Node v0.12.0 (Stable) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.nodejs.org/2015/02/06/node-v0-12-0-stable/ <comment><USER2> I'm really excited that this version of Node includes updates I made for the debugger module[0], including the ability to show you the closures in your program[1]. (This has already helped nail some memory issues in Node itself.) I hope to blog about it in more detail next week.

[0] [https://www.joyent.com/developers/node/debug/mdb](https://www.joyent.com/developers/node/debug/mdb)

[1] [https://github.com/joyent/node/issues/8718](https://github.com/joyent/node/issues/8718)

<comment><USER3> @dap, that's very excited work! Would love to sit with you soon and watch you use the debugger with these enhancements.

<comment><USER2> Cool idea. I'll be demo'ing them at NodeSummit too!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> No mention which version of V8 they use. Did they sync with what Chrome is using nowadays?

Anyways, I've already switched to iojs. I'm sharing part of my code between server and client and it has become increasingly painful to work around the lack of progress on the nodejs side of the network.

<comment><USER5> > I'm sharing part of my code between server and client

How? And why is it a problem with node but not iojss?

<comment><USER6> You can easily use the same framework both on the server and client, especially a general purpose one. Makes life easier.

io.js uses the current version of V8. node uses an outdated one.

Makes life easier if your code is being executed in the same engine, with the same version. Everything that works in one, works on the other.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Good to see that a new version is out - if anybody here wants to take it for a spin on Azure Websites, we at Microsoft just created a small one-click script[1] that installs this version.

[1]: [https://github.com/felixrieseberg/node12-azure](https://github.com/felixrieseberg/node12-azure)

</comment><comment><USER8> They didn't catch up on v8 and libuv and they didn't deliver the supported C++ API. Congrats on the release, but it's kind of disappointing.

</comment><comment><USER9> So can I use generators without a --harmony-generators flag now? Surprised there aren't any mentions of ES6 in the blog, considering the competition from io.js.

<comment><USER9> Answering my own question: nope!

<comment><USER10> This is by far the most disappointing bit of the release for me. Catch up with the V8 releases already!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am glad this is out but bummed about the V8 engine being so old. I see why IO.JS is a thing now but I also understand you want stability as well.

<comment><USER12> I disagree with the assumption that old === stable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Meh, too late. io.js is the standard now.

<comment><USER14> Not sure if this is a joke, but assuming it's not - it's the standard now, and it's been out for... 2 whole months?!

<comment><USER15> It's based on node.js from just before the 0.12 stable release. The v8 and libuv base libraries and other pieces have been updated. It's not like they started io.js from scratch. It's that most of the core developers have moved on to io.js at this point.

Barring a merge back into node.js (which could still happen), I don't see myself going back for new projects.

<comment><USER16> That's a fine attitude, but nothing about it justifies talk of "standard".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's been 5 years since node.js is around? is node.js development slow or the version numbers (scheme) is progressing slow. It sounds like there is at least a decade for ver 1.0. Probably 1.0 does not mean anything. In my mind version 1.0 is the when the product is complete.

<comment><USER18> Don't stare yourself blind at version numbers, they're just a way to distinguish one version from another.

Open source projects generally don't follow the same versioning conventions as closed source projects, as they don't require you to fork over money for each sharp version.

Also, software can rarely ever be said to be "complete", even theoretically. Only very small programs can be written once and be said to fulfil their purpose from then on. For larger programs and systems, the needs and requirements is usually something you try to approximate with ever increasing precision. But usually needs and requirements is a moving target as well, making this task perpetual.

This conspires to make 1.0 more of a marketing decision than to map to any real "completeness". I've seen whole program rewrites in a 0.01 change of an open source project. Similarly I've seen projects bumped to 1.0 with very little ceremony simply because it's been used in production for 8 years now, and why the hell not?

<comment><USER19> I actually looked but couldn't find it in my links, but out there on the internet somewhere is an interesting marketing study showing how profoundly more likely people are to pay for software that is versioned at least 1.0. All of my personal projects are 0.x.x, rarely making it to 1.0. Meanwhile, my business projects rarely start under 1.0.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Several have asked about node.js in contrast to io.js. It's fair to say that the emphasis of node.js at this point is on stability (including API stability, production debuggability/observability, etc.) and performance -- in that order. It definitely takes longer to release software when operating under these constraints; as the team writes in the linked blog entry:

 _We are also pleased to report that this release of Node.js has tests passing on all of our supported platforms. On the one hand, this seems obvious (what are tests for if not to verify before you release it?!), but this is actually the first release of Node.js that has operated under this constraint. Requiring that all tests pass before releasing Node.js marks an important development for the project, and is essential for building a solid path moving forward._

It's unclear what the divergence will be in the future, but the emphasis of the node.js team on stability may or may not be shared by io.js -- and in particular, this may be reflected in things like the V8 version, changes in which tend to subtly break esoteric things on different platforms. Inasmuch as the divergence represents different operating principles (i.e., enterprise- grade stability vs. bleeding edge), it may well be helpful -- and I think it's entirely conceivable that the projects will develop a symbiotic relationship moving forward.

<comment><USER21> A little disingenuous to say the tests pass when they landed this PR: [https://github.com/joyent/node/pull/8689](https://github.com/joyent/node/pull/8689)

Edit: Also, you should probably mention that you work for Joyent.

<comment><USER22> He probably should, but then, almost everybody using both node and HN knows who he is.

<comment><USER23> I don't know why you assume that. Who is he anyways and why do you expect HN+node folks to know who he is?

<comment><USER22> Amongst other things, Bryan Cantrill is the CTO of Joyent, one of the authors of DTrace, and comments here regularly. If you use node (or DTrace, or ZFS) and read HN, he's pretty hard to miss.

<comment><USER24> I use Node and Hacker News every day. I have no idea who he is. I'm not some rube, I just don't pay much attention to personalities in tech like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Competition at its best! Days after io.js gets released, node.js outs a major release.

<comment><USER26> With a year and a half old engine, worse performance and none of the new language features like generators :D

<comment><USER25> It's true, but they are mobilizing, which is good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> As a casual node user, I'd love to better understand how this release compares to io.js. Are they diverging more? Is node playing catch-up?

<comment><USER28> io.js is built against a much more current version of V8, which notably has default-on support for a lot of ES6 stuff.

Quite frankly, as a casual node user myself, I'm sticking with node v0.10 for the time being. I want to see how everything shakes out, and my site runs okay for now.

<comment><USER29> I think the next security "situation" in node and/or io will be a key decision point for many of us in similar situations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Both this and io.js 1.1.0 are available via nvm now.

</comment><comment><USER31> I would just like to point out people are running production stuff on v0.x of something..

<comment><USER32> "People" including major companies with huge teams of dev-ops.

It's not like 0.x universally means "not production ready" and you know better to school them.

The version number only has a meaning within the culture of a specific project. For node, they decided to keep using the 0.x release number long after the product was mature for production use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Awesome! Even better, will Joyent pay me to use it? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8996797](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8996797)

I hope they have enough Timothy J Fontaines.

<comment><USER34> "Pay" seems like a stretch. The only "money" is in Joyent hosting credit, no?</comment></comment>


The Ethical Cost of High-Price Art - <AUTHOR> http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/peter-singer-asks-why-collectors-pay-millions-of-dollars-for-artwork-rather-than-using-the-money-to-save-lives

<comment><USER2> Buying art doesn't destroy wealth, it just moves it to someone else. There are situations where wealth is destroyed, but this isn't one of them.</comment>


Wall St. Ruins Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/23/wall_st_ruins_facebook/singleton/

<comment><USER2> There's hardly ever any market where you can get perfect information. If the retail investors weren't so bought up by the hype of Facebook, they wouldn't be screwed over. Greedy retailers got screwed.</comment>


Ask HN: Me(dev) and a marketer want to go 50/50 on a business. Is this fair? - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys, I'd like your advice.
I just met up with a dude that seems to me, has a lot of business and marketing/consulting knowledge. It sounds like he knows what he's talking about but I can't be sure because I know NOTHING about that field.
Our idea was to get a studio together and work on projects 50/50. However he's not a developer at all so I'm trying to gauge the worth of his 50%.
Our immediate goals are a studio and work. He can bring in the work, freelance projects (he claims) that will bring in like $3000 which doesn't sound bad to me. We want to move on and start an agency like Playground Inc eventually. Our goal is to work on freelance projects for the beginning, and invest money in a professional designer down the line and begin our agency.
I'm having a difficult time assessing the situation. I'm offput by the 50% but honestly, I'm okay with it. I'm okay with it if he truly does bring in work and isn't just dicking around all day. <comment><USER2> Are marketing and sales equal to engineering? Yes.

Should you jump into this without a prior relationship, particularly a business relationship? No.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you are doing freelance and consulting work, and not product development, then you should set up some type of hourly billing system, or consider setting up some type of'finders fee' for the work he brings in. It should be noted, that most freelancers/consultancies do not need a full time bizdev guy until they have at least a handful of employees and are working on a few projects concurrently. With that said, if he can bring in enough work, it may be worth it (and it should be noted that you will need a lot more than $3000 to keep you both afloat).

Also worth noting, equity in freelance/consulting companies is relatively worthless. Billable hours do not scale, so your revenue will be directly tied to the number of hours you and your employees can work. Because of this, you need to focus on making sure you get a decent salary/hourly wage as soon as possible.

<comment> UK-AL "Also worth noting, equity in freelance/consulting companies is relatively worthless" \- Generally true, but not entirely true. Accenture, Capgemini etc are all consultancies/contracting type business, yet their equity is worth something. However it took decades to build these companies, because of the scaling problem.

Other agencies/consultancies/ may buy other agencies/consultancies because client lists, and reputation and so on.

