Ask HN: What if I missed the good stuff in my undergraduate education? - <AUTHOR> I was reading Steve Yegge's recent post on learning about compilers, and, as I'm sure is true for many HN visitors, the post resonated with me in a couple of unsettling ways.  I have my undergraduate degree already, but my education did not include AI, OS, compilers, distributed computing or algorithm design.  (That's what I get for going to a hippy liberal arts college.)  It wasn't as bad as what Yegge described as a "Java certification program," since I came out of it knowing a lot of real-world skills like version control and command line use.  However, I still consider the lack of things like compiler construction to be unacceptable gaps in my skillset.
Two problems: I have a full-time job and student loans now.  I can't really do the undergraduate schooling thing all over again.
What's the best way to pick up these skills post-undergraduate degree?  Should I take night classes at a graduate school, or will those curricula assume prior familiarity with the subjects I'm trying to learn?  I already purchased "The Unix Programming Environment" since it seems to have some good basic information about lex and yacc, but is just the tip of the iceberg.  There's only so much one can learn through years of Googling and reading the odd Hacker News post.  What are my options, really? <comment><USER2> Start with "The Elements of Computing Systems" by Nisan and Schocken. It's a book built around the goal of designing and constructing a computer from the ground up, starting with hardware design and ultimately writing the compiler and virtual machine for a simple Java-like language that runs on the computer you designed. You can download all the software necessary; all the software and support material work very well, and it's ideal for self-study. I think it's a great book; you can read my full review on Amazon--it's the only book I've ever been moved to review there.

<comment><USER3> Anyone knows where I can order this book in india? I checked and couldn't find it in any of the major book shops or libraries. Amazon is not an option coz I cannot pay for the shipping. Any other ideas?

<comment><USER2> nbcindia.com has it for Rs. 1323 with free shipping in India, but it takes 20-30 days.

<comment><USER4> It's worth the wait. This is a timeless book; its contents will not become obsolete.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's too much cool stuff in the world to be able to do all of it. You need to pick something that extends what you know and helps you to accomplish something you can't yet do.

Yes, it's possible to design a language, implement a compiler, write a kick- ass AI, but it's all a long way from where you are (I assume) and while rewarding in the long run, will take ages to get there.

Instead, scratch an itch. Do you have a web site? Do you have an idea for a facility you can provide people? Can you write CGIs without a framework?

I can't tell you what to do - no one can really - but you need to think about what you might like to do.

Then do it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I appreciate your argument, but I feel like you missed an important motivation behind my question. You see, I'm worried about _unknown unknowns_. Once you know enough about a subject to choose an itch to scratch, you don't have to think about the difficult foundational subjects like compilers and AI. But before you get to that point, there are too many unknown unknowns. Like Yegge's perennially disappointing interview candidates, we can't say "grep" instead of "a 2,500-line state-machine in C++" if we don't know that grep exists. It's an unknown unknown, and while I know what grep is, I don't _really_ know what happens under the hood when it comes to syntax trees and machine learning, and since they _are_ foundational concepts of my field, I feel like I need to dive into them as soon as I can, to make everything else I do more informed and efficient.

<comment><USER5> In that case, read, but don't try to understand in full and complete depth, a few books. I would suggest:

* SICP

* The Dragon Book

* Programming Pearls

* The Elements of Computing Systems

There's a shed-load of good stuff, and no doubt others will suggest more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Books. Pick a topic you feel you missed, find a good (possibly "classic") book on it, and study in your free time. Work exercises. Build little test projects based on the material. There's lots of information on the web, but I still find to learn these sorts of topics deeply, you often need a good book.

If AI is your interest, one valuable resource I've found is searching the MIT Press online store for interesting-looking books (most of which are high- quality), and then searching Amazon for a decent used copy. Built up a nice AI library for dollars (or cents) per book.

<comment><USER7> If the OP hasn't read Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs yet, that would be a great one. It takes you all the way from adding numbers together to writing a compiler for a virtual machine. There's a reason it's a classic. Also, it's online:

<http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-4.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hi! I'm actually in precisely (100%) the same situation - and actually one of my friends asked if it's not me who wrote this post (that's how i got to know about it originally). I'm not a "so-cool" programmer, but what i have noticed:

1). All the things are good - till they produce something. In other words (if your job is not very special) - you won't be using tons of different algorithms. So learning only a few most common is simply PERFECT!

2). For all the "hard-times" buy a handbook with things that you think you might need in future (for me it's whole series of Graphics Gems :)

3). To get some grip on what you missed - try the MIT Video Courses. They have an "Introduction to Computer Science". The course is very cool and easy to follow, and should cover some of your gaps.

5). Yeah, five! And the most important - trust yourself and do LOTS of free- time projects. You heard me right - LOTS! When? For ex. I have 30h of classes a week and 25h of work - and I manage. Means - you will also ;) And, wish you good luck! 8]

</comment><comment><USER4> I have a similar, but slightly different issue. I also have an undergraduate degree, and I did take courses in operating systems, compilers, and algorithm design. The trouble is that I don't remember anything. I remember taking the courses, but there was a huge amount of information that got shoved into my head and remained there just long enough to pass the exams and now it's gone.

This is an enormous pity, because it's only now, years later when I have a full-time job and not much time, do I realize what I missed.

If I won the lottery or somehow came into enough money ('fuck-you' money, I guess), I'd probably repeat my undergraduate schooling. However, there are a couple of options that you and I might have.

The first thing to remember is that no matter whether or not you take a formal course, you'll probably be reading some good books in the subjects that we're interested in. There are lots of lists of good, solid introductions to the subjects that we are interested in.

The second thing is that we'll have to make time for the subjects that we're interested in. As working people, we don't have the luxury of spending all our free time on a given subject, but unlike undergraduates, our attention is not necessarily divided over several subjects. In my last year of undergrad, I was taking plenty of courses and it's perhaps not surprising that I forgot so much. Now we can choose one subject (like compiler design), and focus our free time (however little) on it.

A third option is a sort of middle-ground. Is there a local university to you? Most universities allow you to take undergraduate courses as a continuing student. We have our degrees, we're more interested in the knowledge that the course can give us than the credential that the course grants us. The course would grant us the structure and discussion we'd benefit from as undergraduates, while not completely monopolizing our time.

<comment><USER9> > The trouble is that I don't remember anything.

I read somewhere that our long-term memory has unlimited capacity, and there are basically three ways of measuring your memory:

\- Recall: see whether you can recall the pertinent facts.

\- Relearn: measure the time it takes for you to relearn the topic.

\- Recognize: see if you can recognize key points in a previously learned topic when it's presented again to you.

Most people when they claim that they "don't remember anything" only refer to the recall-metric. But I bet that if you try to learn these ideas again, it'd take you much lesser time that it'd for a complete newbie => you haven't _really_ lost everything you learned. It's just dormant.

<comment><USER10> Thanks for that, do you remember where you read it?

Feels a bit strange to ask you to remember a book/article about memory but sounds like a great read.

<comment><USER9> Actually, I do - had to quickly glance through the book to confirm it though.

The book is this: [http://www.amazon.com/Your-Memory-How-Works- Improve/dp/15692...](http://www.amazon.com/Your-Memory-How-Works- Improve/dp/1569246297)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A few days ago I saw a link to a "roadmap" for Rails (<http://techiferous.com/2010/07/roadmap-for-learning-rails/>). It'd be nice if someone put together something like this for a rigorous and practical computer science skill-set.

</comment><comment><USER12> What you're asking is, basically, "How do I continue my CS education?" Consider getting a Master's in CS. If you do it full-time, it will take about two years. Since you know what you'd like to learn, you can check schools to see what kinds of graduate courses they offer. How much prior exposure you need to areas depends on the course itself - not just where you're taking it but who is teaching it.

This is not your only option, and many other commenters have presented alternatives.

Regarding student loans, my understanding is that once you're a full-time student again, payment is again deferred. This might even be true if you're a part time student - I recall a Master's student saying she didn't have to make loan payments even when she enrolled in a community college course, but check to make sure that's correct.

<comment><USER13> _Regarding student loans, my understanding is that once you're a full-time student again, payment is again deferred. This might even be true if you're a part time student_

This is correct, at least for Federal student loans in the US (Stafford, Direct, Perkins). So long as you are attending at a half-time basis or more, your loan payments are deferred. Interest does accrue during these deferrals. However, if your undergrad loans were subsidized when they were originally taken out, the government pays the interest while you're back in school so your total indebtedness won't go up.

See the table toward the bottom of this page:

[http://studentaid.ed.gov/students/publications/student_guide...](http://studentaid.ed.gov/students/publications/student_guide/2009-2010/english/postponeloanpayment.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The point of an undergraduate education isn't to learn stuff, it's to learn HOW to learn stuff. Having a knowledge base in a particular field is only a sometimes-useful side effect.

If you can't learn that stuff on your own now, then you failed at college. More college is not the answer.

<comment><USER15> I couldn't agree more. Every time I see a question like this, I have to hold back a rant. What, didn't they teach you to read at your liberal arts college? How many classes do you have to take before you see the pattern? Here's the syllabus, read the book, go to lectures that rehash the book (except for the occasional, exceptional class), do some exercises, review for a mid-term and a final? Don't know what book(s) to read? What, didn't they teach you to do any research, or use Google?

