Alienated, Alone and Angry: What the Digital Revolution Did? - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephbernstein/in-the-2010s-decade-we-became-alienated-by-technology <comment><USER2> One thing to note is that Robert Putnam wrote the original _Bowling Alone_ essay in 1995. Well before most people in America even had Internet access.

The trend of declining participation in religious organizations, civic organizations (like the League of Women Voters), fraternal societies (like the Elks or Masons), volunteer associations, labor unions, and sports leagues has been happening since at least the 1970s. Surveys of Americans have found a consistent decline in the number of self-reported close friends since as far back as the 1980s. Same for those who reported being friends with their neighbors. Indicators of social capital like the percent of people who donate blood have been falling since the 1970s.

The point is increasing levels of isolation and misanthropy is a manifestation of a broader trend towards declining social capital. And that trend has been ongoing for probably 50 years. Social media may have accelerated it, but I don't think it would have anywhere near the same impact if Facebook was introduced to the American society of 1960.

<comment><USER3> I wonder if it's a side effect of prosperity. If you're poor, you depend on your broader family and community -- when you run out of money, when your car breaks down and your uncle can fix it, etc. etc. and if you have to sleep in the same room as your extended family, you're going to have "community."

However, dealing with people is difficult and inconvenient, so when you have money you decide to leave your family and isolate yourself from other people's problems as much as possible. You perhaps gain more peace, privacy and free time, but it's harder to notice what you're losing.

I'm not going to dredge up the numbers now, but in the 60s in America, I think it's probably safe to say a lot more siblings lived in the same room, a lot more people lived in small independent farms working alongside many family members, etc. etc. People were closer together because they had to be. People in cities didn't have to be quite so adjacent, but perhaps they were closer because it was normal in society to be closer.

Speculation on my part, but it probably wouldn't be hard to find those numbers and back up the argument...

<comment><USER4> From what I've seen living a privileged community in a not so privileged country, its that culture tends to impact in a much higher degree than money or privilege. Yes, money can buy you the privilege of skipping those awkward interactions that make us human, but it is up to the person to actually want to use money with that purpose.

I know very wealthy people that keep very closed ties to their families and friends. It's true that finding real friends gets harder, but the isolation tends to be caused by a deeper cultural norm.

E.g. in Latin America the family is given a much higher importance than in the States or Europe. It is not rare to see young adults living with their parents even if they can easily afford a place of their own. Even those that live on their own tend to meet their families in a regular basis.

In the end it's all about prioritizing what is important in your life and in every society there seems to be a common list shared by it's inhabitants, if you end up in a place that values more independence than relations, maybe its time to start swimming against the current in that regard.

<comment><USER3> Well, that's true, but my argument is that cultural norms spring from necessity. In places where a lot of people must live adjacent, that kind of living becomes the cultural norm and even if you're in a position to do your own thing, you are still influenced by it.

That is, cultural norms affect people, but basic necessity also affect cultural norms. Just like your values inform what you do, but what you do also changes your values.

You're right in that we must make greater efforts to swim against the current, but so many of us must in adulthood develop tools to foster community and connection. That's hard to do, especially when you're vulnerable, there's trial-and-error involved and you don't really have a good model for what you "should" be doing.

<comment><USER4> I have a hunch than in a couple decades this issue will be amplified. The biggest problem we are seeing from the disposal of more social interactions arises from not giving it its true importance.

It may be as you say that in the past interactions were fostered mainly as a side product of the necessity to cooperate and interact with others. However as we develop and become for independent thanks to prosperity and technology we must not get rid of interaction for they are an end in itself.

The issue or even taboo is the lack of importance that is given to the interactions with others just for its own sake. Maybe we will move on from this need and become more self reliant, however in the short term it seems that we are having a hard time adapting, especially with the increase of suicides and drug use in younger generations. -> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21650584](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21650584)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Refrigeration, department stores, radio.

That's food, sundries, and information, the 3 main things that humans go out of their home to get, and before those 3 inventions you had to get into your community to get them.

Refrigeration allowed the growth of larger, depersonalized grocery stores.

Department stores were the first iteration of buying sundries at a place run by people you don't know.

Radio was the first non-local information source available on demand.

For most of human history, people lived in communities and had to interact with each other to live their lives. In the last 100 years out of 10,000 we suddenly don't anymore, and we're still figuring it out. And that's before you consider the impact of the Internet.

This has been a long, slow burn, and I worry that humanity won't be able to grow up fast enough to figure it out before we do something really stupid.

<comment><USER6> I would argue its gross inequality more so than those technologies.

In other countries with less economic inequality I believe studies show more happiness and social cohesion.

<comment><USER7> Not surprising that suggesting social inequality might play a part gets you instantly downvoted. Despite being as plausible an explanation as other (more right wing) possibilities - 'diversity', 'women working' that proliferate in this thread. Its uncomfortable for highly paid tech workers to accept the reality that inequality damages social cohesion.

Nevertheless, If inequality is a major cause of this kind of alienation, it's a particular kind of inequality. Specifically people living in competition, and confronted by the impact of competition in close proximity. Some desperately unequal societies in South East Asia don't seem to have the same level of social dysfunction, while Japan which is relatively flat has enormous amounts of alienation, mental health issues, relationship decline, and of course suicide.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't believe the digital revolution "did this to us". I think it's simply a mirror and and amplifier what was already there.

On social media, for example, we get to see the projections of what people want to be and the underlying darker sides of their personality (narcissism, selfishness, etc). This was always there but latent or hidden... stuff that happened behind closed doors that only families knew about. Now it's public...

Meanwhile the alienation or isolation... as a European, what freaks me out every time I'm in the US is the dependence on cars for everything. That in many places it's not possible to walk to the grocery and get fresh air... That you're in a permanent state of semi-isolation, breathing air-conditioned oxygen with the only human contact being with people that are paid to smile. Contrast that with visiting a city like Kiev where, in the evening after work, the city parks are filled with families enjoying the sunset (when the weather is warm).

I've have the theory that Internet adoption has always been fastest in the US, compared the the rest of the world, because it's the only way to get any kind of "real" connection to other people. The driver - loneliness - was always there, the product of car dependence, television and an entrepreneurial culture that tends to want to monetize any kind of human interaction, even friends (Amway, pyramid marketing).

Ultimately I think it's a good thing, that this stuff is becoming visible and we're realising there is a problem. That's the first step to find the solution.

<comment><USER9> > I don't believe the digital revolution "did this to us". I think it's simply > a mirror and and amplifier what was already there.

You saying the same thing and its exact contrary.

Of course it's always been there. That's not the point. The point is that the so-called revolution/empowerment is promoting the worst out of us collectively and individually, instead of taming the beast, and helping the best.

Taming the beast, the destructive human passions, for the common good, which is the very point of "civilisation".

Edit:

> and we're realising there is a problem

It's been thousands of years we've realised, we know there is a problem. People have discoursed/written about it so much in the past.

<comment><USER3> It's almost like saying, "Cars aren't responsible for polluting the environment. Our capacity for pollution has always been there."

Well, of course it has, but small nudges are responsible for a big part of the course of history.

But I completely agree with them on the isolation of car-based American culture.

<comment><USER10> Yea, but if we're going to follow the logic of the article, the Harris Poll's Alienation Index had American alienation at 29% in 1966. Car culture and the general structure of most towns were already mature at that point. I think the reliant of blaming car culture in America is a red herring to point away from not just the digital revolution but also the 90s media blitz. Late 80s and especially the 90s saw a real rapid change in the way we consume just about anything and everything. The VHS tape really came into power in the 90s, meaning most people didn't have to go out and sit in a large room of strangers to see hollywood movies anymore.

While I do understand (and personally do like) places being close together so I can walk around. Don't pretend that city life is the perfect solution. There's the Rat Park experiment that showed utopian cities are not the answer and it plays out in the human psyche as well. People who live in cities are not necessarily happier than those in rural communities. There's a few NGOs that do happiness surveys across the globe. While living in a city may make you richer and maybe even technically healthier in some aspects, very few are happier than their rural counterparts.

Just saying, it's definitely more complicated than just "car culture".

<comment><USER11> This is a little aside from the topic at hand but do you have any links or literature to expound on the 90s media blitz you mention? I was born in 87 and so grew up with only a faint impression of the 80s through what was lingering into the 90s. From talking to people older than me and looking at various media I can't help feeling like society took a hard turn in the 80s and through-out the 90s to where we are today. I've largely thought that it was due to a combination of technology and corporations/consumerism but I've never read or heard anyone else make that link until your comment.

<comment><USER3> Well, I think it's probably that we live in an economy that has been exponentially expanding for centuries. Workers are producing more, information is flowing faster, and everything is just moving more quickly.

I think what we have is the result of trying to optimize for sales and profits. You must always sell more this quarter than last quarter. It's just picked up, year by year over the decades.

Besides, I've always heard that society took a hard turn after WWII. All those factories had to keep producing something, so they reconfigured to producing consumer goods.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not a hint of attribution to new-media clickbait farms, the head of which is Buzzfeed, who've eviscerated attention spans, long-form journalism and its funding, and pumped the internet full of low-effort, divisive content merely created to generate outrage for ad-clicks.

>What you think doesn't count very much anymore. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Most people with power try to take advantage of people like yourself. The people running the country don't really care what happens to you. You're left out of things going on around you.

