LibreOffice 5.4 released with new features for Writer, Calc and Impress - <AUTHOR> https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2017/07/28/libreoffice-5-4/ <comment><USER3> Love LibreOffice - I've used it and OpenOffice for over 15 years. I've been heartbroken by recent releases, however - the keyboard shortcuts in Calc (and other components) have changed.

This is like breaking my fingers - I'm so much slower now. It's not just that there's a difference - I can adapt to that. It's that they've re-labeled menu entries with duplicate index keys. You can't do some things quickly now (e.g. optimize column widths with Alt-O-M-O, which worked for years).

There's a reason why MS Excel has keyboard shortcuts that make no sense - <USER2> match to menu entries from old versions, and they've kept them in so people who have been using it for decades don't have a reason to switch.

Please, LibreOffice developers, make your menu shortcuts sensible again!

<comment><USER4> Just for your info, no better in MS-land, Microsoft broke most shortcuts between Office 2003 and Office 2007, a few got reverted with 2010. Still it's mind blowing how bad shortcuts are nowadays. Instead of Ctrl+<char> one has to type Alt+<char>+<char> and other nonsense for many shortcuts. (Sure system wide shortcuts and a few ones like Ctrl+C still work) But try to paste a text as plain unformatted text, good luck with that.

<comment><USER5> Interesting observation. I've had the opposite experience. Perhaps it is sbecause I'm not using "shortcuts" but rather am operating the pull-down menus with accelerator keys via muscle-memory. Inserting columns, rows, formatting cells, and many other functions continued to work with the various ALT-x-x combinations that I was used to. I never used any of the CTRL-x variants, except for cut/copy/paste.

<comment><USER4> The position of CTRL on the keyboard is ideal for shortcuts. CTRL+x is short and can be used with one hand. I guess you started with 2007 or 2010. For me the ribbon related shortcuts are inefficient.

<comment><USER5> I started w/ Office 95 (well, standalone Excel 4.0, actually). To insert cells I'd type "ALT-E-I". To delete cells "ALT-E-D". Aside from cut/copy/paste and simple text formatting (bold, underline, italic) I've never used the CTRL-x shortcuts. I've always just operated the pull-down menus with their accelerator keys very quickly.

Edit: Ahh-- I re-read your comment. I'm not using the ribbon ALT-x shortcuts. I'm using the accelerator keys from the old pull-down menus. No-- those ribbon "shortcuts" are frustrating to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Inspired by Leonardo da Vinci's "simplicity is the ultimate sophistication", > LibreOffce developers have focused on fle simplicity as the ultimate > document interoperability sophistication. This makes ODF and OOXML fles > written by the free offce suite more robust and easier to exchange with > other users than the same documents generated by other offce suites.

So, two notes here:

1) Microsoft Office and Google Docs at least have figured out how to make their web versions so that when I copy-and-paste from them, any i following an f doesn't disappear because of whatever they're doing to kern letters.

2) "Shorter XML output" is about 978th on the list of things that LibreOffice needs to do to improve interoperability, and the fact that it's a focus is deeply weird.

<comment><USER7> You are probably not aware of the issues related to Microsoft Office files, which are intentionally bloated with useless XML contents to make interoperability almost impossible. A cleaner XML improves interoperability, even if you do not think it helps. The reality is that until people will consider Microsoft Office files as a reference, anything else will fail WRT interoperability because those files are developed to kill interoperability.

<comment><USER6> > which are intentionally bloated with useless XML contents to make > interoperability almost impossible.

That's just a conspiracy theory. The reason they're "bloated" is because Microsoft Office is optimizing for interoperability with its largest competitor: older versions of Microsoft Office.

Maybe Microsoft Office having "cleaner" XML would improve interoperability. But as long as Office is the standard, the ability to consume messy XML is worth more than the ability to emit clean XML.

<comment><USER8> > That's just a conspiracy theory.

The "conspiracy" is exceedingly well documented, as others have already noted.

The motherlode is these pages of contemporary documents at Groklaw:

[http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=2005121615...](http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=20051216153153504)

[http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=2008071923...](http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=20080719233709726)

A good starting document is "Can Other Vendors Implement Microsoft's Office Open XML?" [http://web.archive.org/web/20070912014933/http://www.hollowa...](http://web.archive.org/web/20070912014933/http://www.holloway.co.nz/can- other-vendors-implement-ooxml.html)

<comment><USER6> > A good starting document is "Can Other Vendors Implement Microsoft's Office > Open XML?" > [http://web.archive.org/web/20070912014933/http://www.hollowa...](http://web.archive.org/web/20070912014933/http://www.hollowa..).

