parents what to read or not read.

<comment><USER6> > _Why do you think older people are more foolish than younger people?_

There is a documented age bias in the sharing of fake news [1][2].

"Foolish" is the wrong word. "Unaccustomed to modern social media" fits the bill better.

[1] [https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/1/eaau4586](https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/1/eaau4586)

[2] [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/10/us/politics/facebook- fake...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/10/us/politics/facebook-fake- news-2016-election.html)

<comment><USER3> I think they grew up in an era, as the post mentioned, where messages were moderated in some manner before reaching your senses. Facebook removed that filter, and they are overtrusting things because their "friend" vouched for it in the form of a post. They trust their friend, and they inherently trust the content of the message. Things will change.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Also, get yourself off Facebook.

Honestly, ripping that bandaid off was one of the best decisions I made for my own mental health, my time, and my ability to properly assess which relationships in my life were worth maintaining. (Turns out it wasn't the hundreds of people I was connected with on Facebook.)

<comment><USER8> But then how do you share pics of food, kids, and vacations?

<comment><USER9> I'm assuming that the above comment is not sarcastic.

Ask yourself:

First, do you have to share pics?

If so, do you have to share pics of food?

Do you really want to share pics of kids in an open forum such as FB?

Above for vacation pics?

Do you really want to share _all_ the pics that you share currently, or just a small subset?

If so, here are some much safer options:

1) email

2) instant messaging application of choice

3) shared folder in the cloud storage of choice.

<comment><USER8> "Open forum"? How is it an open forum if you lock down all the privacy settings to only your most trusted friends and family? FB has those options.

I've always thought there should be a social network that is private by default. With no concept of public anything. And you pay for it, so there are no ads.

<comment><USER9> FB, it's behavior, it's data collection and sharing policies and violations of those said policies makes those settings irrelevant.

Agree with the second part of your comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm sorry but this is not a compelling argument and the author is missing the point entirely.

My folks use FB to keep in contact with a large circle of family and friends and it works very well for that, moreover, this is the case for literally 100's of millions if not billions.

I don't use it, but there's no reason for people not to if they find it useful.

<comment> user00012-ab Anti-vaxers find not getting vaccinations useful, how does that work for the rest of society when they start getting other people sick, and bring back things that were once eradicated.

A lot of people find not living in reality useful, AND they are still allowed to vote; how is that working out for the rest of society.

Until we have a better system for running countries that doesn't allow crazy and uninformed people to vote, maybe getting rid of some the sources of crazy information can at least help.

<comment><USER11> But there are clear and compelling arguments that vaccines aren't safe, whatever one thinks of whether they're useful or not.

RFK Jr has been leading the vax pro-safety charge for some time (not anti- vax), and I think is making a difference.

(I know with all the closed minds on HN, this'll get downvoted to hell, but if you haven't done your own research into the dangers of vaccines, then you'll stay closed.)

<comment><USER10> "But there are clear and compelling arguments that vaccines aren't safe,"

No there are not.

Overall, they are exceptionally safe. When you combine the fact they are reducing potential disease as well and then compound that because of the externalization of the viral spread of such diseases (one infection creates multiple more) then they are exceedingly safe.

And where there are 'issues', they are not in the range of the ridiculous conspiracy theories thrown about.

The anti-vaxxers, especially celebrities, are a serious threat to public health.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Older people are less likely to be tech-savvy, less likely to use ad- blockers, less likely to be able to understand the difference between legitimate news and lies, and they're more likely to spend longer time on Facebook and share more information on Facebook."

While I would like to say I agree with this, it's due to confirmation bias and an availability heuristic. If you don't provide data to support these claims then you're assuming your readers are no better than the subject of your post.

</comment><comment><USER13> ...and your kids, and your friends, and yourself.

</comment><comment><USER14> sure, you can get off facebook the site, but if you still want to keep in touch w/ family and friends, you'll most likely use "whatsapp" which is owned by fb. thoughts?

<comment><USER2> Two thoughts-

1 - Maybe it's big in your circle, but not everyone has the same experience.

I literally don't know anyone who uses the app at all. (And I've asked around)

That's not to suggest your experience is invalid, just to point out WhatsApp may be more popular in your social circle than ubiquitous.

