DigitalOcean announces second Amsterdam datacenter - <AUTHOR> https://www.digitalocean.com/blog_posts/digitalocean-announces-second-amsterdam-datacenter-ams2

<comment><USER2> I've noticed that performance has been reduced greatly lately on their offering. Has anyone else noticed this? Also had a few machines randomly reboot.

/edit Just now I'm unable to join using the console access on a few of my droplets. I'm on a pretty fast internet connection (60MBps).

<comment><USER3> Curious about the performance hits you're experiencing, feel free to reach out to me directly.

<comment><USER2> "Failed to establish a connection to the console. Please reload." is what I'm getting on most hosts I'm running on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> DO's offering is certainly refreshing but why does a single provider get that many upvotes on basically any customary amendment? They are nothing more than what Mediatemple is/was to the designer fraction.

<comment><USER5> because it's trendy.

people like trends, especially the technology industry.

larry ellison has an interesting rant about this on youtube.

<comment><USER4> I know...

      "Cloud computing means using a computer that's out there"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There seems to be a heavy rush on the region at the moment, creating a 1gb box took 17 minutes, now I'm waiting for 5 minutes for a power-off to enable private networking... `sudo shutdown` worked, but the admin job queue seems to not check on that. I'll try again tomorrow :)

</comment><comment><USER6> Yay! And private networking, too!

</comment><comment><USER7> Awesome. The private network offering is what finally got me to move some sites to DigitalOcean. Haven't looked back, I love it.

<comment><USER8> I'm still waiting on an official response to this[1] before I'd even consider it. I went so far as to email the CEO (after receiving marketing mail from his address) and got no response.

[1] [http://digitalocean.uservoice.com/forums/136585-digital- ocea...](http://digitalocean.uservoice.com/forums/136585-digital- ocean/suggestions/4141790-pooled-bandwidth)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> They are also _A /B_ giving a $10 promo credit by email to some users apparently.

<comment><USER3> a/b? Don't think so....??

<comment><USER9> I got two emails from them (I had two separate accounts with Gmail + aliases). In one of them, they offered me $10, the other they didn't.</comment></comment></comment>


History of Computers in the Movies: Panel Lights, Spinning Tapes and Lab Coats - <AUTHOR> http://blog.smartbear.com/geek/a-short-history-of-computers-in-the-movies-panel-lights-spinning-tapes-and-lab-coats/ <comment><USER2> I can't believe he omitted a film where computer hacking played a key role: the original "The Italian Job".

The getaway is made using three (original) Mini Coopers, which evade a chase by jamming the city's computer-controlled traffic signals and using their small size to drive on walkways and off-road. The "hacker" (played by Benny Hill!) concocts a 9-track tape with his own instructions and loads his tape (to replace the real master) by breaking into the computer center. You can see a bank of 9-track tape drives in action.</comment>


What a mid-level salary looks like at Amazon, Alphabet, Facebook etc. - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/05/median-employee-pay-at-tech-companies-amazon-alphabet-facebook.html <comment><AUTHOR> The numbers for Tesla and Amazon are skewed due to low paying factory/warehouse workers</comment>


Uber and Lyft drivers are employees, California regulatory agency finds - <AUTHOR> https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/uber-lyft-drivers-are-employees-california-regulatory-agency-finds-n1229616 <comment><USER2> This seems like a step in the wrong direction.

Uber/Lyft and the rest of the gig economy have helped to improve the 'liquidity' of jobs. This is generally a positive for society as it allows for more rapid wage price discovery.

Government policies have continually eroded this liquidity. For example a tax subsidy for employer-provided health insurance may sound like a benefit, but for many it raises the barrier to switching jobs. The new company may not offer the same insurance thereby not allowing you to keep your doctor. Companies know that these barriers exist and it allows them to underpay employees.

The other problem is by tying all of these benefits to gainful employment, we make losing a job an unrecoverable event for too many. Not only does someone now have the stress of finding a new job, but they also lose health insurance, disability, retirement benefits, etc. We should be adopting policies that make it easier for people to switch jobs, not harder.

<comment><USER3> I think this is actually a step in the wrong direction that is likely to result in us going in the right direction faster. The core of the problem we have is that there are a bunch of new jobs known as "gig economy" jobs and they don't neatly fit into the traditional idea of a 9-5 job.

The result is that currently you basically fall either into "Yes 9-5 job, employee protections, healthcare, regulation etc" or "Not an employee, no protections, no unemployment insurance etc.". The thing is, when these jobs were considered like the latter case, they worked great for gig economy companies since it makes their workforce weak, and gives the companies as much leverage as they could possibly want and shifts liabilities off their balance sheets. The problem is that it's very difficult to get that regulatory scheme changed by workers, because that's not who has power in this system.

Now that workers are in the "employee" camp we've now got a bunch of highly motivated companies that are going to lobby for reform, and if we're careful to do it right, we could actually see the reforms that should have been made earlier anyway where there's no longer this massive chasm around the term "employee".

<comment><USER4> The reason that these kind of jobs exists in the first place is not some inherent sudden demand for them by modern society. It's because this form was required to create the plausible deniability that the drivers were not employees and thus much cheaper labour. This is the entire USP of the gig- economy, lower labour costs. Don't get fooled by a shiny app.

<comment><USER5> I deliver for Doordash and Grubhub. I don't accept every offer that comes to me, I keep both apps open and I wait for an offer that I know I can profit from. If I were an employee, I'd likely be obligated to take every job offer and get my guaranteed minimum of say, $12 an hour. But as independent contractor, I can make $20 an hour. Isn't the best, but I make more than McDonalds and I don't want to chain myself down somewhere while I look for an actual internship/job in my field (halfway through a computer engineering degree). It gets me through college and I take more ownership in the job than if I was just some employee at chumbawumba cheap labor Corp. Only benefit I would wish for in my case is some sort of car insurance offer given a minimum delivery quota and discounted maintenance plan (oil changes, etc.) as it's directly relevant to the type of work.

