The Next Revolution in 3-D Printing: Disposable Panties - T-A http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-07/the-next-revolution-in-3-d-printing-disposable-panties.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Disposable plastic clothing. I'm sorry if this sounds bit hippie but that sounds really bad idea environmentally.

<comment><USER2> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodegradable_plastic](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodegradable_plastic)

<comment><USER3> Do any of the these from their website fit that profile?

> Various types of liquid polymers such as natural Latex, silicon, > polyurethane and Teflon, as well as variety of textile fibres such as > cotton, viscose and polyamide enable tailor-made fabrics for any need.

[http://www.tamicare.com/#!technology/c1xu8](http://www.tamicare.com/#!technology/c1xu8)

<comment><USER4> Yes, latex and cotton are biodegradable.

3D printed teflon and polyamide would be great, those are excellent materials with plenty of applications beyond clothing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Piece of underwear printed in 3 seconds? That's Startrek grade innovation.

</comment><comment><USER6> I told my wife about this article expecting her to be very impressed and she said "so does that mean you have to take your pants off every time you change the panties?"

I wonder if they've solved for this already? There's only one photo of panties on the site that I can find and the style suggests they would require removal of pants. Not exactly fast, and potentially awkward in public restrooms.

</comment><comment><USER7> Or you could just use hydrogen peroxide to get the blood stains out of fabric.

<comment><USER8> It isn't just bloodstains. For example, depending on your body's pH, the discharge can also bleach fabric.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Japan rejoices.</comment>


Packaging Is All the Rage, and Not in a Good Way (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/08/technology/08packaging.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> > But the frustration persists. Only about 600 of the millions of products > Amazon sells come in frustration-free versions.

That's horseshit, I thought, then I saw that the article is from 2010.

Today Amazon has way, way more: [http://www.amazon.com/b?node=5521637011](http://www.amazon.com/b?node=5521637011)

> "16 of 55,642 results for Amazon Frustration-Free Packaging"

I don't use my car often, so I find myself ordering little things from Amazon all the time (1-2 packages a week, lots of books, pens, camera stuff, cables, small electronics, household necessities, vacuum bags, cleaning supplies, etc). In the past two years _lots_ of it has been frustration-free. Kudos to Amazon for what they've done in the meantime.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, blast from the past. I worked on frustration-free packaging at Amazon back then (the article is from 2010). 'Twas an interesting gig.

<comment><USER4> can you give us some personal anecdotes, I'm genuinely curious to hear your story.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure about his personal anecdotes but having recently almost found one of my fingers amputated after trying to get an SD card out of its theft proof package after shopping on the go I think that frustration free packaging should be mandatory and should be re-branded as injury free packaging. That plastic is as sharp as any knife and it can _really_ get you while you're trying to retrieve your goodies without access to proper tools.

<comment><USER6> This sort of outlook is untenable in almost every other domain. For example, we don't ban bottles requiring an opener, even though many foolish people lose teeth or otherwise injure themselves trying to open them.[1]

If I understand correctly, you went to a store, saw a hard-to-open package, and bought it. Then you used incorrect tools and/or techniques to open it and almost seriously injured yourself. Now you want to pass a law banning said packaging? I'm confused by the moral and ethical view that puts such a responsibility upon companies. You're the one pushing a knife toward your own fingers.[2]

You could simply avoid buying products with bad packaging. You could also contact companies that do have poor packaging and give them a piece of your mind. And if you do buy something that's hard to open, use the right tools the right way! Always cut away from yourself. And remember: Sharper knives are safer. They require less pressure to cut, meaning something will be less likely to slip. Frustrating packaging is not a new thing, and these rules apply when using any cutting tool.

1\. If you're willing to bite that bullet and say all bottles must be twist- off, I'm OK with that. That reasoning can lead to a lot of other weird things though.

2\. It occurs to me that many people may not know how to use knives safely. It was in Boy Scouts that I was taught to always cut away from yourself, not school.

<comment><USER5> > So if I understand correctly, you went to a store, saw a hard-to-open > package, and bought it. Then you used incorrect tools and/or technique to > open it and almost seriously injured yourself.

No, it looks like you don't understand correctly at all.

I _did_ injure myself in spite of being _very_ good with tools and general tradecraft, to the point of having had my own machine shop. If I can get injured with such packaging so could you and just about everybody else.

As far as I'm concerned there is no good reason to package things like this for general consumption, but here we are. Opening a package like this results in razor sharp plastic edges using just about any technique that I am aware of.

Using your teeth for bottle opening is just dumb, trying to open a plastic package with the aid of a pair of scissors is really all it should take. Unfortunately that stuff is a bit tougher than it sometimes looks with surprising results even for the seasoned.

As for the 'correct technique' I would love to be enlightened.

<comment><USER7> _As for the 'correct technique' I would love to be enlightened._

Depending on the clamshell, it may be easier to cut at the bubble rather than at the edge. In this case you're dealing with a thin, easily cut bit of flat plastic, rather than a corrugated thick plastic weld. This requires a knife rather than scissors, though sometimes you may be able to get away with using a single scissor blade. This is just a technique that sometimes helps; I wouldn't give it the officialness of 'correct' :)

<comment><USER5> The tensile strength of the packaging (about 0.8 mm worth of it) is such that you need brute force to even pierce it.

Maybe a chopping block as a base and a stanley knife should be part and parcel of any tourist's apparel about to buy an SD card.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Plastic clamshells bothered me a lot less once I discovered how to use a manual can-opener (I love the OXO model, from Amazon: [http://www.amazon.com/OXO-Good-Grips-Can- Opener/dp/B00004OCJ...](http://www.amazon.com/OXO-Good-Grips-Can- Opener/dp/B00004OCJW)

Much safer (for hands and for product) than a knife or scissors.

<comment><USER9> That sounds like a lot better idea than my tin snips and leather gloves. I'll try it next time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Oh Christ, I was just thinking today how stupid packaging winds me up. From what I recall, I don't have this experience with amazon purchases!

For example, the packaging that requires scissors and a spare pair for backup really does my head in. The backup in case I break the first pair, which has actually happened to me.

Another one is the corner tag on food packaging which either is stuck down as well as the rest of the film or it rips off the film AROUND the glue, leaving absolutely no hope of pulling it off the sane way and forcing me to use a knife, which by that point makes me look like a scary individual. By this poiny, I'm slightly more pissed off that I've got used cutlery without actually eating mr making anything.

I actually get really wound up and even consider complaining to trading standards. After all what good is a product if I can't bloody open it?

I can see why it would affect product ratings.

<comment><USER7> Clamshell packaging is an anti-theft mechanism, as the article mentions. It's a lot harder to pocket something that's encased in a wide plastic sheet, and even if you do, the number of items you can pocket is significantly reduced.

Given that retailers only make 20-40% of the final price of the product, having a couple of items stolen costs them a lot more than your couple of minutes of irritation costs you. The packaging isn't stupid, it's just not optimised solely for you (as the article states, web and brick stores have different needs here).

<comment><USER11> I wanted to make this a top level comment, but it belongs here.

Clamshell packaging has more to do with preventing returns than preventing theft. People feel like they have destroyed some of the product to open it, so are very very reluctant to return it.

<comment><USER7> It can do both - if clamshell packaging wasn't really for preventing theft, then the plastic sheets wouldn't be so much larger than the product. Large objects take more room and cost more to handle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Let's not forget one thing about the old plastic awful packaging: We're not the target audience.

Manufacturers went down this road for a reason, and that reason is (or used to be) looking appealing on a store shelf, without being able to just take it. You can put a pretty picture on the box, but the draw of "that's the thing I want, and I can almost play with it" is hard to deny. Dual mode packaging is a step in the right direction for sure, but really, it's about reducing costs, being able to slap a shipping label directly onto the box, and not repacking it - all to save in shipping costs.

Having Walmart, Amazon, etc repackage (pun intended) saving shipping costs under the guise of frustration-free, eco-friendly, whatever, is brilliant, but at the end of the day, it's only purpose is to increase margins.

<comment><USER12> My point with the above though, wasn't to villify saving costs - only one of two possible modes of business success (reduce expense, increase income)

The problem I see is when a manufacturer starts to say "This is good enough for amazon, what's your problem" to typical retailers. This could start causing problems with your traditional retailers. Which, some might say is a good thing, disrupting, all that, but then, when enough of the old way is gone, and most of the market is through online stores, why stay so cheap? Why wouldn't amazon, etc. just start increasing prices to meet demand? We've already seen this starting with the decrease of value in Prime, the end of the tax free hey-day, etc. If our ultimate deliverable in the new internet market is just that we've moved local to online at what the cost used to be locally, we kind of start to fail after a while, don't we?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Who can change titles? Should note it's from 2010 since so much has changed since then.

</comment><comment><USER14> Related, I rather miss the trial balloon that was the Amazon Tote service. Items were delivered in large reusable tote bags which they'd take back on the next delivery, akin to the crates used by Amazon Fresh. IIRC, tote delivery was free but incurred a delay to a specific one or two days per week of delivery service for any given location.

I _really_ liked that Tote eliminated so much packaging needed for conventional shippers including shipping boxes, airfills, and so forth.

<comment><USER8> I miss the Webvan crates from ~2000. They charged a small deposit ($3?), but I ended up collecting about 50 of them when Webvan went out of business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The biggest packing fail has got to be the scissors that come in sealed plastic that can only be opened with scissors.