All of the above will increase with more exposure to what is going on in the world, which is provided by the internet, and all of which will further inclined to be agreed with by journalists reporting on it in a biased manner done for the purpose of generating ad-revenue from outrage driven clicks.

You can argue that the new digital era has alienated people simply by existing, but the new media is the ultimate culprit after having spent the last decade stoking tension in atomizing society based on uncontrollable, biologically determined factors and creating a sense of victimhood and entitlement amongst each of their subdivisions.

<comment><USER13> If the new media is an inevitable byproduct of the digital era simply existing, which is how things look to me, it still makes sense to follow things back to the root cause. How many examples are there of successful media organizations that don't at some level run the same way as the one you're lambasting? Being owned and funded by a government or a multibillionaire to serve as their propaganda outlet are viable but have their own problems that might or might not be worse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The alienation in the US very obviously has nothing to do with the internet, and in fact, I'd say the internet helped people be less alienated. I say this because pretty much every country is as online as the US is, and doesn't have the problems the US does.

The US is alienated from widespread fear of crime, immigration (aka the actual sociological results of Robert Putnam, rather than the yammerings of some Buzzfeed wanker), poisonous oligarch funded divisive politics, and the general disintegration of anything resembling a family life or social fabric in US society. There are various obvious ways of decreasing social alienation in US society; the problem with that is, most people aren't going to like it. The opposite of alienation and social atomization is basically conformity and homogeneity, and that's bad for business; and especially bad for the oligarch types who engender this kind of alienation.

Fiddling with the internet in a futile attempt to decrease social alienation is like buying a tank top to increase your physical fitness.

<comment><USER15> >Fiddling with the internet in a futile attempt to decrease social alienation is like buying a tank top to increase your physical fitness.

Disagree. For the innovators out there, please keep fiddling.

Funny how I can interact with strangers in the real-world and sometimes walk away refreshed but I am not sure there's a single time I have ever read a stream of tweets from strangers and felt anything but anger and nausea?

Reading unrefined emotive sentences has the damning effect of "this is a proclamation, this must be true!"

Where-as if you had the conversation with a stranger, you would realize there are dramatic pauses, "umms" where they aren't so certain of their statement, trailing inflections in their voice where they're actually asking a question instead of making a statement.

Most people are not sophisticated enough to write in a way that accurately conveys their emotions.

So the tweets all read as grand proclamations.

And it sucks. Participating in these "social" sites cause stress.

Keep iterating. How can we experience online, the emotion of in-person chats? Video chats are from perfect and come off stale and more akin to the experience of a CB Radio.

Async video group chat - all participants record video clips/responses? Along with fairly accurate transcriptions of the video, so that the content can be searched?

<comment><USER16> Why do you allow yourself to feel anger and nausea over something as trivial as a _tweet_? Social media is just entertainment and a game, not something that sensible people actually take seriously.

<comment><USER17> Oh boy, I have to tell you about this old guy from New York...

<comment><USER18> I wonder how many millions of productivity hours have been lost in the past 3 years as people direct all of their emotional energy at the president

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > The Americans who marked this decade most visibly with their anger and > impotence are, of course, young white men.

Not that young anymore, another "lost generation"? Lost in clicks, taps, swipes, likes, and upvotes. The only truly innovative invention of social networks is the psychological one, yet not done by the pschylogical professionals - how to mercilessly monetize and exploit the dopamine injection cycle of a human. Shall we invent a way to block on demand the dopamine inflow, the same way we block ads and shut down the lights in a room?

> It seizes some of the best, noblest human instincts — to share, to know, to > connect, to belong — and harnesses them to a degrading system of profit.

This just screams "Tinder" (for a male) with their premium plans, "boosters", and whatnot. Yet here I am - contributing my time and intellectual ability on a website from a country where I will never live or work, which on my entry attempt will assume I'm an intruder, ie. I'm trowing both into a black hole. Please upvote.

Internet with social networks enabled something new. Massive global crowd for whom English is the _lingua franca_. The creativity of this crowd is consumed by American corporations sucking them into their outsourcing centers (or even better more recently - free labour with a promise of becoming an influencer), and the spreading of language is choked by the copyright lobbies. Don't take as granted having your language as a _lingua franca_ , Anglosphere, be timid - 30 years ago we would speak French and you'd be out of this conversation.

<comment><USER20> In 1999 we'd be having this conversation in French? Really?

Honestly if you think social networks are just for people who speak english you gotta take a look at the world a bit more.

<comment><USER21> German was the language of science prior to WW1.

Don't worry, the US is trying it's hardest to torpedo it's outsize influence on culture, language, and finance.

<comment><USER19> > German was the language of science prior to WW1.

I would say well into the WWII even. Especially in the Central Europe, regions under influence of Austro-Hungary, and half of Balkans. Then Germans with Austrians... well... fucked everything up definitely and irrevocably.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Jonathan Haidt has an excellent article that changed my mind on this topic:

[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/12/social-...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/12/social- media-democracy/600763/)

I think the problem with social media is that the loud crazy voices that are usually confined to the corner streets in cities can now shout all the way around the world.

A simple fix would be to limit the distance a 'voice' could travel to geographic boundaries that are a function of population density.

<comment><USER23> Sounds like what Yik Yak tried to do.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> "Harris Poll's Alienation Index... asks whether respondents agree with these five statements:

What you think doesn't count very much anymore. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Most people with power try to take advantage of people like yourself. The people running the country don't really care what happens to you. You're left out of things going on around you.

Harris then averages the rates of agreement to reach an index... In 1998 ... the score was 56%. In 2008 ... 58%. [2018], it was 69%"

The rest of the article is trying to unpack why answers to those questions changed

<comment><USER25> The one fact-checkable statement there is false. The rich do get richer, but the poor also get richer.

<comment><USER26> I would love some help clearing up something I never quite understand: does that depend on whether it's corrected for purchasing power? How does this relate to e.g. the idea that you have to work more hours on a minimum wage job to buy a house? So is it fair to e.g. express the price of a house in "burger flipping hours" instead of dollars, and see the price go up, implying that the poor do get poorer?

Or is that already incorporated in the concept of "purchasing power", and are you now double correcting for something?

<comment><USER27> Purchasing power and inflation adjustment are usually accounted for properly. When people say "the poor get richer" they're talking about the global poor, like folks who live on $2 per day. That number had drastically decreased. But in the western world the "poor" working for minimum wage and middle classes have seen almost no gains while the rich have seen massive increases in both income and wealth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Social media is a straight jacket. You can say anything you want but no one cares what someone in a straight jacket has to say because you can't actually do anything.

<comment><USER29> A software engineering position at Uber in SF seems to be something of value to most people on HN. I know someone who quit that position to focus on her Instagram career. She was not a mode or anything, one day she just announced she's turned vegan and voila, she was an influencer. Now she owns a house in West Hollywood. All within 8-10 months.

<comment><USER30> Is she pretty? I'm not trying to be sexist, and I don't even use IG, but my gf does and a while ago I worked in a product targeted at IG 'influencers'.

When researching, basically your success as an influencer had to do pretty much solely on your looks (or your photoshop skills) rather than your message. (for both men and women). You can be a 'vegan' influencer or a 'I eat meat still dripping in blood' influencer, and the most important 'variable' on your success was how attractive you were.

(outliers existed, but mostly they were 'connected/endorsed' by some big brand or celebrity already)

<comment><USER31> There is nothing wrong with being sexist. Reality is sexist. She is only successful because she's an attractive female. And there's nothing wrong with that. Not everybody is equal.

<comment><USER32> There's something wrong with posting flamebait comments to HN. Please don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I look back on a time when the world Was so young A beautiful ecology A flowing river and a bright beautiful Sun was enough Now I don't really know anymore Satisfied with only the land and the trees Instead we mass-produce machines I really wonder if there can ever be a Place for a little A little bit of Romance '83

I thought that love and kindness were The things we all need A bit of sensitivity Just living life simple was the thing to Believe in I don't really know really know anymore Sharing all the human feelings deep inside Instead we hide behind machines I really wonder if there can ever be a Place for a little A little bit of Romance '83

</comment><comment><USER34> This was a strange decade for tech.

Seems like a lot has changed, but at the same time the companies we were talking about in 2010 are the same companies we're talking about today e.g. FB, Twitter, Apple, Google, Netflix, even Uber all existed in 2010 and are just a more polished version of their 2010 selves.

<comment><USER35> i dont know about strange, stagnant, yes. when things stagnate they rot

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This reminds me of a book I read about the history of extemporaneous poetry (pretty much freestyling) in Latin America and Europe, and its decline:

> The verse improvisations of Cantabria are at best dormant. Women and men > skilled at creating them are still alive, but the context that produced them > is virtually extinct. That context was a world in which the lives of one's > neighbors were the chief, virtually the only, entertainment; a world in > which personalities and eccentricities were savored. To some of their > neighbors in adjacent valleys the attacks on differences in appearance, > births out of wedlock, poverty, and impotence seemed uncouth and brutal. But > running through the recollections of the older men and women I talked to > were phrases like, 'nobody was offended', 'they took it in good humor', 'it > was part of the fun', or 'we all looked forward to it'. In 1942 Cossio wrote > that the people of Polaciones knew no moral laws. One could also say that > they had been able to maintain their own laws, different measures for what > could be said and done and what was considered an offense.

Attribute it to the internet, car culture, personalized media, whatever, but I don't think it's ever been easier to decide you dislike the people around you and find another community, perhaps virtually.

In turn this easy access to frictionless interaction makes people less and less tolerant of what would have been everyday interaction in the past.

