Postbank to replace 12M bank cards after employees steal 'master key' - <AUTHOR> https://www.timeslive.co.za/sunday-times/news/2020-06-14-postbank-forced-to-replace-12-million-bank-cards-after-employees-steal-master-key/ <comment><USER2> Insane. Just think of the risk that this 'master key' exposed to the bank's employees.

Having access to something as insanely valuable as a bank 'master key' puts the employees at risk of blackmail, extortion, etc.

That's why you have HSMs, key ceremonies, Shamir's secret sharing etc. It's not just for trust, it's also for protection of those involved.

Unauthorized wire transfers can be undone, or covered by insurance. Loss of life cannot.

<comment><USER3> I appreciate this. I wasn't familiar with Adi Shamir's secret sharing scheme. I found this video quite helpful in clarifying how it works for cases where only a subset of the participants are required to confirm the secret.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFY5SyY3IMQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFY5SyY3IMQ)

<comment><USER4> The original paper on this "How to Share a Secret" by Adi Shamir is incredible. You should absolutely read it.

\- The system is proven to be information theoretically secure (not just computationally)

\- It uses only high school math

\- The paper is only TWO PAGES LONG

I highly recommend printing this out on a single sheet of paper (double sided) and digging in.

[https://cs.jhu.edu/~sdoshi/crypto/papers/shamirturing.pdf](https://cs.jhu.edu/~sdoshi/crypto/papers/shamirturing.pdf)

<comment><USER5> Thanks for sharing. This is indeed genius and so simple. Brilliant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Note that this is a banking division of South Africa's Post Office. I was confused it was the Deutsche Postbank.

They lost more than $3.2 million from fraudulent transactions and will now have to replace more than 12 million cards for its customers after employees printed and then stole its master key in December 2018. Took them long enough to figure it out.

</comment><comment><USER7> >The breach resulted from the printing of the bank's encrypted master key in plain, unencrypted digital language at the Postbank's old data centre in the Pretoria city centre

I can't read anymore. Is there anymore technical explanation?

Was it actually 'printed' ... on paper?

Was it even an actual encryption key or just a password or something?

<comment><USER8> People seem to forget why credit cards came into existence.

It was not for security. Ever.

Credit Cards were introduced as a less-secure-but-more-convenient-check.

The store then would have a stock of "blank checks" with absolutely no security features where they would imprint with carbon paper and a pressure roll the credit card information and pretty much "mint" the client a check on the spot.

Over time the raised letters for the crude minting press morphed into a magnetic strip, but the process was still 100% the same. _Outside of the US_ in the last decade (2yrs in the US) some little security was added with encryption keys and PINs. Which is nothing more than a digital signature the bank may or may not check (like it did with the actual signature on the previous mentioned blank checks minted by the store). This is the step that was compromised with the stolen keys. In other words, the few places where you have to insert your card chip into a reader and type a pin had their security degraded to the same level as places where you simply use your magnetic strip or type your numbers on an online store.

<comment><USER9> Even more fun fact: we rely on mag stripes (vs. chip n pin / nfc / etc) because of gas pumps. The cost of refitting gas pumps holds us back. Yay.

<comment><USER10> So why not limit the magstripe to gas pumps and give them a time frame of 5-10 years to upgrade existing pumps, and mandate chip capable card readers in new pumps?

At the same time fees could be raised 2% for non-chip transactions to incentivize upgrades.

<comment><USER11> Looks like they have deadline of 10/2020 before visa and mastercard start holding owners liable for fraud if they haven't upgraded to chip readers.

[https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2020-01-07...](https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2020-01-07/gas- stations-rush-to-adopt-chip-card-readers-at-fuel-pumps)

<comment><USER12> That's stupid. Just issue cards without stripe and the problem will solve itself.

<comment><USER13> It's a chicken and egg problem. Gas purchases are on the of the most common purchases in the US. Removing the ability to pay using a credit card would a) piss of owners of the new credit cards, b) likely cause people to use their old credit cards for longer and still wouldn't push gas stations to switch over quickly as most have atms and gas stations could insist on cash payments. Keep in mind that at least some of these gas pumps can't be upgraded but have to be replaced in order to support the new chip cards. What should have been done is a combination of good incentives for upgrading early (maybe reduced fees?) and penalties for not upgrading within a time frame (fraud payments are owners responsibility after n amount of time, increased fees for dealing with fraud)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Ah hah hah haha!

And our (USA) law enforcement agencies promise us that any encryption master keys required by their grandiose plans will only be used in cases with proper legal court warrants (ignore the FISA court warrant abuse based on lies and deceit) and will be super secure and never stolen.

Just like those secret hacking tools stolen from the CIA.

Or these private master keys.

<comment><USER15> Don't forget the TSA travel master keys, which can now be 3-D printed by anyone using this repo: [https://github.com/Xyl2k/TSA-Travel-Sentry-master- keys](https://github.com/Xyl2k/TSA-Travel-Sentry-master-keys)

<comment><USER16> You can use a ball point pen to pop open the zipper on any luggage.

I understand that the illusion of control is very helpful for nervous passengers, but your luggage is leaving your control and it's mostly nylon fabric and plastic.

<comment><USER15> Yes, but you're missing the forest for the trees. A government entity (TSA) had a thing built specifically for their needs ("secure" locks for luggage) and promised they would be the only ones capable of unlocking it. Then somehow the "secret" they promised to protect (physical keys) got leaked out somehow and now the entire thing is security theater.

Also I think they used these locks on handgun / firearm containers that were declared when travelers with a CPL or LEO people traveled. Those are typically put into a hard container that is difficult to open unless you unlock the lock.

EDIT: last paragraph is wrong, please ignore that. Thanks guys.

<comment><USER17> I don't think you have to use a TSA lock on luggage with a firearm [1]. If it meets the legal definition of a "firearm" you trigger (get it?) the TSA rules that allow you to use a non-joke lock. Since this includes just the legal firearm you don't even have to carry an actual gun to prevent the TSA from sniffing your undies.

Deviant Ollam gave an (in)famous talk [2] about this at Defcon.

[1]: [https://www.tsa.gov/travel/transporting-firearms-and- ammunit...](https://www.tsa.gov/travel/transporting-firearms-and-ammunition)

[2]: [https://youtu.be/KfqtYfaILHw](https://youtu.be/KfqtYfaILHw)

<comment><USER18> That's a funny hack. However, this looks like conflicting advice:

"Only the passenger should retain the key or combination to the lock unless TSA personnel request the key to open the firearm container to ensure compliance with TSA regulations. You may use any brand or type of lock to secure your firearm case, including TSA-recognized locks."

If you use a TSA lock, that means they have a key to open up the case and access the firearm without you around. That's a big no-no and could result in problems with the law.

You'd also probably want to show up an extra hour early because this could cause long delays. Some airports are notorious for workers who don't know the regulations, don't want to be responsible for any of it, and will refuse to do anything to help you resolve the situation. Also, definitely don't try this if you're flying through New York or New Jersey.

<comment><USER17> I agree that paragraph seems contradictory. I guess I have a slightly lower opinion of the TSA now.

What's important is that you don't have to use a TSA lock. You just have to open it for them if they ask.

> Also, definitely don't try this if you're flying through New York or New > Jersey.

Why?

<comment><USER15> CPL's are typically granted at the state level, but not all states need to recognize your CPL as valid. So it's perfectly legal for me to fly from Detroit to New York with a firearm, because the TSA staff in Detroit, MI legally recognize my MI CPL.

However, the TSA agents in NY do not recognize my MI CPL. As a result when I fly back from NY to MI, I could get arrested for carrying a firearm.

More on this here: [https://www.theblaze.com/news/2018/01/18/colorado-woman- decl...](https://www.theblaze.com/news/2018/01/18/colorado-woman-declares-gun- in-luggage-gets-arrested-at-new-york-airport-and-folks-are-frustrated)

<comment><USER17> That has to do with concealed carry. Putting a firearm in your suitcase does not require a CPL, nor does it require concealed or even open carry. I'm sure it's still legal to transport a firearm in New York.

To be clear, this rule can be triggered by a flare gun or starting pistol. Traveling with those seems perfectly reasonable and I don't see why a CPL would be required.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Postbank is a subsidiary of South Africa's Post Office.

An entity that is bankrupt and barely functional despite having a state mandated monopoly on an entire country's postal system.

As per article they're also running the SASSA social grant system which is a train wreck in itself and has been buried in legal disputes for years (not random small cases...a challenge to the legitimacy of their core mandate on grants).

Someone walking out the door with printed encryption keys sounds about right.

<comment><USER20> > An entity that is bankrupt and barely functional despite having a state > mandated monopoly on an entire country's postal system.

To be fair, plenty of state-mandated monopolies of postal systems still aren't profitable, often because they don't significantly control their revenue stream insofar as they don't set the prices of their products.

<comment><USER19> Your argument is broadly sound, but not applicable in this particular case.

Currently people are paying a massive premium to utilize private courier to have their stuff privately couriered. People are literally going f that I don't care what it costs I don't trust the postal system.

A sane postal service would review this situation and try to understand why the people think "f you". SAPO has decided that the correct solution to this situation is to simply legally mandate that everyone has to use their useless service thus making couriers illegal for this category. Literally:

[https://mybroadband.co.za/news/business/346729-online- stores...](https://mybroadband.co.za/news/business/346729-online-stores-may- be-forced-to-use-the-sa-post-office-and-they-are-not-happy.html)

I personally take a pretty dim view on "nobody wants this...fine...so we'll just force it by law" dynamics

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It seems ridiculously cheap, relative to payout, to attack financial institutions by joining them as employees. Couple this with the fact that "white collar" crimes are punished with relatively lenient sentences.

