Want to Understand What Ails the Modern Internet? Look at eBay - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/20/magazine/want-to-understand-what-ails-the-modern-internet-look-at-ebay.html <comment><USER2> I use eBay frequently. I have only bought things, but I want to sell things, however I'm terrified of getting scammed. And eBay does nothing to ameliorate those fears. I got as close as taking pictures, writing a description, and stopped at the last step before putting my item for sale. Everything I've read suggests that it's simply not worth it to try to sell things because you have no protection from scammers.

As a buyer, however, it's great so unless you have enough margins to protect you from scammers, and if you just want to sell one-off things like eBay from the 2000s, then don't bother.

As a technology platform, eBay is an embarrassment. They released features like collections that didn't work on their production website and it looks like they got rid of it entirely now. They have a half-built API that has confusing documentation, and their APIs that do work aren't very useful. Nothing about their site has changed in 20 years, and they're waiting to die, like Yahoo. I'm surprised Amazon or even etsy hasn't been able to destroy them yet, since they're a stationary target that hasn't done anything meaningful in over a decade.

<comment><USER3> In the last two years, I've found that about 1 in 4 of my purchases from China will never arrive. Obtaining refunds is an easy process but frustrating. Many of the sellers will have rankings that make them seem trustworthy only to disappear completely. And we can also lay blame on the western hemisphere. Canada and USA postal systems bear the brunt of the costs of "free" delivery. They will give these packages low priority. Packages will languish for months and when items finally arrive, it can be difficult to arrange payment with the seller after a refund.

<comment><USER4> I wonder if there's anything unique about your situation or just a lot of bad luck. Are you buying generally higher-end items? What does the tracking reveal in terms of where in the process the item disappeared? In the US or China? Or was it just never tendered for delivery?

I've bought a lot of stuff from China on ali and ebay, but no single item over $30 in value. So far I'm at 100% in terms of delivered items. A lot of crushed packaging, but no damaged items. Maybe 95% in terms of on-time delivery.

<comment><USER3> I have had good experiences with items that cost over $50. They tend to arrive quickly. For instance, a tray of CPUs was shipped to me in less than 36 hours for $10 total shipping.

For me, it is the inexpensive items with free shipping that seem to be the most risky. I also probably bid on auctions rather than fixed prices items more than the average person.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not exactly sure what point this article is trying to make, but as a regular eBay user, these are my biggest issues when using the platform. I'm based in the UK, so some of these may not apply for other locations.

\- Delivery times aren't accurate. When I buy something from eBay I expect it will arrive within a week, but if I want something to arrive in a shorter time I buy it elsewhere. There is no way to filter listings to find which sellers will post an item today, and ship it via a method that will arrive tomorrow. A lot of listings are marked Fast&Free, but those have an estimate delivery date of Thursday.

\- Too many Chinese sellers. A lot of items are sold by Chinese sellers who list the item location as in the UK, but in the description say that there is a 20 day delivery time. If I want stuff from China I'll buy it from AliExpress.

\- Too many duplicate listings. If I search for a common item where there are a few variations, I usually see the same item repeated a handful of times on the first page.

<comment><USER6> >Delivery times aren't accurate.. {snip} A lot of listings are marked Fast&Free, but those have an estimate delivery date of Thursday.

I think that's because if they don't give a pessimistic estimate of delivery time, they open themselves up to 'it didn't arrive next day' type negative feedback and DSR scores. I'm in the UK and am selling cars part time to earn extra money at the moment - most of which need things doing (hence my markup). Nearly everything I order from eBay arrives next day (if I order before 10am), even though it usually says 2-3 days minimum. But I totally agree, it's a PITA as you should be able to filter down to those who actually will put it in the post that day if you order before (say) midday.

>\- Too many Chinese sellers

Totally. They are spottable for the most part, but it's a pain to have to read the listings for the giveaways, and occasionally I'll miss it and then have to wait a couple of weeks for something to arrive. This has happened in the past when I've paid for it, and then they've said 'sorry... just checked and the UK warehouse is out of stock, so we'll send it direct from our China warehouse' \- as if there's actually a UK warehouse. These have ALL been listings claiming 2-3 days' delivery.

>Too many duplicate listings.

Yup. It's getting crazily difficult for car parts which I get a lot (see above) - slightly different listing, same seller, etc. Or different seller, identical listing with slightly different price.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think I missed the point because I don't understand what this article is trying to say exactly.

<comment><USER8> The article is a meandering and muddles it point but here's the paragraph where the actual point is made:

 _In 2001, an eBay user might have given an eBay seller a low rating for an unsatisfactory packaging job; in 2018, an Uber driver might be dinged if a rider doesn't like his personality or choice of music. Facebook recently began ranking publishers by trustworthiness, based on feedback from users. Upon discovering a problem, a platform company's first instinct is to find a way to expose it to the wisdom of a market, or at least the will of a crowd._

 _It's a transactional platform; the transaction is very clear to both sides," Hagiu says. "By and large, buyers and sellers are aligned on eBay." A seller banned for counterfeit sunglasses hasn't lost any rights, just his ability to use eBay. Crucially, to most ears, a scammer's claims to the contrary would sound ridiculous._

The article's view on what ails the internet is the flawed idea of "wisdom of the crowd". The recommendation based systems where companies say - "others watched/read this so, you must like it too".

But then the article presents Amazon as something better and conveniently forgets that Amazon too has a similar ratings system. Though only the product level reviews are front and center. Seller reviews do not take the limelight. And as evident by Amazon's glut of fake products this weakness of rating systems is being gamed too.

<comment><USER9> The other point was sites are often trying to address social issues with market solutions. Facebook's mission is social connection but its profit is attention bidding.

<comment><USER10> Maybe "stated mission"? Do you believe that Facebook's mission is actually social connection?

<comment><USER11> > _Do you believe that Facebook 's mission is actually social connection?_

Exactly. I laughed out loud at how insanely cynical it is that they suggest that as their mission.

After reading it, you can almost hear Zuckerberg laughing and sneering, "dumb f___s".

<comment><USER10> He could have seen the light. Some sort of light. God. Landmark. Qigong. Some Hawaiian spiritual practice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> OT: What eBay is really good at:

If you want to buy a notebook with a US keyboard (which some devs prefer) and when it's hard to get them in your home country.

eBay.com offers a Global Shipping Program where the US seller just send their stuff to this shipping program and eBay takes care of everything else. Even customs will be paid by eBay and the buyer just pays once and benefits from fast processing. It's a buttersmooth way of international shipping.

I got my last notebook within just one week and it was still cheaper than the local version in my home country. I know that some notebooks offer US keyboards in any country (ThinkPads and Macbooks) but then you usually wait also min 1-2 weeks because they are custom builds or they come directly from China.

Don't know of any other entity than eBay offering this.

<comment><USER13> The Global Shipping Program is a really fantastic thing. I've used it both as a buyer and a seller (vintage computers) and now have all sorts of interesting stuff from all over the world. Also no problems at all shipping CRT monitors internationally despite couriers (probably perfectly understandably) refusing to provide insurance on them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> From a senior management perspective, eBay is run like a private-equity backed portfolio company. No offense to PE firms, but eBay has the feel of being more worried about costs and makes very little investment in long-term growth--as if the owners just want to turn a profit and sell the company before the debt comes due.