I don't remember where, but I once read something that said the great appeal of fame is not just being adored, but being adored _and not having to reciprocate_. We seem to be moving in that direction.

</comment><comment><USER37> The internet offers superficial social interactions.

It gives reasons to ignore the people in our surroundings. And them, us. We physically socialise with fewer people.

Our social skills decline.

We can choose to completely ignore those of different opinions. We were once forced to socialise with them. No longer in our digital bubble.

This fractures social cohesion.

Loneliness and then anger results. This anger can and will be directed by those willing and able.

</comment><comment><USER38> If anyone wants to be more aware of this issue, I recommend the book Amusing Ourselves to Death, and also Technopoly, both by Neil Postman.

</comment><comment><USER39> It may have done it to some of us, to those who were doing great perhaps even dominating and shaping local groups but to the rest it was a huge relief finding likely minded unavailable in the immediate geographical vicinity, allowed those alienated locally finding community elsewhere.

I believe the article is seriously biased and criminally incomplete, shortly incorrect.

<comment><USER40> Well yes, it's buzzfeed. Just flag it when you see the domain, you don't need to take the bait.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I think that we consume a lot more content through computer recommendations algorithms. These filter bubbles makes us more alienated towards different opinion and views than our own preferred way of viewing things. Thus the more we consume media through filter bubbles the more alienated we become.

Plus technology is replacing human interactions. For example: Bookstore vs online bookstore Renting movies at a video store vs online Movie streaming Spontaneous interactions at cashiers being replaced by software.

Not one of these one interaction may make us more alienated but summed together they make something bigger. A question to ask is what technology replaces?

Also people are a little bit less religious nowadays and religion serves as a gathering point for local community where people come together and meet.

<comment><USER42> Predictive algorithms exist to re-feed us the past. Nostalgia is comfortable, safe, familiar, and easy. Not only do "people who like also like" type suggestions trap us in what we already know and like, but content producers themselves use data of what is liked to make more of the same. Artists have been replaced by marketing data science.

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/78691781-c9b7...](https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/78691781-c9b7-30a0-9a0a-3ff76e8bfe58)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> The more information you have, the more you have to worry about and anger about.

Quoting the great Cypher, "After nine years, you know what I realize? Ignorance is bliss".

</comment><comment><USER44> " And yet, the journalist Jon Katz argued, the country was on the verge of something even greater than prosperity and progress — something that would change the course of world history."

From the infamous Jon Katz of Slashdot fame. Oh the memories.

</comment><comment><USER45> I'm sure that all the people who have this feeling have an external locus of control. Listen, social skills are just skills. If you're feeling alienated, go fix it.

I'm not. Pretty happy. And I use lots of social media.

</comment><comment><USER46> The criteria for alienation are listed as:

> What you think doesn't count very much anymore.

> The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

> Most people with power try to take advantage of people like yourself.

> The people running the country don't really care what happens to you.

> You're left out of things going on around you.

2, 3, and 4 have been true since the beginning of America and probably since the beginning of every country that has ever existed. Two has been objectively verifiable in the last 50 years in America and can even be graphed out. Three is also objectively verifiable to some extent on a case by case basis. This isn't a matter of opinion. These are terrible criteria to judge alienation with. Any person who is aware of his society and culture would be aware of these things and would agree with at least 3-4 of them in America.

</comment><comment><USER47> I agree broadly but I think the real cause is overlooked.

When I was young, everyone in our town read the <Town Name> Times. They may have passionately disagreed with it, they may have thought it was too right or left, but they all read it and could at least have discussions from a common starting point.

Now that is gone. Right-wing boomers read only news sources aimed at right- wing boomers. Left-wing millennials read only news sources aimed at left-wing millennials. Of course they are hopelessly alienated from each other. One side reads that unemployment is at an all time low, one side reads that income inequality is at an all time high, and both are convinced that the other side is fundamentally incapable of reason.

So they all sit in their echo chamber and get angrier and angrier at anyone outside of it, fed day after day by a media whose only real interest is more clicks, more ads, more money.

I don't know how we come back from it. I'm not sure we do. It scares me frankly.

<comment><USER48> >When I was young, everyone in our town read the <Town Name> Times.

Speedway Town Press, delivered free to every house in town. Me and several friends started delivering it around 12 for 3 cents a paper and every kid would always read it because they wanted to see the honor roll announcements, school event photos etc.

Our principal retired when we were in 2nd or 3rd grade then in 6th grade we read about it in the town press, some of us wrote a letter to the editor that was then in the next addition and got us all letters from his widow.

We knew our neighbors by name (adults knew each other by first name, kids knew adults by Mr surname/Mrs surname). If you were going out of town for vacation you told the neighbor and they'd take your mail in, with they key they already had, and even feed/water your dog for you.

Neighbors would drop by to visit each other, often being invited in if it wasn't nice out.

I don't even know what my neighbors look like now. If you lined 5 people up I couldn't tell you if any of them were my neighbors or just random people.

My neighbor across the hall leaves their keys in their deadbolt at least once a week (Seriously, at least once a week. Twice just this week I've come home to see their keys in the deadbolt. Flat out will not answer the door because "oh my god a stranger"). Car key, apartment key etc. They've been doing this since they moved in in July. I have no idea what they look like despite the fact that I've stood there knocking on their door more than a dozen different days for multiple minutes each time trying to tell them they've left their key in the deadbolt. The first time I actually walked around to their windows and knocked on the window in a room that was lit "hey you left your keys in the door", nothing. Knocked on the door some more, nothing.

I truly miss a time when we were more interested in the people around us than strangers online.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> "Instead we got Baby Yoda" I don't see this as a bad thing.

If this is an age of weaponized communication, perhaps it's not bad to learn how to moderate it's intake?

</comment><comment><USER50> I don't agree even if the article tries to be _optimistic_.

Could it be that the "Harris Poll's Alienation Index" is now being answered by people who is more _aware_ about what is going on in the world? The source of information is not the mass-media anymore.

After 20 years of mass-internet, is still a matter of SNR. I didn't care about the life of Britney Spears in 1998, I don't care now about pewdipie.

It will pass when the next generation will develop a natural filter for bullshit. That will be the plateau.

</comment><comment><USER51> A pretty good consolation for the alienation and rage Buzzfeed is telling me about is being able to go to Buzzfeed and find out which Friends character I'm most like.

</comment><comment><USER52> Poppycock and fiddle-faddle. We allowed these things and did it to ourselves.

</comment><comment><USER53> Why it's BuzzFeed news on hackernews?!?!

</comment><comment><USER54> This gets close but misses the obvious reason for any recent spike:

" It's easy to speculate about the reasons for this increase: a financial crisis that awakened Americans to the widening gaps between rich and poor; an opioid epidemic caused by corporate greed; entrenched racism and sexism; bitterly divided partisan politics; and, of course, technological change"

It's not "partisan politics," we feel alienated because we are witnessing the attempted dismantling of modern democracy by a transnational network of would- be fascists. We feel alienated because a man who admitted on tape to being a serial rapist was subsequently elect4d president. We feel alienated because the police are murdering innocent civilizations with shocking regularity, as are Private individuals with guns. Non of this is "partisan"... the government and its allies around the world are openly hostile to the interests of the public. That is, well, alienating,

<comment><USER32> Please don't take HN threads into flamewar. This is going the wrong way down a one way street.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER54> So funny to return to this after reading through the fact-free chaos of the 'socialist website" Assange disinformation and the attending praise of Wikileaks.

Hopefully one day we can go through a collective process of settling on what's true and what isn't, and prioritizing true stuff! I heard this happened at a grand scale, the enlightenment, I think it was called?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Digital my ass. So it's all Zuckerberg's fault now?

How about the fall of Soviet Union and communist block? Which events (although being good for people) were abused by certain groups to:

\- end the public debate on whether capitalism is the right way to run the society,

\- enable unprecedented power concentration in a single country,

\- and make money and greed govern practically all aspects of human life?

Lots of clever thoughts in the comments, but I'm really surprised no one brings this one up.

<comment><USER55> I'll add that it's really fucking sad, that one of the greatest achievements of human society (Internet is basically a huge collective effort), is demonized for somehow unleashing lowly human nature and similar nonsense. It's just a medium and, in some cases, a mirror.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> This article is bs. We were all that in disguise. Do some bout it. Bye.

</comment><comment><USER57> It's really important that we blame the internet companies. Otherwise we might have to take responsibility for ourselves. Better to be victims.</snark></comment>


Here's How Facebook Can Avoid Playing the Part of the Colonialist - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2016/02/11/facebook-colonialism/ <comment><USER2> "Of course Facebook wasn't marching in with gun in hand, seeking to subjugate all who stood before it — it was only partnering with local mobile operators to give people free access to certain online services.However, there are parallels worth drawing."

Regarding the parallels, neither did the British come marching in with gun in hand, seeking to subjugate all who stood before it. (British East India Company)[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=British_East_Indi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=British_East_India_Company&redirect=no)

(Foothold in India)[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=East_India_Compan...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=East_India_Company&redirect=no#Foothold_in_India)</comment>


Making of: Sharypic.com - <AUTHOR> http://sachagreif.com/making-of-sharypic-com/

<comment><USER2> That is amazing work, I really like the clean lines between the tiles and the centered 'Get Started' button. The top bar is great too and the green/purple colors really help the words jump out of the page.

