8K vs. 4K TV - <AUTHOR> https://www.techhive.com/article/3529913/8k-vs-4k-tvs-most-consumers-cannot-tell-the-difference.html <comment><USER2> Our living room isn't big enough to hold a tv where we'd notice difference. Our 'old' 1080p TV still seems perfectly fine to us.</comment>


A kernel.org status update (no more SSH for developers) - <AUTHOR> http://news.gmane.org/find-root.php?message_id=%3C4E7D1409.1010802%40zytor.com%3E

<comment><USER2> "we will start sending out new ssh credentials to the active developers who had kernel.org accounts before"

um no. You _should_ be asking developers to send you new SSH credentials. Generating users' private keys on their behalf is completely unnecessary and provides extra opportunities for attackers to snarf them.

<comment><USER3> Yes, this is weird. There has to be more to the reasoning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> we use gitolite with git hooks, and no trouble so far...

and why ask generate private keys instead of asking users to submit public keys? Less work and more secure.

<comment><USER5> why is it more secure? don't you end up with a whole pile of private keys in one place?

and they will still need those private keys, as far as i can see. so you need to send them over what, email...?

<comment><USER6> The gitolite permissions file is fairly robust. Each person who needs to access Git repo(s) sends you their _public_ key (i.e. id_rsa.pub) and only their public key is stored on the server. Since access to the gitolite server is really just an SSH connection, the keys are stored in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys and managed via gitolite.

So, you get the tried-and-true security flow of public keys within SSH.

As for the user/group management, gitolite lets you provide access to various repos (with settable read, read/write, read/write/+ permissions) to individuals identified by the public key files you've received from your Git contributors.

Not sure if that's what you were wondering but we've had a fairly easy time providing secure access to our own private Git repos using gitolite.

Server-side hooks are going to be an interesting problem to solve for kernel.org.

<comment><USER5> i know how gitolite works; i've used it myself.

what i am asking about is the central generation of private keys. that is not necessary for gitolite. the normal (secure) process is to have users provide their public keys.

what i would like to know is how kernel.org generating private keys for users (in one central location, and then, i assume, distributing them) can be "more secure".

<comment><USER6> Gotcha. Yeah, there's no reason for users not to generate their own key pair and submit the public keys via whatever means makes the most sense. It's going to take someone a great deal of time to gather all the public keys, rename them and add them to the gitolite system.

There are a couple of web admin panels that can sit in front of gitolite and manage keys, repos and permissions. I've not tried any of them but hopefully someone is looking into that. Makes a lot more sense than generating key pairs and distributing private keys to everyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "no more SSH for developers" is wrong. Please read carefully: " This new infrastructure will no longer have shell access to the git repositories"

kernel.org is more than one server...

</comment><comment> X-Istence How many developers were actually using git hooks? I know I have a couple of git hooks, client side, but so far have not had the need to have them server side.

<comment><USER8> I don't know about kernel.org stats, but these are pretty useful server side for sanity checks (i.e. enforce commit message rules), notifications (IRC, XMPP, etc), and external integration (Gerrit, Jenkins CI, etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm missing something. If the goal of revoking ssh access is to stop kernel devs being able to run arbitrary commands on kernel.org servers...surely you can't give them permissions to set their own commit hooks?

If an attacker compromises a kernel dev, instead of using their ssh access to run cmds on kernel.org, they just use their hook access to run cmds on kernel.org.

</comment><comment><USER10> As they say "Don't fix what isn't broken".

</comment><comment><USER11> Real men install mandatory access control</comment>


Show HN: Whize (Alpha) – Discovery focused search engine - <AUTHOR> https://alpha.whize.co
Hi there, so this is an early version of Whize, a discovery focused search engine. Currently, as a proof of concept / concept demo we've crawled all (as of a few weeks ago) of public github and given you a search engine that returns repo results based on relevancy and our notion of novelty and recency.
We are privacy focused and want to provide a search experience that doesn't follow you across the internet.
We would love feedback and generally, we are trying to figure out if we should expand on this and are trying to gauge people's interest.
You can read in-depth about what we are trying to do here: https://medium.com/@iantbutler01/existing-search-engines-fail-independent-and-small-businesses-enter-whize-404958949534 <comment><AUTHOR> [https://alpha.whize.co](https://alpha.whize.co)

[https://medium.com/@iantbutler01/existing-search-engines- fai...](https://medium.com/@iantbutler01/existing-search-engines-fail- independent-and-small-businesses-enter-whize-404958949534)</comment>


US mercenaries arrested in Haiti, part of a scheme to move $80M for president - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2019/03/20/haiti-president-mercenary-operation/ <comment><USER2> Note: The "president" in the title is Haitian President Jovenel Moïse.

<comment><USER3> I first thought it was Trump, before reading the article

<comment><USER4> Through no fault of your own, no doubt. You thought exactly what the author (or editor) intended for you, and everyone else, to think.

<comment><USER5> I did not get that impression. The Intercept has covered a number of stories about Haiti and there are plenty of people who are aware of the political situation over there.

<comment><USER6> Putting "US", "president", "$80M", and "scheme" in the title was definitely done on purpose. The title could have easily been phrased differently to make it clear that the president in question was the Haitian president but that wouldn't get as many clicks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _U.S. authorities have so far failed to bring charges against the contractors for illegally traveling out of the United States with their weapons, which requires a license._

I'm skeptical charges will ever be brought. Ex-military security contractors are ubiquitous in certain parts of the world, and seem to live by a different set of rules.

<comment><USER8> I'd love to read more about the process of contractors acquiring those special rights. Maybe you got some further reading?

<comment><USER9> It's all about who you call after you have been detained.

<comment><USER10> for example, private military contracting is outright explicitly illegal in Russia. That didn't prevent in anyway a well known Russian private military company to fight in Ukraine and Syria ... both times of course for the side supported by Putin.

<comment><USER11> The Russian "Blackwater" is called Wagner Group.

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

<comment><USER12> These guys are also in Venezuela right now:

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/25/venezuela- madu...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/25/venezuela-maduro- russia-private-security-contractors)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> People are so exhausted from the aforementioned demonstrations I doubt anybody will demonstrate based on this new information. (I know people who went two weeks without any water in their home.) I just can't imagine Moise remains president for much longer. Note: I live in Haiti.

<comment><USER14> This incident with the mercenaries, is it the thing Haitians are particularly concerned with, or is it more of an episode in a bigger story?

<comment><USER13> The bigger story is the missing $2B - the story does touch upon that. Many contracts were handed out for works to companies owned by people in government or their friends and the works were not done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This was small potatoes compared to the UAE hiring ex-SF to conduct assassinations in Yemen.

[https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/aramroston/mercenaries-...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/aramroston/mercenaries- assassination-us-yemen-uae-spear-golan-dahlan)

</comment><comment><USER16> Is this a follow up from a front page post about a week ago titled "My Boss Will Call Your Boss?"

<comment><USER17> Search didn't help, link?

<comment><USER8> Someone posted the link 1 min after your comment unfortunately :')

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19368175](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19368175)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's unclear to me how the "caper" was supposed to work... the goal, apparently, was to achieve a money transfer.

So... was the plan that the armed group of foreigners would intimidate bank personnel into allowing a transfer they otherwise wouldn't allow? A kind of "soft" bank robbery?

</comment><comment><USER19> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19368175](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19368175)

</comment><comment><USER20> There is a comedy movie script in here somewhere I'm sure of it.

It almost reads like somebody was watching the TV series Mission: Impossible, and said, "Yeah, we should get some guys like that and move the money before anyone can catch us."

<comment><USER21> Three Kings movie, starring George Clooney

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I find it amusing (and sad) that the title is equally believable if you think that "President" was referring to Trump.

I had to RTFA to find out.

</comment><comment><USER23> The title of this feels a little like bait. Sadly it's only because current political climate in the US has had it's share of "schemes" to "move" money.

<comment><USER23> Whoever downvoted. Maybe you could leave a comment in support of the title so I can understand your point of view? Or at least a counter to my comment.

<comment><USER24> I agree with you. How can they give the article that title while the last sentence states, "It is unclear what that assignment might have been?" While I believe the title may be correct based off of other information in the article, the authors make themselves look incompetent (i.e., maybe covering their asses) by ending the article with that assertion.</comment></comment></comment>


Feds Say Man Deserved Arrest Because Jacket Said 'Occupy Everything' - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/03/man-deserved-arrest/

<comment><USER2> The display clause prohibits advertising your party / movement / whatever _in the Supreme Court building_. It's a specific exemption intended to avoid influencing the impartiality of the group responsible for making determinations about the Constitution, which strikes me as not such a dumb idea.

 _It is unlawful to parade, stand, or move in processions or assemblages in the Supreme Court Building or grounds, or to display in the Building and grounds a flag, banner, or device designed or adapted to bring into public notice a party, organization, or movement._

There are some genuinely stupid acts of government out there like free speech zones and all the security theatre, or attacking photographers. This is not one of them.

Want something to get mad at the government about today? Congress is currently playing an $85 billion dollar game of chicken.