<comment><USER22> When IT leadership talks a big game about security, as a skilled practitioner on the ground I still see plenty of opportunities. When you delve into details, a lot of that "serious business regulated entity with compliance auditing requirements" stuff is brain dead. Like, running vulnerability scanners that don't even speak the same wire protocols as a the applications under test. Enforcing strict ACLs on UIs while it's trivial to SSH and curl the backend APIs.

I sometimes wonder whether accounting is like this too. Is financial audit just as much of a fig leaf? Can a skilled accountant also spot dozens of ways to embezzle?

<comment><USER21> We are truly saved by our better angels. If all people were ruthless economic competitors, and took every efficient financial opportunity available to them, criminal or legal, a cooperative society would be unmaintainable. We should consider ourselves lucky (perhaps blessed) that the anti-social among us are a tail end minority.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is quite surprising to me. Some of the banking technology and practices in Germany are extremely tight and their infrastructure seems problematic. Living there for a while as a non-native and being with PostBank, it was insanely difficult to login and understand. Germany is also heavily marred with bank cash groups, meaning you get charged elsewhere.

It was great to see N26 come along and change that, and thank god for their native translations.

<comment><USER24> They really should add "[South Africa]" the title, since my first thought was "Is this Germany or might they mean PostFinance in Switzerland?"...

How do you summmon dang, with @dang?

<comment><USER25> I think burning sage and eye of newt is involved too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Shouldn't this be the kind of key/info/data where it is divided into N pieces, and all of the pieces are stored separately?

<comment><USER27> Shamir Secret Splitting divides a secret into M pieces requiring N parts to reconstitute. This does not absolutely prevent this attack, but requires collusion between attackers who are presumably trusted insiders, but trusted insiders can be compromised by blackmail, coersion, greed, or other angles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> My accounting professor used to say the mirrors and security cameras in stores were to monitor the employees more than the customers.

<comment><USER29> Employers steal _far_ more than employees: [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c4/Wage_the...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c4/Wage_theft_versus_other_property_crimes.png)

[https://www.gq.com/story/wage-theft](https://www.gq.com/story/wage-theft)

[https://www.epi.org/publication/employers-steal-billions- fro...](https://www.epi.org/publication/employers-steal-billions-from-workers- paychecks-each-year/)

[https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-bigger-problem- th...](https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-bigger-problem-theft- protect/)

<comment><USER30> Wage theft is hard to monitor with cameras and mirrors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> How exactly would one use this key nefariously? It seems to do so would require a whole chain of capabilities.

In any case it would make sense to have multiple master keys...say use a different master key for each batch of so many cards.. then if one key was compromised it wouldn't affect 12M cards.

</comment><comment><USER32> I have this fantasy that there was some security engineer who said, "hrm this looks like you could steal/reconstruct this master key by..." raised it up to management and subsequently ignored or shot down because changing the solution was too expensive.

</comment><comment><USER33> There's a non-paywall article on the subject at:

[https://hotforsecurity.bitdefender.com/blog/south-africas- po...](https://hotforsecurity.bitdefender.com/blog/south-africas-postbank-is- replacing-12-million-bank-cards-after-major-security-breach-23503.html)

<comment><USER34> A better one here: [https://www.zdnet.com/article/south-african-bank-to- replace-...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/south-african-bank-to- replace-12m-cards-after-employees-stole-master-key/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> That proves my point again that there are not enough regulations on electronic security standards that applies to private companies.

All you have are white hat security consultant experts that only have their dollars and reputation to work with. The public is highly vulnerable on those things yet I don't see politicians really caring.

<comment><USER36> Quite the opposite: the free market will deal with this just fine, giving a big penalty to companies that don't care enough. The government, on the other hand, imposes bad businesses, enables regulatory capture and has proven many times that it has no idea how to handle infosec. These white hat consultants aren't perfect but through competition they're still better than lobbied lawmakers.

<comment><USER37> Do you think that the free market worked as desired in the case of Equifax?

<comment><USER38> Do you think we actually have a free market?

<comment><USER39> If we don't have a free market, it doesn't do much good to say the free market will solve any of our problems.

<comment><USER40> Huh? Presumably the suggestion is to make the market freer.

<comment><USER41> Or perhaps to acknowledge that the assumptions about a free-market ignore the realities of human psychology, and thus a free-market inherently cannot exist because humans are not capable of producing a free market without regulation, and regulation is antithetical to a truly free market?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Humans are a real security risk.

</comment><comment><USER43> Is there no equivalent of PCI in South Africa?

</comment><comment><USER44> and why was there a "master" key?

<comment><USER45> They probably rolled their own encryption, because it was over 20 years ago.

<comment><USER25> [https://classicprogrammerpaintings.com/post/148027314949/we-...](https://classicprogrammerpaintings.com/post/148027314949/we- rolled-our-own-crypto-pieter-bruegel-the)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Would you build a castle with a back-door?

<comment><USER47> Actually, castles almost always had back doors.

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

<comment><USER46> Almost always? Source for that? Very interesting, I guess during a siege there's a tradeoff there. If your postern is on the other side of a mountain range, then definitely it's not so bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Do you mean the "main key"?

</comment><comment><USER49> Does anyone have a link without a paywall?

<comment><USER50> [https://www.zdnet.com/article/south-african-bank-to- replace-...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/south-african-bank-to- replace-12m-cards-after-employees-stole-master-key/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> *main key

<comment><USER52> If they used main key this wouldn't be a problem</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Languages Worth Relearning? - <AUTHOR> Programming languages evolve at different speeds. Sometimes there are huge breaking changes, sometimes backwards compatibility keeps things rather stale. And occasionally it's like Python 3.
So tell me about languages that have changed enough to be worth learning new, either because now the language is actually worth it, or because paradigms changed. How does the community deal with it, do we now have two or more different languages subsets in play (C++) or has almost everyone moved on (Javascript)? Do we have cases where the language (mostly) stayed the same, but the library/tool/community changed enough for it to be considered "new"?
Examples would be Javascript/ES6, C++17 or Java 8+, but if someone wants to go on about Fortran 77 vs Fortran2015, I'm more than okay with that. <comment><USER2> C++17/20, PHP 7.3, and Prolog</comment>


Show HN: Linkr: Twitter, but Just the Links - <AUTHOR> https://linkr.surge.sh <comment><USER2> I like the idea. I was thinking about something similar with twitter. I wanted to get most shared links, filter only those that speak about startups, and present them as top shared first.

I think there is a need for service like yours</comment>


Ask HN: Who has the best personal website/blog? - <AUTHOR> This thread on Twitter took off (https://twitter.com/pjrvs/status/1176945769598705664), so I'm curious to ask the same question on HN. <comment><USER3> I don't know which aspect for the "best" you mean, if you meant best on monetary gain by reading their articles, definitely [https://kalzumeus.com](https://kalzumeus.com) (HN user patio11)

<comment><USER4> he encourages people to write to him -- has anyone?

I wanna write to him about a Startup idea I have, to see if i can ask him some questions and see what he says about the potential of it. That be ok right?

<comment><USER5> I wrote him an email once and his reply was gracious and very helpful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [https://www.gwern.net/](https://www.gwern.net/)

Beautifully designed, highly readable, black and white. Take a look :)

</comment><comment><USER7> Bret Victor's is a great one: [http://www.worrydream.com](http://www.worrydream.com)

<comment><USER8> Without Reading anything ... This Site is a bloat for my smartphone

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't know about "best". But here's some I always check in on:

Jessie Frazelle: [https://blog.jessfraz.com/](https://blog.jessfraz.com/)

Joshua Stein: [https://jcs.org/](https://jcs.org/)

Jim Fisher: [https://jameshfisher.com/](https://jameshfisher.com/)

(I just noticed they all have first names starting with 'J', weird coincidence, right?).

</comment><comment><USER10> I must mention Amos Wenger [https://amos.me](https://amos.me) who strated writing recently but have a really nice prose and great touch of pedagogy which make post really enjoyable and personally I learn things very well in his posts !

</comment><comment><USER11> My favorite blogs generally post super actionable marketing tactics that you can begin implementing as you read. Also enjoy reading industry insights, observations and trends from folks with high levels of experience.

[https://a16z.com/](https://a16z.com/) (specifically Ben Horowitz's posts - <USER2> starts off each with a rap lyric)

[https://sparktoro.com/blog](https://sparktoro.com/blog)

[https://andrewchen.co/](https://andrewchen.co/)

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

[https://rankz.io/blog](https://rankz.io/blog)

[https://contentdistribution.com/guides](https://contentdistribution.com/guides) (mine)

</comment><comment><USER12> [https://philip.greenspun.com](https://philip.greenspun.com)

</comment><comment><USER13> I like Scott Alexander's Slate Star Codex (yep, it's an anagram of his name). He talks mostly about science, religion and social issues, often with a pleasant reading and a comment section filled with good discussions.

[https://slatestarcodex.com/about/](https://slatestarcodex.com/about/)

<comment><USER14> Uh.. but one has an _n_ and one _s_ , and the other has no _n_ and two _s_ s.

<comment><USER15> He balances it out by putting an N in the logo. (serious answer)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Seths.blog because he has written daily for 20 years, and aaronparecki.com because his blog is a manifestation of IndieWeb ideas (open decentralized comments, likes, mentions, etc.)

</comment><comment><USER17> I tend to read blogs that cover PHP, C++, Linux and some iOS development here and there, etc. Here are some of my favs:

\- [http://brendangregg.com](http://brendangregg.com)

\- [https://marcell.me](https://marcell.me)

\- [https://www.raywenderlich.com](https://www.raywenderlich.com)

\- [https://blog.codinghorror.com/](https://blog.codinghorror.com/)

</comment><comment><USER18> [https://brandur.org/articles](https://brandur.org/articles)

Great articles and I personally love the diagrams.

</comment><comment><USER19> I've been digging on a lot of Observable notebooks lately. Having code and visualization and description so neatly presented together makes for a powerful presentation.