<comment><USER4> wtf, a propaganda post from a brand new account?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> No one talks about the cars.

200k drivers. $25k for the kit (car, phone, misc). That's $5,000,000,000 of costs Uber & Lyft ducked.

What other employment requires you to front the boss $25k for the privilege of earning starvation wages?

 _For years, both Lyft and Uber have said that if they are forced to reclassify gig workers as employees that such a change would have an adverse effect on their profitability..._

No doubt.

<comment><USER7> How does it work with taxi drivers? Don't they front the cost of the vehicle + medallion?

<comment><USER8> Commonly they rent the car. If you own the car and medallion, you're sort of a business unto yourself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Government is expanding the scope of definitions used for regulation until everything fits. "Regulation creep risk" must be accounted for by investors and entrepreneurs seriously considering chasing their dreams.

Even if you are technically correct that your startup isn't within guidelines, you'll need hundreds of thousands (millions?) of dollars of budget to fight a neverending series of lawsuits.

Transportation industry is but only one example.</comment>


YouTube's top earners: Eight-year-old Ryan tops list with $26m - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-50835222 <comment><USER2> Why is a child that young on the internet in the first place? Nobody under 13 should have access.</comment>


Is economics a science? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/business/economics-blog/2013/nov/06/is-economics-a-science-robert-shiller <comment><USER2> Of course it is a science, but most critics of it should remember that it is a social science, and comes with all of the difficulty of proof that all social sciences suffer from. There are some common principles of the field that have strong theoretical and empirical foundations, and the rest of them are trying to make do with the constraints forced upon them by virtue of working with humans.

The principle of Supply and Demand is one that has so much historical empirical evidence that it might as well be called a physical law...but we can't call it that because the principle relies on human cognition, culture, and other non-deterministic influences. Trade theory also has an extremely strong empirical evidence. A lot of microeconomics is also very emprical, and even has a lot of experimental control mechanisms for which macroeconomics does not. Still, we can accept these ideas as true beyond any reasonable doubt. However, we have an extremely long way to go before the rest of the field catches up to the same standards.

<comment><USER3> Which "law" of supply and demand are you thinking of? To my knowledge, there is no single such law, just a general rule of thumb. Simple mathmatical models in economy, in which "laws" can be proven often don't predict the real markets all that well.

<comment><USER2> I explicitly did not call it a law, and even explained why it cannot be called such, so I have no clue why you are calling me out on that.

Regardless, I take exception to the claim that they "often don't predict the real markets all that well". They can predict real markets very well in most scenarios. Most theoretical-basis predictions of price ceilings and floors (such as rent control or minimum wages) are perfectly sound, but there is plenty of ambiguity in the results that critics seem to misinterpret as proof of the failure of Supply and Demand to predict outcomes.

Price ceilings tend to result in shortages, but occasionally result in no effect at all. But that isn't enough evidence to say that Supply and Demand doesn't apply to this scenario. In order to disprove the applicability of Supply and Demand, you would have to show that a price ceiling _increased_ the quantity supplied. Such scenarios are as rare as black swans.

<comment><USER4> >They can predict real markets very well in most scenarios.

Amazing that we are in the longest recession in years, and back in 2006 most economists were saying the only way is up.

<comment><USER2> Amazing that you would claim such a thing when the majority of economists never bother to publicly make a single macroeconomic prediction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Questions like "is X a science" looks often like the "True Scotsman" fallacy

Or better, if you want to keep strict, to things that can have an experiment "perfectly reproduced" infinite times, then you have physics and chemistry for that.

Biology? No. A simple example, the LD for a substance. At LD50 you have 50% of samples dying. Here you have a substance with a very strong effect (death), at a high dose (because it kills 50%) and still, the chance of it effecting the sample is 50% (ok, 50% by design of experiment, and you'll have an spectrum of reactions)?

An electron suffers a force inside an electrical field, 100% (exactly) of the time. Some things have some probabilities, like nuclear decay, where it decays to substance 1 A1% of the time and to substance 2 A2% of the time, but that's it, no in-betweens.

<comment><USER6> > Questions like "is X a science" looks often like the "True Scotsman" fallacy

True about Scotsmen, false about science. Science is easy to define, therefore easy to detect.

Either a field has testable, falsifiable ideas -- ideas that can be compared to reality in practical tests, indeed are compared to reality, and are promptly discarded if they fail the test -- or they do not. End of story, fini, full stop.

> Biology? No.

Biology, yes. Either DNA is the source of heredity or it isn't. It's testable and falsifiable. Either natural selection produces new species or it doesn't. Again, testable and falsifiable. Biology can make and test empirical claims, and it does, and it discards those ideas that fail the test. That's science.

Look at prions. At first no one knew what was going on, so they did some research. They took body fluid from one victim and passed it through a filter that would have stopped a virus, but the prions got through. This forced the explanation that something smaller than a virus was reproducing and causing fatal illnesses. This led to a much better assessment of what prions are. A falsifiable test was performed, the test succeeded, prions are real. Mad cow disease, Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease and a handful of other diseases would have remained unexplained, except for the science.

> An electron suffers a force inside an electrical field, 100% (exactly) of > the time.

It's easy to describe physics as a science, for the reason that it is very much a science. What's hard is comparing physics to other endeavors that might or might not be sciences. But there's no reason to use physics as a science yardstick -- all one needs to do is ask, "what theories have you tested, falsified, and discarded?"

[http://xkcd.com/435/](http://xkcd.com/435/)

<comment><USER5> > Biology, yes. Either DNA is the source of heredity or it isn't.

As always, it's more complicated than that. But you can definitely test (and confirm) for DNA being a part of it.

But that's one part of biology, confined to planet Earth, and we're not sure it's the whole story.

Yes, it is proven, according to science rules that, (for all biological entities known) DNA (and RNA) conveys hereditary information.

