Chicago and Los Angeles Are Next Up for Google Fiber - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/12/08/chicago-and-los-angeles-are-next-up-for-google-fiber/ <comment><USER2> As a Chicagoan I'm excited, but also worried it will lead to the incarceration of multiple public officials and a raw deal for the city, somehow.

<comment><USER3> > incarceration of multiple public officials and a raw deal for the city.

What? How?

<comment><USER4> [http://pols.uic.edu/political-science/chicago- politics](http://pols.uic.edu/political-science/chicago-politics)

> The Windy City has kept its crown as the most corrupt major city in the > country over the last 40 years. But Houston is starting to give Chicago a > run for its money.

> According to new research released today by University of Illinois at > Chicago political science professor Dick Simpson, there were 45 convictions > for public corruption in 2013 (the latest year available) in the U.S. court > district that covers the Chicago area. That's way, way above the 19 > convictions in Los Angeles and 13 in the Southern District of New York > (Manhattan). But Houston had far and away the most pols convicted on federal > corruption charges in 2013, with 83.

<comment><USER5> so the more convictions, the more corrupt?

<comment><USER6> I'm from Chicago. You gotta live here to understand.

<comment><USER5> I'm from chicago too, so I guess I do understand by that logic.

I'm not even sure what we're arguing about, in fact

<comment><USER7> You are both "from Chicago"? Meaning, the city itself or the suburbs. Big difference. The suburbs are not Chicago.

<comment><USER6> I live in CHICAGO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I can't wait for this in LA. I'm currently paying $115 per month for 1Mbps/10Mbps for Time Warner "business class" internet-only service. My company does visual effects work, so I actually have to drive my video files home on a USB drive to upload them since my home connection is 20Mbps/200Mbps for $50 per month. The internet monopoly situation in the US is terrible for businesses here.

<comment><USER9> This is so ridiculous, it's literally unbelievable. My home city, Kiev(Ukraine), has multiple 1 Gbit residential broadband providers for $6 - $15. Not joking.

<comment><USER10> As I learned in New Zealand, the data rate to the ISP is largely irrelevant. I had a 100mbps+ connection in NZ, but rarely got over 2mbps to any international location. It would speedtest at full line rate.

However, here in the US, I've got a 50mbps connection, and I regularly get 50mbps.

<comment><USER11> US broadband interconnects with the rest of the network are pretty terrible.

Reference: those name-and-shame articles a while back from a network company (Level 3, from memory?) that produced hard numbers on how little $ US cable/DSL internet companies were willing to put into improving their capacity at the peer link.

 _[Edit]_ Yup, Level 3. I thought they were interesting because hard numbers at this level seem difficult to come by. Here are the articles from 2014:

[http://blog.level3.com/open-internet/chicken-game-played- chi...](http://blog.level3.com/open-internet/chicken-game-played-child-isps- internet/)

[http://blog.level3.com/open-internet/observations- internet-m...](http://blog.level3.com/open-internet/observations-internet- middleman/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sadly, Seattle bureaucracy has ruined google fiber here: [http://crosscut.com/2014/12/google-fiber-never-come- seattle-...](http://crosscut.com/2014/12/google-fiber-never-come-seattle- broadband-internet-2/)

<comment><USER13> I'm in Seattle, and I have gigabit (www.gowaveg.com) in my apartment. It's $80/month, and I get ~15ms latency to AWS West (Oregon). It's wonderful.

Wave G has an interesting model - they mainly hook up apartment buildings (it used to be called "Condo Internet"). They are experimenting with hooking up houses on the street as well - they're doing fiber to the home in the Eastlake area, but I don't know if that's working out yet.

I love them. When we moved to Seattle we only looked at apartments that had Wave G service. I'm going to be very sad when we move out of Seattle and have to return to normal Internet. But so far this model is encouraging, if non- inclusive to people outside the nice apartments.

<comment> steve-howard One of the biggest losses moving out of my old First Hill apartment was that they had CondoInternet and where I was going they didn't. I don't even care about the throughput, it was just incredibly reliable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's just talk. Google has parts of three small cities wired. Google has never done a big city, or an entire city. Sonic already has parts of San Francisco hooked up with gigabit fiber.[1]

[1] [https://www.sonic.com/gigabit-fiber- internet](https://www.sonic.com/gigabit-fiber-internet)

<comment><USER15> I'm in Salt Lake City, where they announced they've been building a long time ago, and we ain't seen sh*t yet.

<comment><USER16> I'm in Atlanta and we've seen the trucks out laying fiber already. I'm hoping for the end of next year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> LA has had notoriously bad ISP coverage. Most houses in the area only have a choice between one cable provider or going DSL.

Nice to hear AT&T is planning to roll out gigabit fiber in LA as well. [http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/12/att-bringing- gigabit...](http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/12/att-bringing-gigabit- fiber-to-la-and-dozens-of-other-metro-areas/)

For some reason Verizon Fios has avoided LA proper but laid out Fiber along the outskirts and in Ventura County years ago.

<comment><USER18> TWC coverage is not bad - my addresses in LA each have had 300Mbps available for $65/mo. Speed tests clock in around 330Mbps down.

<comment><USER19> TWC coverage here in Rochester, NY is $84/month for 50Mbps.

I'd guess you only get 6x the speed for less money in LA in places where fiber is a viable competitor.

<comment><USER20> I have gigabit fiber at my house in Rochester for $100/month via the new upstart ISP, Greenlight (actually their lower 500Mbps tier for $75/mo). They're expanding slowly, but they are expanding.

<comment><USER19> I'm drooling over Greenlight. Thus far they seem to be prioritizing high- density areas like apartment complexes, though. Down in Pittsford it's not looking hopeful for a few years at least.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > Yes, San Francisco has been skipped again and I'm going to go cry into my > slow internet from Comcast.

I seriously still cannot get over how funny this is.

SF pitches itself as the centre of the tech universe, and yet, it still hasn't "disrupted" its own crappy broadband infrastructure. (Much less the rest of the country's!)

I'm sure there's many good reasons for Google passing them over, but that doesn't keep it from being hilarious.

<comment><USER22> Chris Sacca (of Twitter / Uber investing fame) spent months / years of his life working for Google trying to get San Francisco to agree to install free, city-wide WiFi paid for by Google. It didn't happen.

[http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/S-F-stalling-Wi-Fi- plans-...](http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/S-F-stalling-Wi-Fi-plans-Google- executive-2551901.php)

<comment><USER23> Heh - I was doing this before Chris Sacca was!

Listen to what happened:

We were seeking to build wifi and wanted to get the city to allow us to put the nema boxes on street lights and stop lights.

I cant recall the officials name now (this was ~2002 or so) -- and they came back and stated they wanted video cameras on all stop lights. They then said that they wanted "at least 60 frames per second" and that they wouldn't allow us to put up the devices as they were already looking to pull fiber to every stoplight to support cameras.

<comment><USER24> Wow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> AT&T recently announced some initial "Gigabit" deploys in the Chicagoland suburbs. I guess now we know why.

AT&T has been horrible in Illinois, with years and years of dragging their feet as well as reneging on commitments made to the State in return for e.g. tax breaks and rights of way.

Even with their announced Gigabit service, one really faces roughly twice the cost of Google Fiber if one chooses to opt out of AT&T's connection/data spying. And they impose a 1 TB / billing cycle (month) data cap. At the supposed 1 Gbps maximum speed, that's a bit less than 154 minutes of data -- less than 2.5 hours. For the entire month / billing cycle.

It's not difficult to imagine a 4K household easily exceeding this cap, or even a 1080p household with several users.

So... Go, Google Fiber. I don't hold out much hope they'll get out to me, but I'm glad that they may finally be holding incumbents' feet to the fire in a large urban market -- one that is considered AT&T's "home turf", to boot. (The erstwhile SBC headquarters were/are in the Chicago suburbs, and a lot of corporate management/leadership is or has been in the area.)

</comment><comment><USER26> If I had to guess, I imagine they would start out around where their offices are in Venice and at least reach to where their Youtube studios are in Playa Vista. Both areas are big for startups along with all new development in Playa Vista.

<comment><USER27> It might actually emanate out of One Wilshire.

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

<comment><USER26> Yeah actually that is a really good point. The place is integral for connectivity on the west coast.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Has Google announced San Diego officially yet? My friend said he noticed they were putting up hiring ads [1] there. But their San Diego page [2] doesn't make it sound quite official yet.

[1] [https://www.google.com/about/careers/search#!t=jo&jid=137035...](https://www.google.com/about/careers/search#!t=jo&jid=137035001&)

[2] [https://fiber.google.com/cities/sandiego/](https://fiber.google.com/cities/sandiego/)

<comment><USER29> Tries [https://fiber.google.com/cities/houston](https://fiber.google.com/cities/houston) on a lark

         500 Internal Server Error
         The server has either erred or is incapable of performing the requested operation.

I feel like Olya Povlotsky - "Dog bite me, Seth. I think finally I will die. The dog die, Seth. I was poison to that dog."

Sigh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'd assumed that cities like Chicago with relatively old/dense/complex infrastructure would pose a tremendous challenge to a project like Google Fiber. Happy to have assumed incorrectly, but it does seem a significant jump from mid-sized metros like Provo/Austin/Kansas City.

</comment><comment><USER7> I lived in Chicago (proper, not the burbs) for years. The existing city cable provider, RCN, was one of the best I ever had the pleasure of using. It's definitely no Comcast like the suburbanites are stuck with.

The city is too old.. they don't even have all the schematics for all the gas lines and other pipes and wires laid over the centuries. Digging in Chicago is very dangerous and restricted. It will be interesting to learn how they deploy this if it happens.