I'll just link to Bostock's, but there are many other informative and enlightening ones. This will only get better ;)

[https://observablehq.com/@mbostock](https://observablehq.com/@mbostock)

</comment><comment><USER20> [https://coderscat.com](https://coderscat.com) is a great one.

And if you are a beginner for learn to code: [https://learntocodewith.me/blog/](https://learntocodewith.me/blog/)

</comment><comment><USER21> I think Dan Luu's website is kind of cool [0] because visually there's no frills, just content.

\- [0] [http://danluu.com/](http://danluu.com/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Dunno about 'best', but my favourite is Julia Evans - love her style, love her content.

[https://jvns.ca/](https://jvns.ca/)

<comment><USER22> Her zines are awesome - she's good to follow on twitter too: [https://twitter.com/b0rk](https://twitter.com/b0rk)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Hey, Since you asked who has the best blog, its difficult to pick just one. So let me share a list of a few personal bloggers who I think are the best.

1\. Yaro Starak 2\. Darren Rowse 3.Abby Lawson 4\. Trevor and Jennifer Debth 5\. Paul Scrivens 6\. Steve and Jennifer Chou 7\. Rosemarie Groner 8.Lindsay and Bjork 9.Jon Morrow 10\. Alborz Fallah

SEO is the backbone of blog optimization. Reaching the right audience is what matters the most along with the good content. If you are wondering how to get there, do read 'SEO For Growth'. Get your copy from [http://neiltheblogger.club](http://neiltheblogger.club)

</comment><comment><USER24> If you're into the .Net stack and Azure, checkout -

[https://www.simongilbert.net/](https://www.simongilbert.net/)

</comment><comment><USER25> I find myself on Chris' site all the time

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

</comment><comment><USER26> [https://medium.com/commitlog](https://medium.com/commitlog) duh ;)

</comment><comment><USER27> NODE's is pretty nice: n-o-d-e.net

</comment><comment><USER28> muhammadraza.me

I like the search functionality

</comment><comment><USER29> I think mine is pretty good www.aladinbs.com

<comment><USER30>
        <script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.5.2/jquery.min.js"></script>
        <script src="http://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/modernizr/2.8.2/modernizr.js"></script>
        <script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.11.3/jquery.min.js"></script>

Ignoring the two kinds of jquery, you're loading JavaScript to your non-TLS website without TLS?

And loading your analytics (quantcast) with inline scripts on a non-TLS page?

That's kinda asking for a MITM attack, isn't it?</comment></comment>


Where's your F chord? - <AUTHOR> http://calnewport.com/blog/2014/02/14/wheres-your-f-chord-what-guitar-teaches-us-about-the-quest-for-mastery/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+StudyHacks+%28Study+Hacks%29

<comment><USER2> I find the A chord is more interesting - beginners always start playing it with three fingers, pros always use one.

Similarly, the minor barre chord is one of those chords that - to me, as a mediocre beginner - always seemed tough to do unless you'd progressed beyond the basics to a semi-intuitive level of understanding re: guitar ergonomics.

<comment><USER3> > pros always use one

Which A chord? The first position A major? I work with pro musicians, and they use however many fingers works for them within the context of the progression. Mostly I see three. But "always" one? Where are you getting your data?</comment></comment>


RadPad Enters Airbnb's Turf – Opens Marketplace to Short-Term Rentals - <AUTHOR> http://www.bizjournals.com/losangeles/news/2016/02/02/radpad-moves-into-airbnb-s-neighborhood-with-short.html <comment><USER2> Airbnb has a new neighbor: [http://bit.ly/1TBitzf](http://bit.ly/1TBitzf)</comment>


Touch the Sky with Alex Zanardi - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5OE6nYCC18

<comment><USER2> It never ceases to amaze me how positive that guy can be after what happened. He has accomplished so much since that fateful day. (shakes fist) "Damn you Italians and your lust for life!!!"</comment>


Germany marks first ever quarter with more than 50 percent renewable electricity - <AUTHOR> https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germany-marks-first-ever-quarter-more-50-pct-renewable-electricity <comment><AUTHOR> Charts to discover the fraction of different energy sources can be plotted on the page of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems: [https://energy-charts.de/index.htm](https://energy-charts.de/index.htm)

The Fraunhofer Society which runs this institute is a reputable organization and the largest single research organization for applied sciences in Europe.</comment>


Ask HN: How many Canadians live in the SFBay area? - <AUTHOR>

I'm from Toronto and at least once per day I seem to meet a Canadian.<p>I've heard a rumor that there's something over 400,000 Canadians which would make it the 13th largest metro area by Canadian population. <comment><USER2> Canadians are one of several invasive nonnative species that are becoming a growing problem here.

The current strategy to combat this is to release sterile Canadians into the wild to reduce herd fertility, adding the release of contraceptives at Sharks and Barracuda games and Digital Moose gatherings as they occur.

</comment><comment><USER3> I met one just the other day -- he said "a-booot" a lot.</comment>


Attack of the Platform Holders - <AUTHOR>

Apple has overplayed its dictatorship, Twitter bought Tweetie, Facebook is pushing its own credit system. Is this the evolution or devolution of tech platforms? thoughts? <comment><USER2> It's consolidation. It's the same thing that happened to the web browser market as first Netscape and then IE dominated the browser was. The same thing as when Apple and IBM-and-clones basically divided the PC market and forced out all the other early entrants.

It sucks if you're one of the also-ran platforms, it sucks if you developed for one of the also-ran platforms, and it means you have dramatically less bargaining power if you're developing for one of the winning platforms. (OTOH, it's pretty nice if you're bought by one of the winning platforms.) I wouldn't worry about it too much in terms of the long-term evolution of tech platforms, though. Historically, each major consolidation of platforms has laid the groundwork for the adoption of the next big platform. The web would never have caught on if Netscape had needed to support, well, these: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_home_computers> instead of just Windows/Mac/Linux. Then today's Web 2.0 apps like Facebook and Twitter would never have caught on if they had to support all the early browsers in addition to IE & Firefox. Similarly, I bet this consolidation of web & mobile platforms lays the groundwork for some platform that replaces them all.

</comment><comment><USER3> The problem is that these platforms have gotten so big that it's hard to directly compete against them.

Instead, developers have decided to join them, knowing full well that the platform owners hold all the marbles and can yank the rug out from under you at any time.

What's interesting to me is that Apple is getting lambasted over their 'closed platform', but we can clearly see with Twitter and Facebook that the 'open web' suffers similar problems when you build to someone else's platform.</comment>


Samsung's Goal: "Beating Apple is #1 Priority" - <AUTHOR> http://www.macrumors.com/2014/04/07/samsung-beat-apple/

<comment><USER2> Beating Apple:- In my opinion they already beated all the smartphone manufacturer, for example in 2013 Apple shipped 153 million iPhone where as Samsung shipped 313 million smartphone, so where is the question of beating, they already did that. Yes your point should be in revenue or profit so i would say it's very difficult because both the company have different strategy. So Samsung you should focus on profit margin rather than shipment number.</comment>


Ask HN: HN going reddit with all these Erlang threads? - <AUTHOR>

I've noticed a surge in Erlang articles. <comment><USER2> It was so ordered: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=512145> ... and like lemmings, we followed.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's our new scalability strategy of "scaring new users away".

</comment><comment><USER4> we just really love erlang.

p.s.: boy this place is boring and very similar to reddit, isn't it?

<comment><USER5> Oh yeah this place like sooooooo boring! An yo dudue I think you misspelled dissimlar.

Well i iz back off to reddit.com because that's like super awsome.

Videos, funny pics, comics, cool suff - wicked awsome!</comment></comment>


Trapped on a bus with other geeks building a startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.startupbus.com/

<comment><USER2> 1995 tech bubble: spend all your VC on Aeron chairs

2011 tech bubble: spend all your VC on a bus that goes back and forth across the country

</comment><comment><USER3> It's a cute idea, and would probably make good television, but as a programmer I've got to say I'd take my quiet office with it's few distractions over the back seat of a bus any day.

</comment><comment><USER4> "You're either on the bus, or off the bus."

This is a really fascinating example of a cultural phenomenon that seems to be brewing. It seems like the same kind of smart and imaginative young people who in 1965 would have been starting rock bands are now trying to create startups. Maybe in a few years from now the time will be right for Codestock Nation.

<comment><USER5> What's codestock nation?

<comment><USER6> I am guessing that was a reference to Woodstock Nation (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodstock_Nation>)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not sure about most people, but I'd get motion sick after looking at a computer screen for more than 15 minutes on a bus. Wouldn't do great things for productivity.

</comment><comment><USER5> After reading a few comments I feel like there might be need for some clarification. The following is taken from my Quora post in the thread that I already linked to:

\---- snip ----

The StartupBus is a powerful filter for people.

Participants are under pressure to communicate and work with a limited toolset and random strangers; most importantly they can't back out and leave. On top of that they must deal with mundane things like overflowing bathrooms, snoring people and all kinds of other muff.

The people that are comfortable with all of the above constraints are almost always interesting, intelligent, successful (in many different ways) and exactly the kind of people that I'd like to work with. The other people don't even bother applying.

Last year all participants got along great and the real value (e.g. this year's bigger, better event) was created only after the bus.

<comment><USER8> Considering that it's only for 48 hours, I wouldn't think any of these factors (snoring, bathrooms, no backout option) would be relevant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Really impressed with how they work on people.

I did a facebook auth and retweet, a couple of minutes later I had two new private followers and a personalized email with "Hey Daniel, I vouched for you to apply for the StartupBus this year. Go here to find out more and definitely apply so my vouching for you isn't wasted."

I know it's all automated but the feeling of being kind of important still stays.