</comment><comment><USER16> Thought this was going to be about postinstall scripts in debs.</comment>


Seeing ultraviolet, exploring color - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/118557-the-eyes-have-it-seeing-ultraviolet-exploring-color

<comment><USER2> I guess this means that the rods and cones in our eyes are capable of processing UV light, but our natural lenses filter it out while implants like this don't? Anyone have a deeper explanation?

<comment><USER3> Seems to be what he is suggesting.

 _So perhaps a small percentage of people (myself included) have increased sensitivity in the S cones to light around 400nm (or shorter) ... but normally, the natural lens would filter that out - mine is now gone._

[http://www.komar.org/faq/colorado-cataract-surgery- crystalen...](http://www.komar.org/faq/colorado-cataract-surgery- crystalens/ultra-violet-color-glow/)</comment></comment>


React Native Accessibility Is Pretty Bad - <AUTHOR> http://www.takingnotes.co/blog/2018/11/09/react-native-accessibility/ <comment><USER2> I mean, none of these concerns are specific to React Native, really; any lowest common denominator framework has the same issue. Accessibility is too rarely considered by designers, or more specifically the designers' bosses, who seem to think of it as an afterthought to be tacked on later as an optional bonus; it should be a core consideration.

In iOS, it's been a core part of the system frameworks for 9 years. That builds on over a decade of the same accessibility frameworks in macOS. There's really no reason that every new, popular, and widely-used user interface framework or library can't implement accessibility 100% on the two primary mobile operating systems.

Last year's WWDC session[1] on designing with accessibility in mind was just a reminder, but it really should be considered a mandatory part of user interface testing. If a company can't afford that aspect of testing, then they should really consider what frameworks and libraries they're using, how they're developing, and what trade-offs are involved.

[1]: [https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2017/806/](https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2017/806/)

</comment><comment><USER3> >Allow me to preface this by saying that React Native sets out to solve problems I don't think are very interesting to solve. In particular I don't think that sharing a single UI between disparate platforms is desirable from any perspective that isn't cost savings and that even from that perspective it's dicey.

Allow me to disagree. Mobile development is a mess these days. Doing stuff in React native is way easier than native (when there is a module that implements what you want), so most of the time you do things (a lot) faster. Sure, react native needs a lot of work and stop breaking things every single version they update and the modules need to step up in quality. I hope with the fabric rewrite, things get much better.

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally agree with you about React Native being easier for me anyway. I would love if accessibility was more built in. The original author submitted a PR for a basic bit of integration that looks fine but is being blocked from merging by a lint thing.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm using React Native for a lot of projects these days so this is pretty worrying. Seems like there's a lot that react-navigation could be doing.</comment>


Does it matter where you go to college? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/12/does-it-matter-where-you-go-college/577816/ <comment><USER2> This is not what these studies measure, but people in Academia are much more likely to have gone to elite grad schools (in their respective fields, which is not the same as undergrad rankings of course). And, in my experience (Stanford undergrad, MIT PhD, currently UChicago postdoc), elite grad schools predominantly select people from elite undergrad institutions. It's possible to get into a great grad program from a non-elite school, but it's much harder, while someone like me in the middle of my class at Stanford was able to get into good grad schools without too much trouble.

This is probably not just due to snobbery; it's much more likely for the admissions committee to have heard of your recommenders and such. If you do research with a famous professor at a non-elite school you'd probably have similar results, but the barrier is a bit higher.

<comment><USER3> That's almost certainly true, but interestingly, the list of elite schools does get shuffled up a bit at the grad level. Few undergrads would consider UCSD more of a prize than any Ivy, but as a graduate research program, it would be considered very elite. Berkeley arguably has more top 5 PhD programs than any other university, but again, when two high school students bump into each other in the hallway, whip out a ruler, and measure admissions packages, Harvard is definitely a longer and thicker acceptance letter than Berkeley.

I do remember an interesting flurry or articles from a study a couple of years ago suggesting it doesn't matter much where you go to college _provided you major in STEM_. From my limited observations and experience, I'd say that's true - I doubt a strong CS major from UCSD experiences any real disadvantage vis-a-vis more selective ivies, but an international relations major from Yale definitely has a leg up on securing those prestigious early career internships and positions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My anectodal experience tells me no. I went to a CUNY (NYC system college) school with a 99% acceptance rate and sub 20% graduation rate. It was more important that I lived in New York than that I went to this specific school. I was able to find internships which got me into the industry, network with folks from different industries, and generally have a lot of opportunities available to me. Also, I graduated in 4 years with no student debt and low overall expenses, I was able to pay my way with a part time job and government subsidies. I've given way more in taxes than what it cost the city and federal government to send me to school.

It may not be an elite Yale or Stanford education, but most folks don't have that anyway.

<comment><USER5> But is your experience typical or exceptional?

<comment><USER4> It's atypical but I think it provides a completely different model about how to think about college. A lot of parents are stressing out about how to pay for college and for good reason, but I think you can derive 80% of the value of going to college for 20% of the cost.

For one: I don't think most families can pay the extra fees associated w/ going to an out of state school. Second: most states have at least one solid state school that has a relatively high acceptance rate for residents, third: students and parents really need to have frank discussions about the economic potential of a degree. Fourth: Students and parents should strongly consider a "half and half" between community college and a state school to complete their degree.

At the end of the day, a lot of parents are paying for prestige, but if you can get the right degree and internship experience I don't think where you went to school is weighted as heavily.

I'm fortunate to be in software (although I did do market research before declaring), I doubt anyone who's read my resume has heard of the school I went to, but a critical internship really opened up the doors for me and I've had opportunities to interview at some of the biggest companies in the world. You gotta think outside the box.

<comment><USER6> How do you get the right internship experience if the right companies don't recruit from your school?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> >Third, to admissions officers of elite colleges: Do better. America's most selective colleges can, it seems, change the lives of minorities and low- income students. But they're still bastions of privilege. They enroll more students from the top 1 percent of the income scale than the entire bottom 60 percent. In this way, elite institutions are like factories of social mobility being used as storage facilities for privilege; they have the potential to use their space to manufacture opportunity at scale, but mostly they clear out real estate for the already rich, who are going to be fine, anyway.

I wonder if this this advice would actually be harmful. The real cachet of the elite colleges is not so much their elite teaching, but that the elite go to them. Going to these colleges as a non-elite kind of "adopts" you into the elite and has great benefits for these non-elites. However, if these elite colleges basically become a reflection of the United States where the vast majority of people are non-elite, these elite colleges will lose their aura over time. The elite won't really be affected by this as they have other social networks to connect with fellow elite. However, the non-elite will lose this important way of networking with the elite.

</comment><comment><USER5> They should run a location effect study to accompany this.

Is it better to have a high SAT score and go to San Jose State vs low SAT score and go to (say) UVa (University of Virginia which is a good school far away from Silicon Valley) to get a job in Silicon Valley.

</comment><comment><USER8> It matters especially if you're not from the US. You could've gone to the best university in your country, but if it's not a top institution in the US or a handful of others (ETH and a few more in top positions according to Qs Rankings) I feel like most big names in tech won't even look at your resume.

Anedoctal example, but I graduated with a decent mark from the top CS department in my country (106/110) as an UG, I couldn't even apply for a masters in top universities in the UK (let alone US) since their requirements are skewed towards not accepting people from my country (if you came from the UK you needed a 2:1, which if I remember correctly is around 70%, if you came from my country you needed 109/110, which is over 99%. Scores for other EU countries like Spain and France were converted to their 70%). This led me to going into a masters in my country, which will most likely hinder me from getting a PhD in any top institution in the EU just because of the country I was born in, even though some of the professors in my current masters degree course are top researchers in their fields. So yes, I feel like where you go to school earlier in life _greatly_ influences where you will end up in the future; and even more so, where you were born influences your chances of making it anywhere in life. This is not to say that I am some unrecognised genius, I feel like I am a "median" CS student with a poor math background to booth; but at the same time I absolutely feel like a lot of talent will go unrecognised and won't have the same chances in life others have just because they happened to be born in a country rather than another (even more so after having studied in the UK for a year and having met people who went on to work for top companies when they clearly were subpar compared to people studying in my own country)

<comment><USER9> I'm an Australian with no degree who got poor marks in high school, and I got a job at Microsoft (software engineer doing C++ dev and some light reverse- engineering) after about 5 years of freelance work, with zero qualifications.

IIRC my education history came up once in the interview process (I was interviewed by 6 different people that day and only one brought it up), and that part of the conversation basically consisted of:

Interviewer: "You don't have a degree?"

Me: "No, I'm self-taught."

Interviewer: "Oh okay, that's cool."

Literally nobody that I work with talks or cares about where you went to school or what your grades were. YMMV I guess.

<comment><USER8> I feel like the problem lies in getting your feet through the front door, after that how you got your education really doesn't matter anymore. You were lucky enough to get an interview with Microsoft thanks to your past work experience, but other people (especially the ones who try academia before going into the private sector) don't have that chance and most of the time won't even be invited to an interview, that's the problem.

I am confident that if big companies actually interviewed people coming from different universities they would find that most top-uni grads are worse that people coming from different institutions who always feel like they have to perform 110% just to level the playing field.

<comment><USER9> Actually my work experience had almost nothing to do with it, as pretty much all of it was done under NDA. What really helped me was having a set of public personal projects which demonstrated competency in relevant areas (I know because I had a discussion about it with my hiring manager after I'd been working there for a couple of months - I was curious about how much the lack of a degree mattered when they were filtering candidates).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think that we idealize that it doesn't matter, but at a certain level, it does matter - even decades later. I went to no-name university and graduated with a high GPA in CS in '95\. My work experience since has been solid, and I have some respectable accomplishments, but places like Google and Facebook don't even notice me. The only "black mark" on my resume that I can imagine would be holding me back is "graduated from no-name university".