As for likelihood this goes through, I can't see this ever happening. It's very corrupt, city employees don't want to work too hard, it's running on borrowed time.

Oh, I'm in Austin now. :) Can't say I care to return to the Windy City but this would certainly help pull in migrants other than native midwesterners.

</comment><comment><USER31> How much would it cost for the US government to connect all US households to fiber? about 1 month of war?

<comment><USER32> Your first question is fair. Your second question brings politics into here for no reason.

<comment><USER33> I think it's entirely reasonable to discuss tech priorities and national infrastructure spending. Maybe 'war' has a particularly political dimension, but so does Social Security, welfare programs, national health care, manned space exploration, etc. Basically any large spending program is going to be a political, almost by definition.

<comment><USER32> I agree with your point but framing things as war instead of defense spending is leading and politically inclined.

<comment><USER33> I think most people distinguish between "baseline defense spending" and "elective war" in a general sense without either term feeling overtly political.

But if we were to take the set of [Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq] and try to decide in particular which are which, we would quickly find that to be political.

So in America, the political-ness of "war" tends to shift with the times. Right now, those times are 'interesting'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Five years ago, I honestly thought everyone in major cities would be using encrypted gigabit mesh networks by now. Maybe in 2020.

<comment><USER35> There's some promising mesh projects. Stay strong!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Really hope this happens. Our current choice of Comcastholes or AT&T's Slow DSL is ridiculous for a city like Chicago.

<comment><USER36> I have RCN and I really enjoy it. I've heard their TV service is garbage but I haven't had any problems with RCN and I only pay $50/mo for 50/10 speeds.

<comment><USER37> Had RCN in Uptown, forced with Comcast in Logan. I really miss RCN. Couldn't beat the price/performance ratio.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Los Angeles will be an impressive feat. The ridiculous number of jurisdictions will generate an ungodly amount of red tape.

<comment><USER39> Well the announcements are kind of dishonest, they aren't doing whole cities. Select neighborhoods get the service and you actually be a street over and miss out. I remember the excitement when they announced Atlanta, until we saw the map.

Yes it is impractical to cover a "city" but it would be more honest to say "Coming to select areas of X"

<comment><USER40> DTLA needs it badly too. Some of us are stuck with DSL :/

<comment><USER41> Look into that, my building on 7th & LA now offers TWC. It took a while though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Does anyone know what it takes to start up municipal fiber? There is a dark fiber line about 4 blocks from my house (in Berkeley), I feel that if I got enough neighbors to sign on to helping fund the initial costs of piping a connection to that, we could all get much better internet service -- but I don't know where one would start with that.

<comment><USER43> Only time + money. But more of both than you likely want to invest.

Disclosure: built my own ISP 13 years ago after a similar "how hard can it be??" moment.

<comment><USER44> Have you written up this experience anywhere? I'd love to read that.

<comment><USER45> I second this. I'd love to know how ISP companies back then were operated.

<comment><USER46> a bit easier with less scale; otherwise identically to today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> LOL force change with the pocketbook. yes internet is needed for modern use, use phone carrier for banking, bills, and email. disconnect cable, internet, Netflix, and all other streaming and cloud services, games and all the digital crap. Put a digital antenna on TV. Many businesses will quickly lose money and force change back to somewhat affordable rates. In the mean time back to reading, board games, hobbies, parks, exercise, etc.. they don't cost a penny. If everyone disconnected for a few months you would realize that there is life beyond these time wasting distractions. The best things in life are free anyway.

</comment><comment><USER48> Congrats to the residents of Chicago and LA for having the local government leadership to work with Google.

I wish I could say the same for NYC where I live.

Despite the fact that Google owns one of the largest office buildings in the city where many engineers and other staff work, there is no Google fiber here.

Sadly, the mayor seems more focused attempting to slow the growth of Uber until the residents vociferously protested.

Now he is trying to ban the popular horse drawn carriages in Central Park -- or ban most of them. Sigh....

<comment><USER49> > popular horse drawn carriages

Popular with whom? The minimal revenue it brings from primarily tourists? Most of the backlash has come from NYC residents who deplore the conditions for the horses. The welfare of the horses should take precedence over the minimal revenue they bring.

<comment><USER48> According to a recent NYTimes article, most New Yorkers like the horse drawn carriages but the mayor made a commitment to a group that spent $1 million for ads against Ms. Quinn who was the mayor's leading competitor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I'm still wondering if Google Fiber is a foundation for Google's ambitions to resurrect their city-wide WiFi plans that stalled in SF years back. Ever since Google-Fi rolled out, I've been more convinced that Google doesn't actually need to wire every home with Fiber, just to put it in enough places and blanket the area with their own fine-tuned data network. Then, charge people for accounts to access it.

</comment><comment><USER51> In the current fiber cities, does anyone know if the service made it out of the city limits into the burbs?

(Asking as someone right outside the Chicago city limits...)

<comment><USER52> In Austin, no, the map follows closely to the city limits.

They provide maps of the rollout too: [https://fiber.google.com/cities/austin/fiberhoods/](https://fiber.google.com/cities/austin/fiberhoods/)

<comment><USER53> To be fair, the city limits in Austin are pretty huge, already encompassing lots of what would qualify as the suburbs. Take, for example, the West Gate/South Manchaca/Stassney/William Cannon area (marked as Emerald Forest above), where there's already heavy build out going on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Heard about ATT gigabit coming to Sacramento yesterday (amongst many others). Finally seeing these lazy companies upgrade infrastructure.

[http://about.att.com/content/dam/snrdocs/GigaPower/FINAL%20-...](http://about.att.com/content/dam/snrdocs/GigaPower/FINAL%20-%20Sacramento%20GigaPower%20Commitment%20Release.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER55> The top comment is a (seemingly half or less than half-) joking comment about corruption in Chicago.

I have another, related thought:

These two cities are, without any reasonable dispute, centers of horrific police brutality.

Will Google Fiber drive down internet prices (and promote more public wifi) so as to cause a measurable increase in reporting and uploading of high- definition video of incidents?

</comment><comment><USER56> I wonder how much of LA will be covered? it is a gigantic area. I do hope they go up to the Pasadena and San Marino areas...

</comment><comment><USER27> My start-up is in LA and we're been talking about moving to SF. This will definitely factor in to our discussion.

<comment><USER57> Just curious: what specific factor(s) make you consider the move? I mean, in your view, what are the big draws to SF, things that LA either lacks or has only in low quantity/quality?

<comment><USER27> We[0] make SAAS for developers, so we expect a lot more of our customers to be in the bay. There's also a deeper market for technical talent and VC capital. LA has a lot of lifestyle perks (beach, forests, desert, great weather, more daylight in the summer, more sqft of office/apartments per $). I imagine that the bars and restaurants in LA are better (but I don't know).

So mostly, The Bay is where to ecosystem is.

[0] [https://UseDopamine.com](https://UseDopamine.com)

<comment><USER58> Nice "Invalid security certificate" popup you have there?

<comment><USER27> You don't say? . . . That's going on the list.

<comment><USER59> Same here ;/ looks bad on chrome osx

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> I'm on Sonic 1 gigabit fiber in Sebastopol 50 miles north of San Francisco, one of the reasons we moved north from the city. Sonic are excellent and are building out in San Francisco in small areas.

<comment><USER61> I used to live in Santa Rosa (working for Agilent). Do you work remotely or have a job up there? The North Bay tech scene isn't as good as you think it would be.

<comment><USER60> consultant, wfh

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> As someone a few miles from Google HQ, this doesn't mean very much. Mountain View has been on the "potential" list for at least 2 years, with no movement whatsoever.

<comment><USER63> The less movement you have, the more you need fiber.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> I won't mind if my Comcast Internet suddenly gets a free speed boost here! (But I won't sign myself up for an ISP that's primary business is tracking your data.

</comment><comment><USER65> I can't understand why Google hasn't picked Alexandria, VA. It's a small, fairly dense, highly educated city with high average household income.

I bet the city government would welcome it. It's pretty much all Comcast right now, and the city is researching muni fiber.

Plus it's right outside Washington DC and plenty of government officials live there. The effect of competition on broadband quality and price would be highly visible to federal lawmakers.

edit: I'm curious why this is getting downvoted.

<comment><USER66> Has Google Fiber ever gone head to head with Fios areas? I'd imagine Fios can provide 1Gbps with minor upgrades.

I get 75/75 from Fios for 60 bucks in Crystal City.

Cox is rolling out gigabit for 100 dollars in Fairfax county.

<comment><USER65> No FiOS in Alexandria. Edit: or Cox.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Excellent, I await an actual gigabit connection and support people that actually know what their doing.

</comment><comment><USER68> Come capitalism, save us from the vicious tyranny of capitalism!

</comment><comment><USER69> Baltimorean here. Enjoy it, bastards :D

</comment><comment><USER70> good for them to do a major city. i'm still waiting for pdx.

</comment><comment><USER71> Now Comcast is scared.

</comment><comment><USER72> Whoo, Chicago.

</comment><comment><USER73> Can we count San Diego as a large LA suburb? Please?</comment>


Ask HN: Some advice for a startup from Pakistan? - waqas-

http://opensource.com.pk we are a startup from Pakistan, trying to build a web agency powered by a collaborative community. Would really appreciate some feedback and advice. <comment><AUTHOR> Is that the landing page? If so, shouldn't it be focused upon the client needs?

Perhaps think about "Never Say [Opensource] When Selling a Web Design Project" <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5570679>

Sell to Staff/collaborators through dev channels e.g. GitHub e.g. <http://37signals.com/> doesn't mention RoR etc.

