How Much Do Skyscrapers Actually Move? - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/how-much-do-skyscrapers-actually-move-1707522178 <comment><USER2> When the World Trade Center towers were being planned, the builders discovered that nobody really knew how much sway occupants of tall buildings could tolerate. Wind tunnel tests showed that the (relatively) light buildings would sway more than expected and the builders feared that any publicity about this would scuttle the project.

They began conducting two secret research programs. One investigated methods of dissipating energy to reduce sway. The other determined how much a room could move before occupants noticed it.

This second investigation was conducted under the pretense of "free vision exams." Participants were led into a room that was (unbeknownst to them) mounted on rails and moved by hydraulic rams. The amount of simulated sway was increased until somebody spoke up.

The engineers eventually determined that the sway could be brought within acceptable (though still detectable) levels by installing viscoelastic dampers between the floor joists and the building's perimeter columns.

The whole story is told in the 2003 book _City in the Sky_ , which is a fascinating read.

<comment><USER3> That's a really interesting way to go about it, I like that solution. I'll have to check the book out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The answer to the title question seems to be:

> Inside the building, on those top floors, the oscillation is what unnerves > us. A forty-story building may sway a foot to the left, a foot to the right. > The span of that period might last around four seconds. A hundred-story > building, by comparison, may move on the order of two-and-a-half to three > feet to each side, cycling through a ten-second period. Typically, the > taller the building, the longer the period of its cyclical motion.

And the implicit question of how much movement we feel:

> Acceleration is what causes the body forces that might tip us off our firmly > planted feet, or nudge us back into the passenger seat of a car pulling away > from a stoplight. Fighter pilots experience acceleration at many times the > magnitude of gravity—"4 Gs" or more. The top of our hundred-story skyscraper > accelerates through its period, as it sways from one side to the other, at a > mere fraction of what a fighter pilot feels: maybe ten milli-g's, or one > hundredth of the force of gravity.

<comment><USER5> Surely it's not actually _acceleration_ that you feel most of the time. A constant acceleration is, after all, indistinguishable from constant gravity, and so small acceleration vectors which, when added together with the local gravity vector, are still just a little more or less than 1 g, aren't really detectable - they just feel like gravity is pointing in a different direction. Obviously larger accelerations are detectable as being 'not quite like normal gravity'. When it takes different-to-normal effort to move your limbs, your body gives you feedback about it.

What you _can_ feel is change in acceleration - a sudden change in the direction your body perceives as 'down'. Braking in a car doesn't feel much different to driving down a hill, but when the car's speed reaches zero and suddenly _stops_ decelerating, the jerk as gravity snaps back to vertical is definitely noticeable. It's the jerk, not the acceleration, that throws you off your feet when you're standing on the subway and it pulls into or out of a station.

<comment><USER6> It's unbalanced forces you feel, not unbalanced acceleration per se. If you have a constant acceleration, it's because there's a consistent force on you.

It's why this part of the article is wrong: > _Humans are also terrible at perceiving velocity at a constant speed. [not perceiving sway] is why, when you're traveling on a train at a steady fifty miles an hour, your body believes you might as well be sitting perfectly still._

Humans in a train moving steadily are enclosed in an environment where everything is moving at the same speed as them - seats, air, everything. There are no unbalanced forces to feel in the first place. Just the same as we don't perceive the earth's movement around the sun (well, in a moving-body sense) or the sun's movement around the galaxy (which is blisteringly fast on a human scale); because our frame of reference moves with us.

Of course, in the real world, trains do sway side-to-side and also up and down a little where the rails meet up (click-click click-click...), and we all feel that. But we're talking about a theory train here, and only looking at forward velocity :)

Edit: Wikipedia says the sun orbits the galaxy at 220km/s. Monty Python's "Galaxy Song" says 40,000mph, which works out to 18km/s. Either way, it's pretty zippy for us humans.

Galaxy Song: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buqtdpuZxvk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buqtdpuZxvk)

<comment><USER7> Right: We're only terrible at perceiving constant velocity without visual reference because it's physically impossible to do so in a controlled environment, according to Newton.

What we're terrible at is perceiving _constant acceleration_ in very fine increments, like 10 milli-G while standing, or on up past 100 milli-G while sitting or prone. This is _directly equivalent_ to sensing a certain slope/grade in the terrain, if one is robbed of accurate horizontal (horizon) and vertical (trees/buildings) reference. The mind is capable of tolerating several degrees of tilt while being perfectly convinced everything is flat, so long as the visual references point in that direction... and even at greater extremes we really only notice topography when it's highly variable, cliffs and abrupt hills and sharp changes in slope. I have an unconfirmed notion that our ability to, for example, carry things on our back, or walk while pregnant, would be sharply curtailed if our body didn't automatically adjust to the different center of mass, and different perceived gravity vector from the standpoint of our skeletal centerline.

Humans directly perceive jerks, and they perceive them with alarm, because if the ground is jerking in a natural context it means you're about to fall off a slope and die.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Humans are also terrible at perceiving velocity at a constant speed.

This is not so much a quirk of our species as a physical impossibility

</comment><comment><USER9> For a fascinating read on the intersection of buildings, wind dynamics, and a litigious society, see "The Fifty-Nine Story Crisis" [0]. The article describes the response of the architect/engineer of the Citicorp Tower, when he realized that the building would topple like a domino in winds that could be expected at least once every 16 years.

[0] [http://people.duke.edu/~hpgavin/cee421/citicorp1.htm](http://people.duke.edu/~hpgavin/cee421/citicorp1.htm)

<comment><USER10> The litigious society seems rather justified in this case.

<comment><USER11> But did you read to the end and see how everyone involved behaved in the aftermath? The opposite of what you seem to be implying. And honorably so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This damper movement video was really incredible to see [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYSgd1XSZXc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYSgd1XSZXc)

The small scale demos just don't do it justice.

[https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Taipei_101](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Taipei_101)

<comment><USER13> Why did you link through Wikiwand? It's some annoying overlay on Wikipedia that makes the window really small? Here's the direct Wikipedia link: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taipei_101](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taipei_101)

<comment><USER14> It's actually a browser plugin to restyle^H^H^H^H^H um actually not restyle, redirect from wikipedia to same page on wikiwand? I think it looks nice but hadn't used it before... curious if sosuke has any connection to them, but it seemed more interesting when I thought it was just restyling... the redirect to their own domain is a bit weird...

<comment><USER12> Ha, no it was just a mindless copy paste.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I used to work on the 97th floor of the Sears Tower. On a really windy day, we would get downright seasick.

</comment><comment><USER16> How does the concrete not develop cracks when the building sways so much? Same for the lifts - why don't they hop out of their rails?

<comment><USER17> A building is say 500 feet tall. The top moves say 2 feet.

In order for this to happen every 10 feet of the building doesn't shift sideways a certain amount. Every 10 feet of the building bends a certain amount. A VERY small amount. Tiny fractions of a degree.

So the bottom 10 feet of the building bends say 0.001 degrees. The bottom is flat, the top is tilted 0.001 degrees.

The next 10 feet bends an additional 0.001 degrees, but its base was already tilted 0.001 degrees so its top is tilted 0.002 degrees.

The next 10 feet bends an additional 0.001 degrees, but its base was already tilted 0.002 degrees so its top is tilted 0.003 degrees.

Repeat this 50 times (for 500 total feet) and you've got 0.050 degrees of tilt at the top which might be noticeable. Further, you have to add up displacements the whole way from the bottom to the top as well.

If you took a picture of the building sideways it would look like this: [http://www.codecogs.com/users/23287/Cantilever- Beams-101.png](http://www.codecogs.com/users/23287/Cantilever-Beams-101.png)

<comment><USER18> I like your reasoning, but I wonder about magnitudes. Since:

      10 feet/story * sin(0.001 degree) = .00017 feet/story

then:

      50 stories * .00017 feet/story = .0085 feet [building]

If things added up this way, your magnitudes would be way off.

In fact, since sin(x) is linear for small x, you'd need about 100x more angle to get 100x more deflection. 100x more deflection would be about 0.85 feet one way, or 1.70 feet peak-to-peak.

Two feet peak-to-peak for 50 stories matches some of the figures quoted in the article for buildings of this scale ("A hundred-story building, by comparison, may move on the order of two-and-a-half to three feet to each side...").