However there tons, and tons of agency type business that never get anywhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Start with going with 50/50 on business _he_ brings to the table. This way you can work with 10 guys like him and evolve accordingly.

If he insists on 50/50 legal contract upfront (which is not unreasonable if he's the star), add the minimal yearly dollar amount clause of the business he brings in.

</comment><comment><USER5> Before you go down that road.. why don't you do a couple of jobs together as a trial?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm currently working full-time and studying on my off-time (stanford startup engineering course) + working on my project and my own clients so I don't have time until the end of August. Come that time, I'll have money for a few months rent and food.

<comment><USER5> That still doesn't stop you from testing the waters with each other. Do one project together then reassess.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Whatever work he brings in, it cannot sustain both of you, so either he needs to make billable hours, or you both need to seek employees to bring in more money.

Also whatever you do, really try to seek help from someone older you can trust, who has experience doing business. You need someone to assist you in setting up the terms between you and your future business partner.

</comment><comment><USER7> "I'm okay with it if he truly does bring in work and isn't just dicking around all day"

I think if that is the attitude you're taking going into this, partnering is a bad idea. You will constantly be judging & nit picking his every action.

</comment><comment><USER8> What is his track record? Past successes?

If he doesn't have any serious wins already (e.g., ran a successful division or business), run.

Be sure to check his references.

If he is a proven former CEO, though, 50/50 sounds plenty fair.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm a designer and I'm looking to collaborate with a developer. I have an idea which can outcome to a monthly income regardless clients.

Would you be interested? Email me: email@example.com</comment>


Startup Aims to Make Silicon Valley an Actual Meritocracy - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/05/gradberry-tara-ai/

<comment><USER2> How does the "AI" interpret this repo:

[https://github.com/EnterpriseQualityCoding/FizzBuzzEnterpris...](https://github.com/EnterpriseQualityCoding/FizzBuzzEnterpriseEdition)

It's near perfect idiomatic java. But does the dev solve any actual problem? More generally, how can you really evaluate a code project by parsing it line by line for syntax and style best practices? I think this algo would select the essays with the best handwriting, not the best ideas.

</comment><comment><USER3> > _Once a candidate links their online portfolios and projects—usually Github > repositories—to Gradberry, the platform analyzes whether or not a candidate > has written good-quality code._

Tell me one human being that can read someone else's code and determine whether it's "written good-quality code" and I'll have you a queue of companies that want to use you as a recruiter. AI instructions are created by humans. If a human can't determine the rules for "quality", then how is an AI going to do it?

<comment><USER4> The rules are inherently there; we humans just don't understand them other than as a case by case basis.

What needs to be done is a way to distill the logic behind "written good- quality code" and feed that to a machine to analyze. Machine learning seems like a good fit for this kind of exploratory problem.

<comment><USER5> The rules _aren 't_ inherently there because there is no one standard for good code. Code quality cannot be separated completely from the context in which it is written.

<comment><USER6> Not as a whole, but there are rules that can be evaluated against. Think consistent styling, usage of comments, etc. Things that the average linting tool tells you about.

Granted this doesn't prove correctness, or lack of bugs, but style is a major factor of readability and hence quality.

<comment><USER7> I agree style can be a useful input to evaluate. Most of the critics, myself included, take issue with the broad brush Gradberry uses to paint their ability to measure quality. It's masquerading subjectivity as objectivity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not sure about the approach to take a look in public code.

Students and graduates may still not developed good coding skills, assuming they have the time and energy to contribute to open source (they probably should as a pure marketing tool, though) People with experience may not have their code available. Not every company works with open source.

It seems to be quite biased to certain kind of developer. I agree is a good kind of developer, but if the objective is to find "the best", it could be a relatively small talent pool.

</comment><comment><USER9> Their number one tip is "Good profile pictures matter", so welcome back to prejudice land (I'm registering anyways, I'm a white dude, it shouldn't hurt me).

[https://gradberry.com/getting-started- candidates/](https://gradberry.com/getting-started-candidates/)

<comment><USER10> Hiring isn't just about how people code. Alot of times you run into other disconnected problems, like team members not getting along, people working in opposite directions, and so on.

<comment><USER11> How does that relate to profile pictures, though?

<comment><USER10> It highlights a similar unrelated idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A a Latino programmer, I must say it's never been easier to get a job. From this angle, there's something even beyond a meritocracy.

However, if one wants to raise money(some VCs) or get a finance job, most are biased towards a certain stereotype(skills not as blatant) and that's where the real prejudice exists.

</comment><comment><USER13> 5% of first year's salary seems an extremely (and unnecessarily) low commission.

<comment><USER14> I'm sorry, low?

<comment><USER13> Yes, we pay ~30% of first year comp for traditional agency hires. Granted, they're doing more than simply flagging candidates of interest, but if this product is successful, I'm just as willing to pay 10% or 15% as I am 5%.

<comment><USER15> Maybe this is intended to be "disruptive." A lot of what is called disruptive, seems to do with replacing a labor intensive middleman with automation, at a lower but still profitable price.

<comment><USER13> I agree and was mostly observing that 10% also meets your last criterion.

Sell goods and services based on the value to the consumer (minus a consumer surplus), not on a cost-plus-markup model. The cost-plus model only needs to set the floor (so you don't run unprofitably forever.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This company may be missing an opportunity to market this product to the industry that may benefit the most - agency recruiting (aka headhunters).

Most recruiters don't have the ability to evaluate code, so when they are representing candidates to their clients they are relying on a host of other indicators and data in order to try and gauge the coding ability of their candidates.

This product is a way for recruiters to vet the code of their candidates, and could then pass along those results ("Gradberry score of n") to their client as a value-add that other recruiters not using the system can't provide. A somewhat similar concept to recruiters years ago who asked candidates to take skills tests from places like Brainbench.

For the right price, I imagine recruiters would be interested in this as a differentiator between themselves and other firms. Gradberry would also still benefit from the feedback data if recruiters reported their results.

</comment><comment><USER17> > According to Reuters, an overwhelming majority of the startups it looked at > were founded by people who had held a senior position at a big technology > firm, worked at a well-connected smaller one, started a successful company, > or attended one of three universities—Stanford, Harvard, and Massachusetts > Institute of Technology

Did they ever stop to think that maybe people who are talented and interested in starting their own tech startup business might seek out these schools and positions, disproportionately to other options?

You can't point at facts like these and claim they are proof for a lack of diversity. It might turn out that, given the chance to evaluate and interview every possible candidate in the world, that the top 1% of talent might be 80% drawn from those backgrounds, irrespective of all other traits.

<comment><USER9> Actually I don't see how being a manager at bigco or being a wealthy student in an expensive school with lots of means helps you bootstrap a company on a shoestring.

On a side note I'm more and more weary about the "lack of diversity" narrative, Indians and eastern Asians are over-represented, this is not a white world, there is a lack of Blacks, Hispanic and women, but remember that the Indians and eastern Asians will be the most suffering minority in rebalancing. Also, I think the issue of white women might not call for the same changes as the issue of minorities, because they are not a minority. I still don't know what to do (but I don't work, so you're free to take my job, I was a manager in IT), but I think a more nuanced analysis and a finer picture than "it's a bunch of white rapists" might help finding leverage points.

<comment><USER18> > Actually I don't see how being a manager at bigco or being a wealthy student > in an expensive school with lots of means helps you bootstrap a company on a > shoestring.

I don't know either about the wealthy students, but being a manager at a bigco surely must help you to get customers with the network they have, especially if their startups are in a related field.

<comment><USER9> In my experience, it doesn't. They just go after blue chips again directly, but blue chips have a 18 months decision time on a purchase and don't like new technology. They lack the humility/will to go after many small companies to hone the product, business model and the funnel against many customers before hunting the whales again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So I'll only be considered a good programmer if I work on github? Way to replace one broken method with another equally limited view of candidates.

</comment><comment><USER20> Coding is only a small part of the equation.

Better architecture / data modeling (often) leads to less code.

Working out the problem that actually needs to be solved will likely lead to a better architecture.

</comment><comment><USER21> Is anyone else driven nuts by how hard it is to get at the data behind so many articles?

For instance, the bit about how it's important to have attended one of three universities - "Stanford, MIT, or Harvard", made me wonder what kind of disadvantage you are at if you attend a very strong but public CS program (Berkeley, University of Washington, Illinois).

The article has a link to the reuter's analysis here:

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/12/us-usa-startup- con...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/12/us-usa-startup-connections- insight-idUSBRE98B15U20130912)

Which includes a link to a graph (I'm thinking, ok, great, here's the data!)

[http://www.reuters.com/subjects/series-a](http://www.reuters.com/subjects/series-a)

If you hover over some of the dots on the "unconnected" companies, you can see a few of the other universities attended. So it does appear that yes, attending Berkeley or other top public CS programs does put you at a significant disadvantage where it comes to getting series A funding [1], though this was as far as I could get. Maybe I'm bad at web searching, but I just couldn't find the raw data.

You know, as an aside… ycombinator set up an amazing series of talks from founders and CEOs for a truly exceptional class at stanford ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8325479](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8325479)). There was a posting about it on HN a while back, and they did make the videos available… but there's nothing like actually being there, possibly with the opportunity to meet a high up in person.

There were a few objections, some down-modded (for a variety of reasons), about possible class issues here. I would say this: there's a reasonably good CS program across the bay at a university that enrolls more low income students than the entire ivy league combined. If middle and low income students appear to be having more trouble becoming founders and getting funding (as opposed to becoming high value employees for those who get series A funding), this might also be a great location for another round of this course.

[1] this is highly relevant, since students from top public CS programs don't appear to have significantly lower mid-career salaries as _workers_ (in fact, worker bee salaries may be slightly higher out of Berkeley).

Also I may have made a correlation causation error. Could be that the university itself has little to do with this.