[http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57572068/sequester- its-j...](http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57572068/sequester-its-just- dumb-obama-says/)

<comment><USER3> >The display clause prohibits advertising your party / movement / whatever in the Supreme Court building. It's a specific exemption intended to avoid influencing the impartiality of the group responsible for making determinations about the Constitution, which strikes me as not such a dumb idea.

Okay, now I get it. It sounds like they may be applying it wrongly here, unless they were deciding a case involving or related to the occupy movement.

<comment><USER4> Read the law again, it doesn't depend on whatever case is being debated, it's generic in scope. Any political banner, display, etc. is excluded, not just ones pertaining to a case being argued.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> TIL:

<http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/uscode/40/II/C/61/IV/6135>

40 U.S.C. § 6135

 _Parades, assemblages, and display of flags in the Supreme Court Building and grounds_

It is unlawful to parade, stand, or move in processions or assemblages in the Supreme Court Building or grounds, or to display in the Building and grounds a flag, banner, or device designed or adapted to bring into public notice a party, organization, or movement.

<comment><USER6> Does that apply to the Supreme Court not being able to display things or the citizens visiting it wearing clothing with signs?

<comment><USER5> Visitors.

<comment><USER6> > wearing clothing with signs?

<comment><USER7> That counts as a device, yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You know, I was going to post about how stupid the gov't was on this from reading the title.

But he wasn't arrested simply because of his jacket.

He was arrested because his jacket was political in nature, he was asked to take it off or leave, and he refused to leave.

If I asked someone to leave my business and they didn't, I'd have them removed by police too if it became necessary.

For those who think there are free speech rights in a judicial building, try being the one to make repeated outbursts in a courtroom. If nothing else the government is being consistent here.

<comment><USER8> While they don't have to tell him that the Supreme Court is a first-amendment free zone, that's a point of law that I would bet MOST Americans are unaware of. I certainly was.

If they'd said, "Sir, the law prohibits wearing clothing that advertise things of a political nature in this building. Please take it off or leave," rather than simply telling him to remove it or leave, he might have been more likely to comply.

On the other hand, it seems pretty WTF-worthy that the first amendment be rendered void in a building charged with protecting it.

<comment><USER7> > On the other hand, it seems pretty WTF-worthy that the first amendment be > rendered void in a building charged with protecting it.

If you consider this to be a case of voiding the First Amendment, you'll also be interested to know that the First Amendment is also voided in the case of giving jurors relevant information in the middle of a court case.

<comment><USER9> Care to give an example that doesn't violate the Rules of Criminal Procedure?

<comment><USER7> That was actually my point.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to Tell If You're a Supertaster - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/54/the-unspoken/how-to-tell-if-youre-a-supertaster <comment><USER2> *supertaster</comment>


Give suggestions on people to circle on Google+ - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> My suggestions:

Paul Irish (jQuery): <https://plus.google.com/113127438179392830442/posts>

John Resig (jQuery, Khan Academy): <https://plus.google.com/115675748062237570841/posts>

Ryan Dahl (node.js): <https://plus.google.com/115094562986465477143>

Yehuda Katz (Ruby on Rails, jQuery): <https://plus.google.com/106300407679257154689>

</comment><comment><USER2> It really sucks that Google+ doesn't allow for creating groups yet or exporting your circles.</comment>


The Hunt for the First Arcade Game Easter Egg - <AUTHOR> http://kotaku.com/the-hunt-for-the-first-arcade-game-easter-egg-1793593889 <comment> _-_T_-_ Interesting story; great research; so much repost

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=arcade%20easter%20egg&sort=byD...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=arcade%20easter%20egg&sort=byDate&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)</comment>


Pmarca Tweets as Blog Posts - <AUTHOR> http://pmarcatweetsasblogposts.tumblr.com

<comment><USER2> This is useful, and interesting, and a good read.

My question: Twitter feels like totally the wrong platform for his thoughts. I know, I know, "it is what you make of it", but this feels a bit like a round peg into a square hole.

Why doesn't Marc just publish thoughts on Tumblr / Medium / Facebook / Wordpress / etc?

Just feels like this blog (and thread) is unnecessary....we're now at the point where someone compiles someone else's 140-character tidbits into a cohesive point, and we're all thankful for it. Kinda weird.

<comment><USER3> Marc used to blog beautifully, many of his posts are available at [http://www.pmarchive.com](http://www.pmarchive.com). Right now I'm guessing he posts tweets because it's most convenient for him, and he has more important things to do with his time. So he lets others do the boring, tedious work of formatting his thoughts for him.

It all works out, ultimately. If it saves Marc a few minutes, it's probably worth it for him.

I've been meaning to do something similar for all of Elon Musk's interviews, but... I don't have the time, either. I have all the data sitting pretty in my Evernote but it needs some real brainwork-led-formatting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is Twitter one of the best run companies ever?

I accept I'm probably wrong, but my feeling is that Twitter is on the wrong course. Not that they won't be successful in the direction that they're heading, just that they won't be nearly as successful as they could have been. It feels to me like they've lost track of their central appeal.

Yeah, I know that's vague and not much to hang onto. I should probably try to figure out what I really mean by it.

<comment><USER5> They've probably just changed focus for a while.

Remember when Google was run by Eric Schmidt? Different vibe, but the company needed it at that stage.

I don't think Twitter has necessarily closed any of the doors of earlier opportunities. If you think about them on the scale of IBM/HP/Apple, it's still early.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Also really valuable are his blog posts from 2007/2008\. He's since took his blog down but they're archived here: [http://blog.jedchristiansen.com/pmarcaarchive/pmarca- archive...](http://blog.jedchristiansen.com/pmarcaarchive/pmarca-archive-has- moved-here/)

<comment><USER7> or.. [http://pmarchive.com/](http://pmarchive.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Dude - this is so brilliant! Was just going through pmarca's tweets yesterday & was thinking "damn- I wish somebody can convert this into a blog post" .

Thank you!

Let me know if you need help. I can pick a day of the week & help transcribe/collate that days tweets!

</comment><comment><USER9> Love this. Largely cause I started following him right when I joined twitter and thought I was going crazy. Have I been ignoring this guys' tweets all this time or did he really just go from zero to 100?

<comment><USER10> He's had a dormant account since 2007 but picked it up Jan 1 this year: [http://i.imgur.com/LejqDQ5.png](http://i.imgur.com/LejqDQ5.png)

<comment><USER5> He also hangs out on HN occasionally... [https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=pmarca](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=pmarca)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Rule 613: People either grow into big jobs, or swell into them"

I don't understand this at all.

<comment><USER12> Asked on twitter what he meant by 'swell', @pmarca replied "I mean personality change - ego, hubris. Stop listening. Start feeling entitled."

[https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/425378431283384320](https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/425378431283384320)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is great work.

Like others have pointed out, blogging might have been better especially since tweeter is fleeting. When it is gone, it is gone (mostly). Storify's usecase is for putting different tweets from different timelines/times into a coherent flow.

I concede that twitter removes the friction of saying "Let me write a blogpost and think of a title". Maybe a new proper blog theme that makes title optional? I know Tumbr does something like this.

Another idea might be to modify the compose section of Twitter like buffer does [http://imgur.com/PbpisGh](http://imgur.com/PbpisGh). If you click the "longer than a tweet -LTAT " check box, You have more than 140 characters" say, 1000 characters?

When you click publish 3 things happen.

1\. You automatically publish a Tweet with a link to the the post. ala longtweets

2\. You have a post published on your normal blog. Maybe without a title

3\. Your whole post can be read in within Twitter using Twitter card support.

PS: I wrote about Twitter spoiling coherent thought here [http://oonwoye.com/2013/07/20/twitter-vs- blogging/](http://oonwoye.com/2013/07/20/twitter-vs-blogging/)

<comment><USER14> FWIW, google plus does this right I believe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is awesome.

</comment><comment><USER16> isnt this what storify is for?

</comment><comment><USER17> I like the post at the bottom, [http://pmarcatweetsasblogposts.tumblr.com/post/73631082205/m...](http://pmarcatweetsasblogposts.tumblr.com/post/73631082205/measure- performance-with-paired-metrics-for-best) , which starts with:

 _" "" The problem with arbitrary metrics in complex situations — they tend to backfire. Give emergency services drivers rigid response time metrics, and they'll tend to stay close in to urban centers. Surprise!

Andy Grove had the answer: For every metric, there should another "paired" metric that addresses adverse consequences of the first metric. Many companies and especially governments violate this principle continuously, and are startled by the result — every time. """_

This last bit - Grove's paired metrics - does not seem nearly as widely known as it probably should be.</comment>


Boom Town: Tech Jobs Have Tripled In San Francisco Since The Start Of 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/27/san-francisco-tech-job-data/ <comment><USER2> > Tech jobs in San Francisco have nearly tripled since the start of 2012 — > from 13,000 to 44,000

This doesn't sound right.

<comment><USER3> What, 44,000 is near 39,000 ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Tech Jobs are tripling now the Compensation needs to triple too!</comment>


The "All I want for Christmas is..." Thread - <AUTHOR>

Ok, I'm new here at HN so I've been debating on whether to make this post or not. Now I have.
It's the season so for anyone who celebrates, what would your ideal Christmas gift be?
Come now, even hackers want cool stuff too. <comment><USER2> A SENZ hurricane-proof umbrella, seriously this thing rocks: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQxaS0zmH4U>

Also I'd like an iphone to try my hand at iphone development, a nice 21-24" monitor, and a python book.