However, on reflection, I think the offsets cumulate quadratically. Because:

       *
        \
         \  [story 2]
          \
          |
          | [story 1]
          |

The first story has an angular offset, but the angular offset of the second story adds to that of the first, etc. This must be common knowledge among structural engineers.

In that case, since we can just add all the displacements, the appropriate quadratic multiplier would be 50 __* 49 /2 = 1225, not just 50, and the total displacement is:

      1225 * .00017 feet/story = 0.21 feet.

This would mean your original, very tiny, angles were only about 5x too low. Nice work!

<comment><USER17> Yeah it was a total guess, not informed by doing any actual math. Thanks for adding some real numbers to the discussion!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There's a really fascinating and relevant 99% Invisible [1] on a building with insufficient sway damping leading to potential for collapse. If I recall, a student discovers the issue while running calculations for a class and reached out to the architecture firm. Worth a listen if you haven't heard.

[1] - [http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/structural- integrity/](http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/structural-integrity/)

</comment><comment><USER20> A lot:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HB2jgJJG2is](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HB2jgJJG2is)

</comment><comment><USER21> I wonder if you get "land" dizziness after spending time in a tall building!?</comment>


Linux Kernel Library - <AUTHOR> http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1511.0/01898.html <comment><USER2> Cool. So what (if any) implications does this have for providing a linux based rump kernel? Is it basically aiming to do the same rearchitecting/cleanup of the Linux Kernel that NetBSD did in order to support things like rump kernels?

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this basically rump kernels for Linux or am I misreading it?

<comment><USER4> That is my reading of it as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love how the anti-spam filter messed up the git repo name.

<comment><USER6> Yeah; helpfully rendered in URL form in this followup message: [https://lkml.org/lkml/2015/11/3/754](https://lkml.org/lkml/2015/11/3/754)</comment></comment>


LyfeLens – Drop Cam for your Car (and then some) - <AUTHOR> https://www.lyfelens.com

<comment> jack-r-abbit From the FAQ:

Q: Does LyfeLens have a subscription service?

A: While LyfeLens will provide superior functionality as a dash cam without a subscription plan, the full LyfeLens experience requires a subscription. The subscription activates the 4G LTE connection and the web portal, which are necessary to support push notifications, WiFi hotspot, automatic cloud storage, live video feeds, and speed and location monitoring.

So, without the subscription it is just a dash cam. But they don't have any info on subscription price. I don't have a problem dropping $200 on a device like this with the _full LyfeLens experience_. I don't have a problem paying a subscription fee. But I'm not going anywhere near a device that basically requires a monthly/yearly fee to make it more than just a dash cam... but isn't upfront about the price.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good feedback. The subscription details aren't listed because carrier negotiations are still taking place to get the lowest possible price. It will likely be between $19-29/mo, depending on how much you plan to use the hotspot feature.

<comment> jack-r-abbit Fair enough. Assuming it is technically possible, I would suggest having a lower tier plan for people that don't want/need a hotspot in their car but still want all the other cam related functions. I certainly don't need another connected device in my car to stream music and movies. But I would want the camera to be able to connect out and do all that other stuff.

It does look like a nice device. Wish I had one last week when someone keyed my car. :(</comment></comment></comment>


I've Written a Book - <AUTHOR> http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2011/06/28/ive_written_a_book/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+IgnoreTheCode+%28ignore+the+code%29 <comment><USER2> Lukas is one of the preeminent thinkers in the field of user experience & user interface design and if this book is anything like his blog, it'll be a must- buy for anyone working on software that other people use. Congrats!

<comment><USER3> I'm not big in the scene so was unaware of his blog, but hearing such praise makes me more interested in getting it to help me unsuck the UI in my own projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I will definitely buy the book, but I find that the (blog article) title "I've written a book" doesn't help to sell it, unless you know the author...

</comment><comment><USER5> I just purchased this book in both formats and I am giddy with excitement to read it. But I just have to ask... does anyone else think the swiss army knife on the cover looks like some kind of horrifying insect?

SWEET JESUS GET IT OFF ME

<comment><USER6> That's actually what sold me on the cover image :-)

<comment><USER7> Upon closer inspection of the cover image, I finally realized what the knife body actually is. Crafty!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can anybody say how the illustrations hold up on the Kindle version? I have a DX and it is OK most of the time, but with a visual book like this...

<comment><USER6> The illustrations themselves are all okay, as far as I can tell; I've tried to make sure that they have enough contrast even on a greyscale screen like the Kindle's. However, there are some formatting issues with a few of the pictures on the regular-sized Kindle's screen. I'm not sure if these issues also appear on the DX. They might not, because they seem to occur due to the Kindle's small screen width.

I'll talk to my publisher to see if we can get these problems fixed.

<comment><USER8> I bought the DX specifically to solve the formatting problems on the little version. It makes code listing readable too. I will let you know how it reads. Cheers.

<comment><USER9> I'd be interested to know this, too. Fortunately the Pragmatics also let you download the PDF, which usually read well on the DX even though the navigation sucks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'll have to mark this on my long list of "books to buy when I have money."

<comment><USER7> If you're building a product that you hope will get you to that point, this book might be a good investment right now!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> promo video: <http://vimeo.com/25448878>

</comment><comment><USER12> This sounds interesting. Can anyone recommend some highlights from his blog which would help evaluate whether it's worth purchasing?

<comment><USER6> Maybe somebody else will do that, but if you go to the pragprog.com page for the book, you can read the preface and two sample chapters: <http://pragprog.com/titles/lmuse/designed-for-use>

<comment><USER12> Thanks, Lukas.</comment></comment></comment>


(Unicode) Private Use Areas - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Use_Areas <comment><AUTHOR> I thought this was of interest after I read this on SU:

[https://superuser.com/questions/1205451/how-can-i-display- th...](https://superuser.com/questions/1205451/how-can-i-display-the-uf8ff- apple-logo-emoji-on-windows)

Apple, apparently, has a private use area that defines things such as the Apple logo in Unicode; people on Apple platforms were unaware that it only displays on Apple hardware. I wasn't aware Unicode even _had_ such a thing.

To me it opens up all kinds of interesting things - as a commenter in the SU question points out, nothing stops say, Microsoft, from defining the same code point as the Windows logo.</comment>


Ask HN: Hacker news equivalent for data science - <AUTHOR> Does anyone know if there's a HN equivalent where the discussion topics revolve around data science? <comment><USER2> [http://www.datatau.com/](http://www.datatau.com/)</comment>


Ask HN: Is anyone hiring remote workers? Starving college student needs work - <AUTHOR>

Hi, I'm a starving college student about to graduate from a CS diploma program in a couple of months. I'm in a financial bind (rent due in two weeks!), and I need to start working sooner rather than later. I'm a super-frequent lurker on HN, and I'm always excited about the latest technologies being discussed.
I'm only taking two classes at the moment, one of which is a course on presentations and the other is on systems security. I am looking for work that would allow me to learn new things, and possibly even lead to something long term.
My current projects include a dashboard application for the BC Oil and Gas commission which is using Drupal. I built a prototype of this application during my co-op term with the commission last summer (and I can push the code to github if someone would like to see it). I'm building a twitter clone as per the ruby on rails tutorial by Michael Hartl.
I have experience with a variety of languages and platforms gained both in school and on my own time. Some of these include PHP/MySql, JavaScript, Android, Java (including JSF, JSP, and struts), C, some python, and node.js. I pride myself on my ability to solve problems independent of language or environment.
I'm passionate about a few specific areas of software development, including databases and database warehousing, concurrent programming (hence the interest in node.js), and algorithms. Here are a few small sites I've worked on as a freelancer: http://www.andreecazabon.ca/[1] http://thirdworldcanada.ca/[2] http://www.lazoslearning.org/[3] http://cafedeluxe.ca/[4] http://tanglewoodconstruction.ca/[5]<p>My github mostly consists of my smaller learning projects, but nevertheless, I can provide a link to it if required.
I'm hoping someone here has a need for an enthusiastic 20-something hacker.
Cheers,
A <comment><USER2> You should put your contact details in your profile.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion, will do!</comment></comment>


Java: Let it be - <AUTHOR> http://tekkie.wordpress.com/2008/03/06/java-let-it-be/

<comment><USER2> I am in the camp that says keep the abstraction level somewhere in the middle, not too low (painful) and not too high (you will lose a lot of people). There is a happy Buddhist middle there somewhere.