<comment><USER10> Actually, none of it's automated it all comes from a real person :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> With applications deadlines quickly approaching, you have to submit one soon if you wish to become a part of this experiment.

<comment><USER11> While I appreciate your enthusiasm, you'll likely find the HN community appreciates rational discussion over marketing spiel from accounts with 1 karma, 1 comment and no submissions.

<comment><USER6> The deadline is indeed approaching. I felt that was a valid clarification. I rephrased the comment to make it more neutral.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Startups on a Plane.

Who's with me?

<comment><USER13> Should be good! Hackers on a Plane seems to work well, for four years so far. [http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/08/hackers-on-a- plane-...](http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/08/hackers-on-a-plane-set- course-for-j.html) (Seems main site, hackersonaplane.info , is down currently)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is it just me, or does this sound like the plot line of a B-rate Thriller?

I guess it could also be the basis for a reality t.v. show. Either way, I hope they record at least some of it for some ancillary income - who knows maybe webisodes of this could be popular.

</comment><comment><USER15> I hope in a few years to be able to launch startupboat.

Snark aside, I used to work with a guy who lived on a boat in SF (for him it was cheaper than renting), and once a week or so, a bunch of us would actually work from the boat.

<comment><USER16> We have one in Cleveland, sort of :)

LeanDog has a pretty kick ass office on an old boat anchored in Lake Erie, which used to be a restaurant. They host all sorts of meetups & such (including Cleveland Startup Weekend), they're incredibly active & helpful in the community here.

And no, I don't work there (unfortunately)

<http://www.leandog.com/float.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Some more background from quora: [http://www.quora.com/StartupBus/What-do- people-think-of-the-...](http://www.quora.com/StartupBus/What-do-people-think- of-the-StartupBus?q=startupbus)

</comment><comment><USER17> Does the bus have Internet while it's traveling at 60 mph in the middle of nowhere? If not how would you expect to get anything done w/o extensive planning ahead of time?

<comment><USER18> It would be cool if Sandra Bullock had to keep the bus going over 60mph or Keanu Reeves's internet would shut off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Crazy cool experience building relationships providing long-term benefit.

<comment><USER20> @keKatie will be departing from West Coast. Woot!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> @keKatie will be departing from California. Woot!

</comment><comment><USER12> Why?

</comment><comment><USER21> I'll be on the NYC bus.</comment>


Gnip Says XMPP Ecosytem Too Half-Baked, Pulls the Plug - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/gnip_says_xmpp_ecosytem_too_ha.php <comment><USER2> I posted this on the original article but I might as well post it here as well, with bonus typo corrections.

The question is if XMPP can be made into an efficient application for streaming events to multiple (or multitudes of) subscribers. Chat is a 1-to-1 limited tima affair. PubSub is not. I am afraid this is not simply a matter of a bette rimplementation of an XMPP server but something much more fundamental. Roy fielding has argued ([http://roy.gbiv.com/untangled/2008/paper-tigers-and- hidden-d...](http://roy.gbiv.com/untangled/2008/paper-tigers-and-hidden- dragons)) why the economics of XMPP for pub/sub do not work out and why the solution is simply to better structure the HTTP APIs that the various services provide. This is why large customers are needed. There is cost involved and somebody has to pay it. The recent Twitter/Gnip moves serve as testament to Roy's foresight.

<comment><USER3> XMPP is most definitely not a message bus, and message buses or message queues are two technologies that seem like the practical/workable implementation of multicast for the purposes of pubsub.

One thing that I think makes XMPP so heavyweight is that it's XML. And it took so long to get off the ground because the documentation was like "here, look, it's so easy to send messages over Jabber, it's just XML" but didn't really explain all the "presence" terminology nor provide libraries for a number of popular languages initially that hid all the complexity and let you actually join to a server. Even the perl XMPP library on CPAN talks about "XML stanzas" -- dude, all I want to do is join a server and send and receive messages, hook me up to an event loop! (admittedly, the perl module in question does this, there's just a lot of XMPP baggage to get around). XMPP also include{s,d} a lot of complexity for things that normally happen out of band for security purposes, like user creation on the servers. I mean, XMPP makes the IMAP protocol look simple.

<comment><USER4> The "Protocol for Synchronous Conferencing" is an IM protocol that was developed for efficient multicast and pubsub and extensibiltiy. It also has a much simpler(RFC822-like) to parse syntax.

<http://about.psyc.eu/PSYC>

But almost nobody uses it. It is even more half-baked than XMPP. I guess this is a tradeoff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This mirrors my experience with XMPP implementations. It honest to god is a LOT more work than it's worth. If you need a scalable messaging system, hook up a mature JMS implementation (e.g. OpenMQ - search for the article where they got that running with linear speedup over 512 nodes on EC2), and put a STOMP connector at the front for non-java clients.

</comment><comment><USER6> Maybe AMQP is the answer?

</comment><comment><USER7> gnip is one of those cool services that is so fringe that it may have more developers than users. its another sharecropping deal, just like facebook app builders...get too popular, present a threat to unseat the core services...you get unplugged. it would be a triviality to simply block their ip ranges should they ever get traction against the core services' own webservice strategies

<comment><USER8> Sort of like what happened to Feedburner, right?</comment></comment>


Longterm storage: NAS+HDDs+CrashPlan (for ARM) vs. costly Amazon Glacier [$$?] - <AUTHOR> http://benguild.com/2014/05/17/nas-hdd-crashplan-vs-amazon-glacier-cost/

<comment><USER2> I have two problems with the data as provided. First, the advantage Glacier has over a NAS is that it's offsite. If my house goes up in flames, Glacier is fine, but my NAS may be toast. I also don't think factoring in resale value is a completely fair argument since there are lots of things that can't be accounted for in resale, and it's more a snapshot of current resale value than that of a few years from now. Glacier may be slow to retrieve and have penalties for early retrieval, but that's a small cost to pay (I think) if I have a catastrophe and need my data back.</comment>


Ask HN: YC, what happens when a candidate idea competes w/another YC investment? - <AUTHOR>

Is there a conflict of interest? Or is it just a case of hedging bets? I would imagine at some point the portfolio would reach a size that would make it difficult to avoid. <comment><AUTHOR> Also, is it recommendable for startups to apply to places like YC if this scenario is true for them? This has to happen all the time. What's to stop a VC from protecting his investment by giving a heads-up?

</comment><comment><USER2> It's fine. YC startups Etacts, Rapportive and Xobni are all competitors in the email CRM space.</comment>


Can you download Safari from the Safari page? - <AUTHOR> https://www.apple.com/safari/ <comment><AUTHOR> GitHub told me to update Safari and sent me to this page... but Apple didn't seem to bother with a download link. Or am I missing a UI element because Safari 9.1.2 is that outdated?

<comment><USER2> Isn't Safari managed through the App Store?</comment></comment>


Low correlation of predictions and outcomes is no evidence against hot hand - <AUTHOR> http://andrewgelman.com/2016/12/19/30759/?utm_content=bufferab985&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer <comment><USER2> Does "Hot Hand" mean something different to statisticians than then sport's participants? I ask because I'm seeing code in the article's comments that doesn't correspond to what I would think is the definition.

<comment><USER3> This is from the abstract to the "original paper" according to the comments: "We investigate the origin and the validity of common beliefs regarding "the hot hand" and "streak shooting" in the game of basketball. Basketball players and fans alike tend to believe that a player's chance of hitting a shot are greater following a hit than following a miss on the previous shot."

<comment><USER2> > Basketball players and fans alike tend to believe that a player's chance of > hitting a shot are greater following a hit than following a miss on the > previous shot.

Interesting. That's certainly not what I believe, but I guess they've done the research. In my circle, it was the belief that sometime you get in a zone and really are having a good day, feeling good, and shooting well. I certainly have had basketball and golf games where I made some shots, but didn't think I had the hot hand. I've also been on the floor when I felt really well and hit quite a few in a row. That's the hot hand from a player's perspective.

This really sounds like a simplified scenario that doesn't really have anything to do with what players talk about.</comment></comment></comment>


Been on HN Front Page? Heavybit Is Hiring a PR Person - <AUTHOR> https://angel.co/heavybit-industries/jobs/66807-developer-focused-marketing-and-pr-manager

<comment><USER2> [http://www.warplife.com/tips/webmaster/](http://www.warplife.com/tips/webmaster/)

No I haven't been on the front page - not _yet_.</comment>


A call to action for tech - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/25/a-call-to-action-for-tech/ <comment><USER2> If anyone reads the journals of the far-left, like The Baffler, Dissent, or Jacobin, I can tell you they view Trump more positively than Silicon Valley.

The Baffler in particular ran a scratching article about "protests" from Silicon Valley. Keep in mind this is an extremely liberal magazine that is the heir to the 1960's New York intellectual scene.

The Baffler found this group called, I kid you not, "Boutique Activist Consultancy", who spew such meaningless nonsense like "the next trigger for mass revolution will be a contagious mood that spreads throughout the world and human community". This group, out of Berkeley, charges a mid-5 figure fee for such wisdom. They've since locked down most of their website, but you can find it, along with their self-published CreateSpace Amazon E-Book, here: [http://activist.boutique](http://activist.boutique)

Basically it's hard to believe any of the liberal beliefs coming out of the SF area anymore, more likely they exist simply as a means to protect wealth and corporations. Google has for years ratcheted up their donations to Republicans, while many VC's are suspected to be Republicans in their own right.</comment>


What's Special About Lisp? - <AUTHOR> http://kresimirbojcic.com/2011/08/02/whats-so-special-about-lisp.html <comment><USER2> I do love ruby and feel that it's metaprogramming techniques to allow you to easily emulated many features of Lisp's macros.

That said the author missing an obvious thing here. They key with macros is that they allow you to alter syntax (not calculate values as many who try initially misunderstand them), and s-exps are essential to being able to do this (because they are effectively an abstract syntax tree).