But biological proofs are weaker than physics proofs. "Oh, you proved humans have this thing called blood cells and they're round?" Until you find people with congenital Anemia, and look, their blood cells are not round, because this makes them immune to Malaria. So it's not possible to generalize as much.

In Physics I am confident that the electrons (and chemical elements) in my computer are 100% indistinguishable from the ones in the Sun (albeit in different quantities and temperature of course)

And speaking about physics, light was a wave and this had been tested and verified multiple times. Until it wasn't.

<comment><USER6> >> Either DNA is the source of heredity or it isn't.

> As always, it's more complicated than that.

No, it isn't. All one need do is demonstrate that DNA is not the source of heredity, i.e. falsify the claim. That's how science works. Epigenetics doesn't disprove the role of DNA, it augments it, in the same way that conduction and convection stand alongside radiation as mechanisms for the transport of heat energy.

> But biological proofs are weaker than physics proofs.

Not the scientific ones.

> And speaking about physics, light was a wave and this had been tested and > verified multiple times. Until it wasn't.

That's misleading. There was a debate about whether light was a wave or a particle -- evidence supported both views. Eventually a new theory combined and fully validated all the prior observations by showing that light is both a wave and a particle. That theory is the best-supported and most powerful theory devised to date, and is the crowning achievement of 20th century physics. And it will eventually be replaced by an even better theory, one that explains more, with fewer preconceptions and arbitrary axioms.

That is science at its best, science driven by evidence, evidence that shapes theories, theories that must survive testing or be discarded.

<comment><USER5> > All one need do is demonstrate that DNA is not the source of heredity

Oh, I'm not saying DNA isn't the source of heredity. I'm saying that there are other smaller factors. (you can google them). Heredity in the strict sense, yes, it's DNA, in the broader sense, well, you can have two different fenotypes with the same genotype.

> There was a debate about whether light was a wave or a particle -- evidence > supported both views.

Not before the 20th century, diffraction of light (amongst others) firmly put it as a wave. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light#Wave_theory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light#Wave_theory)

And the wave theory of light is still widely used (when it's applicable of course).

<comment><USER6> >> There was a debate about whether light was a wave or a particle -- evidence supported both views.

> Not before the 20th century,

Yes before the 20th century. I refer you to the debate between Newton and Huygens as well as Hooke, his contemporaries with respect to these ideas.

[http://www.studyphysics.ca/newnotes/20/unit04_light/chp1719_...](http://www.studyphysics.ca/newnotes/20/unit04_light/chp1719_light/lesson57.htm)

Such debates persisted from then until the shaping of quantum theory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm astonished that these questions get asked again and again, about fields that are obviously not sciences.

Fields that can and do test their theories against reality in practical, empirical tests, that discard falsified theories, and that have a corpus of supporting evidence that forces all similarly equipped observers to the same conclusion, are sciences. The rest are pseudosciences whose status is clearly shown by innumerable articles whose titles end in a question mark.

[http://xkcd.com/435/](http://xkcd.com/435/)

<comment><USER7> Microeconomics is a science by that definition. Mathematics is not (or not really).

<comment><USER8> Mathematical proofs are falsifiable, and there are a lot of hypotheses, that are not proved yet: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_m...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_mathematics)

<comment><USER6> > Mathematical proofs are falsifiable

No, they aren't. A mathematical proof is by definition unfalsifiable. If an error is found in a proof (as with Wiles' proof of Fermat's Last Theorem), that it isn't a proof ... yet. And mathematical proofs aren't empirical, another requirement for science.

Scientific theories are falsifiable in perpetuity because the possibility always exists for new empirical evidence to show up that falsifies an existing theory. This possibility doesn't exist for mathematical proofs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> You can't apply the scientific method and when coming back in the real world leaving models and presumptions aside you see that economists never play an important role. They easily justify their failures no matter how big. You can't even trust history books to tell you if the X policy was a success or failure.

In order to understand economics in my view, you have to know how politics work. Politicians and nations or people in power at any given time can turn a debt to 0 or to a war. Of course in a democracy it's more complicated, but generally that's the main idea. The their puppets try to justify the move.

It is what is happening in Greece, in the USA, in Italy and in other parts of world.

Rationality and math has little to do with economics. So since economists never predict anything really (when they do they get a Nobel), I hardly see this as a science.

As for the argument that physics or biology is not a science, I can know this: the same experiment can done time and again giving the same result. Try it in real-life economics...

<comment><USER10> Lacking predictive power is indeed a big issue of economics.

However you are completely wrong about sovereign debt. It is a minor issue, and defaults almost never result in wars. Argentina defaulted or restructured its debt 4 times since 1980.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love to hear Schiller speak, even though I don't subscribe to his particular behaviorist ideas (they are quite outside the mainstream of academic research). He is very measured in his criticism of the mainstream, and his article is a very fair summary (in my opinion) of how scientific mainstream economics is. Schiller is a moderate dissenter in that he thinks the current ration-agent-model approach is flawed, bout doesn't advocate abandoning mathematical models.

Like Schiller, I believe that it is possible to test and validate theories, but at the same time we cannot have the same certainty as in physics, and the "irreducibly human element" will also prevent the same deep mathematical theories that we see in physics, ever being developed for economics.

</comment><comment><USER11> No, it is not. Nor it should be.

Economist call their discipline "social science" basically because they suffer from "science envy". They want to believe that there are simple things like "water molecule is the bonding of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen". But in economy they are not, as economy is about the most flexible thing on Earth, humans and the relationship between them.

Economy is about dogma, there are Keynesians dogma followers(that look like never read a book of Keynes), Austrian dogma followers, and so on. Nothing to do with science but with power grabbing. Today all institutions are dominated by keynesians ands as everybody can see they are making the world a worse place.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's Science as much as any social science is Science.

The only reason we can't transform social sciences into hard sciences is because it would be horrifically cruel and unethical to exert rigid, inflexible rules on thinking, breathing, feeling human beings.

