Eric Weinstein may have found the answer to physics' biggest problems - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/may/23/eric-weinstein-answer-physics-problems <comment><USER2> Aw, at least mention that this is an article from 2013. I'd been looking to a follow-up from something recent re the Wolfram stuff, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22866284](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22866284)

</comment><comment><USER3> Eric Weinstein on April 2nd posted the lecture to his YouTube channel + at the end of video he goes over to clarify some details: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7rd04KzLcg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7rd04KzLcg)

I'd recommend his The Portal video podcast series as well: [https://www.youtube.com/user/nobani88/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/nobani88/videos)

Two other recent interviews he did with Lex Fridman [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIAZJNe7YtE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIAZJNe7YtE) and Joe Rogan [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf0_nMaQ6tA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf0_nMaQ6tA)

</comment><comment><USER4> About that:

 _Hosting a lecture in a university physics department [Oxford] without inviting any physicists is, at best, an unforgivable oversight. As my colleague Subir Sarkar put it, "It's surprising that the organisers did not invite the particle physicists to attend – if indeed the intention was to have a discussion."_ [1]

If the theory is to be anything but a dalliance he really needs to engage in conversation. Weinstein may be right, or his ideas may very well stimulate other ideas in the field. But the hard work of debate and discovery comes first, afterwards the headlines.

[1] [https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23595-weinsteins- theo...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23595-weinsteins-theory-of- everything-is-probably-nothing/)

<comment><USER5> The article hints to a correction that was ommitted and the letter it links to is a dead link. I highly doubt he didn't "invite anyone from the physics dept".

Listen to Eric's podcast and you will come to realize that his relationship with mainstream physics dept is much more complex and nuanced.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a physics major myself, I'm a huge fan or Eric's work and his new podcast. I think his critic of mainstream string theory and the general malaise of theoretical physics dept globally is spot on. String theory is a dead theory in denial of its failings and lack of experimental evidence for 30 years now. The podcast he did with his "arch nemesis" who had a similar but competing theory was excellent. It shows he is not living in bubble.

</comment><comment><USER6> This says that the "first generation" of particles includes the quarks. That is, just as the electron has the muon and the tau as related but heavier particles, the quarks also have such particles.

Do such particles exist? I had thought that the six (plus their antiparticles) were all there are.

<comment><USER7> I thought the six were three generations of two (well, four with antiparticles).

</comment></comment><comment> java-man This looks rather interesting. Could someone working in this field comment on this theory?

<comment><USER6> Article was published in 2013. I haven't heard much about this since, so I'm going to guess that it didn't turn out to be the answer. (Or at least, it has not yet shown itself to be superior to mainstream theories.)

<comment><USER8> Joseph Conlon of the University of Oxford stated that some of these particles, if they existed, would already have been detected in existing accelerators such as the Large Hadron Collider.[12]

> sounds like a hack to me.

Few physicists attended and no preprint, paper, or equations were published.[13] Weinstein's ideas were not widely debated. The few that did engage expressed skepticism.[12][14] They were unable to debate more intensely due to the fact that there was no published paper.[15] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Weinstein](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Weinstein)

<comment><USER6> I don't know where you got "sounds like a hack to me", but you're not quoting my parent comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> He just recently explained this on Lex Fridman's podcast and JRE

</comment><comment><USER10> (2013)</comment>


Why Pussy Riot Crashed the World Cup Final Dressed as Russian Police [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/video_and_audio/must_see/45119823/why-pussy-riot-crashed-the-world-cup-final <comment><USER2> Is this approach working at all for their goal? It always sounds rather like they just annoy people they are trying to save, no?

<comment><USER3> Think of it like an annoying advertising campaign where even if you don't like the advert now you are more likely to be aware of the product.

<comment><USER4> But if the campaign truly is annoying, couldn't it make people more aware, yet also more likely to side in the opposite way the campaigners intended/desired?

<comment><USER3> This is a common argument used to detract from protests (I'm not saying you are using it deliberately). People ask why people have to be so distruptive and question the methods to move from the issues and focus on the individuals. Why can't the protest just be a little more reasonable and acceptable to them. Even though the only acceptable protest to the questioners would be one that didn't happen and caused zero disruption.

Protests are intentionally disruptive to get attention. Otherwise they wouldn't work and news reports and stories about the issue being protested wouldn't be made. We know this protest worked because we're still discussing it.

<comment><USER5> True, but there's also a more rational angle to this - as an activist group, you have to ask yourself, how much sympathy for your cause are you willing to sacrifice to get more attention?

<comment><USER3> How is your point more rational?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why You Should Write Programs to Write Programs to Write Programs For You - <AUTHOR> http://www.modernperlbooks.com/mt/2013/09/why-you-should-write-programs-to-write-programs-to-write-programs-for-you.html

<comment><USER2> First thing that came to my mind when I saw the title. [http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/?joel.3.219431.12](http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/?joel.3.219431.12)</comment>


Mr. Bad News (1966) - <AUTHOR> http://reprints.longform.org/mr-bad-news <comment><USER2> This article goes well together with the Overlooked[1] series by New York Times, which prints obituaries for the people _overlooked_ by NYT at the time of their passing.

The one that appeared on HN a while ago was for Alan Turing.

This profile of the obituary writer gives a better impression of how and why some of those people could have been overlooked.

[1][https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/obituaries/overlook...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/obituaries/overlooked.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> That was a good read!

It is much more interesting than the obituary the nytimes ran for him: [https://www.nytimes.com/1990/09/05/nyregion/obituary- alden-w...](https://www.nytimes.com/1990/09/05/nyregion/obituary-alden- whitman-is-dead-at-76-made-an-art-of-times-obituaries.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> Gay Talese, the writer, is a famous for bringing a new style of journalism (as were a few years later people like Tom Wolfe, H.S Thomspon and so on). His most famous piece is called "Frank Sinatra has a cold".

</comment><comment><USER5> This was amazing. I've never been so captured by an obituary.</comment>


Say Yes to Markdown, No to MS Word - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@drodil/say-yes-to-markdown-no-to-ms-word-be4692e7a8cd <comment><USER2> I've spent the bulk of my career on content-driven apps, ranging from basic CMS systems to platforms that manage workflow of large, complex, legal documents. And I can tell you that while Markdown works for basic formatting of short documents, it falls short when you work with people whose entire lives revolve around long documents with complex formatting. (Attorneys, policy writers, etc.) A UX that exposes markdown to that crowd just isn't widely accepted. And that is before we even get into actual features like TOCs, headers, pagination, margin control, nested tables, etc.

Now, the benefits of Markdown listed in the article are all true -- but also only loosely tied to the UX of the actual document authors and editors. If Markdown supports your formatting needs, sure, it is a good storage syntax for your content, fine. But don't make attorneys, policy writers, etc., use it. I'm not saying MS Word is the only answer either, but I highly recommend that people find/modify/create a more robust editor for your authors.

<comment><USER3> As someone who wrote his school papers LaTeX and now jockeys Word for a living as an attorney, let me tell you why Word is awesome:

1) Everyone uses it. You get documents from co-counsel, and you can flip on track changes and send some comments. Track changes is better than version control (for legal documents). Word shows you what you just deleted, so you can be sure you haven't changed the meaning without intending to. And co- counsel doesn't use git so sending diffs around is of limited utility.