<comment><USER11> I don't think this is always the case. I graduated in 2014, from a small state university with a CS degree and a decent GPA. Last year after only have a couple years in the field with a big US based Tech company, and I landed interviews with Amazon and Google while searching for jobs after being laid off. I think it really just depends on location, and probably a million other things.

<comment><USER12> I think it depends on companies you worked for prior. I can develop complete applications. However, I don't have much experience with large teams and I don't want to work for a tech company because I prefer a laid back environment and less hours.

I doubt google would hire me due to lack of experience working on a large team with many departments,even though my GPA was 3.9 from a average Chicago Uni.

<comment><USER13> Ditto. I've been in IT since 1998 and attended a smallish college in VA. Done fine all these years. I don't need the feather in my cap from working for large companies like some feel the need to pursue. I worked for Microsoft for a short time and wondered why I even took the job. It was among the worst of my tech jobs. The people were stuck up, they were on the verge of losing out on the mobile race (while still pushing Windows Mobile). Never again. I work for a non-profit and am quite happy to, as you say, have more control, less hours, but far more sanity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There is a lot of talk about elite universities offering full-tuition to those that make under a certain income, but what this ignores is usually you have to be in a certain income bracket to obtain certain SAT, AP scores along with the right ECs and upper division college prep courses. This usually means attending the best private, public, or STEM magnent school in your state, which sadly most families in those income brackets cannot afford. The people getting into these elite schools come from elite secondary schools and the poor people that can't attend these schools are usually excluded from admissions to elite colleges. So the "free tuition" advertisement is nice, but in practice their admissions standards do a good job of keeping such poor folks out.

<comment><USER15> This is at best a half truth. Going to these schools helps, but it is not necessary.

There are an abundance of people who are qualified to get into elite universities at less-than-best schools in a given state.

There are three main issues that I see:

1\. They self-select out of applying. They know lots of smart people, but they don't know anyone else who applied, so those elite schools must be impossible to get into.

2\. Their teachers/administrators have no idea how to write a strong recommendation for a stellar student. The applicants don't know how to choose people who can write good recommendations.

3\. The applicants don't know about the small tweaks in their extracurriculars that will make them standout (e.g., demonstrating leadership, vision, etc.), and/or they don't know how to write about their considerable achievements in a compelling way (e.g., I've heard an incredible and incredibly modest person saying that their considerable achievements were not worth discussing on an appication because "Well, what else would you do? Isn't this just normal?" Answer, no, it was not normal.).

Note also that plenty of the "poor" students have been recruited in one way or another, with athletes probably being the biggest recruiting pool.

<comment><USER14> What you wrote only adds to, not negates my overall message. These are the products of being poor.

<comment><USER15> I think the admissions practices are largely fine, and they dont, by design, aim to keep poor people out (as you suggested).

I think that these schools could do a better job at educating potential applicants and the circle of people around said potential applicants _much_ better. In my opinion, the internet has democratized this process considerably over the past 20 years or so, but I think there is still considerable room for improvement, especially by the universities themselves.

<comment><USER16> I guess I'd disagree, in that admissions practices at many schools are designed to admit children of rich people. Sure, poor people aren't penalized for being poor per se, but they're not going to contribute to the endowment, you know?

So you get a boost for being a legacy, for having parents who are rich, for being from a rich feeder school that indicates you have parents who are rich, etc. It's not that you get a -1 on your point total for being poor. It's that you get a lot of +1s for being well-off, because ultimately well-off people give more money back to the school & produce well-off alumni who are attractive to well-off applicants. At private colleges and universities in particular there is a careful attention paid to long-term revenue, as colleges are feeling the economic squeeze in the amenities arms race. Colleges are separating into 'winners' and 'losers' and that sorting is along the lines of revenue and endowment.

The article is right on that connecting unconnected kids with connected peers is the biggest benefit of an 'elite' education. 'Winner' colleges today are trying to surf the wave of existing power structures rather than create/educate a new wave of potential elites.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think "where" you study matters, but for a different reason. It's not the prestige of the school, it's the geographic proximity to potential jobs.

I'm (still) trying to find a job in New Zealand, Australia, or Canada. Despite an MEng and 4 years work experience to satisfy immigration, companies aren't interested in interviewing people who aren't already physically there and have the right to work.

The only solution seems to be to get a student visa by joining a course in underwater basket weaving, and continue looking for a job locally when physically present. It's a terrible misuse of the visa system, but there seems to be no other way.

</comment><comment><USER18> I believe if you want knowledge, then the answer is no. College can teach you a lot and show a ton. That said, ultimately, you will have to become your own teacher anyway and you can do it in your own room at your own house. But if your goal is getting a job, you absolutely want the biggest names (the bigger, the better chance at getting a job) to vouch for you. According to the article, this may not be true for rich white men (presumably, American), but if you are from Kazakhstan or Nigeria, I believe you'll definitely get a bang for your buck waving that Harvard paper in front of a potential employer.

</comment><comment><USER19> >In other words, if Mike and Drew have the same SAT scores and apply to the same colleges, but Mike gets into Harvard and Drew doesn't, they can still expect to earn the same income throughout their careers.

I've read that SATs are heavily g-loaded.

In such a case, your success being correlated with the SAT is obvious, as IQ being positively correlated with income is well-accepted in psychometrics.

So yes, you can be successful without going to a good school, but mostly because you're relatively intelligent.

</comment><comment><USER20> So it's a tautology. Prestigious schools attract top talent because top talent goes to prestigious schools. The best way to be successful is to be top talent—regardless of where you go to school for the majority—but top talent are likely to be those people who push and stress and play to win the "collegiate sweepstakes".

<comment><USER21> I think you missed the point of the article. It only matters for certain demographics. The byline says it all: "they can have a big effect if you're not rich, not white, or not a guy"

I'm not sure what 'rich' means in the article, but if it means 'not poor' then for middle class white males it doesn't matter what school is on your resume.

<comment><USER22> > for middle class white males it doesn't matter what school is on your resume

That's not what the studies show. What the studies show is that, if you're a well-off white male _who is in the top 1% academically_ then it doesn't matter, long-term financially, where you go to university.

I mean, I found the article interesting but that's a pretty niche bunch of chaps right there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> tldr;

"The simplest answer to the question "Do elite colleges matter?" is: It depends on who you are. In the big picture, elite colleges don't seem to do much extra for rich white guys. But if you're not rich, not white, or not a guy, the elite-college effect is huge. It increases earnings for minorities and low-income students, and it encourages women to delay marriage and work more, even though it doesn't raise their per-hour wages."

<comment><USER24> To be honest, that sounds like going to an elite school gives women the short end of the stick. You get paid the same, but put off vital life events.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It not only matters where you go to college but which professors you study under. Got one that doesn't care? Sorry, their research is more important than effectively teaching you. Got one that carries out favoritism and/or discrimination? Sorry, your grade and chance of getting a good first job out of college just got lower if they don't like you, and you still get to pay thousands for that. I see MOOCs as a step in the right direction to solving many problems within education.

</comment><comment><USER26> So many correlation and causation errors all over the place.

<comment><USER27> Maybe so, but please don't post shallow dismissals to HN. A good critical comment teaches us something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Yes sadly</comment>


Doing One Thing, Well: The Unix Philosophy - <AUTHOR> https://hackaday.com/2018/09/10/doing-one-thing-well-the-unix-philosophy/ <comment><USER2> This is always hardest in the beginning. At the start of any project, it feels wasteful to separate every bit of functionality into its own, self-contained project, including the necessity to implement a standard I/O model for it.

But as the project advances? I'm usually cursing myself for writing code that does two or three things, because suddenly it needs to be configured to do a slightly different 2 or 3 things, and before you know it I don't even know why I wrote the damn thing in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Another interesting idea to come out of the computing world around that time > was the saying "worse is better". Although this idea wasn't a direct > relative of the Unix philosophy, it's certainly similar. The idea references > the fact that additional features or complexity doesn't necessarily make > things better, and a "worse" project — one with fewer features and less > complexity — is actually better because it will tend to be more reliable and > usable.

I don't think that this is an accurate description of "worse is better". I've always taken it as being a bit (or more) tongue-in-cheek. Sort of an analogy to the saying that a lie can travel half-way around the world before the truth can get its boots on, but going on the say that a lie is therefore better because its faster.

<comment><USER4> My understanding of "worse is better" is that it's a terse reading of "perfect is the enemy of just good enough", or in other words, "just ship it already" \- pick a stopping point where it's useful, and stop worrying about how it could be perfect - you'll never ship.

A more verbose breakdown of "worse is better" can be found in Richard Gabriels: "The Rise of Worse is Better"[1] also linked in the OP, which includes a really fun breakdown of MIT attitudes vs New Jersey attitudes. (To wit: AT&T Unix came to us from New Jersey)

[1] [https://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is- better.html](https://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html)</comment></comment>


Really spiffy continuously variable *geared* transmission - <AUTHOR> http://www.gizmag.com/steve-durnin-ddrive-d-drive-infinitely-variable-transmission-geared/15088/

<comment><AUTHOR> Reading a bit more on it, it's starting to sound less practical to me. Almost more like a differential, in that you have to supply a variable speed to one shaft to change the ratio. Now that's easy enough with an electric motor, but if that auxiliary input requires significant torque, it's not so useful anymore.