The "movement" effect on the tiles however is IMHO not a great idea. Unless I stare at the tiles long enough, I don't realize there is a fade-in/out effect, the pictures that are faded out just look bad.

<comment><USER3> Thanks! I agree about the pulsating effect on the tiles, it's something we tried out but it doesn't work. It'll be gone soon :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you enjoyed this, I also posted about designing CodeYear.com a couple weeks ago: <http://sachagreif.com/how-i-designed-codeyear-com-in-1-hour/>

</comment><comment><USER4> i like this homepage design. the windows style gets you right into different already posted events. I get the product immediately, nice work</comment>


Grim C++ Tales from the Crypt: The Visitor Pattern (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://cppcrypt.tumblr.com/post/168134225802 <comment><USER2> The thing that annoys me most about this pattern is that people always miss the "there needs to be lots of things you want to perform on those thingies".

And so we end up with a huge pile of visitor code, and there is one or maybe two actual visitors.

When it would have been far easier to read and modify if it was just coded out normally.

<comment><USER3> I've never considered this, but I think it's a fair assessment! It's particularly striking when you see a compiler with multiple visitors that are refactored into one or two visitors to reduce the number of traversals. I think I understand the cause, it's easier to start with a visitor pattern than refactoring into a visitor pattern.

Nevertheless, for many problems, like compiler construction, I've never seen a pattern that matched the utility of the visitor (even outside of imperative and object-oriented patterns)

<comment><USER4> Use the right language: one with ML style pattern matching.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you're like me and couldn't get past the first few slides because it's a terrible reading experience, go to the archive, which shows the whole thing in thumbnails. It makes it little better, even though the thumbnails are in reverse:

[https://cppcrypt.tumblr.com/archive](https://cppcrypt.tumblr.com/archive)

<comment><USER6> This would definitely be better as a blog post than a dog post.

<comment><USER7> What is a dog post?

<comment><USER6> It's when you cut your blog post into tweet-sized blocks and post each tweet in a separate jpeg with a cartoon dog.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The visitor pattern isn't appropriate everywhere, but it's quite good for traversing and manipulating ASTs (abstract syntax trees). An AST typically has many kinds of nodes, but programs that traverse the AST usually only care about some small subset of those nodes. The visitor pattern provides a clean solution: a generic AST traversal library visits all nodes in the tree while allowing the program to customize what happens when visiting specific nodes. I've found the visitor pattern very effective for creating derivative ASTs without knowing about everything that might be in the AST.

<comment><USER9> Yes, this is the only place I have ever used the visitor / double dispatch pattern. The main idea is it fulfills the "Open-Closed" principle:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open–closed_principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open–closed_principle)

Otherwise you find that your AST data structure is never finished -- you are constantly added stuff to it. I wish there was a clearer way in C++, but this is _the_ C++ solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's things like the visitor pattern that led me to implement Clasp - a Common Lisp that interoperates with C++ and uses llvm as the backend (github.com/clasp-developers/clasp.git). Common Lisp has generic functions and multiple dispatch - so it doesn't need the wretched visitor pattern. Try writing a compiler using the visitor pattern - I dare you. :-)

<comment><USER11> The visitor pattern doesn't disappear under CLOS, but all the framework boilerplate code does.

So that is to say, we can still have a situation where we have a tree of objects T with nodes N of different classes ( _expression_ , _if-statement_ , ...) and visitor objects of different classses ( _pretty-printer_ , _evaluator_ , ...).

Then given some generic function G and visitor object V, we walk the nodes of the tree, and simply (funcall G N V) for each node N that we encounter.

The remaining verbiage is then in all the method specializations we have to write for G for all the N V combinations that occur.

For all the framework brevity, we yet have an additional flexibility relative to the Visitor Pattern: namely, we can not only vary the choice of visitor object V, but also of G. The Visitor Pattern fixes the generic function in terms of some hard-coded some visit()/accept() protocol.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This... I can actually see the point in this. The Visitor pattern is one of those patterns I never really saw the point of, and which mostly struck me as an over-engineered hack about a shortcoming in a language.

This example actually makes clear why you'd need to do it this was in C++ at least. Not sure which other languages would need this. It's certainly not pretty. Then again, dispatching twice is not so bad compared to your average Java-style over-engineering.

<comment><USER13> It's not a "shortcoming" of the language _per se_. Visitor is a mitigation of the Expression Problem[0] on the Object Oriented spectrum. Object oriented designs need to use Visitor to add functionality to existing data structures, whereas doing such is a natural feature of Functional languages (though FP languages have their own awkward angle in attempting to add new data structures to existing functionality). This is a big motivator for most modern programming languages supporting multiple design paradigms.

[0] [https://eli.thegreenplace.net/2016/the-expression-problem- an...](https://eli.thegreenplace.net/2016/the-expression-problem-and-its- solutions/)

<comment><USER14> It's a shortcoming of languages that don't have multiple dispatch.

<comment><USER15> Why should anyone force changes into the core language if all you want to do is use an obscure programming construct in a corner case that's easily implemented with a design pattern?

Some of these complains are at best very misguided.

<comment><USER16> Why have functions and control structures when we can just jmp?

<comment><USER15> That's a disingenuous comparison. Functions are used pervasively, but even the visitor pattern isn't used very often.

<comment><USER16> But in languages that support multiple dispatch at the language level, they're just another way of writing polymorphic functions. They're not just a niche feature. When you don't have to write all of the ceremony of the visitor pattern, it's easier to use visitors everywhere without thinking about them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I clicked the link and then tumblr asked me about privacy, with a link to "Manage options".

I clicked the link, hoping to disable x,y,z and there is just text. No options!

Not reading further.

</comment><comment><USER18> What a terrible UI on that website. Constantly clicking "Next"! Yuk. And every page required zooming in and out to make it fit on my screen. For a tech focused comic, you'd think the author could run it through an ImageMagick batch resize job. Bonus points for allowing keyboard back and forth navigation.

<comment><USER19> I agree, horrible, luckily I use vimium so after the first page it was a repetitive key sequence to move forward

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> While I, as a rule, try not to stand against good storytelling, I clicked far too many times while thinking "get to the point" before I just closed the tab.

</comment><comment><USER21> The example code the author comes up with: [https://github.com/dpugson/examples/blob/master/chpt1_the_vi...](https://github.com/dpugson/examples/blob/master/chpt1_the_visitor_pattern/example.cpp)

Which implements the pseudocode: [https://cppcrypt.tumblr.com/post/168134402897](https://cppcrypt.tumblr.com/post/168134402897)

        main {
            thingies = [ purpleThingy, littleThingy ]
            interactions = [ commentOn, cherish ]

            for (interaction in interactions)
              for (thing in thingies)
                 interaction.interact(thing)
        }

The author does mention things like "function pointers can be used in simple cases" and "std::variant would avoid the need to overload the method". But the main reason for having the C++ code the way it is is because "you can't dispatch to overloaded methods at runtime". [https://cppcrypt.tumblr.com/post/169439207562](https://cppcrypt.tumblr.com/post/169439207562) ff.

</comment><comment><USER22> The thing with the visitor pattern is that it indeed is useful for many operations over fixed data. But the same holds for simple pattern matching. Inheritance (or rather subtyping) is useful for changing data but a fixed set of operations. But what the eff do we do when we have many operations on changing data? The expression problem still is an interesting problem, because a data structure that solves it would basically be the "gold standard".

</comment><comment><USER23> I don't understand why the class instance needs to accept the interaction. Why not just invoke the interaction directly?

        interactor_p->interact(thingy_p)

Would this still be considered the visitor pattern or is the extra layer of indirection important?

<comment><USER24> Your code won't compile because interactor::interact is not defined on the base class. That line is needed because the overload resolution is static. So with the macro ACCEPTS, you build the code where the overload is resolved.

<comment><USER23> I see. There is no interact signature that accepts IThingy, which is the whole point of this pattern. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> C++ match expressions would make std::variant a really nice alternative.

I assume there is already a proposal out?

<comment><USER26> std::visit mostly allows you to do that already:

[https://coliru.stacked- crooked.com/a/be5c44281eea8bc4](https://coliru.stacked- crooked.com/a/be5c44281eea8bc4)

Then only unfortunate missing piece of the puzzle is that there's no trivial way to create a closure out of this, so it requires a bit more manual work to propagate local state to the visitor.

<comment><USER27> If you build your visitor out of lambdas, instead of a struct, you can propagate local state to the visitor easily by using lambda captures. There are good examples of this approach at [https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/utility/variant/visit](https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/utility/variant/visit)

<comment><USER26> Unfortunately, you can't leverage template substitution rules with the lambda approach. And that's really necessary if you want to have actual powerful match expressions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> When I originally read about Visitor in the GoF book it was fun to work through its convoluted way but seemed ugly in any language, including the original SmallTalk.

I'd probably just do type checks and maybe use a 2D table for the possible interactions.

</comment><comment><USER29> I enjoyed the format of this, kept me interested. Nowadays I feel like if I read a blog post I have such a short attention span I'd just glance over it.

Would love to see more stories.

</comment><comment><USER30> The only time I have ever encountered a code base where the visitor pattern was necessary and fulfilling its purpose is Babel (the JS compiler).

<comment><USER31> Agreed. The _only_ times I've ever been justified in implementing this pattern have been when doing compiler work.

Someone else up-thread mentioned what I think is the key requirement making visitors worthwhile is non-trivial tree traversal. ASTs seem to fit this description more than any other data structure I've had to work with day-to- day.