2) Typesetting is built-in. Yes, this is one thing that's terrible about Word and great about LaTeX. Separation of content and presentation is good. Except when it's not. Word is, for the most part, WYSIWYG. That means I can tweak my hyphenation or kerning as I go, and when I print to PDF 5 minutes before the brief is due to the printer (as in dead trees), I can be pretty sure what it'll look like. LaTeX lets you control that too, but the "production" step is often longer.

3) Speaking of formatting: legal documents, and often other business documents, aren't just mechanical. For something like an appellate brief in an important case, thousands of people might read it (and its enshrined immutable in the public record for posterity). The content is the most important thing, but they also have to _look nice_. Markdown, as far as I can tell, gives you very little control over typesetting.

Word is, from an intellectual perspective, a mish-mash of awful ideas. But it's a really good tool for quickly producing documents that are bear a passable resemblance to a properly typeset book page. (Which is the gold standard--briefs for the Supreme Court until very recently were often typeset using a hot-metal press.)

<comment><USER4> I didn't know Word had settings to adjust keming.

To be honest I only use Word to view requirements docs. I thought keming was on a per-font basis and that's it. But if Word lets you tweak it that's pretty cool.

<comment><USER5> It's "kerning", not "keming".

<comment><USER4> Almost like I typed it with bad keming, huh?

[http://www.ironicsans.com/2008/02/idea_a_new_typography_term...](http://www.ironicsans.com/2008/02/idea_a_new_typography_term.html)

<comment><USER5> So I don't recognize someone's made-up term consisting of a cute misspelling; I try to be helpful and point out the correct spelling, and what do I get? Downvotes. Sigh.

<comment><USER4> I upvoted you, but remember that talking about _fight club_ will get you _fight clubbed_.

It not just a misspelling, it's a relevant misspelling to the meaning of the word.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Markdown is great, there are a bunch of _really_ good reasons to use it.

But Markdown doesn't compete with Word, really at all. There's no strong reason to frame them as opposites or to suggest that one can replace the other. Word is an editor, and Markdown is a spec. Word is wysiwyg, and Markdown is not. Word is built to handle large and complex documents with complex formatting and references, Markdown is (primarily) made for lightweight use to create simple web pages.

Word is simultaneously an horrific beast and a beautiful program, but the list of features Word has that Markdown doesn't support is probably 2-3 orders of magnitude larger than the list of features Markdown even has. Word can do everything Markdown can do, but not the other way around, even if you allow for arbitrary HTML (which is cheating).

I'm all for Markdown when it's appropriate, and while I try to avoid Word for simple text documents, there are absolutely times that it's called for. Definitely learn Markdown. And then use the right tool for the job.

<comment><USER7> Is there a document spec out there that is more feature-full than Markdown, but isn't Latex?

Is it even possible to create such a spec and not end up re-creating Latex?

<comment><USER8> Asciidoc and restructuredText both have more features, stronger specifications [1].

reStructuredText has strong official support for extensions, including regular syntaxes in the language for using extension points consistently. That power alone makes it suitable for a lot of domain-specific documents, which is why IMNSHO a lot of the better software documentation is in reStructuredText rather than Markdown.

[1] Don't forget that for Markdown the only "official" spec for that name is a blog post and a Perl script. CommonMark is very well specified now, but is A) surprisingly quite recent despite the proliferation of Markdown usage, and B) technically a forked specification and "not official" and not allowed to use the name "Markdown" by the original author/developer.

<comment><USER9> The one advantage I saw over markdown vs rsT, say, was that documents with markdown looked good when viewed in Vim as well.

But when I'm including code in a doc I much rather prefer rsT, because I can specify the code type so the syntax highlighter doesn't have to guess about the language.

<comment><USER8> There are Vim syntax highlight scripts for rST, but they've never been included in the base install like Markdown.

This is the one I used for years, I believe:

[https://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=973](https://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=973)

Looks like several people recommend this script:

[https://github.com/dhabyx/riv.vim](https://github.com/dhabyx/riv.vim)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've tried to switch to Markdown almost completely for portability, but I end up having to return to Word frequently to accomplish certain features. IMO, Markdown's biggest flaw was that the original feature set was incomplete, and everyone has tried to fill in the gaps (TOC, tables, references, etc.) their own way instead of settling on an updated standard. That makes it really frustrating when I've got to rely on GitHub-flavored Markdown to accomplish something without being able to trust that it will work on a platform that only supports vanilla Markdown, etc.

One thing I _will_ give Word credit for, despite all my qualms with it, is that it's probably the only program that I can blindly paste something from my clipboard and expect that Word will render it reasonably well.

<comment><USER11> >>> that Word will render it reasonably well.

You know MS products are pretty bad when the best one expects is that content cut from another owned product renders "reasonably well". We should expect, demand, that windows clipboard integrate perfectly with Word.

<comment><USER12> maybe its harder than it looks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Ooooh man, I would love to do that. I enjoy writing markdown, and I enjoy using pandoc.

However, whenever I have to print something, there is pretty much just one possibility in Markdown: export as pdf. And export as pdf uses Latex. Latex is cool. But if you want to customize your document, you will sooner or later need to include latex headers into the "build" process of your file, and soon you have a clusterfuck of tooling and a make file for a document that was supposed to be a simple report. And then I'd rather write it in Latex.

Does anybody have a solution for this? Some kind of print-friendly Markdown- to-PDF workflow? All the non-Latex alternatives looked horrible. In fact, I sometimes export markdown documents to Word just to print them.

<comment><USER14> MD->HTML->PDF. Just use a browser to render your document. You can make the process a bit more automated by using something like Chrome Headless. I'm sure there's a project out there that does this all in one step from the commandline.

<comment><USER13> This approach is what I have sometimes been using. It works OK and I can style my documents with CSS. But there are little things that bug me, like headlines on the last line of page N and the paragraph starting on page N+1 and header/footer lines generated by the browser.

<comment><USER15> for what it's worth you can define pagebreaks with css [0]. it's not the most user-friendly way, but works. the @page rule also comes in quite handy

[0]: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/page- break-...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/page-break-inside)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I want to use markdown for our technical documents. But MS Word really has some features that are missing that would be needed for a markdown editor to make a dent in what we need.

1\. auto-generating table of contents

2\. easy table creation/manipulation

3\. header/footer and page numbering

4\. comments/edits (maybe integrated with git?)

It's unrealistic to expect non-technical people to learn LaTeX, so we're stuck with MS Word until someone makes an amazing Markdown editor that can handle these things.

<comment><USER17> Our needs are simple, so we have something† based on kramdown (in GFM mode) and tilt-pdf[0] (shameless plug) which generates a TOC, handles styles, headers/footers, and leverages wkhtmltopdf††. Documentation is in git as markdown files, linted, generated, and published as part of CI/CD. Comments/edits are done though GitLab MRs implementing an editorial review process. Occasional contributions are done through GitLab web editor, and more involved non-technical people use VSCode to sync, write, and commit. The GitLab flow of (Issue->Branch->MR)->(Fetch->Edit->Commit->Push)->(Review->Merge->Publish) is quite assisted and works quite well with open-minded non-tech people.

[0]: [https://github.com/lloeki/tilt-pdf](https://github.com/lloeki/tilt-pdf)

† The tool should be open-sourced as soon as we can clean up the code of hardcoded internal stuff. It'll appear over there: [https://github.com/adhoc- gti/makebook](https://github.com/adhoc-gti/makebook)

†† Contemplating moving to headless Chrome. Also, increasingly using Hugo for online documentation.