Good luck :)

<comment> waqas- we will do a/b testing on the landing page soon so we will try a couple of things. we want both clients and freelancers so will mix it up :D yes, that is a good idea. we will definitely include those networks in our outreach efforts. what can we mention about RoR?

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't write very clearly and I think you missed the point... Your prospective clients don't care about technology, they want to know how you are going to help them.

If you are a web agency, then you main page needs to focus upon meeting the desires of your expected clients. Here is the page for one of my local web agencies: <http://www.hairylemon.co.nz/> . Hairy Lemon use open source when appropriate but they don't advertise it.

Read the article and substitute the word "opensource" wherever you see Wordpress... Think about that... Read the article every 1st of the month :-)

My point about RoR is that the company that created it (in all its open source glory) does not mention it on their own main web page - because their propective clients don't care about it.

PS: I am a tech head and love open source!

<comment> waqas- hmmm..thats a very good point. also, i didnt notice that about RoR. altho, they do mention it once, ure right that they dont make a big deal out of it. so, we can change our homepage copy to be more focused on the clients and problems/solutions. the hairylemon site is a great example, it has very good flow and nice clean simple text. is this your company? thanks for the great advice robocat!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


You won't be able to tear yourself away from these dancing bots. Hypnotic - <AUTHOR> http://robotics.ovh/?bts <comment><AUTHOR> Hint: hold one for a while...</comment>


CSS Paint API: New possibilities in Chrome 65 - <AUTHOR> https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2018/01/paintapi <comment><USER2> > Note: As with almost all new APIs, CSS Paint API is only available over > HTTPS (or localhost).

This feels ridiculous. I understand why certain features would be gated behind https (camera access, stuff like that). But this feature doesn't look dangerous at all. I don't always want to deploy https. What about local websites (not localhost, but LAN) ? Am I not allowed to use those APIs then ?

<comment><USER3> From a purely technical perspective I agree. There's no reason this has to be behind HTTPS.

I don't think this was done for technical reasons though. Rather, it's an attempt to drive further adoption of HTTPS with the ultimate goal of phasing plain HTTP out of mainstream use entirely.

For websites on LAN you can either install your own root cert on client devices, or assign the site a public domain name (even if the site itself isn't accessible from the public internet) and get a publicly-trusted cert that way.

<comment><USER4> > install your own root cert on client devices...

That's a pain in the ass just to test a local website.

<comment><USER3> If you're just testing on localhost, there should be no need for a cert. As the article says, localhost is treated the same as https here. In the future, I expect all features that require a secure context will start treating localhost as secure, if they don't already.

<comment><USER4> I usually have 2 or 3 devices that I need to test a website on, so no - localhost alone doesn't help at all. For example: I run the website on my workstation and I want to test it on my iOS and Android devices.

With this recommendation, I have to generate a certificate and install it everywhere just to test simple functionality.

Since Google recommended the ".test" domain for internal testing that's what I use. In the past I had used ".dev" (now owned by Google) and ".local" (now used by Apple for bonjour networking) to setup test domains on my LAN. So, Google should allow these features through for ".test" at least.

Honestly, they should make it a flag that developers can toggle at the very, very least.

<comment><USER3> \--unsafely-treat-insecure-origin-as- secure="[http://example.com"](http://example.com")

[https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium- security/deprecating-...](https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium- security/deprecating-powerful-features-on-insecure-origins)

Or just use a self-signed cert and click though the security warning.

<comment><USER4> The first recommendation doesn't work on iOS or Android.

The second, well, who knows if it will work today or tomorrow. And, it's still a pain in the ass.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've written some prototypes using Paint Worklet that run in both Safari and Chrome.

Safari has an experimental API called -webkit-canvas that's very similar to Paint Worklet. You can use it to write code that runs in either engine pretty easily.

I've just thrown together a gist outlining how to do so:

[https://gist.github.com/appsforartists/e5d2a4b7826bf5962fad1...](https://gist.github.com/appsforartists/e5d2a4b7826bf5962fad142bcd255465)

It's not quite a polyfill, because -webkit-canvas doesn't automatically repaint when you change an input property. Otherwise, it would be pretty simple to write one.

I may write a proper tutorial at some point. Hopefully this gives other interested folks a push in the right direction, in the mean time.

</comment><comment><USER6> we already had this all the way back in 2008. It's called webkit css canvas! Iconapp.io is using that heavily!

background: -webkit-canvas(mycanvas);

<comment><USER7> with the CSS Paint API you instantiate a new canvas like object for every time your reference the painter, while this was referencing one specific instance of a canvas, right?

<comment><USER5> I don't know the internals of either.

In a Paint Worklet, the canvas is generated for you, and your painter is automatically called every time an input property changes.

In -webkit-canvas, you manually instantiate the canvas and manually repaint it.

It's the difference between reactive and procedural programming (even though the actual painter is procedural in either case).

Here's a gist I threw together showing how to use the same paint function with either API:

[https://gist.github.com/appsforartists/e5d2a4b7826bf5962fad1...](https://gist.github.com/appsforartists/e5d2a4b7826bf5962fad142bcd255465)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> You've always been able to use a canvas normally and then create a url to it using toDataUrl. Alternatively toBlob then createObjectURL which I think might be more performant than data url which requires encoding/decoding base64.

So I guess the main thing added is convenience? Am I missing something here? Adding CSS that requires corresponding JS code is also new territory isn't it (I can't think of anything else that does this)?

<comment><USER9> CSS Houdini is a multi-vendor effort to make more aspects of CSS layout scriptable rather than all having to be specified ahead of time.

[https://ishoudinireadyyet.com/](https://ishoudinireadyyet.com/)

This gives a much greater ability to iterate rapidly on new layout and styling details, polyfill for specifications that aren't widely implemented yet, and hook into some parts of the browser stack that you previously just had to use as is and trust that if you need a new feature, it would eventually be specified and/or implemented.

I think this article does the best job of explaining the whole effort:

[https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2016/03/houdini-maybe- the-m...](https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2016/03/houdini-maybe-the-most- exciting-development-in-css-youve-never-heard-of/)

<comment><USER8> Within the context of Houdini, the Paint API is less weird to me now.

There are so many warts in CSS that I really wish I could customize. For example if I wanted to add a outside-aligned instead of center-aligned stroke to text, you can only accomplish it with lots of hacks: [https://css- tricks.com/text-stroke-stuck-middle/](https://css-tricks.com/text-stroke- stuck-middle/) [https://css-tricks.com/adding-stroke-to-web- text/](https://css-tricks.com/adding-stroke-to-web-text/). Using pseudoelements hidden behind, a circle of text-shadows, etc.

I wonder if there's anything in the Houdini project that will let me fix this. This paint api is useless to me since it doesn't give me the original contents of the dom being styled (so I would need to redraw the text, style it and layout it on my own). The solution I ended up with is using svg filters: [https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2015/05/why-the-svg- filter-...](https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2015/05/why-the-svg-filter-is- awesome/). But a unified solution to customizing CSS without needing to call it a hack would be nice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > As of now, text rendering methods are missing and for security reasons you > cannot read back pixels from the canvas.

Does anyone have an idea as to what those reasons might be? I've heard of JavaScript access to certain CSS features being limited (e.g. getComputedStyle()), but I'm not sure what the benefit is here. Is there any way that user information could be leaked through a paint worklet context?

<comment><USER11> We made a mistake in the article there. (There aren't any security issues with pixel read-back here) I'll ping Surma on Monday to get it fixed.

The primary reason we did this is to ensure there wasn't a performance cliff if you did read-back pixels. With the current API surface you can record all of the canvas commands, and play them back when you need to raster. Additionally it doesn't leak how many pixels we are actually rastering to.

(hope this helps).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I always find it interesting that Chrome is charging ahead full steam on experimental API's like this while most other browsers have given no intent to implement them yet.

Did Chrome come up with Houdini? Are they being brave or pushy here?

<comment><USER13> Author here :)

Houdini is a task force that consists of people from Apple, Mozilla, Microsoft, Chrome, even IBM and Samsung. It's by no means a Chrome-only thing or us being pushy.

Servo has an experimental implementation, but it's the part of Servo that hasn't been merged into FF. All participating browser vendors have given very positive signals about CSS Paint API.

Check [http://ishoudinireadyyet.com/](http://ishoudinireadyyet.com/) to stay up to date :)

<comment><USER12> Thanks for the info. Love your youtube videos by the way :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The second demo doesn't work for me, I think it's missing demo2.js?

[https://googlechromelabs.github.io/houdini-samples/paint- wor...](https://googlechromelabs.github.io/houdini-samples/paint- worklet/parameter-checkerboard/)

<comment><USER13> ... my bad. Last minute corrections made it worse. Will get it fixed ASAP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why isn't text rendering supported?

<comment><USER16> There are some odd threading issues with rendering text in OffscreenCanvas:

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=801176#c29](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=801176#c29)

Given the post's mention of running this stuff off-thread in the future, I suspect it's related to that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Another day, another wart on the modern web stack.

<comment><USER18> Maybe so, but this is by now a cliché. Please don't post unsubstantive comments to HN threads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Quit bloating the web...

Also I am sick the HTTPs everywhere movement. What if I for what ever reason don't want to use HTTPs.

We have so few browsers, that basically what they do is the defacto standard.

<comment><USER20> I am sorry that you are sick of the HTTPS everywhere movement.

But forcing your sites to use HTTPS will also prevent your users from unwittingly participating in DDOS attacks on other sites (e.g. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Cannon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Cannon)). Consider it herd immunity.