This is why the UI is horrible and, in general, the site feels stuck somewhere in the early 2000s. Perhaps this is also why the company culture is broken and somewhat dishonest. They have frequently engaged in dramatic policy shifts when someone got the idea that the bottom line could be enhanced. In these cases, they are capable of totally disregarding their ecosystem (especially sellers and affiliates). Worse, they would outright lie about their intentions, which I suppose they felt necessary for placation when completely screwing over their "partners".

eBay has long had a certain toxic nature, including an almost uncanny ability to leave customers and partners feeling disappointed, if not outright cheated at some point. Whatever the shortcomings of the people who participate in their marketplace (including scammers), they are amplified by eBay, whose resolution policies essentially amount to doing as little as possible. This is what people are reporting as disappointment when they've needed an issue resolved.

I am amazed that people still use eBay.

<comment><USER14> This is in line with my horrid experience with them last year. I have experienced the fallout from each point that you made. I had no idea that an e-commerce platform as popular as theirs could be so incompetent, rigid and downright hostile since I've had the exact opposite experience with their competitors. Their resolution policies and guarantees are a joke.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It looks like I'm the only one in this thread who has the experience of being scammed, as a buyer, on eBay. Although admittedly, this happened on the Indian version of the platform (which is now owned by Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart).

I wrote about the irony of them promoting the sale of refurbished items when it was a refurbished Xbox that I purchased last year that turned out to be a dud, on Medium ([https://medium.com/@chakrabortypritish/ebay-india-a- cautiona...](https://medium.com/@chakrabortypritish/ebay-india-a-cautionary- tale-of-pain-frustration-c3f55dfd821e) \- I had to incorporate a bit of sensationalism to try and fetch some views, which is why it's written the way it is, didn't work anyway). Turns out that the seller lied about the machine's warranty, and Microsoft support couldn't help me either. eBay support consistently told me that they couldn't do anything about this according to company policy. Never felt this helpless on an e-commerce platform, and I've never gone back on eBay.

And yes, their platform UI/UX is horrible, I concur. The only way to show that the Xbox was stuck in a boot-and-crash loop was to record a video, and they did not permit video uploads on their (laughable) grievance redressal platform.

</comment><comment><USER15> On the other hand, it's a drag that there isn't something like Yelp for FLOSS.

I would have loved to see a rating and some reviews of several development processes before wasting my time posting patches.

<comment><USER16> I'm getting pretty good at working that out.

Note that this isn't a dig at any particular project, I know FOSS is hard and free time is scarce (and so is funding).

Quick ones:

1\. Date of last commit to main repo

2\. Number of issues open on Trac/Bugzilla/GitHub/Jira whatever (note, I'm taking a point off if you use Trac, only because there's still an instance from 10 years ago sending me emails that I can't unsubscribe from)

Takes more time:

3\. Number of open pull requests/mailing list patches and general discussion around them

4\. Any kind of clear and updated roadmap.

Edit: number one these days should be an up to date and working CI/CD system with published artifacts, including for Windows.

<comment><USER17> I like to look at the reactions maintainers have to pull requests. Do they usually get merged, or do they end up being dragged through a bureaucratic nightmare and eventually closed?

<comment><USER16> I've never written anything popular enough to really get pull requests, but I can definitely understand _not_ merging a pull request due to not being able to maintain that code or it taking the project in a different direction to what you want.

<comment><USER18> It's one thing to say "no", it's another thing to say "later" forever.

<comment><USER16> That comes back to having a defined plan for where you want the project to go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've seen it fragment and specialize.

And I'm okay with that.

For instance with musicians - particularly guitarists (only because we tend to be gear enthusiasts) - Reverb.com has become our new Ebay.com. It's even replacing Craigslist for a lot of what we were doing previously (allows local deals, too).

They essentially took all the good things that were working for Ebay and tailored it to musicians. It's a slam dunk.

</comment><comment><USER20> The article is incredibly meandering and non-committed to saying anything in particular.

</comment><comment><USER21> I just cannot compare Amazon to Ebay. While I can get similar items on both what I use Ebay for , collectibles, antiques, and hard to find items, is outside the scope of Amazon. I never expected Ebay to be the big retail spot, for many of us it is the world's largest garage sale.

I use Ebay for many replacement parts for items not normally found in stores or worse jacked up on Amazon because they come bound with Prime shipping. Amazon might be top dog from name recognition but places like Wal Mart are trying and unless Amazon gets a grip on knock offs they are in danger of alienating a good number of buyers.

</comment><comment><USER22> What happened to the future where all our transactions were secured by trust rated escrow agents?

</comment><comment><USER23> Some day in the far future, eBay will invent a technology that lets people embed Youtube videos in their listings. I'm not holding my breath though.

</comment><comment><USER24> Happy to share my experience with ebay.de in Germany as a seller and buyer.

Started selling some old tech/appliances I don't need anymore on eBay: last month 4 items for 250 EUR total, before that a few more items for ~400 EUR total.

Items went for 50-70% of the original price, and then eBay took their commission which at times was quite steep at ~15% of the selling price. It was still worth it since for most items I couldn't find any takers locally on Kleinanzeigen (Craigslist analog).

eBay has annoying limits for new sellers so to sell my old Sony camera I had to wait a month after selling my old Canon DSLR. It's impossible to contact a human support for this issue. They raised my limits automatically recently though.

Don't remember any problems with my buyers or when I bought something. Some of it I shouldn't have bought at all but that's a different story :-D Looking forward to clearing more of those storage boxes.

</comment><comment><USER25> eBay really should allow you to filter out items with multiple price points. So many sellers abuse that system so heavily (e.g. the standard 99c memory card listings that have some crappy little microsd adapter included in the listings to drag the price range down).

Basically everything else that's bad about ebay I can deal with, but that's the one thing that sends me racing to other sites.

<comment><USER26> You can see the same on Amazon - just search for some 3D printing filament, you'll get listings that vary from 10 to 40€ all in one entry...

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Ebay is trash but it's where the buyers are.

I've been buying and selling on eBay since they came to the UK but I have to hold my nose every time I visit the site.

</comment><comment><USER28> Want to understand what ails the modern PSTN network ? Take into account that we have been trying to fix it politically for 40 years now.

</comment><comment><USER29> I tried to Buy It Now an item off Ebay just now and Ebay responded, "Sorry, this seller is on vacation, so this item is unavailable."

Sinking ship.

<comment><USER13> It's usually listed very prominently on the listing page when this is the case. That said, I have no idea why sellers would choose to use this instead of just scheduling things around their vacations.

<comment><USER30> Ebay tracks shipping statistics, if you deliver late they ding you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Why do the style guides of these large organisations often insist on the ludicrous capitalisation of "EBay" when it appears at the start of a sentence?

<comment><USER32> As a writer I will jump through linguistic hoops to move uncapitalised proper names away from the start of a sentence - for example, a medical device called "i-gel" which I wrote a paper on. Starting a sentence without a capital is just too jarring in formal writing I find.

<comment><USER33> Yep. For hundreds of years English has had a rule that proper nouns are capitalised; it is pretentious to imagine that "myThingy is soooo cool that you can't even use the rules of English on it."