Worried your education is incomplete (How could it not be?) or unknown unknowns? Do some research! (Research? Again?!) Every CS program in the world has their curriculum online. See what they think you should be learning. You had to pick classes, right? Didn't you consider the options then? Find discussion of CS curricula. This post by Philip Greenspun springs to mind:

[http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2004/10/02/what-would- an-...](http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2004/10/02/what-would-an-ideal- computer-science-education-look-like/)

Oh, wait. Holding back a rant. I guess I didn't this time.

<comment><USER15> > ... you see the pattern? Here's the syllabus ...

I didn't mean to say that's the best way to learn. But it is certainly A way to learn, and one that should be (utterly) familiar to you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why do you want to lean compiler design (or any of the other topics you mention)? Are they directly related to your job/career path or just hypothetical areas of interest?

I have no college education and no formal CS training and I've done fine in the industry (12 year in it). I learned to program C at 13 from books and I learn what I need that is relevant from the internet and code samples. Stuff like compiler design which would purely be theoretical for me I don't let it bother me.

(I mean, at an abstract level I can work out how my code is converted into machine code/byte code but I couldn't write a paper on it).

Wouldn't it be worth spending the study time on learning the bleeding edge of development instead, like node.js or map-reduce if you are going to self- study?

<comment><USER17> The post mentioned in the OP (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1608129>) mentions some cases where knowledge about how compilers work would be useful and offers a warning about what may happen to those without this understanding:

"In fact I used to ask candidates, as a standard interview question, how they'd find phone numbers in a tree of HTML files, and many of them (up to 30%) chose to write 2500-line C++ programs as their answer."

Not that this necessarily describes _you_ (since I don't even know what you work on), but I've heard it said (here, I think) that if CRUD is all you know, CRUD is all you'll ever do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> If one is dedicated enough, I think the best way to go about it is picking up textbooks (make sure to pick the good ones - reading reviews on Amazon) and powering through them.

There are quite a few resources out there though to supplement the textbooks, like course websites, old exams and opencourseware (MIT and Stanford have some amazing videos on iTunes U, Berkeley has a channel on YouTube)

</comment><comment><USER19> The most important thing I learned from university was learning how to learn. I'm a developer who majored in Electrical Engineering and the computer science related topics I'm picking up via courses here and there and lots of reading.

I don't know where you are but you could try taking courses over weekends as well if they offer them.

</comment><comment><USER20> There are some great courses available on the web, in the form of video lectures. MIT's OCW courses most notably, but many other CS departments have similar offerings. They might provide a bit more structure than self-study via texts, while giving you more flexibility than night classes.

<comment><USER21> ArsDigita University has full lectures most core CS subjects. Shai Simonson's discrete math, algorithms, and theory of computation videos are great.

<http://aduni.org/courses/>

<http://mgccl.com/2008/04/06/aduni-videos-now-on-google-video>

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> does your employer offer any tuition benefits? maybe you could pick up a night class on their dime :)

<comment><USER13> This is always a great option, and actually I'm looking to go the other way. I studied a whole lot of computer science during undergrad and feel I missed out on other disciplines.

I'm taking a course in creative writing on my employer's dime this fall, and hoping to try out an intro course in a couple languages over the next few years too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Check out the computer science section on <http://www.academicearth.org>.

Most top computer science programs put these courses online for free.

</comment><comment><USER24> You clearly missed the point of your liberal arts education. How sad.

<comment><AUTHOR> Whoa, whoa, whoa! Slow down there, cowboy. Just because my education was deficient in one way doesn't mean it didn't make up for it in others. I'm incredibly thankful for my liberal arts education; it turned me into the happy hippy I am today. Do I have some frustrations and regrets in terms of the things I missed? Absolutely. But that in no way prevents me from appreciating the things I did learn, which were numerous and profound.

<comment><USER24> good to hear; my apologies for the negative note. contextually, far too many people consider a liberal arts education irrelevant and we are producing generations without a grounded understanding of critical or contextual thinking-- or an appreciation for beauty. easier to get that studying Spenser than code, I'd argue.

<comment><USER17> On the other hand, I found it easy enough to get that in high school and then on my own at the local book shop.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


In the World of Cryptocurrency, Even Good Projects Can Go Bad - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/31/technology/envion-initial-coin-offering.html <comment><USER2> I missed the part where this was ever a good project.

Cryptocurrency mining has to use the cheapest available power, or else it loses money because the mining rewards float at just above the cost of the world's cheapest power. Because many companies prefer renewable power (such as data center operators who want to claim they are carbon-neutral) and there's a limited supply, renewable power will always be at a premium over the cheapest power.

A big problem with successful ICOs is that the companies immediately have too many shareholders to let them pivot. The idea could probably be morphed into something that works, but not with 100s of retail shareholders demanding progress on the idea they originally backed.

<comment><USER3> > I missed the part where this was ever a good project.

Agreed.

> Cryptocurrency mining has to use the cheapest available power

Mostly agreed.

> A big problem with successful ICOs is that the companies immediately have > too many shareholders to let them pivot.

An ICO doesn't give you shareholders. Some ICOs outright call the money you give them "contributions" or "donations". (Tezos, who had a very successful coin offering and then hit somewhat similar challenges as this lot was very explicit: "Any contribution made to TEZOS during the Contribution Period as described below is qualified as a non-refundable donation...") But even the ones who label the money as an investment aren't giving out anything remotely resembling ownership, control, or voting rights to the purchasers.

I don't see any reason why a pivot wouldn't be possible. And, cynically, a lot of ICOs do pivot almost immediately, from "building the product they promised" to "spending the money they raised". :)

> not with 100s of retail shareholders demanding progress

They can "demand" all they like, but what can they do? They have no ownership, no control, and no votes. The company is apparently owned by one Matthias Woestmann; as the article notes, he doesn't even have to listen to the _founders_. He certainly doesn't need to listen to the people who participated in the ICO.

<comment><USER4> Agree to all of those points. The part where any "investors" essentially have no say, control, or equity in the company would certainly defy any possible reason for a sentient angel or corporate investor to make an investment. There's an abundance of red flags that people need to seriously look at.

Other gems from the article:

> "I know most of the I.C.O.s out there are either fraud or won't deliver on > their promises," he said. Envion, he believed, was different.

Uhh...

> Seif Shieshakly, an adviser to Envion who is based in the United Arab > Emirates, said that the I.C.O. structure had "cut out so many middlemen" and > created new investment opportunities, but that "the lack of regulations, > again because of the infancy of I.C.O.s, carries risks that regulated > environments would generally have far less of."

This one again speaks for itself.

> The investors have also turned up evidence that some of the founders sold > their own tokens before the current mess spilled into the public.

Wow... so I guess with a lack of regulation, insider trading is suddenly cool again.

> But he said the funds added up to only $50 million at this point, not the > $100 million that the founders had claimed. Mr. Woestmann said the founders > hadn't raised as much money as they claimed. And the declining price of > virtual currencies has dropped the value of the various digital tokens > Envion is holding.

So they not only willingly defrauded investors, but also basically used the money like a bank instead of a company, and just purchased other crypto assets to trade and earn from.

> Jessica Smith, a 21-year-old in England, said she had put $28,000 into > Envion — almost all of the money she had made over the last two years of > trading cryptocurrencies nearly full time. She said she was now looking for > new work.

That's a very painful lesson about putting all your eggs in one basket, but one she will probably learn from.

<comment><USER5> > That's a very painful lesson about putting all your eggs in one basket, but > one she will probably learn from.

Gamblers often don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _Envion said it would use the money collected from investors to build mobile rigs, filled with computers designed to "mine" or digitally create new Bitcoin. The rigs could be moved between sources of renewable electricity, which would power the mining computers_

Good project?? Sounds absolutely pie-in-the-sky. Another ridiculous idea that raised an insane amount of money from extremely naive investors. In other words, just another ICO.

<comment><USER7> It would be a great idea, had only cryptocurrency been invented before powerlines.

<comment><USER8> Powerlines are far from lossless, so there is still an advantage to being close to the power source. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission#Lo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission#Losses)

<comment><USER7> Hauling trailers around isn't lossless either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> How much of this ICO story is simply rediscovering things that old finance had already found?

All this talk about being able to trust the entrepreneurs, that they were building a real business in good faith, it's not exactly a new problem.

The solution, before blockchain muddied the waters, was that you'd find a reputable investment bank, which would stake its reputation on your sincerity, and they'd introduce you to people who would be willing to invest. There would be a bunch of rituals to go through, like a road show, presentations, meetings. And that's not all; there was a regulatory process they would show you how to pass as well.

<comment><USER10> Definitely. So much of cryptocurrency world seems hell-bent on rediscovering why current financial regulation exists.

At one point in US history, it was relatively easy to create a bank, and the banks could issue their own private currencies: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildcat_banking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildcat_banking)

This provided relatively little value and quite a lot of failure, so it was taken as a "let's never do that again" lesson.

The Etherium fork after the DAO theft was in my view people rediscovering the value of having a regulator.

Given the regular and massive losses due to breakins, scams, and fraud, I have to wonder if this is the most efficient way to learn these lessons.

<comment><USER11> > Etherium

Is this a running joke or something? I've seen the misspelling of Ethereum several times now on hackernews and it's a tell-tale sign that the people talking about it haven't invested much time researching it or delving in to the space in any way.

> Given the regular and massive losses due to breakins, scams, and fraud, I > have to wonder if this is the most efficient way to learn these lessons.

Where there is money changing hands, there are scams and fraud. The difference with crypto is that you can follow / track the money at all times. It doesn't mean you can get it back, but it does increase the chances that somewhere along the line the attacker will slip up and reveal themselves once they try to buy something or exit in to fiat currency.