<comment><USER18> I've been working on a similar system that is in the process of being adopted by at least one standards group ([https://github.com/cabforum/documents](https://github.com/cabforum/documents) ).

I would strongly recommend looking at weasyprint ([http://weasyprint.org/](http://weasyprint.org/) ) for HTML to PDF. It gives much better PDF output and offers CSS print support, so you get page control.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Last time Markdown was written about on HN, someone mentionned Typora ([https://typora.io/](https://typora.io/)) for a very simple WYSIWYG text editing.

Just wanted to share it again, as it became my favorite Markdown editor for university or sometimes work.

<comment><USER20> This is what I want. My goto editors are Pages on the mac for heavy formatting, and Google Docs for everything else. I'd love to use Markdown more, but writing your text in one window and viewing it in another is very 1982. It just isn't good enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> No matter what format/tool you come up with, there will be use cases it doesn't support, yet are needed.

When it comes to the written word, the world of legitimate, needed use cases is HUGE. The word processor is the natural evolutionary response to this need: A complex hodge podge of features and ways to visualize the content you're creating.

You can tell that this article was written by an engineer because he's willing the world to fit into his neat and tidy box. It completely ignores the needs of most other industries. Were markdown to become the new standard, it wouldn't take long for a thousand ISO specs and extensions to come into being, until finally markdown is as complex as SOAP, and people go back to using Word.

</comment><comment><USER22> Yes! Yes! Yes! Big fan of markdown and friends. At the Awesome Makrdown page [1] I try to collect all awesome goodies about Markdown. Anything missing? Contributions welcome.

PS: What's wrong with markdown? Let's evolve markdown (delete, yes, delete some gimmicks, change some and add some) - see Texi - Text with Instructions [2] for the "next generation" the best of markdown and wikimedia markup all together now.

[1]: [https://github.com/mundimark/awesome- markdown](https://github.com/mundimark/awesome-markdown) [2]: [https://texti.github.io](https://texti.github.io)

</comment><comment><USER23> I was expecting a bit more from the article, given the first thing I read at the top of the page was, "(author name) just another legendary software developer."

As much as I dislike Word, you cannot simply compare Markdown to Word. Markdown is a text based format specification, while Word is a massive tool comprised of countless features (which happen to include a WYSIWYG editor).

</comment><comment> cup-of-tea Right now I'm writing a document in plain text. Not markdown but org-mode. I could export it as markdown for collaboration purposes easily enough. What I will get at the end is a higher quality document than most Word users will produce but with a minimal amount of effort.

The thing is a document only really contains a handful of different elements. Therefore you only need a handful of styles. What you do is make a template document for pandoc in the format of your choice (e.g. MS Word) and then your markdown/org-mode document can be automatically converted into that style.

The problem with Word is it makes choosing ad-hoc styles really easy instead of promoting the use of styles. It has developed a culture of people who think about text being "bold" rather than text being "a heading" or "emphasised" etc. We teach this distinctionfor HTML and CSS (and it is, to some extent, used) but for some reason still use Word for writing documents.

<comment><USER24> Styles have been best practice in Word too for decades. And in current versions the styles portion is like half of the default "home" ribbon, with big buttons and fancy live previews and all, so you can't really argue that they would be especially hidden in the UI.

Still, it is true that your average Word user still typically produces fairly horrible documents. Why is that?

I suspect that large part comes from that they have been thrown in front of Word with very little guidance or training, because "everyone knows how to use Word", and they then just struggle on, occasionally googling and finding equally bad hints that they are unable to recognize as such because they don't know the fundamentals. Despite of its appreances Word is actually fairly complex (probably too much so for its own good) software.

Another big part, especially in corporate environment, is that "templates" that people are supposed to use are almost universally horrible. Either the concrete template files are bad, or the users are given some other document and told to make theirs look the same, which typically won't end well due aforementioned reasons.

Sure, Word also has true issues in this area too, but lot of the problems are cultural, and of course there is a feedback thing going on also that bad practices fester more bad practices and sort of also suppresses MS from radically improvong the situation.

<comment> cup-of-tea > I suspect that large part comes from that they have been thrown in front of > Word with very little guidance or training, because "everyone knows how to > use Word", and they then just struggle on

Yes, I would agree with this. Even worse is that typing is also an expected skill but very few people can actually do it. Almost every person I come across for whom typing should be a necessary part of their job are simply incapable of doing it. How can we expect people to use software like Word if they can't even type?

But I really do think that in the vast majority of cases people do not need to be using Word. It could very well be done in a plain text format and the documents would look better as a result. Much of Word's functionality is very much a "could" rather than a "should".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Couldn't agree more. I've made the switch some time ago and couldn't be happier. In fact, I wrote an entire textbook [0] and a novel [1] in Markdown (and I wrote about the markdown-to-print workflow here [2]).

I still use Google Docs, but more as a distributed note-taking thing, be it docs or spreadsheets, than for "production" stuff; especially for things that benefit from being version-controlled.

[0] [https://github.com/ggambetta/computer-graphics-from- scratch](https://github.com/ggambetta/computer-graphics-from-scratch)

[1] [http://www.gabrielgambetta.com/the-golden- legacy.html](http://www.gabrielgambetta.com/the-golden-legacy.html)

[2] [http://www.gabrielgambetta.com/tgl_open_source.html](http://www.gabrielgambetta.com/tgl_open_source.html)

</comment><comment><USER26> Markdown is not a replacement for Word. However, you should try StackEdit ([https://stackedit.io/](https://stackedit.io/)) if you just need a quick way to write, preview, and store Markdown files in Google Docs.

</comment><comment><USER27> I agree that Markdown is great and all but

* File size. Not a big matter now-a-days but single text file can store many times more information than a binary file.

I don't think the author knows what a binary file is.

<comment><USER28> and perhaps doesn't realise that .docx is just zipped XML

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok I admit the mistaken word in the article. Still the argument is valid, don't you agree? :)

<comment><USER28> if you'd argued that the Docx format is unecessarily verbose, well that's a possibility (Although the problem is that MS are dealing with 30 years of legacy here, it's not a simple task. One of Word's better achievements is that I can generally open 20+ year old documents and they'll render just like they did back when they were created)

but to say that .docx is a binary file format, nope, it's a zipped text file format. If you parse docx you unzip and use an XML parser, you don't use a binary parser.

.doc was a binary format, but that's not been a default file format for Word in the last 15 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Ugh, so _close..._

I've been working on translating a scanned PDF [1] back to Markdown, and I've stumbled on some issues:

* we're kinda targeting Github Flavored Markdown, but there's also an online version which uses Docsify, and some incompatibilities have tripped me up: hard line breaks, specifically.

* I've tried Mou and MacDown to edit, and the preview pane drifts out of sync, and sticks there. Both require awkward tricks to reload the files if you edit them elsewhere.

* diagrams and math formulae are, well, I'm kicking the can down the road on those.

* footnotes with text aren't exactly standard yet.

Glancing at Dillinger and StackEdit, mentioned in the article, I see _other_ issues:

* multiple lines aren't automatically paragraphs

* StackEdit sorta supports diagrams and math expressions, but, not in a way they'll render on the target.

Having vented about all that, to come back to the article: this is still _far_ preferable to Word. These obstacles don't feel insurmountable, and I was easily able to whip up tooling to go back and forth from one file for the book to a file per chapter, and it's mostly _easy_ to track changes with git and Github.