Now in some fields, like computer documentation, there's practical reason to change. It would be confusing to capitalise command-names if they are lower- case in their (case sensitive) native language. But newspapers aren't bound by that consideration, and it doesn't really apply to company names anyway.

<comment><USER34> Actually, look in any book printed 18th/early 19th century and you'll see that the rules were quite different then: _all_ nouns were capitalised, as in modern German, and the 'long s' was frequently used in the middle of words. Mass literacy, almost-universal schooling along with physical punishments for children not doing exactly what the textbook said have given us moderns the idea that the 'proper' English of our grandparents remained the same for centuries, but really the language has always been in flux and the rate of change just got significantly slowed by cultural pressures between approximately 1850s to 1950s.

<comment><USER32> I don't think of myself as a total sheep - case in point I put the comma outside of the quotation mark because otherwise it parses weird.

<comment><USER35> You are fighting the good fight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> >Peter Thiel — an early Facebook investor and board member — with his funding of lawsuits against media companies and his eclectic and severe right-wing politics.

The take away of Thiel glaringly missed Palantir in favor of some digs.

<comment><USER36> Eclectic and severe right-wing politics? Awfully colorful way to describe him in an article which isn't an editorial.

Would love to see the NYT describing a left winger as eclectic and severe. Even masked antifa don't get that treatment.

It's frustrating to have to mentally guard against this political mudslinging. The article is worse for it, and IMO it's just coddling their readership and narrowing their audience.

<comment><USER37> Do you think either characterization - eclectic, severe - is actually incorrect?

<comment><USER9> There is a much more neutral way to write it.

>Thiel who is known for funding a lawsuit against Gawker and his conservative politics.

Still, I think those, while visible, are rather minor notes compared to starting a billion dollar defense contractor.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Author Iain Banks has terminal cancer - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-22015175

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure I can express in words how much of an effect Iain Banks' writing has had on my life. From my school English projects on some of the earlier books through to his latest work, his imagination and ability to convey those ideas in his novels are just staggering.

</comment><comment><USER2> Such sad news. Mr Banks instantly became one of my favorite authors after I read his SF novel Player of Games. Then I read The Wasp Factory, which cemented his status on the other side of the fiction fence.

</comment><comment><USER3> He has lived a life that almost all of the centenarians could only dream of. Age is not relevant. Not everybody has the luxury to know when the time has come...

</comment><comment><USER4> Fuck cancer. :(

</comment><comment><USER5> x</comment>


Angry employees tattling on companies that violate software licenses  - <AUTHOR> http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/princeton-student-reveals-way-to-access-students-personal-data/29867

<comment><USER2> Flagged for linking to a completely different story.</comment>


Ask HN: Startup Critique Request for Qwanz.com - polling site with a twist - <AUTHOR> http://www.qwanz.com/

<comment><USER3> "Ever wanted your opinion to _actually_ matter? Qwanz groups your opinion with other passionate people and lets you take action, _together_."

I am a big fan of blatant one line descriptions of what a site does. You can follow this with your "why qwanz" graphic. I'm not saying this is the best line ever, but you have to think of what benefits you are trying to convey.

Polling sites are boring. I'm not going to get excited about a polling site. Seems like you are pushing more emotion though. People passionate for causes can group their opinion and actually "do something about it". Sell that passion to me, not the details and certainly not "polling".

First impressions:

Terrible enterprisey, hard to remember (how to spell) name.

I like the 3 top create, view, browse boxes. They were the first things I noticed and helped me understand the site a little better.

Usability impressions:

Right panel is too big. No need for that. Looks like ads. Encroaching on the content. Flash movie looks like an ad and could very well be thrown into a "learn more" page. Seems like you are trying to oversell your concept - <USER2> add more, just be clear! Benefits, not features.

Take some organizational influence from stackoverflow. It's all about scope. You have 10 main categories. Each of those cats has filters and sorters. Then your categories apparently have sub-catories. I don't like how sub-cats are simply partitioned within the list. The Main category "home page" should have a sub-cat drilldown, and a global (relative to the category) list of all polls with sub-cat tags. (think stack overflow).

This logic should be true for the global list of all top level categories. I.e. like the stackoverflow homepage. A list of the top global polls with tags. Organization and scope imo is very important.

Using this logic, you don't even really need a right panel, maybe just a tag list or other popular filters, sorts.

Links:

<http://www.qwanz.com/poll/248>

could easily be : <http://www.qwanz.com/poll/248/what-changes-should-qwanz- make>

thats it for now.

</comment><comment><USER4> One nit: you are missing a question mark following the first bullet under "Why Qwanz?", so "Feel powerless to influence matters that are of interest to you" reads like a benefit statement instead of a question. (I.e.: "It can make me feel powerless? Sign me up.") I assume you meant "Do you feel powerless...?".

Also, maybe it's just me, but that whole image is very fuzzy looking, while the rest of the text on the page is nice and crisp. Maybe it should be PNG instead of JPG?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN,

I'm working with the founder and dev team of Qwanz.com, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on the site. Qwanz is a polling site, with one key feature: once you've answered a poll, it gives you some next steps you can take -- including political / media / business figures who can actually use the information.

For example, someone who voted in this poll (<http://www.qwanz.com/poll/245/>) about Olympia Snowe could then forward the results to Snowe's press secretary (or call their office directly).

Qwanz is a startup with a thesis, and the thesis is simple: people fill out polls because they care about issues. If they really care, they'll welcome the chance to make a bigger difference.

Your feedback is appreciated! We're in the very early stages, so HN's comments will play an important role in what Qwanz does next.

Here are some Qwanz polls on what Qwanz should be doing:

<http://www.qwanz.com/poll/248>

<http://www.qwanz.com/poll/247>

<comment><USER5> You're smarter than this site looks. Good luck.

Allow anonymous poll response but keep separate results tables for anon / logged in / everyone.

How are the follow-up steps created? If it's just some googly thing it won't be that compelling.

Homepage is extremely cluttered in a bad way for first-timers; this isn't always a big deal but it's good to be aware of.

Consider organizing it s.t. eg Olympia Snowe could have an official "polls" channel for polling her constituents; impact of poll results is more credible that way.

Have a "clone this poll" feature and follow-up / "poll response"; if some user dislikes a poll's phrasing or options they ought to be easily able to clone a poll and tweak it....keeping around that metadata so that people taking either poll can see other related polls. Similarly with response polls -- some way to post a counter-poll. Good for user engagement.

Settle on if your sideboxes have rounded or square corners plz.

<comment><USER6> i second the comment about allow anonymous responses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> On the hp I don't see what makes it special.

The name sounds awful to me and combined with the design it inspires associations with unpleasant business products.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm guessing you're going to get bit of traffic from people who meant to go to QwanTz.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, that would be nice. Not exactly targeted traffic, unless we start to do dinosaur-related polls.

(I didn't pick the name / URL. I would have gone with something like "pollsthatwork.org" or "pollsbutbetter.com".)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Sounds a lot like Kwanzaa =)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwanzaa>

<comment><USER10> or dinosaur comics

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nice UI and features, but I have basic problem - what does Qwanz mean? I'm not able to correlate to its idea. Its very hard to remember...so very unlikely to come back... Just my $0.02!