</comment><comment><USER22> _Silicon Valley really, really wants to be a meritocracy._

Nope. It really doesn't. It wants to be _perceived as_ a meritocracy. That's a different goal entirely. It's the same privileged, well-connected "MBA culture", but in the 21st century, MBA stands for "Meritocracy By Assertion".

VC doesn't want _not_ to be a clubby, relationship-based business, because who-you-know cultures are great at giving the well-connected an extortive power that they wouldn't otherwise have. ("Those who question the meritocracy will be de-meritized.") Sure, there are Silicon Valley _engineers_ who want to live in (and believe in) meritocracy, but they're not the people with the power. You can get an employee position on merit, but if you want to ascend to the founder or investor ranks and get real equity in the Valley... you still have to be a child of the old empire.

It was hard to read the rest of this article after this critical miss.</comment>


This is what happens when you let Java people write apps for your platform - <AUTHOR> http://apenwarr.ca/log/?m=201004#09 <comment><USER2> It's an interesting idea that the language choice is somehow related to the quality of apps produced, and an excuse for another "Java sucks!" rant, but has pretty much no basis in reality.

The article doesn't seem to mention the millions of J2ME games available on run-of-the-mill phones, which are pretty high quality. So the argument that it must be Java's fault is completely misguided.

Just one 'top list' of J2ME games available, showing some pretty professional titles, by big names and small alike:

<http://www.jamster.com/fw/goto/games>

More likely to be the fact android is still relatively new, comparatively small market size, etc that is keeping more professional game/app developers away from it. But I'm sure it'll mature if the market size increases.

Please get away from this "Languages are soooooo important!!!" bs. Languages just don't matter. They don't.

<comment><USER3> Java is really great for server apps, but I've yet to see a desktop app that is reasonably performant. Ok, Eclipse is not horrible, but it takes about 2 GB of RAM. I don't know what it is about the SDK or language, or people who write software for it, but it seems impossible to produce a reasonably performant java desktop app.

<comment><USER4> It's quite possible to create responsive Java desktop apps. It's just that it takes an experienced Swing developer who has learned all the hard lessons about building that type of app.

That said, yes, many Java developers write bad code, but so do developers who write in other languages. Java just gets a higher profile because unfortunately the Java community has a tradition of writing libraries and APIs that sacrifice usability for flexibility (that's the kindest way I can put it, anyway).

Slightly off-topic: Am I the only one who feels that Eclipse is the IDE equivalent of a hair shirt? I find its UI sluggish, its insistence on imposing its ideas about project management on you irritating, and to be generally overcomplicated. To me, NetBeans, former versions of IntelliJ, and VS are much nicer products (mind you, half the time I still just use an text editor though).

<comment><USER5> Regarding IDEs, after using eclipse for years, I recently tried Netbeans and found its UI sluggish, its ideas about project management on you irritating, and its configurability sorely lacking...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Android is using Java the language, not the JVM and not libraries of code that were written for the JVM. The platform's API is also totally different than what you can find in Java SE.

And while I hate Java the language, only shortsighted developers blame the language for their lack of skill. You're not primarily an artist, you're an engineer so get over it ;)

Android's development model is also proprietary, so its quality has got nothing to do with open-source.

The title of this article is "open source is stupid". I beg to differ, this article is stupid.

<comment><USER7> In creative work, tools don't matter. In engineering, they do.

You can't build a F1 car or a space vehicle without amazing tools, but you can draw a striking picture or play beautiful music with the most humble of implements.

<comment><USER6> First of all "amazing" is subjective, and all current mainstream tools are amazing in some way.

Android has Dalvik, which is a register-based virtual machine (as compared to the stack-based JVM) that's optimized for solid-state memory (which has slower access times) and with bytecode optimized for interpreting on ARM processors. I's questionable if it was the right thing to do, but it's still amazing.

Having a VM on a mobile device is debatable, but it's higher level and that's one way to achieve portability and to reduce accidental errors (memory leaks, buffer overflows).

And what language would you propose they should use? Their own? C#? And keep in mind that it has to be a language that doesn't need lots of magic to make it run efficiently, like a tracing JIT (a pragmatic choice based on current real-world constraints).

Your analogy to cars doesn't hold water. You can't build an F1 without proper knowledge, and all the tools in the world won't help you with that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What, the page doesn't load?

<comment><USER9> "This is what happens when you let Java people write apps for your platform" :)

</comment></comment><comment> mike-cardwell This is what happens when you host a website on the end of a DSL line.

<comment><USER10> 76-10-167-252.dsl.teksavvy.com

yep.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I passionately dislike Java as your average C programmer, but this post is pure trolling.

Apple was always about the design first and technology second. And Google always had these in reverse. So their platforms appeal to different types of developers and it is quite natural that Android apps are _produced_ (in a Hollywood sense of the word) by the tech people and IPhone apps are produced by the designers. Hence the obvious appearance and visual polish difference between two.

</comment><comment> one-man-bucket Site is down for me =/

<comment><USER12> [http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/http://apenwarr.ca/lo...](http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/http://apenwarr.ca/log/?m=201004#09) says "It's not just you! <http://apenwarr.ca> looks down from here."

It got news.YC'ed? or HN'ed?

<comment><USER13> The downforeveryone guys should add a goog cache link. Search cache:<http://apenwarr.ca/log/?m=201004#09>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I couldn't agree more. Most of the people I know who write for android are constantly complaining about the iPhone licensing agreement, and then when I look at their apps, it looks like garbage. The problem is that with out a review process the whole platform looks like dreck and because of that no one will spend money on an android app. It's almost as bad as the apps I've seen on jailbroken phones, half of them replace the home screen and all of them look terrible.

I actually had an app rejected from the app store today for inappropriate use of the Detail Disclosure button. (I was using it as a login button)

Although I disagree and think its ok, I can understand how if people (like myself) just use buttons for whatever they want it can result in a very inconsistent user experience.

That said the login button is now a rounded rect.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's basically the old Windows Mobile modders on a new platform: <http://www.xda-developers.com/>

The exodus has been happening since Android was released, but now that MS has finally come to their senses with WM7 (WM7:WM6::Zune:Janus) there's no future left in doing total UI conversions for manufacturers/carriers wanting artificial product differentiation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Isn't this the troll we fed yesterday?

</comment><comment><USER14> Oh boy... Did anyone read TFA? Is the TFA available somewhere else?

</comment><comment><USER15> Haha, just because someone said he's a fanboy, he ignited a controversial debate on Android & iPhone. Yeah, that's what a fanboy usually be!</comment>


Z1d 4GHz "sustained all core turbo" either a mistake or broken - <AUTHOR> I've been load testing z1d last couple days and cpu's are always set at the base 3.4GHz. Turbostat doesn't run (likely due to kvm hybrid on nitro). Tried changing the cstate to 1 but always showing 9. I can only see 1 core go up to ~4GHz and only for a fraction of a second and only a handful of times. All other times they stay at 3400GHz. I opened a case with aws ec2 support team who doesn't know what's going on. They said they are escalating to the development and hypervisor teams.
Has anyone else tested the z1d and been able to get "sustained all core turbo" of up to 4GHz?
sauces:
https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2018/07/introducing-amazon-ec2-z1d-instances/
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/processor_state_control.html <comment><USER2> We discovered and quickly resolved an issue on z1d instances that prevented the CPU from running at a sustained 4.0 GHz frequency. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

</comment><comment><USER3> AWS Engineers looking at this, will update soon</comment>


Social sensitivity trumps IQ in group intelligence - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19530-social-sensitivity-trumps-iq-in-group-intelligence.html <comment><USER2> These people can keep their socially sensitive group. I will pick high IQ any day of the week. Competing head on head, I'll bet my high IQ group would beat them hands down every time. I respect IQ, and have found people who are smarter make much better decisions overall. I know I do.

<comment><AUTHOR> How old are you?

<comment><USER2> I am an adult. I am old enough to know what I am doing. Why do you ask?</comment></comment></comment>


Catnip: its uses and effects, past and present (1990) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1480656/pdf/canvetj00079-0049.pdf

<comment><USER2> I knew it was in the same family as marijuana, but I didn't realize people could actually hallucinate from smoking it.

<comment><USER3> please see: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepeta_cataria#Humans](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepeta_cataria#Humans)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is HN reading? - <AUTHOR> Alright, so a month ago i made this same thread, and it seemed quite popular.
(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8257369) Since then i´ve:
Read:
Siddhartha - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siddhartha_(novel)
Das Steppenwolf - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steppenwolf_(novel)
Into the Wild - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_the_Wild_(book)
Bought, but yet not read:
Godel, Escher, Bach - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach
Being and Nothingness - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Being_and_Nothingness
CODE - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code:_The_Hidden_Language_of_Computer_Hardware_and_Software
Let´s hear what HN recommends and is currenty reading <comment><USER4> Godel, Escher, Bach;

This book is dense. But takes three times as long to read as any fiction that length. Most paragraphs require stopping and pondering.

It is my second time attempting to read this book. The first time, was about 6 months ago. Now, being on my second year in CPGE and having been through quite some math, it was more approachable.

Hofstadter invents his own system of formal mathematical logic and his own procedural programming language to explain concepts, without going into what would be considered a more "standard" formal logic system or even the Turing machine itself. He does a good job piecing them together but at certain times I feel like it'd be more meaningful to read the original works on several of the subjects he touches on.

While formal logic certainly predates this book, a lot of the AI and neuroscience research that he describes were (and are) very much active. The book was published in 1979, and its references to AI reflect the time period.

The book is hard to read, especially for prolonged periods of time. It's dense and the concepts are not the easiest to begin with.

Worth reading? Maybe.

Will it expand your thinking? Probably, though maybe not as much as you might expect; due to the broad spectrum of topics covered, it's not as deep as I would like in some areas and spends too much time smoothing over difficult topics in certain fields in order to make "clever" maps between concepts in the fields (though in this aspect he's just being a computer scientist--- simple representations that map cleanly across everything! Sadly, the world is not that way).