Several people have commented that it sounds very much like some of the hydrostatic drives used in the Agri industries.

But hey, it's still a neat demonstration, if not entirely practical.

</comment><comment><USER2> I'll be honest in that I can't quite figure out how this works. I did note the acentric gear at end which would be very difficult to balance and would surely put huge loads on the shaft holding it. From the text it sounds like the ratio is selected by spinning the lower shaft at a variable speed, which is quite interesting but sounds like a bit of a challenge.</comment>


Lock Your Mac with a Bluetooth Proximity Sensor - <AUTHOR> http://www.netputing.com/applications/handylock/ <comment><USER2> > As a result your screen will be locked until you move back in range of your > Mac. At that point it will unlock on its own. Almost magical!

That's asking for trouble. It's too easy to step away with something embarrassing or incriminating on your screen expecting to return alone, and end up returning to the computer with someone who should not see that screen.

Unlocking should require (at least optionally) something more than your mere presence, such as a PIN. Unlocking should then work this way:

• if the correct Bluetooth device is near, the PIN is necessary and sufficient,

• if the correct Bluetooth device is not near, unlocking requires something more complex than a simple PIN, such as the logged in user's password.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not exactly the same, but in the same space: [http://www.knocktounlock.com/](http://www.knocktounlock.com/)

<comment><USER4> Been using this for awhile. Deactivated it because it's a huge security risk at border crossings.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. I just mentioned it as it's similar, but I won't recommended either. I don't recall leaving an unlocked terminal in the past 10+ years. It's habit that's very easy to develop and follow strictly (I do this at home even when I'm alone). At one point, I was even tracing the keyboard cable when coming back to unlock to make sure there isn't something in-between although it's not hard to hack your keyboard internally as well. Laptops robbed me of this habit, unfortunately.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone know of a simple script to get the signal strength of the bluetooth connection on OS X? I've been putting together pieces of this app functionality, but I'm stuck at a scriptable / command line bluetooth program.

Right now I'm using a bunch of launch daemons to disable the requirement for a password when I'm on a particular wifi network, but bluetooth would be handy.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I have no affiliation with the author of this thing -- I just found it today and started playing with it. It seems to work well after you mess with the sensitivity a bit.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is a really cool idea. I looked online for alternatives since I have an android device, and while the best solution I found requires an additional device, it looks very polished.

Does anyone have experience with this?

[https://atama.io/sesame2](https://atama.io/sesame2)

</comment><comment><USER7> Nice and also available elsewhere. Namely:

Token Lock - www.map-pin.com/tokenlock-home

Proximity - [https://code.google.com/p/reduxcomputing- proximity/](https://code.google.com/p/reduxcomputing-proximity/)

</comment><comment><USER8> The fact that it uses its own screensaver instead of the system one is enough of a reason not to use it. The only thing it should do is trigger the system screensaver to activate, all unlocking should be standard.

</comment><comment><USER9> A few years ago I figured out how to make my Mac play a snippet of A-Team theme music when I would return to my desk. It lasted a very triumphant half day before I got tired of it.

</comment><comment><USER10> Nice idea - but can't get it to work reliably. It locks when my phone's signal is weak despite being close to me.

</comment><comment><USER11> Will this play nice with Handoff between iOS8 and OS X 10.10?

</comment><comment><USER12> No Android support?

<comment><USER13> It detects my android (S5) and gets readings from it. Doesn't seem to lock the screen though...</comment></comment>


Senate Stock Watcher - <AUTHOR> https://senatestockwatcher.com <comment><USER2> It would be great if

(a) elected officials could hold only cash, bonds, and index funds, specifically bonds and index funds that are open the general public and have at least $XX assets, to prevent engineering an index fund available only one one or a few people.

(b) pay them better to make up for the loss of gravy. Sure, the pay raise would not be sufficient to make up for the lost income, but it should be high enough that none of them could complain they can't live on the salary. Paying the senate majority leader under $200K / year is not enough, considering they often have living expenses in Washington and their home state. Lower ranking members get paid less. Pay the leader $1M/year and everyone else $500K/year and then prohibit anything but vanilla investments.

<comment><USER3> Long only is actually a pretty terrible choice if you want a "solid" portfolio with risk hedging.

I work in "tech" and I'm substantially net short "tech" as a hedge for potential layoffs, via options. Unfortunately I can't hedge via my employer's stock directly (like most companies my employer very explicitly disallows it, plus I'd be running a high risk of an insider trade accusation; I think it's understandable and acceptable).

A better idea might be to force people's allocation way ahead of time, say any change must be pre-announced 6-12 months ahead of time. That's how responsible executives (for example Bill Gates) sell their stock - via long term stock sale programs. Once signed - has to happen, whether good news or bad news.

<comment><USER4> You can easily protect your portfolio while being net long using uncorrelated asset classes like a blend of stocks and bonds, or even long inverse ETFs. Look into risk parity portfolios. No need to keep your foot on the gas and the brake at the same time.

<comment><USER3> Inverse ETFs are shorts, let's be real for a second :). And I'm well familiar with risk parity.

Bonds+stocks only doesn't protect you from stagflation (inflation up, growth down) or a depression (inflation around zero, growth down).

Bonds+stocks+gold only doesn't protect you from a depression.

Both a depression and a stagflation can easily last for over 5 years, so it should be taken seriously, IMHO.

Related: [https://www.artemiscm.com/](https://www.artemiscm.com/) (see the paper linked below; note that this is also a sales pitch from a long vol fund, so possibly it's a little too optimistic about the strategy).

<comment><USER5> You're wrong. Bonds protect against depression and index-linked bonds protect against stagflation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Fascinating site!

Unfortunately -- correct me if I'm wrong -- the calendar day selected isn't the day stocks were traded, but rather _reported_ , which can be up to 45 days after a trade? [1] E.g. today's date (Apr 10) shows trades that happened on March 9, 20, and 25.

So very cool for transparency, but of zero utility for anyone trying to either duplicate a trading strategy, or trying to suss out in advance what senators know that we don't. :(

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

<comment><USER7> So, in about 30 - 45 days time this is going to make for some VERY interesting reading..

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If historical data is available, an aggregated result of this could be compared to the S&P index. To see if their trades actually outperform and therefore if they a better traders than average, and if so, this might mean they have better info.

<comment><USER9> And if they're consistently worse than the average, just execute the inverse of their trades and beat the market. :)

Joking aside, I'm surprised that members of Congress have even allowed to trade on the markets, given how much inside information they know.

<comment><USER10> I think it's actually worse than that: I think they are specifically allowed to do more insider trading than the average US citizen. I could be wrong though, I just heard that once upon a time.

<comment><USER11> seems like the STOCK Act should have closed that loophole, [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/STOCK_Act,so](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/STOCK_Act,so) it's illegal we just have to see if anyone is prosecuted over it.

<comment><USER12> If I recall correctly, the stock act has them regulating themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> How about making one for Congress?

In 2011, "60 Minutes" reported that members of Congress could legally trade stock based on non-public information from Capitol Hill. video [0], write-up [1]

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zh30lm7aSQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zh30lm7aSQ)

[1] [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/congress-trading-stock-on- insid...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/congress-trading-stock-on-inside- information/)

<comment><USER14> The Senate is part of Congress but The House doesn't disclose trades. The Stock Act of 2012 prohibits insider trading for the Senate and provides that trades are disclosed, which is why the data is available for that branch.

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

<comment><USER15> > The house doesn't disclose trades.

This is not a factual statement. See the Clerk of the House of Representatives [0].

The main issue is that many of these trades are submitted by scanned, handwritten documents.

[0] [http://clerk.house.gov/public_disc/financial- search.aspx](http://clerk.house.gov/public_disc/financial-search.aspx)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Would be interesting to create a senate-tracking "index" fund. Wonder how that performs against the market.

<comment><USER17> The STOCK Act (or Ethics in Government Act, actually) only requires reporting within 30-45 days of purchase/sale, so your fund will lag behind whatever market-moving events they're trading on.

<comment><USER18> If you copy the long term plays it could still be viable.

<comment><USER19> You wouldn't know if it's long term.

Day 1 - stock purchase Day 45 - reported Day 46 - you buy or not? Day 45 - stock sold Day 90 - reported Day 91 - you've already lost

<comment><USER18> I mean investments that are typically long term, such as LEAPS, and as an example buying them if they're still at the same price they were bought by the senator at.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> A question to people who might pay more attention to the functioning of Congress than me: Is much of their day-to-day business actually secret? If Congress is about to pass a bill which will benefit company X, can't we all go on to the House or Senate web sites and read the drafts of those bills and have the same "insider information" that they do? Are we just mad that they're paying more attention to what they themselves are doing and how it will benefit certain companies' stocks than normal people who have better things to do with their lives than track what Congress is debating from day to day?

<comment><USER21> > can't we all go on to the House or Senate web sites and read the drafts of > those bills and have the same "insider information" that they do?

The published drafts are days behind what's being circulated; you can see this every time there's an emergency bill, it's often voted on almost simultaneously with the final text being released. Sometimes, there's a reading of the bill, if people push the right procedural buttons.

Regardless, insider trading on delayed information isn't nearly as good as insider trading on current information (probably? I don't have experience with insider trading :)

<comment><USER22> This. When npr.org has more timely, relevant information than congress.gov-- e.g. S.3548[1] wholesale pivots to H.R.748[2] with significant changes incorporated, and the latter isn't updated until days later--it leaves much for the general public to desire.