The bottom line is that crypto exists because the banking system is perceived as broken by many. It's slow, expensive and corrupt as far as the average person on the street is concerned.

<comment><USER12> "Ethereum" does not match normal English spelling rules, so native English speakers have a tendency to spell it in the "correct" way as Etherium.

If anything, I would argue that "Etherium" is the more proper spelling and that we should migrate to that.

<comment><USER10> Yes, that was indeed my mistake. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've been watching this one very closely as I'm a fairly large miner. This was a scam or failure from day one.

Totally over-engineered and zero experience running an actual mining operation. They put so much effort (patents!?) into those MMU shipping containers that there is no way for them to compete with all the other people who are just building a simple box and throwing miners into it.

The MMU had substantial airflow design issues as well. To the point that something as simple as opening the door of the container would throw everything off balance. How about putting 90+ holes on the side for sucking dirt and bugs into the container? I could keep going on and on...

The also heavily moderate their community. Anyone who speaks up with hard questions, is silenced with blocking and removal from their group.

To watch it get to the point where it has is quite entertaining to the say the least.

HydroMiner is a far more interesting project, run by two sisters, with actual long term experience in this industry. Nicole got ripped on the math for this article [1] which was directed at Envion, but at some level, she is pretty right. There was no way that Envion would ever pay back what they claimed they would.

[1] [https://medium.com/@hydrominer/why-there-is-no-161-profit- in...](https://medium.com/@hydrominer/why-there-is-no-161-profit-in- mining-a876ebb91443)

</comment><comment><USER14> _The founders of the company ... set it up in Switzerland...

...problems had begun even before the project started fund-raising late last year because of the chief executive the founders brought in, Matthias Woestmann.

According to Mr. Martin, the founders gave Mr. Woestmann what they thought was temporary control of their shares in the company. Mr. Woestmann later refused to give them back, and then diluted the shares of the other owners, providing him with control of the money that was raised._

This is exactly the same problem Tezos had. What's the deal with people giving up control of their money?

<comment><USER3> I read the same passage and did a double take.

If you give someone ownership of your company, obviously they're not obligated to give it back. It's _their_ company now. You were dumb enough to give it away; why do you think they'd make the same mistake?

Also, to the extent that this had worked, it feels like an attempt at setting up a straw transaction to hide control of the company. Why exactly did they thing they needed to "temporarily" transfer ownership of the company?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> _Jessica Smith, a 21-year-old in England, said she had put $28,000 into Envion — almost all of the money she had made over the last two years of trading cryptocurrencies nearly full time. She said she was now looking for new work._

Put it all on red!

</comment><comment><USER13> From: [https://www.investor.gov/howeycoins](https://www.investor.gov/howeycoins)

RED FLAG: CLAIMS OF HIGH, GUARANTEED RETURNS: Not quite 'guaranteed', but seems quite inflated... [https://www.envion.org/en/ico/](https://www.envion.org/en/ico/)

RED FLAG: CLAIMS OF "SEC-COMPLIANT": Yes, [https://www.envion.org/en/faq/](https://www.envion.org/en/faq/) "Our token is fully compliant with regulations set by the SEC and Swiss financial regulators and outside auditors from one of the Big Four auditing firms will vet every aspect of the business, including prior to the ICO."

RED FLAG: INVESTING WITH A CREDIT CARD: Yes, [https://www.envion.org/en/faq/](https://www.envion.org/en/faq/) "We accept Ethereum (ETH) and Bitcoin (BTC) cryptocurrencies and credit card payments with Visa or Mastercard."

RED FLAG: PUMP AND DUMP SCAMS: Yes, look at the current price.

<comment><USER16> "The world as we know it, will change" ... It seems like a Bitconnect punchline !!

Seriously, how can they treat this ICO as a "good project". You are right, the landing page is full of red flags.

<comment><USER13> People who invested with a credit card have their funds locked for up to a year!

[https://www.envion.org/en/news/how-to-invest-short- instructi...](https://www.envion.org/en/news/how-to-invest-short-instruction)

"Buying EVN by credit card will result your token to end up in a locking period of 4–12 months (see envion.org/faq). This locking period is a protection for our investors needed for credit card payments."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> >a plan to bring clean energy to the computers that manage Bitcoin.

This doesn't even make sense. Not surprising this failed and I don't feel sorry for idiots that invested in a project that makes no sense. Bad projects must fail.

</comment><comment><USER18> The JOBS act was a push towards securitized crowdfunding but it had too many strings and never took off like many hoped. ICO's are proof that there is demand for real-time trading in private companies with micro-investment, but it also has obvious issues.

My hope is securitized-ICO's develop that make it easier to raise money from a global pool of investors, and the investors also have liquidity and legal rights. We need regulation that improves the situation without destroying it.

<comment><USER19> There's demand but there is no supply. No serious company is going to crowdfund away actual equity. Only the very worst companies are going to go out on the street and beg randos for capital hence ICOs. The reality is that the public will never have access to high quality deals. But there is a lot of money being left on the table that is flowing into scammy ICOs and badly managed Kickstarter projects. It's really too bad the IRS has nothing on the spectrum between private foundations and highly regulated public charities. There's a case to be made for "micro-foundations" that could be crowdfunded for a common purpose and would be barred from issuing ownership shares or taking on debt. (At dissolution time all "profits" of the charity must be disbursed to another charity.) There's a real failure of imagination here at the IRS: the internet makes it ever easier people to collaborate but it's very difficult to effectively pool capital which leads to Kickstarter and ICOs both of which are very sub-optimal solutions for everybody.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> What about this ICO made it a good product compared to others?

<comment><USER21> It had a _whitepaper_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> My biggest takeaway from the past few weeks is that POW based distributed cryptocurrency is a bit like communism; it only works on paper.

The reality is that, even with Bitcoin, the power to stave off attacks has consolidated to a few big players. The massively distributed protocol and massive power usage is a huge wast at this point. If your gonna need a few big players anyway, might as well build a trusted circle from the start and eliminate the rest of the waste.

The coins that can actually be used for day-to-day transactions are vulnerable to attacks. The largest and most secure player, Bitcoin, has reached the point where transaction fees are too high and speeds to slow; nobody takes it anymore.

Where does it go from here? I predict governments are gonna crack the whip and altcoins, along with ICOs, will be a footnote in history.

<comment><USER23> EOS has DPOS (Delegated Proof of Stake) which is not wasteful like PoW, it is a trusted circle model, and transactions are free, and it is easier to distribute ICO-like tokens, I think it might go there from here

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Bad projects may perceive as good Good may perceive as bad The market dont know better

</comment><comment><USER25> Hey kids, good projects can go bad in all worlds!</comment>


AI Writing Code Makes Software Engineers More Valuable - <AUTHOR> https://davnicwil.com/ai-writing-code-makes-software-engineers-more-valuable/ <comment><USER2> The biggest problem of AI in increasing the capacity of AI as a code maker is security. Who can then control AI? What if AI can generate its own "secret" code for purposes that we don't know about? What if AI could build their own network for purposes far from the reach of the human mind?</comment>


Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter - <AUTHOR> http://alexeymk.com/dear-dr-stallman-an-open-letter <comment><USER2> A few points i would like to remind everyone who criticizes rms.

1) rms is a radical guy. You cannot change that. He fights for what he thinks is right. He is not the kind of person you can ask to censor himself.

If he thinks u.s goverment is to blame for 9/11, no matter how saying it in a lecture seems childish, he will say it.

If you invite rms for a lecture, he is coming with his radicalism. That is to be expected. You cannot invite rms and expect steve jobs.

2) rms is a practical guy. stop acting like he's a mad man who knows nothing. He started GNU, wrote emacs, glibc, gcc and probably others. He created the concept of free software and wrote a license as good as GPL to defend it.

He also managed to gather a community around this very crazy idea of free software.

3) rms doesnt want people only to use free software. he wants people to value their freedom, and as a result of that, use free software.

It doesnt really matter if whole world uses android instead of ios. The point is, these days, most people involved in open source community, do not even care about free software and the freedom it offers.

Most people are interested in technological advancements or affects of an open source project on market. None of them are concerns for rms.

And, what i said above is just what i interpreted from his actions and are not facts.

<comment><USER3> > If he thinks u.s goverment is to blame for 9/11, no matter how saying it in > a lecture seems childish, he will say it.

By the way he doesn't believe that. Last time I read about his opinion on the subject he said that proofs were lacking on both sides (truther and non- truther) but that it was probably the work of religious fundamentalists (either christians or muslims).

<comment><USER4> To be honest, if he believes that 'proofs are lacking on both sides' then I've just lost quite a significant amount of respect for the man.

If the 'truthers' are correct then many hundreds, if not thousands, of people decided to conspire to murder thousands of innocent civilians and, somehow, managed to prevent any leaking of this whatsoever.

On this basis alone, the idea that 9/11 was a conspiracy is insane, before we get to the fact that, as with all other conspiracy theories, there is just no evidence whatsoever (though the 'truthers' require an unattainable standard of proof from reasonable people, despite requiring none for their own beliefs) then the idea that there is 'no proof' on either side is equally unhinged.

If you can't think clearly on something so clear and obvious then it really draws into question your reliability on any subject, especially if you are 'preaching' on the subject.

I'm sorry, you just have to draw the line when you're talking about the murder of thousands of innocent people. Seriously.