</comment><comment><USER12> I prefer <http://gopollgo.com/> It has a super clean UI and tons of real-time features that kick ass.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is a great-looking site. (Although if you happen to know the designer, you might suggest making the voting statistics chart more clear. You can't tell which choices correspond to which colors unless you vote.)

<comment><USER13> Hi there,

I'm the main developer for GoPollGo.com. Some pretty big changes are coming along in the next few weeks and we're definitely fixing up the voting statistics portion of the site.

<comment><USER14> The light blue on white text is terribly hard to read.

<comment><USER13> Thanks for the feedback. We'll definitely take that into consideration for our next deployment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Make the twist more obvious.</comment>


SF's housing market is so out of control, 60% of tech workers can't afford homes - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/san-francisco-expensive-tech-workers-cant-buy-homes-2018-8 <comment><USER2> According to a non-representative survey on Blind… Such shotty reporting :(

<comment><USER3> And story likely planted by Blind</comment></comment>


Always Talk to Strangers - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/08/social-cohesion-heart-attack-prevention/378694/?single_page=true

<comment><USER2> The game Rejection Therapy[1] has lots of challenges for interacting with strangers, like _ask a stranger to have your photo taken with them_ and _sit beside a stranger, strike up a conversation_ and so on.

They sound easy to do, but I found out they are anything but.

[1] [http://rejectiontherapy.com](http://rejectiontherapy.com)

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds good.

Step 0: overcome social anxiety and general awkwardness.

Edit: to make this comment a little less pithy, I will say that I've ordered 'What to Talk About', and it has lessened the looming daemon of small talk...somewhat. ([http://www.amazon.com/What-Talk-About-Cocktail- Elevator/dp/1...](http://www.amazon.com/What-Talk-About-Cocktail- Elevator/dp/1452114501/))

<comment><USER4> ahmadss, your reply to this is dead.

Mods, why was the comment about rejection therapy killed? It's a very popular and highly relevant game. And the poster has 1000+ karma; they don't seem like a spammer.

I couldn't see anything objectionable about the comment.

<comment><USER5> I'm new to hacker news and have not figure out this "dead" feature. What exactly is happening?

<comment><USER4> "dead" means a mod killed a link, comment or even an entire account. You can go to your profile settings and select "showdead" to see dead posts.

At it's best, "dead" indicates spam removal, or a shadowban of a spammer. Unfortunately, when it's applied in appropriately, the poster doesn't realize.

In this case, there's a comment that I think was removed incorrectly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [http://teawithstrangers.com](http://teawithstrangers.com) might be relevant ;)

<comment><USER7> Reminds me of a similar project that was called 'lunch-hat' or something that I can't find now. The premise was similar, you find some strangers near you to have lunch with.

<comment><USER8> grubwithus.com seems to have closed down now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Yet another article trending on Hacker News about loneliness, social anxiety, and community. Man, we really must be a bunch of introverted shut-ins!

Machines sure can be funner than humans, but the ammount of trending articles around this theme reveals a few uncomfortable truths about this community. Yikes!

<comment><USER10> Shaming us for it is not helpful.

<comment><USER9> May be projecting there ... no shame intended.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There should be a community to help us lurkers stop lurking.

</comment><comment><USER12> Excerpt:

 _" There's evidence suggesting that negative factors of the neighborhood, things like density of fast food outlets, violence, noise, and poor air quality impact health," lead researcher Eric Kim, a psychologist in his final year of doctoral work at the University of Michigan, told me. I'd add broken windows. One 2003 study found that "boarded-up housing" predicts high rates of gonorrhea in a neighborhood, as well as premature death due to cancer or complications of diabetes. (And murder.) More recently, researchers from University of Pennsylvania looked at the health detriments associated with vacant land. By their understanding, abandoned buildings lead to isolation and erosion of social relationships, mutual trust, and collective efficacy, which leads to poor physical health.

Kim's team is focusing on the other side of things: the positive elements of a neighborhood that "might perhaps be protective or even enhancing of health." For a young scientist, Kim is precociously well versed in the language of hedging_

So, what gives? I am baffled as to why this is not being discussed in earnest as a piece on research into health factors but is being talked about like it is a criticism of the social climate of HN and the social skills of its members.

</comment><comment><USER13> not only is it healthier but the networking can be very useful.

</comment><comment><USER14> Hello, strangers.

<comment><USER15> Hello, dallen33!</comment></comment>


Beginning of the end for Pokémon Go? - <AUTHOR> http://www.valuepenguin.sg/beginning-end-pokemon-go <comment><USER2> Why would players completing the game have any impact on download figures? A fall in downloads means fewer new users, people who have completed the game have already downloaded it. Poor article.</comment>


Why CCP is still using Python 2 - <AUTHOR> http://www.robg3d.com/?p=1175 <comment><USER3> It was an interesting read, I'm not sure if they are like the shark, already dead but the message hasn't gotten to the swimming part yet, or like a harbinger of the future.

One of the things engineers are going to have to come to grips with is that you can actually be "done" doing new design. It's really really hard in FOSS stuff because bug fixing is so much less rewarding than new feature development. But programming languages are tools, and if you're familiar with tools in the physical world you realize that once you get to a certain optimum, there isn't a lot of 'new feature' to add.

The nature of tools is why a good oscilloscope or bandsaw is still a good oscilloscope or bandsaw 25 years later. It does what it needs as well now as it did when it was new. If there is some new 'space' to work in, you might need a variation of the tool, but the basic tool is fine.

Computers, and computer tools, are maturing. We've seen this in the slowing of the upgrade cycle, the resistance to change that the OP writes about, people are ok with their tools. That will be a different world of computers than we are used to I suspect.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure if your dead shark is referring to Eve or Python 3.

I'm of two minds here. I currently work for Google. I doubt Google will _ever_ move to Python 3. There's just too much legacy code, not enough certainty that upgrading it won't introduce bugs, and too little business reason to switch.

However, I also try to stay reasonably current on technologies available outside of Google, mostly out of paranoia that I'll end up one of those irrelevant big-company employees. And when I try to weigh all of the technology options I might use for a startup against my accumulated experience and what I want in technology infrastructure - Python 3 still stacks up fairly well. I'm not entirely certain I would use it - Go is an intriguing new option, and the non-Java JVM alternatives have gotten a lot better since I was last in the startup world in 2008. But the big changes in Python 3 - <USER2> and async - have helped it stay competitive, and disciplined use of function annotations could help eliminate much of the maintenance/documentation problems of not having static typing, and it still is way beyond the competition in terms of convenient syntax and helpful abstractions.

In general tech infrastructure has about zero chance of gaining adoption in existing large enterprises, because the costs of switching are prohibitive regardless of how good it is. Companies stick with whatever was popular when they were founded, which is why Google (1998) is still a C++/Java shop, Facebook (2004) still uses PHP, and Dropbox (2007) is all Python. But that's not how new technologies get adopted. They get adopted by old companies dying off and getting replaced by new ones, and as long as tech companies continue to die (which seems a virtual certainty), there will be room for new languages and tools.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Let's face, there's going to be projects that will NEVER be ported to Python3. Not a couple, a lot. Why should they? If they are using software for making money, it works and porting it to Python3 maybe is just too expensive and too risky.