Then let's start there! Let's start with the first section about Word Processing, in fact:

``` 1.1. Historical Compatibility

OOXML contains compatibility markers to describe older legacy documents, their quirks and processing models. These compatibility features mark behaviours that software must implement to correctly display and process the majority of documents in existence.

The "Compability Settings" WordProcessingML4 section within OOXML does not provide for repeatable practices. While it provides Microsoft the ability to store information related to various behaviors in their legacy file formats, the specification merely lists the names of these settings without proper definitions. An OOXML-consuming application, presented with a document using these attributes, will be unable to interpret them properly and render the page in a high-fidelity manner. Further, since these attributes are merely listed but not defined, the ability to practice the benefit of being "fully compatible with the large existing investments in Microsoft Office documents" (the goal of OOXML according to its authors) is consequently reserved for Microsoft alone.

These behaviours such as "autoSpaceLikeWord95" , "useWord97LineBreakRules" and "useWord2002TableStyleRules" are not defined. As OOXML repeatedly states, [t]o faithfully replicate this behavior, applications must imitate the behavior of that application, which involves many possible behaviors and cannot be faithfully placed into narrative for this Office Open XML Standard.

These processing hints in the proposed standard depend on undisclosed information, and therefore other vendors cannot correctly process historical documents using OOXML. This lack of specification has significant implications for the New Zealand public sector organisations operating under the Public Records Act who are seeking to preserve documents of their records in a readable electronic form. ```

I think that rather supports the claim that backwards compatibility is a problem for OOXML. I see no claim in there about any deliberate obfuscation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm getting the macOS gatekeeper alert about "unidentified developer". Obviously this can be bypassed by right-clicking and choosing open, but don't the libreoffice developers code-sign LibreOffice.app (anymore) ?

<comment><USER10> I was confused by this, too. I could have sworn they were signing previous releases, but I'm not sure.

I did check the SHA-1 of my download, and it was correct.

<comment><USER11> previous one was definitely code signed. I installed the previous one yesterday and it was signed. So, surprised when today's wasn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> >Thanks to the efforts of developers, the XML description of a new document written by LibreOffice is 50% smaller in the case of ODF (ODT), and around 90% smaller in the case of OOXML (DOCX), in comparison with the same document generated by the leading proprietary office suite.

Given Microsoft's record in implemeting OpenDocument, this shouldn't be too hard to do.

<comment><USER13> I think they're saying they do .docx better (or at least smaller) than MS Word does .docx

<comment><USER7> DOCX files created by LibreOffice are not only smaller but simpler in term of XML structure, and easier to interoperate. A two-page file created from scratch is 1100 XML lines if written by LibreOffice and 11500 XML lines if written by Microsoft Office. The 10400 redundant XML lines are there to make it difficult to properly read the file. Also, they may contain non-standard elements which have been deprecated before the approval of the standard itself but are still there after 12 years.

<comment><USER14> I'm not sure that "to make it difficult" is true.

MS Office is very old, from their point of view compatibility will always have to mean it works as much as possible like the previous version.

So suppose you have a three-way condition clause in some code, each paragraph has either "Straight", "Fast" or "Thom Hopkins" formatting. Hmm. During XML standard writing you ask engineers to explain these options so you can write them up for the standard.

"Straight" and "Fast" turn out to each have six paragraph definitions. Great! Write those in the XML standard. The guy you asked to work out "Thom Hopkins" has gone on sick leave due to a mental breakdown, he has left a forty page document, which includes excerpts from several multi-page C++ classes, one of which seems to be a partial implementation of a bin packing solver and another involves regular expressions.

You find the supervisor of the guy who last worked on the original "Thom Hopkins" code. He explains it was developed over 15 years by a large team and was originally a core part of the document engine before the invention of the faster "Straight" paragraph mode sidelined it.

Now, you _could_ add all this crap to an appendix of the proposed XML document standard, and watch a committee vomit when they try to read it OR you could say "Thom Hopkins" is a special mode and shouldn't be used in standards compliant documents, even though it's actually used in millions of templates for your own popular office suite. And then people will say you did it just to spite them...

<comment><USER15> I mostly agree with you, I subscribe to "don't attribute malice where you could attribute incompetence or unforseen factors" but I keep wondering in the back of my head why they would keep all this cruft in the docx format. They hard forked their document format in 2007 and caused a LOT of headache back then, why not take the opportunity to streamline all this stuff, you know? Why not remove "Thom Hopkins" in the case of your story?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm looking forward to giving LibreOffice Online a test drive. Perhaps it can replace Google Docs for us with a nice self-hosted solution.

Are there any public demo instances available?

<comment><USER13> [https://demo.nextcloud.com/#short-term](https://demo.nextcloud.com/#short- term)

<comment><USER4> Great. It works fine even on a tablet with touch. Sure, GoogleDocs is still better, but the power of the underlying LibreOffice will a lot more, and it's on-pare with iCloud and better than MS Word WebApp

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I like LibreOffice as well. I find the whole suite useful: Writer, Calc, Impress and Draw. No heavy office person but I I use Calc several times a week.

It's funny that after so many years the tools still struggles getting traction even among Linux users. The built-in PDF was there years before MS Office which is why I wrote all my Resumes in the past with LibreOffice/OpenOffice. Google Docs might be more intuitive but it has less features than MS Works and I have little control over my privacy.

</comment><comment><USER18> As much as I love LibreOffice -- and I prefer to use it whenever I can for several reasons -- the UI is just painfully awful.

My university and one of the journals I publish in require Word (docx) files for papers and other documents, so I'm required to use Office. No alternatives are allowed, not even LaTeX or sending in PDFs: their whole internal editing and typesetting system is based around Word. Still, while I disliked the ribbon in 2007, I've found the Word UI to have improved significantly over the years, with 2016 being remarkably decent and producing quite presentable documents. I would not object to there being a similar UI them in Writer.

I wanted to use Writer for several papers and my PhD thesis, but it has some difficulty importing my otherwise-not-very-complex Word 2016 files. While the text is imported more or less correctly, table widths and alignments get all screwy (which is a big deal), Word's internal cross-references (e.g. "See Figure X", where X is a number representing a specific figure and if that figure is re-ordered in the document, the number changes) get horribly broken, among other issues. Having Word export as ODT and opening that in Writer fixes some issues but creates more issues to the point where there's no real alternative for me than Word, at least for papers and other academic documents.

It really bugs me, and I blame Word for the interoperability issues. Even so, I have no alternatives due to the requirements of the journal. Bah.

</comment><comment><USER19> I try to get into LibreOffice, but I just can't: on windows the ui is quite laggy, and the fonts just look... strange. It's like both the kerning and AA are off.

</comment><comment><USER20> Warning to Windows users. I've just performed a clean install of the latest version, and I'm experiencing this problem:

[https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/113122/menu-bar- vani...](https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/113122/menu-bar-vanished- cursor-registration-wrong/)

Looks like others are having this problem, too.

<comment><USER20> Just found a solution, disabling OpenGL rendering. Not sure why this works, but it does:

[https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/112724/all-the- words...](https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/112724/all-the-words-in- menu-bar-and-drop-down-lists-are-replaced-with-dots/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I love seeing plain-text-related features appear every once in a while. Stuff like this[0] makes it much easier to use LO with my home-grown notetaking system which is kept in plain text.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBNWOWJul4w&t=1m9s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBNWOWJul4w&t=1m9s)

</comment><comment><USER22> I remember using OpenOffice torrents back in 2004 as the equivalent of `:CheckHealth` to see if users had problems with their network configuration, throttling, connection speed, etc because of how perpetually well-seeded they were.

I tried the torrent download just for kicks, and I was pleasantly surprised that was still the case: it downloaded at over 40MiB/s. (yes, MiB/s, not mbps).

Here's a magnet link if anyone wants:

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:40836b52d32f79dbb90f2453ab3ee6e6da825880&dn=LibreOffice_5.4.0_Win_x64.msi

</comment><comment><USER23> How is the native Wayland support these days?

<comment><USER24> 5.3 already runs perfectly for me on Wayland (native, not through Xwayland). So I guess 5.4 will be the same :)

<comment><USER23> That pleases me. Now if Firefox could catch up....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Forget features. Just make LO usable again. I had to revert to OpenOffice recently in the middle of pitching a client for a desktop db conversion from MS Access. On OS X Sierra LO has regressed.

</comment><comment><USER26> I use calc all the time, and it does just fine, but one thing I'd like to know how to fix is the poor performance when having a filter applied on a long column...it crawls...

<comment><USER27> Have you submitted a bug report or looked for an existing one? [https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Li...](https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=LibreOffice;bug_status=UNCONFIRMED;version=)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Libreoffice is too slow with large documents.

<comment><USER29> At what size (in MB) of document have you noticed that it gets too slow? asking because I am planning to use it for a writing project.

<comment><USER30> I do course guides and question sets to support teaching in LibreOffice Writer (at home) and OpenOffice (at work). In the 60 page range, with lots of formulas, diagrams (drawn with drawing tools) and some bitmap images (scans of hand drawn graphs). I also copy in charts and graphs and more complex drawings from Calc/Impress as needed. No complex 'section' schemes or restyling though just writing straight through.

The size in Mb varies according to the number of scans - the drawings and diagrams themselves take little file space. A 100 page course guide comes in around 2Mb as an .odt with half a dozen scanned plots.

Seems sprightly enough on a core-duo laptop with 2Gb ram and KDE at home and the usual 'office PC' at work.

<comment><USER29> Interesting. Thanks for the info. Don't know a lot about the sizes of word processing docs, but slightly surprised that a 100 page doc would come in at as little as 2 MB. I would have thought it should be more. Maybe it is due to ODT format being compressed text/XML, which I think I read somewhere - need to look up the format spec.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I havent checked in a while, but have they given up on the pathetic attempt at an Access clone? It looked like someones weekend project accidentally got turned into a product.</comment>


The React license for founders and CTOs - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@ji/the-react-license-for-founders-and-ctos-b38d2538f3e5 <comment><USER2> _One other downside is that, if you're relying on Facebook open source, the license makes it hard to claim that Facebook is infringing your patents. Facebook could use your patented designs and processes and it's understandable you'd want to hold them responsible in court. As part of the patent grant, you'd have to stop using Facebook open source upon claiming patent infringement._