Very good? Absolutely.

</comment><comment><USER5> Currently engaged in:

-The Bone Clocks - David Mitchell. Just a fun read. Fiction sucks me in pretty easily, and I enjoy the time-hopping.

-Dirty, Sacred Rivers: Confronting South Asia's Water Crisis - Cheryl Colopy. Not enjoying this as much as I thought I would so far, possibly because I have too much academic experience in the topic area and the writer is a reporter. I'm a bit more pragmatic about large energy projects, not exactly bleeding heart, but I try to focus on the bigger picture. It was a free book on a table at work though from someone cleaning out their office, so not a big deal.

-Operations Research - Hillier and Lieberman. Also a free book from work. Something I need a stronger foundation in for upcoming projects.

Perpetual Backburner

-Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace. I've gotten a couple hundred pages in a few times. If I get distracted at all it's so hard to go back to.

-Capital in the 21st Century - Piketty. I blazed through the first couple hundred pages around when it came out, then I went on a long vacation. Now I sort of nibble at it when I'm in the mood. One of the most compelling economics books I've ever read.

Recently finished

-The Book of Basketball - Bill Simmons. Fun to read about the history of the NBA from a true fanatic. Eyes glazed over in some sections on the Celtics though.

<comment><USER6> What makes "Capital in the 21st Century " compelling?

<comment><USER5> Giant data set, big collaborative effort, spreadsheets and calculations are available online, and enjoyably written. Most economics texts I've found to be extremely dry, mostly theoretical (minimal or short-term real world data), and/or have their calculations hidden in some excel-based black box that will never be seen by anyone else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Read: "Einstein: His Life and Universe" by Walter Isaacson

Currently reading:

"Zero to One" by Peter Thiel

"Discover Meteor: Building Real-Time JavaScript Web Apps" by Tom Coleman & Sacha Greif

Reading next:

"Benjamin Franklin: An American Life" by Walter Isaacson

Overall, I like Isaacson's writing style, and for someone with a non- scientific background, did a pretty good job at describing physical concepts such as a relativity and space-time.

It was exciting to read his bio on Steve Jobs the day it came out, but in retrospect seemed to lack depth. I'm not sure if I learned anything new about him as a person, than just someone following Apple and his career over the years.

</comment><comment><USER8> Currently reading:

A Guide to the Good Life: Ancient Art of Stoic Joy - William B. Irvine

Algorithm Design Manual - Steven S Skiena

Blah Blah Blah: What To Do When Words Don't Work - Dan Roam

Highly recommend the first 2, Blah Blah Blah is a rehash with a twist on Back of the Napkin.

</comment><comment><USER9> Recently finished:

 _Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom_ by Cory Doctorow -- frankly, I found it kind of boring, and also found the narrator unsympathetic. I'm not sure if the author intended him to be an Unreliable Narrator or not.

 _Facts, Values, and Norms_ by Peter Railton -- Gains three stars for combining serious consideration of ethical and meta-ethical issues with a completely naturalistic worldview and a genuine grappling with history and ideology. Loses two stars for being far, far too long-winded and using vague, colloquial terminology and appeals to intuition where a methodoological naturalist can and should appeal to the fruits of science. (Copy-pasta'd from my Amazon review)

 _Rapture of the Nerds_ by Charles Stross -- pretty funny, even if it made a transhuman superintelligent supercivilization look kind of... dumb.

Currently re-reading for fun:

 _The Wee Free Men_ and _I Shall Wear Midnight_ by Terry Pratchett -- It's Discworld. Go read them. NOW. And read _A Hat Full of Sky_ in the middle.

Then there's been a lot of textbooks I've been reading, which I won't list. Though...

 _Logical Labyrinths_ by Raymond Smullyan -- dense, and _fun_ , a graduate- level intro textbook to first-order logic disguised as a logic textbook.

</comment><comment><USER10> The Algorithm Design Manual

My 'technical non-fiction' read to help keep my mind sharp.

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00B8139Z8/ref=oh_aui_d_det...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00B8139Z8/ref=oh_aui_d_detailpage_o00_?ie=UTF8&psc=1)

The Disaster Artist

My 'non-technical non-fiction' read to help keep me interesting around non- tech folk. The making of 'The Room,' complete with lots of weird Tommy Wiseau moments and behind the scenes insanity.

[http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BSAZ6LE/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl...](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BSAZ6LE/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=1OHHR3E8POWSY&coliid=I3NWCBWNSAIPVW)

Neuromancer

My fiction read to help keep my mind young.

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000O76ON6/ref=oh_aui_d_det...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000O76ON6/ref=oh_aui_d_detailpage_o02_?ie=UTF8&psc=1)

Edit: formatting

</comment><comment><USER11> Started this book way back, but finally getting around to finishing it now:

 _The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America 's Man-Made Landscape_ \- James Howard Kunstler

It's a bit of a rant, though I think the author is generally on-point. As an armchair urban planner myself, his constant skewering of Le Corbusier work as a total failure makes me very, very happy.

For balance I'm also working through:

 _Doing Documentary Work_ \- Robert Coles

There are some great insights in the book, but the author has a very tedious tone and is very, very verbose. I'm not sure if I will finish it, though I'll try. He also likes using really big words (like, a level of vocabulary that suggests he's deliberately trying to write at a superhuman reading level), which is tedious since his excessive vocabulary ultimately doesn't help him make his point better. I'm pretty sure I can get through Middle English faster than I can get through this book.

</comment><comment><USER12> China Mieville, Embassytown, [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/05/books/review/book- review-e...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/05/books/review/book-review- embassytown-by-china-mieville.html?_r=0)

 _" Language is the principal theme of "Embassytown," a particularly deep- thinking entry in a tradition of using the speculative resources of science fiction to address how language shapes culture and society ... The drama of "Embassytown" develops as the Ariekei learn to lie and are beset by violent addiction to a new kind of speech. The resulting plague sends waves of change pulsing through the semi-sentient buildings and machinery of their city — an inspired Miévillean touch, grotesquely original (addicted houses try to grow ears) and yet also strikingly familiar to anybody who's spent time in a neighborhood in steep decline."_

</comment><comment><USER13> Read: Ayn Rand - We The Living Currently Reading: Ayn Rand - Atlas Shrugged

Honestly loving Atlas Shrugged, but We The Living is easily my favorite book I have ever read. It has deeply affected how I think about life and I share many philosophical beliefs with Rand, would highly highly recommend.

<comment><USER14> Rand gets some things right. She takes hero worship to a whole new level, though.

Peter Thiel's take on her in Zero to One is pretty good.

<comment><USER6> I don't remember reading about Ayn Rand in Zero to One. Could you tell me where? (Hoping the Kindle version wasn't abridged or something)

<comment><USER14> I don't have my copy nearby. It's a one-off comment about how Galt's Gulch is a childish fantasy. Some things are necessarily the work of many minds working together - nobody can build a rocket or a railroad on their own in a secluded community of genius captains of industry.

edit: I also just realized that I read a pre-release screener - it may have been cut out of the published edition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm about a quarter of the way through "The Martian" by Andy Weir. It's good, geeky fun so far. Some of the dialog is clunky but the main character is interesting and fun.

I also read "11/22/63" by Stephen King. An interesting twist on time travel with the usual King propulsiveness. Recommended for King fans like me who may not have read him in awhile.

"Geek Sublime" by Vikram Chandra is a surprising mix of "my career in writing" with computation lessons and history. I took a break from it to read The Martian but it's extremely interesting. He's one of my favorite writers and I'm glad he's got something out that might expose him to a different audience.

<comment><USER16> Look up Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra - it's a great, multilayered story. I'm hoping it will be made into a movie someday!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936–1945 (John Toland)

Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage (Alfred Lansing)

Dusty Warriors: Modern Soldiers at War (Richard Holmes)

NB A book that I read recently that I wasn't expecting to like very much but really enjoyed was "A Fortunate Life: The Autobiography of Paddy Ashdown" \- to say that he's had an eventful life is a bit of an understatement (Royal Marines, SBS, MI6, politics) - he actually comes across as a politician with strongly held morals - shame I can't vote for him!

</comment><comment><USER18> Machine Learning: a Probabilistic Perspective [http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~murphyk/MLbook/](http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~murphyk/MLbook/)

excellent ML textbook, comes with code

</comment><comment><USER19> Currently Reading:

Annals of the Former World - John McPhee [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/78.Annals_of_the_Former_...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/78.Annals_of_the_Former_World)

My Years with GM - Alfred P. Sloan Jr. [http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/275912.My_Years_with_Gene...](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/275912.My_Years_with_General_Motors)

</comment><comment><USER20> Read: Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why by Laurence Gonzales (This was a great read), The Painter by Peter Heller (Interesting novel), Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown (Good ideas and content, repeats a lot)

Currently reading: The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham, A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy by William Irvine, Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer

Edit: reformatted for clarity.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm working my way through the novels that were joint winners of the Hugo and nebula awards. Every book has been fantastic, although The Left Hand of Darkness was the high note of the books I hadn't read before.

[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_joint_winners_of_the_...](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_joint_winners_of_the_Hugo_and_Nebula_awards)

</comment><comment><USER22> Read: Dune by Frank Herbert

Reading: Foundation by Isaac Asimov

I have been trying to get back to science fiction after leaving it for so long. It's great so far!

<comment><USER23> Comedic sci fi is getting me back into it:

John Scalzi writes a kickass tale- Old Man's War series

Robert Kroese just hilarious - Starship Grifters

Read a while ago and couldn't put it down - Avogadro Corp: The Singularity is Closer than it Appers by William Hertling

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> In the Heart of the Sea: The Tradgedy of the Whaleship Essex, often called the non-fiction version of Moby Dick.