</comment><comment><USER3> an idea for my startup and some courage to quit my job

</comment><comment><USER4> More customers.

</comment><comment><USER5> you.</comment>


Ask HN: I live near a nuclear reactor. How do I stay safe? - <AUTHOR>

See title. Potassium iodide in case the ground shakes? I messaged Safecast [0] about getting their equipment to investigate further.<p>Are lead shields any useful?<p>[0] http://safecast.org <comment><USER2> don't travel in a car. exercise, but don't do dangerous sports. eat sensibly. live with a partner or pet dog.

<comment><USER3> And don't smoke, burning tobacco releases radiation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I lived close form a nuclear plant for years (in France). I know when you move in, the city gives you a set of Potassium iodide pills. They tell you to ingest them if you hear the firemen's horn 9 times straight.

Good thing is that there are way more water/plants/animal testing for radiation close to nuclear plants than others. So you actually are quite sure to eat healthier than in more remote areas with less controls.

Last risk is explosion/fission/big problem. Well in this case, common sense tells me that I would prefer live close by and enjoy the white light for a few milliseconds than live 200 kms away and die slowly :s.

</comment><comment><USER5> You are safe.

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

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. That disclaimer at the end though ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Are you trying to advertise safecast? When was the last time you heard of a reactor issue in your life, aside from the one being built on the "Ring of Fire".

</comment><comment><USER7> Worry will kill you faster than a nuclear power plant will.</comment>


A Brief History of the End of the Comments - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/10/brief-history-of-the-demise-of-the-comments-timeline <comment><USER3> As the first person in the world to put comments directly under news stories (japantoday.com), I am appalled by the excuses that sites give to stop their comment sections. For example, the Daily Beast said they were stopping comments because of the trolls, yet there were plenty of good commenters on there. What about them? This trend seems partly driven by an unwillingness to deal with the work of removing actual trolls, which is not actually all that difficult, and the arrogance of some journalists who simply don't want their opinions to be questioned. I try my best to avoid those sites now -- they don't want you to engage.

I've always found that the commenters are the core of the community and they will come back time and time again to discuss the issues and add extra context and meaning. They give sites life. Life is messy, but we deal with it. These sites seem to think they can offload the work to Facebook, but all they are doing is losing their community, the people, and the spark. They should know that Facebook doesn't care about their community -- it only cares about Facebook, and will screw them as soon as it can.

<comment><USER4> newspapers existed for centuries without comment sections, i think the mode of propagation will survive

<comment><USER5> Newspapers have long had letters to the editor and published essays sent their way. A famous example being the Constitution debate in the US with the publishing of what came to be called the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers.

<comment><USER6> And plenty of sites follow that model without requiring comment sections. And they're better for it.

<comment><USER5> Letters to the editor is a heavily moderated comment section.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Strongly dislike this trend. Comments are audit in a badly-regulated industry. Open discussion of content will undoubtedly play a role in the future of journalism. This is clearly a step backwards, not forwards.

I don't think this is really about trolls for trolling's sake. I think this is about being called out on sloppy content.

We all know that online journalism is a seriously tough business, especially for anyone trying to maintain some sort of reputation for quality. For these guys, it's economically infeasible to make sure every article is high quality because the headline is <insert very big number here> times more important than the body and there are plenty of competitors taking advantage of that.

So when a site starts publishing empty content because they feel that they have to, comments are rightfully merciless on calling BS. Writers get demoralised and publications look for ways to save face. As pointed out, removing a comments section is far preferable to heavily moderating against unfavourable comments. But still, I hate the trend we're seeing.

The Verge is an interesting one. They selectively open comments but many articles remain closed. It's not entirely clear how they decide which articles to open but there at least seems to be a tendency to open comments on the longform stuff they're proud of.

Longer term, everyone is looking for a model where quality is rewarded or at least some sort of rebalancing for the internet publishing economy. Blendle wrote a nice article about their experience getting consumers to pay: [https://medium.com/on-blendle/blendle-a-radical- experiment-w...](https://medium.com/on-blendle/blendle-a-radical-experiment- with-micropayments-in-journalism-365-days-later-f3b799022edc)

</comment><comment><USER8> Here's an amusing example: Mozilla's blog no longer allows comments.[1] But they're asking for comments. So they write: "Tell us what you think of these proposed principles on your social channels using #contentblocking and join us on Friday October 9 at 11am PT for our #BlockParty, a conversation around the problems and possible solutions to the content blocking question." So they're sending people to Twitter to comment?

[1] [https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2015/10/07/proposed- principles...](https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2015/10/07/proposed-principles- for-content-blocking/)

<comment><USER9> Sounds like a smart idea to me. Instead of having their page clogged with comments (some of them probably snarky ones) they get a crowdsourced social media campaign. I don't think Twitter's a great medium for reasoned debate on principles, but I can see the appeal to the Mozilla Foundation.

<comment><USER8> Yes. From the Foundation's perspective, it weakens opposition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> No matter what side of an issue a 'true believer' is on they do not like having their dogma challenged. In the modern web comments have frequently played that role, so, it is no wonder that comments are dying out.

Of course, no one will say that is why their own comment section is going away. There is always some high-minded reason why they shouldn't have comments. It doesn't hurt that comments aren't advertiser safe. Protecting a brand runs counter to having open comments.

<comment><USER11> That's claptrap. Comments on 99.9% of websites are a pointless cesspool. If someone wants to scream racism or misogyny at other people, they can fire up Wordpress and make their own crappy blog. No one has some moral duty to give the diseased gums of humanity somewhere to spew their garbage thoughts, and ginning up some argument about comments being a space for telling truth to power is prima facie ridiculous to anyone who's spent 20 minutes on the internet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> As a good old fashion user. I want to read reliable,solid and critical thinking news and able to read&write comments on a single page.

I am OK if they just handle over the IT cost to social media, and just simply swap their original comments section UNDER EACH news pieces to facebook/Twitter.

But if they give up the comments at all, then why not just shutdown the whole site and open a twitter account to post news.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm excited to see what the Motherboard Letters experiment turns up. I honestly can't recall the last comment section I read that added to the discussion. Aside from hot-button political or social issues with their associated vitriol, even technical videos or software reviews are cluttered with useless claptrap. Maybe I read the wrong sites. But when I was a heavier dead-paper consumer, I absolutely enjoyed the letters section of quite a few periodicals.

I think punting to social media is... uninvested. I enjoy twitter more as an index of links, rather than actual convo. Facebook, meh. It's facebook - <USER2> conversation mediated by an ever-shifting overlord that I don't care to participate in. But neither of them are lauded as interlocution par excellence, last I checked.

The big question for me is how the issue of engagement plays out. Comments update in realtime, letters assume you're familiar with the antecedent article.

Either which way, I think it's about time we saw more experimentation in this area.

(I'm glad I had the opportunity to read a page full of people projecting their own egos, conspiracies, and neurosis on this very article.)

</comment><comment><USER14> I avoid sites that do not allow comments.

<comment><USER15> Why?

<comment><USER16> to me it's like going to an ecommerce website that does not have product reviews

<comment><USER15> Funny comparison :-)

That said, it's a little bit different. When you plan to buy something, the advice of past buyers is really helpful. But when you read something, you usually don't need other people advice to extract value from what you read.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I used to think the magic fix for comment sections was linking them to a concrete identity. Then I see pages where people post deliberately offensive remarks with their name on it, and I decided that most websites don't need a comments section. It seems to work better in smaller communities than the entire Internet.

</comment><comment><USER18> At the Financial Times site, much of the value is comments by the readers, many of whom are active in the industry.

</comment><comment><USER19> That's interesting. What I've heard (arguably second-handedly, but still) is that news sites purposefully troll in their own comments sections in order to create a heated argument - which means more people interacting, viewing pages and thus viewing the ads. What's changed?

</comment><comment><USER20> All of these isolated occurrences do not seem to add up to any kind of single trend. Upvoted for instance funnels into reddit, which is a commenting board par excellence. It wouldn't make sense to have comments on any kind of "reddit Digest". There is a slightly disturbing trend involving sites which try to push an agenda banning comments, but the choice of examples in this article obscures that particular issue.

</comment><comment><USER21> > _While it's too soon to say that comment sections are outright dying— there > are plenty of major sites that still have comments, including WIRED—it's > safe to say there's a trend towards replacing them with something else. > Here's a brief history of major publications pulling the plug on comments._

In other words: something that the most active readers of a website enjoy and others can just ignore is taken out by online publications.

</comment><comment><USER22> News outlets don't want their bullshit called out. Full stop.

A general solution to the problem has _got_ to happen, but it's been tried many times before and always failed. (Biggest failure [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Sidewiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Sidewiki)). Godspeed to whomever does it right.

<comment><USER20> Never heard of Google Sidewiki before. What was the discussion quality like generally?</comment></comment>


Django, now with JavaScript tests - <AUTHOR> https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/internals/contributing/writing-code/javascript/

<comment><USER2> I'm actually more interested in the opposite, i.e. writing python code that tests a js (react) ui.