This. This is the whole freaking problem.

The problem with software is that there's no real "moat" for most products. We've seen again and again that major software companies are happy to let small competitors test new solutions and products, then eat them if they're successful.

Don't want to sell? They just pop up a clone and use their market leverage to force you out.

This license just exacerbates the problem.

Facebook's license basically reads: "Hey, if you use our stuff, we'll reserve the right to eat your business if and when we like. Want to sue us for it? Well now your product doesn't exist anymore because you lost all the licenses."

<comment><USER3> > your product doesn't exist anymore because you lost all the licenses

I think the revocation only applies to patents granted by the patents clause and the licenses (for using the software) are still valid. I might be wrong though.</comment></comment>


Old Car Brochures - <AUTHOR> http://www.oldcarbrochures.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> I feel like the 1974 Lincoln/Mercury brochure ([http://www.oldcarbrochures.com/static/NA/Lincoln/1974_Lincol...](http://www.oldcarbrochures.com/static/NA/Lincoln/1974_Lincoln/1974_Lincoln- Mercury_Brochure/dirindex.html)) may represent peak '70s salesmanship...

 _> Last year 44 out of 50 airline pilots rated a 1973 Marquis Brougham more comfortable to drive than a $31,000 European town car._

 _> We've demonstrated the excellent ride of a 1973 Monterey Custom in a dramatic test: a vial of nitric acid was safely suspended over a $50,000 natural Russian sable coat on loan from Maximilian of New York, while traveling over rough and irregular road surfaces._

 _> Sexy European cars with great style and superb performance have had, all too often, prices that run into five figures. Until Capri that is._

... not to mention Detroit's bizarre '70s fascination with what to the modern eye are unbelievably tacky materials:

 _> The [Lincoln Continental] Mark IV instrument panel is simulated cashmere walnut woodgrain matina and burl walnut woodgrain applique._

 _> For 1974, the Mark IV has new, sophisticated insulation against outside sound, thick 25-ounce shag cut-pile carpeting enhancing the luxurious interior, further hushing the ride._

 _> Overhead rich vinyl sheathes sun visors and headlining. Super-soft, expanded vinyl covers the European-influenced bucket seats and even door panels. There are rich tones of woodgrain vinyl along the dash. Touches of European luxury everywhere._

A word I was unable to find anywhere in the brochure: "mileage."

A word I only came across on the last page of the brochure, down with the fine print: "safety."

<comment><USER2> Fake wood grain is one of the enduring mysteries, not only is it gross, tacky and objectively uglier than real wood, its not even any cheaper!

<comment><USER3> I think the deal with a lot of those materials is that at the time they were seen as "new" and "modern" and "synthetic".

Kind of like when aluminum became a du jour metal and things traditionally made from other metals suddenly had to be made with aluminum —nowadays we think of aluminum as cheap and disposable (depending on application), but for s time it was the "Titanium" of its day, and the same for those other materials.

<comment><USER4> I was a kid in the 70s, but even at that tender age I thought the synthetic substitutes looked like shit. They didn't look "new and modern", they looked cheap and like someone was trying to make do with the economical alternative.

So don't be fooled by the brochures. We weren't.

<comment><USER3> They didn't have to appeal to everyone. I don't think it's much different from the novelty of "clear acrylic" telephones.

What I really don't get is how anyone would want this station wagons with the fake wood paneling and obtrusive fake trim on things like the Chevy fleetmaster. But I think it's just one of those incomprehensible fads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I cant help but thinking from these brochures that people had more picnics in the 50s/60s than we do now. Perhaps it was a trend for awhile. Or maybe related to the fact people couldn't easily live together before marriage :P

<comment><USER6> Maybe it is like how you might think there are a lot of Americans who are frequently hauling things and going off road in their pick up trucks ... but they probably aren't ;)

Not unreal, but perhaps the volume of depiction and such was more aspirational than reality.

<comment><USER7> I think you're on to something.

The picnic scene is a lot like the picket fence suburb scene. Iconic atomic family American dream.

<comment><USER8> I just realized that I own a pickup, have a white picket fence around my suburban home, and enjoy picnics.

To be fair, though, my pickup is a 1946 Dodge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> While looking for some proprietary hose fittings I came across back issues of an automobile trade mag. Here's one from 1964. What a time to be alive.

[http://www.ai- online.com/Adv/catalog/downloadCatalog.php?id=...](http://www.ai- online.com/Adv/catalog/downloadCatalog.php?id=1093)

</comment><comment><USER10> > > [http://www.oldcarbrochures.com/static/NA/Ford/1924_Ford/1924...](http://www.oldcarbrochures.com/static/NA/Ford/1924_Ford/1924%20Ford%20Freedom%20Mailer/image2.html)

Funny how this Ford was marketed only as a "summer and fall" car... Forget about the winter...

Also - interesting to note that I see no car model years between 1941 and 1945. WWII I suppose...

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, all civilian car production in the U.S. was suspended for the duration of the war so the auto plants could be used to produce military trucks, tanks and aircraft.

<comment><USER11> I'm astounded sometimes how little people know about history anymore.

<comment><USER12> Well, nobody can know everything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> good to see But some links are misdirecting

[http://oldcarbrochures.org/index.php/index.php/Canada](http://oldcarbrochures.org/index.php/index.php/Canada) \--> [http://oldcarbrochures.org/Canada/](http://oldcarbrochures.org/Canada/)

and

[http://oldcarbrochures.org/index.php/Australia-2](http://oldcarbrochures.org/index.php/Australia-2) \--> [http://oldcarbrochures.org/Australia/](http://oldcarbrochures.org/Australia/)

</comment><comment><USER14> An 1924 Ford cost $265 (In this Freedom Mailer: [http://www.oldcarbrochures.com/static/NA/Ford/1924_Ford/1924...](http://www.oldcarbrochures.com/static/NA/Ford/1924_Ford/1924%20Ford%20Freedom%20Mailer/image2.html)), which in today's money is only $3,968 (based on [https://www.usinflationcalculator.com](https://www.usinflationcalculator.com)). Is that true? Why didn't _everybody_ have a car?

<comment><USER15> Employee wages were lower as well I suppose.

<comment><USER14> Wouldn't that be incorporated in the inflation though?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Man the 87 Chevrolet Camaro IROC-Z[0] is still such a beautiful vehicle. So much fun having a 5.7 liter 8 cylinder as an underachieving 16 year old newly minted driver!

[0][http://www.oldcarbrochures.com/static/NA/Chevrolet/1987_Chev...](http://www.oldcarbrochures.com/static/NA/Chevrolet/1987_Chevrolet/1987_Chevrolet_Camaro_Brochure/1987%20Chevrolet%20Camaro-03.html)

</comment><comment><USER17> These are always really interesting! I wish they had a better UI though since often the collectors appear not to be web devs (and we all are - here on hn :p).

<comment><USER18> Honestly, most of the time these simple websites are way nicer to use than what "web devs" put out these days.

<comment><USER17> I totally agree with you. For this site I would just wish it had the images to either full with or height mode and a next/previous button at exactly the same position to flip through the brochures. But I hear you on the js insanity front -- been there, suffered that. :p

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is amazing. I found the brochure for both my parents' first cars. My dad had his first car until I was 13, so I most definitely remember riding around in it.

</comment><comment><USER20> You might also like visiting the ZeitHaus in Wolfsburg, Germany. It's a museum packed with old cars.

</comment><comment><USER21> Love it! I had to go lookup some of my old rides.

</comment><comment><USER22> I clicked a few links and got 404 every time.

<comment> King-Aaron I didn't have this experience, i.e. [http://www.oldcarbrochures.com/static/Australia%20and%20New%...](http://www.oldcarbrochures.com/static/Australia%20and%20New%20Zealand/Holden/1970%20Holden%20Torano%20GTR-X%20Concept/image1.html) resolves for me

<comment><USER23> If you're on an iPhone the site redirects to [http://oldcarbrochures1.bmobilized.com/](http://oldcarbrochures1.bmobilized.com/) which doesn't resolve.

<comment><USER24> Bypass with "Request Desktop Site" in Safari

<comment><USER23> The links on the site redirect before there's a chance to do that.

<comment><USER24> Do it on the home page. Worked for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is gold!</comment>


Facebook, Microsoft, Mozilla form W3C group to clean up the mobile web - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/119993-facebook-microsoft-mozilla-join-forces-to-clean-up-the-mobile-web

<comment><USER2> > The reason they're not part of the W3C group, of course, is because they're > both making vast amounts of money through their proprietary, locked-down app > stores.

Considering 97% of Google's revenue still comes from advertising, I'm not sure that I'd characterize Google as making "vast amounts of money through their proprietary, locked-down app store".</comment>


First app for Apple Store  - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UZmPxvWM3g This is my first mobile game. It is made with Unreal Engine. Check out the iTunes link : http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/evil-conveyor/id492002451?mt=8.
Any feedback about the game will be very helpful. About the art/gameplay/logic.
The development took about 8 months with 2 Artist and 1 programmer.
Thanks for reading! <comment><AUTHOR> This is my first mobile game. It is made with Unreal Engine. Check out the iTunes link : [http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/evil- conveyor/id492002451?mt=...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/evil- conveyor/id492002451?mt=8).

Any feedback about the game will be very helpful. About the art/gameplay/logic.

The development took about 8 months with 2 Artist and 1 programmer.

Thanks for reading!</comment>


The Tech Industry Has a Drinking Problem and It Is Hurting Diversity - <AUTHOR> https://kevincrawley.io/posts/tech-industry-drinking-problem/ <comment><USER2> While I will _absolutely_ concede that being born a middle-class white Caucasian male in the US is an objectively advantageous and generally privileged situation to be born in to...

You're going to lose me at the notion that I'm somehow exercising "white privilege" by consuming/offering alcohol at/around/near work functions or venues.

If the author is already making the reader concede an implicit agreement that there is an "inclusion/diversity" problem, then I'd argue the problem exists at a deeper, more fundamental level.

This reeks of selection bias and circular reasoning when you say that things that occur in a non-diverse environment are immediately perfect examples of non-diversity because "look at this non-diverse group of people partaking in $thing".

I'm even fine with saying it's non-inclusive, _except_ that has to cut across all demographics, including white males. There are plenty of white males employed in tech who find the idea of socializing/drinking with co-workers absolutely contrary to what they feel is fun or engaging.

As a thought experiment: let's say all tech companies, from startup to FAANG, as of today, went completely "dry" for any and all work-hosted functions, as well the same policy for all corporate offices/locations.

Would diversity get any better? And if not, how can you say it was making it worse?

<comment><AUTHOR> > You're going to lose me at the notion that I'm somehow exercising "white > privilege" by consuming/offering alcohol at/around/near work functions or > venues.

That wasn't the point of my statement re: privilege. It was more of an allegory to the fact that I didn't get thrown in jail for some of the really stupid shit I did in the past.

Let's also consider the social advantage of those who do imbibe with those who don't in regards to building relationships with superiors at your job.

<comment><USER2> > Let's also consider the social advantage of those who do imbibe with those > who don't in regards to building relationships with superiors at your job.