The point is that, as time past, hopefully more new projects will be created in Python3, and they can drive the development of more and more modules and tools, and, eventually, all new projects are in Python3 and Python2 is just legacy.

Legacy code happens. And for good reasons. And there are lots of people working on them and earning money. Software is a means to an end. I love to use new technology and using old tech drives me crazy, but from the point of view of business, it's a decision that makes sense. There are still COBOL systems that behave perfectly.

EVE is a game. It currently works. Its players don't care if it's done in Lisp, x86 assembly or Haskell. The people working with the code care, but to migrate it to Python3 is simply to costly and risky to do. And will probably always be. If they start a new project, they may be starting it on Python3. And that's fine. That's the way it should.

<comment><USER6> If they're going to keep developing their game for 20 years, and they're smart, then they'll migrate sooner or later; otherwise the weight of finding developers willing to work in the ancient language that python 2.7 will become, and teach them that language, will drag them down, costing them more in the long term than a migration would. Just as it has for COBOL projects. It sounds like they are making efforts to pay down their technical debt; once they have decent test coverage, the move will be much less intimidating, and it sounds like their string-handling library is debt they really want to be rid of - it's just not top priority at the moment.

For projects that are being mothballed in "maintenance mode", sticking to the old tech makes sense. But for a project being actively developed, either you pay off your technical debt, or you pay interest on it forever.

<comment><USER7> Maybe that's true and maybe it's not. Unlike COBOL, Python 2 isn't inferior to its putative successor. Maybe people will eventually move anyway. Maybe they won't. Maybe they will, but not until after we are all dead.

Or maybe somebody will say bugger this for a game of soldiers, take the current Python 2, add such features from 3 as can be backported without breaking compatibility and release it as Python 4, and everyone will move to that and forget about Python 3 altogether. I don't know that will happen, of course, but I don't know it won't either. Prediction is hard, especially about the future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don think it should surprise anyone here that users with enterprise-size Python codebases aren't jumping to Python 3. PEP 373 doesn't end support until 2015, and I assume at that point RHEL or maybe even someone in the python community will pick up the torch (a la Rails LTS).

I think by far the more interesting question is what is going on with today's green-field projects (a.k.a. the enterprises in the making). Whoever steps forward to maintain 2.7 long-term will probably be charging an arm and a leg (Red Hat I'm looking at you) and so of course this is unaffordable for bootstrapped companies and ordinary folks will not be able to afford a security patched Python 2 install.

Meanwhile the statistics I've seen for green-field development are mixed-to- promising for Python 3. I know for my new projects I'm over 50% 3.3. And when the shoe drops with 2.x support EOL, I think that's going to give it a serious kick.

<comment><USER9> Which statistics? I'm honestly curious.

I presume you've read [http://blog.startifact.com/posts/python-2-gravity.html](http://blog.startifact.com/posts/python-2-gravity.html)?

All the new python3/python2 libraries I've noticed adhoc recently have been doing the horrible 'polyglot' one-code-base-support-python2-and-python3 thing, or been in python2.

<comment><USER10> What's horrible about the "polyglot" approach?

Beyond not getting to take full advantage of python3, it's really a relatively painless solution (though when you hit the pain points (bytes vs strings vs unicode) you'll notice).

<comment><USER9> There's nothing particularly wrong with it (honestly polyglot should have _been_ python 3.1, with new features at they rolled to 3.2, 3.3, etc. in my opinion); but if the reason for using python 3 is that it has shiny new features (like async io), it's a bit of bummer because you can't use them if your library is py2 compatible.

...which kind of makes it 'python 3 but actually python 2 running on the python 3 runtime', and the code is harder to maintain than either python 2 or python 3 (twice as much testing to do too).

Not really much of a carrot for library developers to support python 3.

<comment><USER11> what kind of library could transparently use async IO, or not, based on platform? using explicit async for anything dramatically changes the behavior and public API of the code.

there is of course a _huge_ carrot for library developers to support python 3 which is, so that python 3 users can use your library, rather than having all of your work replaced by something else and generally holding back the community.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As someone who works in VFX I can sympathise with CCP on this.

However the real question is: why _should_ port everything to 3? none of the software in VFX uses it, plus a lot of people aren't really up to speed with the changes.

What is the point? yes the language "purer" but that doesn't make my life easier......

<comment><USER13> The point of maintaining the source code to the latest version is to guarantee its survival to the long term: at some point you will have to pass the ownership to another, younger, dev that might not have been taught into this older technology; or port your script to a newer hardware, and eventually deal with an sub-optimal or incomplete VM.

Either you maintain to the latest version and distribute the cost in time or one day you will have to start from scratch, and probably lose more time and money to do so. See every organization still running on XP ? They may be sentence to death in 3 month, that may be the hardest way learn it.

<comment><USER14> "See every organization still running on XP ? They may be sentence to death in 3 month, that may be the hardest way learn it."

Huh? XP will just be chugging along, for another decade probably in some places. There are still business being run on DOS software FFS. What is the easiest - pay for a complete replacement somewhere in the next decade or two, or upgrading everything every few years to stay with the times?

(written from Windows XP and not likely to move for at least another half year...)

<comment><USER13> Well, with Microsoft (and many other software company) ready to pull the plug of updates on this OS, I hope you have faith in your antivirus to stop every unpublished exploit.

<comment><USER15> Anti-Virus systems are not required for anybody who practices even a tiny modicum of caution (Don't browse with plugins like java enabled, never open attachments, don't click on links) - and in stand alone with a half decent set of firewall rules your Windows XP system will be fine.

<comment><USER16> A _patched_ system with a firewall on and without "trojan horses" brought in by the user is relatively safe.

XP will stop getting patches soon.

And this list ([http://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability- list/vendor_id-26/pr...](http://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability- list/vendor_id-26/product_id-739/cvssscoremin-5/cvssscoremax-5.99/Microsoft- Windows-Xp.html)) is only going to get longer and longer, because even though Microsoft will be EOLing XP, there will be tens of millions of Internet facing machines using it, probably even in 2020.

<comment><USER15> Having a firewall + not loading trojans gets you 99.9% of the way to security.

The problems are that normally people (A) don't want to deal with the hassle of a firewall, and (B) don't like to be cautious about opening attachments (C) People don't like to be restrained about what they click on, and finally (D) People tend to browse with all sorts of plugins loaded (not to mention Javascript being almost universally loaded).

For those people, yes, they will need to have a lot more handholding by their operating system vendor.

For somebody running a Windows XP system that doesn't have to do any of those (Cash Register, Kiosk, Office Machine) - they are fine, can be locked down, and can probably run Windows XP for the next 20 years without concern.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Reading the article, I've realised I do now support a Python 2.8, but I personally believe it should have only one feature...

There's no getting around the fact that large Python codebases have been built up in 2.x. Going forward, there are three paths for the developers of these codebases to take:

1\. They can stay with Python 2.x until the lack of updates becomes a problem. 2\. They can attempt to switch out Python 2.x code with Python 3.x code where appropriate. 3\. They can choose to rewrite with a language other than Python.