[1] PAIP, previously discussed here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16469167](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16469167)

</comment><comment><USER30> I don't understand the love for Markdown. I get that it is useful for quick and dirty formatting. But as soon as I want to make a document that can interoperate with others or has long term use requirements, I reach for XHTML. It is not sexy, but it has a well understood definition. As far as I know, Markdown still has a few different definitions that are not perfectly compatible.

</comment><comment><USER31> I have one more: Bit-rot resistance. If you've ever tried to work on an MSWord document that's been around the houses a bit and had lots of work on it by different people (using different versions of different applications), with font choices and colours and formatting changing on a whim, you'll know they can degrade over time and become cumbersome to edit.

</comment><comment><USER32> Most of the documents I write are letters which are printed and faxed/posted to people.I tried using asciidoc, but unlike latex there is no document class like letter, which automatically formats the content as required for a letter.I think markdown and similar methods needs to be further enhanced for many common documentation use cases.

</comment><comment><USER33> MS Word is part of the interoffice workflow ; a formal word document has a predefined and deliberately inflexible template, it goes though several iterations of edits and approvals. Features like Track changes , templates and WYSIWYG enable organization to efficiently create reliable documents.

Markdown is awesome but it is not an alternative to MS Word.

</comment><comment><USER34> I've mostly switched to Dropbox Paper for writing work-related documents (and I think that product has some, "oddness", that I'd have difficulty explaining to a non-technical person). It seems to follow markdown syntax. I find it great for general writing tasks or creating documents I want to be able to refer back to, but it's probably missing some of the publishing & formatting features people get from Google Docs & Microsoft Word.

I'm not a huge fan of MS Word myself, but in the limited experience I had, it's very difficult to get people to move away from it. I'm kind of feeling like this is the kind of thing that software developer see as an obvious improvement to let people know about, but miss on the fact that there isn't a huge amount of friction on the problem this solution solves.

</comment><comment><USER35> As a current high school student: hell no.

I've tried writing study guides for myself in Markdown, and while it is useful, it is 10x easier to do it in Word.

Plus, as many people are saying, everyone uses Word. My school even gives out Office 365 subscriptions for free.

</comment><comment><USER36> While using Markdown everywhere is probably a misguided but well-meant effort, I think it can be more easily agreed that Word is damaging as it basically limits the user to Windows (or having to import to LibreOffice which seems to be doing better but still blows up on seemingly simple office files)

We should be trying to remove .docx and use more widely available standards that everyone can use, even if it's just LO's format.

</comment><comment><USER37> For legal documents, Statements of Work, bids, etc. I've been using latex a lot lately.

It has most of the benefits of Markdown but is way more powerful.

The learning curve is quite high though and to call it human readable is a stretch sometimes.

I like to write common documents up front then put macros in place of things like "client name" \-- then at the top of the file I declare them and it makes for really easy document generation.

</comment><comment><USER38> For people who have Word/RTF formatted text and want to convert it to markdown, this is a very nice little utility to convert text quickly: [https://puppypaste.com/](https://puppypaste.com/)

I use it almost every day when copy-pasting from from shared google docs.

</comment><comment><USER39> If you are the only one editing your documents, and if you have a workflow that which needs nothing more than what Markdown provides, this is well and good. But in the business world, particularly legal and finance, this is rarely the case.

</comment><comment><USER40> I think this is in front page because we nerds just want the definitive reason to say 'fuck Word' and use MD or similar.

But -as we can read in these comments- there are lots of reasons and situations where this is ridiculous.

</comment><comment><USER41> They are different things. You're not going to use markdown when interacting with "normal" people...

<comment><USER42> I had a fellow that wanted teach sales guys to use LATEX so they could keep documents versioned in GIT...

Kind of makes sense from developer perspective :) not much from sales perspective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Even better than Markdown is Org-mode: the latter can do everything the former can do, and has every advantage _other_ than being massively hyper-popular, _and_ it has many, many, _many_ other features (definition lists, scheduling, time-tracking, task-management &c. &c. _ad infinitum_ ).

Yes, Markdown is an improvement over Word — and Org-mode is an improvement over Markdown (other than not being as popular).

<comment><USER44> I think what Org-mode really needs are plugins for other editors or maybe an editor all by itself. Of course, this will likely not happen, because people who love Org-Mode also love emacs. But having to learn and use emacs before being able to learn and use Org-mode just means it will never be really popular.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> No thanks, I prefer my Libreoffice. I like markdown for simple stuff but other than that, nope.

<comment><USER46> I like LibreOffice too, but it has no outliner mode. That leaves it hopelessly crippled for me, sadly.

I use Calc, Impress and so on, but I write in MS Word 97 under WINE. Faster, industry-standard for right or wrong, and very very quick on 21st century hardware.</comment></comment>


Did Glee Rip Off a Jonathan Coulton Cover? - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/underwire/2013/01/glee-coulton-baby-got-back/

<comment><USER2> This is at least the third time Glee has ripped off a cover and failed to give credit/royalties:

[http://www.pleasewelcomeyourjudges.com/2011/11/greg- laswell-...](http://www.pleasewelcomeyourjudges.com/2011/11/greg-laswell-not- glee-ful-about.html)

This is by far the most blatant: they even leave in the Coulton-version-only line "Johnny C"

<comment><USER3> Especially considering that "Johnny C" is "Jonathan Coulton"...

<comment><USER4> kind of similar to the song "rapper's delight" which lifted bars from another artist, to the extent of spelling out his name in the first line.. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rappers_Delight#Grandmaster_Caz...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rappers_Delight#Grandmaster_Caz_writing_controversy)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The original song really didn't have a melody, and Coulton's version clearly does. If his melody is original, it seems like this has to be a violation of copyright. Certainly the melody of the Glee version is identical to Coulton's.

Hopefully something good comes out of it for Coulton in the end.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Original: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=M...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=MCWaN_Tc5wo)

Glee: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Y...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Yww4BLjReEk)

<comment><USER6> This makes for an easier comparison.

<https://soundcloud.com/suudo/joco-vs-glee-baby-got-back>

<comment><USER7> Oh wow that's amazing! Obvious in a both auditory and graphical way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> No no no. Artistic copyright only matters to CONGLOMERATE media companies; not silly artists the laws should really be protecting!

<comment><USER9> The best part was when I came across some random guy on Twitter that was trying to say that it was ok because JC is a 'nobody.' I couldn't tell if he was some sort of shill or just a random idiot (probably the latter).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What this will hinge on (and why it is relevant to HN) is whether Coulton's release of songs under the Creative Commons BY-NC license (attribution, non- commercial) AND his additional statement that the the CC/non-commercial clause did not apply to covers (with encouragement to mix) still protects his copyright over the arrangement and derivative lyrical changes.

I am of the opinion that he does retain these rights since the intent is clearly to not put the whole work under the CC since he can't extend his compulsory license to Sir Mix-a-Lot's lyrics to others. If he had released his arrangement separately under a CC-BY-NC, or even CC-BY, he still would have retained the copyright to that...but I don't think he ever did. It is his unfortunate wording outside the license...informal and non-legal, that creates the confusion.

You see this with open source projects (usually sole developers) who release under a restrictive license but then assure you that gray area uses are permitted. These always give me pause. But when there's money on the line and license clearances are part of your business, there is absolutely no reason not to get absolute clarity and clearance before using the work. It is a lot easier to do beforehand than after, which I think Fox will find out.