It's a brilliant, engrossing read > [http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17780.In_the_Heart_of_the...](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17780.In_the_Heart_of_the_Sea)

</comment><comment><USER25> Just finished: In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin Arabian Sands by Wilfred Thesiger

Now reading: Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiesen

Been on a travel themed binge the last few weeks, rereading my favorite travel books. I highly recommend Arabian Sands, gives a pretty unique view of how the Arabian Peninsula was changing right after WWII.

</comment><comment><USER26> Read \-----

The Unwritten Laws of Engineering - King & Skakoon The Epic Struggle of the Internet of Things - Bruce Sterling The Dilbert Future : Thriving on Stupidity in the 21st Century Always Postpone Meetings with Time-Wasting Morons - <USER2> Adams

The Straight Dope Tells All

Currently Reading

The Mahabharata - This is an epic

Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet

</comment><comment><USER27> Recently read:

Programming Elixir - Dave Thomas

Introducing Elixir - Simon St. Laurent and J. David Eisenberg

The Swift Programming Language - <USER3>

Currently reading:

Functional Programming in Swift - Chris Eidhof, Florian Kugler, and Wouter Swierstra

Recently purchased but not started:

The Algorithm Design Manual - Steven S Skiena

Sipping from time to time:

Inverting The Pyramid: The History of Football Tactics - Jonathan Wilson

</comment><comment><USER28> I just finished Feynman's Rainbow by Mlodinow. It's an interesting look at Feynman and Gell-Man. It was a little lighter on Feynman moments than I expected, but certainly worth the read. I took a break from the 3rd Game of Thrones book to read that.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm a good way through Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.

So far it has given a lot of insight into his upbringing and general history that would be the bedrock of his philosophy. Hopefully it gets into how he identified and executed on his business strategies.

</comment><comment><USER30> Reading: Jaron Lanier - "Who Owns the Future?"

Read: Jessica Livingston - "Founders at Work"

</comment><comment><USER31> The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox

Highly recommend

Next up: Zero to One - Peter Thiel

<comment><USER32> The Goal is one my favorite books to recommend to anyone joining a startup, but also for product management types. I first read it around the same time I read The Lean Startup, and I found the two to be very complementary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Recently finished Freakonomics (S Dubner & S Levitt) and East of Eden (Steinbeck). Highly recommend the latter, but Freakonomics was a bit of a disappointment, possibly because it was overhyped to me beforehand. Worth a read, though.

</comment><comment><USER34> Reading: "A Game Design Vocabulary" by Anna Anthropy and Naomi Clark.

It's good, I recommend it. She addresses quite well what I think is wrong with a lot of indie games these days, and offers insightful ideas to making games better.

</comment><comment><USER35> Read:

Zero to One - Peter Thiel

Traction Book - Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares

Currently Reading:

How to win friends and influence people - Dale Carnegie

</comment><comment><USER36> Understanding A3 Thinking: A Critical Component of Toyota's PDCA Management System (Sobek II and Smalley)

Data Smart: Using Data Science To Transform Information into Insight (Foreman)

An Everlasting Meal (Waters and Adler)

Product Design and Development (Ulrich et al)

</comment><comment><USER37> Currently Reading:

Good Strategy, Bad Strategy [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11721966-good- strategy-b...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11721966-good-strategy-bad- strategy)

</comment><comment><USER38> This is an interesting site, which started up recently, producing short stories paired with music.

[http://musicandmythology.com/mm0.html](http://musicandmythology.com/mm0.html)

</comment><comment><USER39> Currently read and recently read, in no particular order:

Modern C++ Design (Andrei Alexandrescu)

The Screenwriter's Bible (David Trottier)

Clean Code (Robert Cecil Martin)

Il Codice da Vinci (Dan Brown)

The Anatomy of Story (John Truby)

A Random Walk Down Wall Street (Burton Malkiel)

The Power of Habit (Charles Duhigg)

</comment><comment><USER40> Evidence-Based Technical Analysis - David Aronson ; Chapters 4 and 5 give a very accessible explanation of statistical inference through the use of sampling distributions. It's an excellent book.

</comment><comment><USER41> Code Complete, 2nd Edition.

Rating [ _][_ ][ _][_ ][ _][_ ][ _][ ][ ][ ] = > [7]

Level [_][ _][_ ][ _][_ ][*][ ][ ][ ][ ] => [6]

Basic => Intermediate

Pages => 753

This is a generalist book with lots of references to more advanced topics about programming.

</comment><comment><USER42> Currently reading:

Where The Golden Apples Grow, Kage Baker

Ten Things Every Child with Autism Wishes You Knew, Ellen Notbohm

Atypical: Life With Asperger's in 20 1/2 Chapters, Jesse A. Saperstein

Unframed: The Art of Improvisation for Game Masters

Les Misérables, Victor Hugo

</comment><comment><USER43> Currently Reading:

Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India (William Dalrymple)

</comment><comment><USER44> The Turning Point (book) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turning_Point_(book)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turning_Point_\(book\))

</comment><comment><USER45> Just finished: Ready Player One and The Riftwar Saga (both very enjoyable)

Reading: Predictably Irrational (more substance than most business books I've read)

</comment><comment><USER46> Reading: How to Lie with Statistics - Darrell Huff

A very entertaining read: throughout the short book, Huff satirically likens abusers of statistics to criminals.

</comment><comment><USER47> Recently read:

Fluent in 3 Months - Benny Lewis

Currently reading:

The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger

Looking forward to:

Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One's Looking)

</comment><comment><USER48> I started reading "Atlas Shrugged" after reading about Peter Thiel's libertarian views. I'm thoroughly enjoying it!

<comment><USER49> Great! It is a thought provoking book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Zero To One - Peter Thiel

Tribes - Seth Godin

The Four Agreements - Miguel Angel Ruiz (life changing) The

Seven Spiritual Laws of Success - Deepak Chopra

These are some that I am reading/read recently.

</comment><comment><USER51> Reading: Be As You Are - Ramana Maharshi Power of Habit - Charles Duhigg Applied Security Visualization - Raffael Marty

</comment><comment><USER52> Read: A short history of nearly everything. - Bill Bryson

Bought, but yet not read : My Struggle: Book 1 - Karl Ove Knausgaard

</comment><comment><USER53> Currently reading: For the Love of Physics: From the End of the Rainbow to the Edge of Time - Walter Lewin

</comment><comment> steve-benjamins \-- Read --

Don Delillo: End Zone

Luc Ferry: A Brief History of Thought

Brett Easton Ellis: Less Than Zero

\-- Working on --

Don Delillo: Libra

Hubert Dreyfuss: Being in the World (it's taking me a long time...)

</comment><comment><USER54> Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety -- Eric Schlosser

</comment><comment><USER55> Currently reading: \- "When Google Met Wikileaks" by Julian Assange \- 1984 by George Orwell

</comment><comment><USER56> Design for Hackers - David Kadavy

A rebours - J.K. Huysmans (in dutch translation: 'Tegen de keer')

Bad Astronomy - Philip Plait

</comment><comment><USER57> How did you manage to read 7 books in a month? That a book in 4 days.

I hope to finish To Kill a Mockingjay this month.

<comment><USER58> He only got through 3.

<comment><USER57> You are right. 3 is a good number. 20.43 pages ((152+237+224)/30) per day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Just completed: Zero to One.

Always reading: Christopher Alexander's The Nature of Order: The Phenomenon of Life.

<comment><USER30> Would also recommend Christopher Alexander's "Notes on the Synthesis of Form".

Is Zero to One worth the read?

<comment><USER32> I thought it was worth the read. It's short and quick. I don't agree with everything, but it's compelling and entertaining, and thought provoking.

I also read Blake Master's blog entries back when he first wrote them, and found the book a better superset.

Thanks for the rec on Synthesis of Form!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Reading:

Michaelangelo - A Life in Six Masterpieces

Proving Darwin - Making Biology Mathematical

Handmade Electronic Music - The Art of Hardware Hacking

</comment><comment><USER60> House of Leaves - Mark Z. Danielewski

Very similar style to Infinite Jest, but the story seems much more sinister.

<comment><USER61> Parts of it were boring, parts of it terrified me (way more than Lovecraft ever did).

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Read: Expanse Series by J.S.A. Corry (decently diverting space opera)

Reading: Galaxy Formation and Evolution

</comment><comment><USER63> One Jump Ahead: Computer Perfection at Checkers - Jonathan Schaeffer

The Number Mysteries - Marcus Du Sautoy

</comment><comment><USER64> Currently reading: The Humans, by Matt Haig.

Funny, insightful, perceptive. It's a really great book.

</comment><comment><USER65> Currently working on Robert Caro's series on Lyndon Johnson. Awesome, dense books.

</comment><comment><USER66> Read: The Fall of Hyperion

Reading: Eloquent Javascript 2nd edition Learn You a Haskell for Great Good

Next:

Discworld series

Secrets of The Javascript Ninja

</comment><comment><USER67> Reading:

Cadilllac Desert: The American West and it's Disappearing Water - Mark Reisner

Year Zero: A Novel - Rob Reid

</comment><comment><USER68> Read: "Galápagos" \- Kurt Vonnegut

(re)Reading: "Drown" \- Junot Díaz

</comment><comment><USER69> Reading : After dark by Haruki Murakami

Read: No Place to Hide by Glenn Greenwald

</comment><comment><USER70> Currently reading

Mature optimization handbook by Carlos Bueno

</comment><comment><USER71> Last read: Hard to Be a God

Reading: The Karamazov Brothers

</comment><comment><USER72> currently reading \- Working effectively with legacy code (Michael C. Feathers)</comment>


The Return of Africa's Strongmen - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/articles/the-return-of-africas-strongmen-1417798993 <comment><USER2> Given that democracy is at its heart mob rule, in countries without a liberal democratic tradition the losers of elections tend to also lose their lives and privileges; it'd be insane to ever step down as president in many of these Third World states.