Also, to respond to some of your other anti-HTTPS comments:

regarding overhead: people are also working hard to minimize the amount of overhead inherent to TLS. For instance, TLS 1.3 will establish an encrypted connection in a single roundtrip, and is capable of resuming encrypted connections in zero roundtrips with application opt-in (see [https://blog.cloudflare.com/tls-1-3-overview-and-q- and-a/](https://blog.cloudflare.com/tls-1-3-overview-and-q-and-a/)). The encryption itself has fairly ubiquitous support in hardware, making most of them ridiculously fast.

regarding CAs: with HTTP you are implicitly relying on the honesty of people in the network path. With HTTPS you are implicitly relying on the honesty of the intersection of a) people in the network path, b) people who control a CA. This is strictly fewer people than with HTTP. People are also working hard to solidify our faith in the set (b), by requiring Certificate Transparency for all new certificates, thereby ensuring that misbehaving CAs can be detected, and drastically raising the cost of mounting a CA-based attack.

You say "What if I for what ever reason don't want to use HTTPs", I you'll have to layout some of those reasons explicitly. You'll probably find that people are working on all of them.

In general, the default expectation on the web should be encrypted and authenticated (i.e. only both endpoints can read/write the data). Once we live in that future, asking for the ability to allow plaintext network traffic will seem a lot like asking modern programming languages to explicitly allow buffer overflows. The language designer would be justified in saying "No", and ignoring you. The considerate language designer might ask "why would you want that", and try to address your real need. But they would still never actually give you what you ask for. This may be "taking away choice" in the same sense that mandating airbags is "taking away choice", but people shrug and accept it because the baseline has moved.

<comment><USER19> The biggest problem is Java Script. Netscape made huge mistake when they added that to their browser. If we wanted to download code on the fly it should have been a separate format from HTML. HTML is supposed to be a document. Sadly, that boat sailed decades ago. I really wish the standards committee would quit adding basically hacks to what was supposed to be a bunch documents. Then create a separate format more conducive to that goal.

I suppose you could that creating a secure web context is kinda of way of doing that. Separating documents from more interactive content. However, freaking HTML is a horrible way to structure such a system.

Also the CA is single point of failure. A MITM only affects the users along that routing path. CA failure can affect the entire web...

I agree default is fine, but the user should be able to change those defaults. I could always compile a version for Firefox or Chromium that does. However, that's kinda ridiculous that I don't see any thing for instance in about:config Firefox.

\--Speaking of programing languages-- Honestly, I don't see any language succeeding that only allows code with run time checks running. It's why rust has the unsafe keyword. To override those checks. The reason there are lots of hardware devices where the data from said device will vary in size, and there is no way the compiler will know how all these devices work. The unsafe keyword allows Rust to be a system programming language. Heck even C requires you to revert to ASM at times for working with hardware. The generated code may not meet some strict requirements set by the hardware or you need to setup the environment so C code can run.

Honestly, the biggest problem I see with programming languages is that too many of them try to be general purpose. Domain specific languages are great. If the language is designed well for the problem space it can lead to well written concise and understandable code. If your problem domain is working with hardware you need raw pointers, memory access and accurate timing. If you problem domain is altering images you probably want easy to use vector operations, handling of regions ect...</comment></comment></comment>


UCLA math star Terence Tao wins $3-million prize - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-ucla-math-prize-20140626-story.html <comment><USER2> Alas, but then there is also that most distinguished honor in mathematics: The Grigori Perleman Award.

"...On 18 March 2010, it was announced that he had met the criteria to the first Clay Millennium Prize for resolution of the Poincaré conjecture. On 1 July 2010, he turned down the prize of one million dollars. He additionally turned down the prestigious prize of the European Mathematical Society.

"I'm not interested in money or fame; I don't want to be on display like an animal in a zoo."

\--Grigori Perleman

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

See Also:

The Puzzling Case of Grigori Perelman

"As long as I was not conspicuous, I had a choice. Either to make some ugly thing or, if I didn't do this kind of thing, to be treated as a pet. Now when I become a very conspicuous person, I cannot stay a pet and say nothing. That is why I had to quit."

[http://nautil.us/blog/purest-of-the-purists-the-puzzling- cas...](http://nautil.us/blog/purest-of-the-purists-the-puzzling-case-of- grigori-perelman)

</comment><comment><USER3> >>> The other four winners of the new math prize are Simon Donaldson of Stony Brook University in New York and Imperial College London, Maxim Kontsevich of the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques in France, Jacob Lurie of Harvard, and Richard Taylor of the Institute for Advanced Study in New Jersey.

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

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

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

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

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Taylor_(mathematician)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Taylor_\(mathematician\))</comment>


UK plans for satellite navigation system in doubt after Brexit - <AUTHOR> https://news.sky.com/story/uk-plans-for-satellite-navigation-system-in-doubt-after-brexit-11566068 <comment><USER2> This is a Brexit / no longer having access to Galileo military grade tracking issue rather than NIH. Incase you were wondering.

Nothing on costs though. I assume this would have to be global in scope.

<comment><USER3> Yep Galileo is open and anyone can use it same as GPS. The military component is reserved for EU members.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Collectnode 1.0.7 is already available. Now as RPM package too - <AUTHOR> https://collectnode.com <comment><USER2> So, how does this compare to ohai (from Chef) and mcollective (from Puppet)?

Is there a packaged version for other OSes, or is this Red Hat/rpm only?

<comment><AUTHOR> The tar.gz package is compatible with RedHat and Debian OS based, CollectNode is a portable software, so all the requirements are already packaged (except the samba-client package, only required if you are going to work with Windows systems.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> A quick glance at the documentation would seem to indicate that this is very similar to Ansible or any of the other major configuration management tools (Chef, Puppet etc). I'm not quite sure why you would use this over one of those.

<comment><AUTHOR> When I need to know which servers have an specific parameter in a file (for instance), and get a report sorted by operating system and server name, not displaying the servers where the file doesn't exit, I wouldn't use Ansible, I would use CollectNode. It is the perfect complement for Ansible. The big point of CollectNode is that is very quick and very focused on reports, making very easy take the information wanted with the format best fits your necessities.</comment></comment>


My startup (uses an algo to find the perfect bra) got covered by BI - <AUTHOR> http://businessinsider.com/true-and-co-this-startup-has-the-secret-to-finding-the-perfect-bra-2012-4

<comment><USER2> [Disclaimer - I'm married to one of the founders so _very_ biased :) ]

I'm a huge fan of their approach. They're taking a hardcore CS approach (recommendation algorithms, machine learning, etc) to a space that rarely sees lots of tech applied. And they close the loop all the way to having great suppliers/product.

This is exactly what Marc Andreessen was talking about in his software eating the world article.

</comment><comment><USER3> Really creative application of machine learning! Would love to hear about this as a paper on one of the ML conferences someday :)</comment>


An inside look at Stephen Wolfram's computational paradigm - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2013/11/29/sentient-code-an-inside-look-at-stephen-wolframs-utterly-new-insanely-ambitious-computational-paradigm/ <comment><USER2> The problem with covering claims of changing paradigms is: who is qualified to evaluate such ambitious claims? Realistically, not many folks.

I think the best thing for a reporter to do is to connect the appropriate experts together to build a balanced story. Yes, spend time with Wolfram, take good notes etc.--but then find the right experts to respond to and evaluate what he said.

To me, this story reads a bit too credulous to be really useful in understanding what Wolfram is claiming. I read Wolfram's blog post already, and this story seems about the same in tone and content.

What I want to see is the equivalant of this [1] article: a cranky review by an expert in the field...with citations.

[1] [http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/reviews/wolfra...](http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/reviews/wolfram/)

<comment><USER3> Isn't that what hacker news comments are for?

<comment><USER4> Wolfram is a master at this game. You can't deny the brilliant stuff he's done; throw in new terminology for unoriginal concepts, and it becomes very hard to call a bluff (or a delusion). Edit: or confirm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am really excited about this. Combining their API with the NLP stuff we are building cool things would be even simpler.

Our engine turns things like "How many people are living in China right now" in to { "action": "query", "project": [ "population" ], "model": "geopolitics", "payload": { "country_code": "CN" } }

We can do more complex things, but I figure pasting huge code examples in to HN is frowned upon.

Combining our ability to create structured queries with Wolfram's ability to do amazing visualizations could result in some amazing things.

We are looking at basically having the Star Trek computer in terms of being able to say. "How many times more men live in China than in the US" and have our data create a query that Wolfram would visualize by taking the number of men in china and dividing by the number of men in the United States.

Or taking it a step further... "let me know" our version of "If this then that" could be really impressive with this kind of data. "Let me know if there is rain anywhere on my route from San Diego to San Francisco Tomorrow"

We have already started to do some of this at [http://plexivoice.com](http://plexivoice.com) but ties to Wolfram will make it even more surreal.

<comment><USER6> If it's not too much trouble, could you put some of these huge code examples in a blog post or something?

I get the sense that a lot of people (myself included) are still a little confused as to what "Wolfram Language" _is_ exactly, and maybe some code from someone who sees value in it would help clarify things.

<comment><USER5> I will get a blog post up soon, and will update this thread.

I think part of the problem is Wolfram named it poorly.

Think "Ultimate Mashup Tool with a relatively easy interface for building the mashups"

I'm excited because with my NLP stuff it can be "Mashups built with your voice" or "Mashups your Grandma can build"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sidebar:

Argh.

I've played with alpha several times and each time gave up in frustration.

Just now I wanted to know "What's the history of the closing price of the Dow Jones Industrial Average in ounces of gold over the last 50 years?"