2- Moving off of FB-the-app has advantages, even if you're using other FB-the- company products. It's not all or nothing.

<comment><USER3> WhatsApp might as well be SMS in many countries. Not so, in the US.</comment></comment></comment>


The Sounds of Dialup Modems and Related Equipment (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://goughlui.com/legacy/soundofmodems/index.htm <comment> semi-extrinsic Mandatory infographic explaining all of the sounds:

[http://www.windytan.com/2012/11/the-sound-of-dialup- pictured...](http://www.windytan.com/2012/11/the-sound-of-dialup- pictured.html)

<comment><USER2> One of the comments on that says

> This sounds like US signaling. We had totally different in Europe and former > USSR.

Other than the dialtone, and that in most of Europe a non-local call is started by dialling 0, is there any difference?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The double "bong" note used to probe the line properties before the high rate modulation starts was deliberately designed to sound good.

It's amazing that analog modems eventually reached 100% of the bandwidth of the digital network used for analog transmission, at least in one direction.

Once data is really moving, it sounds like noise, of course. If it didn't, there would be wasted bandwidth not carrying data. Analog radio and TV waste about 80% of the transmitted power on the carrier. When TV went digital, broadcast station power, and power bills, went way down.

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IF2v32xCD0Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IF2v32xCD0Y) Dial up sound slowed 700%

</comment><comment><USER5> I still have an old 14.4 serial modem I just can't part with for nostalgic reasons (was my first payment received for computer related work at a BBS). Sadly haven't had a phone line in many years to ever plug it in to :)

<comment><USER6> Years ago, I managed to get two modems to establish a connection without an intervening telephone network by connecting a phone line between them. I turned off dial tone detection by issuing an ATH0 command to the answering modem. I then issued an ATA command. On the other modem, I issued an ATD command and the two modems negotiated a connection.

I was able to transfer files using the ZModem feature of the telnet program I was using at the time over that connection though it was significantly slower than just using a null modem cable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Aahhhh, some happy memories.

I downloaded Slackware over a 14.4 ...

</comment><comment><USER8> In case anyone's curious, the DTMF digits in the 'Unrelated and Strange' ISP call are 99937501. I presume 9 for outside line, then 993-7501 for a local number.

Wonder what ISP that was?

<comment><USER9> Doing a bit of searching, looks like a Sydney, Australia number.

+61 2 99937501

Could not find an ISP listed with that number.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Found this page awhile ago and love it. v.22 is my favorite, as it's when I learned what a modem was, though I'm also fond of v.32 and v.34... I stopped using dialup before upgrading to v.90 (combination of using a 33.6 modem a bit longer than usual and then being a reasonably early adopter of a cable modem).

See a couple comments of people using one as a ringtone... that is an excellent idea and I may do that now.

</comment><comment><USER11> The V90 have been my phone ringtone for a while now; when I get called the people around me gets a blast from the past and give me funny looks.

</comment><comment><USER12> The only interesting sounds are the sync and line measuring tones. Actual data, I mean the QPSK or QAM modulation sounds like white noise to us.

</comment><comment><USER13> v34-33600bps.mp3 is my new ringtone - thanks!

<comment><USER14> I've got a "56k.mp3" that's been my ringtone for years.

There's been a few times when I've been in a meeting, forgot to put my phone on silent, and received a phone call. Everyone immediately stops talking and looking around with "WTF!?" looks on their faces.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Oh man the Rockwell 2400baud smacked me right back to 1993. Thank you so much!

</comment><comment><USER16> I can remember every bit of that v90 sound. Must have had it for 5+ years.

</comment><comment><USER17> I remember v.92 pretty well as a kid and then 56k. Good times</comment>


Ask HN: Has T-mobile started blocking NPM? - <AUTHOR> Getting EHOSTUNREACH over cell hotspot (and tether).  Any T-mo subs out there care to switch to the hotspot, try 'npm -g outdated' or similar, and post results?<p>Edit: Correct errno code.  Ubuntu 18.04; current and ~6-month old npm distros both fail. <comment><USER2> Just quickly tried running the command on T-mobile hotspot and also couldn't connect. I didn't try debugging much, so it could've been another issue, but just adding myself as a data point.