Almost any code meant to be used by other people (i.e not throw-away scripts, but even some of those!), even code written by almighty Lispers, will need to be tweaked by another person at some point - they call that "maintenance" but since that term comes with baggage, I say tweaking.

Great Lisp (and by extension any very-high-level-abstraction) tends to emphasize the elegant proof aspect of it, or the poetry aspect of it, depending on whether you come from the math or the art bent of mind, which, of course, need not be mutually exclusive. "Painters and Hackers" captures this.

But refining code this way can leave out later day tweakers in a state of dread. This is why really great math profs don't just recite the super-elegant proof but actually "motivate" it, with examples, with analogies and so on, none of which will be found in the proof itself.

A medium-level abstraction language will tend to leave in the analogies and examples, in a sense, so the tweaker will find some guide-posts. At the very least, he can turn a little knob here and there, and there is a bit of continuity in his experimentation. With dense, super-abstract code, a single token can hold the hold galaxy but will take arbitrarily long to figure out.

Sorry for the long, rambling comment, but my personal experience (I have shipped a lot of stuff) is Buddha is right. We must avoid extremes and go for the middle.

<comment><USER3> Isn't always going for the middle an extreme?

Tongue out of cheek, this is an interesting point. Could good tagging in a VCS solve the problem, or not, b/c you don't want to transport the whole development tree every time you reuse the code base?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "What static type systems force you to do is talk about the data flow of your code. This isn't so that humans can understand it (though with some discipline it's possible to create readable code this way), but so that the compiler and runtime don't have to figure out what the data flow will be when your code is executed. It's really a form of optimization."

I've been thinking along similar lines recently, and I was pleased to see this put so succinctly. If static typing is merely optimization, it follows from Knuth's Law that the first draft of your program shouldn't be statically typed. The ideal high-performance language, then, is one in which it is easy to write dynamically typed code, but also one that lets you selectively type your program where necessary, without a lot of changes. I haven't seen too many languages that do this, though; I believe Lisp allows it, as do VB, Boo, and Actionscript 3.0.

</comment><comment><USER5> Instead of worrying about K&R, memory pointer mismanagement/code that can't compile/code that core dumps, Java* lets you screw up on higher-level issues (class design, coupling, coherence, anti-patterns)

* (and other languages that usually don't allow programmers to manipulate memory directly)

</comment><comment><USER6> What about all those complex APIs and exceptions? NullPointerException still makes you somewhat uncomfortable (if not as much as seg-fault). I guess there's no "perfect" programming language, all have their own virtues and vices.

</comment><comment><USER7> What I want changed in Java is removal of (non-final) static variables.</comment>


Bikes put spanner in works of Dutch driverless car schemes - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/13/bikes-put-spanner-in-works-of-dutch-driverless-car-schemes <comment><USER2> So are driverless cars are even more hostile to non-cars than ones with human drivers? Seems to me that we need less cars, more pedestrians, and more cyclists.

What this article says to me is that autonomous cars are less safe for pedestrians and less safe for cyclists.

</comment><comment><USER3> As an American living in the UK, I feel compelled to translate the title for my friends across the pond: "Bikes throw a wrench in the plans for Dutch driverless car schemes."

</comment><comment><USER4> Why can't they spot cyclists? My 2015 Tesla S 70D with Autopilot 1.5 and only one monochrome camera correctly identifies cyclists most of the time; surely things have improved since then.

<comment><USER5> "But the varying sizes and agility of cyclists, with their sudden changes in speed and loose adherence to the rules of the road, present a major challenge to the existing technology"

The 'loose adherence of the rules' is a pretty good reason I think.</comment></comment>


Refugees Detained at U.S. Airports, Prompting Legal Challenges - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/28/us/refugees-detained-at-us-airports-prompting-legal-challenges-to-trumps-immigration-order.html <comment><USER3> > "Mr. President... Call Mr. Trump."

Having been detained by CBP several times I can see the smug look on this officers face. Like, "It's not my policy but I'm happy to do my job."

You see, this is the biggest problem that no one is talking about. Sure, these policies (mass surveillance, unlawful detention, violation of human rights) are handed down by edict by a powerful faction at the top of the food chain, but they are enforced by every day people. People against people, that's what this is about. Its our friends, our colleagues, and neighbors that are doing this. People, the people who have these jobs, have the moral right to resist these policies. They must fight their supervisors or they must resign if they cannot fight. We as a society have to agree that we won't mindlessly follow such ignorant leaders.

Do you know why we still hunt down Nazi's 80 years later? Because "I'm just doing what I'm told" isn't a good excuse.

<comment><USER4> That's why I'm in favor of the RW libertarians view of big government and how it's in the best interest of society to have as much small a government as possible to avoid situations like these as large bureaucracies tend to corrupt over time and when they turn evil, they hurt innocent people that come close to them.

<comment><USER5> The original Libertarians were left wing anti-government anarchists. The word was appropriated by the far right in the US, and The ones today are Ayn Rand fanatics- the likes of Paul Ryan, who are anti-labour and pro-business. Reducing the power of the government - an institution in which people have some kind of say in - while allowing corporations to flourish - <USER2> where citizens have absolutely no say in - leads to oligarchy.

There are interesting approaches to reducing government size from left- liberterains(Libertarian socialist and Anarchists) but they are not mainstream in the US, which has shifted so far right over the last few decades that Eisenhower would in many policy matters be considered a far-left unelectable today.

<comment><USER6> > _while allowing corporations to flourish - institutions where citizens have > absolutely no say in_

Wrong. Corporations are the one of most sensitive organisation types. Stop giving them money, see how soon and peacfully they die. Remind me a state that has given its power peacefully ?

<comment><USER5> Difficult to stop giving them money when they sell products billions use, and also employ millions. It's probably easier to overthrow the half the states in the world than to bring down Apple.

<comment><USER6> Oh cmon at least be realistic. Are you sure, 5 years from now, Apple is going to be as powerful as today ?

Market always tend toword decentralisation. More so in AnCap one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> >According to the filing, Hameed Khalid Darweesh was granted a special immigrant visa on Jan. 20, the same day Mr. Trump was sworn in. He worked with the United States in Iraq in a variety of jobs — as an interpreter, engineer and contractor — over the course of roughly a decade.

This is completely insane. Not only is it a blatant violation of human rights and our treaties regarding refugees, but this is going to be a major blow to our national security. The promise of American citizenship is one of the major driving factors for informants and interpreters around the world that help our armed forces. Trump seems hellbent on making life miserable for anyone tasked with actually protecting our country.

<comment><USER8> So we should invite traitors and collaborators into the USA? Those are the last people we should allow to join us here. That's the thing about cheaters: They cheated on their last partner with you and they'll cheat on you soon enough.

If we'd keep our noses out of nation building where it's none of our business we'd need a whole lot less of these people. Let that be a lesson to us the next time a fool president wants to invade a new Iraq.

<comment><USER7> >So we should invite traitors and collaborators into the USA?

I'd like to see you call the Kurdish interpreters I served with in Iraq traitors. Do you actually have any idea what you're talking about, or just spouting nonsense? These people are fighting for their lives against terrorists, too. And at _much_ greater risk than we did.

<comment><USER8> Of course the USA should support the recognition of the Kurdish state and its success and freedom. And that is where Kurdish aides to the US have a right to live.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is disgusting. To show such blatant disregard for civil liberties and human rights and a dozen other pinnacles of developed/western/first world countries is an affront to what we've accomplished and supposedly learned from the past.

I mean seriously, barring refugees on Holocaust Rememberance day, and then only describing those killed as "victims", seems like it should be a very, very dark SNL skit.

<comment><USER10> Trump is putting the lives of soldiers who have to rely on these interpreters and local fixers at risk. It's now clear to anyone in Irak that whoever works for or help the Americans takes risks on all sides, and will not be supported. Just grrrrreat.

<comment><USER11> I found this article very informative:

[http://www.military.com/daily-news/2017/01/28/trump- refugee-...](http://www.military.com/daily-news/2017/01/28/trump-refugee-rule- block-military-interpreters-us.html)

The tl:dr is that interpreters are already vetted to an extreme degree before they can receive visas under the SIV program, and that this order may in fact cost lives.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Imo, this is another show of why politics doesn't work. Or maybe why politics is not efficient.