Spent 15 minutes fooling around. Finally got the pricing data in working separate queries, but couldn't combine it. So I asked to download the files -- only to be bugged to sign up.

Must be a totally awesome system. I can't make heads or tails of it.

Meh.

<comment><USER8> Was your intention to compare gold and DOW as investments for long term?

In that case you should ask question: "What is the price of Dow Jones Industrial Average dividends reinvested in ounces of gold?"

In long term, the majority of value in stock markets comes from dividends. That does not show in stock price graphs.

<comment><USER7> No. I wanted to see how the stock market change would look if, instead of being priced in dollars, it was priced in some form of commodity, like gold.

So if one day the index closed at 1000, and gold was 200/ounce, it would have closed at 5 ounces.

Thanks for the help, though.

<comment><USER9> If not even nabla9 can understand what you were really asking, it shouldn't come as a surprise that an NLP program couldn't ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Use NLP to convert questions into code, which can not only retrieve data, but also do parametrized computation on it."

This sounds to me to be the core here, simplified as far as possible.

Quite an undertaking, but if it gets rolling properly, it can actually end up challenging Google. Imagine being able to ask the following question and get an answer with summary and graph and maybe options to drill down, all computed in response to the question, not pregenerated:

"How many people were living in China from 1950 to 1980?"

(Or don't imagine and just click: [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=How+many+people+were+li...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=How+many+people+were+living+in+China+from+1950+to+1980%3F) )

<comment><USER2> It's interesting computation, but how often is it useful to quickly estimate how many people were living in China between 1950 and 1980?

Not to pick on that one example, but I do think this is part of the reason that Wolfram Alpha has not taken off at consumer scale. It seems to me that the things it can do that Google cannot, while technologically impressive, are not particularly valuable to most people.

After completing their schooling, most people don't need to solve equations every day. If they do, they already have ways of doing it (Mathematica, for example).

And most people don't need to look up census data, or historical GDP tables, or the location of the ISS. And if they do, they already have ways to do that.

Basically, Wolfram's approach seems like a great way to organize and make useful knowledge that is fully known. But the most value is pushing the edge of the unknown, and that means continuously taking in, indexing, and presenting _new_ information. Facebook does this, Twitter does this, Stack Overflow does this, etc....and Google indexes all of that.

<comment><USER11> > And if they do, they already have ways to do that.

Disseparate ways that take awhile, with results from multiple sources that need to be manually combined to figure out what information is worthwhile. Some of the random queries I've tossed into WA:

"If the average mailbox size is 57MB, and I've only processed 65% of one in the past half hour, how long is it going to take to proce ss all 80GB?" Q: [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=30+min+%2F+%2857MB+*+0....](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=30+min+%2F+%2857MB+*+0.65%29+%3D+x+month%2F+80GB) A: ~1.5 months, better come up with an alternative

"How big is a gigasecond?" Q: [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+gigasecond](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+gigasecond) A: ~1/3rd of a century

"Just how fast are my 5m/s Kerbal Space Program landings?" Q: [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=5m%2Fs+to+mph](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=5m%2Fs+to+mph) A: "I've been rear ended at that speed"

"How much precision will a double give me at the radius of pluto?" Q: [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=orbit+radius+of+pluto+%...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=orbit+radius+of+pluto+%2F+%282+**+53%29) A: "millimeter, perfect"

Or work related; "I'm having trouble visualizing these 3d points, please plot them so I can get a better mental picture for why this right angle assertion is triggering" "Divide by b squared? That can't be right..." when canceling out terms in math code for efficiency, rearriving at one of the equations of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_projection#Vector_projec...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_projection#Vector_projection_2) . "I can't intuit the behavior of this math without graphing it out, lets see... bounds... period... yeah that makes sense!"

I also use it for simpler calculations: "How do the prices of gold and platinum stack up against each other?" "How long until sunset? Thanksgiving?" "When is 18 KST in my timezone?" "How much is that in dollars?" "How big is an acre?" "What does the compound interest on that look like?"

Some of these could be found through google... probably followed by trolling the results for a specific calculator. Others I could calculate myself. But most would be inconvenient enough without WA I wouldn't ask them. Some of these are idle curiosity, but others have saved me significant time doing my job. It's not a daily sort of thing, but it's a consistent way to answer these oddball questions for myself.

Google was a tool I had to learn to turn to with my problems. It didn't used to be my primary interface to all documentation, for example... slowly but surely I turned to it more and more frequently. And so it is so far with me and Wolfram Alpha.

<comment><USER12> Still, there are significant holes in the parsing engine - once you learn its quirks you can get around it, but it's a long way from natural. It can do, for example:

"estimated number of atoms in a liter of water" \- [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=estimated+number+of+ato...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=estimated+number+of+atoms+in+a+liter+of+water)

and

"volume of a cup of coffee" [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=volume+of+a+cup+of+coff...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=volume+of+a+cup+of+coffee)

but not:

"estimated number of atoms in a cup of coffee" [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=estimated+number+of+ato...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=estimated+number+of+atoms+in+a+cup+of+coffee)

What you're looking for is: "estimated number of atoms in 1 cup of water".

Similarly "distance to moon in terms of bill gates' height" does NOT work, while "distance to moon / bill gates' height" does work.

<comment><USER11> Quite true.

Still, the same holds for Google as well - sometimes you need to avoid relevant keywords because of the junk they'll bring in, other times you need to add seemingly tangential keywords, and yet other times you need to resort to google's syntax -- quotation marks, +/\- and site: prefixes. (alack, poor +, we hardly knew ye)

Stumbling upon the right combination can take quite a bit of work until you've built up experience with both the search engine and the subject material's keywords.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Judging by past wolfram hypes, I don't have any confidence in this at all to be even a moderate success. I wish it would be true though, but we know it won't happen. PR/BS ratio is high.

</comment><comment><USER14> Bravo, but I have one question:

What exactly is the "utterly new, insanely ambitious computational paradigm"?

<comment><USER5> The ability to create insane queries that leverage multiple data sets seamlessly and provide a visualization. I gave some examples in my comment.

<comment><USER14> Well, this is technically very difficult. I don't see how it is a new "paradigm" though. It's just a next step in the same direction technology has been heading, no?

<comment><USER15> It's _A New Kind of Search-Engine_

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's hard to figure out what the article is about underneath all the hype coating.

</comment><comment><USER17> Hrm.

</comment><comment><USER18> Wouldn't this be bad reproducibility wise ? I mean, the language spec is essentially changing on a rolling basis.</comment>


Show HN: Cloud storage abstraction package for Go - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@matryer/introducing-stow-cloud-storage-abstraction-package-for-go-20cf2928d93c#.j6l0q5oxb <comment><USER2> Good timing! I'll be needing a solid S3/Disk abstraction, and may as well go with this. Thanks!</comment>


The Android Explosion: How Google's Freewheeling Ecosytem Threatens the iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/04/mf_android/all/1 <comment><USER2> In another thread here someone mentioned that they have "Lisp fatigue", meaning they're just tired of reading ad infinitum threads about just how great and awesome Lisp is. It's gotten to the point of being repetitive and boring.

I feel exactly the same way about iOS vs Android.

Ultimately, Google is a search and advertising company. From our (disclaimer: I work for Google but have nothing to do with Android) perspective, I believe Android is a stellar success as the more people use the Internet, the more money we make. Android has successfully (IMHO) commoditized the smartphone OS, which is good for everyone who isn't a mobile OS maker.

Apple is a consumer hardware company and a stunningly successful one at that. Android is a means to an end for Google just as iOS is a means to an end for Apple.

So all these "analyses"/opinions basically miss the point because Apple and Google are playing two different games.

What's more, I find Apple coverage to be incredibly shortsighted. Like when the Xoom came out in January and the usual suspects went on about how much better it was than the iPad, missing two key points:

1\. Consumers don't compare bullet lists of tech specs; and

2\. Apple's successor (the iPad 2) was only 1-2 months out. Both competitors and commenters are constantly chasing Apple's last year's product, seemingly ignorant than Apple is a constantly moving goalpost.

Also, IMHO smartphones are largely irrelevant anyway. The real battleground is tablets and this is one area where Apple has a _phenomenal_ lead. It's my contention that the digital content and app ecosystems are _far_ more important for tablets than phones (since a greater percentage of even smartphone users spend a greater percentage of their time using "standard" functionality, being SMS messaging, phone calls and maps; I believe data on app purchases would back this up).

Android is certainly a stunning success and I believe huge credit goes to Andy Rubin and the executive team. It is second only to search in terms of Google's successes.

<comment><USER3> _Also, IMHO smartphones are largely irrelevant anyway. The real battleground is tablets and this is one area where Apple has a phenomenal lead._

As a mobile dev, I'd like to believe this, because the tablet is a much more interesting dev target. But it still seems to me that smartphones are ubiquitous and increasingly indispensable whereas tablets are still mainly an appealing luxury.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _The iPhone, revolutionary as it was, didn't alter one underlying dynamic: Phone manufacturers—who wanted to make the most capable, feature-rich phones—were still at odds with the carriers that provide the pricey bandwidth to power those features. That had led to conflict between Apple and its carrier partners, especially AT &T. Apple wanted users to take full advantage of the iPhone's capabilities, but carriers then had to spend billions to keep up with the demand on their overtaxed networks. Android finally rewrote that calculus. Because carriers get a cut of app sales and ad revenue, they stand to make money when subscribers surf the web or download applications. For once, the interests of software designers, manufacturers, carriers, and customers are all aligned._

This is so ridiculously wrong - and anyone who had to do j2me development for applications for all those silver clamshell phones that we all had before the iPhone knows it.