Outside of language trees, I wonder where else visitors are common?

<comment><USER30> ETL for very complex data structures maybe? Oh the irony. I've never seen the visitor pattern used in an ETL pipeline, which might be why they're always such God forsaken messes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> their GDPR compliance screen is full of anti patterns. Will not read.

<comment><USER33> What do you mean, you just have to click the right nondescript links in the right order, then manually uncheck sharing data with each of their 200+ partners.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> How the &$#! do I read this

</comment><comment><USER35> If you ask me, the actual problem is the tree data structure... Maybe post order forms lend themselves better to processing.

The even deeper problem is what ASTs are meant to _represent_ , to which the answer would be "possibly a lot of diverse things". Diversity is never good in a computational context. But I don't see a good way to avoid it in the context of programming languages and ASTs. The reason for the diversity is that programming languages should allow humans to specify what should happen in very few keystrokes.</comment>


On higher education, programmers and blue-collar jobs - <AUTHOR> https://habr.com/en/post/439762/ <comment> core-questions > On the other hand, blue-collars do non-creative jobs, they usually do not > make decisions and do not solve problems; if they follow the instructions, > they do their work very well.

This is a fairly elitist sort of attitude that belays the likely fact that the author doesn't actually _know_ any builders. If they did, they'd know that rarely do engineering plans line up 100% with reality, and plenty of decision- making and creativity is needed on behalf of the skilled worker as they best try to execute the plans of the engineers.

<comment><USER4> Actually many of the younger developers I have worked with treat their jobs like a blue collar technician rather than a creative engineer. It is clear they achieved a CS degree they confused for a trade school. It is pretty clear these developers want all the vanity of being called a developer at a major brand without any responsibility to make independent decisions.

Proof: Have them produce results without the OOP patterns they learned in school or without their favorite framework.

<comment><USER5> I see that too. In the 90s a lot of developers were self taught and were self motivated to solve problems. With recent hires I see a lot of people who probably did CS for a good career but don't really care about the craft. If something doesn't work exactly as it should they just give up.

<comment><USER6> Remember back in <good old days> when people were authentic and real and not opportunistic fakers?

Load up the resentful pioneer module, Billy.

<comment><USER7> There is definitely a division between people who are attracted to the profession because they have an intrinsic interest and those looking for extrinsic rewards.

I bet asking what age someone started programming is as good an interview question as any other.

<comment><USER6> I would fail that interrogation. :-)

<comment><USER5> I'd fail that too. I didn't have the money to get a computer. But I am mechanical engineer and in my first job I quickly was the guy who wrote macros for our CAD system instead of doing designs with it. I never liked using the CAD system but I loved writing code for it. That would indicate a natural attraction to writing code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > The universities do not know whom you see yourself as in the future, and > even you often do not know that at the age of your enrolment. It is believed > that it is better to teach you all the basics, than to miss something > important.

Definitely agreed. Unpopular opinion: I'm a strong proponent of a CS university education, as opposed to something like a bootcamp, for this very reason. An understanding of how OSes work; basic discrete math, etc - <USER2> are fundamentals that shouldn't be ignored just because an engineer doesn't work on them on a daily basis. (Unless if the job description is for front-end development only, in which I'm less qualified to say whether a CS education is needed or not.)

And, most importantly: a university CS education gives you knowledge on what you _don 't_ know about CS. Otherwise, ignorance of your own ignorance just feeds upon itself.

<comment><USER9> Sorry, but I'll point out a bit of elitism in this post.

> (Unless if the job description is for front-end development only, in which > I'm less qualified to say whether a CS education is needed or not.)

The browser is an extremely complex platform, at least rivaling an operating system. If you're going to argue that advanced knowledge of a platform is required for non-frontend work, you should be comfortable making the argument for frontend.

Except people generally don't make that argument. Frontend devs (I am not one) are looked down on. But it's a double standard.

I'm sure that wasn't your intention, but it's a _constant_ expression I see - that web developers are a class separate from the rest of us. The truth is that OS knowledge is not critical and the general sentiment that frontend devs can do their job without understand the complexities of a browser only reveals this.

More to your point, I taught myself about OS's and x86 outside of class because I wanted to learn how to exploit memory safety issues. I never made a career out of it, but I learned a lot, and it was a matter of buying a few books and talking to people on IRC. I found tons of excellent talks by Herb Sutter and Scott Meyer about CPU architecture and how code maps to it.

There's a _ton_ of resources out there for those who choose to self-teach.

<comment><USER10> >> (Unless if the job description is for front-end development only, in which I'm less qualified to say whether a CS education is needed or not.)

> The browser is an extremely complex platform, at least rivaling an operating > system. If you're going to argue that advanced knowledge of a platform is > required for non-frontend work, you should be comfortable making the > argument for frontend.

I didn't read the quoted statement as a position against front-end devs needing CS knowledge, but rather a _lack_ of position in the matter due to the author's ignorance. FWIW as someone working in both the front- and back-end, the front-end stuff can definitely have the same amount of complexity.

<comment><USER9> I also did not read it that way. I read it as an off-hand remark that unwittingly _implied_ that frontend devs were 'others' with different requirements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I had a longer post. I've deleted it. What I'll say is that I did not find the article convincing at all.

I'm quite biased, as I found it incredibly insulting throughout the article, as I myself dropped out of college.

I believe that college is a viable path with many benefits. I believe self taught is another viable path with many benefits.

I am a programmer, and I dislike an article saying that I am not because I chose to exit my university early and join the work force.

<comment><USER11> I also found the tone pretty condescending, but I wasn't sure if that was a result of being translated from another language. I agree that both paths are viable.

<comment><USER9> I think it is definitely beyond language. The condescension of 'you don't have to be humiliated to be a blue collar worker' is absurd in any language - <USER3> assumption that workers are embarrassed to not be one of the Elite Engineers.

The statement that you are not to call yourself a programmer, you haven't earned it, you're not a _real_ programmer.

The justification against being self taught amounts to - 'well you can't work for NASA, and uh, something about learning to be a professional'? I found it particularly ironic that they pointing out how many big projects started in academia - and how many of the largest companies were started by dropouts?

The author acts as if they're exploring the idea, but it's not an exploration, it's an argument that they clearly already had made their mind up on.

<comment><USER12> It's even more condescending in Russian, if anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Most programmers are closer to skilled tradesmen, which doesn't fit into the author's dichotomy of mindless blue-collar workers and university-educated engineers. And the trades' apprenticeship model would probably work better for most programmers than the alternatives.

<comment><USER5> "And the trades' apprenticeship model would probably work better for most programmers than the alternatives."

Make the bootcamps longer and more rigorous and you are there.

<comment><USER14> So... college?

<comment><USER5> It seems colleges don't focus on teaching practical skills. I am always surprised that a lot of fresh CS graduates barely know how to write code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Such a rare opportunity it is to use the word fatuous to describe someones ideas.

The article states, "Programmers who have studied programming languages, development tools, various technologies and patterns, but have not mastered the mathematical foundations, look like artists, who have a perfect understanding of the paints and brushes, learned a lot of tricks, but do not know the colour theory, composition, perspective, human anatomy, and other basics. They may have a lot of brilliant ideas, but they will not be able to express them. And all they can do is to work as assistants or repaint other's pictures."

Backfitting theory to practice and then trying to persuade practitioners and others that they are somehow subject to the abstractions and shibboleths of these gatekeepers, and that we do not understand our own craft, is dishonest. Nassim Taleb calls this "teaching birds how to fly."

University education is valuable when it refines and differentiates students. Outside of maths and maybe divinity degrees, most of them have become managerialist diploma mills. I don't think the article was elitist, since one of the first rules of being an actual member of an elite that you don't go on about it like that. Provocative, anyway.

</comment><comment><USER16> I aspire to be a Scientist (currently a self-educated software engineer & UX designer).

I love education, learning, and teaching myself.

I strive to be around like-minded individuals who think logically or visually.

I have yet to find an education system (in the USA) that provides a learning style that works for me. Or, I feel forced to conform my way of thinking to a style that I consider to be inferior.

At a young age I was diagnosed with auditory hearing dyslexia. But little was understood about the relationship it had with Autism. My parents, teachers and schools did not have the resources, understanding or time to assist in my difficulties. So I resulted to teach myself most of the required subjects. I excelled with hands-on activities, problem solving, and critical thinking but struggled with testing and language based subjects. Something I'm proud of is that in elementary school I was already programming, building computers, and volunteering in the School District's IT Department as a "junior system administrator."

Now that I have a family and responsibilities. I do worry that at some point in the future my opportunities could be restricted by not having a degree. My preference is to have the right education over a degree. But, the more that these conversations around higher education and having a degree comes up, the more I doubt my logic.

I want to attend a university where I can thrive, learn, and be challenged. But I have yet to find the right one. Until then, I continue to read books, teach myself new subjects, learn from mentors, take the occasional credited class, and seek as many learning opportunities that I can find.

I'm not sure why I'm sharing this, but this topic has been something that I've been thinking a lot about lately. It does help me to share my thoughts with people.

<comment><USER17> > I do worry that at some point in the future my opportunities could be > restricted by not having a degree.

The longer you've been actually _doing the work_ , the less people care about your degree. Don't worry about the conversations around you. Worry about the hiring - and in hiring, having a proven track record beats having a piece of paper. (At least, for most employers. The employers where it doesn't are thinking that the degree matters more than the real-world experience. You don't want to work at those places, whether or not you have a degree.)