Somebody does something (an act of terrorism). Instead of fixing the issue at its core, a politician will, instead, do something that is completely unrelated, random and inefficient but that looks like he is doing real work (banning muslims from entry).

A terrorist going on a killing spree is not different than a destabilized white American 30-something going on a killing spree. Both are destabilized (mentally) but for different reasons.

Most people would not care because it doesn't affect their bottom line. Banning muslims isn't an issue for your average American family, even if it doesn't stop terrorism.

<comment><USER13> This is the same line of reasoning that prevents valid use of profiling. Until you can clearly identify and prove the "issue" that you mention then we have to make do with half-solutions that may be the wrong answer in some instances. As an engineer/problem-solver I find this perfectly logical and reasonable. You can't just throw your arms up and say "sorry" when it could very well mean people dying and the dying of people is exactly what you're trying to prevent. If this blanket policy saves even one life I would find it justified.

Either way... It doesn't sound like the two individuals in the article are actual persecuted refugees. The article doesn't elaborate on that. We're just expected to assume that. But we're told what amazing humans they are and how much they helped the US. That sounds more like a dishing out of green card favors in return for services.

<comment><USER14> Its always "anything to save a life!" when its nobody you know. But take away _your_ liberties in the interest of lifesaving, and its a different story. That's called hypocrisy. And in this case its very harmful.

<comment><USER13> I never said I would oppose it if it affected me or someone I know. Even though from that position I might think the response is overdoing it, I still think that they could have logical justification for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is absolutely ridiculous. Nationalism needs to be nipped at the bud before it spirals out of control.

These orders should not be followed. Nuremberg defense doesn't hold up.

<comment><USER16> Remind me, who exactly voted the narcissistic nationalist into the executive office controlling the worlds largest surveillance and secret service/police apparatus?

Small Government is a nice, and good, idea, but history shows us that neither surveillance apparatus (pl.) nor secret police (pl.) relinquish power, ever, within existing in the same continuum of legitimation (ie. state). There has been no previous instance where either were reduced; they only grow until chopped off entirely.

It's an infestation of the state. There is only one - proven - cure. (And I think it's naïve to assume that those who built and grow these structures are not aware of this)

<comment><USER4> > Small Government is a nice, and good, idea, but history shows us that > neither surveillance apparatus (pl.) nor secret police (pl.) relinquish > power, ever, within existing in the same continuum of legitimation (ie. > state). There has been no previous instance where either were reduced; they > only grow until chopped off entirely.

Is there a book or article that I can read about this point?

I'd really appreciate it if you could show me a few examples.

<comment><USER16> I think the most prominent examples would be: Nazis (obviously), Stasi / DDR / GDR, Chile (Pinochet) and the dictatorship in Argentina; but in the last century there were many more examples, be it in South America, Africa or eastern Europe.

Wikipedia has a list of historical secret police: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_historical_secret_poli...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_historical_secret_police_organizations)

\--

Current examples that are still alive and well could be the various GCC states, but especially Saudi Arabia there; the UK and the US to some degree each (both are obviously full-blown surveillance states at the very least; and it can be reasonably argued that (divisions of) the FBI and some other agencies qualify as a secret police) in the western hemisphere; Russia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> To me, what is striking is that USA has always been glimmering example of a civilized society. An asymptote, if you will, of the curve of human progress. It showed other countries what laws are logical ("self-evident"), what is the best way to run an economy and what is the distilled essence of western civilization. Sure, when you look closer, you can always find flaws and internal-struggles. But the principles were always there as an inspiration.

Regardless of the geopolitical situations, it is fair to say that USA is rapidly reaching a point where it can no longer lay a claim on those principles. And I am not claiming that this happened on Nov 8, 2016. This has been happening steadily since the beginning of this century (Iraq War, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay etc.). And simultaneously it comes at a point where the long term sustainability of its other important contribution (free-market capitalism) is brought to question.

We are really living in an inflection point in history (Like end of European imperialism, fall of communism etc.)

<comment><USER18> > An asymptote, if you will, of the curve of human progress.

The curve of progress according to one faction, which it turns out has a lot less popular support than it thought.

<comment><USER17> Sure, ethno-nationalism has a claim on this mantle. But is it curving it towards the right direction? Remember, we have been here multiple times before (like the pre World War I world order). We had to suffer through a lot of carnage to reach here. As a species, we reduced the total human suffering, improved our lives, developed technology to overcome our ailments, began to adopt reason over organized religion and we are almost figuring out how to live with each other in spite of our genetic and cultural differences. Centuries from now, when we are cruising towards stars (if we are lucky enough) to spread through the galaxy, can we look back and say that this step was in the right direction? I don't think so.

I think it of as more as an over-correction, an exploitation of the flaws in the system which unfortunately will bring more bloodshed and suffering to get through before getting replaced.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is most of all a story about instability in Western societies. In my 34 years on this planet, I cannot remember any time where one would enter a plane with a valid visa, only to realuze everything changed so swiftly.

I'm concerned that this will be the trend many places in society now.

<comment><USER20> Just imagine what classified orders are being worked on, or already signed, right now. I wouldn't hold out much hope for any of the limits that have been in place regarding surveillance, foreign or domestic, on citizens or noncitizens.

<comment><USER21> Yeah, based on public executive orders (like no privacy unless you have a green card or are a citizen), I've given up on the idea of privacy from law enforcement at work. There are people with visas in ear shot, and on many of the pull requests I send out.

Presumably it will be slurped real time into some NSA data center. Thanks to that thing Obama did in the 11th hour, it will then be streamed back to local law enforcement for data mining.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Orders such as these will cause people in foreign countries to no longer support or trust US soldiers. Imagine what a storm this will cause when troops start dying because they have no intelligence as to who is friend or foe and what the situation is. Anything you do to people in the US risks having the same happen to Americans in general and not just soldiers in other countries. Note Google is trying to get their people who happened to be traveling in those countries home as soon as possible. I also find it amusing that none of the countries Trump does business in are affected.

</comment><comment><USER23> It's amazing to see policy making without any planning whatsoever.

<comment><USER21> This seems well planned to me. We were told it was coming (not in this exact form) throughout the campaign. Trump has also promised to arrest millions of immigrants in the next four years.

He has to start small. CBP already operates in the constitution free "border zone". It's a perfect way to normalize larger scale unlawful detentions in the public eye and set legal precedents.

Put another way, Oakland and San Francisco airports are almost certainly illeglly detaining innocent people that are in the country legally right now. If the feds started by pulling people with visas and green cards from desks in Silicon Valley or SF there would be riots in the streets.

I am talking about two groups of people within 50 miles of each other, which (until the executive order) had the same legal status.

This is not OK, and it is naive to think it is poorly planned. (I hope you're right though, and trump tweets an apology/release order this weekend.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Protesters should swarm these airports until the prisoners are released.

<comment><USER21> Instead of down voting, could you present a better idea? Spouses of American citizens on legal visas are being indefinitely detained without any cause.

So are members of the US government. They did nothing at all to provoke this reaction from the authorities. Some of them even actively "kept their heads down".

If people do nothing about this now, where will it end?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> And students too. :P</comment>


Algorithm Design: Parallel and Sequential - <AUTHOR> http://www.parallel-algorithms-book.com/ <comment><USER2> Seems the link to the chapter 4 pdf is missing but its there in the entire book pdf.</comment>


Ask HN: Why are there so many CRM software? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> From my experience implementing, integrating or customizing different CRM solutions is that it's not like ERP or MRP. You can have a most optimal way of organizing your stocks, or managing your manufacturing process, and there can only be so many ways to look at the data (in terms of reporting) but CRM is about how you create a relationship with your customer and how to maintain it and every business IMHO requires slightly more customized approach and I believe the approach differ substantially between industries as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> Cause 1 company owning the whole segment = monopolizing the industry. No?</comment>


You're Wasting Your 10,000 Hours - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidburkus/2013/09/25/are-you-wasting-your-10000-hours/

<comment><USER2> I am skeptical of the 10,000 hour rule (some people here seem to have bought it hook and sinker, for some reason). Independent of that, I've come to believe that when practicing instruments, I should do it in a very deliberate and concentrated matter. I don't get better from playing the same old songs, I get better from practicing each movement very deliberately and with great care.</comment>


Should I Reveal My Compensation to a Recruiter? - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/should-i-reveal-my-compensation-recruiter-ambra-benjamin

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm glad she says the answer is "it depends" and gives realistic examples for each answer.