I'm currently using pytest-splinter with phantomjs2, everything works quite well, but I had issues with simulating clicks (I'm still at an early stage of exploration, it could be my fault).

Any similar experiences?

<comment><USER3> You should check out my new integration testing framework:

[http://hitchtest.com](http://hitchtest.com)

It handles a lot of the boilerplate for running services like django, celery, postgres, etc. as well as getting selenium up and running with firefox so that you can simulate clicks and stuff and a mock SMTP server so that you can simulate sending emails.

<comment><USER4> Thanks! This looks pretty nice. I like how you've added the option to 'time travel' and check for example if a reminder mail is being send correctly.

<comment><USER3> Glad you like it.

>I like how you've added the option to 'time travel' and check for example if a reminder mail is being send correctly.

Yes, those two things are a large part of why I wrote it.

I wanted a clean integration with libfaketime and I wanted to be able to create simple mock services that logged out JSON that the test could wait for with epoll, parse and use to verify that the event interaction occurred (e.g. email got received by SMTP gateway/API call was made).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is great news. Currently our js tests are run as part of Django's testing framework using Splinter (Selenium wrapper) to do browser automation. Those are hacked together using some partially documented class methods on top of pyvirtualdisplay and some X server packages so they can be run on a Linux server. Writing the tests themselves is a bit of a nightmare and involves writing pure js inside of Python docstrings and then injecting them into the virtual browser and inspecting the results. So yeah, looking forward to upgrading and using this.

<comment><USER6> Having read the article, it just looks like they run QUnit to test the JS bits of the admin and GIS contrib apps. It doesn't look like anything you couldn't have cobbled together before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> QUnit with no alternatives?

I guess the audience of the JS tests mostly consists of jQuery users, so it's probably not as strange as it seems to an outsider.

I wonder whether there are any reliable stats on test framework popularity in the wider JS community. The only numbers I've seen suggest that it's mostly Mocha and Jasmine.

<comment><USER8> My cursory internet sleuthing has revealed that Angular and React use Jasmine, whereas Ember and CoffeeScript use QUnit.

Haven't found an instance of Mocha. Most job postings I've seen indicate that Jasmine is the dominant test framework.

<comment><USER9> The official React repo actually used Jest, which is Facebook's own testing framework/test runner/Frankenstein's monster.

Basically an old 1.x version of Jasmine, bolted to a test runner, a JSDom environment, and a ton of mostly working automocking magic. It's glacially slow and kind of buggy, and in my experience most projects _using_ React use Mocha, not Jest. And I haven't run across any using actual Jasmine (Jasmine and Jest are neither compatible nor interchangable).

As a general rule, I'd say node-based projects are _heavily_ mocha based, whereas browser-based projects are much more mixed. CoffeeScript based projects seem especially likely to use Mocha over Jasmine; Angular (as you noted) has a strong preference for Jasmine due to their Protractor tool, etc. QUnit seems to be used by a lot of libraries and frameworks, but to have almost no usage among projects; I've never seen QUnit tests in the wild except in framework/library repos.

And as a final data point, note that on NPM, the main mocha package has almost 5 times the weekly downloads of the main jasmine package.

<comment><USER7> Jasmine is widespread but Mocha is pretty much the norm for modules on NPM. This is in part because Mocha is considerably easier to instrument.

<comment><USER10> Indeed, it's better in a bunch of ways! The one that finally got me to switch was that Jasmine didn't have an official CLI version for the longest time; it was browser-based and the CLIs were all third-party (and none of them very good). It includes one now, but it was too late.

<comment><USER7> We first adopted Jasmine for our internal JavaScript tests in ArangoDB ([https://www.arangodb.com](https://www.arangodb.com)) to replace the ancient and inconvenient framework we were using before. It worked, kinda, but it was a mess. We still needed something to expose to developers wishing to test their own apps in the DB and doing that with Jasmine proved to be pretty much impossible.

It was extremely straightforward to integrate with Mocha, though. We just needed to stub out some of the node.js-specific code and provide a very small wrapper to provide our own module loader and reporting plugins. There is an active effort to split up Mocha into multiple modules in order to make it more portable, which would make the stubbing unnecessary, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> From TFA:

> Behind the scenes, compress.py is a front-end for Google's Closure Compiler > which is written in Java. However, the Closure Compiler library is not > bundled with Django directly, so those wishing to contribute complete > JavaScript patches will need to download and install the library > independently. The Closure Compiler library requires Java 7 or higher.

Why Java? Why Clojure?

How did the core team of django come to the conclusion that Java should be apart of the stack?

<comment><USER12> Has nothing to do with Java. There's no stack. They're simply chose the best Javascript compiler available.

Pretty simple, really</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are these signs of a failing startup - <AUTHOR> I just joined a startup which has been running for more almost 2 years now as a remote dev and have been with them for about 5 months now. Currently, we do not have any strong revenue coming in and have about 2-3 customers, it's a SASS/b2b product so I can understand if we don't have that many customers. Last month, the salaries of employees was slashed by more than 50% & I was told by the CTO that because they didn't really have any revenue, investors advised that they reduced spending. A senior developer already left. I do not have any equity in the startup (because I'm halfway across the world, but was promised when I relocated and started working onsite). Are these signs of a failing startup? Should I jump ship? I'm the only dev on the team and it doesn't seem like they are hiring a replacement for the senior dev that left which we need badly. <comment><USER2> Get out now! If the investors believed that the startup had legs, they would put more money in, not suggest cutting costs. Reducing salary is a huge red flag, and there is no upside for you with no equity. You'll never get the lost salary back even if they become profitable.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would think if they aren't adding new customers that's a problem. Are there any new customers in the pipeline? how long is the sales cycle? I would think they need to replace some of that salary with equity. Also, you have to question that leadership of a company that's cutting salary's of employees over themselves. Unless, they're already working for free.

<comment><AUTHOR> the CTO told me that everyone, including the founders had their salaries slashed, save the senior dev who already left.

I'm not sure if there are new customers, maybe just one.

<comment><USER4> Then you should get some equity if you stay.

<comment><USER5> Equity in a two-year-old company with 2-3 customers and not enough revenue to pay its employees is probably worthless - looks like this company won't be around for much longer. Time to look for another job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What do you mean, the salaries were slashed? How is that even possible?

Anyway, just run.</comment>


Why is anyone anti-drone? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/war-is-boring/9fdbf5115ef3

<comment><USER2> Did he really just explain it by saving lives? I don't understand is he really that clouded? I mean can't you basically use that same silly reasoning to promote usage of nukes.

This seems like a really really bad post.

People are afraid of drones, because it's mass satellite imaging of people's personal lives being video captured.

But regardless people do like/show interest in the technology behind them, just not the blatent abuse the government is using them with.

Edit: Also what the heck gives with his cruddy designer site? I can't leave a comment unless I use twitter? What the. . .??

</comment><comment><USER3> "Why is anyone anti-drone?"

Some of us are actually anti-war, not just anti-drone.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that this author's basic point is: "Don't blame technology" for war deaths. Being against a specific war, or human conflict altogether is an entirely different matter.

<comment><USER4> I never realized we were at war with Yemen.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Api2Pdf, an API for Converting HTML, URLs, and Office Docs to PDF - <AUTHOR> https://www.api2pdf.com/ <comment><USER2> Is there a way to provide private feedback? There's no email address I could find on the site, or your profile here.

<comment><USER2> Reported via email, and now fixed.

Requesting URLs such as `file:///etc/passwd` would result in viewing the contents of arbitrary files upon the host. A common security problem I've discussed in the past:

[https://blog.steve.fi/if_your_code_accepts_uris_as_input__.h...](https://blog.steve.fi/if_your_code_accepts_uris_as_input__.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks again - all fixed. Code runs on an aws lambda function, but always appreciate finds like these.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is it possible print URL with auto-removing unneeded content? Such as PrintFriendly.[0]

[0] [http://printfriendly.com](http://printfriendly.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> api2pdf is a wrapper for wkhtmltopdf and headless chrome, so whichever options are available for those services, would be available through the API. For 10,000 PDFs in one month, printfriendly costs over $200 and api2pdf costs a couple of bucks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great idea. This will be very helpful for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!</comment></comment>


Ask Disporia on HN: Are you building a system or an application? - <AUTHOR>

Does anyone have a good idea if Disporia is building a system or an application?
I took what i could bare at their blog, but no email contact , only join our email list. Better said, Are they building a system of applications or an application that supports other application? <comment><USER2> The Diaspora Team is not talking to anybody. What we do know, is that they are developing this along the lines of "personal server" So I think the best answer to you question is 'True' (watch out for those boolean statements!) They are building a system made only of client/servers. Each "server" is a client to its owner and a server to everybody else.

<comment><AUTHOR> Personal Server would mean an application i host. Direct opposition(competition)to the Cloud.

Is their end user system of hosting, better than cultivating a system to harness the individual ownership of users collected information on various applications in the cloud?</comment></comment>


Google Just Gave Millions of Users a Reason to Quit Chrome - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2020/02/20/google-chrome-80-upgrade-deep-linking-update-chrome-browser/#7cd4d80e56fa <comment><USER2> "Google Just Gave Millions of Users a Reason to Quit Chrome" \- very clickbaity title. Forbes is bad, and HN should not let Forbes get the upper hand.