I predict an amicable ending and a new JC song about the ordeal that will be right up there with "Code Monkey" and "Re: your brains" in the hacker/free culture pantheon.

</comment><comment><USER11> Per Coulton himself, he hasn't found any definite proof of it being used in a Glee episode so far, so it's ossible that it;s some overenthusiastic fanboy/girl.

[http://www.jonathancoulton.com/2013/01/18/baby-got-back- and-...](http://www.jonathancoulton.com/2013/01/18/baby-got-back-and-glee/)

<comment><USER12> It's being sold by Fox on iTunes <http://imgb.mp/iX6.jpg>

<comment><USER11> Sweden rather than US tells me it's an administration error. Not all episodes of this show have aired yet, so it may be that someone added it before the rights licensing process was complete, or it's also possible that it was planned for one episode but they decided not to use it in the end (which happens a lot in film and TV production).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I understand that this concerns copyright issues which may be germane to the issue in the tech world, but is mass media drama such as this truly qualified as "news for hackers"?

I would be interested in the demographics of those who up vote articles of this ilk. Not to pass any judgement on them, but out of curiosity as to who finds this news to be important.

<comment><USER14> Jonathon Coulton himself is relevant to many hackers due to to the intersection of his work with many tech/geek related interests including his authorship of numerous themes to computer games, songs about being an unappreciated programmer, songs about the Mandelbrot Set, songs about passive aggressive T1000 helper robots, songs about doomed ST:TOS red shirts, etc.

As for Glee itself -- I have nothing positive to say.

<comment><USER15> I'll come out and say it...

I used to watch Glee with my girlfriend for the first two seasons and found it quite entertaining. At least it tried to do something different than be yet another three camera laugh track sitcom.

I got tired of the stupid plotting and characters though, between the musical- chairs dating and the cheerleading coach alternating between evil bitch and nice person every other week, both I and my girlfriend just lost interest in the characters and stopped watching.

<comment><USER16> I enjoyed it for the first few seasons, I generally like musicals. I got tired of it too for basically the same reasons.

I didn't know they had done this kind of thing before (or at least been accused, see the top comment). When I saw this story earlier today I played that video... I was amazed. It was a nearly perfect copy. That takes a lot of chutzpa.

Someone put a comparison of the two songs up on SoundCloud (link is elsewhere in the thread) and it's nearly perfect. Same tune, same BPM, just a perfect copy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm sure that nobody at Fox will be facing jail time for copyright violation if they did rip it off. "I care about content, but only as long as its mine."

</comment><comment><USER18> Yes. They even used the lyric "Johnny C's in trouble", referring to Coulton himself and substituting the original "Mix-A-Lot's in trouble".

</comment><comment><USER19> That's how covers work. They can be a nice thing — essentially quoting an artist you like — or they can be bullshit, like this.

It's not illegal, but it's not ethical.

<comment><USER20> IANAL, but I thought those rights only extended to parodies? Covers aren't protected because the copyright extends to the words and music.

<comment><USER21> The JC version has a distinct melody/arrangement, so qualifies as an original work. The lyrics are not.

<comment><USER20> Exactly, the music is different enough that the entire production counts as an original work, whereas the Glee version has neither, and thus would be considered a cover.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I like how Coulton is just sitting back and letting his fans handle this, by communicating their view to the media and giving them credit.

</comment><comment><USER23> The 2nd most annoying part of the story is Wired requiring stupidly large images so we view extra ads, which in this story is a _screenshot_ of the YouTube player.

Someone literally decided that would be better than embedding the video the entire article is about.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'd like HN's resident piracy advocates to weigh in on this.

</comment><comment><USER25> 35 years in prison.

<comment><USER26> Brilliant. We should start a White House petition to force US Federal Prosecutor Carmen Ortiz to aggressively pursue Fox until they admit to fixing the 2000 election...

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Anyone thought of the benefits to Glee doing their cover? Sales coming the way of the artist. Lots of sales.

It might be a rip off, but the artist will get paid by it being a song to download in the coming weeks.

<comment><USER28> This might be true if Glee gave credit to JoCo - linkbacks, promotion, etc. As it is he might see extra sales _because he called them out_.

Not to mention the long tail effect of "mentions" is really, really limited, and drops off fast to boot. Any extra sales he sees will all be today and tomorrow.

Only disingenuous used-car-salesman types would pretend that a footnote small- print mention is worth anything more than a sandwich.</comment></comment>


MP3 Search & Free MP3 Downloads Music - Searchmp3songs.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.searchmp3songs.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Searchmp3songs.com is a music search engine for locating an mp3-audio files over the Internet. Searchmp3songs.com does not host any files - its crawler searches through the Net and indexes all the brand new and popular songs for your comfortable and fast search.</comment>


Microsoft researchers make me cry - <AUTHOR> http://scobleizer.com/2008/02/14/microsoft-researchers-make-me-cry/ <comment><USER2> I'm guessing Microsoft has invented a two-wheeled gyro-stabilized personal vehicle which will revolutionize transportation.

<comment><USER3> I remember when I first saw Bill Atkinson's Hypercard back in 1988, when it came bundled with my MacSE. I was 15 and it opened a world of possibilities for me as far as creating something fast and functional. True, Hypercard was not something that made much of an impact on the world at that time...

It was a few years before we saw a derivative of the human-computer interaction present in Hypercard come out that changed the world in the form of NCSA Mosaic. I'm guessing Scoble was moved to tears because he feels the seeds of something great is going to be released on March 3 in that it will open up a world of possibilities for some other group or individual to take the possibilities to a higher level (in much the same way Mosaic took the concepts of Hypercard to the next level). I highly doubt we are going to benefit immediately from whatever we see.

I also think Scoble has hit upon a great point: today's overwhelmingly profit driven model for creating software sometimes misses the beauty in creating something for the pure joy of creation (probably an ironic statement given the fact that this is a VC-based message board). Part of me is saying this because one of the projects I'm working on frequently hits the question: "It's a nice idea but how is it going to make money?" (so I suppose my personal biases are showing through here in this remark).

<comment><USER4> Hypercard was my first exposure to a Mac and to programming. I remember thinking programming can be fun!

I remember staying up to 4am with my college roommate, the night we found installed NCSA Mosaic for the first time. Of course, we regret not becoming wealthy by creating a free email service or whatever (it was wide open) but ce la vie.

<comment><USER5> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C'est_la_vie>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A little googling later..

[http://peteremcc.wordpress.com/2008/02/15/scobles-mystery- so...](http://peteremcc.wordpress.com/2008/02/15/scobles-mystery-solved/)

<comment><USER7> "The Photosynth technology preview runs only on Windows XP SP2 and Windows Vista."

Scoble is not the only one who is crying.

<comment><USER8> They had a java applet for a while, which run on any browser. So the move is deliberate.

Apparently Microsoft is trying to make a killer app to bring the masses back to Windows. But IMO it's too late.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Have you ever known, or heard of, anyone who has cried in wonderment at a demo? Even as an exaggerated emotion signifier, that expression is uggh. Scobleizer is the anti-lolchrist. He just inspired me to make that word up.

</comment><comment><USER10> Ginger.

"The advance buzz about the then-unknown product was, at times, hyperbolic" - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segway#History>

</comment><comment><USER11> I think it's Photosynth. I run a similar (but open) project, <http://openphotovr.org> , and wonder what the effect on us will be.