I say this is obvious because the example itself demonstrates this. The lisp code in the end looks very much like the ruby. Being able to extend syntax means that if you like ruby you can make your lisp work more like it. Now try to reverse this example, make a ruby library that emulates a lisp style, I think you'd find it much more difficult, and expensive.

The other important thing to not forget is that this syntax transformation happens at compile time. One of the reasons that Ruby has a reputation for being slow is it has to keep track of a lot of metadata and all sorts of look- ups to do a lot of the metaprogramming (which is why people should make better use of it, you've already paid for it). In Common Lisp all this transformation is free during runtime. Think of a common issue with JavaScript: no implicit return. If Lisp did not have implicit return you could define a macro 'defr' which allowed you to define functions like you normally do, but always know they return a value. Instead you need to use CoffeeScript.

Finally people do still write plenty of Common Lisp, they're just a smaller community. Not long ago I wrote myself a very practical tool to process a specific file format, with it's own mini-dsl, an order of magnitude faster than similar libraries (albeit with intentionally less functionality) and all in 200 lines of Common Lisp.

<comment><USER3> If you like Lisp, take a look at Clojure. I know it has been highly hyped here, but seriously, a very interesting language, which combines the beauty of lisp and practicality of java runtime.

(Edited: awkward English.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I feel for the author and have recently come to a similar (read: _not same_ ) conclusion: Lisp is pretty crappy for maybe 90% of the work being done out there. The more easily-accessible and popular a domain is, the worse Lisp will be for it. This isn't because Lisp magically gets worse; it's because other languages get _better_ , through libraries. Even if nine of ten libraries are crappy, there are enough people in the space (remember, it's a popular domain) that _something_ good will come out of it, and eventually everyone will basically settle on a few good choices.

Lisp programmers, when using Lisp for what it's best at, don't use libraries. There _are_ no libraries for what they want to do, because what they're doing is obscure and/or hard.

Lisp is best at doing new things that have never been done before, because it's basically a language for writing libraries. As such, it prospers in unpopular fields.*

This makes it hard for lisp evangelists to be taken seriously. If you're to show someone a hard graphics problem written in lisp vs ruby, your reader has to understand graphics programming first. But calculating primes? Anyone can do that. Which example do you think will get more mindshare?

To summarize: Lisp is great at things you don't hear about.

* One reason Viaweb succeeded using Lisp for the web was because the web was still this exciting frontier and no one had really done anything with it yet. I'd go so far as to say that Viaweb wouldn't succeed today---they'd get trashed by the likes of Weebly, which is written in _php_ for crying out loud.

<comment><USER5> I think it's more subtle than that. An interesting program usually contains parts that are "easy" (e.g. interfacing with a database) and parts that are "hard" (e.g. complex algorithms). To be productive, you would want to get the easy bits out of the way so you could concentrate on the hard bits.

Making Python or Scala talk to Oracle (for example) is so trivial you can write that bit of your program in no time at all, then get onto the interesting stuff. In Lisp, you have to spend significant time on this trivial stuff. So if you are writing a program on your own PC for your own use, then Lisp is fine. If you are programming anything that is going to run on existing infrastructure or interoperate with other programs, it's very difficult to justify the additional effort of using Lisp.

And I know a bit about this: I wrote Oracle bindings for OCaml! It was fun, sure, but can I justify it when there are already Python bindings? Hmm.

<comment><USER6> > In Lisp, you have to spend significant time on this trivial stuff. So if you > are writing a program on your own PC for your own use, then Lisp is fine. If > you are programming anything that is going to run on existing infrastructure > or interoperate with other programs, it's very difficult to justify the > additional effort of using Lisp.

Remember: Lisp is a family, not a language.

The best counterexample to your claim is: <http://clojure.org/>

I'd argue even CL covers a lot vs your claim (but please don't make it my arguement, focus on Clojure) with QuickLisp: <http://www.quicklisp.org/beta/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Having spent 3 years with Clojure, I believe that Lisp macros are just as powerful as they say. But no need to take my word for it ... checkout the paper "Languages as Libraries" by the folks behind Racket.

I've created 3 libraries that I think would be exceedingly difficult, excruciating, or impossible to write with the _performance_ and the _level of control over syntax_ in anything but a very good Lisp:

<http://github.com/clojure/core.logic>, efficient embedded Prolog in 1K LOC

<http://github.com/swannodette/match>, in progress implementation of a state- of-the-art OCaml pattern matching algorithm

<http://github.com/swannodette/delimc>, delimited continuations

</comment><comment><USER8> A ton of responses and no one mentions the one-word answer?

"homoiconicity": the property of a language whereby code written in said language is stored, in a natural and immediate fashion, as a data structure of the same language

What this means for Lisp is that if you want to manipulate Lisp code, you aren't dealing with some crazy complex AST: you can actually /see/ how the code is parsed by looking at the code itself, as the code is actually typed using the serialization format for the primary data structure of the language: S-expressions.

So, you aren't just creating a little "DSL" by using some built-in syntax tricks like "implicit last argument block", but instead are able to write code that modifies code and generates code as easily as if you were writing the original code in the first place: the comparison to Ruby is therefore fundamentally flawed.

(Finally, as an unrelated bonus: the parser for Lisp is also written in Lisp and available during the execution of Lisp, so you can have code that modifies and extends the parser itself allowing you to fundamentally alter the syntax to, for example, look like Ruby; this mechanism is called "reader macros", for the record.)

<comment><USER9> Please excuse my ignorance here --

> instead are able to write code that modifies code and generates code as > easily as if you were writing the original code in the first place

Is this often done? I know it is conceptually possible with the advantage being that the same functions used to manipulate lists and data are available for this task, but I got the impression that not many people _actually_ do this? For instance...

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6480053/modifying- functio...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6480053/modifying-function- saving-to-new-function-in-lisp)

<comment><USER8> AFAIK this is actually incredibly common. The example that springs to my mind is people writing matrix libraries that manipulate the code to "compile" it to use more efficient algorithms. People do this kind of thing in C++, such as in Blitz++, but you end up having to pull heroics with the type system (and end up with some pretty abused syntax at times) to accomplish what is much easier in a homoiconic language like Lisp.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The macro example used is meant to be instructive, not a demonstration of how powerful macros could be.

Consider <https://gist.github.com/1119534>, which demonstrates a pattern- matching syntax that (at compile-time!) constructs a minimal traversal of the data structure to find a match. The only way to do this in a language without macros is to write your own compiler.

<comment><USER11> Or Shriram Krishnamurthi's Automata via Macros - a beautiful little nontrivial example of Scheme macros:

[http://www.cs.brown.edu/~sk/Publications/Papers/Published/sk...](http://www.cs.brown.edu/~sk/Publications/Papers/Published/sk- automata-macros/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> > You can fake it anywhere else with more or less work

That doesn't make sense, because there's no way to twist it. It's more work and duplication. I want macros all the time in JavaScript and that is a pretty flexible and dynamic language.

Most of Lisp's other features are common now. Macros are still a big one but you don't need them every day. Lisp has powerful exception handling but I'd rather have Erlang style error handling and recovery.

Lisp's draw is waning but only because our languages are lispy in ways that really matter. We have dynamic, garbage collection languages with REPLs and built in high level data structures that are even better because we have native syntax for them. I don't want to keep track of N different kinds of assoc lists... and I really like Lisp.

<comment><USER13> > Most of Lisp's other features are common now.

Special variables, restarts and flexible reader are some of the basic features, that are not only uncommon, but, actually, unseen in any other language. Just to name a few.

<comment><USER12> Thanks, I knew I'd miss some since I'm only an amateur Lisp hacker.

Factor has a cool and flexible reader too but it's pretty far from mainstream.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I had similar thoughts when I was first learning a lisp. Unlike the author, I was enamored with the lack of syntax and the expressive power that was there. Sure, it's a Turing-complete language like any other, but for me it was a pleasure to hack with. Not only that, but you can actually do things with it (manipulate the language itself, from within the language itself…whoa) that I would only later realize the power of. Turns out you rarely need to use that power.

For instance, I'd do (untested):

        (defn prime? [x] (every? (fn [n] (not (zero? (mod x n))))
                                 (range 2 (Math/sqrt x))))

        (doseq (map pr (filter prime? (range 0 20))))

for the same effect. And I really was happy to write that. It makes sense.

NB: I'd never put such code into production, and I think it should be a warning sign that a purported problem in a language/dialect be based around minimal experience regarding an example.

</comment><comment><USER15> I mean, yes, the biggest win of lisp over other languages is that the metalanguage _is_ the language. That is what is special about lisp. That is, when defining a macro, you are simply treating the program itself _as data_. Since code and data take the same form, this is a really natural way to metaprogram. In most other languages, it is... not.

Now, the featured article picks a... not very good example, for this feature of the language. But that doesn't mean that metaprogramming is useless. Much of a (big) lisp program is building up a domain specific language out of macros, then solving the problem at hand with it. This is the biggest power of lisp, and also the biggest weakness--every lisp program is written in a different language.

In lisp you express your _problem_ in macros, and then express your _solution_ in the language you've built up.

</comment><comment><USER16> Homoiconicity is part of the answer. The other part is that Lisp is built up from a small number of axioms (probably the smallest such number) that are Turing-complete and at the same time are a language that people would actually want to use.

As pg says: "In 1960, John McCarthy published a remarkable paper in which he did for programming something like what Euclid did for geometry. He showed how, given a handful of simple operators and a notation for functions, you can build a whole programming language. [...] It's worth understanding what McCarthy _discovered_ [my emphasis], not just as a landmark in the history of computers, but as a model for what programming is tending to become in our own time. " <http://www.paulgraham.com/rootsoflisp.html>

Why does pg say McCarthy discovered Lisp, not invented it? I think because it's something of such simplicity that one can imagine others inventing the same thing. So if humans contacted intelligent aliens, it wouldn't surprise me if they had independently invented Lisp, just as it wouldn't surprise me if they'd invented prime numbers, or cartesian co-ordinates.