</comment><comment><USER3> I tend to get bizarre and seemingly incorrect network errors randomly from various npm packages from time to time. Yarn does it too (sometimes worse). They will fail with a network error yet I can reach both the package repository and the package files themselves just fine using a browser, and the problem will persist for a while. It might be that.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's indeed the case with my failures, persisting for two days now. I suspected filtering based on something in HTTP headers, but spoofing the User- Agent string with one copy-pasted from Firefox yielded no change. Command-line NPM has an option for the User-Agent spoof -- but not much otherwise, and I guess there's plenty of other metadata for T-mo to fingerprint on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Worked for me. Turned on my T-Mobile hotspot in Santa Monica, CA, connected to it, and ran `npm -g outdated` as suggested. It ran successfully.

<comment><AUTHOR> Seeing the failure in San Diego area, from Ubuntu 18.04. Happens with current npm stable distro, as well as one two major revs back.

Will enable tcpdump et al. Not a network specialist here -- suggestions for debug strategy/tools would be welcome.

<comment><AUTHOR> Relevant lines from 'strace' output:

      [pid   678] 18:17:52 socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM|SOCK_CLOEXEC|SOCK_NONBLOCK, IPPROTO_IP) = 18
      [pid   678] 18:17:52 setsockopt(18, SOL_TCP, TCP_NODELAY, [1], 4) = 0
      [pid   678] 18:17:52 connect(18, {sa_family=AF_INET, sin_port=htons(443), sin_addr=inet_addr("22.214.171.124")}, 16) = -1 EINPROGRESS (Operation now in progress)
      [pid   678] 18:17:52 epoll_ctl(13, EPOLL_CTL_ADD, 18, {EPOLLOUT, {u32=18, u64=18}}) = 0
      [pid   678] 18:17:52 epoll_wait(13, [{EPOLLOUT|EPOLLERR|EPOLLHUP, {u32=18, u64=18}}], 1024, 7523) = 1
      [pid   678] 18:17:52 getsockopt(18, SOL_SOCKET, SO_ERROR, [101], [4]) = 0
      [pid   678] 18:17:52 epoll_ctl(13, EPOLL_CTL_DEL, 18, 0x7ffcc1878020) = 0
      [pid   678] 18:17:52 close(18)          = 0
      ...
      [pid   678] 18:17:52 write(2, "npm", 3npm) = 3
      [pid   678] 18:17:52 write(2, " ", 1 )   = 1
      [pid   678] 18:17:52 write(2, "ERR!", 4ERR!) = 4
      [pid   678] 18:17:52 write(2, " ", 1 )   = 1
      [pid   678] 18:17:52 write(2, "code", 4code) = 4
      [pid   678] 18:17:52 write(2, " ENETUNREACH\n", 13 ENETUNREACH

) = 13

The failing call is the 'connect()'. It's asynchronous -- the following calls collect its failure status of ENETUNREACH.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am able to download packages even now. Greater NYC

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmmm, one possibility is local office bandwidth-throttling, specific to downloads running amok.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> FWIW, on _German_ T-Mobile access to npmjs.com works just fine.

</comment><comment><USER7> Could you try over VPN?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good idea. Don't have one handy, but WireGuard might be in my future.</comment></comment>


Air Force Designed, Built, and Flew a Brand-New Fighter Jet In One Year - <AUTHOR> https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a34030586/air-force-secret-new-fighter-jet/ <comment><USER2> Spoiler: they don't know anything about it, no pictures and no specs. The company that worked on it is not revealed. Really the most notable thing is that it took only a year. The P-51 Mustang was conceived and put into service (wartime) also in a year.

It really is an achievement to go from concept to first flight in a year for a modern aircraft.

<comment><USER3> When you don't design by committee, you can do things in a much quicker fashion. However, once people find out about it, they are going to start requesting a lot of changes because it's not the design they wanted.

<comment><USER4> Also true for all software projects.

<comment><USER3> That's exactly why I worded it without referencing airplanes. It's kind of a universal statement about committees.

<comment><USER5> My theory: In any organization there is a magic number of committee members, that once achieved, assures that the project will fail.