Ok, but that "advantage", or lack thereof, is not exclusionary only to non- white, non-males, which was a fundamental premise of the article.

You're shifting gears between:

"alcohol is evidence of, and further exacerbates, a diversity/inclusion issue stemming from a heavy bias towards white males"

to:

"alcohol is bad for the workplace, regardless of context, because it is exclusionary and leads to problems and implicit/explicit social and health consequences"

This post carries a similar theme to many before it: tech worker(who maybe or maybe not drank in a work-context in the past) gets "woke" about it and decrees that it's bad.

The line I quoted from your recent comment alludes to what I think is what most of these articles are truly railing against:

the implicit, unstated social hierarchies that are created in a given workplace, and the advantages they offer to their members in terms of choice project assignment, progression, recognition, and overall career satisfaction.

Guess what? Remove drinking from the workplace, and _the exact same thing_ will happen anyways. It may not form around drinking. Or, in all likelihood, it still will, just unofficially after-hours, which is likely to be even _more_ exclusionary, because there will be no impetuous for forced inclusion.

We as a species have been building complex social hierarchies for most of our history. That will always select for individuals who are more "social" versus ones who are not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> After I completed Techstars in 2013, they asked all of us for feedback. My #1 piece of feedback to Techstars was to please stop with alcohol at every event. I had several reasons, most of which aren't really touched on here, but are nonetheless important:

1) I can't hear a damn thing or talk at a normal level to investors or mentors in a bar that is playing loud dance music. (Techstars often held events at local bars.) It is uncomfortable to sit in a barstool and literally yell about your business to someone. I can't imagine this is a gender thing. Most of us, especially introverts, wouldn't be comfortable in that situation.

2) Many people see bars as hookups or pickup spots. The environment is geared toward that. I was in a committed relationship at the time and I'm now married (I'm a woman.) I don't want hookups; I'm there to meet investors or mentors.

3) As in above, even at the office, alcohol blurs boundaries and encourages people to do things they otherwise wouldn't (like yell uncomfortable jokes or hit on other people.) It's not a good look for those of us who are there to work.

4) If you don't like alcohol or don't drink, you miss out on the opportunities to "meet and mingle." I can remember many events I declined because they were alcohol-focused (wine tastings, for instance.) I strongly feel I missed out on potential connections to investors and mentors because of this. I now go more often to these types of events because I feel they further my business, but I wish I didn't have to.

I am not as concerned with statistics as I am with alienation. It's not just women or minorities; I've met plenty of straight, white males who don't like drinking either, or feel pressure to drink more than they otherwise would thanks to these events. Removing alcohol from these events does us _all_ good.

</comment><comment><USER4> Neo-puritans are very strange people. I feel like it wouldn't be too difficult to go find prohibitionist rhetoric from the 1890s that essentially recapitulates exactly this post.

 _Instead of a bar or keg at the office, consider an exercise room with equipment that tracks, ranks, and encourages competition._

Ableism! Ageism! and a healthy serving of Hobbsean ruthlessness to boot. That'll clear up those pesky diversity issues in short order.

<comment><USER5> "consider an exercise room with equipment that tracks, ranks, and encourages competition."

I also loled when I read that. Let's replace one extremely bro-ey activity with another. Brillant.

<comment><USER6> How is exercise a bro-ey activity? Don't project your insecurity on reality.

<comment><USER4> exercise isn't. "I can bench more than you, bruh, and our #maxflex slack channel that updates from the weight room proves it!" sure is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > 59.8% of respondents who drank in the past 30 days identified as > White/Caucasian

That's very representative of the country as a whole, wherein white, non- hispanic people make up approximately 61% of the population.[1] Rather than supporting the author's point of view, that statistic seems a good apology for an opposing viewpoint.

> How many of you reading this hang out at crack houses or opium dens? I > realize this is an extreme example, but I'm being serious...we don't go to > these places because we don't use those substances...

Actually, ...[2]

I believe the author has it backwards. Alcohol use isn't contributing to bad work environments; bad work environments are contributing to alcohol abuse.

[1]: [https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/...](https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?src=bkmk)

[2]: [https://www.mercurynews.com/2014/07/25/use-of-illicit- drugs-...](https://www.mercurynews.com/2014/07/25/use-of-illicit-drugs- becomes-part-of-silicon-valleys-work-culture/)

</comment><comment><USER8> > Before we can have a healthy conversation about this, I assume you'll agree > that our industry has an inclusion and diversity problem. If this isn't the > case, you can stop here; I doubt I'm going to convince you of anything in > this post.

I guess I have to stop reading there. :/

<comment><USER9> I love the implication that if you don't agree, you can't have a healthy discussion.

I'm also not sure of the aim; if you have no desire to convince those who don't initially agree, you're preaching to the choir. Isn't the diversity gang enough of an echo chamber already?

<comment><USER10> You're constructing a straw man. The post is making an argument for _why_ there's a lack of inclusion. This rests on the assumption that a lack of inclusion exists. Defending that assumption is left to other discussions, nevertheless there are many people who already agree with it. If you're not such a person i.e. you don't agree with the assumption, the post isn't for you: you have nothing to gain from it.

<comment><USER8> It's possible for there to be no systemic inclusion problem _and_ alcohol creates inclusion problems.

<comment><USER11> i guess i'm not sure what the solution is. are we not supposed to drink? Any hobby or activity that not everyone participates in has the potential to be non inclusive. At my last work a lot of people loved camping but i didn't. Should i stop them from camping because they might make social bonds that aren't available to me?

<comment><USER10> I think the onus is on the company to pro-actively organise social events which don't centre on drinking.

<comment><USER11> but some people are introverts. so it's not very inclusive to have any event as an extrovert would be more likely to go and make connections and introverts would be discriminated. maybe we should ban all events

<comment><USER8> Clearly the reasonable thing to do is stop trying to be infinitely inclusive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm not sure this is a systematic issue vs a workplace by workplace issue. Certainly some companies have a lot more of a drink focused culture than others. Additionally, some teams (lookin' at you, Sales) have the stereotype of having that kind of environment.

As far as addressing drinking, I think the thing to tackle is being compassionate and empathetic to all sorts of issues, not just alcohol abuse in particular. Do you have members on the team that have a disability? Do people practice a religion that requires quiet space throughout the day? How will you accommodate those people?

<comment><USER8> I think a key difference is that people are more than capable of doing their job while differently abled or differently religious. Alcoholics or those who choose to abuse alcohol in the workplace are not capable of doing their job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> >Instead of a bar or keg at the office, consider an exercise room with equipment that tracks, ranks, and encourages competition.

Can you see how your own logic can be applied to this suggestion turning it into a "systemic inclusion problem" for people who don't want to hang out in the exercise room or publicly compare their physical abilities with their coworkers? It's nonsense. People will do what they choose to do and personal choices will _never_ be equally represented in any population.

<comment><AUTHOR> You took my sentence out of context, I said you may "CONSIDER" it.

Nonetheless, of course it could be. You could say that video games in an office isn't being inclusive.

<comment><USER13> Exactly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> We recently rented an office at a WeWork location. I was first surprised to find that beer was available on tap, and then that it was limited to four beers per day---presumably due to abuse in the past. I wasn't actually at that office, so I can't comment on the atmosphere, but this seems to me to be encourage a frat-boy / heavy drinking culture. I've seen similar in certain parts of start-up land. As something who doesn't like alcohol I do find this off-putting, and if I was looking for a job I would stay away from places that advertised easy availability of alcohol as a perk.

I don't think this the culture of all of tech. Indeed tech is too big to have one culture. But it is in my experience the culture of part of it.

</comment><comment><USER15> > It is time our industry recognizes that alcohol has no place in healthy, > diverse, and inclusive environments.

If your working environment has issues with people getting trashed and behaving unprofessionally at company functions where alcohol is served, I would posit that the problem will not disappear in the absence of alcohol.

</comment><comment><USER16> > Before I begin, I want to say that I've spent around 10 years curating this > opinion.

I don't know what to make of this. Did it require 10 years to write this article? Or is it just "I know what I'm talking about, I've spent 10 years having this opinion"?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's simply meant to prepare the reader that I've put a lot of thought into this, and that I have a pretty strong opinion.

If I reflect upon this, it's perhaps to prepare the reader for the idea that it's going to take a very strong counter-argument for me to change my beliefs on this matter.

<comment><USER17> After reading some of the other reactions to your article, I can't help but feel HN crowd is being quite persnickety today with semantics.

<comment><USER16> "I believed in ... for ... years" is not an argument, it provides no facts, it serves as a tool to psychologically influence the reader.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Digit-Al Are there really companies that have alcohol available in the office? That seems very odd to me. I am English, which is very much a drinking culture, but every company I have worked at in the last 20 years has had an explicit policy on not drinking alcohol during working hours. This doesn't prevent people having one during their lunch break if they want to, but if you have enough to be noticeable you're probably going to be in trouble; and drinking in the office is definitely frowned upon.

<comment><USER18> Beer on tap is common at some kinds of companies. Some only bring it out on Friday afternoons. Having enough to be noticeable during work hours would probably get you in trouble.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I definitely have worked places where co-workers enjoyed staying late and then heading to a bar afterwards, and honestly I did feel a bit left out because drinking at bars held zero appeal to me. Personally, that is more due to my autism-related aversions to crowds and loud sounds, but knowing that the few bar experiences I've had usually involve a strange man trying to talk to me for a romantic reason if I stray away from another man for two minutes... that really does put the nail in the coffin. It would have been nice if there were other options offered, but really it's even more optimal for me just to work somewhere without any expectation of regular post-work socialization and bonding at all. And working remotely does that for me. I don't feel like I'm missing out or not "one of the team" any more.

I'm really not bothered by people sharing a beer or two at the office or lunch though. Nobody gives me a hard time for saying no, as it just means more to go around for others.