[1] [https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate- bill/354...](https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/3548)

[2] [https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house- bill/748](https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/748)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > It shall be unlawful for any person to obtain or use a report: for any > unlawful purpose; for any commercial purpose, other than by news and > communications media for dissemination to the general public;

Welp, looks like trying to actually trade on this information is illegal.

Feels like a double standard.

<comment><USER24> Good luck trying to prove that one traded after reading a specific website on a specific date...

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I wonder if it makes sense to forbid members of congress from owning anything other than a narrow class of investments (for example homes and index funds, though I'm surely missing many).

This sounds like the old "cut their pay!" argument. The rejoinder to _that_ argument is that it should be practical for people who aren't already wealthy to hold office, and a low salary would hurt that.

This is different because the hit to potential earnings from restriction to a basic generic portfolio seems small (maybe not relative to the upside from insider trading, but to what members of congress would make as average citizens). Heck, it's still possible to trade in index funds off insider information. But the advantage seems smaller.

<comment><USER26> No need to limit asset classes, this is the problem blind trusts are designed to solve. It's the tool that anyone who wants to avoid the appearance of impropriety uses.

<comment><USER27> But the current majority, at least in the Senate, seems not to need to care about the appearance of impropriety.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I wonder if openness of this information can lead to a senator just front running the watchers by creating 'vibes' when none exist. so they can buy a moderately in-news stock and declare it immediately. then sell it after the run up. or vice-versa with shorts.

in fact they can disclose favorable news immediately and wait for 30days to disclose unloading the position till the fervor has died off.

</comment><comment><USER29> It's sickening how all of these lifetime senators and congressmen can amass such wealth given the salaries of their elected positions.

<comment><USER30> Yes this is something that needs to be looked at more. How much does their wealth grow from the time they enter to the time they exit congress. Some politicians seem to get very wealthy while in congress.

"You can't get rich in politics unless you're a crook."

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I personally don't think insider trading is a crime, as many other people don't [https://reason.com/2012/11/28/legalize-insider- trading/](https://reason.com/2012/11/28/legalize-insider-trading/)

The more resources we spend fighting "insider trading" the more valuable people who have found loopholes or ways not to get caught. It's a never ending losing game. I'd rather make all trades public than ban "insider" trading.

<comment><USER32> I think insider trading should be a private affair: if you work at a company and steal from the company by inside trading on some announcement, well then they should probably fire you (and maybe file a civil suit).

But there's certainly arguments to be made that insider trading is very good for the markets as it allows new information to get incorporated into the price very quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> How about this one for suspected informed trading? ~40% in 2 days...

[https://efdsearch.senate.gov/search/view/paper/82AAE77A-D129...](https://efdsearch.senate.gov/search/view/paper/82AAE77A-D129-4094-9D39-DEBB561EDFFF/) (you have to agree to the terms first)

Unless I misunderstood something, looks like Mark Begich bought KERX stock on 01/28/2013 for 1001$-15000$, sold at 01/30/2013 for 15001$-50000$.

KERX closing price on 01/28/2013 was 6.06, and 8.49 2 days later... Verified by looking at charts in [https://www.barchart.com/stocks/quotes/KERX/interactive- char...](https://www.barchart.com/stocks/quotes/KERX/interactive-chart)

<comment><USER34> God damn, there is no way this is anything other than just brazenly obvious insider trading. Completely unethical. Our representatives are complete and utter scumbags.

Needless to say, this should be illegal. I honestly wish we could retroactively imprison them for doing this.

The current state of the U.S. is so damn embarrassing and shameful. I literally cringe when I imagine internationals seeing what we do here.

<comment><USER35> As I mentioned above, it's a biotech stock. Those sorts of jumps (and dumps) happen all the time around FDA approval dates.

<comment><USER36> Yeah, but perhaps he knew in advance that the FDA would approve?

Of course, it could also have been modelling based on public info or simple gambling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I'd like to see someone dig up all the most egregious examples of suspected insider trading here and post it in the relevant voter guides for each member's reelection.

</comment><comment><USER38> Hey everyone, I'm the creator of this. I'm listening to everyone's comments about new features and expect them shortly!

Thanks for everyone's support and appreciation.

<comment><USER39> I posted elsewhere in the thread, but figured it was worth replying directly - is there any way to find out who is making their own investment decisions, and who is having their money managed in a blind trust on their behalf? The two situations are obviously very different with respect to possible abuse.

<comment><USER39> Just realized, you could get the info manually if it's not already publicly available, given that there are only 100 senator. Their offices would probably just give that info, otherwise "refused to answer" would still be useful info to put on your site next to each senator's trades.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Would be really interesting to see if lawmakers outperform the market and if so, by how much, they can't all be Warren Buffet right?

</comment><comment><USER41> Ok this is really awesome. Now if you would just go ahead and create an API for this, so I can set my TD Ameritrade to trigger trades off of this information, that would be great.../s

</comment><comment><USER42> The general public doesn't have great trading strategies, but Senators may be more well informed. I wonder how a bot based off of their trades would do.

<comment><USER43> I suspect they're sophisticated enough to turn something like an "index fund of what the people in charge buy" into a profit by making sure the timing of the reporting makes it more profitable for them.

Since the reporting isn't instantaneous, they of course also have insider knowledge of their own trades and that those trades would influence markets and when. They could screw around with the timing of trades to give misleading stories, like selling off a bunch of stuff just before they file a report and then buying it after their action tanks the price.

But a virtual index fund that tracked their purchases and sales to make a record of how well Senators do in the stock market compared to an index fund (which I believe are also run by well informed people)? That might shame them into changing the rules if it looks bad. Of course, I don't know enough to say they aren't behaving themselves.

Some cases that look suspicious might, when taken as a whole with their other trades, average out and make clear that they lose money even when they have insider knowledge that they will lose money. Somehow I doubt that, but if it's truly a blind trust or an independent fund it should be true and would increase faith in our elected officials to see hard data for.

<comment><USER44> > But a virtual index fund that tracked their purchases and sales to make a > record of how well Senators do in the stock market

I think it's kinda funny that you called a stock index as a "virtual index fund". Feels like we've come full circle.

<comment><USER43> Thank you! I meant in the sense that it's not a useful thing to buy, but it is funny :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I'd like something like this in Australia, targeting real estate speculation which is probably our largest single source of corruption at all governmental levels.

The US polity though seems too deeply corroded for transparency to be more than a minor (albeit positive) tweak.

</comment><comment><USER46> Fun fact: until the STOCK act was passed in 2012 there was nothing restricting insider trading by Congress.

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

</comment><comment><USER39> This would be much more useful if you could tell which senator was actually making the trading decsions, vs having trades made on their behalf in a blind trust. The situations are very different in terms of potential abuse of inside information

</comment><comment><USER47> This information should be reported within 24 hrs or less of a trade rather than 45 days later to negate the insider trading aspect of the situation.

It also should apply to the house and the senate.

</comment><comment><USER48> My question is this- if one were to build a trading bot that bought and sold along with something like this- 1) would it be legal 2) I'm curious about the returns vs the market.

</comment><comment><USER49> I always liked this study on buying presidential supporting stock. Don't know if it would work on trump but if we'd bought haliburton stock we'd all be rich... [https://www.theguardian.com/money/2008/mar/08/moneyinvestmen...](https://www.theguardian.com/money/2008/mar/08/moneyinvestments.shares)

</comment><comment><USER50> The "Thoughts & Prayers" button is brilliant.

</comment><comment><USER24> Feedback - in the "about" section, this sentence is broken: "Since there is no major reprecussion for insider knowledge trading for a senator or member of congress to act on the best behalf of their wallet." Either drop the "since", or replace full-stop with a comma to join the following period.

</comment><comment><USER51> I wonder how hard it would be to create a mutual fund that tracks the holdings of the senators.

</comment><comment><USER52> The easy solution to this problem would be to either require Congressmen to publicly announce a transaction prior to effecting it, or to tax their capital gains heavily for transactions made outside of a predetermined window.

</comment><comment><USER53> I love this! Create a widget as well, perhaps one day it will be added to the senate website, or the local senators offices.

</comment><comment><USER54> Where does this data come?

<comment><USER42> From the bottom of the page: [https://efdsearch.senate.gov/search/home/](https://efdsearch.senate.gov/search/home/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Just the Senate? What about the House?

</comment><comment><USER56> periodic is spelled as perodic. Very neat idea, I hope something comes out of it.

</comment><comment><USER57> the senate website source...

It shall be unlawful for any person to obtain or use a report:

* for any unlawful purpose;

* for any commercial purpose, other than by news and communications media for dissemination to the general public;

* for determining or establishing the credit rating of any individual; or

* for use, directly or indirectly, in the solicitation of money for any political, charitable, or other purpose.

"...indirectly... solicitation of money... for any ... other purpose".

The author of the site links to a site which takes donations. Is this a violation?

I'm not suggesting he shouldn't take donations; I'm suggesting the language in the usage terms are too overly broad.

<comment><USER58> This is news and reporting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> I also remember a comparison between Barack Obama and Lee Hsien Loong. While President Obama was learning JavaScript for the first time in office, PM Lee had written a C++ sudoku solver prior to high office in addition to being Senior Wrangler (top math undergrad) in Oxford. No, hard intelligence isn't everything (in fact it's probably overvalued in most parts of our society), but it may be a reliable indicator of other character traits important for soft skills, like persistence, diligence, and thoroughness.