The carriers ALWAYS took a big cut of your application revenue. Wanted to sell a BREW app to Verizon customers? Verizon took a very healthy chunk of your little program's paltry purchase price. What was genuinely different (and refreshingly so) was the iPhone's software market - Apple told the phone companies to go to hell.

Does anyone really remember just how bad all of this was before the iPhone?

</comment><comment><USER5> The whole embracing and promoting the industrial ugliness of the Droid was a stroke of genius. It was such a good marketing ploy it is sort of surprising to learn that it wasn't intentional.

<comment><USER6> It could have been intentional. Whoever designed the hardware might well have realized that it was important to be deliberately and obviously different from the iPhone, and that the various managers at Motorola/Verizon/Google just didn't get that until they saw the ad campaign.

<comment><USER7> Could be, but I've been there at the moment when the first unit finally arrives, and its a total piece of crap compared to the designs. The cognitive dissonance is palpable.

Its surprisingly hard to commission a physical product that looks anything like your designs, at least its seems that way to an outsider like me. It could be that actually getting the original iPhone mass produced, and having it still look good, was as substantial an achievement as the phone itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In retrospect I wonder if Google not doing their own phone was in fact a good thing because it gave other parties the confidence to embrace Android while keeping Google away from hardware which isn't their strong point. In many ways it reminds me of Microsoft in the 80s with MS-DOS, although I sort of see iOS as being closer to to the Apple II than the Mac (although I think that analogy feels a bit stretched and is oversimplified).

</comment><comment><USER9> is it hard to make/design phones that look as bare and minimal as an iphone, or is there some other motivation at work?

<comment><USER10> beyond having talented industrial designers, i think part of it has to do with apple's status in the industry. think about how many times apple has come out with a product that is not just a repackaging of old technology, but something they worked closely with intel, broadcom, nvidia, etc. to create (or re- engineer and shrink). i don't know that many of those companies would do similar things for smaller hardware vendors that couldn't commit to as much volume.</comment></comment>


Rapper Priced-Out of Silicon Valley Home - <AUTHOR> http://www.marketwatch.com/story/when-this-rapper-got-priced-out-of-his-silicon-valley-home-he-made-a-music-video-about-it-2016-06-30 <comment><USER2> oakland is not silicon valley

<comment><USER3> Neither is San Francisco, but "Silicon Valley" in the collective mind is now synonymous with "Bay Area".

<comment><USER2> fair point

<comment><USER4> The entire Bay Area might as well be Silicon Valley now. Uber is coming to Oakland and Tesla's factory is in Fremont. We're all part of the same high rent, dense traffic zone, together.

<comment><USER2> damn that bums me out. the east bay's cultural identity has always been so separate from the peninsula.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's your search traffic breakdown? - <AUTHOR>

Digging around in Google Analytics, I was surprised to see how much traffic Google sent to my blog compared to other engines. We are 97.7% Google, 2.3% everything else. Google has a 59% market share overall in the US according to comScore.
See http://railspikes.com/2008/5/28/search-engine-traffic
What's the search traffic breakdown for your site? <comment><USER2> We're 95% Google, 2% yahoo, 1.7% live/msn. Of course, these are stats reported by Google.</comment>


Ask HN: Tumnblr, Posterous, Wordpress or Blogspot - <AUTHOR>

Looking for the best option for a personal blog that must also functions as a personal Website. <comment><USER2> I use blogger, have done since it was the first blogging service. (www.alexmacgregor.com)

There might be valid reasons to switch for sure but I like it's uptime, it uses static html and how I can login with my Google account.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you're the type who will like to tinker with your site, WordPress is unmatched. Get hosting, install it and start exploring its incredible ecosystem of themes and plugins.

<comment><AUTHOR> What about just using the service wordpress offer with out hosting?

<comment><USER4> You're considerably limited as far as customisation goes if you go for a Wordpress.com blog.

IMO if you want a hosted solution go with Tumblr, if you want a self-hosted solution go with WordPress (www.wordpress.org, not .com).

You can customise a Tumblr blog quite a lot and you have the added benefit of not needing to worry about bandwidth (should you strike it lucky and land on the first page of Digg). For greater customisation though (i.e. do basically whatever you want) you should go with WordPress (by far the most popular blogging solution on the Internet).

<comment><USER5> If hosted, but still want to own your content, don't go with Tumblr?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Posterous its blogging via e-mail rocks

<comment><USER3> YMMV. I wish they made their other interface (i.e. in-browser editor) more accessible.

Even after 100 times, I found it counter-intuitive and irritating that clicking "New Post" on my site would launch my email client instead of their editor. The latter is buried somewhere in Settings.

<comment><AUTHOR> I had the same problem when I was experimenting with posterous, To get some pictures in my post was a big mission.

Then when I posted it, it grouped all the pictures together.

<comment><USER7> Our web editor is definitely in need of some love, and we'll be updating that later this year.

We're changing our "post" links to all go to the web editor. While email is still the #1 way our users post to posterous, those already on the web want to stay on the web.

For images: we default to grouping them together into a gallery. But you can also separate them out into individual photos.

-Sachin CEO, Posterous

<comment><USER6> My 2 cents:

1 thing i am dying to see in posterous is "preview" option plus the pages & link section is a littile clumsy.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Australia Repeals Carbon Tax - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/articles/australia-repeals-carbon-tax-1405560964 <comment><USER2> Perhaps whoever wrote the article, should fact-check a bit more. Wikipedia would be a good start...</comment>


How to Become a Data Scientist Without a CS Degree - <AUTHOR> https://selftaughtjobs.com/how-to-become-a-data-scientist-without-a-cs-degree/ <comment><USER2> I don't think it would be ok if non cs grads become data scientists. Doctors need to do it, pilots have to do it. Why not data scientists?</comment>


What I Learned about Style and Writing from Watching Bruce Lee - <AUTHOR> https://philipkiely.com/essays/bruce-lee-style.html <comment><USER2> The training/instruction scene at the beginning of _Enter the Dragon_ has so much tight wisdom packed into only a few minutes.

 _A good fight should be like a small play, but played seriously..._

and

 _it is like a finger pointing at the moon..._

are seriously worth noodling over.

<comment><USER3> Also "Never take your eyes off your opponent"

<comment><USER2> "i said _emotional content_ , not anger!"</comment></comment></comment>


Ember and the future of the web - <AUTHOR> http://frontside.io/blog/2014/02/24/ember-and-the-future-of-the-web.html <comment><USER2> Based on subject I was hoping the article will tell about times when crutches like Ember will be less needed with basic MVC/MVVM baked into browsers (the way it's done in the best desktop GUI framework WPF) and languages better than JS available. It's actually about present day, not future.

</comment><comment><USER3> One of the best articles I've seen written about the future of the web and moving past the constraints developers place on UX due to the way we've built web apps in the past.</comment>


But don't let that distract you; it was designed to kill people (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.calebthompson.io/talks/dont-get-distracted/ <comment><USER2> I'm not sure his solutions are sound. I don't think you should violate your own morals, but the real issue isn't that your code can be used for wrong doing, it's that there are no consequences when it is.

I think weapons manufacturing is a better example than software, because it's much clearer. Weapons are necessary to defend free society, and when they are misused, we hold the misusers to justice.

Or at least we used to. Because today America is actively bombing civilians in 7 different countries, and no one is ever going to be held accountable for the outright human rights violation. I mean, it's a war crime to kill civilians. I don't think you can blame the weapons manufacturers for this though, and I don't think we should have to. Because it's our common ethics that should prevent it.

I guess, though, that in a world without accountability, your individual morals is all that's left, but it's our ethics that need to change if we actually want change. Because if you personally refuse to write the software, someone else will. Like I said, I think you should absolutely refuse to write the software because you won't be able to live with yourself, just don't expect the violators to stop unless we stop them.

<comment><USER3> Mistakes are going to happen and the world has changed. The battlefield is everywhere now. It's not good, but from a high level the US leading the world led to fewer combat deaths.

[https://www.vox.com/2015/6/23/8832311/war- casualties-600-yea...](https://www.vox.com/2015/6/23/8832311/war- casualties-600-years)

Note that that graph is logarithmic.

<comment><USER4> One country waging most of the wars and maiming instead of killing is not an improvement.

<comment><USER5> How is it not?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't understand this guy at all. Two things confuse me:

First, the purpose of a military is to be able to break things and harm people as effectively as possible. Did he think his job would involve making the military less effective?

Second, why is it bad to work on software that's used to kill people? Killing isn't necessarily bad. If this software helped kill Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi or Ayman al-Zawahiri, it would have a hugely positive impact upon the world.

To me, the post comes across as a bunch of meandering moral grandstanding. The core thesis is either utterly pedestrian ("Think about the consequences of what you're building.") or totally fringe (that helping the US military is immoral).

<comment><USER7> Lots of people disagree with you, and believe that killing _is_ necessarily bad.

No matter how bad the person you're killing is, it's still not OK to kill (except in extreme circumstances of self-defence).

Capital punishment was abolished for a reason.

<comment><USER8> What about killing to protect others, as part of your duty?

I'd argue that _not_ killing certain bad people is an immoral choice in itself, designed to absolve one's of responsibility at a great price to others.

"We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm"

<comment><USER9> You just need to incapacitate them not kill them.

<comment><USER10> That's not a viable option. There is no such thing as a truly effective non- lethal weapon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think a lot of people are missing the point of this post, especially because it offers an opportunity to nit pick on specifics. But the point here isn't "don't write code for the military" or "don't write code for killing" or anything else, it's that we need to _think_ about if we're okay with the code we're writing. We need to think about the implications of the things we build.