As long as there are good options, with equal career opportunity growth, available to people who don't prefer cultures where social drinking is the norm, I think it's not a big deal so long as companies are up front with it. I do worry that some people may get a gig on a team at a big company that has that culture though and feel excluded or otherwise be seen as not a team player for not participating, but that can honestly happen with many different things (ie, vegans/vegetarians/religious people needing food options, parents needing kid-friendly schedules) so I don't think not drinking is especially unique - though it is perhaps very often ignored.

</comment><comment><USER20> All of these stats look to be from American sources. Did you consider the overall rest of the world, when you used the all-encompassing statement " _The Tech Industry Has a Drinking Problem_ "?

If not, then I think that, whilst you might have had the best intentions in mind, you really miss the mark for actually covering the _whole_ industry.

In other words: How apt are your statistics, anecdotes, and points of view to be applicable in countries where the drinking age is _far_ lower than in the states? What is the actual ratio of those countries having alcohol at company events versus after-work events, coordinated by workers at 'x' company? How much more or less-likely are those countries to have drinking problems (statistically, speaking) in their populace?

You seem to ignore this, whilst simultaneously stating that an entire industry has a problem - using a sample-set from a small portion of its total whole.

I'm not sure if you're being intentionally disingenuous or if this results from jingosim or if you just haven't considered any of this but it comes across as askewed American exceptionalism: We have this problem and so, by that logic, the whole world must.

</comment><comment><USER21> > ...And It Is Hurting Diversity

Is this really the best angle that they could find? One would assume that a drinking problem - even when confined outside of actual "work" \- would impact _basic professionalism_ well before diversity. See, e.g. the way that a widespread "drinking culture" may have contributed to the recently-unearthed cases of harrassment at top "tech" firms.

<comment><USER22> AIUI the author is being too clever by half, by using "drinking problem" to mean "a problem that involves drinking" (the "drinking culture" you alluded to) rather than the usual meaning "suffers from alcoholism".

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is especially true of tech conferences. I've stopped attending altogether mostly due to the drinking 'culture' of the events.

</comment><comment><USER24> In my experience, alcohol is mostly served to techies because they aren't very social while sober. Yes, it is stereotype but I've found it to be 100% true. :) Even with techies, deep technical discussions are very hard to have because they are so shy. Many of them needs to be inebriated to dare discussing whether they prefer hash-based disk indices or tree-based ones.

</comment><comment><USER25> This post doesn't present any evidence that drinking is more of a problem for the tech industry than any other industry. Purely anecdotally it seems to me that the service industry (restaurants and bars), medicine, journalism, law and aviation are all worse.

I don't drink myself and haven't found it to be a problem (although I did drink in the past).

</comment><comment><USER26> It's not the "tech industry". It's a certain segment of the "tech industry". The same segment that hires like a fraternity hazing. That segment cultivates this. That segment _wants_ this. Is that good or bad? I dunno. I don't want any part of it, but that's my choice.

</comment><comment><USER27> The writer needs to be exposed to more varieties of tech companies. I've worked at quite a few tech companies and never had any pressure to drink. And even at those few social events, I just ask for a soda or virgin cocktail and nobody made a fuss.

</comment><comment><USER28> Its not just alcohol. In the last few years I've counted too many startup CEO's who use speed, mushrooms, LSD and MDMA as if they are standard tools of the trade. It seems like there was a lull during the early part of the 2000's, but recently a resurgence in the use of mind-altering drugs in this industry seems to have occurred.

I fear that there will be a period, up ahead, where it all comes crashing down. Cybernauts may think they've got everything under control, but in my opinion this point of view requires a great deal of ignorance of the decades past, not to mention dire hubris.

<comment> Digit-Al Let's face it, the tech industry is is not renowned for a lack of hubris.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Absolutely true. I drink, but I also commute by car - so that rules out drinking socially at work.

My recent offices have been good about mixing the mandatory-fun-days between drinking and dry establishments.

We did have to chat to an enthusiastic social organiser about why a cocktail mixing class wasn't going to be a great team-building experience with half our team missing.

And, yes, I've been guilty of lazily organising pizza and beer dev events when I really should know better. I'd rather have it called out than have people feel uncomfortable.

</comment><comment><USER30> Christ, what next? Ping pong tables create an inclusivity problem? Music played in the lobby? Catering? Anything that can conceivably differentiate individuals is fair game for these inclusivity nuts. People's tastes are different, what brings people together is going to be different, and people of some kind or another are going to be left out one way or another. You can't have diversity and complete inclusivity at the same time, they ultimately contradict each other.

<comment><USER9> > You can't have diversity and complete inclusivity at the same time, they > ultimately contradict each other.

That's because the diversity these people care about is only skin-deep.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> The tech industry's substance abuse issues like drinking or other drugs are a terrible issue.

This comes from a industry wide occupational burnout issue. Major names like Cisco, Twitch, or Nvidia have staff who are >50% burnt out.

The lack of diversity has absolutely nothing to do with anything here.

</comment><comment><USER32> I think the OP is onto something, but I'll argue that the OP is leaning too heavily on their convictions instead of using facts to make their case.

The first problem I noticed is that they seem to warrant that 4 or 5 drinks per week is "problem drinking." This is not true. First, the point at which drinking is a problem varies from person to person[1]; taller and/or heavier people can drink more than shorter and/or lighter people. Second, the rate at which one drinks is a important factor that isn't considered in OP's opinion piece. Me drinking 4 or 5 beers over the course of a weekend will produce a much different outcome (and a much sadder weekend) than me drinking 4 or 5 beers within an hour (without drinking water in between or after) or even 1 beer per day for the entire work week (which is probably the most telling sign of problem drinking, though it is a very weak sign).

The next problem is the introduction itself. The author asserts that the reader is informed of some abstract "diversity and inclusion" problems within tech and automatically dismisses anyone who thinks differently. (How do you fix the fact that white males are much more likely to apply for a tech job than white females or people of color? Is this a symptom or a cause for our diversity problems? These discussions don't matter to the author, however, because the author is automatically right and doubts that they can convince you otherwise. BTW, I generally agree that tech has a diversity problem.)

The last problem that I'll call out here is that the author suggests that companies install workout facilities or do non-alcoholic activities every other week instead of installing kegs or going to bars. First, installing exercise rooms is MUCH MUCH MUCH more expensive than sourcing kegs from your local brewery. It also increases insurance costs and liabilities (because people can get seriously hurt if they use the treadmill wrong, for example). Second, why can't companies just host multiple events instead of banning drinks for a week (and alienating people who like bars or beers or whiskeys or whatever)? What's going to stop people from hitting the bar after doing $non_alcoholic_thing? Third, nobody is holding a gun to anyone's heads telling them that they have to drink. Bars have non-alcoholic options. Choosing to drink is a _choice_.

[1] [https://talbottcampus.com/problem-drinking-vs-alcoholism- wha...](https://talbottcampus.com/problem-drinking-vs-alcoholism-whats-the- difference/)

</comment><comment><USER33> More like "The Drinking Industry has a Tech problem", HeHehe

</comment><comment><USER6> People in all industries tend to drink often.</comment>


What is the best free university from MS in Computer Sciences? - <AUTHOR> What are the best computer science universities that also offer assistance ship to foreigners. My current only choices are NUST(world ranking: 500) & Fast Universities in Pakistan. People tell me education in Germany is free. <comment><AUTHOR> I have fair CGPA of 3/4 and willing to travel to any country to study.</comment>


Measure your knowledge of the form, meaning, and use of English affixes - <AUTHOR> http://my.vocabularysize.com/select/test

<comment><AUTHOR> The word parts (affixes) in this test appear in more than one word in the most frequent 10,000 words in the British National Corpus.

Researchers believe that in order to use word part (affix) knowledge when guessing the meaning of unknown words, you need to at least: a) recognise a word part in the word, b) know the meaning of the word part, and c) know its function (i.e., part of speech)

This test measures each aspect of word part knowledge: whether you can recognise the forms, your knowledge of their meanings, and your knowledge of their functions.</comment>


Libmill v1.2: 1700x improvement in performance - <AUTHOR> http://www.freelists.org/post/libmill/Version-12-available,1 <comment><AUTHOR> TCP roundtrip times over loopback in the presence of 1/10/100/1000/1000 parallel connections:

Old version (poll):

10/12/22/435/10500 us.

New version(epoll):

10/13/8/6/6 us.</comment>


Rescue.js - <AUTHOR> http://rescuejs.com/

<comment><USER2> I'm still not sure how it catches all unhandled exceptions. I looked at the source code (<http://rescuejs.com/rescue.beta.js>) and it only seems to wrap setTimeout, setInterval, jQuery.fn.ready, and jQuery.event.add. What about exceptions in other functions? Or does capturing the e.backtrace have something to do with it?

Would love to know (and if this works out of the box, what's to prevent cross- domain scripts from communicating with each other by raising exceptions?)

<comment><USER3> It indeed appears to be unable to catch exceptions that happen in event handlers that aren't attached with jQuery or directly in <script/> tags not wrapped in .ready() events, which is interesting because doing so is totally possible: <https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/DOM/window.onerror>

There's an argument to be made for attaching event handlers any way besides using jQuery would be bad practice, but not waiting for .ready() to fire is totally normal for sites practicing Progressive Enhancement that put all the <script/> tags at the end of the <body/>.

<comment><USER4> We will add support for window.onerror eventually, but there are two reasons we haven't yet done this:

1\. window.onerror gives you no backtrace 2\. hooking into jQuery.event.add lets us tell you "this error happened when the user clicked that button".

We've not yet implemented the UI for 2. (48 hours is not so long as we thought!); but I remain convinced that suitable integration with various frameworks is a much better developer experience than trying to rely on just the error message. Being able to see both the source code where the exception happened (see <http://rescuejs.com/assets/screen_341.png>) and the user context in which it happens makes it considerably easier to fix the problem.

<comment><USER3> That sounds great, but what if, for example, you used a library that, following perfectly good practices, intentionally doesn't have external dependencies and hence doesn't use jQuery.event.add nor jQuery.fn.ready, and an exception occurs in it or a callback the page author passes to it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Could we start to add some information on what the given js library does in the HN titles?

</comment><comment><USER6> There's also Sentry (<https://github.com/getsentry/sentry>) which works on the server side too (with python, node.js, php, ruby and java)

</comment><comment><USER7> Is this basically what Proxino does? <https://www.proxino.com/>

</comment><comment><USER8> It should be possible to get exceptions raised in event listeners too (including stacktraces) if you wrap the DOM prototypes. I do something similar in the exception catcher we use at Cue: [https://github.com/Cue/greplin- exception-catcher/blob/master...](https://github.com/Cue/greplin-exception- catcher/blob/master/javascript/errorcatcher.js)