Rather than embracing democracy fetishism, what if we embraced liberty instead? Let the strongmen declare themselves Kings or Presidents-for-Life or whatever, but encourage them to actually foster liberty for their subjects, rather than trying to run an entire nation from a single desk.

Just a thought.

<comment><USER3> Isn't this what we practiced in the '80s, with Pinochet's Chile?

<comment><USER4> And from wiki: "Various reports and investigations claim that between 1,200 and 3,200 people were killed, up to 80,000 people were interned and as many as 30,000 were tortured during the time Pinochet was in government."

September 11th, 1973. Never forget.

<comment><USER5> I might be impressed by such sentiments if the Left had a fraction of the same attitude towards the _5 orders of magnitude greater_ number of people killed by the type of people Pinochet and company killed. Yep, it generally agreed that a bare minimum of 100 million were killed by Communists in the 20th Century; my rough guess, with a non-standard accounting for pre-1949 China, is more like 250 million.

"Some people just need killing", and I put Communist revolutionaries very high on that list.

<comment><USER4> The vast majority of those deaths are from famine (and if you're seriously going to add an extra 150 million from pre-1949, how many are you going to put on the ledger of the Nationalist government or the Japanese?)

Here's a couple posts (from an unexpected source) that go into depth on these kind of numbers, and the things that come up when you take seriously the assumptions that went into generating them and seeing where that leads.

[http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/mustachianism-around-the- we...](http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/mustachianism-around-the-web/'who- gets-rewarded-by-our-economy'-salon-com/msg420147/#msg420147)

[http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/mustachianism-around-the- we...](http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/mustachianism-around-the-web/'who- gets-rewarded-by-our-economy'-salon-com/msg422771/#msg422771)

<comment><USER5> I was perhaps was not clear about pre-1949 China: "only" 60-70 million were estimated to have been killed in that period as of the early '80s, and that includes those killed by the Japanese. I attribute more deaths to the Communists than most.

As for famine, if you're trying to suggest events caused by "agrarian reformers" like the Holodomor and Great Leap Forward just happened to have starved a lot of people due to "bad luck" or the like, I don't see us having any basis for discussion.

<comment><USER4> I'm going to quote from that link:

""" On the subject of famine it is also important to have some perspective regarding the incredible pressures the communist countries were subjected to, and the desperate programs of industrialization they were forced to adopt. From the outset, the west was intensely hostile to communism and placed it under perpetual threat of military defeat. This was true from the early invasion of the newly declared USSR by WWI allied governments, to the runup to and ultimate defeat of Nazism by the Soviet Union, to the Cold war, to the western backing of the Nationalist government in China, to Eisenhower's threats of catastrophic nuclear retaliation against China during the 1950s. In every case, it was absolutely imperative that the communist governments industrialize as rapidly and as thoroughly as possible, costs be damned. In the USSR, the wisdom of the industrialization policy was proven by the defeat of fascism in 1945; but throwing every possible hour of labor into industrialization meant that other aspects of the economy were neglected and catastrophic mistakes like the famine in Ukraine could occur. The exact same motivation and consequence were what caused the Great Leap Forward and the famine associated with it."""

Note that this is very different than the famines we know about that were actually engineered by a government, such as, to pick just one example, the Bengal Famine of 1943 ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943))

<comment><USER6> I was under the impression that once the Russian Civil War was over, Western governments lost interest in the kind of regime in place in the USSR. On the other hand, Stalin had no qualms helping the Nazis prior to WWII. As for the Ukrainian famine, its causes are far from being as clear-cut as you present them, IMHO.

People like Stalin, Mao or Pol Pot had evidently very little regard for human life. This doesn't mean that all communist regimes should be put in the same bag (eg, Castro, as far as I know, didn't genocide anybody, and I don't think his suppression of political opponents was particularly worse than what Batista's secret police did).

Trying to excuse Pinochet's crimes "because Stalin" or "because Mao" is as bizarre as trying to pretend that Stalin or Mao were not mass murderers. Where I can sympathize is that Western-engineered massacres are rarely mentioned in comparison.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> From the article: "But Nigeria's army...still wields considerable power. A fifth of Nigeria's nearly $30 billion budget goes to the armed forces."

That's almost exactly the same percentage as in the USA[1].

[1] [http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=1258](http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=1258)

<comment><USER8> A more insightful measure would be against GDP rather than government budget total.

<comment><USER7> USA = 3.8%, Nigeria = 0.5%

[http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS/countr...](http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS/countries)

<comment><USER9> Interestingly it had been climbing for years, and reached 0.8% in 2011, but has been falling since then:

[http://www.janes.com/article/32167/nigerian-defence- spending...](http://www.janes.com/article/32167/nigerian-defence-spending-to- fall-for-the-first-time-in-a-decade)

Given Nigeria's security challenges, I would have expected greater military spending. At 0.5% it's among the lowest on earth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I was struck by what the article reported about recent trends in democratization after years of economic progress in most of the many countries in Africa. "For now, the advance of democracy in Africa appears to have stalled. In 1990, just three of Africa's 48 countries were electoral democracies, according to Freedom House, a Washington-based pro-democracy advocacy group. By 1994, that number had leapt to 18. Two decades later, only 19 qualify." What I like about the article is that it distinguishes the situations in differing countries on a continent of considerable diversity. Going to a recent Freedom House blog post[1] showed a map of which countries that organization identifies as "free" (green on the map), "partly free" (yellow), and "not free" (purple) by that organization's rating scale. Fortunately, some of the most populous countries in Africa are free (e.g., South Africa) or partly free (e.g., Nigeria and Kenya). The commentary in the post about ten different countries was also informative about key issues.

Yes, the main issue is freedom. The countries that additionally have democracy usually bring along with effective democracy such individual liberty features as an independent judiciary, a free press, and freedom of speech for the populace. That's important for people's daily lives. I lived in Taiwan both before and after that country's democratization, and life became much better with democracy. I'd like to see the same happen in many more countries around the world.

[1] [https://freedomhouse.org/blog/10-positive-developments- afric...](https://freedomhouse.org/blog/10-positive-developments- africa-2013#.VIO6bDHF-So)

[https://freedomhouse.org/regions/sub-saharan- africa#.VIO9pDH...](https://freedomhouse.org/regions/sub-saharan- africa#.VIO9pDHF-So)

</comment><comment><USER10> [http://www.forbes.com/sites/mfonobongnsehe/2014/12/01/nigeri...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/mfonobongnsehe/2014/12/01/nigerian- billionaire-tony-elumelu-commits-100-million-to-create-10000-african- entrepreneurs-in-10-years/)

This is the strong man in Nigeria. To adapt a joke to context, the police went into the compound with tear gas and came out with...jobs, and that was the end of chaos in Nigeria.

</comment><comment><USER11> I think the key to Africa is the same as the key to India. The conflagration of languages other than English or other than the majority.

Africa still has a diverse language stack that stifles its progress. 2000 languages.

India had ~750 languages 50 years ago. Today it has ~250 languages.

<comment><USER12> Is such a trade-off a good thing?

<comment><USER13> Especially if it doesn't even solve the problem.</comment></comment></comment>


The Opa Framework for JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://opalang.org/

<comment><USER2> Personally as a web developer I honestly wished this sort of tools started to get more and more traction. I'm getting a tad tired of using "dozens" of different languages and tools/frameworks to get a freaking website up and running by using good practices.

Quite frankly, I think web developers are, among all the IT people, the ones with more fragmented and disposable tools there is. If you look at a Mac developers, all they have is Xcode, that's it, one language, one framework to rule them all. Window developers have .NET. Game developers, they use one language/engine and that's it ! Not saying it's easier in anyway, just saying they don't worry about what tools to pick, they just do it, almost with just one language.

Web developers on the other hand have to work with a back-end and front-end language, deal with front-end JS mvc frameworks, maybe Coffescript instead ? CSS frameworks, or just use SASS ? cross-browsing issues and hacks, picking the right web server, database, VPN or CAP, on top of that you better have a task runner for all those "compiled" JS files and css, and a watcher so it compiles when you update a file..See where this is going ?

Plus web development tools are so volatile to change. Just look at Backbone for instance, last year it was the best thing for JS standalone apps. This year it's Ember... It's freaking insane IMO. So I really wish either OPA or something even more clever to come along and give us a little and let us just worry about building an app and not having to learn dozens of tools every year.

Having options is awesome, but needing to pick lots of options it's frustrating sometimes

<comment><USER3> The web isn't for you. If you want an authority figure telling you what tools to use, those platforms exist but it's not the way the web can or will ever be.

<comment><USER2> Not saying that. I just wished there wasn't so much fragmentation as there is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Recently I wrote a less overwhelming pre-compiler that allows you type HTML inline with your Javascript, may be worth a look: [http://mxcl.github.io/bs](http://mxcl.github.io/bs) BullScript's goal is just to make writing JS a little nicer, but not to be some whole new language.

<comment><USER5> Somewhat silly question... why not write BSC in JS? I mean, this seems like something that would be a natural fit in a NodeJS environment, and tying into NPM similar to CoffeeScript, Less etc.

I don't mean to come across as an ass, just curious. Though, I do think what you are doing could be a natural extension to CoffeeScript itself.

Also, I would suggest having an htmlEncode(variable) by default, I know that htmlEncode isn't a built-in JS method, but you should want to escape html entities.

<comment><USER4> Yes with hindsight I wish I had written it in JS, but writing the BS compiler was something I wanted to get done fast, and I'm more proficient with Ruby.

BS has the #x{foo} syntax for htmlEncoding, or did you mean that should just be the default?