We're never going to find a hard line we all can agree on, aka "don't work on missiles, but airplanes are okay" or something similar. But we can all stop to think about what that line is for us personally, and if what we're working on crosses it. What would we do if asked to violate that boundary we've created for ourselves?

When I was in grad school, we had to take an ethics in engineering course. We split into groups and discussed the ethics of building certain things, in my group's case building predator drones. While I didn't agree with the person who said they were okay building them because we need weapons, I was far less concerned with that individual than the one who looked at me, straight faced, and said "I don't get what airplanes have to do with morals".

<comment><USER12> _I was far less concerned with that individual than the one who looked at me, straight faced, and said "I don't get what airplanes have to do with morals"._

They're arguing that morality attaches to the user, not the tool.

See any gun-control argument in history, basically.

<comment><USER13> Let's accept for the moment that tools are morally neutral. Notwithstanding that, when you're thinking in a consequentialist fashion, you don't just ignore the knowledge you have of how the tools you build are going to be used. You can say "well it's not up to me, it's not my responsibility to think about how they'll be used", but you have to be upfront with yourself about the fact that you're not taking moral responsibility for your actions.

<comment><USER12> _but you have to be upfront with yourself about the fact that you 're not taking moral responsibility for your actions._

My concern isn't so much the nature or purpose of the tool I'm building, as it is with whose hands the tool will ultimately end up in.

I'd be OK working on military drones, for instance, if I knew they wouldn't end up in the hands of avaricious neoconservatives, LBJ-school paleoliberals, religious nuts, or basically anyone who isn't someone whose judgment I personally trust.

So in practice I wouldn't want to work on a military weapons project with no valid civilian uses. But it's not because I believe drones or land mines or atomic bombs are inherently evil. It's because I have no idea who will eventually end up in control of those products, and because history suggests that they will be used in ways I don't approve of.

I have the same attitude towards patents, basically, but that's a different debate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think a lot of people here are getting hung up on some imagined implication that any code that could ever be used for evil is wrong to make. Yes, this is a grey area and there's no clear line of what the correct ethical choice is in many situations. But the point is that it's barely discussed professionally at all. Other disciplines have quite a bit of exploration into their professional ethics, but software engineering seems to gloss over it. Yes, there is some precedent, but it seems disproportionately small when considering that it is becoming an increasingly ubiquitous role in our society.

It seems like it's not even in our vocabulary as engineers to comprehend the ethics of our work. There's no framework for analysis or disclosure. Sure, there aren't any easy answers to most situations, but have we even tried?

</comment><comment><USER15> Killing people is at the extreme end of ethical concerns, but a lot more people are working on code that's designed to tighten corporations' control over users or otherwise take away their freedom and privacy and increase authoritarianism. Things like DRM, "security" ("because who _doesn 't_ want to be safe and secure?"), removing functionality that allows extensibility/interoperability, etc. I've heard it phrased thus: "Do we want to help them build better nooses to put around our necks?"

<comment><USER16> I would rather write code to kill people, than to control what they watch or consume, and how they consume content. Killing a few people is small in the grand scheme of things. Restricting knowledge or access to knowledge can destroy entire civilizations. Restricting content produces a world I would not want to live in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> A _lot_ of folks here in the comments are missing the point and "getting distracted" by the word "kill."

Sure, it was probably a bit short-sighted of the speaker to not connect the dots and see that this software would be actively used to seek out and kill people. But to me the core message of this talk applies to the very large grey area that lies in between fully ethical software and stuff the DoD makes to kill people (yes killing _can_ be necessary I know, I know, don't get distracted!). And that grey area is mostly social media and ad-tech.

These are two domains which require software to be written that is actively harmful to people's privacy and mental health. We see Twitter being used to target and harass people to the point of suicide. Instagram has been precisely designed to the point of addiciting its users into a fake world that makes them feel like they are nothing and that everyone is happier than they are and it depresses them.

The examples I just cited are prevalent criticism and can start to echo in our chamber here (HN). But how about a real, recent example: Facebook's use of two-factor authentication phone numbers in advertisements. Some engineer at Facebook was given these requirements to implement this super shady and deceitful functionality and chose to implement it anyways without pushing back. It takes advantage of folks who were simply trying to improve the security of their account, but now it is being used to target them with advertisements.

Most of us will have long careers that don't involve writing software that will kill people, but a stunning majority of us will be somewhere in this grey area at one point or another, and you must think about what you make at that point still.

</comment><comment><USER18> Yes, it's important to understand what you're doing.

However: a country without a military (or an allied country with a military) is very quickly not a country. If the US and Europe stopped having a (working) military, they would be immediately taken over by totalitarian regimes who would be delighted to trample over all the rights and privileges their citizens currently enjoy. South Korea, Taiwan, and many other countries/regions would instantly be destroyed by powerful and dangerous neighbors. Free countries are not free because everyone around the world is nice; they are free because people are willing to die to protect them.

A military _must_ have weapons that _can_ kill people. The real goal of such weapons in a western democracy is not to kill people - it's to be _able_ to kill people so that no one will take over or threaten the country and its allies (at least not without consequences). It is entirely ethical to enable self-defense, and self-defense is the purpose of the Department of Defense (remember, its very name is "Defense"). The ACM code of ethics doesn't forbid this, because it focuses on unintentional harm, not intentional harm from a lawful order to protect a country. The author seems to think it's unethical to enable self-defense, and that's just nonsense. Weapons (and anything else) can be misused, but we need to hold the misusers responsible - not pretend that they aren't needed. It's a good thing that military personnel are willing to risk their lives to protect others, even those who don't appreciate their sacrifices to do so.

<comment><USER19> A counterexample: Costa Rica (where I'm from). We haven't had an army for the last 70 years and still remain a country. Superpowers (e.g., US, China, Russia) might need armies as means of mutual deterrence. Smaller countries not so much.

<comment><USER20> This appears to be false.

> So, Who Protects Costa Rica? Costa Rica maintains its military-free status > and does not command any military units or house any war weapons. However, > the country does maintain alliances with other countries, such as the United > States, that can be expected assist in the event of war within Costa Rica. > [https://qcostarica.com/costa-ricas-military-abolition- > histor...](https://qcostarica.com/costa-ricas-military-abolition-history- > who-protects-costa-rica/)

<comment><USER21> Hm... not exactly sure how your quote stating that Costa Rica maintains a military-free status falsifies the grandparent's comment stating exactly the same.

<comment><USER22> It doesn't directly falsify the fact that Costa Rica lacks a military, but shows that their solution does not scale in a useful manner.

Edit: It directly contradicts the usage of the claim that small countries do not need a military. Essentially borrowing deterrence from another doesn't result in the world being military free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > a tool to use phones to find WiFi signals.

> Does it find phones ... This was never about finding better WiFi. We were > always finding phones. Phones carried by people. Remember I said I was > working for a Department of Defense contractor? The DoD is the military. I > was building a tool for the military to find people based on where their > phones where, and shoot them.

I got distracted by this utter failure to define the objectives and requirements of the project. If you want to find phones, don't start by using phones to find wifi routers.

But yeah, if you work for the DoD, you should probably be ok with the stuff you are working on being used to kill people. It's a big part of what they do.

<comment><USER24> And it's not clear that it was a requirement to implement this on an off-the- shelf phone. There are plenty of developer friendly chipsets out there that are easy to sniff with that could've been run off a handheld device.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Where do you draw the line? Almost any significant technology can be applied for military purposes. Likewise, the Internet itself came from a DOD research project; military technologies can be repurposed for peaceful uses.

<comment><USER26> Yes, this is what I don't understand. I'd wager the most dangerous weapon used by the US military is either Microsoft Word or PowerPoint to produce operations orders.

It seems that if a product's utility isn't directly tied to a military outcome, then the outrage never materializes.

Project Maven caused outrage because of the direct link to military drones. However, advancements in AI and machine learning haven't caused the same outrage but can be used for the same purpose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I feel like this underestimates the complexity of the problem.

Both markets and open-source software run on abstraction. (The official open source definition doesn't even allow restrictions based on field of use.)

If people want to implement "know your customer" like the banks do, and make decisions based on their own political values, your customers need to share a lot more information and there isn't going to be very much privacy. Buying services is going to require a lot of hoop-jumping.

And then consider the effect on product design. Unless countermeasures are built in, a copier can be used to counterfeit money. And that's an easy case.

Now we have a simple service for distributing text messages making front page headlines for its effect on society.

It was naive, but the assumption that customers are responsible for their own actions was a useful fiction. A society of mutual distrust makes everything difficult.

</comment><comment><USER28> The author is naive beyond belief.

What kind of software did he think the DOD would have him writing? Fart apps?

<comment><USER29> Maybe software that wouldn't be used to bomb civilians, without visual confirmation, in countries that the US is not in war with?

I mean I would be okay with producing firearms to protect my county. I wouldn't be okay with the CIA sending those guns to kill squads in South America.

A lot of posters here are treating all warring and killing as equal. But there is a huge span from proportional and moral use of deadly force, to doing what would be treated as a war crime if it wasn't carried out by the world's foremost superpower.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Great article. I believe it's important to understand purpose of everything you do.

This story crystalizes that into a very compelling advisory.

Often we do things without that understanding in mind and that can lead to many problems, including miscommunication, errors and possibly what this article alludes to.

</comment><comment><USER31> I only skimmed it but this doesn't really make sense.

a) Obviously if you work for the military, killing people is going to be involved somewhere. That's what the military does!

b) Why would put so much effort into locating wifi routers when they wanted to find phones? They have no need to hide that objective - it's a perfectly obvious thing for the military to want to do.

c) I didn't get that far but is he assuming that "find a phone" = "kill the owner"?