POTUS makes $400k per year. Singapore's PM makes $2.2M / year. It's hard to avoid thinking you get what you pay for sometimes. Personally, I would be much more inclined to consider public service if salaries for government positions were competitive with the free market.

If I can reliably purchase a George Washington or an Abraham Lincoln quality POTUS for $300M per year, I would consider that money very well spent.</comment>


Walt Mossberg Tells Adobe CEO To His Face That Flash Sucks On Android - <AUTHOR> http://www.cultofmac.com/walt-mossberg-tells-adobe-ceo-to-his-face-that-flash-sucks-on-android/98231#more-98231

<comment><USER3> The only place where Flash works very decent is on Windows with IE. It kind of bogs down on even bigger power desktops and laptops. It absolutely blows on OS X for whatever reason.

That said the point of Flash on Android is not to have guaranteed high performance, fluent apps that work like native ones. That's an impossible goal - for one, Adobe cannot control what kind of Flash/AS code all of the developers out on the web will write.

And secondly on my Xoom with 3.1 - Flash works great enough - no stutter or crashes. Does the job. So as more decent hardware comes out and they optimize Flash even more it will become better.

This whole cult like insanity people have created for and against Flash is mind blowing - it's there you can use it if you want, don't if you don't. No one is forcing anything down your throats folks. For me I will take reasonably working Flash instead of not working at all.

Oh and before you beat up the HTML5 drum - it's not there yet and it's not the absolute reality of the web today.

<comment><USER4> I think what people take issue with (at least its what I take issue with) is that Adobe is trying to pretend its an open standard of the web, that helps push the web forward when in reality it does the contrary. For starters, its not an open standard, its an executable program (or plugin). It isn't a standard left up to be implemented by whoever is interested, its controlled by the one and only master implementation by Adobe. A lot of websites like to depend on Flash in some way or the other, be it for ads, video, or some functionality, and more often than not it makes the experience unpleasant.

On the other hand HTML5 is an open standard and thats all it is. Its basically an agreement of what the technology takes as input, and puts out as output. If you want to implement the technology, by all means, go ahead. If group A implements it better than group B, then people have the choice of using the group A technology. Group B will then have to improve their implementation if they are interested in staying competitive, and we all win. That to me is key, the option of using a standard, implemented by different people to make it strive, not a binary distributed and leaving you up to the whim of the company behind it.

FYI: You spoke of windows and Mac OS X, but didn't mention Linux (probably because you haven't tried it, the same way I haven't tried it in Mac OS X.) Flash absolutely blows in Linux as well. I'm not talking just on the gnash and open source flash players, I mean the Adobe closed source build. It stutters, the keyboard input detection is abysmal, it leaks memory all the time, and crashes eventually from all the memory leaks.

<comment><USER5> Flash is _ridiculous_ on OS X. It leaks memory like a sieve - I once left a few tabs open overnight with Flash ads and your various bits of Flash-based internet detritus, and by the time I woke up my machine was thrashing madly until I manually killed Flash. Its performance is also _piss_ poor even when it isn't leaking your RAM all over the floor.

Not to mention it breaks a lot of fundamental browser interactivity - <USER2> something to render on top of your Flash applet? FUCK YOU YOU CAN'T.

Scrolling happily along with your mousewheel on a page, then you hit a Flash applet. While your cursor is over the applet, your scroll wheel stops working. Why? God knows, because Adobe hates us and Flash is the greatest bit of trolling ever.

These aren't new issues - these have been around since the very first days of Flash. Adobe simply has no interest in bringing usability up to the standards of the 21st century.

Nor security for that matter - one of my main objections to Flash is that it conveniently circumvents all of the nice security features your browser has painstakingly built into your experience. Incognito mode? Flash won't respect it. Don't like cookies? Well, screw you, Flash will keep its own equivalent anyways. Nice, sandboxed JavaScript runtime? Well, Flash does its own thing (and has its own bugs and security holes... many, many security holes)...

I trust Google, Mozilla, et al to do a reasonably good job protecting me online. I do not trust Adobe - both due to their lack of regard for basic product quality (both stability and usability), as well as their poor security track record of having more holes than a beehive.

If third parties could actually implement a runtime (one that, say, wouldn't _suck_ ) then maybe Flash would be a good idea. At least there would be a way to work around a single vendor's supremely shitty implementation.

I don't deny the need and desire for a highly interactive technology like what Flash _wants_ to be (and sometimes is)... but this is not the answer.

<comment><USER6> There are some types of apps that are in demand and flash is well equipped to build. Users don't care about any of this stuff. They just want something that works and is useful or fun. It doesn't have to be an arch philosophical issue. When people like you rant about flash, it just demonstrates you've never built the sort of app that flash excels at. Sure, flash has its problems, but there are some tasks that javascript simply can't do, or can't do nearly as well as flash. Flash has done some things wrong, but it's also done a lot of things right and helped pushed the web forward. Get off your soapbox!

<comment><USER7> I don't think that's true. Find an ordinary user who _likes_ Flash intros on websites, or who likes attention-seeking Flash ads disturbing them while reading an article.

The only thing that Flash is used for that real people (as opposed to marketing twerps) actually like is cheesy little games, and they can be done perfectly well without Flash these days.

<comment><USER8> Simply not true. Gmail calling is not possibly in HTML/js.

There are a lot of cool websites that use Flash for more than games and video these days. Qwiki won TechCrunch Disrupt last year. Beatlab is a super cool music creation app.

And Flash will likely always be the standard for DRM Video on the web. Being an open standard, HTML5 can never include DRM.

I see Flash's place is as a stopgap for features that haven't been standardized/implemented yet. It does those very well.

<comment><USER9> Gmail calling uses Google's own plugin, not Flash. And they just open sourced it and intend for browser makers to integrate it into their browsers. Hopefully it will be possible to do video calling in HTML soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is a really poorly written, fanboyish article - not saying anything about whether or not flash is good, but do we really need articles like this one on HN?

 _"Watch the smug get slapped right off of Narayen's face after he laughably tries to claim that contrary to Steve Jobs's argument that Flash is a dead technology, it's currently running on 130 million Android devices."_

<comment><USER11> Agreed. Definitely did not see what the author was talking about there, which leads me to suspect he started watching the video with a strong bias in mind.

<comment><USER12> I clicked through hoping for some technical content about how Flash is doing on mobile platforms. I got an analysis of a facial reaction in an interview.

That's pretty disappointing. So here I am in the HN comment thread hoping someone will say something interesting and technical.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think by far the biggest problem Adobe has to deal with is that there are so many inexperienced software developers who have taken up writing Flash applications. These new developers' lack of knowledge is what causes these applications to have poor performance, not any particular inefficiencies in the Flash platform itself.

It probably stems from the fact that the development studio is designed more for artists than developers, allowing artists to toy with adding functionality to their creations but not really giving them the years of training it requires to understand performance implications.

Adobe can't really make this claim, even though they are fully aware of it, because it is never good to badmouth your customers. So they are left with taking the heat for them instead.

Contrast this to the native Android or iOS development environments which cater to experienced software developers.

<comment><USER14> When it comes to ActionScript the problem isn't so much creatives trying to write code (they'll do stuff in the score) but more self taught programmers who may not be that experienced. Although you could level the same charge at other languages like PHP that attract production people who are looking to do more cut-and-paste than anything else. Another issue is that Flash projects can be very client driven, and more often than not advertising clients don't always grok tech issues.

Although I feel that Adobe has to take some credit for the structure and evolution of Flash. Adobe has always been more about adding 50 average features to sell a software suite than to focus on better/faster/stable. Unlike Microsoft who owns the OS or Apple who makes hardware their core business is selling new tools, so there is no "bigger picture". The result is bloatware.

<comment><USER15> Most Adobe software is bloated (Creative Suite and Acrobat, in particular), but I don't think it is fair to call Flash bloated. The Macromedia Flash dev team has always been very conscious about Flash's download size, allocating code size budgets for new features.

Here are the historical file sizes of the Flash Player installer (compressed .exe for Windows ActiveX Control):

      * Flash Player  2   (1997) = 0.2 MB *
      * Flash Player  3   (1998) = 0.2 MB *
      * Flash Player  4   (1999) = 0.3 MB **
      * Flash Player  5   (2000) = 0.3 MB **
      * Flash Player  6   (2002) = 0.5 MB ***
      * Flash Player  7   (2003) = 0.6 MB ***
      * Flash Player  8   (2005) = 0.8 MB ****
      * Flash Player  9   (2006) = 1.5 MB ******** (first Flash release after Adobe acquired Macromedia)
      * Flash Player 10   (2008) = 1.9 MB **********
      * Flash Player 10.1 (2010) = 2.7 MB **************
      * Flash Player 10.2 (2011) = 2.7 MB **************
      * Flash Player 10.3 (2011) = 2.9 MB ***************

<comment><USER14> By bloated I mean interface complexity rather than physical size. Once upon a time Adobe really understood interface design, but these days their apps feel like a total mess to me. The point of every upgrade seems to be to add a stray feature and move some buttons around. And then they have to make programs like bridge that talk to other programs.

And then the programs keep asking to be updated every five minutes like a kitty that's hungry. In fact I'm looking at my CS3 icons vs my CS5 icons in my dock and even the new icons looked bloated. In fact even the ordering process of upgrading CS is bloated —- it was as if I had to read a manual to figure what the differences were and what the upgrade cost. And I say this as someone who has used their software since Photoshop 1.0 and grew up in PageMaker (which to be fair was Aldus).