<comment><USER5> I didn't notice the #x{foo}, though was thinking that should be the default (safe-first), and if you want unsafe/raw have that be explicit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's a real shame they took out the nice terse OCaml syntax to make it look more similar to javascript.

<comment><USER7> I'm looking forward to writing modern (i.e. web) programs with features stolen from functional languages! And, at the end of the day, more people are more familiar with Java-like syntax, and that's good for adoption.

But can anyone tell me whether the change from ML-like -> Java-like syntax has meant a loss of composability/expressability/any other traditional strengths of FP languages?

<comment><USER8> There is no loss at all: There are just two parsers for the same Abstract Syntax Tree. After parsing which is the very first step of the compiler, everything is the same. All the features of Opa lie in the ability to analyze the code and generate JS code from the AST.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Some earlier discussions, fwiw:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4647476](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4647476)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4142192](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4142192)

</comment><comment><USER10> I guess they didn't get much traction with "opa language" and now they advertise it as "opa framework for js".

It is odd that they still don't have any SQL database support.

<comment><USER11> From their site, they say that "Opa generates and is fully compatible with standard JavaScript code" so it's really no different than preprocessors like CoffeeScript. So the tagline seems acceptably accurate IMO.

And is it really that odd that they've targeted Mongo to start with? Meteor has done the same thing.

<comment><USER12> Yeah I'm wondering what the differences between this and Meteor is.

<comment><USER13> [http://blog.opalang.org/2012/04/one-web-app-one- language.htm...](http://blog.opalang.org/2012/04/one-web-app-one- language.html)

As far as I understand, Opa has 2 killer features over Meteor: Type inference and "location inference".

<comment><USER10> While type inference is nice, I'd still prefer to mark locations explicitly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Can I create new HTML elements? I'm not psyched about the kind of syntax in [http://hasteb.in/rikuquyaju.xml](http://hasteb.in/rikuquyaju.xml) and would much rather have something like [http://hasteb.in/bisilexope.xml](http://hasteb.in/bisilexope.xml)

<comment><USER15> I'm not sure I understand your question. Oh, and this.getChildren() doesn't look very Opa-ish.</comment></comment>


Disqus Gravity — The web of discussions - <AUTHOR> http://disqus.com/gravity

<comment><USER2> This reminds me of Altavista search back in 1999 (it would string together words that were connected, creating a web - exciting stuff back then).

Except I can't figure out how Gravity would be useful at all. I can't, for example expand the "tech" section.

</comment><comment><USER3> This kinda reminds me Tom Groves' "Corkboard" idea (except these are topic bubbles, and Tom actually created floating topic "Post-its")

[http://web.archive.org/web/20040725085305/http://www.tomgrov...](http://web.archive.org/web/20040725085305/http://www.tomgroves.net/corkboard/)

</comment><comment><USER4> What am I supposed to be doing with it? What am I supposed to be getting from it? Admiring some design work or absorbing useful information? The aesthetic is there, but the utility? Nonexistent. This isn't how you present this type of data to a consumer. It isn't consumption-friendly.

</comment><comment><USER5> Some of the text in the smaller bubbles are illegible. Also, is it possible to prevent the collision of a few bubbles from causing everything on the screen to move?

Very impressive!

</comment><comment><USER6> Am I missing something- I like that the blogs are in circles- kind of fun but does it help me find blogs I wouldn't find otherwise?

<comment><USER7> Hey, thanks for the feedback! I'm the lead designer on this project. Gravity probably won't replace Google Reader just yet. Out goal was to create a fun experience, show off a little bit of our network, and listen to feedback – feedback that we might use to drive the design and features of potential future Disqus products.

<comment><USER8> This is very different than most of the stuff I've seen using d3. Do you have plans to "disqus" how it was done?

<comment><USER9> Looks like it's using some of the Force Layout stuff <https://github.com/mbostock/d3/wiki/Force-Layout>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looks like future versions will include an easter egg!

<comment><USER7> Shhh! ;-)

</comment></comment><comment> li-ch Too little information, too much cognitive overhead.

</comment><comment><USER11> this looks cool, what's the technology behind it?

<comment><USER7> Check out D3 here, lots of cool stuff: <http://d3js.org></comment></comment>


'Ogooglebar' and Other Swedish Words We Should Incorporate Into English - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/03/ogooglebar-and-14-other-swedish-words-we-should-incorporate-into-english-immediately/274383/

<comment><USER2> Hilarious: "I'm going on a date tonight, but he's totally ogooglebar! What are the odds he's an axe murderer?"</comment>


Organizational Debt - <AUTHOR> https://boats.gitlab.io/blog/post/rust-2019/ <comment><USER2> @ OP & HN mods - just fyi, it's not clear from the title or URL that this is about the Rust project. Might be worth adding "(Rust)" or something to clarify.

Anecdotally, I for one am not interested in the topic of organizational debt in general or wrt to the "boats" project, whatever that may be, as I've read and experienced quite a lot about it already. But I am very interested in it wrt to the Rust project, given their clarity of thinking in other domains. I clicked through and read this anyway, only b/c it's Sunday and I'm not in a hurry to scan the titles and urls only and quickly decide what's interesting to me. But on other days I might have skipped this one just due to the lack of important information in the post line.

<comment><USER3> > the "boats" project, whatever that may be

"boats" is a person. Short for "withoutboats". From their about page:

> This is the blog of withoutboats, a Rust contributor and a stack of labrador > puppies in an overcoat.

<comment><USER2> I know, I checked it out when I read the article. Point is, I couldn't tell from the HN headline what this was about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Re: Github Discussions

Preface: I don't think this resolves the issue completely by any means.

It's seemed clear to me for awhile that Github discussions need threading, badly. The 200 comments on one of those issues probably amounts to about 40 actual discussion topics. Many of them are the original poster adding follow- up comments to their original comment, or back-and-forth discussions about one single comment. It's especially noticeable on contentious discussion topics.

Basic conversation threads wouldn't completely alleviate the problem--200 threads is much better than 1000 comments, but probably still an intractable amount for the maintainers. Still, it might mean you're able to scan 75% of the discussion instead of 25%.

<comment><USER5> The only thing that I could imagine approaching a "complete" solution would be to have a dedicated secretary who manually writes comprehensive summaries every few days.

Since that's not going to happen, I don't see any better solutions than yours.

<comment><USER6> I've often wondered how much more productive GitHub discussion threads would be if you could set them to be rate-limited: Each user can only comment X times per day and each comment may only have up to Y characters of text.

Right now, it's too easy for people to blast out unedited words and consume the attention of readers. If they had an attention budget, maybe they would spend it more wisely.

<comment><USER7> You'd have to stop people editing their comments, too. Or people end up responding to subsequent comments by editing previous comments and doing the whole:

"On subject foo:.... (insert four paragraphs of blather here)

On subject bar: .... (more blather)

In response to your point .... (yada yada)"

thing, and it gets even more unreadable.

I find any serious, meaningful creative discussion almost impossible without proper threads. I have this same problem in Slack, where interesting, significant, discussions sit in a thread spawned from some innocuous comment and there's no way of highlighting it to say "this is significant.

I hate to say it, but old-school, early-internet forums did solve this problem really well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > there is so often not a reciprocity of empathy from the other side of the > discussion

Being part of an open source community must be a two-way street. I have contributed a little bit back and weigh in sparingly. I am shocked how demanding and entitled some people can be, especially those who have given nothing back.

> the community has no defined boundary of membership

I realize having the time to contribute to open source is a privilege and we should be wary of silencing voices who may have good ideas but not the time to contribute. However, I also believe that the amount of noise is drowning out the signal. I am in complete agreement that we desperately need to define what membership means.

</comment><comment><USER9> Is there an open source project which has done a good job of bringing on Product Managers and establishing norms of how they interact with the community and how they manage the process by which broad consensus is built?

</comment><comment><USER10> Rust is definitely drawing in a large crowd of highly opinionated and smart people that each have lots to say. That can indeed generate a lot of noise.

There are a few risks when that happens. One is that the debates can get kind of toxic and political. This means you get people skilled at politics dominating the discussions. This both drives away people and attracts more wannabe politicians. Worst case you end up with a lot of politicians in charge. The other risk is that you inevitably get schisms, factions, and people going off carving out their own niches all while sucking up a lot of energy with debate, arguments, and the inevitable fallout of that. IMHO this is exactly what happened with e.g. Scala.

Rust is not quite there yet but I'd say it is starting to attract a lot of the same type of crowds meaning that, as this article identifies, now is a good time to do something about it.

One way out is simply imposing some hierarchy based on meritocracy. It starts by acknowledging that somebody needs to take decisions and that not all opinions matter equally. Find some respected long term committers and organize decision making strictly around those doing the most work. It works well in other places in the OSS community. You build it, you own it. You want to contribute, you need to learn to work with those that are going to be in charge of accepting your work.

<comment><USER11> > It starts by acknowledging that somebody needs to take decisions and that > not all opinions matter equally. Find some respected long term committers > and organize decision making strictly around those doing the most work.

No, that's not a way out, because that's effectively what we started with at the dawn of Rust 1.0. withoutboats addresses the problems we've had in the post.

<comment><USER10> I wouldn't dismiss it that lightly. We tried it and it didn't work is not much of an argument here because this is exactly how many other OSS and standards bodies work. E.g. IETF has a process that balances the interests of the stakeholders involved but there's a clear editorial process with somebody nominated to be charge. Same with how Apache functions. Or the Eclipse foundation. These organizations have done stuff like this for a while and they get to deal with plenty of angry users, politics, and other issues that just are part of the deal when you have many stakeholders. Even Linus Torvalds, the prototypical benevolent leader, seems to have come up with a decision process that kind of works. Not that I would advocate that particular way of working.

The bottom line is that most bigger projects seem to end up with some kind of meritocracy. Not a bad thing to have a few responsible leaders staying on top of things.