<comment><USER12> While playing with this project I noticed a tear running down my face.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Scoble, master of cheesy hyperbole. I love technology more than the average person, but come on, a demo made him cry? You've gotta be kidding me.

</comment><comment><USER14> From the corpspeak website:

Next Media's research focus spans the linear and interactive media spectrum from television, broadband, and gaming to combinations of traditional media forms or emerging media forms too new to have a name. The group partners with product groups within Microsoft and select outside content partners such as museums, and public broadcasting to develop conceptual and working prototypes which best demonstrate the functionality or vision for media that can anchor new businesses, services and consumer experiences.

(Thus my guess is a fullscreen handheld device with gesture input that runs Outlook, IE and Excel ;-) (but photosynth does seen quite cool)

</comment><comment><USER15> Here's a good post. [http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/brierdudley/2008/02/is...](http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/brierdudley/2008/02/is_scoble_crying_about_microso.html)

I also bet it's a mix between seadragon and photsynth, that lets you scroll thru images going back and forth in time.

</comment><comment><USER16> Scoble makes me cry. And not in a good way.

</comment><comment><USER17> An extensible Windows XP with a proper CLI?

<comment><USER18> Cygwin?

<comment><USER17> ...with an emphasis on the extensible - particularly the GUI.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "While listening to Wong I noticed a tear running down my face."

A digital onion peeler that takes 5 minutes to turn on?

</comment><comment><USER20> I think they are releasing something new like 'online/offline' (think Google gears) for their flash alternative silver light. The problem is having something that users must download.

<comment><USER21> This is not so much of a problem with autoupdate, microsoft can just command all (windows) clients to download the thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's not just Microsoft researchers, even the developers and UI designers can make you cry - there are millions of users who will support me.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, powered by Windows

</comment><comment><USER23> The word going around is that its Photosynth: <http://labs.live.com/photosynth>

<comment><USER23> Seems it ain't Photosynth. "The thing I'm talking about is NOT anything you've seen Microsoft do before." [http://scobleizer.com/2008/02/15/misreading- scoble-on-micros...](http://scobleizer.com/2008/02/15/misreading-scoble-on- microsoft-cry/)</comment></comment>


Chip, Implanted in Brain, Helps Paralyzed Man Regain Control of Hand - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/14/health/paralysis-limb-reanimation-brain-chip.html <comment><USER2> I hope this technology pans out. My brother is quadriplegic, but still has sensation in his hands. This would be perfect for him. It'll probably be a decade or more before it's commercialized, but hopefully within his lifetime he'll walk again.

</comment><comment><USER3> I remember an article in the 1980s about a wearable computer on a man's belt with batteries, and he had some wires to his brain to help him see shapes, but I can no longer find the reference or pics. It's amazing to see the progress if you compare the pics of the large device back then to the things they are doing now. That and the discoveries and inventions in computing, chip manufacture, cognitive science and biology that are coming together in so many ways. When I watched the film 'Transcendence' this past year, along with having been a fan of Kronenberg and his movie 'eXistenZ', I really started to think about the overlap and hybridization of technologies: implants, wearable tech, AI, CI, CRISPR, biopunk, VR, AR, etc... I can see a dystopic 'Bladerunner' style future of cyborgs, modified humans and crazy disease and organisms. On the other hand, I can see humanity coasting his way into accepting the weirdness, and the crazy future it will bring.

In the meantime, I hope many who cannot, will get to partake in walking, seeing and living longer due to these discoveries and inventions.

<comment><USER4> There have been several such operations, e.g. [http://www.livescience.com/49991-bionic-eye-implanted- man.ht...](http://www.livescience.com/49991-bionic-eye-implanted-man.html)

"A bionic eye implant is now allowing a blind man to see the outlines of his wife after 10 years in darkness.

"The implant, called a retinal prosthesis, consists of a small electronic chip that is placed at the back of the eye to send visual signals directly into the optic nerve. This bypasses the damaged cells in the man's retina.

"The bionic eye doesn't have enough electrodes to recreate the details of human faces, but for the first time since he lost his vision, the man can make out the outlines of people and things, and walk without a cane."

<comment><USER3> I meant a specific reference from the 1980s. I know of the new research. I had found an article with photos and details on the surgical procedure. Thanks anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This reminds me of the book Interface by Neil Stephenson.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interface_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interface_\(novel\))

<comment><USER6> Reminds me more of The Turing Option by Harry Harrison and Marvin Minsky, though Interface isn't a bad match either.

[http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1807642.The_Turing_Option](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1807642.The_Turing_Option)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> To anyone interested in this sort of development from a general standpoint I can recommend _The Brain That Changes Itself_.

</comment><comment><USER8> Does he get the source?

</comment><comment><USER9> A roomful of computers modeling a neural network in order to interpret a subset of a neural network.

<comment><USER10> Not quite, the sensor in the brain is pretty primitive. It's just best picked 96 neurons as opposed to many hundreds really required - and it didn't have a few years to train yet either. They are likely using excess computational capacity to denoise and predict higher order signals from neurons that are connected to the lucky 96.</comment></comment>


The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913 - <AUTHOR> https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/ <comment><USER2> To me, the 'Historical Background' page(s) (which I almost overlooked) are most interesting, and the real treasure here.

[https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/static/History.jsp](https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/static/History.jsp)

</comment><comment><USER3> I did my dissertation using these documents! They're incredibly interesting and give a fantastic understanding of the nature of crime and punishment in England.

@devindotcom mentioned the Newgate Calendars elsewhere. Those are written as moralizing tracts and provide great insight into the morality of the era (there were multiple Newgate Calendars).

</comment><comment><USER4> The Newgate Calendar is another great resource for this type of early records of crime and 'justice':

[https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/the-newgate- calen...](https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/the-newgate-calendar/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Old Bailey, Old style mobile inaccessible website. Sigh.</comment>


British holidaymakers 'traumatised' after arrest at US border - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50050467 <comment><USER2> One thing I've noticed with the culture of law-enforcement in the US is that there seems to be a mental divide of people into bins of "criminals" and "not criminals."[1] People in the second bin get treated reasonably and people in the first bin get zero benefit of the doubt.

By breaking the law, these travellers got sorted into the "criminals" bin and are now treated like shit. In addition, the high punitive nature of merely being arrested means that probable cause has replaced due process in our system. If a LEO treats you like a criminal (i.e. like human garbage) and has probable cause to do so, you are left with essentially no legal recourse.

1: There's also a 3rd bin of "law enforcement" but that is tangential to this article.

<comment><USER3> >By breaking the law, these travellers got sorted into the "criminals" bin and are now treated like shit.

Only its immigration law so its civil not criminal law.

That's the biggest mental divide I come across, there is a certain group that is very quick to label people as "illegal immigrants" or "illegal aliens" or just plain "illegals". Of course the intent is to convey and suggest illegal = criminal. This group can't wrap their mind around the fact immigration status isn't a crime.

<comment><USER2> [https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1325](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1325)

IANAL, but up to 6 months in prison for first infraction under Title 18 (which is US Criminal code).

There are _additionally_ civil penalties.

<comment><USER3> What I said is "status is not a crime." Illegal entry into the Country is a crime, whether you are a citizen or not, its a crime.

Nevertheless, these people were not charged with a crime or illegally entering the Country, nor does Immigration Court have jurisdiction over criminal cases.