And did I mention that it took me longer to install the CS suite than to upgrade to Windows 7??? And I didn't even install all every package (and it still put code from some of those programs on my harddrive).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This argument has been played to death, and Adobe never seem to let it go. The fact is, Apple owes Adobe nothing, and not including Flash was never a dig at Adobe as a company, but a choice that Apple made about Flash as a software package. Adobe seem to have taken it super personally, but the truth is that Flash on mobile devices just doesn't work in it's current form (speed and usability issues). Steve has said multiple times that the door isn't closed on Flash, they just need Adobe to prove it will perform like Apple expects.

<comment><USER17> Not exactly. Apple changed their developer agreement such that programs that weren't developed using the iOS SDK weren't allowed on the App Store. They reversed the decision only later on, and now you can develop on Adobe AIR and have the LLVM-derived compiler (irony?) output code for iOS.

<comment><USER16> With all of Flash's security issues, I am not surprised Apple doesn't let native Flash apps on their own store.

<comment><USER18> I think the security issues for flash in-browser (mobile safari) are more troublesome than security issues for apps in the app store.

Apple can (in theory) validate that the things going through the app store aren't total malware. In-browser? You're on your own, for good or for bad.

<comment><USER19> Truly. We should disable JavaScript as well. Who knows what AJAX vulnerabilities might be in mobile Safari? Apple can't vet them all for malware. On that token, Apple can't vet all websites to make sure that their content doesn't misrepresent Apple as a company. They should probably just trash Mobile Safari altogether.

<comment><USER20> But at least Apple can fix bugs when it finds them in its own products, whereas if there's a giant Flash security hole it can do nothing to fix it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The actual quote from Mossberg is much more polite than the submission title would suggest: "I have yet to test a single [Android phone] where Flash works really well. I'm sorry. They struggle on those Android devices."

<comment><USER22> Why do I suspect Mossberg's statement could be reduced to?

 _I have yet to test a single [Android phone]_

Ok, cheap shot, but I really think he's not actually tried it on high end phones with _reasonable_ flash apps that are _designed_ for mobile use. Yes, if you go to cnn.com which fully expects to be running on a desktop it stutters. It stutters on some desktop computers too. But go to the mobile games sites that specialize in Flash games for phones - and many of them are great.

<comment><USER23> His entire argument for Flash is that you don't have to rewrite your app for different platforms.

<comment><USER22> No. You're mixing in a different definition of "platform" here to include hardware profile. A flash app designed to run well on one mobile device will probably run well on other mobile devices with little or no modification. On the other hand a flash app designed to run well on a desktop probably is not going to run well on mobile hardware. But then probably neither will any app built on any technology that was designed to make use of desktop level hardware.

<comment><USER22> Well, it's interesting to see my comment sink down to negative territory. Here's the exact quote from Narayen in the linked article:

> The value proposition Flash has is that we allow people to author programs > once and get them to as many devices as possible

He says "devices", clearly indicating that he is arguing the value proposition is to deploy across multiple phone (or mobile device) platforms, not some kind of write-once-run-anywhere proposition that works across desktop and mobile.

<comment><USER24> He's used the phrase "multiple devices" before, and he's clearly referring to more than mobile phones.

In this interview from last year he states [1]

"The world is emerging where there are multiple devices [...] to access the internet

Mobile devices are certainly a big part of it, tablet devices will be a part of it, televisions and PCs..."

the more these platforms adopt flash, they won't have to do anything else. It will just work"

Seems pretty clear to me.

[1] [http://www.flashstreamworks.com/archive.php?post_id=12726539...](http://www.flashstreamworks.com/archive.php?post_id=127265398)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> You know what doesn't suck? Having the option to run it when I want. I don't use it often but there have been several instances where I was able to access web content that iOS users could not.

<comment><USER26> Personally, I'd rather have the vendors kill off Flash, forcing the web to switch to alternatives, resulting in an environment where I never need (or want) to use Flash.

I'm even willing to suffer slightly for this in the meantime -- even if that means you can access Flash (poorly) on an Android device, and I can't. Apple's position has already resulted in a fairly dramatic decrease in the number of flash-only websites, and I won't cry if I see it disappear entirely.

<comment><USER27> The problem with this notion is that everyone is assuming that HTML5 + Javascript is going to be somehow drastically better than flash when it matures.

I have not seen any technical arguments as for why this would be. I imagine that when all the inexperienced flash programmers move over to HTML5, we will end up with even slower HTML5 based animated ads and an even more fragmented browsing experience due to the lack of standards for video and audio. Worse, since these technologies can be more thoroughly integrated into websites, it will be far harder to block them.

<comment><USER28> >The problem with this notion is that everyone is assuming that HTML5 + Javascript is going to be somehow drastically better than flash when it matures.

> I have not seen any technical arguments as for why this would be.

That's because you're looking for a technical reason when the real reason lies in strategic interests and manpower concerns.

If I'm Apple or HP or FoobarCorp, and I'm readying the brand new iWidget or TouchFob or FooPad, running my OS and browser, and relying on Flash for rich web content, if there are performance or stability issues, I have to punt them to Adobe and wait in line behind Flash for Windows, Flash for OS X, Flash for Android, and whatever other priorities Adobe has in front of me before they allocate manpower to my problems.

But if rich web content is built in HTML5 + JS then I can send my engineers into our Webkit fork/Gecko engine/IE-wrapper/telnet-front-end to make things work right on our bizarro CPU or GPU or whatever it is that Adobe would have done a piss-poor job of optimizing for.

Relying on a single choke point to deliver good performance to everyone has failed miserably. Independent, self-interested groups are more likely to do a better job of each optimizing HTML5 performance best for their own needs.

<comment><USER29> I fail to see how that is addressing the problem stated.

The fact is that HTML5+JS is miles behind proper performance let alone cross browser compatibility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> You know, as much as I don't like Apple, this time I've got to hand it to them as they were right -- I have an Android and I love it, but the browser plugins are disabled (since Samsung thought it would be a good idea for Flash to be part of the Firmware, and I can't uninstall it).

Flash makes your browser unusable, because it consumes a lot of battery and makes browsing slower. And it's doing this without you even noticing, since many websites include either crappy Flash commercials or at least some .swf that sets Flash cookies for better tracking.

The sad part is that the first 2 days I blamed my phone for the piss-poor battery life, but after I disabled Flash and uninstalled Skype my phone's battery now lasts for 3 days instead of 6 hours and the browser runs smoothly.

</comment><comment><USER31> I've had good experiences with flash on my Galaxy S, mainly flash streaming, I don't play flash games. I've used it on a number of occasions to watch streams of cricket matches.

Much better than not having it at all.

</comment><comment><USER32> Android's not the only platform Flash sucks on. That video clip was freezing and choppy on my 2010 MacBook Pro.

<comment><USER33> I had similar issues with flash video until I re-enabled hardware acceleration. Right Click the video > Settings > Enable Hardware Acceleration.

Hope it helps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Good for Uncle Walt. There aren't enough reporters out there who call CEOs out on the truth of his comments. Right or wrong, it's more interesting for Walt to say his view on this as someone who looks at a _lot_ of Android phones than just let that statement pass unchallenged.

</comment><comment><USER35> Flash may run poorly on mobile devices, but doesn't the equivalent HTML 5 run worse? It runs worse on all other platforms.

<comment><USER25> It's clearly not about which one runs better, has the better development tools, or best support across browsers and operating systems. It's about Flash being (semi)closed, requiring a plugin, and being owned by Adobe.

<comment><USER27> I agree, but sadly the prevailing notion held by the majority of developers and the public seems to be that HTML5/JS is somehow significantly better than Flash in terms of technology. In this sense, Apple's deceptive marketing strategy has been a success.

<comment><USER36> Is it deceptive? I remember iterating through minor versions of Flash just to get Adobe Connect (a product of the very same company, just to emphase) to run without crashing on OS X. Yes, Flash on OS X is horrible mess, even more on Linux. I vastly improved my browsing experience on OS X by actually following Grubers advice and only have one Browser with Flash enabled (Chrome). And even there, it is the single point of crashes(tm).

So this notion is not very surprising.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Mossberg missed a chance to ask him about the other ugly side of Flash: its security vulnerabilities.

<comment><USER37> Wouldn't that be something that could be asked of any sort of technology platform?

<comment><USER38> In practice Adobe has had very poor security response. Claiming that all technologies are equally vulnerable to security concerns is like comparing qmail and Adobe Reader and saying the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I wish someone would tell him that it sucks on every other platform as well.

</comment><comment><USER40> I have an Android phone and I have never had any problems with Flash. And I am far from a Flash cheerleader. It seems that most of the Flash hatred comes from Linux and Mac users. If it sucks on their platforms then I can truly understand that. Even on Windows it could be a lot better. But it is not an evil technology. Just poorly implemented at times.

Every time the argument comes up I feel as if there is a section of people trying to convince others that Adobe is the devil. Flash has its place on the web until something comes along that can properly replace it. HTML5/CSS3 is just not there yet but it soon will be.

</comment><comment><USER41> Speaking from a technical standpoint, since Flash is a VM, and it's running on top of Dalvik, wouldn't performance necessarily be poor?

If anyone knows a little more about how Flash works on the mobile, please share.

<comment><USER42> Flash runs as a plugin inside the webkit based browser and webkit is native code in android since day one.

that also means that you cannot play local .SWF files on android unless you manage to get them inside a web page...