Of the three options, which is the least beneficial to the Python community? The third one. Which is the most beneficial? The second one. To enable this, it makes sense to enable easier mixing of Python 2 with Python 3. So the 'one feature' I'd like to see in Python 2.8, if it is ever made, is to be able to interpret both Python 2.7 code and some set version of Python 3.

How would the interpreter know the difference? The code could easily be labeled using comments, such as how the "# - _\- coding: utf-8 -_ -" switch works. It's not a new idea, it'll be very familiar to many developers (references to HTML and XML schema spring to mind).

This way everyone wins, Python 2 developers get the chance to move to Python 3 as and when it makes sense, Python 3 developers can make use of Python 2 libraries until the ports are ready, and it should be (relatively) easy to implement.

</comment><comment><USER18> This situation is similar to any other technology I would say.

My employer still gets requests for projects in Java 1.4! Just to cite one example from many.

</comment><comment><USER19> _We have very few automated tests._

He could have just written that one sentence.

<comment><USER20> That's quite a glorified view of tests. You can have the best test coverage in the world backed by a great CI culture but if porting something is a huge time investment, it may still be a huge time investment. Maybe there's one 2.x feature that you use almost everywhere that has been removed in 3.x and there's no simple way to replace it automatically.

<comment><USER21> Yeah, but if you have a test suite you add Python 3 and silence the existing failures. Now you can (at least partially) avoid writing new code that wouldn't work on 3, as well as gain the option of refactoring things to resolve compatibility - with lots of freedom to decide how much effort to spend on that if any.

It'd no longer be a huge risky project where you have to cut the QA team over to Python 3, then spend a bunch of QA's time putting the new code through the ropes with no end in site while explaining to management that this is all providing zero new functionality.

<comment><USER20> _Yeah, but if you have a test suite you add Python 3 and silence the existing failures._

They likely already know where a lot of their failures are going to be even without tests. The effort involved in fixing those known failures alone is prohibitive. The fact that the rest of regression testing will be easier with tests is nice, but doesn't reduce the work required to a level where they can justify doing it.

 _Now you can (at least partially) avoid writing new code that wouldn 't work on 3,_

Once you're on 3, you can just run your code and see if it works on 3. You don't need tests to avoid writing code that works on 2 but not 3.

 _as well as gain the option of refactoring things to resolve compatibility - with lots of freedom to decide how much effort to spend on that if any._

I don't think resolving compatibility issues is optional...

<comment><USER21> > I don't think resolving compatibility issues is optional...

It is if you stay on 2 for production/qa and the bulk of new feature development in the meantime. Only CI (and any developers working on python 3 compat.) would be running 3 and only to provide reports of how compatible things are.

Only once the test suite passes would you swap QA to 3, start removing 2 compatibility code (i.e. whatever you've done to hack around handling strings) and eventually ship 3 to production.

Edit: The solution of "just switch to 3 then make it work" is exactly what they can't do because of (completely valid) business and political concerns. I think that if they were able to have a goal of some small percent of test progress on Python 3 per release - but continue to ship features - they would be able to find time to do the work if it's at all a priority, even if it took many many releases. If it's not at all a priority then maybe that's the one- sentence summary instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wonder if things would look differently if they made everything more modular and went for opensource approach. Sure it has it's downsides, but from what they list:

\- "We have our own localization solution inside EVE..." \- if it's better than gettext, other people would use it too and some would push for porting it to py3

\- "We just removed a custom importer we've wanted to remove for years..." \- was it for DI? would it become a better framework on its own if it was adopted in other codebases?

\- "Ultimately we've been ... monolithic" \- maybe that's also something they noticed

It would be great in cases like this to look into an alternative reality where they both used available modules and opensourced any big chunk they created themselves and see how things turned out. Maybe they would be worse for some reason...

<comment><USER23> The custom importer was made to get around limitations of Python circa early 2000's, which don't exist any more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Worth mentioning that there's a Stackless Python3, albeit for 3.2 and 3.1 [http://stackless.com/wiki/Download](http://stackless.com/wiki/Download)

</comment><comment><USER25> It was interesting, and the biggest point that sticks out is "we have little automated tests" and that is where the main problem is. From working in tested and untested environments I can attest that a tested environment can rip technologies out and put new ones in easily and quickly. Sure it may take some time, but you always know you didn't break the world.

</comment><comment><USER26> Does anyone know what parts of the game client are using Python? Are they using it for scripting?

<comment><USER27> All of it, at least the last time I checked.

You used to be able to wrap the client in your own Python, execute that, and give yourself extraordinary powers (read data from any market in game, send a pop up message to any player, etc)

<comment><USER28> Inject code, teleport between systems. There was some lack of server-side validation last year, but that seems to be fixed now.

<comment><USER27> There were some larger violations/extraordinary effects possible, but you could get caught by logs then.

<comment><USER28> Yes, you can get caught by logs. That however still leaves some already existing consequences of said illegal (in terms of player-game interaction) manipulations. For example compensate expensive destroyed ships which were destroyed with use of an exploit. Also, that affects customer satisfaction and support must deal with that too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It's interesting to see an open-source language fail like that. Perhaps there is a need in some sort of strategical direction, to ensure new versions don't cause upgrade issues?

</comment><comment><USER30> Huh? Python 2.8 discussions recently? Last I checked there was never going to be a 2.8.

<comment><USER9> What rock have you been under?

The last 2 weeks have been full of people championing the idea that perhaps a 2.8 with back ported 3.x features is a better solution than the 3.x line, because it provides new features with an any easy upgrade path to existing code bases.

...just because most of the core python developers currently seem to hate this idea (pep 404) doesn't mean it won't happen.

If 3.4 is as much of a flop of the 3.x line has been thus far, we're almost certainly see some change of direction over the next few months.

<comment><USER16> I don't understand why Python 3 is a flop. It's a incompatible, new version of a programming language. It's seen slow, steady, constant adoption. In the low single digits, but that's to be expected for a incompatible new version.

Most Linux distributions will be adopting it, most mainstream packages are ported or are planning a port.

Want to bet that in 3 years' time Python 3 will be the most popular Python version (51%-49% maybe, but still a majority)?

Wait for all the LTS/Enterprise distributions to switch to it - that will be the tipping point.

<comment><USER9> I really don't know what to say to that.

Imagine if the java 9 runtime came out today and 2-4% of people were downloading and installing it compared to the java 8 runtime _five years later_.

That's a flop.

Python 3 has _not_ been a success.

I fail to see why python is magically exempt from the common 'no one uses it, product is DOA' wisdom.

<comment><USER31> How many people have to use it before you wouldn't say "no one uses it"?

<comment><USER9> Honestly I'm being flippant.

The real answer is both PG and Google and many other Serious Folk have blogged and talked about how growth is the single most important key metric for tracking project success.

Actual total users are irrelevant; they're like page views. Cute, but useless.

What's critical is that once a product has over come its initial growth spurt of early adopters, if the rate of rate of growth isn't in the right ballpark, the project is in trouble.