<comment><USER5> OK, hundreds would be impossible and silly, but why would it take hundreds? Suppose Cheney decided by himself to let the attacks happen, could he have, without anyone catching on? If not he alone, who else would be needed? No more than five surely.

Discounting a conspiracy as impossible is just as silly as arguing a conspiracy of hundreds. Improbable, yes, impossible, no.

<comment><USER6> _Suppose Cheney decided by himself to let the attacks happen, could he have, without anyone catching on? If not he alone, who else would be needed? No more than five surely._

No, because the people at the top are not the ones who do the work. They set policy, and sometimes directly tell people what to do - but, more often, they tell people who then tell other people what to do. If a conspiracy is going to involve the top of the chain - and it should be pointed out that the VP is technically not in the chain of command - then it's going to involved dozens, if not hundreds of others if the conspiracy is actually going to do something effective. And in that case, there will be enough written down that eventually it will out. See, for example, the Iran-Contra affair.

An excellent account of both what the critical points for intervention were, and what happened on the day is "The Ground Truth": [http://www.amazon.com/Ground-Truth-Untold-America- Attack/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Ground-Truth-Untold-America- Attack/dp/B0043RT9A8/) The title has unfortunate "truther" connotations, but it comes from a term the aviation industry uses to establish what happened after a crash. They use first-hand material and evidence to establish the "ground truth" of the crash, and from there try to extract lessons. The author does exactly that, using primary sources exclusively - such as recorded conversations between air controllers - to determine the sequence of events.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Years back, I used to be an FSF member. Not that I liked the GPL much (in fact, I mostly use the Apache License), but they raised important issues, and had a track record of investing into fine software (GNU) that I benefitted from a lot.

However, their campaigns were getting so off-target, that much of my sympathy dwindled, and I ended my membership. Childish 'anti' advertising, such as 'BadVista' and DDoSing Apple's genius bars (gee, that's will convince anyone who was visiting an Apple Store) only made the whole free software movement look bad, childish, and unsocial. To this day, they seem to put their energy into almost hilarious campaigns (Windows 7 sins? Seriously?).

This open letter is on the mark, their current course only marginalizes the FSF and part of the FLOSS community. Whatever happened to relying on your own strengths, rather than caricaturizing the competition?

<comment><USER8> I'm a happy fellow of the FSFE (<http://fsfe.org/>), the European pendant to the FSF. Sometimes we also discuss FSF campaigns, and usually agree that those would almost certainly be counter-productive here in Europe, especially things like the "Windows 7 sins".

However, we always thought: Well, the USA have a different culture, so maybe this kind of campaign is needed there, and probably our style of campaign would not work there.

(With "our style" I especially mean: not to exaggerate, and to prefer positive campaigns over negative campaigns.)

It is interesting to see that our objections seem to be also valid within the USA, too. Maybe it's time for some people to join the FSF and to encourage them to learn from their European branch.

<comment><USER9> It's interesting how advertising cultures are different. In Greece, for example, it is unthinkable for an ad to acknowledge the competition, especially in a negative light.

It was a rather big shock for me when I saw a US ad for a Ford car (for example) saying "our fuel consumption is X lower than the Prius".

This would never happen in Greece. At most, they would say "our fuel consumption is X lower than the nearest competitor".

<comment><USER10> (Canadian here, but the ads are similar and we get lots of US channels.)

>At most, they would say "our fuel consumption is X lower than the nearest competitor".

This is what usually happens. It's only when a competitor is so well-regarded that people wouldn't even consider the company running the ad that they mention names.

For example, fuel econonmy and the Prius and almost inseparable in people's minds thanks to good marketing, to the point that someone shopping for an efficient car would probably not even consider Ford unless you challenged their assumptions with a surprising fact (that the Ford had better MPG than the Prius).

It's like the "Droid does" ads (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e52TSXwj774>) - the iPhone was so dominant that they basically had to say, "You think that Apple/Toyota is the best in this field? Well guess what, we're better!"

<comment><USER11> In the prius example, my hunch is that when doing tests the the generic terms (things like "nearest competitor") failed to elicit comparisions with the prius. Prius already has a not-a-regular-car cache so my guess is they had to use prius as the generic term. Or they were specifically targeting people that were already seriously considering the prius. Prius may be on the way to becoming another kleenex.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If Stallman wasn't a crazy hippy he wouldn't have been into this cause years before even the first dot.com boom. It's unfair for someone to insist that a visionary go corporate all these years later because you feel uncomfortable. If you want to be the next generation spokesman than become that, but don't waste time trying to make a zebra shed his stripes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for making that point. I want to make perfectly clear that I have a tremendous amount of respect for RMS and everything that he's done. By no means would I recommend that he compromise his ideology or 'go corporate.'

All I'm saying is: almost everybody at his talk (already a self-selecting group) was put off by the tone and extremist nature of his delivery. His message got lost, and that sucks - it's an important message.

<comment><USER3> But his eccentricity and radicalism are what made the fsf and gnu possible in the first place. Anyone with his skills in the 70s turned into a millionaire by the end of the 80's. Instead he decided to lock himself up and write emacs, gcc, glibc etc and give them away for free living on donations and minimum wage freelancing.

The thing is that you can't call him on his eccentricity and radicalism when this is exactly what got him there in the first place. Sure, he's not business friendly but we already have very powerful entities such as google advocating foss in a business friendly way. I still find his speeches entertaining and things like swindle and digital restrictions don't offend me, they're actually refreshing compared to the usual politically correct speeches.

<comment><USER13> I dunno. Couldn't you use that same sort of logic to argue against criticizing any great/commendable person? We shouldn't criticize them because those character traits are part of the reason they accomplished these other things over here.

Then again, maybe the criticism they've received all along has helped to drive them to those successes, so we actually _should_ be criticizing them...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Just a quick thought from skimming this thread: It seems like there are two issues, radicalism and eccentricity.

Saying that the government may have caused 9/11 is eccentric. It's crazy and "radical" in an uninteresting way, and most intelligent people will ignore it.

But the idea that one shouldn't use Google docs if one values freedom is radical. I think RMS is completely and totally wrong, but the radicalism or apparent impracticality of the idea is not what I object to.

The cheesy campaigns and slogans have elements of both. They are radical ideas presented in an eccentric way. I think the 7 sins stuff, Swindle, etc., are stupid and childish and really have no upside.

But contrary to what the OP seems to suggest, while many people are turned off by radicalism, radicals are influential way out of proportion to what one would be led to expect by making a quick survey of people's negative reactions to them.

It can be hard to separate what's radical and what's merely eccentric. Especially if you're the one trying to figure out how to present radical ideas.

<comment><USER15> I believe that radicals are the most influential when they contrast against (and serve as a warning about ignoring) the moderates.

Imho, the problem the FSF has is that they don't have a MLK to Stallman's Malcolm X.

Eben Moglen? maybe? Is he active anymore?

<comment><USER16> But on the other hand, if we instead choose licences and the GPL as Malcolm X, then there definitely is a MLK in BSD.

Do the BSD and BSDish licences have any front people the same way GPL do in Stallman?

<comment><USER17> "Open Source" (Eric Raymond et al) and Apache Foundation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I dislike the idea that every single leader in the world must only conduct themselves according to Dale Carnegie, as it were. There is an over-abundance of people doing just that, and judging from this post and many of the comments, a lot of people seem to want others to conform to that sort of uniform "persuasive" behavior. I'm not saying it isn't effective, but surely not everybody needs to do that. Isn't there room in this big world for a few genuine _personalities?_

<comment><USER19> Of course there is, but I think in some ways it hurts RMS, and it hurts the image of the FSF.

A good friend of mine (a fellow hacker, actually a much much better hacker than me) and I were talking about Richard Stallman the other day. The guy deserves an _enormous_ amount of credit for his contributions to humanity.

Think about what happened as a result of GCC. Think of how many things were enabled because of that.

Right now I'm sitting in one of the design studios over at ASU borrowing some bandwidth and hanging out with one of my friends while she works on an architectural model. Something that I never realized until I spent some time talking with her was how _unbelievably lucky_ we are as nerds.

I was talking to her about what an architect hopes for after college.

Spend tons of $$ on school->hope you get a good internship->Hope you get hired somewhere good->hope that you get the privilege of working on something cool->maybe get a good job doing something fun.

You _have_ to spend other people's money, lots of it, in order to do cool things in architecture.

With open source software (and I understand that GCC isn't _all_ of open source software, but it's important) this isn't true at all.

My passion is for building websites. My webservers run linux, I use python as a scripting language, I use apache as a webserver, I use mysql as a database. If I get _really_ big, maybe I'll use nginx as a proxy cache.

The only limiting factor in how much stuff I can build on my computer is how fast I can input new information into my brain. I'm constrained by my ability to learn and _that is pretty much it_.

This is _huge_ , and this is something that is pretty unique to computers.

And think about the ways in which this freedom to create has revolutionized the way that humans communicate with one another. Think about how equalizing this is across the economic spectrum.

(I'm sorry, I went kindof off topic there...)

You've got all of these absolutely wonderful things happening in OSS. If somebody wanted to give Dr. Stallman a Nobel Prize for contributions to humanity, I wouldn't bat an eye.

But to "the outside world" a lot of these things are hidden behind a personality that is incredibly off-putting, and that's a little bit tragic. I wish Stallman was a tiny bit more "normal" just because I want more people exposed to the things that he has done.