<comment><USER16> Thank you, for sharing that perspective. I agree with you, and the people/companies that I want to work with do value who I am, my experience, and my background.

So far, the only challenge that I've encountered in my current situation is with having to obtain documentation for immigration that provides a history of my work experience, responsibilities, and qualifications in a way that is equivalent to a degree or vocational training.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> _The university gives you fundamental knowledge, which will not become obsolete when you finish your education._

The university in it's modern form has a effective history of several hundred years. That puts it far ahead of specialized engineering school but naturally hardly eternal.

What's interesting about this generally appallingly snobby and shallow article is the way the division between intellectual and manual labor has remained a constant even as this society evolved quite a distance from the time when universities mainly produced priests. The division between skills requiring a university education and those not requiring one has in the US become fuzzier and fuzzier. But division still remains a fundamental prestige point simply because no other division has replaced it (things are complicated now to create alternate division).

Moreover, it's also testament to how far programming has fallen away from other engineering fields whose on prestige guarantees them a place in the university.

<comment><USER19> _> The university in it's modern form has a effective history of several hundred years._

I'm not sure what you mean by "modern form", but Oxford University is nearly a thousand years old. It's older than the printing press and the founding of the Aztec civilization.

<comment><USER20> I assumed he was talking about the Humboldtian university with undergraduate teaching institutions and graduate research institutions. That model is from the late 19th century.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Unrelated to the article, I'm seeing a lot of material from habr.com making it to the front page. Most of these articles are direct translation from posts from the main Russian-language site, which I've found to be an excellent- quality blog aggregator with really interesting long-form articles. Many articles are posted directly to Habr by large Russian tech firms (Yandex, Vkontakte) or firms with a lot of Russian-speaking developers (Badoo). There are also translations of many popular blog posts that make it to the top of Hacker News, and high quality discussion in general. I read Russian with difficulty, but Google-translating or finding the original linked article in the case of translations works very well. I don't know of a similar tech- focused English-language platform (Medium focuses on all sorts of topics, and is getting scummy, and Slashdot/Hacker News/Reddit are not platforms for long- form content). I wish there were an English language equivalent. Maybe habr.com will accomplish it, but with it's mostly-in-translation articles, I don't know.

I am a little annoyed that habr.com now directs to the English site for me by inferring my geo/browser language, but the Russian language content is accessible at [https://habr.com/ru/](https://habr.com/ru/)

<comment><USER21> They have an interesting article about how they localized to English: [https://habr.com/en/company/tm/blog/435764/](https://habr.com/en/company/tm/blog/435764/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've heard programmers described as plumbers. I've heard orthopedic surgeons described as body mechanics.

There is a certain type of person who considers any endeavour that is tactile, applied, or practical to be "blue collar". When I encounter such people I can't help but wish I were rather in the company of a plumber or a mechanic.

</comment><comment><USER22> Tangential, but the Lec quote at the beginning made me smile. Thank you, author, for the token of appreciation to a great aphorist.

</comment><comment><USER6> > There is the matter is that blue collar professions slowly become extinct > because they are replaced by robots and automatic machines. Now whole > factories are ruled by a few engineers and skilled technicians. This is good > because no industrial work should be done by hands more than once. And that > is especially true in programming, because in programming non-creative work > can be automated very easily. The present world does not need more blue- > collars, because machines do their work very well, it needs more scientists > and engineers who will invent our future. Likewise, the world does not need > more low-skilled programmers (even though they are not blue-collars in any > sense) because they will be replaced very quickly by smart machines and > programs. Instead, the world needs more high-skilled programmers, true > engineers, who will change our life, making it better, safer and longer.

Engineers can be idealists, too.

</comment><comment><USER23> > Only one thing, please do not call yourself a programmer, because a > programmer is an engineer.

No, programmers are not engineers, generally, even if it became trendy around the late-90s dotcom boom to give every programming and programming-adjacent job in private industry (government didn't really join this trend) an "engineer" title.

<comment><USER24> Maybe the appropriate title is missing since the concept is so new.

I think an appropriate name might convey a mix of the concepts: problem solving, design, creative, abstract, structure.

If you add "rigor" to this, you have a good general, multidisciplinary, description of an "engineer". I think this slight, but important, difference is why people want to use "engineer" for non rigorous software.

In reality, you probably have some gradient between "software designer" (the ever fluid art and design of software) and "software engineer" (proven critical systems).

<comment><USER25> > I think an appropriate name might convey a mix of the concepts: problem > solving, design, creative, abstract, structure

Hmm, something like (now hear me out), I dunno, "developer?"

<comment><USER24> I suppose that would go flat in the middle, but I believe it's too broad to cover the range. There are engineers, and there are people in software who I wouldn't consider "developers".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> "They may have a lot of brilliant ideas, but they will not be able to express them."

Part of me thinks this is true...but the amazing thing about programming is how many high-quality tools encapsulate the hard bits so that you can do pretty brilliant things.

Yeah, maybe you won't be a pioneer in computer vision or perception engineering, but you'll certainly be able to build useful products with robust libraries and frameworks.

</comment><comment><USER27> > The present world does not need more blue-collars, because machines do their > work very well, it needs more scientists and engineers who will invent our > future.

I don't know... plumbing, welder, underwater welding, glass blower for scientific glasses, etc.. are in need iirc.

</comment><comment><USER28> I've read this thing as well (wish I'd be able to link it) how this guy was like "nono, we might have got it wrong" — it's clearly the high-thinking non- creative (non-artful) jobs that are going to be lost first due to the advent of AGI

</comment><comment><USER29> Reminds me of when I did an accountancy course and the instructor was talking about engineers being blue collar job as it was very practical and you could work without being a member of an official professional society. Kinda true.

<comment><USER30> True for most probably, the only engineers I've met who actually studied for and passed the PE are civil, mechanical, and electrical engineers (the ones who work for the government).

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> ... blah blah petty self-serving bourgeois rambling blah blah</comment>


Windows 10 - <AUTHOR> http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/default.aspx <comment><USER2> I'm going to do the wait and see before I upgrade any of my PCs to Windows 10.

The bummer is that virtual machines like Virtual Box don't qualify for the Windows 10 upgrade. But I can run Windows 10 Tech Preview in Virtual Box. That is how I test operating systems in Virtual Box before putting them on bare iron.

Some people are scared of the AI and Cloud features of Windows 10 and compare it to Genisys in that Terminator: Genisys movie. I think that is made up and there is no threat of a Skynet network.

<comment><USER3> >Some people are scared of the AI and Cloud features of Windows 10 and compare it to Genisys in that Terminator: Genisys movie. I think that is made up and there is no threat of a Skynet network.

No one thinks that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Make sure to check the privacy policy before upgrading to Windows 10: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9966236](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9966236)</comment>


Milemeter: Buy Your Insurance By the Mile - <AUTHOR> http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/12/milemeter_buy_y.html <comment><USER2> Several urban/economic studies have shown that if insurance was added to gasoline (about $.45/gal I think), it is cheaper for almost all people, prevents the uninsured motorist problem, and is more equitable. I think this is a move in that direction, although as a single small company it can't solve the uninsured motorist problem of course. Hopefully it can get people used to pay by the mile so we can more towards a more sensible solution.

[http://www.google.com/search?q=pay+at+the+pump+auto+insuranc...](http://www.google.com/search?q=pay+at+the+pump+auto+insurance)

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for all the interest in MileMeter! To address some of the comments:

1\. Pchristensen -- While MileMeter can't solve the uninsured motorist (UM) problem single-handedly, we can put a dent in it. Many uninsured motorists are uninsured due to insurance affordability. Some low-income drivers must choose between purchasing groceries and legal compliance (see papers at <http://centspermilenow.org>). In my opinion, legal enforcement of UM laws is capricious unless an affordable compliance solution exists. Simply by pricing by the mile, MileMeter insurance should lessen the affordability problem and beneficially impact UM driving.

2\. Anamax -- The correlation between vehicle miles traveled and accidents is roughly linear when all else is held equal (age, location, vehicle, etc). For every mile you drive you have roughly the same probability of becoming involved in an accident.

3\. Spolsky (Joel?) -- Despite what insurers request as part of the underwriting process, no auto insurance product currently in existence uses your mileage as a principal rating or pricing factor. Trust me on this one :) Part of the problem with existing insurance companies is their lack of rating and pricing transparency: obfuscation favors the insurer, not the consumer. By pricing by the mile MileMeter hopes to address several industry flaws at once, and provide an intuitive product to consumers.

4\. MileMeter does not use tracking devices.

5\. ZipCar (now merged with FlexCar) is an excellent service. We hope to work with them one day.

-Chris (of MileMeter)

</comment><comment><USER4> Nice idea. I drive about 500 miles a year.

Now that I think about it, this will give people an incentive to drive their cars less, which can only be a bonus.

</comment><comment><USER5> Have y'all ever BOUGHT car insurance?

It IS priced by the mile, approximately-- you have to tell them where you drive and how often, including the approximate distance to work if you commute, and your insurance is priced accordingly.

</comment><comment><USER6> New startup idea: Take whatever USA-specific startup ideas are on the web and reimplement them in Canada.

Works for any values of location and alternate_location.

<comment><USER7> New? I've been thinking about this for years!

One of the problems though is that Canada's biggest market is the US. 35 Million people doesn't bring a heck of a lot of VC.