Maybe "ScrollToTextFragment chrome browser capability to worry users" would have been better?

<comment><USER3> Suggesting Something Perliously Wrong With The Universe, _The Register_ has both a more informative story _and_ a far more sober, and accurate, title than _Forbes_ :

"Chrome deploys deep-linking tech in latest browser build despite privacy concerns"

[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/02/20/chrome_deploys_deep...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/02/20/chrome_deploys_deeplinking/)

<comment><USER4> That was posted a few hours ago [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22382606](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22382606)

<comment><USER5> OK, we've moved the comments thither. Thanks!

<comment><USER2> Well done.

It might be interesting to "weigh" certain websites negatively (e.g. Forbes), especially when they continuously use click-baits and other dishonest techniques to deceive their audience.

<comment><USER3> AFAIU that is done, though I'm not sure Forbes makes the list.

I have no idea if it's a list per se or of all sites get some weighting factor, starting with 1, and falling (or possibly rising) from there.

In terms of general reputation / link-worthiness, this is an interesting question/problem online. Also the general problem of assigning reputation on a site-wide or domain-wide basis. There are more and less reputable parts of, say, "facebook.com". I don't think all of "google.com" should be treated similarly (more a problem when "plus.google.com" was an active member of that domain, and not even a proper subdomain component). Wordpress would come to mind.

Which means that when you're assigning reputation(s), the assignable handle is an issue. Does it map sufficiently well to what it is you want to give a high or low reputation.

The problem even exists for individual people. I have friends I'd trust for book recommendations but not food suggestions, and vice versa. Scientists, philosophers, and politicians notoriously are highly reliable in some domains but not others.

The universe is complicated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This appears to be a dupe on the homepage: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22383910](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22383910)

<comment><USER6> I guess I picked the wrong horse - lol</comment></comment>


Rough Ride Ahead: Buckle Up & Get Your Money Now (if you can) - <AUTHOR> http://www.vcconfidential.com/2008/06/rough-ride-ahea.html <comment><USER2> Wait, who's saying to get your money now, as fast as you can, on whatever terms you can? Maybe I'm cynical, but why do I have the feeling it's a VC?</comment>


Analyzing the Patterns of Numbers in 10M Passwords (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://minimaxir.com/2015/02/password-numbers/ <comment><USER2> Huh. Of all my old blog posts, this is the last one I expected to randomly resurface at the top of Hacker News.

There were a lot of other articles made using this 10M Password dataset at the time it was originally released, which the dataset author aggregated into a subreddit ([https://www.reddit.com/r/10millionpasswords/](https://www.reddit.com/r/10millionpasswords/)). WPEngine, for example, has a much more comprehensive writeup with ad-hoc looks at specific passwords ([http://wpengine.com/unmasked/](http://wpengine.com/unmasked/)).

<comment><USER3> Off topic, but where do you host your website and what is your tech stack?

Would it be possible to do a blog post about traffic patterns from HN? Eg- Hits vs time since post, hits vs day of post.

<comment><USER2> The site is static, hosted on GitHub Pages and generated via Jekyll, backed by Cloudflare for extra HN-proofing.

As of this comment, there are 150-170 concurrent users on the site, with about 120 of them (~80%) from HN. Although I do have the data, I am hesitant to do a write up since I would need to correlate traffic to the rank of a submission on HN, which I do not have in retrospect. (For example, a post at #1 can get 300 concurrent users while this post at #3 only 150. Posts in #20-30 are lucky to get 50 concurrents. For further reference, note that Reddit posts which hit the front page of a default like /r/dataisbeautiful can get 1,000 concurrents.)

EDIT: When this post dropped to #4, traffic immediately dropped to 100-110 concurrents.

<comment><USER3> Man, you have to do a post about traffic patterns to your website with whatever data you have, it's way too interesting. Leave out the rank correlation part, and share whatever data you have available. Please!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The distribution of 1-digit numbers is simple: when sites require a digit, everybody appends '1' to their usual password. The exponential declining frequency of subsequent digits is because when passwords 'expire' folks just add 1. The short lifetime of site usage results in that decline. Just thinking out loud.

</comment><comment><USER5> Looks like a few of the patterns in his analysis has a tendency towards Benford's Law[1]

[1]:[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford%27s_law)

<comment><USER6> Technically it describes none of these. Benford's Law only describes collections of leading digits. The charts in the article are just exponential distributions.

<comment><USER5> Yeah. Reading a bit more into it, I think you're right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The problem with this type of analysis is that it treats the 10million passwords as if they are representative of all passwords. A more descriptive title would be:

"Analyzing the Patterns of Numbers in 10 Million passwords that were not randomly selected from an unknown number of accounts"

One of the first cracking rules in john is append a "1" to dictionary word. "123" is one of the few multidigit strings that john appends in the default ruleset. Furthermore the first 5 million passwords were used to generate a character frequency database for cracking the second 5 million.

<comment><USER2> The 10M dump was collected from a wide variety of sources to avoid sampling bias.

<comment><USER7> How did you "avoid" sample bias? How many of the passwords come from databases that were dumped in cleartext or cracked with 100% success? Meaning every account on that system was included in cleartext or 100% of the passwords from a dump were cracked.

The reason I ask is that the dataset you analyzed does not make this claim:

"Now not all of these passwords are plaintext. Many dumps include passwords in a hashed format that requires you to crack them yourself." [https://xato.net/a-glimpse-into-the-world-of-internet- passwo...](https://xato.net/a-glimpse-into-the-world-of-internet-password- dumps-5ee4609da237)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> DataGenetics did a similar analysis with four-digit numbers in leaked passwords and PINs. The article contains lots of cool visualizations.

[http://www.datagenetics.com/blog/september32012/](http://www.datagenetics.com/blog/september32012/)

<comment><USER9> I'm always struck by the uncredited similarities of stuff there to other sources, like the pin grid, found in this paper published earlier in 2012 than the blag there:

[https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/Papers/BPA12-FC- banking_pin_...](https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/Papers/BPA12-FC- banking_pin_security.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment> d--b Notable fact: '69' makes it as '3rd most used combination of 2 numbers in passwords'.

<comment><USER10> I assume because most users were born in 1969?

<comment><USER11> I'm not sure if this comment is deeply sarcastic and insightful on a number of topics, or just hopelessly naive. I'm learning towards sarcastic and insightful, and it's impressive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think brute force password crackers could be made much more efficient by using machine learning or manually written rules to exploit how people choose passwords.

Even if you force users to pick a password of at least 8 characters with upper and lower case letter, numbers and special characters, I suspect the real entropy is much lower than the theoretical.

<comment><USER13> There were a couple of talks about this at password^12:

Like:

[http://passwords12.at.ifi.uio.no/Kirsi_Helkala/](http://passwords12.at.ifi.uio.no/Kirsi_Helkala/)

[http://passwords12.at.ifi.uio.no/Markus_Duermuth_Password_Se...](http://passwords12.at.ifi.uio.no/Markus_Duermuth_Password_Security_and_Markov_Models/)

But it's a whole conference about passwords... so not sure if I found the presentation I had in mind...:

[http://passwords12.at.ifi.uio.no/](http://passwords12.at.ifi.uio.no/)

And btw, registration is now open for password^16 in Germany in December: [https://passwordscon.org/](https://passwordscon.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> When it comes to visualisation of numbers distribution, every time I recall the Secret Live of Numbers [0] applet by Golan Levin from 2002. Haven't seen anything comparable ever since. So pleasant to browse through the data I'm tempted to try to make the java applet runtime working again now. (At least we can enjoy some screenshots [1])

[0] [http://www.flong.com/projects/slon/](http://www.flong.com/projects/slon/) [1] [https://www.flickr.com/photos/golanlevin/sets/72157594388612...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/golanlevin/sets/72157594388612317/)

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm surprised 69 is third instead of first. I'm even more surprised the author is surprised it's in the tops.

When I first looked at a password database I actually laughed out loud at how many 69 there were. I don't know, there is something funny about 'Yaris69' or 'Puppy69', although it's probably used ironically these days.

</comment><comment><USER16> The fact that there are peaks at 6 and 8 digits per password is probably due the fact that dates can be represented as DDMMYY and DDMMYYYY respectively, rather than imply that humans are better at remembering an even number of digits.

</comment><comment><USER17> An interesting peak in the '7XX' subset is '768' which is an important number for muslims. [1] I also noticed mild peaks at '258' and '852' which are vertical sequences on a numeric keypad - in the 4-digit PIN dataset there was a distinct peak at '2580' as well - as well as another at '951' for the diagonal sequence.

[1] [http://islam.stackexchange.com/questions/799/what- does-786-m...](http://islam.stackexchange.com/questions/799/what- does-786-mean)

</comment><comment><USER18> There's a comment there [0] asking for more graphs including the distribution for password managers that randomly generate passwords... erm...