<comment><USER6> I was just thinking about this the other day when reading the comments on small nuclear reactors and how many organizations, governments and countries can't accomplish anything of significance in a timely, costly or efficient manner.

I was thinking it should be written like a law:

The success of a project or goal is inversely proportional to the number stakeholders, investors and/or general labour involved in the project/business/goal.

This idea is closely related to the 80/20 rule, the cost/performance/quality decision triangle, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have no special knowledge, but I find myself wondering if it's just a variant of an existing fighter (F-22, F-35, maybe even F-23) or a manned variant of a recent drone prototype like the X-47B.

</comment><comment><USER8> Reminds me of what I read from the memoir on Skunkwork. They specifically used off the shell components and other strategies to reduce engineering time and speed up prototyping.

Not knowing anything about aircraft development, they are probably much less ambitious about design specs while at the same time iterated much faster.

<comment><USER9> There are many lessons to be found within Skunk Works by Rich.

Among them is the statement that the SR-71 was _not_ at the edge of the design envelope. If I recall correctly, there were substantial safety margins in most areas, "like a Chevy truck" in order to ensure the speed of development and improve the likelihood that the entire project would succeed.

The HN productivity/self-help crowd will find a lot more in there.

This passage has had the highest personal impact per word as any text I've read: _You don 't need Harvard to teach you that it's more important to listen than to talk. You can get straight As from all your Harvard profs, but you'll never make the grade unless you're decisive: even a timely wrong decision is better than no decision. The final thing you need to know is don't half- heartedly wound problems - kill them dead. That's all there is to it. Now you can run this goddamn place._

Also: [https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/who-we-are/business- are...](https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/who-we-are/business- areas/aeronautics/skunkworks/kelly-14-rules.html)

<comment><USER10> >You can get straight As from all your Harvard profs, but you'll never make the grade unless you're decisive: even a timely wrong decision is better than no decision

What I wrote in my journal after joining an investment bank's equity research team:

"Good dinner with two traders, x and y; they have both been in the business for more than a decade and shared many interesting experiences and insights into the business. I did not realize that our traders very much need information flow, preferably proprietary, in order to entice their buyside counterparts to trade through them. It almost doesn't matter whether the information is accurate or not; what counts is being distinctive".

I well remember one of the traders slamming his fist on the table complaining about how a former analyst was very bad at returning phone calls, and saying that being 52% right (meaning 48% wrong) is better than a higher correct percentage but not being available.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Yeah, but the defense budget is optimized to benefit multiple Congressional districts as a jobs program, this doesn't work...

<comment><USER12> The original article says that they aren't trying to reduce spending. They want to take money that used to go into long-term maintenance and put it into into R&D and manufacturing. Instead of keeping the planes flying for 30+ years, they want a steady stream of new, up-to-date specialized designs that they keep in the air for 13 years or less. They want to force China and Russia to play a never ending game of catch-up.

It would be a shake-up in the current system, but is fully compatible with running a nationwide jobs program.

<comment><USER13> It also means opponents have thirteen different aircraft they have to train against!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Lots more detail in the original article this one links to: [https://www.defensenews.com/breaking-news/2020/09/15/the- us-...](https://www.defensenews.com/breaking-news/2020/09/15/the-us-air-force- has-built-and-flown-a-mysterious-full-scale-prototype-of-its-future-fighter- jet/)

<comment><USER12> Yeah, that's a really good article, and discloses that what they're doing isn't about a single new airplane. They want to completely change the way the Air Force manages the entire airplane lifecycle:

> The main difference is that the Air Force would flip from spending the > majority of fighter program costs upfront instead of at the end of the > aircraft's life. To continuously design new fighter jets, the service would > keep multiple vendors constantly under contract for the development of new > planes, choosing a new design about every eight years. To make a business > case that is profitable for industry, it would then buy batches of about > 50-80 aircraft every year.

> The result is a 25 percent increase in development costs and an 18 percent > increase in production costs. However, the price of modernizing aircraft > would drop by 79 percent while sustainment costs are basically cut in half, > Roper wrote in the paper.

> "I can't make both ends of the life cycle go away; industry has to make a > profit somewhere," Roper said. "And I'm arguing in the paper that if you get > to choose what color of money you use for future air superiority, make it > research, development and production because it's the sharp point of the > spear, not the geriatric side that consumes so much of our resources today."