What I really like about the article is it encourages engineers to _work_ with recruiters instead of against.</comment>


Pirate Bay Retrial Denied - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/06/pirate-bay-retrial-denied/

<comment><USER3> Does this remove the option to appeal? From my knowledge a retrial is the same court based on circumstances to be unfair while an appeal is for moving up the court system. This article seems to use the words otherwise, maybe the swedish court system is different.

<comment><USER4> Although they have reached the limit of the Swedish system, they are continuing to escalate their case by taking it to the European Court of Human Rights. [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/06/pirate- bay-r...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/06/pirate-bay-retrial- denied-judge-declared-unbiased.ars)

<comment><USER5> It doesn't say anything about the possibility of appeal of the original verdict. Just that the decision of the "bias-judge" can't be appealed. (And apparently, they're going to fight that in the European courts.)

<comment><USER6> correct, both parties have appealed the previous verdict, and there will be at least one other trial. If the court would have found the judge bias they would have had to retake the previous trial.

Edit: The Local is a good source for English news about Sweden: <http://www.thelocal.se/20280/20090625/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This goes to show that copyfight is going to win and we will be paying for their content and or consume it legally. We were doing so before p2p came along and we'll do so again.

An unpopular opinion in these parts, but just look at the last ten years of tech and copyright. Copyright has always won in the end. This industry (tech) though has thankfully forced their hand and copyright is now offering good alternatives to piracy that are legal (hulu, youtube music vids, etc).

<comment><USER8> Putting aside arguments as to the morality of copyright infringement, I'm surprised you think that the pro-copyright lobby will win. The odds are hugely stacked against them.

The content industry has a large amount of financial and legal backing, but the pirates are backed by technological progress. As bandwidth increases, it becomes faster to download material, and easier to hide your activities from prying eyes.

The content industry has enough problems with piracy now; how do you think it'll fare in the next decade when there's enough bandwidth to run anonymous P2P networks at decent speeds?

<comment><USER5> If what you're saying is true, then it will not be a victory in the sense of A defeats B, it will be one where the world is changed. If pirates win, the whole industry as it is now will disappear and a revenue model will win.

Whether this is a good or a bad thing, I'll leave up to you. But it seems likely that if the pirates win, both the industry _and_ the pirates will disappear...

<comment><USER9> >Whether this is a good or a bad thing, I'll leave up to you. But it seems likely that if the pirates win, both the industry _and_ the pirates will disappear...

Pirates will disappear as pirates, they will still be there as music sharers.

The meaning of your post is not very clear to me, i don't know if you mean commercially produced music will disappear. If that's what you think, it's an incredibly short sighted view, and is not at all likely to happen, even if music sharing is legalized across all countries in the world. Although, your writing leaves room for interpretation, you may also be speaking about a different economical model, in wich case i agree with you

<comment><USER5> _> Although, your writing leaves room for interpretation, you may also be speaking about a different economical model, in wich case i agree with you._

We are in agreement then :-) That was what I meant to say.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Im heavily divided on this. On one hand I think the court made the right decision and that a completely unbiased judge would have found the same.

But on the other hand there is that little bit of nagging doubt that possibly somebody (or rather a group) sneakily made sure he was given the case - <USER2> I am dead against!!

Mixed bag all round - TBH I think an appeal is probably the best approach over a retrial; but it has to be heard again in some form. Right now it is too much of a hanging verdict to me.

<comment><USER11> Whether an unbiased judge would make the same decision is irrelevant. A retrial in a case like this should be automatic. Judges cannot be affiliated with the Prosecution or the Defense in a trial, Period. In the US court system, this would almost certainly have resulted in a retrial, but perhaps I am being naive.

<comment><USER12> From what I'm reading, the question of whether there was an affiliation was what the panel considered, and they decided no, because whatever affiliation there was was simply to an organization that espoused intellectual property and copyright laws as they existed already.

In other words, you can't be forcibly recused from a copyright trial just because you believe copyright laws are valid in their strictest interpretation.</comment></comment></comment>


April Fools in Space: Astronauts Order Pizza - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2013/04/01/space-prank-iss-pizza/

<comment><USER2> God, that guy with glasses is so... awkward?

I'd say dumb, but I know astronauts undergo a rigorous selection process, so that cannot be it.</comment>


Latest PS3 update swaps out existing browser for WebKit - <AUTHOR> http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=462325

<comment><USER2> That's pretty interesting. WebKit-based browsers currently have about 30% of desktop browser market share, and basically all of the mobile browser share (iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Nokia, but not Windows Phone).

Combined with Firefox's 25%, that's a clear lead for open source. On the web, open source has always had the lead in infrastructure, but it's only recently started winning on the end-user side as well.

It seems like browsers on TVs will be won by OSS before it's even started. The new Panasonic and Samsung TVs are going to be using WebKit. The Google TVs are a done deal. The PS3's browser is apparently WebKit too. Much like mobile, the only holdout is Microsoft with the XBox.

I guess I'm beginning to wonder, why even bother keeping Internet Explorer closed? At this point everyone else is competing on UI while sharing core code and utterly winning while doing it. I can't even imagine how much time and money Microsoft is spending trying to keep up with the thousand eyes and hands of its competition, all just to maintain feature-parity, without even thinking of competing in UI or otherwise innovating. This is Microsoft v World, a tough fight even without all their competitors cooperating. As is, it's utterly unwinnable.

<comment><USER3> Xbox doesn't currently have a browser at all.

<comment><USER2> Ah, my mistake. I Googled for it but misread the results.

<comment><USER3> No problem, just further shows your point that Webkit is dominating most spaces.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Originally I'd said that they swapped out Netfront for WebKit, but I'd forgotten that recent Netfronts actually use WebKit for the engine – obviously they just updated to that.</comment>


Ask HN: Do growth hackers still exist? - <AUTHOR> It seems like this was a hot job opening to have for startups just a couple years ago but now I'm not sure if this position exists anymore. Was it that faddish that it disappeared or are there more official/specific names for it now? <comment><USER2> "Growth hacking" is just a trendy term for marketing or sales (depending on whether you're b2b or B2C).</comment>


Photos of a Hail Storm in Guadalajara - d--b https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/01/freak-summer-hailstorm-buries-cars-in-mexicos-guadalajara <comment> King-Aaron Here I was thinking "oh yeah, freak summer hailstorms aren't that unusual in warm areas, we get them in Australia"

But those photos are next level.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> See the collapsed roof in the middle of the picture:

[https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/f4ab1d36b0264645a09a556df2f2d...](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/f4ab1d36b0264645a09a556df2f2dbb590e54809/0_96_4000_2400/master/4000.jpg?width=620&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=822d2333445961bc9b012059a5b499c2)

</comment><comment><USER2> Is it just me or are the climate change deniers a bit less vocal recently? I recall them being much louder on their denial, but this summer they seem to have become less mainstream

<comment><USER3> Well they won (power, not the argument) and have moved on to stages 4 and 5 ([https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate- consensus-97...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate- consensus-97-per-cent/2013/sep/16/climate-change-contrarians-5-stages-denial))

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Global warming

<comment><USER5> Global warming means Earth gets warmer on average, but also has wilder local swings like this one. The dynamics become more energetic because the planet has more energy to work with.</comment></comment>


College students struggle to go without media for 24 hours - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2010/04/college-students-struggle-to-go-without-media-for-24-hours.ars <comment><USER2> Related HN discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1291520>

</comment><comment><USER3> God I wish someone would unplug me from media for a while, I've got a stack of books I never make time for :(

<comment><USER4> books are media.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> One thing about the moratorium... Most college students nowadays have grown up alongside telephones, computers and TV. They haven't learned any other ways to contact people who aren't adjacent to them in a timely fashion... I, for one, would be very hard pressed to say "hello" to many of my friends on my campus, simply because the dorms are locked, and I have no way to say "hey, let me in". I don't blame college students for being dependent on technology, as that's how we stay in contact with each other.

<comment><USER6> I think this is important. The article also mentioned that this group of people doesn't read newspapers or listen to the radio, so the loss of their usual media cuts them off even more than might otherwise be the case.

(I'd be curious as to whether they still had landlines available.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The next logical question that this kind of articles brings to mind is how do you 'treat' this -- or rather, what are the most efficient tools, tricks and behaviors to progress beyond this addiction, and control our urge to connect the hive brain and focus on productive work?