</comment><comment><USER17> From one page the author linked to [1]:

 _"Because coders DO NOT LIKE LISP. Most programmers find Lisp unpleasant and unnatural to use. They're not idiots, they're not ignorant, and they're not willfully choosing a less-powerful or less-efficient tool, they're choosing tools based on what makes them productive and happy."_

The _"profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get [functional programming]"_ [2] is a mystery that I've been trying to figure out, albeit slowly since the day only has 24h. I've gone through the Peepcode video on Clojure and I couldn't find an answer, and I didn't even feel attracted to the language, quite unlike my first Ruby experience.

Then the other day I watched Matz - creator of Ruby - talking about Ruby 2.0, and he used the word "happy" multiple times to explain how he wants developers to feel when using his language, and I thought of how brilliantly he's succeeded. I have now spent more time coding in Objective-C than any other language (iOS development), and every hour I code Objective-C I miss Ruby and how happy it makes me feel.

I find that happiness is highly overlooked in discussions about programming.

[1] [http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?joel.3.371875....](http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?joel.3.371875.57)

[2] <http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html>

(edit: formatting)

<comment><USER18> Have you looked at "The Joy of Clojure"? I thought the authors did a very good job of showing why exactly they're so excited to be working with the language.

In any case, this is very much a question of discourse. For historical reasons Lisp (at least Common Lisp) seems to have this reputation of being associated with deadly serious people, or alternatively smug lisp weenies, while Ruby people talk about how happy it makes them feel all the time, even though there are plenty of people who clearly have fun with Lisp (even "crufty" "old" CL), and I'm sure many people would regard working with Ruby a chore. I mean, to each his own, I honestly can't imagine there's an objective scale on which CL (much less exciting new languages like Clojure) is "less fun" than Ruby. Things like homoiconicity, on the other, are objective criteria for comparing languages. There are plenty of reasons to like (say) Python better than (say) CL, but to say that homoiconicity or restarts or MOP are no big deal because if you try hard enough you can replicate 95% of that functionality in (say) Perl is a different question entirely.

<comment><USER17> _to each his own_

That was pretty much my point. That _maybe_ the solution to the mystery of the _"profound enlightenment experience"_ around Lisp is that it makes some very happy, but not me.

 _Have you looked at "The Joy of Clojure"?_

I haven't, I'll look into it, thanks. I haven't given up on solving that mystery yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think whole point of comparing programming languages from this angle is pointless. You should not go and judge a language by several phrases. Go speak/write/read it for a while, learn some slang.

Like all other languages, programming languages are also just that, languages - tools to express your thoughts. To me and many others Common Lisp reduces the friction between those thoughts and written description of them. It is so much more to this language than just its syntax and politics. It is joy to develop in thanks to SLIME, it almost never gets in your way, it performs, it has wisdom of half a century and people who possess it. Yes, it is far from perfect, but then again - there is no perfect language! and even if there was one it would sound like those studio processed pop-star voices rather than perfection to me, because it would still superimpose its perfection over you own views.

In other words, please don't judge the language by how you can pronounce "how can I get to the city centre", it sounds similar in most.

Now all this spoken/written language comparison might sound weird to you, but to me it makes perfect sense, because programming to me is nothing but a dialogue between me, computer and the future version of me reading the source. And I like the language which allows me to do this on my terms, rather than that of Guido, Matz or whoever. And to _me_ Common Lisp is pretty close to that.

P.S. Just as a side note, folks on #lisp and #sbcl are one of the most pragmatic and intelligent people I have ever seen, I learned more from their discussions than by reading a couple of books. To any of you reading, rock on Lispers ;)

</comment><comment><USER20> > In Lisp I get a feeling that nothing was done since '58. <snip an ignorant > rant about macros>

Well, macros for one didn't exist in Lisp in 1958.

</comment><comment><USER21> I know and enjoy Lisp, but I don't use it anymore. I do, however, use Ruby, which is an acceptable Lisp. [http://www.randomhacks.net/articles/2005/12/03/why-ruby- is-a...](http://www.randomhacks.net/articles/2005/12/03/why-ruby-is-an- acceptable-lisp)

In general, Lisp doesn't seem special anymore because (1) language implementers have taken Lisp's most important lessons and applied them to their own languages and (2) said languages have become relatively popular.

A lot's happened since "Beating the Averages". <http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html>

</comment><comment><USER22> Evidence of people working in Common Lisp: <http://www.quicklisp.org/>

</comment><comment><USER23> Lisp works with me to get the job done. Other languages typically impose a Way to get the job done.

I don't think like other language designers often. So I like a flexible language.

</comment><comment><USER24> A Common Lisp variant of an excercise found in the Seasoned Schemer:

      (defun sum-of-prefixes (tup)
       (let ((sonssf 0))
         (loop for n in tup
               do (setf sonssf (+ sonssf n))
               collect sonssf)))

The variable 'sonssf' is an acronym for "sum of numbers seen so far;" this function creates a list of sums of all numbers it visits as it traverses the input list.

ie:

      (sum-of-prefixes '(1 1 1))
      => (1, 2, 3)

      (sum-of-prefixes '(1 2 3 4 5))
      => (1, 3, 6, 10, 15)

It's a simple bit of code that I go into in more detail with an example in Python and Scheme: <http://agentultra.com/?p=670>

The reason why I think Lisp is a great language is that I haven't yet needed to use any "patterns" in any of my (admittedly small) projects. Patterns, IMO, are boilerplate code to work around the limitations of a language. I haven't encountered a need for that in Lisp yet. It's a good sign to me.

I also have dynamically scoped variables, generic functions, parametric dispatch (or multimethods or whatever you call it), macros, and a very powerful OO system if I need it. Best of all is that all of it is unified by a small amount of syntax, backed by a small set of axioms, and surrounded by a wonderful (but small) community.

 _edit: Fixed the example output_

</comment><comment><USER25> I hate to just insert a link into a comment, but this article is a much better response than anything I could come up with:

[http://www.randomhacks.net/articles/2005/12/03/why-ruby- is-a...](http://www.randomhacks.net/articles/2005/12/03/why-ruby-is-an- acceptable-lisp)

<comment><USER26> That article is bullshit:

Ruby is a denser functional language than LISP. This is just not true! Sure sometimes you have syntax suger in Ruby that makes something smaller but othertimes you don't in lisp I can always make everything smaller with macros. I would bet that Ruby is not shorter for most programmes.

His hole argument is based around that in lisp you have wo write (lambda ....) and in Ruby you don't.

Ruby gives you about 80% of what you want from macros Ruby may give you some of the power but there is a lot you cant do in ruby and its much, much harder to do those things.

Ruby's libraries, community, and momentum are good Thats nice but has nothing to do with being lisp.

Not saying anthing against ruby but this article is just very strange.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I have a question for those that have done a lot of programming in Lisp: Is macro programming a really big part of Lisp programming? I mean, what percentage of a typical project would be macros?

I ask the question because you can achieve the same results in most dynamic languages by grabbing the string representation of a function, run it through a parser, modify the resulting AST and then regenerating the function string before passing to an eval (CoffeeScript being a good example of this approach). Sure, it's messier than in Lisp, but in return for the messiness of macros, you get much easier to read syntax in most of your code. Is the use of macros really such a big part of Lisp programs that it justifies the lack of syntax everywhere else?

<comment><USER26> Macros are not something you need everyday (at least not your own macros) but when you need them you really need them. CoffeScript is a good example, if JavaScript would have been a real lisp there would be no need for CoffeeScript at all because you could build it in JS.

Your example of meta programming is very very messy and putting eval everywhere would also be a security nightmare and if you do it this way you don't end up with nice syntax. <\-- People don't really use this because of those reasons.

Macros are not messy to use they look like a normal function that meens often you don't even know or care if something is implmented in a macro or a function.

The other big part of the macros look like language build ins for example in a REST-Framework you would have something like 'defresource'. The auther of the framework can give you the best syntax to discribe what his library does. (Look on Stackoverflow for DSLs in Clojure)

Writting good macros your self is a little harder and can look wired because your just not used to code looking like this.

The USE of macros is a REALLY REALLY big part of every lisp programm because the HOLE language is build on macros. Almost everything that is normally build in the compiler is just a macro.

<comment><USER27> Firstly, CoffeeScript _is_ built in JavaScript. Does that make it a 'real' Lisp?

Secondly, Lisp macros are every bit as big a security risk as using eval... That is what the E in REPL stands for, after all. In both cases, if you are taking input from source code, and not from outside sources, there is no security risk.

Thirdly, yes, my example is messy. But it is still doable, and I just have a hard time believing that this kind of programming is a major percentage of the code of a Lisp program. To be clear on that comment, I can easily believe that you end up invoking macros a lot, but I don't believe that a large percentage of the code written for a project is actually macros. What percentage of code in a typical project is macros? And how many of those macros can be easily reproduced by using specialised syntax of a language such as ruby (optional parantheses, blocks, re-opening classes, method_missing, etc)?

This is an important point, because if you only have a few hundred lines of this stuff in a typical Lisp program, and it can be reproduced by using a parser in another (dynamic) language, then the advantage just isn't that big. For argument's sake, imagine having a module available in Javascript that provides the Jison parser along with the Javascript grammar, which just re- emits the original Javascript source. In addition, it has a nice API to allow you to modify the grammar (adding / modifying rules). So far so easy, this stuff already exists in CoffeeScript, go copy it from there. Now, having loaded such a module, is Lisp really in a much better position than this modified Javascript?

<comment><USER26> In any language you can build a interpreter/compiler for any other language but thats not the point. The point is that you can do random AST transformation at compiletime.