<comment><USER13> If a figher plane has a lifespan of 30 years, does this mean that at steady state, the air force would have 1500 - 2400 fighters of 30 different types?

Did Hayao Miyazaki take over Air Force procurement, or what?

EDIT: Ah, they also reduce the lifecycle to 10 - 15 years. Still wild!

<comment><USER14> I don't think you should be downvoted, it's a reasonable misunderstanding.

The goal is to create a constant pipeline of new planes with short lead times, so that they don't need to have extended lifetimes with expensive maintenance. Personally I feel that's a better approach overall for many mobile capital- intensive systems: military hardware, public transportation and so on.

As the interview points out, smaller, more-frequent procurements reduce the risk to suppliers as well. Currently every weapons system project is a existential risk to contractors, so they quite naturally try to push as much back as possible. And so we wind up with parts being built in every Congressional district at vast expense and added complexity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Given that a warplane has not been developed so quickly since WW2, part of me wonders if there has recently been some development which has given the air force a wartime sense of urgency. While it seems unlikely that we wouldn't hear anything about such a development, it also seemed unlikely that we wouldn't hear about a project like this.

<comment><USER16> They can if they need to... Both the U2 and the SR71 had a crazy short development time - months, not years. The history of both those aircraft from a build/design perspective is an amazing read. They knew the U2 would be obsolete for the original mission and got the blackbird in the air. Got to wonder if it is just significantly harder to hide things now than it was in the late 50's. Between satellites, cell phones, and globs of potential collaboration - it would be hard to keep something in the air a secret.

[http://www.roadrunnersinternationale.com/sr-71timeline.pdf](http://www.roadrunnersinternationale.com/sr-71timeline.pdf)

<comment><USER17> The irony is that the U-2 is still in service while the SR-71 is decommissioned.

This doesn't take away from your point of course, I just thought it was interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Would love to hear if the Air Force Kessel Run program contributed to this [1] [2] (cc @AndrewKemendo).

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23703326](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23703326)

[2] [https://kesselrun.af.mil/](https://kesselrun.af.mil/)

<comment><USER19> I've only heard good things about that program; if they somehow contributed to this effort, it would be another huge feather in their hat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Would be interesting to hear more details on how they pulled that off. I would tend to assume the fast development speed involves using a bunch of existing tech instead of developing new. Maybe it's also unmanned, letting them drop a ton of life-support stuff and relax reliability requirements.

</comment><comment><USER21> I would think at this point we don't really need fighter jets.

Wouldn't a vast number of cheap remote controlled/ai driven flying explosives be more useful?

</comment><comment><USER22> So basically they could do this because of limited budget, right schedule and no red tapes? Sound like a start up to me :)

</comment><comment><USER23> Not knowing much of anything about it, it's kinda hard to figure out how much of an achievement this is...</comment>


Steve Jobs on sales/marketing vs. product/engineering driven companies - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/ow/status/792284416286523392 <comment><USER2> What's notably absent from from Apples keynotes is the passion for the product. We have ops (Tim), marketing (Phil), design (Jony). Steve would bring the passion and frame the product and exactly how it's innovative and will change things. At these past keynotes product managers have given canned passionless presentations for Apple products. Like the Apple TV from a few days ago.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ironically, what Steve Jobs later decided for his products looked a lot like pure marketing (from the Macbook onward iirc) because I have _never_ needed or wanted or bought a mac product since then.

<comment><USER4> What did Apple do that was purely for marketing purposes in your opinion? They seem pretty product focused to me.

<comment><USER5> Yes, like Jobs alluded to in his quote, the marketing people ("toner-heads") end up running the show by getting promoted.

Then, they abuse their leadership capacity to make mis-guided calls regarding product design because they do not truly have the customers' needs at heart (e.g. no headphone jack).

To take it one step further, there is plenty of marketing justification for removing that jack, given Apple's ownership of Beats.</comment></comment></comment>


Here come the design patents: new law boosts rights in shapes, designs - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2012/12/27/here-come-the-design-patents-new-law-boosts-rights-in-shapes-designs/ <comment><USER2> "Design patents" are more sensibly understood as being part of the trademark regime than the patent regime. They protect entirely arbitrary and non- functional aspects of a product. If the shape has any utility, then the design patent is invalid.