You can't turn human beings into raw predictable numbers without killing them, or throwing them in jail (however intangible such a prison might be, loss of choice and free will is enslavement).

</comment><comment><USER13> It is a social science with assumptions on how things works. A lot of economic theories are just that assumptions, assumptions on how the market works.

If you have the time watch Professor Steve Keens one of the economists who predicted the 2008 subprime bubble criticize main stream economics.

Especially the Federal reserve system which is privately owned by the biggest banks. Read on Edward Griffins google the creature from Jekyll island. In that information you will find that the FED was created by a among others senator Aldrich who's daughter was married to one of the banks who created the FED.

Thus private banks create debt out of thin air more now so than ever they are backed up by central banks. In the European central bank, the head of the bank comes from Goldman Sachs. There is a documentary called 97% owned which states 97% of all money in circulation are now debt just 3% is cash.

Ever wonder how the rich gets richer?

</comment><comment><USER14> No. Social sciences aren't sciences. They're "Social" sciences. That doesn't keep it from straying into the real sciences, just like computer science sometimes strays into real science.

<comment><USER15> Are you saying that computer science isn't a science?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> You can hardly innovate in economics if politics don't follow.

Economical decisions are so much entangled and tainted with politics, that's a big reason why it's not really scientific. The theory is sound, but practice is awful for many reasons, mostly political and because of the human factor.

Capitalism is a decent and somewhat balanced practice of economics, but the fact that it's not a hard science shows that there is a disconnect between theory and practice.

</comment><comment><USER17> I once thought that large-scale macro-economics was derived from empirical behavioral economics and microeconomics, similar to the way thermodynamics is derived from basic laws of physics (via the methods of statistical mechanics). That's _not_ what was done, but maybe someday...

Also, imagine a world where macroeconomic models get thrown out, or at least modified, when their predictions fail. Wouldn't that be neat?

</comment><comment><USER18> I consider economics to be more like a branch of philosophy than a science. The way to judge a good economic theory from bad one is to evaluate the soundness of its arguments. Historical data can never confirm or refute an economic theory because people have free will, and can act any way they choose.

</comment><comment><USER19> It was much clearer when it was more appropriately called "Political Economy".

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_economy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_economy)

</comment><comment><USER20> Surely the question should be, "Can you apply the scientific method to economics?".

<comment><USER21> There are lots of non-experimental subjects at any university -- history, archeology, etc.

The ideologists wanting to demote economics never seem to want to also throw geology out of the university.

(In the future, some gigantic geo engineering might make geology experimental, the same goes for "perfect" computer models of society and economic experiments. Don't hold your breath, unless we argue inside such a model now; wonder what the hypothesis is? :-) )

<comment><USER22> Eh, sorry, but geology is full of theories that were (and are) later tested, most getting discarded after the testing, and a few holding up and being accepted as true. Just like any science out there.

Do you know of any macroeconomical (because, really, that's all about macro) theory that was discarded since Keynes become mainstream?

<comment><USER21> The "scientific method" \-- which I commented on -- needs to formulate hypotheses, test them and so on. That can't reliably be done in any mostly historical science, by definition.

(And of course you can randomly test _some_ things in historical sciences too. E.g. finding historical trading patterns by looking at materials used for artefacts, diet by looking at enamel of skeletons, etc etc. Other things won't find any possible test solution, ever.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Why does it matter, why is that question such a hot potato?

<comment><USER24> Take all the fast food workers that strikes to raise their minimum wage from ~$7 to $15/hour because they need to work more than 8h or are dependent on food stamps.

Many (most?) economists think that that will have disastrous consequences for the US economy. Iff economy is a science, then their view should be taken into account because it is based on solid scientifically-backed evidence. Exactly like how you would take the view of climate scientists very seriously if you knew climate science was a real science.

But if economy is not a science, that means there is no evidence either or. Then you have no one else results to rely on and have to use your own common sense to analyze questions like the above one.

<comment><USER23> And does that matter? Most things are like that.

The miniscule subset of all things in the universe that we do know scientifically doesn't mean that the things outside that subset don't provide any value.

If an economic theory is useful even if it doesn't have a proof like in hard sciences it provides value nevertheless.

There are scientifically proven things that are undisputable but which, on the other hand, aren't much of a value either _now_ but maybe of great value later, at some point in the future. But merely having scientific evidence is not an implication of value.

If something seems to work, it seems to work. If that something also gets scientifically verified at some point it might turn out to have additional value, too. But it still works if it happened to worked before that.

Of all the information verified in hard sciences only a part is practically valuable in running societies, governments, states, and efforts involving humans. The minimum wage of fast food workers is a problem that has no scientific answer and which is also probably quite hard to approach scientifically in the first place. I suppose that the majority of question in a human society are like that.

An inflated appreciation towards scientifically verified information tends to overlook everything else that isn't scientifically verified. Yet all those things lacking scientific verification are things among which new theories are discovered and some of those do eventually become proven and verified.

Yet ultimately, there are no truths, just opinions. Some opinions are individual opinions and may not be shared by many. Some opinions are reasonably based on evidence from various scientific experiments and some of that evidence is so solid that it would be hard to _convince_ most of individuals in our culture otherwise. The physical theories involving air travel are accepted and tested by millions of people every day: they're effectively betting their lives against the theories explaining flight being correct. So the opinions are shared by many if not most people and they practically become something we consider a truth. Yet what happens is not that it becomes more true or a more absolute truth: what happens is that you _convince_ more people —— and often for a good reason, but objectively that's what can be seen happening. In the end, all we have is our mind and the way we make it up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoscience#Psychology](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoscience#Psychology) is psychology a real science?

<comment><USER26> What does that link have to do with your question?

To answer your question: some subdisciplines of psychology are (e.g. biological psychology), and some are not (e.g. psychoanalysis). From what I've seen, all world-class universities emphasize the former; the latter is only taught in passing in psych 101 as history.