<comment><USER11> I don't really want to get into it, but my point is not that, "it doesn't work," but rather, "no, we have actually tried that, so there must be more to the story." A key difference, for example, between Rust and the other projects you mention is the collective expectation of the community's involvement in the decision making process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you have too much organizational dept, you can also go bankrupt, right? Yes, seems that some projects actually did that: [https://github.com/greasemonkey/greasemonkey/milestone/77](https://github.com/greasemonkey/greasemonkey/milestone/77)

<comment><USER13> What is that about?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I really empathize with the community interaction aspects of these comments - having spent a few months triaging everything that comes into our (admittedly less organized) repo, I can very much understand. It can be truly draining to only see the negatives and the nits and the nags and the bugs and the bothers and the badgers of a product. Heck, it makes it easy to forget about all the people who love it, those who've never once complained and silently continue about their business, able to ignore the fact that work had ever been done (and continues to be done).

But... It's swell when you meet someone and they offhandedly mention using the thing you work on, heck, even recommend it or straight up take it for granted. I know those moments probably can't sustain open source maintainers (and that leads into the second point about capturing funding), but, at least in my experience, they really help keep a more healthily balanced perspective. And that's at least a part of being able to stay happy working on such a project.

With respect to funding... As a relatively young compiler dev, I've pretty much always taken compiler software for granted. It's (almost) always been that languages have been freely available, and usually the source available, too. If I'm honest, at the price point of "free", it's almost hard to picture how compiler engineers get paid at all. Normally people sell tools, but... Programming languages are now tools freely given. And now even their advanced refactoring tools and IDE support. Strange to think about it, if I'm honest.

</comment><comment><USER15> Github comment threads are basically like a kicked over dumpster which has all the content landed on the floor. I hate going over them. Something like a stackoverflow style organization would improve a lot.

</comment><comment><USER16> >> Using GitHub issues to discuss design is like drinking from a firehose

It depends what kind of community you have. I noticed that projects which have received a lot of hype tend to lose their thought leaders and they often end up with highly divided communities and opinions. Also, when people jump on the hype bandwagon too quickly, they set themselves up for disappointment and discussions become more emotionally charged. This is made worse by the fact that the most emotionally invested people are more likely to get involved in discussions.

</comment><comment><USER17> > It becomes overwhelming and exhausting

> It becomes harder for users with genuinely new insights to participate > because they can't tell if their insight is new or not and may decide just > not to post it.

> Working groups need a toolkit

I wonder if that toolkit might look something like: [https://www.kialo.com/](https://www.kialo.com/)

Structuring and organizing discussions like this might make them more scalable.

One difference is Kialo only seems to support binary arguments. There may be more than two design options.

</comment><comment><USER18> Instead of discussing ideas in threaded conversations, you could try using standardized proposal documents. It works well for Python.

<comment><USER19> Rust has an RFC process. However, RFCs have associated comment threads. Do PEPs have these or can you do suggestions only by addressing a new PEP?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> How bad is it if everything on that list applies to my day-to-day responsibilities at work?

</comment><comment><USER21> Very well written, honest, and instructive post!

</comment><comment><USER22> Clearly there's need to introduce a process for Rust Improvement Proposals.

</comment><comment><USER23> December 16, 2019?

<comment><USER24> the super organized manage to bend time to get things done

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> So... Change to Gitlab?

<comment><USER26> I don't think GitLab's issues are that different from GitHub's that it would solve these issues. Perhaps something like Loomio might, which is made for use cases like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> [deleted]

<comment><USER28> There is. Try clicking the [-] beside a comment title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Just use IRC ... the problem with writing down all ideas and all discussion like with Git issues or a forum is that the few good ones get buried in all the shit. With IRC you can only have one or two discussions at the time, so you won't have the problem of following 30+ simultaneous discussions. IRC is a form of grinding, after some time, the community will have reached a consensus, and all arguments for and against something will be known by most regulars, so when someone new joins and say something that already has been discussed a thousand times, one of the regulars can say that these are the trade-offs and this is why it has not been implemented. Good ideas or important issues will be repeated over and over until they are either implemented or fixed, so prioritizing issues becomes natural.

<comment><USER30> > Just use IRC ... the problem with writing down all ideas and all discussion > like with Git issues or a forum is that the few good ones get buried in all > the shit.

Buried is still searchable and linkable, IRC generally isn't. Poorly rehashing old discussions generally doesn't help improve the signal to noise ratio either IME.

It's not necessarily obvious where all discussion should take place either. I started writing a VisualRust patch to add stdlib natvis files to MSVC projects, which instead morphed into a better rustc patch: [https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pull/43221](https://github.com/rust- lang/rust/pull/43221)

Thanks to this buried gem I stumbled across in a search: [https://github.com/rust- lang/rust/issues/36503#issuecomment-...](https://github.com/rust- lang/rust/issues/36503#issuecomment-250405902)

If that was an IRC discussion somewhere instead, it probably wouldn't have gotten done (or at least not nearly so soon), because I'd be chatting and listening in the wrong channel/silo.

<comment><USER29> The human brain already filters out sounds (noise) that are not important. It filters out vision that is not important. It filters out smell. etc. And it does so automatically. But we can not yet filter out information, and too much information debt can cause anxiety. And issues can get old very fast in software as things change, but there is no-one to delete or update posts that are no longer relevant. I think you where lucky that the 9 month old post was still relevant. Some organizations solve the organizational dept by ferociously closing down issue/threads and only work on the open ones, while also making sure there are no more open ones that they can handle.

<comment><USER30> My experience is that desired features always vastly outpaces the ability for software to keep up with it, resulting in the very triaging of issues you mention - closing them quickly. The flip side of this is that most ideas never get worked on, and a lot of them _do_ stay relevant.

Sometimes the code that feature would operate on has changed significantly, sometimes the need for it has been mooted or enhanced by other changes, sometimes the change has been made significantly harder (or easier!) by other changes.

But often the idea on it's own is relatively unchanged, and closed is just another form of buried - still searchable, reopenable for the right reason.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bugs in Grandstream Gear Lay Open SMBs to Range of Attacks - <AUTHOR> https://threatpost.com/grandstream-bugs-smbs-attacks/143141/ <comment><AUTHOR> The original advisory can be found here[0] and a Github repository with PoCs here[1].

[0] [https://www.trustwave.com/en-us/resources/security- resources...](https://www.trustwave.com/en-us/resources/security- resources/security-advisories/?fid=23920)

[1] [https://github.com/scarvell/grandstream_exploits](https://github.com/scarvell/grandstream_exploits)

<comment><USER2> Grandstream doesn't care about security, they went over a year with a broken TLS reg stack on the DP750/DP720, and slightly under a year with the same exact issue on the HT802.

I'd be curious to see an audit of the DP750...</comment></comment>


Lala.com - Social iTunes Competitor with 6 Million Songs, 10 Cents A Song - <AUTHOR> http://www.informationweek.com/news/personal_tech/music/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=211300166

<comment><USER2> I'll take Rhapsody's subscription service any day.

$15/month on LaLa: add 150 songs every month to my stream list.

$15/month on Rhapsody: have instant access to millions of songs every month.

BTW, I do not work for Rhapsody or any of its partners.</comment>


The Economics of a Roman Suez Canal - <AUTHOR> https://alternatehistoryweeklyupdate.blogspot.com/2012/06/economics-of-roman-suez-canal.html <comment><USER2> I _had_ to look in Wikipedia if the "Canal of the Pharaohs" was real [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Canal#Canals_dug_by_Necho...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Canal#Canals_dug_by_Necho,_Darius_I_and_Ptolemy)</comment>


Ask HN: Online website creator? - <AUTHOR>

The website is crucial for a startup. Yet it is very tricky and time consuming to get it right. To save us time we are looking for the best online website authoring software.<p>So far we have found SiteMaker powered sites and sitekreator.com which seems to be pretty good. Do you have any better suggestions? <comment><USER2> <http://www.weebly.com/features.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> First what are you trying to build? A storefront is vastly different from a general company page. A social site is different from a streaming video site. Identify what you want first then find out who the best of breed is.

<comment><AUTHOR> We don't need a complex web application. We need a decent-looking website that describes the company, the products, possibly using rich content. A contact form, an integrated blog would also be nice.

But we need something more than a basic wordpress theme really. They look too primitive. So it comes down to adding a bit of your own design, but if you go for a fully custom design than it comes down to project managing and building a whole website. Therefore I am considering a website builder to be a solution that is somewhere inbetween.

<comment><USER4> Aegean, based on what you describe, SiteKreator could be a really good fit for you.

Besides having a collection of well-designed themes available, SiteKreator offers design customization beyond what most other platforms offer.

We have been very busy in upgrading our functionality, including new gallery visualizations, a new application platform that lets you create and add your own applications (we've released the SDK for it) and lots more. you can find more on our blog <http://sitekreator.com/sitekreator/blog.html>

Why not sign up for the free trial and see how you like it?

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to get in touch.

Rene Community Manager SiteKreator

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I haven't used it myself, but it was fun following the development of Harmony: <http://get.harmonyapp.com/> \- which does online site creation and hosting.

</comment><comment><USER6> How about shopify</comment>


AWS and Sustainable Energy - <AUTHOR> http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/sustainable-energy/

<comment><AUTHOR> > AWS announced a 4.8 megawatt hour pilot of Tesla's energy storage batteries > in its US West (Northern California) Region. Batteries are important for > both data center reliability and as enablers for the efficient application > of renewable power. They help bridge the gap between intermittent > production, from sources like wind, and the data center's constant power > demands. For more information, please see the Tesla press kit > ([http://www.teslamotors.com/presskit/teslaenergy](http://www.teslamotors.com/presskit/teslaenergy))

<comment><AUTHOR> TL;DR AWS uses Tesla's batteries in Region US West (Northern California)</comment></comment>