If you go Canada only, you need to modify your objectives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Finally! Car insurance for hackers! I dial in to clients for about 95% of the work and work on my startup from home. A quick back of the envelope calculation would reduce my bill by about 80%. Can't wait.

</comment><comment><USER9> I live in the city and drive about 50 miles a month, while paying about $150 a month for insurance. This will be a Godsend for me. I can't wait.

<comment><USER10> Perhaps zipcar or similar would be a better solution?

<comment><USER9> (late, I know)

There are several Flexcar locations in my city, but the nearest is about a 1.5 mile walk. Not really convenient =(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interesting. I thought women drivers paid lower rates because they have fewer accidents. Not so?

<comment><USER7> I don't think it's fewer, I think it's that they're less likely to be at fault.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Yeah, this seems great. I wonder if it will be available in all states.

</comment><comment><USER13> Risk isn't linear in miles driven.</comment>


Why Stop Multitasking - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2010/05/how-and-why-to-stop-multitaski.html <comment><USER2> Looks like 25% article, 75% adverts and headers and footers and title bars and side bars and overlays and banners and other stuff.

<comment><AUTHOR> yup exactly ugly disgn methods

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> sometimes when you have a lot of tasks to do you do them at the same time depends on what tasks you are doing, and this is actually not a smart thing to because you are actually not multitasking you are just switching tasks in unproductive way, this article made it clear what multitasking actually is.</comment>


Sneaky Microsoft renamed its data slurper before sticking it back in Windows 10 - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/26/microsoft_renamed_data_slurper_reinserted_windows_10/ <comment><USER2> OK, this looked rather scary and also rather unbelievable so I did a quick research and unsurprisingly it turned out this is blown way out of proportion (if not downright wrong).

The article claims DiagTrack collects "your name, email address, preferences and interests; browsing, search and file history; phone call and SMS data; device configuration and sensor data; and application usage". That description is credited to Microsoft itself ("As Microsoft explained"). But if you follow the link it turns out it's not really Microsoft's explanation, but just what some user on official Windows forum wrote. My guess: Windows Technical Preview did (or had ability to do) that and user confused one thing with another.

Next thing, DiagTrack came to Windows (TP) via update KB3022345, so let's check that update: [https://support.microsoft.com/en- us/kb/3022345](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3022345)

"The Diagnostic and Telemetry service collects diagnostics information about functional issues on Windows systems that participate in the Windows Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP). CEIP reports _don 't_ contain contact information, such as your name, address, or telephone number. This means CEIP won't ask you to participate in surveys or to read junk email, and you won't be contacted in any other way."

Of course, it's still possible there's some foul play here, but I'd prefer it would be investigated first and accusations thrown later, not the other way around.

<comment><USER3> Years and years ago I used to read The Register, as it had good content. Now, it's just a tabloid - a technology-oriented one, but a tabloid nevertheless.

Unless I'm mistaken, what The Register have said in the article would constitute libel, right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It _has_ to be possible to turn these things off, and the users should insist on their right to do that.

When we're there, I've seen today in some traffic I collected some regularly occurring telemetry from Firefox. I don't remember agreeing to that.

<comment><USER5> Firefox asks you what you want to share when you first use it (it is a band on the bottom).

They're definitely not hiding it, and you can change it anytime in the option. Again, not hidden at all.

<comment><USER4> I've checked, I have "health" and "crash reporter" turned on and "telemetry" turned off, but this connection I've observed to some server named telemetrysomethingmozilla or something such was reestablished after every page load.

<comment><USER6> I can only suggest you file a bug.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > _We already knew Windows 10 Threshold deleted third-party data monitoring > tools and cleanup tools, including stalwarts like Spybot and CCleaner. It > even disabled Cisco's VPN software. Just a bug, said Microsoft. Two bugs > would be a puzzling coincidence – but something else makes it altogether > more troubling._

I really doubt this has anything to do with the data collection.

<comment><USER8> TH2 deleted every application with custom driver installed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> So, on one hand Microsoft is starting to become a good open source player, and then on the other it continues to abuse its users.

Nope, I still won't use your products.

<comment><USER10> If it's free you're the product. Gee, where have I heard that before? Funny, how things boomerang back to hit you in the ass.

<comment><USER11> windows 10 is only free if you have a legitimate key for 8.1

<comment><USER12> What? I have a legit install of 7, and it never bloody stops nagging me to accept a free upgrade to 10.

<comment><USER13> What do you mean you don't want it? Just look at the long list of features mentioned in this thread that you will get if you upgrade!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> 228 comments are below the article, that speaks volumes. Most people are very angry about how Microsoft acts. The phone home spyware in recent updates for Win7/8 and Win10 is pretty creepy and probably illegal in several countries. It also speaks volumes how some MS employees defend their company with rather ridiculous comments. Since the MS Build event many MS employees are on HN: if you are one, instead of downvoting try to read the angry comments from consumers below the article.

@Dang / HN admin: who flag such news? Or why is it already on the second page? Can you investigate if there are some voting/flagging-ring/bots active?

<comment><USER15> > Most people are very angry about how Microsoft acts.

While I support people getting "mad as hell" when a business abuses their customers, harsh words and the occasional strongly worded letter won't change anything.

MS will continue along this path until they see their revenue dropping or their market share shrinking. Continuing to use windows - even with the spyware disabled - tells MS that they got away with it. They will continue testing that threshold to see how much they can get away with. This strategy works particularly well because memories are short and every every new release moves the Overton Window[1].

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This article is just ridiculous, the author is going out of their way to attack microsoft instead of just reporting the facts. Terrible journalism.

>We already knew Windows 10 Threshold deleted third-party data monitoring tools and cleanup tools, including stalwarts like Spybot and CCleaner. It even disabled Cisco's VPN software. Just a bug, said Microsoft.

>Two bugs would be a puzzling coincidence

What makes the existence of software bugs "puzzling"?

> The data that DiagTrack collected was typical of a spyware programme

So credit cards, passwords, etc... right?

>Examples of data we collect include your name, email address, preferences and interests; browsing, search and file history; phone call and SMS data; device configuration and sensor data; and application usage.

I guess not?

> The only way you knew you were being monitored was by eyeballing the list of > running processes in Task Manager.

That doesn't sound very spyware-esque, you'd probably want to be hiding yourself from the task manager.

<comment><USER17> > you'd probably want to be hiding yourself from the task manager.

Why?

<comment><USER16> Why would you want your malware visible to the user?

<comment><USER18> Attacking Microsoft is the done thing. They are wildly successful by any conventional measure and have made themselves a target.

Personally I have nothing against the company, we are a .net house and I like their current stuff Win10 is legitimately good and atm visual studio is _at least_ on a par with intellij which I have used extensively.

So whilst I bare them no ill will they should absolutely be subject to the highest degree of scrutiny.

Apple should too, ofc, and moreso in recent years they are. They real travesty is that all industry leaders (and honestly, tell me windows isn't an industry leader - it bloody /is/ an industry!) aren't held up to the same degree of rigour as Microsoft are.

<comment><USER16> I'm not trying to criticise the article because it tries to attack MS, I'm trying to criticise it because half of it simply isn't true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If you read this as Connected (User Experience) and (Telemetry) service, it's actually a far better name than the Diagnostics title it had before. And makes perfect sense, when you assume it is for doing the minimal reporting they say it is.

/shrugs

</comment><comment><USER20> Is this what's known as "SQM" inside of Microsoft or is it something different?</comment>


Nerd Sniped by BINFMT_MISC - <AUTHOR> https://blog.jessfraz.com/post/nerd-sniped-by-binfmt_misc/ <comment><USER2> Too bad the more narrow minded segment of the HN population appears to have buried this one out of spite.. because this is some super pro badass shit, packaged in a hilarious format by jessfraz. Guess it's not everyone's kind of humor, a real tradgedy if you ask me.

Can you imagine a future where you don't have to install runtimes to run things anymore because they are all distributed with everything you need? It would be amazing and magical in many ways. No more reinstalling the OS because things got weird after X went berserk.

Being forced to pollute my perfect, pristine machines with multiple versions of Python, or having to even commit to a single version of anything seems less good than not having to.

I'd rather burn the extra HDD space to avoid risky installs messing up the system.

<comment><USER3> What you are describing is just a statically linked binary, the world of computing moved away from this well before I started my career but there are pros and cons about it, not only related to disk space.

<comment><USER4> what are the pros of dynamically linked binaries, not related to disk and memory usage?

<comment><USER5> when a security vulnerability is found, you can fix the relevant library without recompiling all the binaries that are linked to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love the idea of executable single-file containers. I'd take it even farther. I've recently discovered a way to make polyglot scripts that are simultaneously executable on Linux, Mac, and Windows[1]. It would be pretty easy to embed binaries in these scripts, and by simply embedding a binary for each OS you'd have a cross-platform binary single-file application.

Of course three copies of the binary is not ideal, but it shouldn't even be necessary. With some deep hacking the platform-specific code could be minimized and the rest of the binary could be shared. Wouldn't it be fun to have truly platform-independent binary executables?

[1] [https://gist.github.com/jdarpinian/6860ddfd92b5b458a20ab6055...](https://gist.github.com/jdarpinian/6860ddfd92b5b458a20ab6055583bc3e)

<comment><USER7> I don't really see this.

What about packaging - e.g. this file having a proper icon on Windows? What about distribution via the app market platforms?