I personally don't see the point of design patents. The whole premise underlying the patent system is to prevent free-riding, but shapes are rarely the product of significant capital investment. If the problem becomes one of confusing similarity, then trade dress is the more appropriate vehicle (incidentally, I think if design patents hadn't existed, Apple would've sued Samsung on trade dress infringement grounds).

There is an internal tension in IP law between the economic justifications for the law and, well, the law. The point is to protect expensive capital investment into design from free-riding, but the law is loathe to actually look at whether a design is the product of expensive investment.

</comment><comment><USER3> The scariest line is the one that says that if the patent office fails to respond in a fixed time, the patent is automatically granted.

The golden question is how deferential US courts will be to a valid US patent with international precedent. Hopefully not at all because these patents are going to be complete crap.

<comment><USER4> The easiest way to do this is with a DDoS on the patent office. If everyone issues a bogus patent request every day, every patent will be granted :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why is it that whenever they use the word "harmonize" it means we're going in a more restrictive direction instead of less?

<comment><USER6> Restrictive in what respect?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why is harmonization so important for patents and utterly laughable for health care?

<comment><USER8> Follow the money and the established players and you'll see why.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I find this quite curious, how would it work with clothing? I mean most clothes designs are the work of high end fashion houses, the middle market and lower end then produce very similar styles, its an accepted system. Surely this mean the fashion industry would be subject to the same design patents and thus the middle market could be legitimately sued?

<comment><USER2> Dseign patents theoretically apply to clothing, but are rare because proving the various elements is somewhat onerous. In any case, they are largely unnecessary. Fashion is almost entirely driven by branding, which is protected by trademark. People buy the brand, not the design. So the JC Penny copy isn't even really in competition with the high-end fashion house design.

<comment><USER10> Here's a theory: high end design houses have not created their own 'low end self-copycats' because they couldn't block the JC Pennys and Zaras and couldn't compete with their large-scale production, marketing and sales. If law now allows such blocking, then I could see that expansion into low end happening.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "It has come to our attention that the hat you knitted infringes on certain designs patented by our client..."

</comment><comment><USER12> The first chapter of my economics 101 text mentioned that if everyone had "replicators" that could automatically produce anything one desired, there would be little need for economics at all. I realize now the flaw in that delightful thought.

</comment><comment><USER13> What in the world does this photo: [http://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/shutterstock_9784...](http://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/shutterstock_97841513.jpg?w=300&h=210) have to do with the article?

</comment><comment><USER14> We don't have to participate in this system. There are alternatives.

</comment><comment><USER15> What if mathematicians decided to patent all known geometric shapes.</comment>


Lucy (sunlight bender robot) FREE PUBLIC BETA test launch Apply here - <AUTHOR> http://solenica.com/public-beta/?=hacker-news <comment><AUTHOR> Lucy is a completely new device that redirects sunlight wherever you need sunlight to be. We need helpful users who can take Lucy in and tell us, based on an extended period of time in their home, how and where they use Lucy, what they light up with Lucy and the added functionalities they could see in future versions. If you want to be one of our beta testers, please apply here

</comment><comment><USER2> Very cool Idea! I applied please choose me :)</comment>


COO Tim Cook Opens Up About All Things Apple - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/01/coo-tim-cook-opens-up-about-all-things-apple/69754/ <comment><USER2> Full story: <http://www.macworld.com/article/157247/2011/01/cook.html>

<comment><USER3> That is interesting, to hear what he says to investors. Salesmanship, but interesting.

Off topic, but last spring on my way back from Silicon Valley I happened to sit next to the guy who ran a parts plant in China making components for Apple. I have very narrow interests (programming, hiking, writing/reading, and cooking) so it was neat to get talk to someone who is in a very different kind of business than I am in, and was in a much higher pressure job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is a COO allowed to short stock like this????

Edited highlights:

We are doing crap in the PC business (that we went into when we didn't have Jobs)

We are doing great in the mobile business - that Jobs got us into.

So don't worry about an Apple without Jobs!