Not only does it log stacktraces, but it also breaks Firebug. And you'll find out that most of your exceptions end up coming from JS injected by shady toolbars and malware on people's systems :-(.

</comment><comment><USER9> Also check out <http://ratchet.io> which also supports debug-style logging so you can, for example, wrap console.log() to debug client-side issues in production.

</comment><comment><USER10> We rumbled as well. Not as practical. We made a Star Trek game. <http://the- glimmer-twins.r12.railsrumble.com/>

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER11> That's a neat use of JavaScript Source Maps. Unfortunately, it looks like you would effectively need to make your non-minified codebase public. Any plans for ways to get around that?

<comment><USER12> Your source code is not that special. Really. Do you really think you have some clever trick nobody else has considered, and that you can successfully hide it behind minification? Come on.

<comment><USER13> While timmclean's comment does indicate that he was thinking about keeping your codebase private; most people minify their code to cut down on filesizes... so his questions is still valid.

<comment><USER14> The question is, but it's answered with source maps. The concern that source maps allow anybody greater access to your code is not a valid one.

<comment><USER11> I just did some more reading on source maps. I thought they had far more information about the original source than they actually do. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Looks very much like <http://errorception.com> to me. Definitely a dense market now, a comparison page would help.

</comment><comment><USER16> <http://www.errorify.com/> is also using sourcemaps (and you don't have to make non-minified code public), with no dependencies (like jquery, ...), totally crossbrowser and provides optional code rewriting. And has unified dashboard <http://www.errorify.com/features>

@glesperance 10x

<comment><USER17> There's one too many 'r' in your first url.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> When I tried to do this myself, I ran into a problem with lots of errors happening for reasons exterior to my app - People have strange plugins, that may fail; if the user navigates away from a page, before all javascript has loaded, it might cause unpredictable errors. You probably need to filter these out, to be able to use it for anything.

</comment><comment><USER19> Is this like <http://errorception.com/> ?

</comment><comment><USER20> How do you deal with minified JS (which is what you normally have in production)?

<comment><USER21> They mention that they use source maps ([http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/developertools/source...](http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/developertools/sourcemaps/)) at the bottom of the page.

<comment><USER20> Ouch. Looks pretty complex. Has anybody here tried it? Any feedback?

<comment><USER22> If your minifier/obfuscator supports creation of source maps, it's simple. You just need to set a flag to tell it to create the map along with minified JS and you're good to go. UglifyJS2 and Closure Compiler are among those that can create a source map.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Implementations of Cat(1) from Various Sources (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/pete/cats <comment><USER2> Unused variable in plan9 implementation? [https://github.com/pete/cats/blob/master/plan9-cat.c#L22](https://github.com/pete/cats/blob/master/plan9-cat.c#L22)

<comment><USER3> [https://github.com/brho/plan9/blob/89d43d2262ad43eb4b26c2a8d...](https://github.com/brho/plan9/blob/89d43d2262ad43eb4b26c2a8d6a27cfeddb33828/nix/sys/src/cmd/tcs/plan9.h) seems to be a global variable. [https://9fans.github.io/plan9port/man/man3/arg.html](https://9fans.github.io/plan9port/man/man3/arg.html) also references it.

<comment><USER4> Thank you, that bit was very interesting. I like the idea for single threaded applications of having argv0 be a global.

<comment><USER5> Doesn't have to be single-threaded even. Main writes the pointer at the start, and no one else is going to change it, just read from it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How this GitHub project missed the punning opportunity on calling itself "herding-cats" is beyond me. :-)

</comment><comment><USER7> Woah:

      GNU     782 lines
      others  123 average lines

counting only the UNIX cat with the most lines to keep them from messing with the average.

</comment><comment><USER8> aww, cats are cute</comment>


How I got a YC interview as a single founder and blew it at the final hurdle  - <AUTHOR> http://swaggadocio.com/post/37188318276/how-i-got-a-yc-interview-as-a-single-founder-and-blew <comment><USER4> Honestly I don't get it. While the story is cool, it really just seems like you're comfortable blowing several thousand dollars on what, lets be honest, is a very, very unlikely chance at securing a domain name.

I know this story speaks of SV culture in some way; huge risk, huge rewards and the idea that no one can stop you. If the venture pays off, it makes you a hero. If it doesn't, well you get a cool story. But you're aiming to be head of your own company, you need to make wise business decisions. This doesn't look like one, and just shows (me) that you're willing to make large gambles for a chance at winning the lottery. Where do you draw the line?

<comment><USER5> Good domains are valuable, so a few thousand pounds is a small amount to risk. Zap.com is a really good domain. His approach was smart. A billionaire is too busy to discuss the sale of a domain, but if you do manage to catch his interest, he may well give it to you free/cheap because it isn't an asset he spends time worrying about.

I love the conservative objections here. Stunts like this only work if most people aren't willing to try (EDIT - thanks).

EDIT: Outlandish stunts are the best way to improve your hustling abilities. If you have the time and money to try it, you win either way.

<comment><USER6> > A billionaire is too busy to discuss the sale of a domain, but if you do > manage to catch his interest, he may well give it to you free/cheap because > it isn't an asset he spends time worrying about.

From what I read, it was the hedge fund not the billionaire that had the domain.

if that's the case, then the problem is that the fund is carrying the domain on their books for some value, say $100,000.

If they give it away for "free/cheap" then they report a loss of $100,000 to not only their investors but also themselves, presumably they are invested in their own fund:)

no one is going to let someone else at the fund just give away $100,000 of gains.

<comment><USER7> No real difference between the baller at his own hedge fund and the fund.

<comment><USER6> umm, I think you'd feel different if you were an investor in the fund and the principles just started giving your money away :)

Remember the money isn't just the owners, it belongs to the limited partners, ie the people who put money into the fund.

<comment><USER7> He's already been investigated (or prosecuted, I forget) for expensing personal stuff at the fund. But really, it would be easy to consider it an investment, or buy the asset personally and then invest it personally. Whether or not a small asset like that is his personally or the fund's doesn't affect his decision making.

<comment><USER6> > He's already been investigated (or prosecuted, I forget) for expensing > personal stuff at the fund.

Are we still talking about the same thing here?

> or buy the asset personally and then invest it personally.

Yes he could obviously do this, but he can't just give part of hte funds assets away, which is what I was clarifying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > "PG knew exactly what I wanted to do, it was the quickest anyone has grokked > my idea. I could almost see this divide conquer algorithm working in his > brain as he traversed the idea space, it was spectacular to behold."

These PG hagiographies are getting good.

<comment><USER9> hag·i·og·ra·phy/ˌhagēˈägrəfē/ Noun: The writing of the lives of saints.

:)

<comment><USER10> One of my favorite words

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _...PG hit me with a particular question about acquiring a particular type of user, one I should have been able to answer, one I'd practiced dozens of times over the past few days, one I had several strong answers to. I don't understand why, but my mind simply went blank. The interview ended a minute or two after._

Sounds like an incredibly minor detail to base the decision on considering everything else appeared to go well. I've no doubt PG and the team are all about small details but that doesn't quite add up for me.

Either way Steve, you did great to get as far as you did and a YC rejection is only a minor hurdle along the way so best of luck bud.

</comment><comment><USER12> Fwiw, I had a very similar YC experience as a solo founder in front of PG, Trevor, Robert and Jessica (S12). After the rejection email I had an acquisition offer from a market leader (term sheet). Decided to turn it down and raise a round. Going after the market. Currently closing with top-tier investors and launching product.

<comment><USER13> We need to collect these stories

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> First, thank you very much for detailing your Y Combinator experience with the rest of us; you will no doubt help out many other startups planning to apply to Y Combinator.

During the entire interview, I imagine PG and his partners were likely analyzing and processing your idea, your capacity to execute your idea, and your potential to succeed compared with the potential for other top-tiered candidates to succeed. Also, they were likely looking for signs, any sign (based on prior failures), that were predictor of failure.

In my opinion, you were likely turned down because either they weren't convinced that you (along with your idea) have the potential to succeed more than the candidates they were considering, or your case showed signs of potential failure. Note that the signs of potential failure is not necessarily reflective of you or your idea, it is simply based on actual factors that Y Combinators have seen in startups that had eventually failed. I have read about this from PG himself right here on HN.

If Y Combinator turned down a potentially primed-to-succeed applicant because the applicant did not convincingly answer one question (while being very convincing on all the other questions), then I am definitely mistaken about all I have read about PG and Y Combinator. These chaps are well-reasoned and thoroughly experienced investors, I don't think they will turn down a potential DropBox for missing one question—well, I hope not.

</comment><comment><USER15> Do these "how I blew it" articles make anyone else uncomfortable? They always seem so self-deprecating, presumptuous, and often very seriously glorify YC and/or PG. Reflecting on an experience, especially one that you were hopeful about, but didn't go the way you wanted is good. But being so attached......

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Further to the money fixation. Has no one considered that I might have actually tried to raise money from Falcone? When I get him in a room, you can bet that I'll be trying to get the domain and some capital from him before I'll try to buy it off of him with my own cash. What do you think is more likely to be successful, a billionaire throwing down a relatively small amount of coin to invest or him hearing out an offer to acquire the domain for 5-6 figures without laughing me out of the room. We might have different values but to me 2-3 grand for a holiday and a roll of that dice is chump change.

<comment><USER16> Wait. Isn't Falcone one of the bad guys in 'Batman Begins'?

<comment><USER17> Falcone is a punch line in Real Life. This whole story is ridiculous on many levels. If Robert Altman were alive he would remake "The Player" set in HackerNews, err, Silicon Valley.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "but when I finished I filled the BCC with as many permutations of what his email address could be and then hit send."

I've figured out a great way around this. Install rapportive in gmail, compose a new message and start guessing emails. If the email is correct, rapportive will pull up all the information for that person. Bingo! There's the correct address!

<comment><AUTHOR> Tried that!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> After the story of you flying over to doorstep a hedge fund manager, navigating the many layers to get there and ultimately solving the problem, I don't see YC saying no to be a problem.

Learning experiences and such, grind it out and keep going.