How do I go about upgrading the application?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Cool stuff. nixpkgs not too long ago gained support for programmatically declaring binfmt_misc configuration: [https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/commit/c64639b54caa6595f9ef...](https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/commit/c64639b54caa6595f9ef62ed2548593b5fe5db66)

</comment><comment><USER9> The equiv command in Microsoft Windows is "assoc". You can run it with no args to see what programs are associated with what extensions in Windows. I mention this because of a security concern.

i.e.

        assoc

        assoc .vbs=txtfile
        assoc .mp4=WMP11.AssocFile.MP4

Perhaps it may be worth considering security practices for BINFMT_MISC before people find any sub-optimal defaults. In the past, clever people would exploit some of the default associations that applications would insert on Windows desktops. At some point, desktop file exploring apps may decide to hide "known extensions. The desktop will also leverage this association.

<comment><USER10> You need to be root to change binfmt_misc's configuration, so it's not analgous to Windows' file associations (which the user can also change).

I also believe that xdg-open (and the XDG scheme) is more similar to Windows' file associations than binfmt_misc, since XDG is more of a user-facing thing.

<comment><USER9> I believe you need to be a on an admin account in Windows to change global file associations. In fairness though, most people are logged in as an Administrator.

<comment><USER11> You can also have user file associations on Windows though.

<comment><USER9> Certainly. I supposed the point I am trying to make is that a lot of old windows behaviors that lead to security incidents are finding their way into non-desktop linux machines. My servers have binfmt mounted, for example. SystemD appears to be bringing in a bit of desktop behavior to both desktops and servers. Maybe this is ok if people are aware?

<comment><USER10> binfmt_misc has existed for a much longer time than systemd (it was originally added in _1997_ [1]). It has been used for many features like emulating binaries "natively" by setting up binfmt_misc so that binaries are executed inside QEMU if the architecture is different. It has had many other similar uses for decades.

I'm not a fan of systemd in the slightest, but blaming systemd for an in- kernel facility that has existed since the mid-90s (and isn't even used by systemd to my knowledge) doesn't make any sense.

[1]: [https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/v4.15.7/source/fs/binfmt_mi...](https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/v4.15.7/source/fs/binfmt_misc.c)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> FWIW, you don't need to fiddle around with binfmt_misc (which requires root permissions) to execute a Go program as a script. The following shebang works:

       ///bin/true; exec /usr/bin/env go run "$0" "$@"

See [https://stackoverflow.com/a/30082862/334761](https://stackoverflow.com/a/30082862/334761) for detailed explanation what's going on there. The only downside is that all exit codes != 0 get mapped to exit code 1 by `go run`. It will show the original exit code on stderr instead.

<comment><USER13> That's quite cool, but minor point of pedantry: that's not a shebang. A shebang is interpreted by the operating system, which uses it to find and launch an interpreter for a file.

Compared to that, the example snipped you provided is doing many more, and different things:

1\. Launches a shell language interpreter: usually the system default POSIX- compliant sh, but could (rarely) be something else. Compared to "read the first line, and if it's a shebang launch python or whatever" in the kernel, this is massively complicated: it starts another whole runtime. Run "strace" on a file that just does "///bin/true; sleep 1000" to see exactly how much is happening just for that shell launch.

1\. Executes /bin/true. It's probably present everywhere, and probably the right program, but still an assumption.

2\. Evaluates a bunch of string slinging statements in the shell to interpolate arguments, then replaces itself via "exec".

3\. Launches /usr/bin/env (hopefully the right program, and hopefully in the right place) to find the go interpreter.

4\. env (hopefully) also calls "exec" again and then launches the go run command to start the compilation/execution sequence.

That's a _lot_ of stuff. Pretty garden-variety stuff, but still a lot of additional complexity. A shebang adds none of it, though "trampolining" shebangs (which themselves are just programs to do basically this) can reintroduce some internally.

That's the beauty of the shebang as a trick for truly interpreted languages: it's extremely direct and simple as a means of getting your code executing on your desired runtime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Or another cool idea use .preinit_array for shared bins and .init_array for static bins and inject a .seccomp, .unshare, etc section that gets called in the preinit, init. This way you can support both shared and static bins with a tiny size increase.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm confused. Is this a Microsoft Windows thing?

</comment><comment><USER16> > Hacker news, you can shove your comments right up your

...

<comment><USER17> Yes, very odd. Don't think I'll be upvoting this submission.

>Imagine if an entire OS had all the languages packaged this way so that everything could be "dot slashed" and executed but without actually installing the language to your host operating system.

This has been technically possible for decades, but the disadvantages (startup time, memory use, disk use) outweigh the advantages. (better security, assuming no VM escape bugs, which is an assumption you absolutely can't make, considering the long list of Xen CVEs) Breezily asserting the superiority of this solution without acknowledging any possible downsides is also strange... more press release than blog post.

<comment><USER18> Containers aren't VMs. There's no VM to escape, and Xen has nothing whatsoever to do with containers. Ironically, there's a really good explanation of this topic which was given by the author at a conference.

Also, this is a write-up about something cool that author discovered. It's about the fact that dot slash isn't magic, but rather a feature which can be (ab)used to do something out of the ordinary. Sounds like a blog post to me.

<comment><USER17> An excellent and helpful correction. But security-wise chroot/runc is _even worse_ than Xen, since the attack surface is so much bigger!

[https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/search/results?adv_search=false&fo...](https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/search/results?adv_search=false&form_type=basic&results_type=overview&search_type=all&query=docker)

[https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/search/results?adv_search=false&fo...](https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/search/results?adv_search=false&form_type=basic&results_type=overview&search_type=all&query=chroot)

<comment><USER19> See first comment about how it's a pivot root and if you are going to claim containers are insecure please first capture the flag on [https://contained.af](https://contained.af) or gfy

<comment><USER20> Thanks jessie and cyphar for making HAN great again!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Want to be a Hipster? Early invitations available. - <AUTHOR> www.useHipster.com<p>We can't say much about the company publicly, but I'd be happy to answer any questions you email to me at email@example.com <comment><USER2> I have been following <http://usehipter.com> when it was just for boulder, you can explore some of the stuff it has too offer from here. <http://boulder.usehipster.com/explore>

The site is a question and answer site on what cool stuff there is to do unless they are going to pivot on their launch.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for that. Yea, basically looks like "Quora meets Foursquare". Hmm, pretty hard to maintain stealth when the back door is wide open on one city...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "The refer 3 friends for an invite" promotion is rather annoying considering you don't disclose anything about the product.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm afraid we can't say too much. We've applied for the Launch Conference, and have agreed not to talk about what the company does. You'll just have to wait until Feb 23rd (if we get in) to find out!

<comment><USER5> That's as annoying as a pseudo-intellectual and inauthentic hipster.

<comment><USER6> That's _sooo_ Kafka.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Isn't the key to being a hipster never using anything marketed at hipsters?

<comment><USER8> I don't know, I find it (whatever it may be) to be refreshingly honest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> My city is apparently too underground for Hipster.

</comment><comment><USER10> If a self-proclaimed hipster site turns out to be a pseudo-meritorious fad - is the start-up a success? Philosoraptor wonders.

This has to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Irony and all.

<comment><USER11> I'm shaving my ironic moustache.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why don't some of you just shut the f __k up and either Sign up or not. Just because you are eager to know what the product is it doesn't mean it's suck or of the provider. You are not part of the initial launch/marketing strategy so relax.

</comment><comment><USER13> If anyone would like to help me test this theory, it looks like 51 people have tried it before me:

<http://usehipster.com/?referred_by=52>

<comment><USER14> Give this one a shot: <http://usehipster.com/?referred_by=5457>

<comment><USER13> Wow, 5000 users by name and splashpage alone!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This better be good with a name like that. Signed up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Its going to be awesome. Thanks for signing up!

<comment><USER15> I don't like your access for 3 signups model, though. Since I have no idea what it is or who you are (other than my intuition that you're a nice guy), you're asking me to bet my standing with 3 others - and more importantly, their contact details - for an opportunity of unknown value at some unknown point in the future. Perhaps it will be awesome, perhaps I'll be splashed all over pathetic-wannabe.com. This is a risk I don't mind taking with my own email address, but which I'm unwilling to subject others to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Just want to say Doug is doing a nice job answering questions via email about the service behind his decidedly blank landing page. Thanks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the shout out. Just doing what I can!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Check out all the cities available.

<http://usehipster.com/cities>

</comment><comment><USER18> <http://freethingsnetwork.com>

</comment><comment><USER16> Doug - where did you get the stock photos for each landing page?

</comment><comment><USER19> Is usehipster coming to Glasgow Scotland

</comment><comment><USER20> I liked you better when you were still underground.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're still underground, for the time being. We'll be expanding the alpha test soon to new cities, so we wanted to make sure there are interested users for each new city.</comment></comment>


The Programming Languages Developers Complain About Most - <AUTHOR> http://apl.as/q3kda#.V6THDBLQWD0.hackernews <comment><AUTHOR> Data from devRant.io.</comment>


Linux 4.3 Released - <AUTHOR> https://lkml.org/lkml/2015/11/1/202 <comment><USER2> Not strictly pertinent, but...

Am I the only one surprised to see this kind of work done on a Sunday?

I have nothing against it, but just considering work vs family context.

<comment><USER3> The weekend is largely useful as a means of coordination in companies, as they often prefer all workers to take off at the same time. Given Linus's work arrangement, he has no particular reason to prefer taking off on the traditional weekend.</comment></comment>