My fears for python 3 are two fold:

1) The initial 'early adopters' growth spurt of python 3 is over. However, we're not seeing any large scale migrations to py3; lots and lots of people just sticking with py2. Sure, new stuff is being written in python 3, but the question is, is it growing? How fast is it growing compared to the overall growth rate of python adoption?

2) NO ONE KNOWS. The core python team is _not tracking this information_ ; either they don't care, or they're totally out of touch with reality.

So when I say 'no one is using it' I mean, 'relatively few new people are using it, the growth rate over time of python3 relative to python2 appears to be flat', and if you were part of YC, that would mean the project _catastrophically failing_.

...and the developers should be paying attention, and they don't appear to be.

<comment><USER32> My definition of success for shadowcat doesn't require that level of growth. I'm sure many, many companies have a definition of success that doesn't require a 'rate of rate of growth' congruent with being 'part of YC'.

Given that, attempting to apply the same definition of success to a programming language just seems silly, especially given explosive growth usually ends up with a disastrous pop culture - think 1999-era Perl or 2003-era PHP or 2006-era Rails for examples where the majority of people using the language weren't necessarily adding noticeable value to the ecosystem, and in the long term have created a lot of hatred for the respective platforms as a result of code that was just plain bad.

<comment><USER9> What level of growth?

I'm just saying that if the rate of adoption of python 3 is flat or negative, that's _extremely bad_ regardless of the absolute number of people using it.

Its naive to think that growth isn't a key metric for any community project.

I'm not going to justify that; there's plenty of research out there about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> what's CCP?

<comment><USER34> Developers of the EVE Online space MMO. [http://www.eveonline.com/](http://www.eveonline.com/)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: When is Bootstrap 4 going to ship? - <AUTHOR> Bootstrap 4 is forever in development. It still haven't came out of the alpha stage. Is there any deadline the community is executing towards. <comment><USER2> There is no confirm release date as per this issue [1].

[1]. [https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/pull/17021](https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/pull/17021)

</comment><comment><USER3> never</comment>


Web hoster Antagonist automatically fixes vulnerabilities in customers' websites - <AUTHOR> https://www.antagonist.nl/blog/2012/11/hosting-provider-antagonist-automatically-fixes-vulnerabilities-in-customers-websites/

<comment><USER2> That's a good approach, but not novel and not the first host doing that.

Many hosts automatically scan and fix their clients sites and have been doing that for a while. Specially when you are talking about popular CMSs like WorPress, Joomla and drupal.

thanks,

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sorry, I think due to our lacking description of how the technology exactly works you're confusing it with existing technologies. What we announced today is not comparable with something like Installatron, they do just version updates. Those automatic updates usually breaks plugins. We only patch the vulnerabilities, without modifying any functionality.

<comment><USER3> Sorry, but you definitely aren't the first: <http://support.wpengine.com/wp- engines-security-environment/>

<comment><USER4> To my understanding, the page you are linking to describes a sandbox environment, which is different from what the poster is doing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Do they automatically fixing themes to CMS'es? Updating the engine is one thing, WorPress, CME, and so on, but that only takes care of a tiny portion of the attack vectors. In my experience, if a wordpress or a phpbb forum was hacked, then its the user installed/programmed theme that was the cause and not the engine itself.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right many vulnerabilities exist in the plugins/themes. We do fix these as well.

<comment><USER6> Are you reporting these issues back to the authors of the plugins/themes and providing your fixes for them to include?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for taking a look! I will be available here to answer any questions you might have about this new technology.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think this is lovely. From first-hand experience, I know how often something as trivial yet important as "updating that horrible Joomla website to the latest bug-fixed version" gets low on a company's priority list. It's really just a reason to host your site in a SaaS CMS instead of uploading a bunch of PHP files yourself, but in case it's too late for that, having the hosting provider take care of this is lovely.

That said, I think the article is an odd mixture of business-speak and nerd- speak. As a coder, I'd like to know whether it fixes my handwritten SQL injection vulnerabilities too (probably not). My boss, however, probably will need a simpler version to get the point.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your interest. The service focuses on fixing vulnerabilities in commonly used and popular software solutions such as WordPress, Drupal and Joomla. So, currently, we do not fix handwritten SQL injection vulnerabilities.

On a technical level it differs primarily on that it's not an external service that can only start responding after the website has been hacked; they treat the damage caused by a successful hack instead of preventing the hack in the first place. Because we can scan the code itself, we can actually patch vulnerabilities before they are being exploited. The beauty is in that we do not do "normal" updates but just patch the vulnerabilities in a non-obtrusive way, this prevents the website to fail because of incompatibilities.

<comment><USER8> "The beauty is in that we do not do "normal" updates but just patch the vulnerabilities in a non-obtrusive way, this prevents the website to fail because of incompatibilities"

Does this mean you're writing your own custom patches for every single versions of the software solutions you're supporting ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can you you say which languages/platforms your system is able to analyze/patch and explain some basic technical details of how it understands arbitrary customer code well enough to find and patch vulnerabilities?

Can it fix bugs and write a few new features for me too?

</comment><comment><USER10> This thing is awesome!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! :-) We think so too!</comment></comment>


This trial claimed to show a 4 and 5-day week are equally productive. It didn't. - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/document/d/15q3hdJI2SxDBcOsn2Cqk8bMgLRDV-mP3R5UOrhms5Bc/edit <comment><USER2> > the media totally failed (...)

This is the one part that _doesn 't_ surprise me in the least!

</comment><comment><USER3> This is an incredibly weird and mobile-unfriendly way to publish an article...

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, I'll get a Medium account and post it there.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to submit a website to cakephp.org? - <AUTHOR>

I have a website built in cakephp, and would like it to be included in the list of sites build using cake and displayed on cakephp.org.
Questions: 1) How to submit my site? Is there a process for this? 2) Does it require a certain level traffic etc required to be even considered for getting listed there. <comment><USER2> Try asking in #cakephp on freenode or in the google group ([https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/cake- php](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/cake-php)).</comment>


Sourcegraph Server 2.4: Run Your Own Code-search Server - <AUTHOR> https://about.sourcegraph.com/blog/introducing-sourcegraph-server-2-4/ <comment><USER2> Sourcegraph CEO here. Thanks for this unexpected post. We packed a lot of stuff into 2.4: faster, more powerful code search, Google Alerts-style search monitoring, diff searches, and more. It's now free on a single server for any number of users and repositories.

The big tech companies all have something like it internally for all their devs, and Sourcegraph helps level the playing field. It lets you search, explore, reuse, and monitor all your internal code, so you can spend more time getting stuff done.

Get it at [https://about.sourcegraph.com](https://about.sourcegraph.com). Happy to answer questions (tech/product/business) here.</comment>


JRR Tolkien: 'I never expected a money success' (1968) - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/authors/tolkien-interview-its-easier-to-film-the-odyssey/ <comment><AUTHOR> just one little quote that caught my eye

"It all began when I was reading exam papers to earn a bit of extra money. That was agony. One of the tragedies of the underpaid professor is that he has to do menial jobs. He is expected to maintain a certain position and to send his children to good schools. Well, one day I came to a blank page in an exam book and I scribbled on it. 'In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.'"

</comment><comment><USER2> I suppose we've all wondered what Tolkein would think of the Jackson films.