You think of macros as a kind of pay of for s-exp syntax. I have to say that even without macros I would think s-exp syntax is nicer. Sure in Ruby you can do alot when you play around with that suger stuff but this stuff often doesn't come free. See this blogpost for an example of what I mean: [http://briancarper.net/blog/579/keyword-arguments-ruby- cloju...](http://briancarper.net/blog/579/keyword-arguments-ruby-clojure- common-lisp)

Depending on what you do you are writting a lot of macros. In lisp the interface to a library is almost always in a DSL style witch makes them easy to use. See this list here: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3968055/are- there-any-clo...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3968055/are-there-any- clojure-dsls). In your own Application your maybe not going to need them that often depending on what you do.

What you discribe is just a macrosystem. Having macros in a language with syntax is duable (look at Dylan or Plot) but you will find that getting everything nice and easy to use is much harder then you think. If CoffeeScript has a macrosystem great. I don't really know CoffeeScript well enought. Could you provide me with some nice examples of how people use this in CoffeeScript?

If I where you I would just learn enought lisp that you can trie it out yourself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> What's special about Lisp? Simplicity. No syntax means you don't have to parse code when reading it. Each construct's scope is clear. Whenever I code for a while in Lisp and then have to go back to C or Java, I find myself uncomfortable. Not so the other way around.

</comment><comment><USER29> Look if you want a language thats actually new and people are doing stuff with it go to clojure.

</comment><comment><USER30> Really like this counterpoint after all the LISP elitists so often snub other langs. The Ruby version is much more elegant and readable, in this little example. Would love to see more comparisons, specifically hacking around the lack of macros in other langs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Being a Lisp enthousiast myself I often find those LISP elitists are people new to the language repeating the tired arguments we have heard so often before.

<comment><USER30> I'm learning clojure, and find it has a certain elegance, but I don't fully "get it" yet.

<comment><USER31> Both lisp(s) and smalltalk took me about 18 months of decently serious use before I had a 'I get it moment'. Stick with it and it will come.

I'm hoping that if I keep at it with Haskell, that eventually I'll have my 'I get it' moment with it as I think I can learn a ton from when I get it, much like I did with Lisp and Smalltalk.

I've learned things from many different languages but the two I've learned the most from where Lisp and Smalltalk.

<comment><USER32> It took me about a year to have a "I really get it" moment in Clojure.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Most Terrifying Thought Experiment of All Time - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2014/07/roko_s_basilisk_the_most_terrifying_thought_experiment_of_all_time.html <comment><USER2> This article is from 2014.

</comment><comment><USER3> wut.</comment>


Trump Just Signed a Law That Changes Life Aboard Airlines - <AUTHOR> https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/president-trump-just-signed-a-law-that-radically-changes-life-for-airline-passengers-flight-attendants-airlines-almost-nobody-even-noticed.html <comment><USER2> Looks like a regular, boring law full of regular, boring regulations. I don't see any issues.

>The story of this law has been dominated largely by what isn't in it: no restrictions on what airlines can charge for baggage or change fees.

I'm glad. I don't like paying baggage fees (in fact, I've started to travel much more with only a carry-on partly to avoid the fees) but this is one of those things that the market should decide. It's an extra revenue stream for airlines (or an extra perk when waived for those with status). In general gives airlines more options and more flexibility in adjusting ticket prices.

<comment><USER3> Flying did get much worse as "1 free checked bag" became more rare. Now everyone wants to fly with a mountain climbing backpack, and planes regularly run out of overhead space.

No, I'm not checking my $10k in camera equipment because people aren't checking their dirty tshirts.

<comment><USER4> I have the opposite experience. I never want to check my bags because waiting around at the carousel for a checked bag isn't my idea of a good time. I want to be able to just walk off the plane and get to ground transportation with minimal delays.

Yet airlines keep offering me _free baggage check_ at the gate on full flights. I actively try to avoid checking my bags, but I'm usually in boarding Group 3 or 4, so I'm forced to have my bag gate-checked. I hate it. Most people do. Some even try to untag their force-checked bags on the jetway when they see overhead luggage space, and then get told off because that is prohibited. I've resorted to buying an AmazonBasics underseat bag[1] so I never have to check my bag.

For domestic flights, in my experience few people want to check their bags. (exceptions exist of course, like in your case)

For international flights, checking bags is included in the cost of the ticket.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics- Amazon161214-Underseat-L...](https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics- Amazon161214-Underseat-Luggage-Black/dp/B071G2D5MM/)

<comment><USER5> On the routes I usually fly, waiting at the carousel usually doesn't add more than maybe 15 minutes. And I usually go to the bathroom and grab some food anyway.

It's certainly preferred over the hell of trying to get my bags overhead, and also allows you to wait and be the last person on the plane, minimizing time crammed in a tiny seat.

The amount of cumulative time wasted because of stowing bags is immense.

<comment><USER6> The mean is low, but he variance is very high - if they lose your bag, you could be waiting for days!

<comment><USER5> I mostly fly direct domestic, so it's basically impossible to lose my luggage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> >>The story of this law has been dominated largely by what isn't in it: no restrictions on what airlines can charge for baggage or change fees.

That's a market decision. It really irks me when people demand price controls for innocuous things. All the airlines will do is find another way to make you eat the cost. This should become area where one airline can one up other competition wise.

<comment><USER8> If the market is fair there is no problem. The moment you get quasi-monopolies the "market" is heavily tilted in favor of the airline.

For example if your flight out of Newark is only operated by United Airlines, what choice do you as a market participant do you truly have?

[source][https://futuretravel.today/united-airlines-should-go-out- of-...](https://futuretravel.today/united-airlines-should-go-out-of- business-325e9983e51f)

<comment><USER9> Don't fly: use a video conference, or just forego contact altogether. Travel by other means: drive, or take a train—-certainly viable in the Northeast. Use another airport: you said Newark, there are (at least) two other major airports in the New York area alone.

People usually have multiple choices available. Certainly they have alternatives to flying United Airlines out of Newark. That someone does not _like_ these other choices does not mean they do not exist.

<comment><USER10> Cool, I'll just video conference in to my next vacation in Hawaii.

<comment><USER9> Or, don't vacation in Hawaii. You have choices whether you like them or not.

<comment><USER11> And those choices include choosing to protest the crappy state of things and suggesting it needs to change rather than happily working around all the crappiness and accepting it as inevitable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I see one of the new regs is this: >bans e-cigarettes from planes;

You already can't bring vapes in checked luggage, so what are the nicotine addicted supposed to do? Switch to cigarettes at their destination, since they can't take their vapes along with them? This might be trivial to some folks, but I know people for whom this will be an absolute nightmare.

Anyway, this is easy for the non-addicted to see as a non-issue or a minor change, but for those who have nicotine habits, this makes airplanes that much more of a hellish experience than they already are. Worse, it actively punishes the folks trying to get away from smoking analog cigarettes, because it makes it nigh impossible for them to take their substitute when they travel..

<comment><USER13> I don't understand all those bans on e-cigarettes that pop up. They're essentially harmless, as opposed to "analog ones". I get that some people don't like to see any kind of smoke in general, but actual smoking is a public health problem, and IMO society should be supportive of e-cigarettes as a quite decent solution to this problem.

<comment><USER14> Part of it is the perpetual wishful thinking of nicotine addicts who think that since it is technically not smoking so they can do it anywhere. I recall radio ads billing this "benefit" even and speaking of the satisfaction of a "quitting smoking" device.

<comment><USER13> That was kind of a selling point, and what I'm essentially suggesting is it should be the case to _some_ extent, out of concern for public health benefits. You shouldn't be able to vape everywhere, but e-cigs shouldn't also be _more_ banned than regular cigs.

(No conflict of interest here; I'm not, and never was a smoker.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> >allows the Justice Department, Homeland Security, and other federal law enforcement agencies to hack or shoot down privately owned drones if they deem them a threat

they just kinda slipped that one in there... the rest seem pretty benign. Maybe this one:

>increases the penalties for interfering with cabin crew or flight crew

is there any reason to believe that the current penalties aren't working and that increasing them will fix it?

<comment><USER16> Maybe benign, but also amusing that this got slipped in too:

 _> requires the FAA to set up an "Office of Spaceports"_

<comment><USER17> You joke, but there is actual serious regulatory uncertainty with space launches - the Air Force is trying to hand over more and more regulatory authority to civilians, and there's a serious question of which responsibilities belong to the DoC (through the FCC, for historical reasons) and which to the DoT (through the FAA).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I like nearly all the things on that list. As someone else mentioned, most airlines already do most of these things; I'm not completely sure that a change in the law was necessary. However, US airlines have a pretty terrible reputation, deservedly in my opinion. Maybe this change will trigger some improvement in the industry? Lets hope.

</comment><comment><USER19> > authorizes $1.68 billion for relief for Hurricane Florence, which hit the > Carolinas last month;

The fuck does this have to do with any of the other regulations in this law?

<comment><USER20> It is basically a parliamentary procedure hack. An urgent issue can be tacked on to an existing bill that is already farther along in the process. Streamlines the passage.

There is also a bit of game theory going on here, by attaching a _must pass_ item to the bill you can get other less favorable items passed at the same time.

<comment><USER19> > by attaching a must pass item to the bill you can get other less favorable > items passed at the same time.

This should not be allowed. Items in a bill should be passed by their own merit, not by the merits of other 'must pass' things they hang off of.

<comment><USER21> Ok sure. Now go write a rule that would implement that.

<comment><USER19> "It is illegal to add on unrelated regulations to bills"

Done. It's easy to write it, the hard part is changing a corrupted system to actually pass it and follow it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Nah. It's just a requirement to study the issue from a safety perspective.[1]

"SEC. 577. Minimum dimensions for passenger seats.