They are currently being held in an Immigration Detention Center and facing removal (deportation), thats civil, not criminal.

If they were charged with a crime, they would 1st go to criminal court. It happens all the time, an undocumented person commits a crime (of fraud or moral turpitude), gets charged, found guilty, serves time, then upon release from jail/prison ICE is there to meet them, detain them in a Immigration Detention Center/facility while they face the civil Immigration case.

<comment><USER2> Just because they weren't charged with a crime doesn't mean they weren't arrested for a crime. People get arrested for crimes they are never charged for all the time.

[edit]

> The occupants were arrested for illegally entering the US without > inspection. During processing, records revealed the two adults that had > previously been denied access to the US, CBP said on Tuesday.

Source:

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us- canada-50067575](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-50067575)

<comment><USER3> >People get arrested for crimes they are never charged for all the time.

Yes and the point is we don't call those folks "illegals."

You responded to my comment, specifically:

>This group can't wrap their mind around the fact immigration status isn't a crime.

Your pointing to a criminal charge that has nothing to do with my point. Sure citizens and immigrants alike can commit crimes, including illegal boarder crossing, but illegal border crossing has nothing to do with immigration status. Immigration status is itself not a crime.

<comment><USER2> I was responding to the first half of your comment, not the second, specifically:

>> By breaking the law, these travellers got sorted into the "criminals" bin and are now treated like shit.

> Only its immigration law so its civil not criminal law.

[edit]

And to respond to your second half, colloquially the word "illegal" is used to refer to civil matters all the time (e.g. illegally parked car). Not all undocumented immigrants are here illegally, but those who would be legally deported if discovered are.

<comment><USER3> >the word "illegal" is used to refer to civil matters all the time (e.g. illegally parked car)

That's referring to a thing not a person. You would not label the owner of that illegally parked vehicle as an "illegal", "illegal car owner", etc... If a person illegally breaches a contract you don't call them a "illegal contractor". The term "illegal" is applied to undocumented immigrants because it fits a narrative.

>By breaking the law, these travellers got sorted into the "criminals" bin and are now treated like shit.

Going back to your illegally parked car, do we put the owner of that illegally parked car in the criminal bin and treat them like shit. Of course not, that would be ridiculous. Undocumented immigrants should be extended the same courtesy, and even if detained and put into civil removal proceedings they should not be treated as criminals or like shit for that matter.

> Not all undocumented immigrants are here illegally, but those who would be > legally deported if discovered are.

Sorry, I don't know what your trying to say here. Any undocumented immigrant can be detained and subjected to removal/deportation proceedings at anytime...they don't need to commit any crime for this to happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> U.S. Border Patrol has become a government-sanctioned ring of thugs living out a power fantasy. Nothing more. Disgusting.

<comment><USER5> A grey area where you don't have any rights, if they don't like anything about you they can just put you on the next return flight.

That's if they let you fly there in the first place. I know someone who was denied access because they had a criminal record from over a decade ago, even though it was a minor offence (no prison sentence). This is a UK citizen, so you can imagine how much more difficult it is for someone from a less favourable country.

This is advice for Brits from the US Embassy: "Can you advise me if my arrest, caution, conviction will prevent me from traveling visa free and registering under ESTA? We cannot advise whether a traveler's specific situation will have a bearing on their eligibility to travel visa free under the Visa Waiver Program. Our advice is that if you have ever been arrested, cautioned or convicted you apply for a visa."

Cautioned! You don't even need to be convicted or even arrested for an offence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > They say they were driving with family members on 3 October when, to avoid > an animal, they veered onto a small road.

> A police officer then pulled them over, told them they were in the US state > of Washington and arrested them.

Horrible and inexcusable experience to be sure, but the explanation for how they ended up in the US needs some work.

<comment><USER7> There are loads of spots along the border there where the US/Canada separation is only a grassy median [0]. So it's odd but not unbelievable.

There's an even more extreme example to the east near Vermont where the border runs through individual buildings in the town of Stanstead [1,2] and there are just white lines on some streets you're not supposed to cross.

[0] [https://goo.gl/maps/XasmFG9Ms6FJUUsRA](https://goo.gl/maps/XasmFG9Ms6FJUUsRA)

[1] [https://goo.gl/maps/5aWrrN5TjuE8ennS7](https://goo.gl/maps/5aWrrN5TjuE8ennS7)

[2] [https://www.canadiangeographic.ca/article/stanstead-town- bor...](https://www.canadiangeographic.ca/article/stanstead-town-border)

<comment><USER8> Pretty funny that there's no street view for the laneways crossing the border in your second line. The SV driver was like "yeah nope, not going there."

<comment><USER9> Honest question: How are people _supposed_ to cross the border right there? Clearly there's a maintained and passable road there -- there's a stop sign, and then a white line where the border is. Are you supposed to have some pre- approval like TSA pre-check? Call ahead? Stop and wait for a Border Agent to come running out of the library? Go by _better to ask forgiveness than ask permission_?

<comment><USER10> Self reporting is a thing for citizens. Some unmanned crossings have phonebooths that directly connect to an agent.

Edit: I'm not sure that these still exist as a standalone thing. They may have been phased out after 9/11.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> crooked-v I wonder how much money the US government is going to waste on arresting, holding, processing, and then deporting people who would have turned around and left if asked.

<comment><USER11> Wrong question... right question is, who is enriching themselves on this policy?

<comment><USER4> I don't think it's anything so elaborate as that. I think it's simple sadism on the part of the thugs. They just like exerting power.

<comment><USER12> Can confirm, I was detained by the INS back in the 90s, with my US passport in hand, because I didn't look "American" enough. After holding me for a couple hours I was dismissed with no apology and no explanation, though a customs official helpfully explained that I "looked like a terrorist".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > it has even damaged our relationship

Might have a case for lawsuit arguing alienation of affections:

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

</comment><comment><USER13> @dang Can we get this article flagged? If I wanted something like this I'd visit /news or /worldnews.

Immigration and the political climate in the US is very hot right now. It's not the reason I read HN, if you want your rage fix read elsewhere.

> Hacker News Guidelines

What to Submit On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off- topic.

<comment><USER4> Significant geopolitical events have become a mainstay of HN, for better or worse. This one is a landmark example because it falls outside of the pattern people have (sadly) grown accustomed to.

Edit: The second sentence was referring to the significance of the event (and why it would therefore be interesting to people on HN); I didn't mean to say the HN post itself was an outlier in some way.

<comment><USER13> Looks like it was flagged. Thankfully others agreed with me instead of allowing it to become a mainstay like you suggested.</comment></comment></comment>


Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending - 1999 - <AUTHOR> http://www.linkrap.com/FannieMae1999

<comment><USER2> Ex-Freddie-Mac-Now-Cato-Economist Arnold Kling claims (in this interview: <http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/14744>) that Fannie basically had to lower their requirements in order to meet the HUD requirements mentioned at the end of this article. So a well-intentioned but unaccountable leader makes a decision with unintended consequences, but because that decision reverberates through the market power of enormous governmental structures, it leaves a much larger mark than would be otherwise possible or likely.

</comment><comment><USER3> In a lot of ways this is an indictment of "social engineering." But I'd argue there are other factors at work here since "easing the requirements" is the equivalent of holding the door open...the lenders are the ones that walked through...

<comment><USER4> The government threatened lenders who were being too conservative, interpreting it as discrimination.