</comment><comment><USER8> Our parents lived without "media". Their grandparents, without planes; theirs, without cars; telephones; lightbulbs.

The timeline might be off, but the point is as soon as we get used to tech, living without it is a struggle. Nothing new.

</comment><comment><USER9> This piece is nearly devoid of information. What are "media", beside the examples given? Are textbooks included, for example? How many students experienced withdrawal symptoms, and how were those symptoms measured?</comment>


Keshif, a web-based tool that lets you browse and understand datasets easily - <AUTHOR> http://keshif.me/ <comment><USER2> Interesting demo but it seems very busy or visually dense. I like the examples that have less information or even the same on a bigger canvas. Looking at who funded it since it was done by Huawei they probably wanted that .

</comment><comment><USER3> Love the name; in Turkish it means "discovery"

<comment><USER4> The author of the project is Turkish (this is his PhD research project at UMD - [http://adilyalcin.me/](http://adilyalcin.me/))

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> >Keshif will present your data in its effective visual design

What criteria does it use to decide which visual design pattern to use?

</comment><comment><USER6> Yeeesh...I consider myself experienced with data but that console confused me greatly...I imagine it doesn't do well with less ideal datasets. I think Tableau is probably the more appropriate, general purpose data exploration tool...and I say that as someone who doesn't really know how to use Tableau (I'd say Tableau is the first piece of software that I've decided that I'm not patient/smart enough to learn).

<comment><USER4> Given your background in computational journalism (and teaching students to use python) I'm curious what you find difficult about Tableau?

<comment><USER6> I think it's about as difficult as it needs to be...in that it purports to be an interactive visualization builder that also serves as a self-hosted visualization player, as well as a kind of database/spreadsheet hybrid (or at least, a hookup between those kinds of things)...for non-technical users who need all of those things, all at once...Tableau is probably the best solution. But I usually only need one of those things at a time...or, that's how I approach my data problems: work with it in SQL/Excel and export into a portable format (i.e. JSOn or CSV) that a data visualization tool can make do with, whether that data viz tool is just, well, Excel, or ggplot2, or D3, if I need a web interactive. And I know how to upload/host my own web content.

So Tableau is difficult because it's an all-in-one package with a lot of moving parts...and I rarely need all of those moving parts. While I don't use Tableau myself, I know many people who do, and generally they use it because they don't know how to do web things, period...i.e. Tableau's web charts "just work", once you learn how to build them.

Of course, "just works" is a moving target in this day of responsive web and AMP and non-Web platforms (i.e. Facebook Instant Articles)...media publications that produce Tableau viz are going to have to find a workaround, or hope that Tableau continues to innovate in making their viz packages portable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> No matter what kind of local file I upload, whether JSON or CSV, it warns me that it is not supported.

<comment><USER8> You're using JSON v3.2, I'll bet. You need to upgrade to the latest version.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How does this compare to Kibana/Grafana?</comment>


Show HN: Website change detection agent to track websites and get change alert - <AUTHOR> https://www.agenty.com/products/change-detection-agent/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey Hackers,

We have been working on our new product "Change Detection Agent" from a long time, and today I am so excited to show it to you. And a new version of Agenty Chrome extension with fresh design and ability to edit agents, single page scraping in Chrome extension itself.

[https://www.agenty.com/docs/change-detection/how-to- create-a...](https://www.agenty.com/docs/change-detection/how-to-create-a- website-change-detection-agent)

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/agenty-advanced- we...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/agenty-advanced-web- scrap/gpolcofcjjiooogejfbaamdgmgfehgff)

Add your comment here with your thoughts or feedback

</comment><comment><USER2> What's the difference between yours and existing website change detection sites

<comment><USER3> Like what? I had a link to an open source library from a while back but I lost it and have been looking for something like it.</comment></comment>


How 5G will reinvent "working from home" - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/work/1707685/how-5g-will-transform-our-ability-to-work-from-home/ <comment><USER3> Anywhere I would want to work away from the office - my house, a cafe - <USER2> decent wifi. I'm not sure how 5G will make any difference there.</comment>


Running a webserver on ARM Processors?  Not yet, but there is some potential - <AUTHOR> http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2009/09/07/LinuxApacheOnARMProcessors.aspx <comment><USER2> I think this area has a lot of potential. I'm a fan of Atom-based solutions -- the author is concerned about ECC, which is less of an issue for me.

Part of the problem with Atom solutions to date was the power-hungry chipset that it used to ship with. The current generation chipsets still consume more power than the CPU, but they are a lot better (~10W against ~22W for the 945GSE vs the 945G).

Particularly for solutions that rely on redundant nodes, it's a great solution. In the right conditions you could even move to ambient-air cooling and save a huge amount of energy.

</comment><comment><USER3> The Arm-based netwinder I had some 10 years ago worked decently as a small web server. His point is really another one, though; about whether it would make sense for big server farms.

</comment><comment><USER4> _If a 4-core, cache coherent version was available with a reasonable memory controller_

Multi-core Cortex A9s are hitting silicon as we speak, so this is actually not far off at all.

</comment><comment><USER5> It is not quite the same workload or flexibility that the author was looking for, but I was running a web server on my Newton (162 MHz strongarm 110, 4M of RAM) more than a decade ago. Imaging a beowulf cluster of... oops, wrong forum for that particular meme...

<comment><USER6> I managed to get apache running on a Nokia n800 (320 MHz ARM11) just for kicks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If I were more than a mere Software Engineer I could actually go and impress people by stating that I work for ARM.</comment>


What a Programmer Does (1967) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Knuth_Don_X4100/PDF_index/k-9-pdf/k-9-u2769-1-Baker-What-Programmer-Does.pdf <comment><USER2> > (A programmer does not primarily write code; rather, he primarily writes to > another programmer about his problem solution.)

An obvious concept that can so easily be forgotten at times.

<comment><USER3> Not so obvious. I have a couple problems with this statement.

The first is that it confuses programmer (as in "coder") and developer (as in "designer"). But maybe that distinction didn't exist yet. To me, a programmer/coder is actually a translator - they translate the solution expressed in the specification of a program into a computer language (which is typically itself translated to machine code by a compiler). In reality, gaps in the specification or impedance mismatches between the specification language and the computer language can "force" a programmer to become a designer. In a way, one can still see this as a translator having to translate an idiomatic expression.

The second problem with this statement is the same as with "readability": it is very subjective. That's why another claim in this text, that incomprehensible code written by bad programmers dies early, has been proven false in practice. Readability and viability are in practice separate concerns. For instance, highly optimized code is often less comprehensible than naive code yet it is more viable because the extra efficiency is required. Furthermore, human to human communication using a computer language is more or less efficient depending on the distance between then computer language and natural language; as an extreme example, it would be terrible to communicate using assembly language. So the H2H communication problem is better solved with documentation. That is, comments if we speak strictly about computer code.

Now the question is: if comments solves the human to human communication problem, why would one has to write more comprehensible/readable code? To me the answer is: you don't write comprehensible code in order to better communicate with your fellow programmers, you write comprehensible code because you write the simplest possible code. It is comprehensible because it is simple, not because of the additional requirement that it has to be understood by someone else.

<comment><USER4> Is there really 2 roles there? Who wants to design but not code or code but not design? I can't really imagine how you could even do either well without doing the other.

<comment><USER5> See proper engineering and the distinction between an engineer, a technician, and an assembler. There is overlap, of course, but designing and producing the product is a collaboration between all three. The engineer is primarily responsible for designing the system, the technician for helping the engineer translate the design into a realized system, and the assembler for actually realizing the system.

<comment><USER6> Well, but it's a bit weird with software. The "realized system" typically comes out of a compiler. When designing the system, the computer can often take your design and turn it into a realized thing.

In fact, we even have software called an assembler :)

Of course, it all depends on what level you're doing design at, and what level your language(s) work at. But the point is that those 3 roles aren't necessarily are fulfilled by humans when working with software.

<comment><USER5> I didn't say they necessarily were all fulfilled by humans. My point is that they are not necessarily all fulfilled by one human. Apropos of the comment I made in response to the "architecture astronauts", the complexity of most software projects is such that the design, from a technical standpoint, is a pretty small portion of the total effort required. In that case it makes sense for the technician to be the designer as well, which is something that often happens in the trades on simple jobs.