<comment><USER20> _I'm constrained by my ability to learn and that is pretty much it._

Well, I think it is more subtle than that. You are relying on certain externalities - for example, you can't build a chip fab without spending an enormous amount of money, and you need all that power so you can work in Python and not ASM, you can't lay ubiquitous bandwidth without spending an enormous amount of money, etc.

What you are doing is equivalent to your friend creating whatever she can imagine in MicroStation (or whatever CAD architects use these days). It's just that she seems to be more aware of the commercial aspects of actually making it happen than you are.

<comment><USER19> You're right, but these externalities are accessibly cheap.

Last month, my website had ~150,000 visitors. People who I know and look up to in the tech community tweeted about it (it was for an article I wrote).

I was able to design something, implement it (the software the runs the site [on top of the OSS stack]), then release it to the world and watch people use it.

It wasn't just a demo, it was a real-life, functioning product.

I pay $20/mo for hosting on linode. $20/mo gets me the ability to compete with multi-billion dollar media publishers, and multi-billion-dollar software companies (faecbook, twitter, etc [ _obviously_ my $20/mo doesn't scale. The point is that I'm creating the same thing they are, just smaller).

I got "noticed" by a whole bunch of people who used my product.

This is _not_ the case with architecture. You could make an _really_ cool model, or design in CAD, and nobody outside of your social circle would likely see it.

I just paid $48 for a year of hosting on prgmr because I wanted to give some friends of mine a sandbox to play in while I teach them python.

Imagine an architecture teacher giving their student a plot of land, as well as a crew of builders, and a yard full of raw materials.

 _That's_ where OSS software is right now, and that is amazing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I hear this opinion a lot, and I think it slightly misses the point. The open- source world already has plenty of socially conventional advocates promoting their products. If the FSF became an ordinary open-source software promoter, it wouldn't have nearly as much influence as, say, the Ubuntu marketing team.

But there aren't many organizations trying to derive software principles from objective logic instead of subjective cost-benefit analysis, who insist that freedom and controlling your own computing is not just another feature but a vital issue. RMS may not convert many Windows users, but he does come up with valuable insights. If no one else is going to be a vocal, uncompromising advocate for software users, I can cringe through Windows 7 Sins and jokes about letting presidents drown.

</comment><comment><USER22> This man is arguably the greatest hacker of all time. He's hacking the culture, he's been incredibly successful.

It's shocking and irresponsible that people are commenting on "what rms says" based only on hearsay, speculation and mis-quotes. At least take the time to Google before condemning the man for things he never said.

<comment><AUTHOR> The link to the video of the lecture was in the first sentence of the letter. Apologies if this was unclear.

<comment><USER22> Apologies to you but I was referring to commenters on this thread, not your post. Specifically, the 9/11 stuff. I should have replied to those directly, but was disgusted.

My apologies once again because it has nothing to do with you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Also, Stallman has been taking baby steps for a very very long time. He didn't start with a completely free software machine at all. He used a proprietary compiler at first, a proprietary editor, etc. in order to build everything up.

In today's world, it _is_ possible to do all of your work using free software. It may not be Google Docs, but LibreOffice is pretty awesome and you can just use Empathy or Pidgin IM to talk to people over an XMPP network.

At some point you have to pry yourself away from proprietary software and the sooner you do it, the less likely you are to cave in and use _more_ proprietary software.

Stallman has been repeating the same ideas for years. It's hard to sound persuasive or charismatic when you're _not_ trying to be a leader and when you've been saying the same damned thing over and over and having to adapt it to the realities of today (which could have been avoided if only more people had listened in the first place...)

</comment><comment><USER24> I don't think that Stallman should tone down his message. Sure, he can be rough, but so what. (I've experienced this in email with him when he asked about re-releasing some of my early Lisp books under the FSF doc license, but that is OK.) The world needs people with strong contrarian opinions and even if I don't always agree I value what they say.

Way off topic, but: I can imagine a future world where there is an underground using free software, private but linked ad-hoc networks, etc. The victories of the super rich over the rest of us in the last decade actually have me looking at fiction like the world in Gibson's 'Johnny Mnemonic' as a real possibility for the future.

<comment><USER25> RMS wrote a short story on the premise

<http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> What bother's me about Dr. Stallman is that he is concerned with particular freedoms, such as the freedom to tinker with software, and brands this as _the_ freedom. This is ideology. For me the most important freedom is the freedom to get my work done with the best available tools. Often the best available tools are not "free" software, especially if you do anything other than web or systems programming.

I actually prefer to see him marginalize his views – it helps intelligent people who are not interested in buying into other people's ideology realize that he is an egomaniacal cult leader without needing to waste time considering the soundness of his ideas.

I prefer the "open source" guys.

<comment><USER2> you don't give a damn about freedom, you just want a good tool. Its not really that hard to understand the difference.

<comment><USER17> What is "freedom"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Proponents of the FSF desire the hegemony of free software with the same uncompromising fervor as revolutionaries in russia desired communism in 1917. And the analogy does not end there. In many ways, free software is a communists dream.

Marx hoped that technology would make human labour redundant through mechanisation of production, allowing humans to spend all their time doing r&d (or r&r) --- he hoped that stuff like food would become free to create. With software, it's already possible to make this a reality, as programs can be replicated without cost. All other things being equal, this should lead to great benefits to society, a prospect that has attracted RMS and others.

That being said, it is as useless to ask RMS to compromise as it would be to ask those revolutionaries to in russia, 1917.

Furthermore, asking them to take baby steps is condescending, and they will ignore this advice. The reason is that their motivation differs from the majority of the hackernews readership. Sure, if they took baby steps and focused on PR and focused their agenda, free software might become more mainstream, and many entrepreneurs and small companies would benefit. But they don't want entrepreneurs and small companies to benefit, esp. if it means making these compromises.

Essentially, this is why I find articles like this condescending. The point of FSF is to improve society by advocating universal adoption of free software. Entrepreneurs indirectly benefit from these endeavors. Entrepreneurs then complain that the FSF could be more effective if they compromised their platforms. But this is sort of disingenuous because it's essentially the entrepreneurs telling the FSF to redirect effort that would benefit all of society to effort that would benefit the entrepreneurs. Granted, the former efforts are harder than the latter, but it is no one's place to tell the FSF how to direct their charity and advocacy, especially not someone who stands to gain from the reallocation that they themselves suggest.

<comment><USER3> > Proponents of the FSF desire the hegemony of free software with the same > uncompromising fervor as revolutionaries in russia desired communism in > 1917.

Sorry but this is not true. Stallman already said many times that he doesn't think proprietary software should be banned. In fact the first version of the emacs license used to oblige people to redistribute their modifications even when there were no re-distribution. RMS realized that was fascist and decided to only ask for source in case of redistribution (as in the gpl later).

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Eben Moglen <http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/> is a more winning spokesman for the FSF these days. I hope he'll forgive me for mentioning that there's plenty of him on YouTube <http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=eben+moglen> :)

<comment><USER28> eben's a wonderful speaker, but i believe he's resigned from actively working for the FSF? i could be wrong

<comment><USER29> I believe he now works for the Software Freedom Law Center, which is sort of affiliated with the FSF.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> On the flipside, if Stallman was less crazy I wouldn't have my second-favorite comic strip of all time:

<http://xkcd.com/225/>

<comment><USER3> Relevant [http://blog.xkcd.com/2007/04/19/life-imitates-xkcd-part- ii-r...](http://blog.xkcd.com/2007/04/19/life-imitates-xkcd-part-ii-richard- stallman/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I don't think this guy gets it. Clearly, he has drawn the line at "proprietary software is fine, as long as it's useful to me". To RMS, though, that's not where the line is: he simply refuses to use software he can't tweak or audit. That's not like calling Obama Hitler or saying global warming is a scientific fraud. It's just an ideology, like not driving a car or only eating foods that don't come from animals. Nothing wrong with that, so why all the hate?

This article is sillier than calling the kindle "swindle".

<comment><USER32> If the spokesperson for the Vegetarian Society was trying to persuade others to become vegetarian by branding all farmers "murderers" and engaging in ridiculous rhetoric, I think other vegetarians might be concerned that their message wasn't being conveyed appropriately and was alienating them from the mainstream, thereby resulting in fewer vegetarians.

<comment><USER33> I can't tell if you are being facetious, but the main argument for vegetarianism is that "meat is murder."

<comment><USER34> For many of the vegetarians I've known, that's a secondary argument, the primary being a healthier lifestyle.

<comment><USER25> The analogy works fine. We have the politically motivated FSF on the "meat is murder" side, and on the other hand the Open Source movements belief that open source is simply a more practical way to develop software on the "healthier lifestyle" side.

I wouldn't expect PETA to stop with their off-putting campaigns ("Your Mommy Kill Animals"), it is what they genuinely believe, and for them keeping silent and advocating "a healthier lifestyle" would be so far from their viewpoint that it would practically be a lie, even if it might win them more friends and influence.

Same with RMS. His views are radical, and toning his messages to make them more palatable down would be dishonest to who he is. Let someone else play the moderate and practical.

Of course, moderate and practical people don't dedicate their life to a message, be it "a healthier lifestyle" or "a better way to develop software". The Open Source spokespeople like Michael Tiemann or Tim O'Reilly) tend to get distracted by having a life to live.

<comment><USER35> And let's not forget that RMS' views create the space that moderates inhabit. In other words, if there were no RMS, the moderates would be the extremists and we'd all be poorer for it.