I've yet to see anybody seriously discuss psychoanalysis nowadays outside of... well, to be honest, women's studies. Of course, that field never claimed to be a science. Oh, Žižek does too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Yet more intelligentsia bullshit from the Guardian. No. Economics is categorically not a science. It's not even a social science. It is, at best, one of the humanities.</comment>


If Swift runs on Linux, and Android is Linux, won't Android have the most apps? - <AUTHOR> Theoretically, could Android run "all the apps" natively if they add support for Swift? Conversely, if Apple forked Android, could they do the same thing in reverse? I'm not taking sides, just curious what the experts think. <comment><USER2> It is relatively easy to produce NDK outputs from Swift : [https://github.com/swift-cc/tools](https://github.com/swift-cc/tools) That's not very useful though. NDK is by design very limited and can't interact with almost any of the platform APIs

The Android framework team could theoretically make the necessary work to allow Swift code to :

-dialog with the framework APIs (so we would need need some kind of API bridge)

-compile to oat or bytecode format so that it can be read by ART (the vm used by android).

They would have to throw away and restart from scratch a lot fo the tooling though.

The Android frameworks team discussed the adoption of a new language during the fireside chat of the android dev summit.

The language in question was Kotlin (which would IMO a much bigger contender as the next language for Android). Their response was that adopting a new language means a massive amount of work for them and some very hard questions to answer like 'what about the people that still need/want to write in Java ?'.

Adopting Kotlin is not in their plans right now (it might change if in 2 years 90 % of the devs write their apps in Kotlin), especially since Kotlin already outputs bytecode, so it is 100 % compatible with the java APIs of Android.

This is even far less likely to happen with Swift :

-Apple controls the future of the language, Google can only lose from such a relationship.

-It is not compatible with the java APIs.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Apple controls the future of the language, Google can only lose from such a relationship."

I didn't think of that, but makes perfect sense. I haven't heard of Kotlin, thanks for sharing. Personally, I think the "massive amount of work" would be worth it, considering they can afford to hire more developers.

If you ask me, anything would be better than this weird Eclipse plugin concept, not very sexy. Granted, I have not researched it more than a few hours, but if "Hello World" requires a certain bloated IDE and multiple pages of code, I want nothing to do with that. I did find DroidScript and that looks like fun, but I haven't tried it yet.

Strictly from a marketing perspective, the name "Swift" just sounds easy and intuitive, which is maybe the opposite of Java's reputation at this point.

<comment><USER2> >weird Eclipse plugin

That's the standard to add new languages to Eclipse, nothing weird with that. The Eclipse plugin has been deprecated for a long time though, and Android Studio (based on IntelliJ) is the official IDE of the platform.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The language will compile, but all of the UI frameworks for iOS aren't available on other platforms.

It strikes me as similar to how .NET is cross platform. Command line apps will run, but anything with a GUI would have to be written with a cross-platform UI kit.

<comment><USER4> That said, Microsoft did port iOS frameworks to their native frameworks, so that iOS apps can run without code changes on Microsoft platforms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Swift is just a programming language not an OS. You can program in C/C++ on Android and iOS if you want to and forget about Swift.</comment>


Facebook's war on free will - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/19/facebooks-war-on-free-will?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Submit_to_HN <comment><USER2> _Still, Zuckerberg's juvenile fascination with hackers never died – or rather, he carried it forward into his new, more mature incarnation. When he finally had a corporate campus of his own, he procured a vanity address for it: One Hacker Way. He designed a plaza with the word "HACK" inlaid into the concrete. In the centre of his office park, he created an open meeting space called Hacker Square. This is, of course, the venue where his employees join for all- night Hackathons. As he told a group of would-be entrepreneurs, "We've got this whole ethos that we want to build a hacker culture."_

If there's one thing Facebook is not, it is not representative of the Elder Gods that Zuck, at least according to this piece, nominally idolizes. If he really does, he failed his idols in the most catastrophic way.

Hackerdom, to me anyway, is C, Unix, K&R, RMS and (sigh) ESR, Linus, Ian and Debra, GNU, the EFF, and the Grail Quest that is GNU/HURD. It's Freenode; emacs, vi, and the editor holy wars. It's the Woz and a man with a magic whistle.

It is _not_ facebook, in any way shape or form.

<comment><USER3> It's hilarious to me that the guy who is responsible for turning the open internet into America Online II wants to cosplay as a "hacker."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting article, has similar concerns to those raised by Cathy O'Neil in her book 'Weapons of Math Destruction', and also by Tim Wu in The Attention Merchants. Those of us working in software rarely stop to think about the biases we're hardcoding in our programs, and how it can impact users. We really need to wake up to how we are affecting people's lives.

<comment><AUTHOR> I couldn't agree more. Engineers are often so far (physically and metaphorically) from the actual impact of what they work on, it can be really easy to miss the damage it does.

People who work for Facebook must have to work very hard to remember the people they are experimenting on are people, not just "users", and that they don't have cart-blanch with how they treat them. Especially if they are building addiction into their service!

Also, Weapons of Math Destruction is a fantastic book.

<comment><USER5> I heard a guy say once in a talk, "There are only two groups that call their customers 'users': Drug Dealers and Software Developers."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Somehow the same thing posted 6 hours later has a lot more discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15284020](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15284020)

</comment><comment><USER7> It started good then the whole article went on a tangent.</comment>


What was the first app to do a staged rollout or invite-only launch? - <AUTHOR>

It's commonplace these days for apps to do "staged rollouts" or stagger invites for new adopters.
This trend obviously grew from the concept of pre-launch email signups, and seems to have turned into more of a marketing gimmick than actual necessity. Smaller apps and startups have adopted the practice from big boys like Google to enhance their image.
To me, this is the digital equivalent of making you stand in line to get into a club - making it appear more crackin than it actually is.
My question is - what was the first app or service to do the whole "invite" thing? <comment><USER2> The first big one that comes to mind is Gmail - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Gmail>

<comment><AUTHOR> That's the first one I can recall as well. Any others around that same time? Perhaps the social networks? Friendster / myspace / facebook?</comment></comment>


FounderDating & Teach for America Partner to Help Edupreneurs - <AUTHOR> http://pandodaily.com/2012/08/01/founderdating-partners-with-teach-for-america-to-help-edtech-entrepreneurs-co-founder-up/ FounderDating and Teach for America are partnering on FounderDating Education. Same great network for cofounders - now expanding to help Ed entrepreneurs. <comment><USER2> Be interesting to see what comes out of this program. What are some examples of current companies or startups in the Edu-tech space?