</comment><comment><USER32> The military is an absolutely essential institution, but for the sake of the civilians _and the soldiers_ , we shouldn't forget its function: Kill people and destroy their creations. I saw a recruiting commercial for the U.S. military showing an aircraft carrier and calling it a 'global force for good'. That misleads recruits: It's a global force of death and destruction, and that will be your job if you sign up. We don't like to think that, and we can't let that result in rejecting all use of the military - which is just as irresponsible - but we must face the reality of a very serious subject so we can think seriously about it.

When we imagine that the military is something else, especially something glorious, not only do we risk the worst evil of humanity, war, but we also harm the soldiers (and sailors): War is very damaging to them, and not just the dead and the physically wounded, but causing and experiencing death and destruction results in great psychological harm. Humans are not cut out to do it: IIRC the details, on D-Day in WWII, half the soldiers didn't fire their weapons when they should have. After every war, you can read that people 'were not the same' when they returned; many are damaged. Suicides are (or recently were) very high among U.S. soldiers, and the current wars are relatively very low risk for them. I've read interviews with elite special forces soldiers who talk about how hard it is, psychologically, to kill.

Another consequence is that we put soldiers in positions to fail: We send them to wars that they cannot win, usually because we ignore the essential requirement of a stable political outcome - Afghanistan and Iraq are only the two most recent examples. Many in the U.S. like to imagine an invincible force, a panacea for international problems, but just a brief glance at history shows otherwise: since WWII, there has been one clear victory (Gulf War), two endless stalemates (Korea, Afghanistan), one ongoing quagmire of mostly negative results (Iraq), and one loss (Vietnam). We also ask soldiers to do jobs they are not trained for, such as policing: Police are there to bring and maintain peace and public order; soldiers are trained to do the opposite, kill and destroy.

When we have a clear idea of a military's function, we can align outcomes with our values, minimize the use of soldiers precious lives and health, and put them in a position to succeed. To ignore the reality of the military's function, of killing people and destroying their civilization, is immoral IMO.

<comment><USER33> > of killing people and destroying their civilization

You should exchange these two parts, making it "destroying civilization and killing their peoples". It is ambiguous currently and suggests a dangerous act of directing a military against its own people, which happened in history and brought bad results every time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> LOL @ "North Virginia" . Also, when he says R^2, is he talking about Pearson's correlation coefficient? That paragraph is confusing, and in the next one he admits being mystified by the idea of gaussian distributions... I guess I should stop trying to make sense of the technical elements of this article.

</comment><comment><USER35> I don't see this as a "don't help the military" post. This is a post about needing a _profession_ of software engineering.

There are, clearly, ethical lines. Leaving aside where the line and the military cross, it is important to think how we will build such a profession - and enforce membership (which is the whole point)

Also worth noting is a common medical ethics quiz: You are a ER doctor, and a college football player comes in, RTA, spine shattered, internal bleeding, conscious and not in pain but needs operation to stem the bleeding.

He clearly and openly states that as he will never walk again, he does not wish to live.

Do you operate?

Most doctors it seems operate, and oddly that is a violation of most ethical board recommendations.

<comment><USER36> if i understand correctly, it would probably be illegal (at least in the US) for a doctor not to operate in that situation. the only circumstance i know of where a doctor can willfully allow a patient to die is when a notarized do not resuscitate order has been filed. even in this situation, they would still probably be obligated to try any other means at their disposal to save the patient.

<comment><USER37> I don't think the point is that there is an obvious right answer, but rather that the existence of formalized (ish) ethics and codes of professional conduct frequently distinguishes the medical profession from software engineering.

<comment><USER36> sure, but it seemed worth pointing out that the ethical behavior prescribed by the board is probably illegal. i don't want a formalized code of ethics in my field that might require me to break the law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> This is a wonderful article and interestingly one of the more poignant bits is a quote from someone in the film industry (to paraphrase):

"We meet with a lot of startups and the only question is 'Can this be done?' Nobody is stopping to ask questions regarding the ethics."

That being said however, it is really tricky to come to any easy conclusions. We live in a complex world and it's not clear even after exhaustive questioning what damage could be done with the work that one is doing.

Fire was one of man's greatest discoveries - but if you stop and look at all the dangerous uses it could have been put to, it is quite possible we would not be sitting here today on HN...

</comment><comment><USER39> The article is interesting, but not a new problem. Any technology can be used for good or bad (within a given morale framework). Yes, we should all keep it in mind, and ensure governments representing us regulate technologies, or do not use them for unethical purpose. The article doesn't even address this.

Unfortunately, the author writing 6 or 7 long paragraphs to build tension, repeating the same sentence for drama effect, to finally get to the the author's pretend shocking discovery that the DOD and its contractors are producing lethal technologies, ruined it for me.

</comment><comment><USER40> Bill Sourour's blog post discussed on HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12965589](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12965589)

</comment><comment><USER41> I'd have worked on greyball if it was pitched as a tool for disrupting justice, but would feel bad if it was for people who threw up in the car too many times.

I see these kinds of articles constantly. Are there really that many people out there who aren't aware of their own responsibility for their actions?

</comment><comment><USER42> He seems to be saying don't build something if it's possible that some people could do bad stuff with it. That would mean we shouldn't build end to end encryption, because terrorists could use it to hide. And that we shouldn't build Tor, because child pornographers could use it.

</comment><comment><USER43> The job said "Department of Defense" right on the tin. He was not misled in the slightest. He said it paid half again as much as other internships, but I see no mention that he returned any of his bloodsoaked gains.

</comment><comment><USER44> ... I think the ethical responsibility here is with the trigger-pullers and their chain of command; not the phone-finders.

<comment><USER45> Its both. Absolving yourself of hunting jews for nazis because you didnt personally pull the trigger is morally and ethically bankrupt. Your line of thinking is exactly the problem.

<comment><USER36> how many levels of indirection does it take before you are no longer "morally and ethically bankrupt"?

is the janitor at CIA partially responsible for extrajudicial killings? is it morally bankrupt to pay federal income tax, a portion of which will finance the killing machines?

<comment><USER46> > is the janitor at CIA partially responsible for extrajudicial killings?

Yes, obviously to a lower extent.

> is it morally bankrupt to pay federal income tax, a portion of which will > finance the killing machines?

False dichotomy. Moral responsibility is not boolean.

We take a hundreds of small decisions every day that have social implications.

Obviously choosing to live, work, and pay taxes in countries with governments with a history of violence has moral implications.

<comment><USER44> If you look back far enough, nearly every on-land government still extant today has a history of violence; be it that they conquered the land they inhabit, that they invaded their neighbors so that they might not be themselves invaded, that they were established due to their predecessors being violently overthrown, and so on.

Governments really suck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> leave aside the article.. it's done its job..: just read the comments in this thread. my oh my

</comment><comment><USER48> tl;dr man working for the military is shocked to find out that his code is helpful to the military. edgy writing about ethics ensues.

</comment><comment><USER49> This was my same experience in the DC area, anyone with a Computer Science degree is getting scooped up by the intelligence community, and you will get interviewed by spooks because your friends are interviewing with the NSA.

I did some contracting for a Department of Defense subcontractor too, and then got the hell out of that town.

Those people are twisted. Their ideology is twisted. And your parents are just excited that you got an interview at any job.

</comment><comment><USER50> I never really get why military has such a bad press in the programmer's crowd.

I mean sure, killing people is bad in a society but it's precisely because the world has been so far a succession of ruthless wars between groups of people that having a military is a good thing to protect you.

I know the "military kills unethically etc.." and "we are a peaceful world etc.." arguments but maybe people are getting a bit too, and wrongly, "certain" that it will last. If anything, history has shown that it's a succession of cycles until the next wars. Better be able to be the strongest ones.

I've been in my country's military (Europe) and most of the people are not psychopath (a few, sure). they are normal people thinking their job is an important one to protect peace at home.

So yeah "just don't go to job that makes you uncomfortable". It's the only takeaway i get from that article but i don't share the military shaming. Would have been more convincing with a oil industry or "on-demand market" example

<comment><USER51> >I've been in my country's military (Europe) and most of the people are not psychopath (a few, sure). they are normal people thinking their job is an important one to protect peace at home.

If you live in Switzerland, that's a reasonable expectation for those people to have. If you live in the UK, it's naivety to the point of intentional ignorance. If you join a military that has a habit of starting foreign wars, you can't hide behind the make-believe motive protecting your country from invading forces. You know what you're getting into.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> "I came here with a simple dream...a dream of killing all humans."

<comment><USER33> No. Military is designed to kill some people for the sake of some others' lives. Enemy detection is vital to a military's function. Otherwise it will obliterate itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> This is pretty dumb. Maybe I have a good imagination for malice but if I thought through every possible bad use of some code I could never write any code or produce nearly any item in the world. I suppose this is parallel to believing if guns themselves are bad or not.</comment>


The Moz CEO's Wonderfully Refreshing Reason for Stepping Down - <AUTHOR> http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/230353

<comment><USER2> Rand is an intelligent guy who is impressively self-aware.

I've seen him speak multiple times on SEO and marketing topics and each time his bursting enthusiasm has made him come across as someone worth working alongside (or for).

It's good that he's not only been granted the opportunity and fortune to be able to step down from something he no longer enjoys, but it's good that he can see that in doing so the business is likely better off.

How many CEOs (and founders) have done similar things in recent history? I'd go even further and beg the question: what's the ratio of times that's worked out well for the company and individual vs times it has not?</comment>