<comment><USER36> The difference though, is that usually the moderates have the pulpit and the radicals are ever marginalized. That hasn't happened to a great degree here. Stallman is still the front man for the movement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Ignoring the particulars of the issue, I think it's sad that non-mainstream views on 9/11 automatically makes someone a valid target for ad hominem attacks, even in educated and intellectual circles. This form of social exclusion is essentially nationalistic and a dangerous trend.

While conspiracy fetishism is unfortunate, it's good to have people questioning the official line, and it isn't as if all the facts around 9/11 are clear cut--yes, there is much unsupported speculation that can be thrown out immediately, but simply positing government involvement on some level is not a priori outlandish.

I don't think we should expect anything different from Stallman, or any radical thinker. Controversy is part of the job.

<comment><USER38> The issue is not that he holds such views, the issue is that he brings it up in the context of free software in order to push the line "the gummint is out of get us", which makes it a little unpalatable to many.

<comment><USER37> I agree it's not effective rhetorically. Digging into any controversial issue is rhetorically risky for a public figure. What is worrying to me is the disproportionate sensitivity Americans have to this particular bit of controversy. All he said is he believes the US government was involved in 9/11. He didn't say how or in what capacity. Yet based on many of the responses, you'd think he said that Lizard Man Bush flew the planes himself by remote control. The author complains that Stallman is marginalizing himself, yet if he and others are willing to attempt to marginalize him based on unpopular (not crazy) political opinions, who's really to blame?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Can somebody tell me when exactly did Stallman say that someone who used proprietary software was a hater of freedom ? In the last interview I read, he seemed able to understand that almost nobody would go as far as him on the side of software freedom.

[http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/031411-richard- stallma...](http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/031411-richard- stallman.html?page=2)

<comment><USER40> I have no citation, but he did say things along those lines when I saw him at Portland State not even a month ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I wonder how many 24-year-old CS students have given this same advice to Stallman in the last 25 years. Not that Alexey shouldn't voice his thoughts, but it's well-trod ground.

</comment><comment><USER42> When I first started to become computer savvy, Stallman had already moved into the activist stage, and further away from programming. I had always heard that he was a great programmer. But, I've never actually seen any code he's written. The earliest software versions I can find on gnu.org's FTP are from 1994--I'm guessing most of the projects had multiple contributors by this time.

Anyone happen to know where some pure Stallman code can be found?

<comment><USER43> apt-get source emacs

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I definitely hadn't expected as much feedback and discussion as the post got; thanks, everybody! In case you're curious, I got an email back from RMS: <http://alexeymk.com/dear-dr-stallman-the-aftermath>

<comment><USER44> Thats it? That response is a bit of a letdown (but in a way exactly what I'd expect from rms). It kind of goes without saying that you're going to be skeptical of things said by someone who disagrees with your philosophy, but I wouldn't fault him for using that as a preface to a discussion, except that's all he says. It make it seem like he just dismissed your message without giving it any thought. Maybe that kind of hypocrisy is needed in a advocate like himself, implore people to heed your message, ignore listening to anything that might change your attitudes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Saying "Big Brother" is simply telling the truth. When the US government and other governments feel it's okay to illegally wiretap people and the TSA subjects you to full body searches and cellphones make you easy to locate and the US government uses drones to kill people in other and the NSA wants backdoors into encryption schemes and ways to break them, I think it's safe to call them Big Brother.

</comment><comment><USER45> Relevantly, FSF's new executive director is asking for feedback, and specifically criticism: [http://lists.fsf.org/archive/html/info- member/2011-04/msg000...](http://lists.fsf.org/archive/html/info- member/2011-04/msg00001.html)

</comment><comment><USER46> Whilst I'm against negative campaigning, rms has been and still is the consciousness of free software. We would be in a very bad place if not for him. yeah sometimes he's a dick, but then we all are.

</comment><comment><USER47> I really don't think the signs that are used to illustrate this article are comparable. The Kindle/Swindle sign isn't making up a new name for the Kindle. It is saying that this thing in the sign is a swindle. You shouldn't buy it because it makes false promises. If a person made up a sign with a bottle of Coke and put "Tastes Great" beneath it, that person wouldn't be calling Coke "Tastes Great".

Sure, it's negative advertising, but that doesn't put it on the level of Lyndon Larouche advertising. It might be on the level of the people who called Microsoft M$ on Slashdot 15 years ago, but I don't really think it is. I didn't see the talk, so I don't know if he called it a swindle during the talk but if he did, then I would put the remark in the latter category.

I'm even less sure what the objection to the other sign is. Is it the word "sins"? They want you to go to their website to see the things that they don't like about Windows 7. Mainly, I would guess, in the way that it restricts your freedom. What is a short word that is less incendiary that means things-I- don't-like-about-a-thing-that-restricts-my-freedom?

Finally, "baby steps"? In this day and age? I've used almost exclusively free software for over ten years. It's really not that hard. I prefer it. So start using free software or don't. I don't care. But don't pretend it's a big hassle that someone told you that you should.

(To be clear, I'm not a total apologist for RMS. He has said some distasteful things about women and from what I hear his hygiene isn't the greatest either.)

<comment><USER48> In his talk, he referred to the Kindle nearly exclusively as the "Amazon Swindle," only clarifying that he was talking about the Kindle at the end, for what its' worth.

<comment><USER47> That's unfortunate. In the past, I've had more respect for the FSF because they generally refrained from such juvenile word substitutions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> _When you talk about the risk of software as a service, you can mention that the US gov't is attempting to collect identifying user data from the Wikileaks Twitter account, or the recent domain name seizures of PokerStars and other online gambling websites.

These are practical consequences of a lack of Free Software_

Huh Wut!?

How is free or open software going to prevent any company from receiving a court order to disclose data about its users?

This has nothing to do with technical implementation of a service.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed, the point isn't straight-forward. Stallman's argument was against software-as-a-service and in favor of doing computing locally.

If we were using a decentralized twitter alternative like identi.ca or status.net, then all of the IP/log data wouldn't be in Twitter's hands to give in the first place. This is the 'if you let other people do your computing for you, you lose control/freedom over your data' argument.

The same logic (albeit less convincingly) applies to PokerStars - if we were using some sort of Bitcoin-driven, no-single-point-of-failure architecture for online poker, the US government wouldn't have been able to shut down the operation nearly as easily.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I've always found a connection between brilliance and "yelling at cars on the side of the road." Take the good with the bad.

<comment><USER51> I've read a number of your books and never drew that connection before, thanks.

Also, I thought that guy looked a lot like RMS, but I was going too fast to get a good look.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I really appreciated the tone of this piece. Respectful, well written and convincing.

</comment><comment><USER53> I pretty much agreed with everything except the ridiculous idea that Stallman should try out Google Docs so he could see how "good" it is.

<comment><USER54> I don't understand your objection. It is an amazingly simple tool for collaborative editing and I don't know of any free software alternatives that are as easily usable.

<comment><USER53> I don't doubt it, but if you think Stallman is interested in a product because it's "better" than another product then you really don't know what Stallman's values are at all. Stallman's not objecting to it on the grounds of it being poor software, nor is he making the claim that it _is_ poor software.

If someone's on a diet and refuses to eat chocolate because that would be against the point of the diet, countering with "I think you should try it---it tastes so _good_ " completely misses the point.

<comment><USER54> To act like free software can entirely ignore what closed-source software does is a bizzare position to take though. Simply the act of using high quality software (closed or open) gives you insight, inspiration and direction for whatever you're working on.

I know Stallman isn't interested in products because they're "better". But he should be - even if only to push the free software movement to make itself even better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55>
        today's proprietary stuff isn't marijuana;
        it's heroin, and it's really, really good

I beg to differ -- today's proprietary software is exactly like marijuana.

When it comes to freedom, there's is no black & white classification, only shades of gray. And the whitest of them all are the BSD-like licenses, which are frowned upon by the FSF.

And the reason I think proprietary software is like marijuana is because you CAN be careful when using it, you can also take it in small dosages where it makes sense, you're only required to use it responsibly to not end up hooked with freedoms lost.

And of course, for some people marijuana usage turns into heroin -- but everybody fears heroin and heroin comes with a heafty price for the junkies, which isn't that good in the eyes of consumers (best things in life tend to be cheap ;))

Also, leaving this analogy behind -- let's take as example GIMP.

Gimp is awesome for what it does and I actually think its grotesque interface is the reason why I ended up working with masks, really groking effects like smart-sharpening.

But if you're deep into photography, using Gimp is unacceptable. First, it has serious limitations like 8-bits per color (which means you're losing color info, when importing from RAW formats, or when composing layers -- and as a practical consequence, correcting over/under-exposed photos becomes a nightmare). CMYK support is hackish at best, and photographers (professional or passionate amateurs) do print their photos (whether it's for selling, or for doing exhibits). Then, while the UI forces you to learn about the inner- workings of digital image processing, it becomes a pain in the ass to quickly retouch hundreds of photos (unless you can do them as a batch, with some scripting, but since every photo is unique, no, you can't).

So comparing a product like Adobe Photoshop, which provides real/measurable value to photographers, with a drug that you can get rid of -- that's stretching it a lot. I also view a product like Photoshop as something that gives you more freedom for expression -- also saving you bucks which you'd spend otherwise on extremely high-priced gear.

</comment><comment><USER56> It is almost impractical for me to be like Stallman and shun a lot of Hardware/Software. But, I do not wish for Stallman to be any less radical than he is as: by being radical he gains my attention and some of his thoughts and ideas stick with me and, it has made me think about 'freedom' while buying any piece of Hardware/Software.