<comment><USER20> Yes, though the problem they likely saw was he virtually has no product, business plan, nor seems interested in selling it as much as himself. Its a trope you see here in the post mortem after every YC season selection.

"I hacked the process and all I got was this stinking blog post."

Edit: This front-paging HN will more than likely land him a job somewhere, for better of for worse, and was likely his real goal in writing it.

<comment><USER19> He did say that he had a product ready to demo but they didn't want to see it.

Selling yourself is almost as important as the idea, if you have the best idea in the world but you seem a bit wishy washy then no one is going to be interested, but if you can sell yourself and get them to believe almost anything is possible in your hands then you're in with a better chance.

<comment><USER21> I have seen PG and others on numerous occasions say they're interested in the smartest of people, some of whom may just have a bad idea and need mentoring in that regard.

It's a lot easier to point a smart/hard working person in the right direction

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> You shouldn't have left Silicon Valley so soon. There are several VCs who would have had a meeting with you.

<comment><USER23> I sent him an email with a similar thought. The fact that he left and didn't try other venues could make some people question his true grit. I liked his story and wanted to meet him just to hear the story in person.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I also went through the single founder interview experience and blew it, but for different reasons.

I had the domain knowledge and experience, but PG said my demo was too simple (which it admittedly was - it was a MVP to test some assumptions I had about the market).

It was an intense, yet very fun 10 minutes of my life...

</comment><comment><USER25> Great post, but your choice of colors make reading it incredibly hard on my eyes (it's the end of the day here).

<comment><AUTHOR> What's the easiest to read Tumblr theme? I'll happily change it. Sorry it makes it difficult to read.

<comment><USER25> The fact that I read it through is proof to how compelling your post is. Your story on trying to get the domain name by all (reasonable) means really resonated with me. Are you based in London?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yessir! Email address in HN profile. Hit me up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> From Reuters: Zap.Com Corporation, incorporated in 1999, is a shell company. The Company was established for the purpose of creating and operating a global network of independently owned Web sites. Harbinger Group Inc., the Company's principal stockholder owns approximately 98% of its outstanding common stock. As of December 31, 2011, the Company has no business operations. During the year ended December 31, 2011, the Company had no revenue.

"So you're telling me there's a chance." - <USER2>

Zap _is_ a great name. But there's no harm in starting with PayWithZap.com, like you're currently doing, then acquiring zap.com down the road when you have real capital or revenue. Owning zap.com now is a premature optimization, a nice-to-have.

</comment><comment><USER27> To be honest I thought this was going to be the usual YC navel-gazing, but actually found it to be an amusing, interesting read.

</comment><comment><USER28> I would not give money to a guy who writes on black background either.

<comment><USER29> I stopped reading after the first paragraph. Dark background/white text is absolutely horrible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> If your business is good, answering a single question incorrectly should not cause a good investor not to invest in it. If your business is bad, answering a single question correctly should not lead to an investment.

A single answer should not be the difference between getting an investment and not getting one. Can you imagine Warren Buffett passing over a stock he was prepared to buy just because the CEO couldn't answer a particular question instantly?

</comment><comment><USER31> Most people would rather have an excuse to fail than have a reason to be successful.

</comment><comment><USER32> Firstly great story and very entertaining :-) Certainly i would have used it on the application as it makes you stand out and gives the interviewers something interesting to ask about, thats what application forms are for after all.

When it comes to jumping on a plane to try and blag the domain name I think its actually a pretty smart move, on the open market that name would have gone for 6 or 7 figures certainly far more than you could have afforded on seed funding, in which case its worth dropping a grand or so as a gamble that you might get it for much less, I'm guessing you were hoping they'd say they weren't using it and just sign it over to you?

Hey you took a chance and gambled 1000 bucks in the hope of it paying off many times over, it didn't but thats life.

Best of luck man :-)

</comment><comment><USER33> I own a credit card company and maybe I could help you. I'll send an email later today :D

</comment><comment><USER34> I don't know if recs are weighted based on that particular recommender's history, but they are definitely weighted based on how well the recommender knows the applicant, and how strong the recommendation is.

I still recommend that applicants seek out YC alumni when applying, but this is because they will give you good feedback on your application and advice on the interview process, not because their recommendation of someone they met once over coffee will move the needle.

</comment><comment><USER35> Remember seeing you introduce Twillio at Tomorrow's Web a while back and was hugely impressed.

I have a feeling we will be seeing a lot of very cool stuff from Zap in the future ;-)

</comment><comment><USER36> I love the story. The title of this story sounded like it was a note venting out frustration and telling everyone that though dejected, I will make it without YC. But unlike the title, you are so full of positive energy and I hope others at YC could have seen that. I am sure you will make you dream come true. Keep hustling and wishing you the very best of luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Sort of off-topic but I thought that the use of "take a punt" was interesting. Before I realized he was European, I thought it a strange phrase. Obviously in (soccer) football, taking a punt (a kick to try to score) would be a good thing, but it first registered to me as an (American) football reference of punting (rather than going for a touchdown).

</comment><comment><USER38> If there's one thing that administering, taking part in, or hearing about interviews over the past few decades has taught me, it's that you never did as _adjective_ as you think you did. In fact, you're usually pretty far off the mark.

</comment><comment><USER39> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hiUuL5uTKc>

Great story. Shows just a glimpse of the many different angles you need to take as an entrepreneur to try and make things work. (or not work)

</comment><comment><USER40> I don't know if this story is illustrative, helpful, or whatever. But to me it's a damn fine read.

</comment><comment><USER41> How much is zap.com worth? I would imagine at least 6 figures.

</comment><comment><USER42> Anyone got a TLDR on this? It looks interesting, but I don't have the minutes to read it to get the juice.

<comment><USER43> Spent lots of time and money stalking a big time hedge fund manager in an attempt to acquire Zap.com domain. Failed to acquire domain, but still considers this a "life hack" because the manager downloaded his business plan.

Later, messed up one question in YC interview and got rejected.

Baffling...

<comment><USER44> How do we know the guy downloaded his plan? It could have been anybody - <USER3> deputy, underling, hell, even the secretary that absolutely refused him access. It doesn't matter that the CEO was running a hedge fund, I guarantee you he knows how to type in "how much is my domain worth" into google to get a rough figure for it.

In my earlier and somewhat more flush years, I used to have a saying "just throw money at the problem until it goes away". And you know what.. it worked. Well .. until I ran out of cash that is. This is what this sounds like to me. Flying London to New York on the off chance to meet this guy? One would have been better off finding out what gym he's a member of, which bars he drinks at, where he shops etc one was that desperate. mini-rant over.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> zap.com is a public company <http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=ZPCM>

That probably explains why there is little interest in selling you the domain. It would probably be a huge PITA for them, even if they wanted to do it.

<comment><USER45> From what I can see ZPCM isn't a public company it trades on what is referred to as the pink sheets.

It has no revenue or business activity meaning it was probably once a public company or had the intention of becoming one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> tl;dr;

1\. Spent lots of time and money(thousands of pounds) trying to meet with CEO of hedge fund just to get one of the domains in their portfolio. 2\. Failed. 3\. Explained that he is co-founder of twillio europe. 4\. Used above story as some kind of self proof of ability 5\. Decided that he failed YC interview because of a silly mistake 6\. Drew lots of lessons and conclusions.

 _yawn_

<comment><USER47> I'm kind-of amazed at how much this person was willing to spend at the drop of a hat. I see someone carelessly jumping on planes, spending thousands of dollars without blinking, and I start to wonder if the person may be bipolar and experiencing a manic episode.

<comment><USER48> > _"I start to wonder if the person may be bipolar and experiencing a manic > episode._ "

...I would think that depends on how many thousands of dollars you have in the bank. It would be nuts to do this if you had no money to your name and were struggling to make ends meet, sure. But if you're got a high disposable income, or you know you can make it up with work, why not?

I haven't had the pleasure of meeting Stevie, and I know nothing about his financial situation. I suspect neither do you. Regardless, you could easily cover the cost of a last-minute LHR-NYC flight with three, four days of contracting (I should know, I used to freelance iOS in London). Doesn't seem _quite_ so crazy when you frame it like that.

What I probably _wouldn't_ do is throw around the idea that simply because somebody buys a ticket on a whim that makes them a manic depressive.

<comment><USER49> To me it wasn't just the cost, it was jumping on a plane instantly when there was no particular advantage to it.

Salespeople who are too aggressive frighten prospects, and his target is a billionaire who hears from all sorts of people who want something from him. If he were sincerely after the Zap name, I think he would have been much better off pursuing it consistently over 6 months, rather than in a dramatic, unprepared rush. Especially since this particular name is a nice-to-have.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Statement from the Tor Project Re: The Court's Feb. 23 Order in U.S. v. Farrell - <AUTHOR> https://blog.torproject.org/blog/statement-tor-project-re-courts-february-23-order-us-v-farrell <comment><USER2> > It is clear that the court does not understand how the Tor network works. > The entire purpose of the network is to enable users to communicate > privately and securely.

The order demonstrates a perfectly adequate understanding of the technology: [https://motherboard.vice.com/read/carnegie-mellon- university...](https://motherboard.vice.com/read/carnegie-mellon-university- attacked-tor-was-subpoenaed-by-feds).

Tor does not actually hide your IP address from the public Internet. Someone technically ignorant might believe that (in which case, his expectation of privacy is based on a false assumption and is thus objectively unreasonable), but that's not the guarantee Tor provides. What onion routing does is ensure that someone sitting in the middle cannot identify _both the source and destination of a packet_.

But the legally relevant technical question is not whether someone can track the packet from the source to the destination. It's whether the user's IP address has been revealed to the public. That's necessarily the case even when communicating over Tor; that's just how the Internet _works_.

<comment><USER3> What does implementation details have to do with expectations? You can't just say the general public's expectations don't matter because they don't understand the implications of network routing.

Do Tor users expect their communications to be private? I think the answer is obviously yes.

<comment><USER4> Then why bother setting up any encryption at all? Why not just call the Internet an "anonymous network" and be done with it?