<comment><USER5> And here's my favourite cherry-picked line out of context:

 _we are all very happy with product pipeline, and the team here has an unparalleled breadth and depth of talent and a culture of innovation that Steve has driven in the company, and excellence has become a habit. And so we feel very, very confident about the future of the company._

<comment><USER4> There is no insider figure that is linked to their products in as personal a way as Jobs - except Jonathon Ives.

There is nobody inside with the product and business clout to take over, so it will either be a faceless VP suit that gets promoted, or they will hire an outside.

Who is CEO of Pepsi these days?

<comment><USER5> You name Jonathan Ive and in the next sentence say there is nobody inside. There's also Tim Cook who did this interview.

Who was CEO of Pepsi ever? Honestly, I'm not sure if that says more about Pepsi or my ignorance.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mueller Finally Solves Mysteries About Russia's 'Fancy Bear' Hackers - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedailybeast.com/mueller-finally-solves-mysteries-about-russias-fancy-bear-hackers <comment><USER2> I find it difficult to believe that the source code of allegedly Russian malware was found. Is there any proof of that ?</comment>


Spotify Is Hiring a President of Playlists - <AUTHOR> https://www.spotify.com/us/jobs/view/o0CA4fw0/ <comment><USER2> I would rather be a beloved dictator than a president so I wont apply, but the requirements was fun to read nevertheless</comment>


The Pentagon Has a Plan to Stop the Zombie Apocalypse. Seriously. - <AUTHOR> http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/05/13/exclusive_the_pentagon_has_a_plan_to_stop_the_zombie_apocalypse

<comment><USER2> A quick google search on CONOP 8888 yields this wikipedia page. Are we sure that this isn't just some anti-commie plan, you know, like Plan R? [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8888_Uprising](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8888_Uprising)</comment>


Photographers Can Be Detained If Their Photos Have 'No Apparent Esthetic Value' - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110815/23584515540/police-say-they-can-detain-photographers-if-their-photographs-have-no-apparent-esthetic-value.shtml

<comment><USER2> You might be interested in the discussion from 2 days ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2884072>

</comment><comment><USER3> I think this piece is fluff. According to the original article, the story unfolded a bit differently. A suspicious cop with no 'Aesthetic Values' asked a photographer for his license. This not being Nazi Germany, the photographer was offended and talked back, then later publicly complained. He was not detained as in hauled to a police station, but rather not allowed to leave before the policeman assessed why he was taking photos in a refinery. The cop did his job and the journalist his. No story here, other than the cop trying to be a bully and threaten to use terrorism charges if he feels like it. This is business as usual it seems anyways.

        1 After running Wolff's driver's license, Kahn left the scene without ordering Wolff to desist.

        2 Legally, a police detention has occurred when "a reasonable individual" in that circumstance would be believe he or she is not free to leave

<http://www.lbpost.com/life/greggory/12188>

</comment><comment> guard-of-terra In other news: <http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/photo-ok/>

I don't see how limiting right to make shots of public space it is good for a society. I think it simply isn't and the said right should be codified.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm getting really close to automatically flagging anything from TechDirt. I don't recall ever seeing a worthwhile story on TechDirt that wasn't covered much more accurately elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER5> Most vacation snapshots have no apparent esthetic value. Virtually all "partying people" have no esthetic value. If this pseudo-law will deter people from taking poorly composed, red-eyed, overly-flash-filled shots of tipsy partiers, I'm all for it.

Talk about your unintended consequence!

</comment><comment><USER6> I thought it's in Europe... California? who came up with this horrible idea?</comment>


RubyMine 1.0 Released - <AUTHOR> http://www.rubyinside.com/rubymine-1-0-ruby-ide-1818.html

<comment><USER2> This program is great in my opinion. Even it is 1.0 (actually 1.1 is out already) state, it add a lot of features that a text editor doesn't have. My top favorites include:

1\. Refactoring, especially really simple ones like rename method are highly useful.

2\. Built in local history including side by side diffs with your version control system.

3\. Middle mouse to 'jump to source'. Ever come across a method and go 'WTF is this?'. One click and you can jump right to the Ruby or Rails method source code. This can be extremely helpful for new developers learning RoR.