I would never want to work him on anything - I watched him tear apart people while responding to their concerns - but, people like him are essential to the Free Software movement.

</comment><comment><USER57> I respect RMS a lot, too, but I have to agree with this piece. He clearly tries to be a PR/sells person first of all. An advocate for free software in all industries and all other parts of society. Why then, doesn't he play to the rules of society where it makes obvious sense? As much as I find his stubbornness personally sympathetic, I doubt he is doing the FSF a favor at this point.

As an example I know from the people at MIT Open Course Ware, that even though they share a very similar view on free information, and RMS can show great achievements, it was really hard to use RMS as an effective advocate for OCW. The key audience was simply turned off by his appearance. As smug as that might sound.

In reality, you can hardly put people into sales, when they refuse to wear a tie every so often.

</comment><comment><USER58> It's too late for RMS. Once a pickle, never a cucumber.

</comment><comment><USER59> Sorry, I cant read something about RMS without remembering his horrific foot incident:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I25UeVXrEHQ>

</comment><comment><USER60> I think Stallman needs to read this book - <http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/159056233X>

Activism doesn't need to be mysterious, there's lots of psychological research that you can look to when you ask "how can I convince people to {go vegan, support software freedom, support gay rights}?"

</comment><comment><USER61> Isn't marginalization the whole point of FSF? They want to attract people committed to free software not appeal to popular culture. Dressing RMS up and giving him public speaking lessons will not change the ideology. His image as it stands is consistent with his image, the complete opposite of Steve Jobs.

</comment><comment><USER62> Damn you, Photoshop (presumably the only piece of closed software some people just can't do without).

<comment><USER63> Lots of proprietary software in the music industry too. Even if you want to create music as a hobby on your computer, things like samples are all in proprietary formats.

<comment><USER8> _> things like samples are all in proprietary formats_

This is not exactly true. There do exist free samples in open formats, for instance the Freepats project:

<http://freepats.zenvoid.org/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> I had submitted something about Stallman and his genius some days back : [<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2471620>]

</comment><comment><USER65> > When we asked, you mentioned that you do not write much code anymore.

This may be partly why he seems out of touch with programmers.

<comment><USER66> He also went through a period of time where he was having wrist trouble which cut down on his programming output: <http://oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/ch09.html#15416>

(the zinger here would be a comment on finger gymnastics required to enter all those parenthesis is elisp)

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> I think RMS's most likely response to this article would be, "If I hadn't been so crazy, you wouldn't have written about my talk at all."

If I were in his shoes, I'd be crazy too.

</comment><comment><USER68> minor nit: i don't think rms is a "Dr.", since he didn't get a Ph.D. (unless he has a secret M.D.)

From wikipedia: "Stallman then enrolled as a graduate student in physics at MIT, but abandoned his graduate studies while remaining a programmer at the MIT AI Laboratory. Stallman abandoned his pursuit of a doctorate in physics in favor of programming."

perhaps he has an honorary doctorate?

<comment><USER69> From the same wikipedia article:

1996: Honorary doctorate from Sweden's Royal Institute of Technology [85]

2001: Honorary doctorate, from the University of Glasgow [89]

2003: Honorary doctorate, from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel [91]

2004: Honorary doctorate, from the Universidad Nacional de Salta. [92]

2007: Honorary doctorate, from the Universidad de Los Angeles de Chimbote.

2007: Honorary doctorate, from the University of Pavia [93]

2008: Honorary doctorate from the Universidad Nacional de Trujillo, in Peru

2009: Honorary doctorate, from Lakehead University [94][95]

RTFA :)

<comment><USER47> I don't think an honorary doctorate entitles one to be referred to as Dr. In fact, most people with doctorates that I know would rather not be referred to as Dr. In the case of this article, it seems like the author is trying to be overly-formal in the manner of a Keith Olbermann rant.

<comment><USER70> Seems like he's referred to frequently as 'Dr. Stallman', including on gnu.org.

[http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=%22Dr....](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=%22Dr.+Stallman%22+site%3Agnu.org&aq=f&aqi=&aql=f&oq=)

<comment><USER47> Yuck.

<comment><USER71> While I know that the regular practice is to refrain from calling recipients of honorary doctorates "doctor", I think that in some cases it's reasonable. Stallman is definitely more deserving of the title than many "real" Dr.s that you'd find.

Maybe universities need a new class of degree called "honorary doctorate and we mean it for this guy".</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


BBR v2: Model-based Congestion Control Performance Optimizations [slides] - <AUTHOR> https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/106/materials/slides-106-iccrg-update-on-bbrv2 <comment><USER2> Dropbox have a good real-world comparison [1] between BBRv1 and BBRv2. They found the retransmission rate to be 4x lower for v2. It's on their edge network, so would be interesting to see how v2 performs on connections with a high bandwidth delay product.

[1] [https://dropbox.tech/infrastructure/evaluating-bbrv2-on- the-...](https://dropbox.tech/infrastructure/evaluating-bbrv2-on-the-dropbox- edge-network)

</comment><comment><USER3> For those interested these are the changes to v1:

[https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/104/materials/slides-10...](https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/104/materials/slides-104-iccrg- an-update-on-bbr-00)

So v2 now also uses packet loss as a congestion indicator and supports ECN.

</comment><comment><USER4> Network congestion really is game theory...

When should I send my packets to maximize my throughput while not unfairly affecting everyone else's packets?

And the best strategy in such a game with the whole intermediate network hard to model and with plenty of unknowns, tends to be some kind of adversarial neural net.

Clearly running that for every packet is impractical, but it could at least be used to make a set of strategies to choose from.

<comment><USER5> Some work in this area:

[https://web.mit.edu/remy/](https://web.mit.edu/remy/)

[https://www.usenix.org/conference/nsdi18/presentation/dong](https://www.usenix.org/conference/nsdi18/presentation/dong)

[https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3229543.3229550](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3229543.3229550)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's been a while since I caught up on the BBR work, are there any ways to tweak the algorithm for cases where you want 'increased fairness' – ie. deferring to other data streams because the current one is a lower priority? This would probably mean approximating LEDBAT, which is often used in large backgrounded file downloads like system updates.</comment>


Ask HN: Why was there a black border on HN few days back? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Marvin Minsky died. It was in his honor. You can see all of the stories on HN here -> [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Marvin%20Minsky&sort=byPopular...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Marvin%20Minsky&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=pastWeek&type=story)

</comment><comment><USER3> When someone important to the community dies, a thin black bar is added to the top of HN as a mark of respect [1].

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5990015](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5990015)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, wasn't aware of that.</comment></comment>


Two year old bug in Android - <AUTHOR> http://servletsuite.blogspot.ru/2012/12/two-years.html

<comment><USER2> That is a feature request, not a bug.

<comment><USER3> Missing features and don't working features are equal in user's eyes.

<comment><USER4> That doesn't change the definition of "bug", though.

<comment><USER3> Definition from wikipedia (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_bug> ):

>A software bug is an error, flaw, mistake, failure, or fault in a computer program or system that produces an incorrect or unexpected result, or causes it to behave in unintended ways.

So lack of support for common standard is unexpected and reason for it could be flaw or mistake.

Also <http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/bug_3>

> a mistake or problem in a computer program

<http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/bug?s=t>

>a defect or imperfection, as in a mechanical device, computer program, or plan; glitch

Imperfection!

<comment><USER4> Geez.. you deliberately take some words of an article and totally ignore the primary defining words in your own pasted text which is "error, flaw, mistake, failure, or fault". Also, it is absuletely not unexpected or an incorrect result when it's not even implemented. It's intended by the programmer not to work and it's your own wish that it should work. It's definitely not a fault in the program code that it doesn't cope with the URI. It was never intended to do that.

It would be a bug if there is code for that URI scheme and the browser/OS should handle that, but doesn't. So if you can point me to the code in Android or some other hint that the scheme should work, i'll agree with you and call it a bug :)

Rest assured that arguing that a bug and a feature request are the same thing will not help on HackerNews. You can try that elsewhere :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is it really so bad that this SMS URI scheme wasn't implemented?

To me it looks like another potential security vulnerability that could be abused by malicious websites.

Therefore I'm quite happy that this "feature" is missing ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> It does not send SMS automatically. Just open SMS client

<comment><USER5> Yes, I know. If they implement it properly it's alright.

But my concern is that a it might get a security vulnerability when a nifty hacker finds a way to automatically submit the SMS.

And in my opinion omitting the feature is the best way to avoid that problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's an argument that this COULD be a platform feature, but it would be fairly simple to write an Android app that provides an IntentHandler for the SMS scheme. I'd never actually come across that particular URL scheme used anywhere: iOS/Apple clearly have it though.

</comment><comment><USER7> This alligator seems a little closer to the boat, why don't we take care of it first? HTTP Authentication

<http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1353>

</comment><comment><USER8> Here is another 2 yr old bug that I just ran into this week. <http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=14924>

<comment><USER4> Here you have a 4 year old "bug" aka enhancement:

[https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1030&...](https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1030&can=1&q=IMAP%20IDLE&colspec=ID%20Type%20Status%20Owner%20Summary%20Stars%20Opened)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If Android team doesn't see this as a potential feature, they should at the least close the bug, just letting it rot does not align with the goal of having a bug tracker.

</comment><comment><USER4> Bug or not, there are far more important things to work on then this (like IMAP Idle support in the standard client).</comment>


Toys - <AUTHOR> http://jsomers.net/blog/toys

<comment><USER2> First question, why dig up someone's blog post from last summer?