<comment><USER3> I don't think he'd have hated them. I think he'd have _loved_ the visualisations of all of his places and creatures (even if they didn't match his own imaginations) and been thrilled with the amount of story telling we could do with film now... and then been more than a little disappointed that Jackson put in so many sword fights and told so little story.

<comment><USER4> At least the Tolkien Estate has voiced disapproval for all of the Jackson stuff.

Personally I did watch the first part of the Jackson's Lotr and oh the horror. I wish I could erase my memories :/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Professor Tolkien has, in effect, provided an intellectual Meccano-set for civilisation creators."

Beautifully put.

</comment><comment><USER6> Too bad they feel the need to soil the article with depictions from the LOTR movies, which are awful adaptations of the original books ("Hey, let's make an Happy Ending since we are working for Hollywood" \- worst idea ever).

<comment><USER7> What part of LOTR's ending wasn't happy? They get a king back, Gandalf and Galadriel bless everyone's crops, the hobbits get eternal life.

I actually remember the movie trying so hard to fit all the original endings in that it just faded to black at least four times, seemed like it was over, then started right back up again.

Of course, Pellenor Fields did get replaced with a spooky ghost army and the best part of the book (Scouring of the Shire) was left out entirely. Not that it could ever have fit in there.

<comment><USER6> Uh, The Shire being completely destroyed despite Frodo's successful quest? Frodo having to depart Middle Earth ? Are those all super duper happy endings for you ?

And of course the Sourging of the Shire could have fit in the movies, it was shown as a vision when they met Galadriel in the first movie. They had it set up and they changed their minds later on.

The ending in the movie is problematic because it follows some of the ends of the book without understanding why they are necessary -> they make Frodo leave Middle Earth but they never bother to explain WHY he has to leave. PJ clearly did not understand the books.</comment></comment></comment>


Git for Data – A TerminusDB Technical Paper [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/terminusdb/terminus-server/blob/dev/docs/whitepaper/terminusdb.pdf <comment><USER2> This is a great idea, interesting that haven't generated much interest in here. However, I am looking forward to read the paper.

Btw, have you heard about OCaml's Irmin? It's something like a git based database. I am interested in how these two compare as git based DBs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - we thought that too! I might re post to see if we just got timing wrong.

I haven't seen the OCaml Irmin before - very interesting and some parallel ideas. I think this sort of store is going to become a popular choice as it hits some pain points around versioning and data pipe lines. I don't know if you've had a chance to read the paper, but the data CI/CD type workflows is really what we are thinking about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> TerrminusDB originated in 2015 when Kevin Feeney and myself started working on the information architecture for the Seshat Global Historical Databank, an ambitious project to store information about every society in human history. We needed a database that could enable collaboration among a very distributed team on a shared database whose primary function was the curation of high quality datasets with a very rich structure, storing information about everything from religious practices to geographic extent. We trialled a number of graph databases and RDBMSs but found all of them wanting (though for different reasons). Thus we began our journey creating our own database from scratch. In designing the database, we focused on the elements we felt were weakest in existing information architectures, namely the ability to have very rich schemas and very fine grained revision control which was data aware - enabling features such as branch, merge, push, pull, fork etc. Essentially, we wanted to bring the sort of automation present in code pipelines using git with CI/CD to the realm of databases. With the latest release incorporating our own terminus-store backend, we now have a database architecture that is a substantial way along the journey to providing this new approach to data curation and management.

</comment><comment><USER4> Looks cool!

</comment><comment><USER5> Awesomness</comment>


The Myth of Multitasking - <AUTHOR> http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/article_detail.asp?id=414&css=print

<comment><USER2> If you are interested in time and multitasking, look at some of anthropologist Edward Hall's stuff.

Monochronism and Polychronism have been co-opted to apply to individuals but they were coined by Hall to describe patterns of culture. A highly monochronic culture would be Germany; things happen one at a time, from start to finish, where a new thing starts. A highly polychronic culture would be a lot of latin cultures, where whatever is most important that second takes precedence, no matter when you started it (this is usually determined socially; family>customer, for example).

Most cultures are more complex than that, though. Japanese business tends to be highly polychronic in the planning stages, where a consensus must be reached and all the time in the world is taken to reach it. However, once the decision has been made, the implementation is not only wicked fast but highly monochronic.

He's worth looking into if you really want to make the leap from how multi- tasking affects individuals to how it affects complex systems.

</comment><comment><USER3> They conflate a few different issues here, the first is interleaving which is ok since you don't really suffer a performance loss or mental setback. The other one is a context switch, for example when a manager interrupts you with something trivial. Theres nothing more effective at stalling a high speed pipeline than that.

<comment><USER4> Can you explain what you mean by interleaving? My intuitive definition ends up being the same as multitasking.

<comment><USER5> I'm guessing the grandparent post is talking about working on multiple (2, maybe 3) tasks. While waiting for something from one task like a compile/test run to complete or a response from another developer on a question, you can work on the other. This allows you to fill empty time with something productive and lets you context switch at favorable times.

That kind of soft context switch is fairly easy to manage. A task coming and forcing a context switch in the middle of something incurs a much higher penalty.

<comment><USER4> Still sounds like plain 'ol multitasking to me, as does the other reply.

<comment><USER6> But with multitasking you're working on something at the direct cost of working on something else and indirect cost of time lost switching context. With this, you work on things while other items are being autoworked on (e.g. running a test or a crawl, downloading a file).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Multitasking is a pernicious evil of our times! Also the cost of context switching (especially for developers) can be hours per day.</comment>


Can't grasp credit crisis? Join the club. - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/19/business/19leonhardt.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5087&em&en=ab4caf3befa3e1c9&ex=1206072000 "All these investments, of course, were highly risky. Higher returns almost always come with greater risk. But people — by "people," I'm referring here to Mr. Greenspan, Mr. Bernanke, the top executives of almost every Wall Street firm and a majority of American homeowners — decided that the usual rules didn't apply because home prices nationwide had never fallen before. Based on that idea, prices rose ever higher — so high, says Robert Barbera of ITG, an investment firm, that they were destined to fall. It was a self-defeating prophecy." <comment><USER2> Did you have your fingers in your ears and your eyes closed waiting for this to happen for a while now? Join the other club.</comment>


Comcast bets on hyper-local by reviving EveryBlock - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/09/02/comcast-bets-on-hyper-local-by-reviving-everyblock/

<comment><USER2> Maybe this will inspire new activity for the open source OpenBlock fork: [https://github.com/openplans/openblock](https://github.com/openplans/openblock)

<comment><USER3> Are there any major installations yet?

<comment><USER2> None that I'm aware of.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm intrigued by the combination of last-mile ISP and neighborhood social networks. It seems that if you were organizing a Google Fiber "fiberhood", or municipal ISP, or some sort of cooperative ISP, these sorts of local social networks are the ideal organizing tool. My Facebook friends all whine about neutrality but are scattered all over the world. My Nextdoor neighbors are largely within a box of CAT5e from each other.

</comment><comment><USER5> Potentially bad news for Nextdoor ([https://nextdoor.com](https://nextdoor.com))

<comment><USER6> Possibly not though. NextDoor has my location and EveryBlock only has Philly and Chicago, it appears.</comment></comment>