[0]: [http://minimaxir.com/2015/02/password- numbers/#comment-18765...](http://minimaxir.com/2015/02/password- numbers/#comment-1876534596)

<comment><USER19> Looks like this guy is doing some serious campaigning for his password manager, take a look at his previous comments:

[https://disqus.com/by/disqus_OIqfE7dCZb/](https://disqus.com/by/disqus_OIqfE7dCZb/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Reminds me about the tidbit about "strong password" rules, like one each of small letter, capital letter, digit or symbol. Like: "Password2016". Really strong. It's even longer than 8 letters.

<comment><USER20> "E12e likes 2016" is probably even stronger and easier to remember

<comment><USER13> The point is that "Password2016" will often score as "strong" (enough) while it really isn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> slightly off topic, what tool/lib did you use to make the charts?"

<comment><USER2> All charts in this post were made using R/ggplot2. (The code was not open sourced in this case because the code for this post is a mess. I have revised my process since)</comment></comment>


Introducing: Cloud.Obj - Python Objects in the Cloud - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mcerdeira/cloud.obj http://cloudobj.appspot.com/ <comment><USER2> Martin, what do you use this for? and do you need help putting together documentation?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I would love some help in documenting or testing.

The idea is to have a public repo of python modules, where you can directly import from, so, you won't need to download and mantain local modules. Now, it only has the standard python modules that GAE provides, but, my idea is to populate the service with all kind of python modules, so you can just forget and import anything from this thing.

I'm planning to make another flavor, a private repo, where you can login and have your own modules, but, the main reason of this project is the public repo idea.</comment></comment>


The Social Dynamics of Programming Together in Dynamicland - <AUTHOR> https://dynamicland.org/research-notes/social-dynamics-of-programming-together/ <comment><USER2> I have read about Dynamicland before and really like the idea of an interactive program/computer. However, I still do not understand what they are actually doing. For example this quote:

> "Each one of these was made by a different person at a different time, yet > Bret was able to combine them without making a single code change, he just > placed them next to each other."

What exactly are they programming? Writing that face from scratch would take a LOT of code. Or is it like a high level framework they are all using which combines visuals together? The idea seems very fun, wholesome, and educational. However, they do not explain what is actually happening from a programmer point of view.

<comment><USER3> I visited, but did not write any code. There's an overarching system that loosely couples everything together. E.g., the system provides drawing/sound primitives, controls how different pieces interact according to a fixed set of rules, and reads/displays the results of computations via cameras and projectors.

People write the bits of code, print them out on paper, with barcodes included that encode the contents of the program for the cameras to be able to see. Each program, then, specifies directives for its own behavior with "anything else" that wants to interact with it.

For example, one program might specify a "wish" to have a number n as input, and then it would produce as output a drawing with a flower that has n petals. Any program that provides a number (maybe by, say, asking the camera to see how many red blocks are on the table) can emit that number in a direction (the papers are oriented) and if you point it at the first program, the system connects the emitted number with the wish of the target program in the obvious way.

So it's like each program is its own independent agent with a really simple behavior, and when you combine a bunch you get some nice emergent system.

AFAIK currently the process of learning/writing the programs still happens on a laptop by yourself. I guess the picture of the young woman typing on a keyboard with the screen projected onto the table is a step beyond that.

<comment><USER4> Some of us are intrigued but can't pay a visit to the lab in person. I would love to see some videos that illustrate what you're describing and better understand how they would eventually synthesize into real life productivity

<comment><USER5> I get the sense the end goal here isn't in productivity but more for education and creating environments that foster a programming mindset and/or nourish more emergent creativity from being able to code at a higher level (probably the most consistent theme in all of Bret Victor's forays).

In a sense, it's basically just a framework with a text editor that isn't based in an OS but instead a 2d surface that you interact with, using your hands and interacting in a more social medium than something like, say, git.

<comment><USER6> > I get the sense the end goal here isn't in productivity but more for > education and creating environments that foster a programming mindset and/or > nourish more emergent creativity from being able to code at a higher level

While those uses are certainly easy to see and imagine in Dynamicland, the mission statement for Dynamicland is to "incubate a humane dynamic medium whose full power is accessible to all people."

The researchers at Dynamicland take this mission statement quite seriously and are making a new medium. Like any medium, this one isn't explicitly limited to one kind of use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For research supporting this mode of working, see Bruno Latour's "Laboratory Life":

[https://www.amazon.com/Laboratory-Life-Construction- Scientif...](https://www.amazon.com/Laboratory-Life-Construction-Scientific- Facts/dp/069102832X/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1517603412&sr=8-6&keywords=bruno+latour)

and Ed Hutchins' "Cognition in the Wild":

[https://www.amazon.com/Cognition-Wild-Press-Edwin- Hutchins/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Cognition-Wild-Press-Edwin- Hutchins/dp/0262581469/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1517603420&sr=8-1&keywords=cognition+in+the+wild)

</comment><comment><USER8> Some more background/discussion (after [1]):

[1] [http://discuss.tbd.cool/t/dynamicland/86/4](http://discuss.tbd.cool/t/dynamicland/86/4)

[2] [http://vitor.io/on-dynamicland](http://vitor.io/on-dynamicland)

[3] [https://harc.ycr.org/project/realtalk/](https://harc.ycr.org/project/realtalk/)

[4] [https://mobile.twitter.com/redblobgames/status/9072538029311...](https://mobile.twitter.com/redblobgames/status/907253802931126272)

</comment><comment><USER9> Dynamicland is amazing, it needs to be seen in person. I encourage everyone to visit and donate

</comment><comment><USER10> > _Virginia has no prior programming experience but has started combining code > she finds around the space into her own creations. Here 's part of a > birthday surprise she left me over winter break. Even our visiting > ethnographer Goetz created a great spatial music game in Dynamicland (also > no prior programming experience)._

> _Like learning French by going to France, people in Dynamicland learn > programming through immersion._

Imagine a meeting with designers where you bring a stack of pages representing neatly refactored code for the prototype as it is put together now, plus a bunch of extra code snippets of possible changes to make or things to explore.

I'm pretty sure that this could make certain types of brainstorming about what a product needs a _lot_ more productive.

EDIT: And now for some trouble in paradise: if we envision this immersive computing environment of the future, what about people bringing _malicious snippets of code_ into the building? imagine we have the ability to print, and to guide robots to disperse the printed text. A quine in dynamicland then becomes a virus, a fork-bomb.

<comment><USER11> As far as I can tell, the pieces of paper are just pointers into a database. If you physically carried in a new sheet of paper it would be inert (or maybe the system would confuse it with some other piece of paper with the same dot- code).

I can't help but think that the paper metaphor, while convenient for immediate manipulation, is ultimately a really clumsy way to store programs, especially given that it is an artificial abstraction around an ordinary filesystem on a Dynamicland server somewhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Show me the code (of the bootstraping system). This project is no more "beyond open source" than a History channel documentary about aliens. This is no more than a tax haven and toy for the wealthy and privileged. Put up or shut up (about claims of being open source or for everyone).

I'm only angry because it's a good project.

</comment><comment><USER13> I really like how this socializes the aspect of creation with software and I know that it would drive about 90% of the software engineers that I currently work with absolutely insane

</comment><comment><USER11> I'd really like to see some examples of the kind of code people actually write for this system. It seems strange that the dynamicland site avoids this entirely.

<comment><USER6> To borrow from the show "Halt and Catch Fire": The programming language isn't the thing, it's the thing that gets you to the thing.

In my talks with the researchers at Dynamicland, it's become clear the programming language is, well, dynamic. It's in flux and not what the main research is being done on.

At a high level, the focus at Dynamicland is on what a "humane dynamic medium" is and can be, which is slightly orthogonal to programming language design.

At a low level, the language used right now is a modified version of Lua, though I have seen GLSL and JavaScript used on some of the programs. The thing is, once you have enough programs, one tends to spend more time using the physical space to experiment rather than spending time in a text editor.</comment></comment>


What questions you never asked to yourself? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> There are infinite questions I've never asked myself. First one to come to mind, "why does my neighbor have the name that they do?"

This might be a more interesting prompt with some extra guidance. "What questions you never asked yourself when you were younger that you wished you had?"

</comment><comment><USER3> Where is the spider from a few days back that I tried to kill but got away?

</comment><comment><USER4> I think early on, a big one might be "What do I really want?"

</comment><comment><USER5> "What questions I never asked to myself?"

</comment><comment><USER6> Choosing between coding and whisky.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm a coder. I say go for coding

<comment><USER7> I am a coder. I say go for whisky.

<comment><USER8> I'm a coder. I say why not both?

<comment><AUTHOR> hahaha</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


After Scanning Cookie of some top sites from Stockholm only Facebook got an "A+" - daniel-l After Scanning some top site from Stockholm, I found something interesting:
Frontpage sets Cookie without user Consent:
- Amazon.com: 9 Cookies - Reddit.com: 9 Cookies - Netflix.com: 6 Cookies - Ebay.com: 5 Cookies - Google.com: 2 Cookies - Facebook.com: 0 Cookie
I'm really confused, some websites set Cookie before I click the "Accept", other set Cookie after I click the "Accept".
Some sites provide me a very very detailed cookie usage checkbox, others not.
So, what is RIGHT of GDPR compliance ???? <comment><AUTHOR> I think for facebook, cookies are only useful when any user has registered with them and they only ask when someone is not registered yet so once user is registered, they unleash their true power and track the hell out of him.