Second question, what gives with defining "toys" to so consistently mean "branded icons from franchised fiction?"

This is precisely what I kind of hate about yuppie culture. You can't have a model railroad, you have to have Thomas The Tank Engine. You can't play with your mom's broomstick and be a wizard, you need a Nimbus 2000 (no, wait, make that a 3000). It goes on and on, and even toys that used to have malleable generic purposes by design, like LEGO, need to be branded and defined and limited and explained and attached to some existing, trademarked, copyrighted, closed universe of predefined meaning.

There's nothing wrong with having a bit of this, sure. I have nothing against a couple Transformers or GIJOEs or Barbies or whatever. But if anything those kinds of toys should be "a sometimes food" for the imagination, and certainly not an all consuming obsession.

What kids need most of the time are real toys, the opposite of these sorts of things. Some blank pages to color on, some simple building blocks, a train that doesn't necessarily "go" anywhere...a racetrack whose races haven't already been run.

If there's a nostalgia to be had for something "lost" in youth, that's where it lies for me...not about anything I've lost, but rather what today's kids are having stolen from them before they even have a chance to miss it.

<comment><AUTHOR> _"... First question, why dig up someone's blog post from last summer? ..."_

reasonable question from someone who has only been here 154 days. Because it fits the _"Anything that good hackers would find interesting"_.

 _"... Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did. ..."_

If you think any submission is sub-standard, flag it (ie: click the bit toggled "flag" url) More guidelines can be found here ~ <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Teddy Ruxpin. That was mine.

My parents got it for me (an expensive gift!) When I found out it didn't _actually_ talk, but instead had a cassette tape with "conversations" pre- loaded onto its back, I never picked it up again.

Though I was really young, I still remember the disappointment and anger it caused me. "But the commercials...they said it _talked_!"

I do think we could use some of our tech genius to make better toys that delight and transform kids. What sort of programming would a _real_ sorting hat require? And wouldn't that be way more fun than Yet Another Social Network? Food for thought.

<comment><USER4> Hm. Maybe YC should fund someone to do this? ;)

<comment><USER5> No need to wait for YC, there are many, many entities operating in the "tech toy" scene. To name a few...

LaunchPad toys (<http://launchpadtoys.com/>) are doing some amazing things with the iPad.

Chris O'Shea (<http://www.chrisoshea.org/>) is a British designer in that space who did a fun little app recently called MakeGo which got great reception.

Cynthia Breazal's group at the MIT Media Lab did some mind blowing things with Tofulandia ([http://robotic.media.mit.edu/projects/robots/tofulandia/tofu...](http://robotic.media.mit.edu/projects/robots/tofulandia/tofulandia.html)).

Keita Takahashi (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keita_Takahashi>), who comes from a video game background, did some interesting work on playgrounds (how to make a 21st century playground?)

Yes, this is something I'm quite passionate about :)

<comment><USER6> We funded Launchpad Toys.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I read this post this morning and had the day to put it through "the hopper". Having done so, I think the key take away about "toy" value is the critical necessity of a difficulty curve (though versatility certainly helps).

When my parents moved, there are three types of toys I saved from the donation bin. The first were, of course, Legos. Legos (unlike the author's examples) don't reduce immersion, rather they expand the "set and props" available. Better yet, you can always modify building plans to create unique creations or even build entirely new creations unrelated to the original intent of sets.

The second set of toys I still have are a cabinet of magic props. The illusion of being able to perform impossible feats certainly agrees with the authors assertion that toys are a form of escape for individuals who due to their age are relatively helpless to control their plight. Further, a very real difficulty curve exists in magic beginning with the ability to convincingly perform a trick and fool an audience. Farther along the difficulty curve would be applying techniques in unexpected ways and designing your own illusions.

The final toy that I still adore is my Rubik's Cube. Like Lego's it is a branded product-- gasp..shock-- but it possesses an outer simplicity that quickly transforms into an unending pursuit of faster times. Anyone can solve a Rubik's cube with a few simple algorithms. But, to solve one in under twenty five seconds starts to demand a significant amount of memorization, focus, and spacial awareness. Thus, you can solve the cube in a day but never truly finish solving it if you continue to seek faster times (by the way, current world record is 5.66 seconds I believe).

Programming of course falls into this category as well. On the intro end of the spectrum you can adjust others programs and build simple choose your own path games. But, if you choose, there is always something more to learn, and apply to the game.

P.S. Fun boardgames work in the same manner. The more you play, the better you get and the more complex the strategies. Catan being a prime example.

<comment><USER8> I don't know that I'd call Catan an example of complex strategies. It's far more complicated than chutes and ladders, but there is still a big chance element, and most of the technique is dynamic and social. (concealing your goals, misdirection, negotiation)

Chess is the classic example, in my opinion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> That was a lovely read, thank you.

I think a lot of the comments are going to focus on how to make " _more_ toys, _better_ toys", and maybe that's inevitable given the audience, but I think that misses the point a little.

All children need is a prop and imagination; the more vague the prop the more things it can be. Realistic toys are, frankly, an adult obsession, because they will always fall flat in the face of what a child's mind can conjure up.

</comment><comment><USER10> When, as a teen, I discovered programming I was immediately hooked. It was the only "toy" that managed to match my immagination.

</comment><comment><USER11> At the risk of sounding cliche: to me making software is like a toy that delivers what the author described. Sure, I sometimes get disappointed (hours spent hunting a dumb bug) but in the end it is as close to magic as the real world allows. And it has real effects on the real world. I hope this never wears off.

</comment><comment><USER12> Just as modern toys prescribe a specific form of interaction, a specific game to be played science prescribes a specific causal relationship between the parts of the world. If toys or scientific theories describe a fixed link between 'what is' and 'what can happen' the opposite process fails. Kids are not able anymore to just invent a new meaning for the toy, a new way to play it just as we are not able to form spiritual belief-systems. And that's frustrating. That's why people say 'old toys were better, you could play with them how you wanted' or 'science is bunk, explaining everything down to the molecular level doesn't give me meaning in my life'. And that's why a new religion is needed which is built on science. Which gives explanations of the world that are not in direct conflict with scientific theories but also rooted in human imagination instead of observation. Which makes them meaningful. Also new toys.

</comment><comment><USER13> I really enjoyed reading this.

I don't really remember being disappointed with toys, but my parents do remember me taking them all apart almost immediately. I had a vast assortment of parts, which I used to build and rebuild and rebuild again all sorts of little robots and Rube Goldbergish things.

Care to hazard a guess as to what I did with my first car at age 16? Yeah, pretty much the same thing. Every computer I've ever owned? Yes, those as well.

As an adult (technically) I manage to collect and routinely discard massive heaps of techno-garbage.

Actually, I may never grow up; I create video games.

I guess I'm still searching for the magic; I know it has to be in there somewhere.

Oh and James, turtles are amphibians (not reptiles) :p

</comment><comment><USER14> Calvin & Hobbes actually have a story that _perfectly_ illustrate this: <https://imgur.com/a/wETcl>

Personally, I never had many toys, and yet I had hundreds. LEGO never fell short to me ;)

</comment><comment><USER15> I really enjoyed that read, well done. I didn't find toys to disappoint me very much. I love love loved my action figures when I was a kids. But my nephews boredom with his toys fits right into the picture you've written.

</comment><comment><USER16> Kids some how like super powers. They always need a hero who saves everyone from evil. My son always asks bedtime stories which has got evils, Thieves,dragons etc and ultimately a hero rescues everyone from these with arrows, guns and some tricks.

</comment><comment><USER17> This makes a good case for open-ended video games with material from existing franchises.

</comment><comment><USER18> I just read this yesterday after discovering that blog. Wow, weird. It is a very good read, though.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you make new friends? - <AUTHOR> As we get older, making friends takes more work. Seems like most people are so busy with life that it's hard to build new friendships. I'm looking to meet new people. What things are you doing to make and keep new friends? <comment><USER2> Definitely know the feeling especially if you are in place you didn't grow up.

Not a magic formula but I find sports opens a few doors for starting to make new friends.

Once mentioned on HN before: if you are ever invited to something, just go. Disclaimer as long as it aligns with your moral principals.

<comment><AUTHOR> I got the point, but sports and meetup events are closed due to COVID-19.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Full-fledged CRM inside your Inbox (Kind of Rapportive for Sales Teams) - <AUTHOR> http://crminbox.com

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://crminbox.com/screenshots>

Screenshot 1: Contextual / editable view when reading an email related to a customer

Screenshot 2: Social profile of all people involved in the conversation / account

Screenshot 3: Works well with other social plugins such as Rapportive

Screenshot 4: Activity stream view to look at a timeline of updates

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-

CRMinbox is an attempt to integrate CRM deeply with the email.

Customer Relationship Management is largely about effective communication, isn't it?

Isn't the point of communication itself a better place to manage customer relationships...rather than trying to aggregate information about accounts, deals, tasks, updates, contacts - in a separate silo - an independent (sometimes loosely integrated) CRM app.

Trying to make the CRM (information) easy to access and update.

Example usage:

\- You open an email (from a customer / partner etc.)

\- Corresponding account(s) are automatically identified and related information - deals/contacts/tasks/social profiles of people invovled - <USER2> shown in a contextual sidebar right next to the email.

\- You need to post a status update / change the status of a deal. So you click on the piece of information you wish to edit, change it, press enter - done.

No going through several clicks / postbacks...no need to leave your Inbox, head to another system to log/share/update information.</comment>