(a) In general.—Not later than 1 year after the date of enactment of this Act, and after providing notice and an opportunity for comment, the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration shall issue regulations that establish minimum dimensions for passenger seats on aircraft operated by air carriers in interstate air transportation or intrastate air transportation, including minimums for seat pitch, width, and length, and that are necessary for the safety of passengers."

That just means an aircraft with a tight seat pitch has to pass the aircraft evacuation time test.[1] Some of those tests may need to be rerun. Which is risky; people are injured in evacuation tests.

The standards need to be re-evaluated, though, because people are fatter.

[1] [https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house- bill/302/...](https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house- bill/302/text#toc-H42766A6E73C64E76B8FA188D403BBFCF) [2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIaovi1JWyY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIaovi1JWyY)

<comment><USER23> You can use a mix of un-uniformed soldiers and police force, led by emergency rescuers, to test the evacuation. No civilians need to be harmed to test efficiency.

<comment><USER22> The FAA requires that the demographics of the testers in terms of age and gender be comparable to that of the general population.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Umm.. no one is commenting on the Office of Spaceports?? This is really freaking awesome! I _hope_ that they get it right. The spaceport in New Mexico is a great idea, I just hope things like this get more growth as we commercialize and exploit the vast resources in space.

<comment><USER25> Yes! The delivery drone bit is cool too.

Still waiting on the Space Force though.

<comment><USER24> Space force! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AUXpnB065o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AUXpnB065o)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > authorizes $1.68 billion for relief for Hurricane Florence, which hit the > Carolinas last month;

One of these is not like the other.

</comment><comment><USER27> These all seem to be fairly benign, small scale changes that codify things most airlines do already.

<comment><USER28> Most airlines have been shrinking their seat widths to dimensions that are less than the average shoulder span of American men. I'm wondering if the requirement to set seat sizes might help there.

Also, the recent incidences of airlines bumping seated passengers in favor of their own staff makes me think the new rules are needed.

But 1200 pages! What else is in there? Did we just create a new bureaucracy- in-a-bureaucracy again?

<comment><USER29> It's the entire FAA Reauthorization Act. So it basically specifies everything that the FAA (which is a large federal department) is authorized to do or required to do over the next few years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This law is a bunch of generally-good regulations that address various sorts of minor dysfunctions affecting air travel lately. What really annoys me is how it's pitched on inc.com.

Let's look at the inc.com headline, which I quote in full: "President Trump Just Signed a Law That Radically Changes Life for Airline Passengers, Flight Attendants, and Airlines (Almost Nobody Even Noticed) In the middle of the Supreme Court fight, the White House held a Friday afternoon signing ceremony for this new, 1,200-page law"

For God's sake, this spin is ridiculous. This wasn't some radical part of Trump's agenda. There's no evidence that the law's signing was intended to deceive the public. The regulations themselves are decent tweaks to existing practice that are consistent with common sense. You'd get a very different impression reading the headline.

Granted, I never paid much attention to inc.com before, but I think I'll find a way to pay even less attention to it now.

<comment><USER31> Yeah I went into it expecting to work up a righteous rage and mostly just nodded along agreeing with everything instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I hope the eventual seat pitch/width standards are reasonable. I don't think a seat pitch below 33" or width below 19" are tenable for an average 6' 200 pound male.

<comment><USER33> It would be nice to be able to sit in aisle seats again without having my arm ripped off by the drink cart...

<comment><USER34> Arm or leg, choose one...

With so many planes having touch screens on the seat in front of you I wish they'd get rid of the service cart altogether, let people select what they want and then deliver it as convenient.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> > _prohibits passengers from using mobile phones to make voice calls during > flight;_

Interesting... on 9/11 the voice calls from passengers to their loved ones are part of the history. Not like a law is going to stop you... but this feels like an odd thing to make illegal. And what about VoIP?

</comment><comment><USER36> Not a lot of comments about the tyranny of regulations in this thread. Surprised there isn't more push-back against a law that is almost entirely regulations imposed on businesses and travelers.

<comment><USER37> I'm wondering which two regulations that will presumably be revoked so that this one could get signed.

> ...it is important that for every one new regulation issued, at least two > prior regulations be identified for elimination...

[https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential- actions/presidential...](https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential- actions/presidential-executive-order-reducing-regulation-controlling- regulatory-costs/)

<comment><USER36> The bill has at least 18 regulations according to this article. I'll be waiting to hear about the 36 we are eliminating. Surely the libertarians and small-government conservatives will demand it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> > prohibits airlines from "bumping" passengers who've already boarded a plane;

It's interesting the article says no one noticed these regulations but this one seems like a big deal since there was so much press about those passengers removed off of planes not too long ago.

</comment><comment><USER39> > _requires the FAA to consider whether to allow supersonic airplanes over the > continental U.S.;_

Intriguing!

</comment><comment><USER40> > mandates that airlines allow passengers to check strollers if they are > traveling with small children

This one is a little odd to me, especially since the law [0] doesn't mention a limit to the age of the child. I can see where a stroller is considered necessary for the mobility of the child, just as a wheelchair or walking frame might be considered necessary for an adult but every time I visit America, I see parents pushing around children that are far too old for a stroller. It seems really odd to encourage this.

There should really be an age limit. I understand that American politics would never accept a reasonable limit like 4 years old but everyone should be able to accept that a 10-year-old doesn't need a stroller.

[0]: [https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house- bill/302/...](https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house- bill/302/text#toc-HBCBC380574E449358E920817DCF2B3DD)

<comment><USER41> This doesn't seem like a big issue. Do you imagine a bunch of parents of 10 year olds abusing this law and taking strollers with them on flights?

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> If they are going to charge fees, i wonder if this can be used for deliverying packets (keep it the unused space you bought).

Imagine if we can hand over the packet to a passenger for ultra faster delivery at the other end

</comment><comment><USER43> I don't like Trump at all, but this kind of "outrage for the sake or outrage" article really makes the media look bad.

The worst part of this bill, IMO, is that it includes hurricane relief funds in a bill otherwise targeting minor airline regulations.

But otherwise, as far as I'm concerned somebody who'd stuff a dog in an overhead bin and smoke e-cigarettes and talk on the phone all flight deserves to be thrown off the plane.

<comment><USER44> To me the article's tone sounded more surprised at how little coverage there was on the bill, than outraged at the bill's contents.

In fact, I thought the article gave a quite positive view of the bill.

<comment><USER43> Honestly, I really don't see why it would get much coverage. Contrary to the article's hyperbole, it doesn't "radically change" anything, and I think most reasonable people would be in favor of the new rules.

Mundane laws like this get passed all the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Why is 1.6 billion in relief for a hurricane placed in an aviation bill?

<comment><USER46> Law is a bit like programming. Imagine reviewing commits to a vast codebase on a tight deadline.

This feature seems to belong in a different package. It _should_ be factored out. But the code builds, and rejecting the whole pull request would delay shipment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> "prohibits passengers from using mobile phones to make voice calls during flight"

Say what? Is it OK if I use a tablet? Or my laptop? Or my SmartWatch? What if I'm doing video as well?

</comment><comment><USER48> The link is down for me, any alternative link?

</comment><comment><USER49> no ban on emotional support peacocks?

</comment><comment><USER50> This passed overwhelmingly in Congress right? Does the airline industry not lobby properly? I suppose contributions might start rising now.

<comment><USER51> The airlines don't care, and may even support these measures, if it means that their competitors have to follow them also.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> One of those things is not like the others...

> authorizes $1.68 billion for relief for Hurricane Florence, which hit the > Carolinas last month;

<comment><USER53> Probably one of those things that's slipped in last minute rather than creating an entire separate bill for it. The same people would probably vote yes on it anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> It appears that it bring the US into line with EU law, only ten year too late.

</comment><comment><USER55> Leaning libertarian, I don't see anything fundamentally wrong with any of the listed provisions, except maybe the cell phones one.

Looks like ranting for the sake of it.

<comment><USER56> What's wrong with banning voice calls? It would be incredibly annoying to have to sit next to someone yelling into a phone on a 4+ hour voip call during a flight.

<comment><USER57> It would be more sensible for the airlines to be permitted to ban them (which they all would,unless they are insane) than to have the FAA ban them.

<comment><USER56> Fair point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Pl000p !!!!!

<comment><USER59> It would be more "fair" to let people make their own decisions and not assume adding a comment is adding an endorsement.</comment></comment>


Never Buy an Apple iMac Without Fusion Drive - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/01/22/never-buy-an-apple-imac-without-fusion-drive-heres-why/ <comment><USER2> Obviously this article isn't written for the technically-oriented, for those who might say "well duh".

I do find it surprising you can still find computers that come with just a spinning rust drive, let alone in a "premium" machine like the Mac is advertised as.

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought most of the Windows Machines you buy come with 5400 RPM spinning 1 TB HDD and not much people fancy the 256 GB costlier version of SSD.

At least, this is the case in India.

<comment><USER3> So does the base iMac. The rust based drive is incredibly slow. For some generations of imac's, we had a 100% failure rate over long period of time of spinning disks. When I was buying iMacs for my company, all the SSD models were special order, wait a few weeks to build.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is Farnam Street membership worth it? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> It depends on what you are looking for and your online content consuming habits.

There are not that much more content with the membership, and if you are reading a lot (too much?) on the web, newsletters etc it may get somehow lost.

However, I find the content always interesting and thought provoking so if you are limiting your reading time and want to add a valuable source, that's definitely a good idea.

Ps. For all others seeking wisdom, the free section of Farnam Street is definitely a place to check

</comment><comment><USER3> Thank you. Had not even heard of it</comment>


World-first images of electric currents in graphene released - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2017-04-world-first-images-electric-currents-graphene.html <comment><USER2> These quantum computing things are tough to understand. Does anyone have a simple explanation?</comment>