<comment><USER3> [http://www.quora.com/Education-Startups/What-are-some- intere...](http://www.quora.com/Education-Startups/What-are-some-interesting- startups-in-the-education-space-Why-are-they-interesting)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where to have your honeymoon? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a techie and looking for a sweet place for a honeymoon.  My girl and I are travelers, we've been to Asia, Latin America, Europe, Africa, and throughout the US.<p>She is a a school teacher (has July off, the month we'll have off), so what do we do or where do we go? It has to be crazy for us travelers, and more importantly special.  Who has a place or a special idea? <comment><USER2> New Zealand.

The place is mind-blowing. It covers every single requirement.

Extreme sports+Skiing/snowboarding+stunning scenery=Queenstown in the Lower South Island.

Native cultural experiences+idillic uninhabited islands+stunning scenery=Bay of Islands, North of Auckland on the North Island

Volcanic activity+amazing hiking+incredible beaches=Rotorua and general east coast in the North Island

This list could go on for miles. I lived there for three years and travelled to almost every corner of the country and the place just blew me away. Do it!

</comment><comment><USER3> Congratulations,

How adventurous are you?

South America If you a re a beach person, route 1, if you are more an outdoor person route 2.

Route 1 -> Santa Marta ---> Cartagena de Indias (colombia)-> Leticia --- ferry through the amazonas --> Manaus (Brasil) --> Buenos aires (argentina) --> Iguazu Falls --> Rio Do Janeiro.

Route 2 ==> Tierra de Fuego, Torres de Paine --> Buenos Aires --> san pedro de atacama(Chile) --> Salar de Uyuni --> Titikaka lake (bolivia) --> Cusco & Machipichu (Peru) --> Galapago's Island.

Europe:

Cultural Cities. (low cost routes inside Europe are extremly cheap if you book in advance). London --> Seville --> Barcelona --> Paris --> Rome --> Firenze --> Venice --> Berlin --> Instabul.

</comment><comment><USER4> Norway, north of the Arctic Circle. From the Lofoten Islands, through Tromso, and then over to the Russian border.

Twenty-four-hour sunlight, landscape that looks like an epic fairy tale, friendly English-speaking people, extremely well-maintained infrastructure, whale watching, not particularly crowded, tons of little ferry rides past and through beautiful fjords.

Only drawbacks: a bit pricey due to the location and the robust Norwegian currency. Also, I wouldn't call it a culinary trip - although you can eat reindeer (pretty much like venison) and whale (ethically interesting but delicious), and beers from Mack are pretty solid.

</comment><comment><USER5> A month is quite the honeymoon :)

Cinque Terre in Italy isn't crazy but would be relaxing and offers some awesome hiking, but it can be pretty much done in a day.

One of the trails between the towns has the lovers lock, [http://www.travelsignposts.com/Italy/wp- content/uploads/2010...](http://www.travelsignposts.com/Italy/wp- content/uploads/2010/03/AJP_5317.jpg) which could be a special place to go.

</comment><comment><USER6> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cusco>

The mountains and Inca ruins are absolutely stunning; even in July it should be quite temperate there (it doesn't really freeze), but, since it's winter, it won't be hot so you'll need a modestly warm jacket.

</comment><comment><USER7> French polynesia must be one of the most paradisiac places on this planet.

</comment><comment><USER8> Zanzibar</comment>


SproutCore Founder Leaves Apple to Build HTML5 iPad Apps - <AUTHOR> http://www.padgadget.com/2010/07/08/sproutcore-founder-leaves-apple-to-build-html5-ipad-apps/

<comment><USER2> Fairly old news by internet standards, check out the official announcement on the SproutCore blog.

[http://blog.sproutcore.com/post/756343010/the-next- revolutio...](http://blog.sproutcore.com/post/756343010/the-next-revolution)</comment>


"You MIGHT be a YTF'r" - <AUTHOR>

I was going to just make this post full of jokes in the vein of the tired Foxworthy tradition - but I don't have a lot of desire to actually brainstorm any and I think I might have something of some, albeit small, substance to add to the long decried appearance of frivolity and triviality that seems to dominate a good portion of the world where we're supposed to be "making something people want"
If you ever think to post such a thing in the future do us the favor of sharing your earth-shattering project that you're working on. Really, I can hear anyone anywhere complain about the sad state of just about anything. Give us some evidence you're actually doing something beyond complaining.
Secondly, take a look at the history of earth shattering innovation in virtually any science or technology and you'll find that the vast majority of innovation, somewhere in it's ancestry of ideas and causations, there's a plethora of things that, by all accounts seemed, at the time of their emergence, rather trivial and often inane. (If you don't believe me watch the series "Connections" by James Burke) So prior to railing on like a Seinfield punchline against seedless watermelon think about what you're doing. <comment><USER2> Wait - what is a YTF'er in the first place? I don't get it.

And what do you mean by _If you ever think to post such a thing in the future..._? What is the "thing" you are referring to - a Foxworthy-style joke?

Sorry but I don't get your post at all. You seem mad but, at what, I don't quite know.</comment>


JQuery Overtakes Flash on World's Top Websites - <AUTHOR> http://appendto.com/blog/2011/08/jquery-overtakes-flash-world%E2%80%99s-top-websites <comment><USER2> This just in: PNG used on more websites than Flash!