<comment><USER43> Flash can't run natively "on webkit." Flash file contains bytecode, which has to be either fully interpreted or JIT-ed. It has to be done on mobiles too. The interpreter or JIT-er has to be native. Writing native JIT-ers is hard, to have a native interpreter you can write it in C and recompile it for every platform but it will be significantly slower. In short, it's not easy to make the Flash fast on a new CPU. And no, Webkit is not a CPU.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I just like that Narayen started his career at Apple. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shantanu_Narayen#Career>

</comment><comment><USER45> Here's the video: [http://www.9to5mac.com/70293/adobe-ceo-responds-to-steve- job...](http://www.9to5mac.com/70293/adobe-ceo-responds-to-steve-jobs-on- flash/)

</comment><comment><USER46> The video froze on my Macbook Air.

<comment><USER47> ...this is why Adobe and Qualcomm would want a deal to add hw support to their ARM fork.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I ran Robot Unicorn through Flash just fine on my Motorola Droid.

</comment><comment><USER49> Frankly, I'm tired of the whining about Flash and the (largely Apple-hating) enablers and apologists for Adobe's incompetence.

Fact is, all Adobe had to do to "win" this PR war was jailbreak and iPhone, developer a version of Flash for it and then show it off to anyone and everyone who wants to see what a great experience it can be.

Instead, Adobe would rather just lie back and say "there's no point in trying", which is an obnoxious mix of laziness, incompetence and arrogance.

What's worse is the number of people who have bought into their BS.

Does Apple want Flash on iOS? Probably not. But with good reason. And who really cares? Producing a compelling Flash experience on mobile (something that STILL doesn't exist, even on Android) would've gone a long way to forcing their hand.</comment>


Ask HN: I would make website for you for free - <AUTHOR>

I want to work on some real projects like website for your product or company or business. I am a student and I would do it for free...<p>Thanks. <comment><USER2> Student at what school / college?

What language? Framework?

Why for free? To gain experience? To add something to your resume?

What experience do you have all ready?</comment>


Higher Ed's Event Horizon: How Universities Will Collapse Under Their Own Weight - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@MLMorley/higher-education-s-event-horizon-9b150898a59d

<comment><USER2> Statements from the article like "how much value are universities contributing to students and is it worth the societal cost?" are cringeworthy. The better question to ask is what is the societal cost of ignorance? That's a different spin on the question does society have an interest in reducing the cost of education?</comment>


BlackBerry may consider exiting handsets - <AUTHOR> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/blackberry-may-consider-exiting-handsets-eyes-investments-ceo/article17911564/ <comment><USER2> Sorry, but what else is left if they ditch phones?

<comment><USER3> Software/Services.

Besides, they're not going to dump the phones. The reporters misquoted Chen: [http://blogs.blackberry.com/2014/04/not-leaving- handsets/](http://blogs.blackberry.com/2014/04/not-leaving-handsets/)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you think we need to keep evolving programming languages? - <AUTHOR> Modern languages are pretty great but I think they've more or less converged on the right way to do things.<p>Maybe we should accept victory and move on to less explored areas. <comment><USER2> Is C++ better or worse for the changes in C++11/14? Better, by far.

Is Haskell better with lens? Yes.

Is Go an improvement over writing concurrency in C++ or Java? Yes.

Are there no more improvements to make? I doubt it. (What are they? I don't know. I didn't know what would make C++ better, and yet I see the improvement in C++11.) I find it hard to believe that just because you and I can't see how to make things better, then nobody else can either.

I think, by the way, that the improvements aren't so much in what they let you write (though Go was), but more in what they make it so you don't have to write.

</comment><comment><USER3> Which modern languages are you thinking about? There's still a long list of stuff in research languages that are not common in industry but are slowly making their way in (think how long algebraic data types and first class functions took to become mainstream, and lots of concurrency stuff that's still being rediscovered), and there's new areas being explored (dependent types, how to do monad transformers gracefully). I would be very sad if we stopped with what we have now.

</comment><comment><USER4> Maybe I am wrong but there is nothing that can be done today that could not be done in a 30 year old language. I am certainly glad IDEs have evolved though

<comment><USER2> Anything _could_ have been done in 30-year-old languages. Take, for instance, pre-STL C++. (The STL came out in 1993-4). You can do anything in it. But using the STL is a whole lot nicer than having to write all that by hand, and has fewer bugs to boot. Then you've got C+11/14, which is much improved.

So, your point is correct, and yet there is real improvement.</comment></comment>


Value your home by comparing to your neighbours' (UK) - <AUTHOR> https://www.getagent.co.uk/valuation <comment><USER2> Tried it, but I found that judging by a single picture whether my house is 'more' or 'less' is too limiting. I honestly tried to tweak it afterward to see if the valuation would make a bit more sense, but it didn't.

FYI I bought my house 415k 2 years ago, zoopla tells me it's now worth 550k, and 'getagent' first estimate was... >900k! After tweaking it was still 770k (!) - Mind you some rather shitty houses seems to have sold for quite a lot but still...

</comment><comment><USER3> I live in a dorma bungalow and it only showed me pictures of houses (which generally cost a little more), may be worthwhile asking a few more questions about the type of property than just how many bedrooms?

</comment><comment><USER4> Tried it. It was pretty accurate. Valued the same as the Estate Agents valued it last week.

<comment><USER2> So that is... traditionally very inflated so you are tempted to sell it, and they will lower the price afterward once you're committed because they are not paid a percentage anyway.

Ahhh estate agents, my favourites...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice idea. How does it account for rising prices since the picture and data was captured?

<comment><AUTHOR> We use the area average growth price. But the idea is we are looking at properties that sold very recently, so the rise in price is not such an issue.

<comment><USER5> 10% inflation is the current rate there. How recent are you looking?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I tried it on a house I just sold. It was only £1000 off.

</comment><comment><USER7> Used & liked!</comment>


Identi.ca blackout 18 Jan 2012 8AM-8PM EST to protest SOPA/PIPA - <AUTHOR> http://status.net/2012/01/14/identi-ca-blackout-18-jan-2012-8am-8pm-est-to-protest-sopapipa <comment><USER2> Another group preaching to their choir. We need facebook, twitter, google, and wikipedia to do this. Reddit, Hackernews, and Identica are filled with technical people that have been fighting SOPA for a while. Need to shock people that don't know what SOPA is and show them what the internet censored is like.

<comment><USER3> _and Identica are filled with technical people that have been fighting SOPA for a while_

Source? See, just cuz we techies know about SOPA does not mean we are _fighting_ it. It takes a lot of repetition for messages to stick, even to people who generally agree with it. This is why ads are repeated a gazillion times: because knowing and taking action on that knowledge are very different things.

I am a perfect example. Initially when this uproar started, I was like "wow, big deal." I brushed it off. Since, I've been getting hit with SOPA-related stuff all the time...and increasingly, I am getting more passionate about it. And yet, I don't think I have really done much! I haven't gotten on the phone to tell my Dad about it. I haven't reached out to my Congressman. I haven't tried to educate my own facebook fans about it. There are thousands and thousands like me: techies, informed about SOPA, and yet mostly passive until a certain tipping point. These blackouts by so-called tech sites help put us techies over the tipping point. And thousands of techies at work can help put the general public over the tipping point.

<comment><USER2> Of course I was speaking in generalities because these sites tailor to the tech community. Every single effort helps but the user base here has a lot of coverage already. We really need to get the big tech companies to put the general public out of their comfort zones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My main website that gets a whopping 200 unique visitors a day has already been blacked out and will remain so until Obama signs the damn bill. I provide a message about why I did it and links to fight it. I already lose money on hosting so a few weeks of lost revenue don't really matter.

If one person takes action and learns and contacts their representatives due to the blackout I did my job.

</comment><comment><USER5> Is anyone keeping a list of everyone pledging to do this?</comment>


Shen: The future direction - <AUTHOR> http://www.shenlanguage.org/babel/babel.htm

<comment><USER2> > we have a liberal and sound license

No you don't.

<comment><USER3> can you expand? it - <http://www.shenlanguage.org/license.html> \- seems to be intended to let anyone use the language while keeping the language itself under the control off the authors. is that correct? if so, what's the problem?

<comment><USER4> Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the recent Oracle v. Google lawsuit determine that language specifications aren't copyrightable?

<comment><USER5> The _specification_ itself is copyrightable, but the language it specifies isn't necessarily copyrightable.

I do not know the exact particulars of the Oracle v Google case, but my impression was that the judge ruled that _APIs_ could not be copyrighted, which does not necessarily reflect anything about the language itself. Even more tentatively, I do not think a programming language could be copyrighted, but I would want somebody else to answer that more authoritatively.

Either way, this license is actually about the _implementation_ of Shen. So if you want to write your own compiler from scratch for the same language, you're free to do so. In fact, this is actually mentioned in the FAQ at the end of the license page. That said, beyond copyright, they also control the name "Shen". So you'd be free to implement a language that was mostly, but not completely, a clone of Shen, you would be free to (assuming you do not reuse any of their code), but could not actually call it "Shen".

Anyhow, my knowledge of the law is laughably incomplete and I am clearly not a lawyer, so take everything I've said with a grain of salt.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Labeling Tesla's Autopilot system as 'semi-autonomous' can be dangerous - <AUTHOR> https://mashable.com/article/semi-autonomous-self-driving-car-autopilot-confusion/ <comment><AUTHOR> "Instead, the style guide suggests those systems should be labeled as "partially" automated or as an advanced driving assistant." \- It could be something like a driver assistant system, but semi-autonomous would mislead people, imo.</comment>