<comment><USER5> Oh, it's a just a whole hell of a lot more complicated than that. The really big threats came from big banks anxious to keep their subprime accounting tricks going as long as possible, and to keep up their oh so profitable derivatives game. The government SINCE 1999 has been quite anxious to keep the charade going as well, since housing and bubble equity was the one shell game that made the economy look like it was growing.

This article, from NINE YEARS AGO, is floating around the right wing blogosphere a lot, accompanied by pretty clueless commentary. Do people really think that if what this program became (and it changed _significantly_ from a program that was simply designed to help more people buy a home) wasn't making bushel barrels of money for the people who helped keep a certain political party in power for most of this last decade, that it would have been allowed to remain?

What the hell has been going on the last nine years? Has there been _anyone_ at the helm?

<comment><USER6> >wasn't making bushel barrels of money for the people who helped keep a certain political party in power for most of this last decade, that it would have been allowed to remain?

Exactly right. Bush did try to push some sort of regulatory scheme back in 2003 which may have prevented some of this, but a certain political party prevented it.

"Significant details must still be worked out before Congress can approve a bill. Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the National Association of Home Builders and __Congressional Democrats __who fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing."

[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E06E3D6123BF...](http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E06E3D6123BF932A2575AC0A9659C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print)

The difficulty in this situation is that the Dems had a lot to gain by opposing regulation, while Republicans would gain very little by pushing it. So why waste political capital? Also, think about the narrative:

Anti-regulation: We want to help low income and minority homeowners.

Pro-regulation: We need to reduce lending to higher risk borrowers because someday in the future, house prices might not go up, and that would be bad because [insert all sorts of technical words here].

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Favorite quote:

>The change in policy also comes at the same time that HUD is investigating allegations of racial discrimination in the _automated_ underwriting systems used by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to determine the credit-worthiness of credit applicants. [emphasis added]

</comment><comment><USER8> Interesting that they thought they had the whole risk level thing down... I remember reading in Good to Great how they had been able to buy riskier mortgages and make a profit.

"While many stock analysts thought that, as the provider of home mortgages, Fannie Mae's success would be completely determined by the spread in changing interest rates, Collins tells us that Fannie Mae realized that the key to Fannie Mae's market-independent success was not in the ratio of profitability per mortgage. Rather, Fannie Mae could become the world leader in understanding mortgage risk levels and profit by insuring that risk. Fannie Mae's key ratio became profitability per mortgage risk level."

[http://www.thinkinglike.com/Essays/Good-To-Great- Lessons.htm...](http://www.thinkinglike.com/Essays/Good-To-Great-Lessons.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> I know the implication is to the current crisis, but to believe that sub-prime is what caused our current problems is plain incorrect. Sub-prime is to today's economic collapse as the Ferdinand's assassination was to WWI: a mere catalyst, but the system was primed by fundamental issues.

<comment><USER10> "I know the implication is to the current crisis, but to believe that sub- prime is what caused our current problems is plain incorrect... but the system was primed by fundamental issues."

You've simply stated an analogy rather than supporting facts. This does not move the discusson forward.

From the _1999_ article: "Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people..."

And expand them they did. The Community Reinvestment Act was signed into law in 1977 by Jimmy Carter, when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress (post-Watergate). It didn't have many teeth then, though, and the damage was minimal. In 1998, Clinton signed into law a version with serious bite. It allowed "community activists" such as ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) to harass any banks they felt weren't "reinvesting" in the "community", blocking future expansions, etc.

You'll notice that, of the 5,700 retail (as opposed to investment) banks in the Federal Reserve System, only about 40 are in trouble. They just happen to be the ones operating in America's larger cities. Rural and small town banks are doing fine. Nor are State Banks in trouble. You'll also notice that overseas retail banks are not having problems either. Strange, no?

The retail banks in the big cities, which were subject to pressure from "community organizers", knew the subprime mortages were garbage and looked around for ways to offload the risks forced onto them by government, so they bundled the loans up into tranches ("securitization") and sold them to investment banks like Bear Stearns, Morgan Stanley, Northern Rock (British bank, now bankrupt), etc. Now the cancer of risk spread through the system and bodies began showing up at the morgue.

It didn't take long for the fun to start. Superior Bank of Chicago failed in July, 2001. According to a press release from the Office of Thrift Supervision,

"Superior Bank suffered as a result of its former high-risk business strategy, which was focused on the generation of significant volumes of subprime mortgage and automobile loans for securitization and sale in the secondary market. OTS found that the bank also suffered from poor lending practices, improper record keeping and accounting, and ineffective board and management supervision."

George Kaufman, a finance professor at Loyola University Chicago called Superior's failure "a tale of gross mismanagement," adding that "[Superior] was engaged in relatively unethical practices, fancy-footwork accounting, playing it very close to the edge."

The Pritzker family, including Penny Pritzker, were fined a record $460 million for violations of the RICO Act.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_Bank_of_Chicago> (Sorry about the Wikipedia link. The best I could do on short notice.)

Completely by coincidence, Penny Pritzker is Campaign Finance Chairpersion for a very famous politician from the same city as Superior Bank. Who used to be a community organizer in Chicago. Who used to do legal work for ACORN. This just happens to be the same politician who received more money from Fannie and Freddie in the last four years than any of the other 535 members of Congress.

Of course, you've already seen all this in the mainstream media, right? Right?

We are about to have the world's first Politically Correct Recession, boys and girls, and You Are There.

Nothing to see here folks. Move along, move along.

<comment><USER11> Not exactly. Here's a great rebuttal from the other side of the political spectrum, that makes some great points: [http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=did_liberals_cau...](http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=did_liberals_cause_the_subprime_crisis)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> "If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry." There are so many prescient quotes in this article.

</comment><comment><USER12> It looks like a stupid idea prima facie. Charge people you don't think are going to pay more? What kind of "educated" individual thought that one up?

I'd laugh if it weren't on you and me to fix their stupidity.

</comment><comment><USER13> If you watch your last 30 years of politics, you see that both red and blue parties were at the helm during significant decisions that effect us now. The only thing you can conclude is both parties are full of dangerous "public servants" and we should clean house.

DONT VOTE FOR PARTIES!!! VOTE FOR PEOPLE!!!!</comment>


New product Cell phone, tablet, laptop labels tell me what you think - <AUTHOR> http://www.getmydeviceback.com <comment><AUTHOR> Goodd Idea?</comment>


Show HN: Add green screen filters on iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://jester-video.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Jester Video is dubsmash for green screen filters.</comment>


Amazon to launch grocery store chain cheaper than whole foods - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/01/grocery-store-stocks-take-a-beating-on-report-that-amazon-will-launch-its-own-chain-of-supermarkets.html <comment><USER2> Its curious because they've already "dumbed down" WF a bit since the acquisition. Lots of the higher end products have been slowly disappearing from the shelves.

I used to make the trek to go to WF in the past essentially for their seafood counter. Now post-acquisition, there is really no need to, since there is no material difference from WF and a regular grocery store when it comes to seafood.

Will be interesting to see how this strategy plays out...will they boost WF foods back into premium territory? Or will WF simply be Grocery+ and their new venture (Half Foods?) will be Walmart+?

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting read, bevensky. I assumed they were going to go all out via Whole Foods. Interesting way to think about this on how they are timing this and how they are targeting different markets.

I wonder how many people could have anticipated this from a strategic sense?</comment>