... They aren't competing.

jQuery is used for many things, only a small subset of which is handled by Flash.

Flash is used for many things, only a small subset of which is handled by jQuery.

Sure, where they overlap, I'd love to see jQuery win... But regular old Javascript and HTML5 is a better competitor for Flash than jQuery is.

</comment><comment><USER3> It also annoys me to see jQuery promoted above plenty of other, perfectly capable frameworks. Why not "JS frameworks used on more websites that Flash"? Never mind that (as wccrawford points out) the comparison is stupid anyway...

<comment><USER4> Which other frameworks have CSS3 selectors built in to the core for DOM traversal/editing?

Which other frameworks are as fast as jQuery?

Speed is critical, and the selector-based DOM navigation is paradigm-shifting.

<comment><USER3> A lot of other frameworks have CSS3 selectors:

YUI - <http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/selector/>

MooTools - [http://mootools.net/blog/2007/06/11/selectors-on-fire-a- tale...](http://mootools.net/blog/2007/06/11/selectors-on-fire-a-tale-of- pseudoselectors/)

Dojo - <http://dojotoolkit.org/reference-guide/dojo/query.html>

Speed isn't anywhere near as relevant as it used to be, as all frameworks are more than "fast enough"- a SlickSpeed test shows jQuery,MooTools and dojo to be roughly equivalent:

<http://mootools.net/slickspeed/>

jQuery is a DOM manipulation library, and nothing else. A library like MooTools provides classes, etc. for more structured programming. Dojo has fantastic chart and grid functionality baked right in, as well as support for RTL languages. jQuery doesn't even have a JSON encoder, which blew my mind when I first found out.

There is nothing wrong with jQuery. But choosing jQuery every time _simply because it's what 'everyone' uses_ is a bad idea. I don't think that there should be a de-facto "go to library".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I really thought this was satire before reading the article.

</comment><comment><USER6> I wonder how many of those sites use both Flash and jQuery.</comment>


Who builds a house without drawing blueprints? (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/2736348 <comment><USER2> I don't actually disagree with anything in the article, but comparisons between software and buildings - especially buildings - leave me cold.

There is almost nothing actually in common between software and buildings. You can't move a house as a matter of course. You can't modify a house in a few keystrokes. You can't just copy a house or delete it. You don't generally consider how a house will evolve over time. A house has a limited number of possible states, and a trivially low number of entrances and exits. The analogy is so poor that it's difficult even to make analogies about how bad an analogy it is.

I have thought for a long time that building analogies are horribly ill suited to software. Perhaps better than nothing, but only barely. Software is a thing unto itself and I just find these analogies make we want to run away screaming.

<comment><USER3> As the article states, "However, metaphors can be misleading, and I do not claim that we should write specifications just because architects draw blueprints."

He's not arguing for specifications because architects draw them for builders. Rather, architects draw them for some of the same reasons that the author posits that software specifications should be written.

As it says elsewhere... "[A]s the cartoonist Guindon wrote: 'Writing is nature's way of letting you know how sloppy your thinking is.' We think in order to understand what we are doing. If we understand something, we can explain it clearly in writing. If we have not explained it in writing, then we do not know if we really understand it." That's why one should write specifications.

<comment><USER4> A written software specification can still be spectacularly wrong. Writing down a spec is no guarantee that you have avoided fuzzy and incomplete thinking or that you understand the problem you are trying to solve.

<comment><USER3> Also covered in the article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When building a house, there is a considerable difference in effort between making detailed construction drawing and building the house, so it makes sense to make a detailed construction drawing.

In software, there is effectively no difference between making a detailed design and actually writing the program, so it becomes a lot harder to know where to stop drawing and start building.

I guess that many of us have, at some point, thought we had come up with a good design, after spending lots of time on it, only to find that it stumbled on some detail when we actually tried to implement it. This makes it tempting to think "If I must work this out in detail anyway, I might as well do it in code. That way, if I get it right the first time around, I will be done!" Unfortunately, it also makes it tempting to stick with a design after it has proven to be a mistake, because of the sunk cost.

(edit: grammar.)

</comment><comment><USER6> It does feel that a lot of buildings were designed with very little effort and are just a random arrangements of components and some patch work to make it passable. There are so many weird solutions, especially in newer buildings.

Far too few entrances and exits. Doors opening the wrong way, or extra doors or short stairs you have to pass through. Random looking window sizes and placements. Or no windows. Or no windows to the side with the best views, instead all facing a close by building. Having to walk around a lot for basic oft repeating functions - ie stairs or elevators that feel like they are installed backwards.

I did some hobbbyist 3d shooter level design in the past, and played a lot of custom maps. You could see the high level "flow" and vision of master designers when playing their maps or looking at them in the editor. Less experienced mappers might have some good individual ideas but the whole would usually not be so coherent.

</comment><comment><USER7> I liked the article and tried to look into TLA+, but the documentation is off- putting at every turn. There is no HTML documentation, you need to download a ZIP of a book. Opening the ZIP, it's not just a single PDF, it's a bunch of PDFs (many a page or paragraph long) that the table of contents hyperlinks to. This makes impossible to skim the documentation.

Looking at some examples, it looks like TLA+ uses non-ASCII symbols which are then maybe mapped to ASCII? As such, you need to remember lots of obscure sigils, and I couldn't find a high-level intro of how it works.

It sounds very interesting, but the documentation could be made much more helpful. Lamport comments that "people nowadays don't read, so I made a video course", but I'm not surprised people don't read if reading is _this_ hard. (I personally dislike video courses because you can't skim them and would much prefer HTML documentation).

<comment><USER8> Agreed about the TLA docs, but it is worth persisting, as TLA is very useful in some situations. These slides cover the basic syntax enough to get started.

[https://www.slideshare.net/ScottWlaschin/tla-for- programmers...](https://www.slideshare.net/ScottWlaschin/tla-for- programmers-235339832)

<comment><USER7> Thank you, that's very useful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Architects draw detailed plans before a brick is laid or a nail is hammered. > But few programmers write even a rough sketch of what their programs will do > before they start coding.