4\. Integrated testing support to run single tests within the UI. (Textmate does have this too)

And last time I checked, Textmate seemed to be a pretty popular text editor with the Ruby community, and that runs about $60 US currently. Unless your time as a developer is valueless, laying out $100 can easily be justified if it saves you exactly 1 hour of productivity over its life time. Paying for good tools that save time is smart business.

Given how amazing JetBrains' IDEA product was for the Java IDE world at the time, I can only imagine how much better this tool will get over time, especially if the Ruby Community starts using it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm liking RubyMine and 1.1 has support for Cucumber. It's not as polished as Textmate, but it has light years more functionality. Split window, basic refactoring, search that doesn't blow, etc.

</comment><comment><USER4> Seemed really overly slow for me. Sticking with gedit with plugins and added syntax highlighting</comment>


F.lux beta for iOS (Xcode 7 sideload) - <AUTHOR> https://justgetflux.com/sideload/ <comment><USER2> Already posted multiple times today; one with comments here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10546333](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10546333)</comment>


How I lost 160lbs after selling my company to Atlassian - <AUTHOR> https://matterapp.com/blog/how-i-lost-160lbs-after-selling-my-company-to-atlassian/ <comment><USER2> Using an anonymous account intentionally. Working normal business hours sounds nice but NOT REMOTELY a possibility where I work. Being intentionally secretive, I work at one of the desired hot/unicorn startups in SF. Employees are non-verbally expected to live/eat/work at the office (9-8). If a new hire were to start clocking out at 5, they would not last long.

What I and many of my peers do is split up the day with a long break in the middle. We'll commonly go for a 1-1.5hr run in the middle of the day along Embarcadero to try to obtain the best of both worlds, not losing our equity and staying healthy.

<comment><USER3> So, what are you hoping to get out of this? I ask not in a condescending way, but with hope that you've thoroughly thought this through and understand the tradeoffs you're making. Certainly you could make a good living elsewhere. Is it for resume building? Are you getting insane stock options? How long are you planning to continue at that pace?

<comment><USER2> Two things, an impressive resume and nice sum of money. As a recent grad it would look awful if I left this "hot startup" a few months after graduating. Secondly, I would be walking away for several hundreds of thousands of dollars in equity.

IDK if this is considered insane, but $100-$250 grand is a really big deal for someone with student debt.

<comment><USER4> How many years of 12-hour days will it take to realize your $250K?

If you were working 9-5 and I offered you a night job for 4 hours a day, would you take it? If I promised you $200K if you did the night job for two years, would you take it? If you got $0 if you quit before the two years was up, would you take it? I can pull out of the deal at any time in the next two years.

I know a guy who scrubs toilets from 4am-8am M-F for $10/hr. He expects that to turn into $100K in about 5 years with careful investment. If he just stuck it in a 0% savings account, it will be $50K in 5 years. Financially, this seems to be a smarter plan than yours. But if you really enjoy what you do in your four extra hours per day, and you really hate scrubbing toilets... maybe your way is better. The point is, there is lots of room to question your choice.

<comment><USER5> Your second paragraph is one of the sharpest and most original insights I've read on HN in the ten years I've been here. That is a fantastic analogy for vesting cliffs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > At Matter, I'm building a team that shares the same work and lifestyle > ethics that I do. This means that we begin our day at 9am, work normal > business hours (with a break for a walk when we need it!), then head home > between 5pm and 6pm to recharge.

I know not hiring night owls was mentioned, but I feel like this isn't the way to go. Even in startups one can make a ton of the communication async.

I know that my mind doesn't work 9-5, it's much more chunked and a good bit of that late. If I try to force it, I end up working in the evening to make up for low productivity.

</comment><comment><USER7> Beautiful, really appreciate the data-driven approach vs the short-term fad diets.

You should really have recommended your nutritionist if they were so instrumental.</comment>


YUI Theater — "Crockford on JavaScript — Part 5: The End of All Things" - <AUTHOR> http://www.yuiblog.com/blog/2010/04/08/video-crockonjs-5

<comment><USER2> Liked the first 4 better than this one, FWIW. This one he mostly talks about the browser/JS security model.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for the links. Very nice videos.</comment>