<comment> daniel-l I think you got the damn point!

<comment><AUTHOR> haha am I right?</comment></comment></comment>


The Odyssey – Alexander Pope translation (1725) - <AUTHOR> https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3160/3160-h/3160-h.htm <comment><USER2> There's a recent (2017) English translation of the Odyssey by Emily Wilson. It's absolutely electric!

Robert Fagles is one of the most famous English translators of the Odyssey, but I find Wilson's to be more fun to read.

I think one reason why I enjoy Wilson's translation more is because she translates each line using iambic pentameter (like how Shakespeare wrote). The original is in six-footed lines (dactylic hexameters). This is an important style choice because dactylic hexameter was a great choice for poets in the ancient Greek language, but a poor choice in English. The translation into English using iambic pentameter gives the poem a natural flow in English.

What's most impressive is that Wilson's translation is the same length as the original, with exactly the same number of lines while changing the meter from dactylic hexameter to iambic pentameter!

<comment><AUTHOR> Alexander Pope is not chopped liver!

>When Alexander Pope's majestic translation of Homer's Odyssey appeared in 1726, his translation of the Iliad had already been acclaimed by Samuel Johnson as "a performance which no age or nation could hope to equal."

<comment><USER3> > his translation of the Iliad had already been acclaimed by Samuel Johnson as > "a performance which no age or nation could hope to equal."

This is the literary equivalent of claiming 640K should be enough for anybody.

<comment><USER4> The difference being in art this is possible, as art doesn't get better, just gets different.

Bach is no lesser than deadmau5 because deadmau5 composes 300 years later. But technology from 300 years before is by definition less advanced than todays...

<comment><USER5> The english language changes over time too.

<comment><USER4> Yes, but not for the "better" either. It's more like art than technology.

<comment><USER5> The translation cease to be good over time, because the meaning of words changes and the way people construct sentences changes. The way people speak and understand text changes.

What was pleasant to read text 300 years ago is unpleasant hard to read text. What was normal word 300 years ago is unusual rare word now. What is even worst, the same word now can mean something completely different.

It is more like technology then music in this regard.

<comment><USER6> > The translation cease to be good over time, because the meaning of words > changes and the way people construct sentences changes.

Agree with the rest of what you say but take issue with "ceases to be good", since, even with translations, determining what is "good" about a piece of literature is complicated and often more about the process than the outcome.

For example some translation which still has a lot of artistic merit or historical importance, but, as you said, is now dated and difficult to read because the language has changed so much since when the translation was written.

I'd argue it doesn't make sense to call that translation "bad". "Bad for an undergraduate", or "bad as a first translation to read, or "bad at X", some specific thing, but overall bad? Personally I'd argue now.

Also for what it's worth even if the science behind music doesn't change, music itself - how we hear it and our culture for it - kinda does.

For example, lots of sounds / music that used to be considered unbearable noise is now widely accepted and popular. Looking at the changes in western popular music in the 20th century is a great example of this.

But —- I agree with you that language and music (and art) are all sort of their own kinds of technologies!

There are materials and techniques and functions and so on. The technology / art divide is much blurrier than is often appreciated. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _The Odyssey_ was _not_ translated by Alexander Pope, but by a ghostwriter Pope hired to translate it under his name. He did this to cash in on the enormous popularity of his translation of Homer's _Iliad_ , compared to which the ghostwritten work pales.

Pope's translation of the _Iliad_ is one of the most amazing books I've ever read. Highly, highly recommended if you want to experience stunningly beautiful and powerful language.

<comment><USER8> Wow, that's fascinating. How the hell do we get that in the title.

Maybe we'll use his name as the label of the translation but without explicitly saying he translated it. That seems approximately what you described.

<comment><USER9> It's a little overstated. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Pope#Translation_of_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Pope#Translation_of_the_Odyssey)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Back stories help, and so with the _Odyssey_ it really helps to have read the _Oresteia_ (yes, Aeschylus is writing later) before the _Odyssey_ , in my opinion, this helps more than having read the _Iliad_. It helps because the Telemachy (the first four books with Telemachus) compares Telemachus (he's such an entitled twerp) to Orestes and then in the 11th book Odysseus descends into the underworld and questions Agamemnon. So it helps to know what they're talking about.

With the _Iliad_ , it helps to know about the _Judgment of Paris_ but I think my prof at Berkeley simply recited it. I don't know what the 'classic' telling would be.

Of course it helps to have read the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ before the _Aeneid_. The first half, the Odyssean half, is just a lot more fun because of Dido. She's like Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet. But when Dido does what Dido did then in the Iliadic second half you're stuck with stoic Aeneas (and Turnus) and Aeneas is just not that interesting.

I would say:

      1. Judgment of Paris (somehow, somewhere, Robert Graves?)
      2. Iliad (I'm a huge fan of Lattimore)
      3. Oresteia (at least Agamemnon)
      4. Odyssey
      5. Aeneid

I could never get into Joyce but I may give him another try.

<comment><USER11> Joyce's great novel has nothing except the most tenuous and inessential connection with the Odyssey, despite the title. Joyce removed the chapter titles that had referred to the Odyssey after the first edition, and said that he regretted ever having put them in there, because they had misled readers and critics into imagining parallels to the Greek story that did not exist. The main character does wander around, though.

<comment><USER12> > Joyce's great novel has nothing except the most tenuous and inessential > connection with the Odyssey

Joyce's own chart of the construction of the book[0] features the Odyssey chapter titles as prominently as any of the other issues. Certainly there is an "essential" connection to the Odyssey, though it is just one rich ingredient for this masterpiece among others. Joyce's later regret can be chalked down to people imagining parallels that he didn't intend, but I don't think there's a scholar around who doesn't believe that Joyce wrote the barmaids as a parallel to the sirens, or the Citizen to the Cyclops.

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

<comment><USER11> Sure, but those are the kinds of things that I was calling a tenuous connection. All I meant was that a scholarly familiarity with Homer is not necessary to appreciate Joyce's book.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is a good thread to ask: Who reads Homer in your country, and why?

I'm currently learning ancient Greek as my "Corona project": purely for fun, and mainly because I'm interested in Greek philosophy and culture.

That said, I feel a bit lonely in my country in pursuing this. Sweden has no strong history of classical studies. Some high schools may offer a course in latin, but it's getting more and more rare, and as far as I know there are not even courses in university because the interest is too low. I don't know anyone and I don't know _of_ anyone in Sweden who actually reads/knows the language.

When I talk to friends in the US, the UK and the Netherlands on the other hand, Greek and the classical Greek works (including Homer, of course) seems to be much more popular and also part of normal young adult education. One of my friends, an American in his late 20:s, had to read the Odessey in high school. My fiance from the Netherlands was offered either latin or greek in high school as well. Most of my textbooks in greek are written by American, English and Dutch authors. So these nations seem to have a stronger tradition in classics.

Can anyone care to elaborate the situation where you live? I'm very curious what motivates people to learn dead languages and read books thousands years old.

<comment><USER14> Here are some personal data points from Australia and The Netherlands:

Australia:

* My high school in Melbourne had one class (15 people) learning Latin to year 12 level. Funnily enough, almost all of us also studied advanced math, and more than half were left-handed. By the end, we were reading the Aeneid, Catullus and Cicero.

* Why did I pick Latin? Well, at my school, two foreign languages were compulsory for years 7-10, and optional for years 11 and 12. In year 7 and 8, everyone had to do Latin, and either French or German. In year 9, around half switched from Latin to Mandarin.

* Two of my friends also did Ancient Greek. They were taught by the school headmaster, who was a Classics scholar.

* That year, in the whole state of Victoria, the total number of year 12 students taking Latin and Ancient Greek were 70 and 6 respectively.

* At university, my engineering school required us to take one subject in a non-technical faculty. I chose Ancient Greek, to complement my Latin from high school. That class had around 60 students. 2/3 of them were of Greek descent and already spoke modern Greek.

* The only Greek word I remember now is κῠβερνήτης (helmsman). You may recognise it as Kubernetes :)

Netherlands:

* My partner, who is Dutch, studied Latin at high school there.

* His school was a "gymnasium", a category of very academic high schools which traditionally taught Latin and Greek. Check out [1] for the background to these gymnasium schools in the Netherlands and various countries.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gymnasium_(school)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gymnasium_\(school\))

<comment><USER15> My school experience sounds exactly like yours—including the gay and Catullus bits—except it was Adelaide so the state had 10 Latin students instead of 70.

I first read the Illiad (Fagels) by torchlight, in a tent by a campfire in a muddy field, next to a cliff where I was risking my neck each day to impress the other boys in the university mountain club. As everyone should.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I actually have a few original sets of this collection (second edition), and then a few later prints of both Iliad and Odyssey (A set from ~1730, and another from the 1770s, the latter binding is lovely, early copies tend to be in worse condition unless you have chunks of cash to spend).

IMHO the Iliad is far more fun than the Odyssey regardless of translation, it also features much better in the wider Hellenic corpus as a reference point if you like to see how it influences wider classic drama.

I became a little obsessed with him for a while because he became a millionaire in his time by essentially inventing DLC: His courtly friends would buy each volume of the books in advance, so he generated a solid stream of revenue so long as he hit his deadlines. For a poet that's good going.