Is the second sentence here true in any meaningful way?

Usually when I start on a personal project that is bigger than a oneliner or a script and more novel than a web page I've been thinking about it for weeks and have made a few sketches of the architecture and key data models and even then I start with a rough outline of the code ready to throw it away.

I don't think everyone does like me but it would surprise me if most professional programmers doesn't make some kind of sketch before starting on a project..?

Either I'm really unusually professional (I don't think so) or this article has a weak starting point.

</comment><comment><USER10> The building analogy doesn't work because the situation is completely reversed. Building commercial software is much cheaper than designing it. Constructing a building is much more expensive than designing it.

Specifications are expensive and since designing software is risky the specification forces you to take the entire risk upfront. Lots of projects stop after a failed MVP to cut losses. You can't do that with a well thought out specification.

There are obviously well studied areas of computer science where the opposite is true. Compilers, databases and simulations benefit from a good design but this is precisely because of their well studied nature. The only way to get an edge in the commercial world is by doing something nobody else did before. That often means nobody, including the creator of the software, knows what the best design is.

This commonly results in an "idiotic market leader" effect where a product with obvious flaws (say mongodb) somehow manages to dominate a market.

</comment><comment><USER11> My TLDR:

> 1h of up-front thinking about the problem and your solution can save you > days of refactoring, testing, debugging. The author proposes writing > specifications as good way of up-front thinking.

Authors own conclusion:

> There is nothing magical about specification. It will not eliminate all > errors. It cannot catch coding errors; you will still have to test and debug > to find them. (Language design and debugging tools have made great progress > in catching coding errors, but they are not good for catching design > errors.) And even a formal specification that has been proved to satisfy its > required properties could be wrong if the requirements are incorrect. > Thinking does not guarantee that you will not make mistakes. But not > thinking guarantees that you will.

<comment><USER12> We can shorten it further. Dwight D. Eisenhower once said, "In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless but planning is indispensable."

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9287426](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9287426)

</comment><comment><USER14> Just like with real estate agents, most times they oversell and charge more just because some new paint. Same with software, dozen of times I planned out a solution just to find that a component does not support a case or have a bug. Thankfully we can just "Fail Fast" in software. So we should use it.</comment>


Show HN: Chrome Extension for Finding Cloud Compute Cost - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cloudureka/eieoionackkjenppkjildngnkenadjgc <comment><AUTHOR> Rationale behind the extension is to fetch cost of compute on any of the cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, DigitalOcean, Exoscale, Linode, Vultr, OVH) from one place. Look forward to your feedback.</comment>


Tell HN: My permanently deleted Facebook account reactivated without my consent - <AUTHOR> Hello HN community,
I permanently deleted my Facebook account about 2 years ago. Sometime in April, my wife and some family members asked me whether I had reactivated my Facebook account. To my surprise, the account had all the previous pictures and posts, even though Facebook promises to delete all your data after 30 days (I believe) of asking them to delete your account.
I've been searching around, and it seems Facebook does not have any sort of customer support. I have clearly not logged into the account, as I don't remember the password for such account.
What should I do? <comment> kube-system Maybe it was reactivated by compromise? I would reset your password, review the access history, and delete it again.

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem is, I don't have access to the email used to create this account. I created this account long time back, when hotmail was a thing. I haven't logged into that email account since 2004. I tried getting access to it, but wasn't able to do so. So basically, this account is in a weird state where it exists, but I don't have access to it.

<comment><USER2> Sounds like your email was compromised

<comment><USER3> Nice username

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Likewise, my Facebook account (mainly used as a dump of my photos from Instagram), got terminated for a reason I've not been able to ascertain, Facebook never responds, so my wife gets invites on my behalf from friends.

Maybe a blessing in disguise?

My Instagram account is still fine though, since I neglected to use Facebook login for it but email instead _shrug_

</comment><comment><USER5> I deactivated my account a couple of years ago and then realized someone has been impersonating me. So I reactivated and used the Jumbo app to monitor and wipe out all the content from both Facebook and Google. They run weekly checks and remove anything you setup including tags by other people.

</comment><comment><USER6> Meanwhile, my Facebook account was disabled in the middle of last year without explanation, and with no response to use of the only available appeals option.

</comment><comment><USER7> You cannot just get out of the matrix. You have unfriend everyone manually, delete all albums and photos and then deactivate the account.

</comment><comment><USER8> If you are EU citizen or resident that is clearly a serious violation of GDPR. They should have deleted your data on request.

That said, I am not litigation specialist, so not sure how to proceed from here.

</comment><comment><USER9> I never created my Facebook. My Gmail address is a common 6 character nickname and people use it as a throw away address all the time.

Sometimes they use it to sign up for things that don't verify email. Any major service I've ignored and go to try usually has my email registered.

I deleted Facebook 3 times before giving up. I believe people were trying to reset the password and Facebook recreated the account. I have left it since before GDPR came in, but I would put money on it being an attempt to re-enable the account.

</comment><comment><USER10> Facebook should be destroyed. No company should have that much information about that many people's private lives.

<comment><USER11> No. Sharing (private) details is a digital right, no one forces the fb users to do that. But there should also be a right to control the information that you've shared. An easy way to remove it.</comment></comment>


Google Apps Already a $400 Million Business? (Probably not.) - <AUTHOR> http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/3/google_apps_already_a__400_million_business

<comment><USER2> Sounds like they pretty much agree that the figure is wrong in the comments.</comment>


Turning the iPhone 6S into a Digital Scale - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@warpling/turning-the-iphone-6s-into-a-digital-scale-f2197dc2b6e7#.xb2k45od6 <comment><USER2> This is awesome! I've too have had apps rejected for arbitrary reasons. Hopefully Apple comes around on this one. Open sourcing it might help flood Apple with different apps/ use cases for the weighing idea.</comment>