It's clear there is some difference between "expectation" and " _informed_ expectation." If there were no distinction, then claiming you expected privacy in any situation would be legally sufficient to eliminate evidence collected while "violating" your expectation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This statement is pretty confusing to me. It seems that they're attempting to use the _legal_ phrase "reasonable expectation of privacy" in a decidedly non- legal sense. The term is in fact a legal one (see here [1] for a definition, or just google the term), and after reading through the definition, I find it hard for anyone to argue that they _should_ have a "reasonable expectation of privacy" when using _any_ public network. Sure, Tor users are using the network because it provides anonymity, but anonymity and "expectation of privacy" are two very distinct concepts. Tor allows them to PUBLICLY communicate ANONYMOUSLY. You can have an anonymous communication without any expectation of privacy, the same way you can have privacy without anonymity.

Note that I am not a lawyer and am making assumptions and inferences about legal matters based on internet searches. YMMV.

[1]: [http://injury.findlaw.com/torts-and-personal- injuries/what-i...](http://injury.findlaw.com/torts-and-personal- injuries/what-is-the--reasonable-expectation-of-privacy--.html)

<comment><USER6> > anonymity and "expectation of privacy" are two very distinct concepts

Can you elaborate on that? I don't think I understand the point you're trying to make. One can construct a semantic distinction, but it doesn't seem relevant here.

Clearly, Tor users are using Tor because they believe the copious online content describing it as either or both of "private" and "anonymous". To argue that their "expectation of {privacy|anonymity}" is "unreasonable" seems to strain logic by any definition, be it "legal" or not.

<comment><USER5> The distinction is that one has a clear legal definition in a court of law and one does not. The judge in this case has examined the case and found that Tor users do not have the legal right to having any expectation of privacy. The fact that we use the term anonymous as a synonym for privacy in some cases has no bearing on the judges ruling.

<comment><USER7> Your own link contains this:

 _It 's important to note that the expectation of privacy discussed here means something different than when it's used in connection with searches by persons acting on behalf of a city, state, or federal government._

So how is it relevant? They clearly say the definition discussed is between private individuals, not the state and individuals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A few years ago this kinda bugged me. Now I am beginning to seriously wonder how judges can still get away with this. If you have no clue what you are judging, how can you do your very important job at all? Your vital role in society? When is some high ranking dude in the government going to recognize it and think of something to get them the hell out of making incorrect judgements?

"No reasonable expectation of privacy in the Tor network"? That's like saying warrantless searches are legal because your house has windows, thus giving you no privacy either.

<comment><USER9> While I agree with you on principle, legally, the boundaries of the 4th amendment's "Reasonable expectation of privacy" end the moment you give your data to a third party. In Tor's case, you give your data to the Tor nodes (third parties). The 4th amendment unfortunately doesn't apply, the precedent here is rock-solid.

<comment><USER10> If one gives a locked safe to someone else for safekeeping, do they really expect the keeper to break open the safe and search through the contents?

I don't think 3rd party doctrine is really a good idea if the above is OK.

<comment><USER11> If you put a safe in a storage locker, the police could gain access to the safe and crack it by serving a search warrant on the storage facility, without ever notifying you -- and in fact they could get a companion gag order to prevent the storage facility from telling you or anyone else that they had done so.

If the service were willing, the police could even gain access by just asking. In that case, you might have a legal claim against the service, but not against the cops.

That's probably the best analogy to data in cloud services.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to stop spam from free email accounts - <AUTHOR> http://rondam.blogspot.com/2008/05/how-to-stop-spam-from-free-email.html

<comment><USER2> What the blogger said, 1\. Whenever a message is sent to a recipient that has never received a message from that account before, modify the message to include a link at the top that the recipient can click on if the message is spam.

\--This is probably something workable, but then it needs a certain proactive work from users which I think people who don't clear their inboxes don't do normally.

2\. Limit the number of new recipients that can receive email from that account to a few dozen a day.

\--nope, won't work. What about jobseekers who spam employers. As much as this is spam, there are diamonds in the rough.

3\. If the number of spam reports from that account exceeds a certain threshold, shut the account down.

\--workable. but what if the user's computer is spambotted? not everyone is an expert. probably a few days warning before a shutdown is a workable solution here. again, it'd be better if the server informs the user of spam flagging and intercept outgoing messages until they agree to a TOS. If there're still TOS violations, shut it down.

4\. Require a valid credit card number to set up a new account.

\-- nope. privacy issues. just not worth it.

<comment><AUTHOR> > This is probably something workable, but then it needs a certain proactive > work from users which I think people who don't clear their inboxes don't do > normally.

Doesn't matter. As long as a big enough percentage of the recipients participate it will work.

> What about jobseekers who spam employers. As much as this is spam, there are > diamonds in the rough.

This is for free email accounts only. ISP's could charge a progressive schedule of fees for accounts with fewer restrictions. It would still serve to eliminate spam because spam relies on the accounts being actually free in order to be profitable.

> privacy issues. just not worth it.

Again, this is for free accounts only. I'm a big privacy advocate, but I think a compromise on privacy to reduce spam is a worthwhile tradeoff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If it was this easy, I just have to believe it would've been done already in the past 10 years.</comment>


How can leaders handle racism at work? - <AUTHOR> https://www.peoplebox.ai/blog/how-can-leadership-handle-racism/ <comment><USER2> I've seen zero incidents of racism over several decades in tech jobs. I'm thus inclined to think it's quite rare.

Alternatively, it could just be that kids today are a lot more racist than my generation.

</comment><comment><USER3> The first step is to remove racism from government policies. End affirmative action.

</comment><comment><USER4> How? The same way they handle extraterrestrial invasion from Alpha Centaurus.

<comment><AUTHOR> Umm, not really! The blog has the answer. What I liked in the blog is the point that the leaders should not wait for others to acknowledge and start conversations, they should take the lead. They are the LEADERS, after all!

<comment><USER4> clear your head of this sh*t and get a life, grow up.</comment></comment></comment>


I made millions out of the last debt crisis. Now the wealthy stand to win again - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/07/i-made-millions-last-debt-crisis-rich-win-coronavirus-fair-tax <comment><USER2> This guy is saying taxing the rich is the solution, but the problem is the way governments try to stimulate the economy. By lowering rates and supplying money to the rich, they make the rich richer more than they stimulate the economy.

<comment><USER3> The income tax just barely services the national debt, IIRC. None of it goes to pay for any services. The whole thing is very ugly. There's a great infograph "Death and Taxes" that shows where the budget goes (not what pays for it, or anything about black budgets), good start. The whole "my taxes pay for" meme is just off. Your taxes just service some numbered debt. It's depressing to think about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > I'm not going to make any prescriptions about how the money be spent, but > the important part is that you take it away from those damn rich people!

<comment><USER5> People feel really entitled to what they earned, because, they earned it. The thing is, their ability to earn it is predicated on society being set up in such a way that the resources available to them make that path of earning possible. It's hardly unreasonable to think that one should pay extra back to society to accommodate that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> the author complains that the stock market is up since its lows and labels that as fat cats getting rich again.

> It is not right that society's richest people profit from this crisis while > millions fall into desperate poverty. I include myself in this.

there is an easy way to start rectifying this injustice, if the author truly believes it is not fair. He can donate his wealth to the government - yes that is a thing. Will he do it? After all he argues it is fundamentally unfair. Writing an editorial is just talk, time he does the walk.

<comment><USER7> This has always been a shit argument. Injustice has to be fixed across the board, otherwise it's a tax on just the honest/moral people.

<comment><USER6> I am talking about the choice of word and testing wether he means it or not.

If he said that the would not mind paying more for taxes, that is ok.

Saying "it is not fair" is just populist BS - would you keep money that you honestly thought was given unfairly to you?

<comment><USER8> You are being pedantic.

Think: a sincere declaration of a willingness to cooperatively sacrifice to solve a group problem, if others do too.

Don't think: an offer to individually self-immolate, which would not solve the problem. That is a straw man test of whether someone "means" business.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best books on meditation? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
I've seen a lot of comments here lately about the power of meditation.
What book would you recommend to someone who wants to try meditation?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Meditation today is a term must abused with many differente significances. Meditation is a state of conscious. The tecnics of meditation are used for create the condition for the manifestation of this state. Mediation can't be learned in a book. The best mode is learning it from a master. And one of the best clean way for me is Zen with zazen. In yoga sutra of Patanjali mediation is considered one of the high level of yoga, level that is reached after a long practice of other yoga levels (asana,pranayama,prathyara and dharana)

</comment><comment><USER3> I've tried meditation a few times, and finally found something that seems to work with my brain (I can explain but it doesn't answer your question). In the meantime, I tried reading a good deal and learning what I could, so here are the things that stand out for me.

Lots of folks enjoy "Mindfulness in Plain English", and it does a good job of explaining some things, and it got recommended to me over and over again.

For something more in-depth, check out "meditation for dummies". It is a decent introduction to meditation.

For a more realistic viewpoint on meditation, check out Sam Harris. He was pretty skeptical, and seems to not over-inflate the results though he's an obvious believer.

Lastly, I recommend watching Shinzen Young on Youtube. He was really more of a turning point for me, and gives a good deal of flexibility in methods.

</comment><comment><USER4> "The Mind Illuminated" ( [https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Illuminated-Complete- Meditation-...](https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Illuminated-Complete-Meditation- Integrating/dp/0990847705) ) is very good, and contains all you need for your practice.

The author is both a long term meditator and used to be a neuroscience professor. The book teaches meditation in a stage by stage way which is very easy to follow.

Another excellent book is "Mindfulness, Bliss, and Beyond: A Meditator's Handbook" ([https://www.amazon.com/Mindfulness-Bliss-Beyond- Meditators-H...](https://www.amazon.com/Mindfulness-Bliss-Beyond-Meditators- Handbook/dp/0861712757/)).

</comment><comment><USER5> I very much enjoyed "Mindfulness in Plain English"

</comment><comment><USER6> Anything by Joko Beck. It talks about meditation in the context of daily living. Highly recommended.</comment>