His Greek wasn't particularly good, so it's suggested that quite a few people helped him, which makes the translation itself inaccurate, but there's no denying his poetic flair.

If you're looking for classic Pope I'd say look at the Rape of the Lock (which most folks read in school), and some of his satires - like Dante though they require some historical knowledge because he was very much a satirist and political commentator and used poetry as a means of expression rather tyhan art.

Bonus fact: did you know he invented the insult "namby pamby", it's derived from a nickname he came up with for one of his literary and courtly rivals.

</comment><comment><USER17> I studied engineering in undergrad, and have only become interested in "classics" for the past couple of years. Homer is great. I've only read Fagles' translation, but plan on Pope next. I've been amazed at how much reading the classics has affected the way I view the world. I find stories and references popping into my head all the time, and when they do you feel this great connection to centuries (millenia!) of humanity.

I look forward to expanding a bit outside of the Western Canon. Also, one wonders about the many stories that have been lost over the centuries.

When I read, I like to collect quotations. My quotes from the Odyssey are here: [https://goodlifeodyssey.com/the- odyssey](https://goodlifeodyssey.com/the-odyssey)

<comment><USER18> +1 on feeling the connection to history.

You will like Sappho(if you haven't read it already).

<comment><USER17> Thanks!

I've read most of this collection of Greek Lyric fragments:

[https://books.google.com/books/about/Greek_Lyric.html?id=-aY...](https://books.google.com/books/about/Greek_Lyric.html?id=-aYtAwAAQBAJ)

If I recall, there are only a handful of fragments from Sappho that survived. Is this what you were referring to? (Or perhaps I a mistaken and the collection I had only included a few.)

<comment><USER19> Indeed, we only have a tiny amount of Sappho by volume, a slim pamphlet's worth, mostly fragments of a line or two. Heartbreakingly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> You can download a free nicely-formatted epub of the William Cullen Bryant translation at Standard Ebooks: [https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/homer/the- odyssey/william-...](https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/homer/the- odyssey/william-cullen-bryant)

This is the first transcription of Bryant's translation available online, and it was very well regarded in its day. Like Wilson's translation, it's in iambic pentameter. It still reads really well, considering its age!

</comment><comment><USER21> Pope's translation (the linked one) is the best, bar none. While some may find the language overdone or question its accuracy, I think the quality of the writing makes up for it. Besides, unless you're reading it in Ancient Greek, a translation is still a translation.

</comment><comment><USER22> The purpose of reading the Iliad is so that you can then read the Odyssey, so that you can then read the Aeneid. Dante's Inferno is in some respects explicitly connected to the Aeneid, so we have a literary connection spanning literally millenia...

<comment><USER23> If we just had a good translation of the Aeneid. Fitzgerald's is okay. CS Lewis's book one is wonderful. But Virgil's poetry carries the Latin in a way that the subject matter really struggles to do without.

I am, however, incredibly happy that we have Clive James's translation of the Divine Comedy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> A must-read for anyone who appreciates The Odyssey is by Nikos kazantzakis, a Greek himself and perhaps one of the best (and least well-known) of the past 100 years. Nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature, he wrote a truly amazing book called The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel. [0]

Even translated into English, the language is indescribably entrancing. I won't try to do it justice here. Thematically, it picks up where Homer left off: Odysseus, genius & trickster, covered in the blood of those who sought to take his home & wife, is home after 20 years of war and strife with gods & monsters. How can such a man return to a normal life?

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

</comment><comment><USER25> I wanted to blog the Odyssey from Eurylochus's perspective in 2006. The next thing I knew, I had blogged the Iliad.

[https://underodysseus.blogspot.com/2006_02_12_archive.html](https://underodysseus.blogspot.com/2006_02_12_archive.html)

I should get back to the Odyssey.

<comment><USER26> An Iliad trailer: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24301605](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24301605)

(unliked, but no one had any specific complaints about any of the characterisations... And I'm still curious about the downthread _sensus tactilus_ , if anyone has any pointers.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> From the introduction: "Scepticism has attained its culminating point with respect to Homer, and the state of our Homeric knowledge may be described as a free permission to believe any theory, provided we throw overboard all written tradition, concerning the author or authors of the Iliad and Odyssey. What few authorities exist on the subject, are summarily dismissed, although the arguments appear to run in a circle. "This cannot be true, because it is not true; and that is not true, because it cannot be true." Such seems to be the style, in which testimony upon testimony, statement upon statement, is consigned to denial and oblivion."

<comment><USER23> Note that was written in the 19th century and does not reflect anything like the current state of affairs.

<comment><USER27> So, Homer was written down in 6th century Athens?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Keat's reaction to reading Chapman's translation compared to the overwrought (to him) one of Pope is famous: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_First_Looking_into_Chapman%...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_First_Looking_into_Chapman%27s_Homer)

</comment><comment><USER29> I urge everyone with even a passing interest in Greek mythology to check out _The Song of Achilles_ (2011) and then _Circe_ (2018), both by Madeline Miller. She perfectly combines ancient stories with modern prose, and these are two of my favorite fantasy novels.

<comment><USER30> When my boy was tweening by reading and rereading Rick Riordan's _Percy Jackson_ series, I enjoyed reading them too.

<comment><USER31> My kids loved reading the graphic novel version of The Odyssey by Gareth Hinds. They continue to read it once a month or so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I find the entire concept of an epic poem covering the events of one of the many wars of the Bronze Age Collapse absolutely riveting - that we have such a thing, such a record, even if through the lens of fictionalised drama, is remarkable.

<comment><USER33> The Iliad actually covers only a small part of the Trojan war. There's a whole corpus of ancient literature that treats various aspects of the war. The famed Trojan Horse incident happens between the events of the Iliad and the Odyssey and is mentioned in the latter but the most complete accounting is in Virgil's Aeneid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Honest question, how does one get past the idea of reading this (to say that one did so and because one respects people who have done so and the authors themselves) and the actual act of doing so, which can take several hours and become on occasion dare I say it boring?

<comment><USER35> You should not be reading the Illiad to check a box. My advice is to approach it as a serious historical work and engage it with a mindset of trying to understand a culture that is very distant while providing clues of similarity to modern life.

As an example, the boring part in the beginning is the names of ships and tribes enlisted to sail to Troy. What I am thinking while reading these parts is why this list was so important and the sheer complexity of organizing all of it. You are talking about months if not years worth of preparation and yet it's reduced to this almost data-like catalog where you can get the sense that the message is: "We have a lot of friends... and we are coming."

And this isn't to say that you should hold it as Truth. What I am saying is that this work had a profound cultural impact over the course of hundreds of years similar to the The Bible today. It will take work to enjoy it and you should only approach it if reading literature of this kind is of interest to you in general.

<comment><USER34> Great answer and compelling thanks. However, ouch, you used the B word. I also read the Bible for the cultural relevance. I found it to be incredibly boring as well. I do not feel better off having read it. For contrast, reading Harry Potter (just as an example) does not enlist such a feeling of monotony and dread. It generally just hums along and is mostly enjoyable. I have often heard this 'canon' argument ie. If it survived this long, and was so influential, it must be worth reading. However precisely this argument unravels for me when reading the Bible itself in its entirety. On the contrary, if one is like me one becomes convinced of humanity's inability to select valuable work for lasting significance, and even more doubtful of the Canon as a great starting point. It seems to be like a 3500 year old imdb with a really inconsistent voting mechanism, if the analogy makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This content is not available in your country (de) :(

</comment><comment><USER37> For the record, Achilles wasn't 'sulking' in his tent.

There was a plague about and he was simply self isolating.

<comment><USER26> Μάσκα ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Anybody want to track down the year of Pope's translation?

<comment><USER26> 1725

[https://barrelroombooks.com/wp- content/uploads/2018/05/1725O...](https://barrelroombooks.com/wp- content/uploads/2018/05/1725Odyssey5.jpg)

<comment><USER8> Fabulous! Added. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Not sure why this is here, it's brings nothing new

<comment><USER18> The discussion here is great. Cheer up.

<comment><USER38> It may be a great discussion but it feels like you guys think HN is another forum like reddit.</comment></comment></comment>


Lisp-powered Ravenbrook Chart - <AUTHOR> http://chart.ravenbrook.com/downloads/chart-2.0.4/

<comment><USER2> Lisp? it seems like a marketing trick. See some Lisp notes here: [http://chart.ravenbrook.com/credits.html](http://chart.ravenbrook.com/credits.html) but the title is confusing.

<comment><USER3> More details can be found from Nick Levine's blog post announcing its release: [http://enlivend.livejournal.com/46231.html](http://enlivend.livejournal.com/46231.html)

<comment><USER2> Ok, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's _Common Lisp_ powered. Not exactly my area of interests and I lost quite a few minutes trying to learn about this. I wish CL people would stop pretending that theirs is the only Lisp.

<comment><USER5> So you was expecting to see Lisp that is inside your area of interests. Right? And title is saying Lisp, not "My Favorite Lisp". So now I'm assuming that you are pretending that only Lisp is your favorite flavor of lisp. Am I right?</comment></comment>