That does not mean that there can't or shouldn't be a distinction between the engineer and the technician on sufficiently complex projects. That is, they don't need to be filled by people who could perform either role, as the original comment I was replying to implied. That point was either miscommunicated in my original post or rubbed some people the wrong way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Anybody know whose handwritten note appears at the top? The URL includes "Knuth" and "Baker" and the initials at the top look like "CLB".

(Also, we changed the URL from [http://videlalvaro.github.io/2014/09/a-programmers- role.html](http://videlalvaro.github.io/2014/09/a-programmers-role.html) to the original source, in keeping with the HN guidelines, which call for original sources. In this case the submitted article does add glosses, but not enough to be more substantive than the original. Historical material is particularly welcome on HN, especially when it hasn't appeared before, and this piece doesn't seem to have.)

<comment><USER8> Chuck Baker [0], according to the index [1], which also has a link to the cover letter [2] from when he sent this and some other papers to Knuth.

[0] [http://history.computer.org/pioneers/baker.html](http://history.computer.org/pioneers/baker.html)

[1] [http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Knuth_Don_...](http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Knuth_Don_X4100/PDF_index/KnuthDigitalArchive- Index.html#u2769-1)

[2] [http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Knuth_Don_...](http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Knuth_Don_X4100/PDF_index/k-9-pdf/k-9-u2769-1-Baker- letter.pdf)

<comment><USER7> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Oh, I had to google what dybbuk is. I first thought it's debug, but it didn't make sense.

"In Jewish mythology, a dybbuk (Yiddish: דיבוק, from the Hebrew verb דָּבַק dāḇaq meaning "adhere" or "cling") is a malicious possessing spirit believed to be the dislocated soul of a dead person."

</comment><comment><USER9> It seems HN has a vintage computing day. Two articles are besides each other on the front page :)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12568829](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12568829)

</comment><comment><USER10> I am kind of dissapointed that posts about "good practices" dumbly enumerating those like SRP and DRY without adding any value get here a lot of upvotes. Where this paper stating why we should use best practices has like 10 points. You can also infer from it why you somethimes should not use "good practices".

</comment><comment><USER11> That aerospace corporation job advertised there sounds might fine. Even if they are a little sexist!

<comment><USER12> Still very much a going concern [1] (and a fair few open positions listed on their website...). They're an interesting organization -- basically, set up to provide long-term oversight over the ballistic missile program.

[1] - [http://www.aerospace.org/](http://www.aerospace.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The job ad on the bottom mentions the following:

> These are excellent opportunities for men who have two to six years > experience with [some computer]. We prefer college graduates but will > carefully consider all applicants.

Uh, graduates with work experience? Am I missing something or is that a contradiction?

<comment><USER14> No, they mean that all applicants must have years of work experience. Some applicants might be considered if they never got a college degree, but they prefer applicants who got a college degree before they got their six years of job experience.

<comment><USER13> Ah that makes sense. Graduates sounds to me like people who _just_ graduated, but of course that's not what it technically means.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I like the font in the PDF

<comment><USER16> looks like Futura.

great look

It's the font on the Supreme logo (𝙎𝙪𝙥𝙧𝙚𝙢𝙚)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't agree!

I know many programmers, that just write the code.

For example: what problem is solved by the developer when he/she coding the login page?

It just like any other profession, only a few people in the group are able to solve problems

<comment><USER9> Have you even read the article?

TLDR; You are not only writing instructions for the compiler but for your future self and your fellow programmers. How can you disagree with that?

<comment><USER17> yes, I have red and I don't agree. I do not like such a generalization.

a summary of the entire article is:

"a programer does not primarily write code; rather, he primarily writes to another programer about his problem solution."

I agree with one: there are good programers and there are bad programers. I don't agree, that bad programers die young ;) Today there are more bad than good programmers.

<comment><USER9> Summary is: communication is more important than writing syntactically correct programs.

No offense, but you have some trouble understanding the language. If you re- read it, it say that young programmer'S code die young, not the programmers themselves :)

<comment><USER17> no offence taken.

I agree with this: "communication is more important than writing syntactically correct programs" but article is titled: "what a programmer does" not "what is the most important in a programer job"

<comment><USER9> To me, that's equivalent :)*

* that's highly subjective</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Who is your favourite a**hole and why? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Survey-Questions/Who-is-your-favourite-asshole-and-why

<comment><USER2> Well, this is Ryan Air, the airline whose core concept is abusing both its customers and its employees.

Edit: oh, and they systematically under-reported take-off weights in Germany (and probably elsewhere), paying less fees than they should have, i.e. fraud.

</comment><comment> saiko-chriskun Linus of course, hahahah.</comment>


Privacy: The Latest Tool Being Used For Censorship - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110310/02044513424/privacy-latest-tool-being-used-censorship.shtml <comment><USER2> Google corporate lawyer opposes European's idea of rights. Film at 11.

<comment><AUTHOR> I suppose it's not unexpected but it shouldn't be dismissed, this whole 'right to be forgotten' concept makes very little sense yet this argument does make a lot of sense.

<comment><USER2> Agreed that the argument shouldn't be dismissed just because of who's advocating. There was a great discussion about this at the Twitter privacy chat a few years ago, and quite a few others so things the same way.

That said the "right to be forgotten" argument makes sense to a lot of people in Europe. Characterizing this as wrong or misguided which doesn't come across as very respectful. During the privacy chat, I wound up saying something like "Wait a second, doesn't Spain's law count?" Most Americans on the chat basically said no, it shouldn't count, because that's not how we look at the world. Google comes across as similarly disdainful of other cultures.</comment></comment></comment>


My Cognitive Bias – A cognitive bias explained every time you open a new tab - <AUTHOR> https://mycognitivebias.com/ <comment><USER2> First off, it's a neat idea and it extrapolates well to other domains. I'd love to have "random x definition" when I open a new tab--would ensure I at least get some learning done while procrastinating on the web.

On a less positive note, and tangentially related:

I'm kind of sick of the whole "bias" obsession. It's everyone's go-to counterargument these days, and it's a shallow, poorly developed one. It's like everyone's lost critical reasoning skills, which require delicate attention to the particular strategies and propositions deployed in a given argument, and found these set of stock biases to use instead. In fact it's _impossible_ to purge an argument or line of thinking of _all_ so-called biases (though these don't actually exist in arguments, they are deduced from arguments)--if it were, it wouldn't be an argument or thought.

The goal of catching our own mistakes is an admirable one, and I'm not advocating people stop doing that--I just think it too frequently bleeds into trying to find so-called biases in _arguments_ (whether written or verbal). In fact, this is more or less a fool's errand. What people are _actually_ trying to point out in arguments are _logical fallacies_ which are traits of the argument. _Biases_ contrarily occur at the individual level and are _operational_ flaws, they only occur _during_ the thought process, and it's only meaningful to talk about them in these terms (that is, as they manifest in the ongoing practices of a person)--they are not properties of a line of thought's encoding (the written or spoken argument). Fallacies or viewpoints expressed in an argument may _hint_ at the biases of the author, but it's a non-sequitur to start talking about them (when critiquing an argument), as the only way one could actually confirm this is by observing the author at work in daily life. To say, such an such an author is biased, is useless. It doesn't contribute meaningfully to a critique of the argument, and it would need to be verified through observation of the author.

 _Demonstrating_ to someone that they have developed/fall prey to particular bias frequently and working to rectify that _one-on-one_ is a totally different story, or trying to catch biases operating in yourself is a totally different story.

Edit: I suppose you could say I'm biased against biases. A joke that illustrates my point.

<comment><USER3> I think one of the most interesting things that have come from my study of the decision making literature is that there is a _second_ field that Kahneman respects, that stands opposed to his heuristics and biases (H&B) tradition. The field is called Naturalistic Decision Making (NDM), and it's mostly built around the study of intuition and expertise.

The argument that the H&B camp makes is that heuristics and biases get in the way of proper judgments and decisions because they are shortcuts that our brain makes to conserve resources. The argument that NDM makes is that heuristics are _how our brain works_ , and we should spend more time utilising how it naturally works to make better decisions, instead of fighting it and trying to build intuitions for probability (which are unnatural, and not what our brains are built for).

The disagreement led both of Kahneman (H&B) and Klein (NDM) to write a joint paper: [https://www.fs.fed.us/rmrs/sites/default/files/Kahneman2009_...](https://www.fs.fed.us/rmrs/sites/default/files/Kahneman2009_ConditionsforIntuitiveExpertise_AFailureToDisagree.pdf) the key takeaway of which is that the H&B approach is best suited for domains where expert performance is bad, and the NDM approach is better suited for domains where expert performance is reliable. The paper describes the conditions of the two domains.

I've written a longer post summarising the findings from NDM at [https://commoncog.com/blog/putting-mental-models-to- practice...](https://commoncog.com/blog/putting-mental-models-to-practice/), which exists as part of a longer series on putting mental models to practice. (Earlier parts cover the foundation of the judgment & decision making field, which is mostly built around the H&B tradition at the moment).

<comment><USER4> You did a solid job outlining the 2 oppposing sides between heuristics and biases (H&B) and Recognition-primed decision making (RPD) in the blog article you authored and linked to.

I'd like to invert your key takeaway by looking at it a bit differently by framing it in terms of the environment being observed rather than in terms of the expert's performance.

I'm reminded of this Murray Gell-Mann quote: _"Imagine how hard physics would be if electrons could think "_ which I came across while reading an Economics piece. The writer used the quote to illustrate how much harder Economics as a field is, relative to a field like Physics. I agree with that characterization because, in general, electrons and by extension inanimate objects are not susceptible to behavior change from external stimuli, but humans are. Which is why expertise can be considered reliable when the environment consists of inanimate entities (e.g. astronomers, accountants) or animate but motiveless entities (e.g. livestock judges, grain inspectors).

How reliable an expert performs in an environment largely depends on the level of autonomy enjoyed by the entities that constitute the environment under observation. An expert's ability to reliably understand an environment correlates inversely with the number of entities that enjoy autonomy in that environment, because it is infeasible to model a real-world environment in your head. What experts do is to mentally model a tiny slice of reality from which to draw inferences from.

Humans are entities that can think and act independently before, during and after an expert has been asked to intervene, which is why Doctors, Nurses and Auditors appear in both columns of reliable and unreliable performance for experts.

(PS: I encountered 2 occurrences of the typo: "Marlie Chunger")

EDIT: reworded my comment significantly to make my point more clear.

<comment><USER3> I'm assuming that you didn't read the section of the essay where I summarise Shanteau, Kahneman and Klein's findings? Complexity of systems is one aspect, certainly, but valid and regular causal inferences are by far the dominating factor. Doctors, nurses, and auditors appear on both sides because they belong to fractionated fields of expertise. I have included a definition of 'fractionated' (their terminology, not mine) in the essay.

(Also, Marlie Chunger is a fictitious character invented to illustrate some of the ideas in the series.)

<comment><USER4> > _I'm assuming that you didn't read the section of the essay where I > summarise Shanteau, Kahneman and Klein's findings?_

I did read your summary in the section titled _A Personal Take_ , unless there is another summary? Link?

(I'm wondering if your blogging tool allows a way to jump directly to sub- sections using anchor-links. This would be a time-saver for long-form essays.)

<comment><USER3> Ahh, my apologies then. Yes, that's the summary. You're not the first person to point this out to me, but it turned out that the other reader stopped at 'A Personal Take' — which was what I thought happened here!

(I was going to look at the essay again and ask myself if I made a mistake, since everyone seems to stop at that heading. It also meant my structure was badly chosen. And then I saw your reply!)

Then, to address your idea more directly: I can see where you are coming from, but I think Klein and Kahneman's definition of 'has reliable causal cues' + 'provides opportunities to learn those cues' are better filters. Klein studies some incredibly high performing individuals — experts who are able to perform well even in very complex environments. So it's not always true that complexity of environment determines existence of expertise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I see a lot of plugins to customize the new tab page, but at least the way I use the browser, I usually never spend more than a second on that page.

Do people actually look at what's on the new tab page? I literally hit Ctl-T and then start typing a URL or hit a bookmark in the bookmark bar. I don't even know what's on the blank tab.

<comment><USER6> My assumption is that people will use this one for a bit and then install something else. There are just about 200 of them so it shouldn't be long until one sees all of them. However, if one learns about 2 or 3 biases they were not aware of, I'll be happy. The primary goal behind this was to work with my wife on it and we had a great time. The reaction we had from everyone was just amazing and we'll look into building more fun things like this.

<comment><USER5> I was in no way denegrating your work. Apologies if sounded that way.

I was just trying to see how many people actually look at that page.

<comment><USER6> No worries. I didn't think you were denigrating our work. If it helps at all, we've had 141k page views since Monday. Granted, that's just how many tabs all the users opened so I can't really tell how many people actually read the definitions. I'll have to see if there's a way track the link clicks on the Source links and measure that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seems like the authors of this extension have a bias towards chrome.

<comment><USER8> Yeah. But it does have ~60% share.[0]

        Chrome   61.05%
        Safari   12.99%
        IE       10.92%
        Firefox  7.02%
        Other    8.03%

0) [https://malcolm.cloudflare.com/](https://malcolm.cloudflare.com/)

<comment><USER9> Chrome and Firefox have the same extension format, it's probably only 10 minutes to get it on Firefox too!

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add- ons/Web...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add- ons/WebExtensions/Porting_a_Google_Chrome_extension)

<comment><USER10> Not only that, but Firefox has amazing tooling such as `web-ext` cli, where you can just execute `web-ext sign` and it'll generate the `.xpi` format, run it through automated test, and give you signed versions you can distribute from wherever you want. They even have a polyfill to make the Promise based API that firefox uses compatible to Callback style APIS in Chrome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Author uses I/we but I couldn't find a name anywhere on the page.

<comment><USER6> Hey, That's intentional. My wife and I worked on this together over a couple of weekends hence the use of I/we. We built this so that we can work on a little project together and not for recognition. We're pretty private and we'd be quite happy if no one knew our names but I'm sure that with a few google searches, you'd be able to find out who we are. Since we don't collect any data apart from page views/loads, we think that's fair but I'd love to hear your thoughts if you disagree. Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is it possible to see a listing of all the biases somewhere?

Ah found it, once you install the extension it has this link at the bottom: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases)

<comment><USER13> Is this the list used? The article claims that his "wife diligently did all the research and compiled the list of cognitive biases".

<comment><USER6> Hey, Yes, that's the list we used and most definitions are from wikipedia. Some wikipedia entrances weren't too clear so she looked for other reputable sources instead. Granted, this isn't ground breaking research, but rather curation. I'd say her effort still counts. Also, we are very open about not being experts, but just very interested in the subject. I think it would be unfair if we'd start to push uninformed opinions. I'd love to hear your thoughts if you disagree.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If one's aware of all the cognitive biases, does it really make his/her life better?

<comment><USER15> You can't expect a good answer: anyone who has invested their time into learning them all is surely biased :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> A little while ago, I set up a Repetitions (repetitionsapp.com) deck with a list of cognitive biases pulled from Wikipedia.

It's not foolproof, but being aware of cognitive bias means you can do more to minimize bias in your every day life.

<comment><USER17> > repetitionsapp.com

Anki seems to be the go-to spaced repetition program here. Have you tried it? What attracted you to repetitionsapp?

(I don't use either, but I'm looking for a good one...)

<comment><USER18> I'm interested in hearing about this too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It'd be cool if the extension could pick a bias, based on a URL being browsed, and then display as a pop-up or whatever.

</comment><comment><USER19> Quick suggestion: maybe you could add one example in your website or even a screenshot, to show what it looks like

<comment><USER6> Thanks. That's a good point. I'll have to add something

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> cognitive bias #6385: install random browser extensions* from sites, instead of expecting the site to actually show the content

* or browser tool bar. ha! you're all those suckers from the 90s, today.</comment>


I'm a cuddly atheist. I don't need to tell my mum her faith is stupid. - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/jim-alkhalili-im-a-cuddly-atheist-i-dont-need-to-tell-my-mum-her-faith-is-stupid-8430524.html <comment><USER2> > "I have no evidence to prove there is no God. The burden of proof is on > them, yes, but I don't force it upon them to prove it."

Good quote. I feel like some don't understand this about atheism. I'd say the majority (there's always outliers...) of atheists aren't "out to get" religious people or rub it in their face. Just waiting for some solid proof!</comment>


"Editing" trees in Clojure with clojure.zip - <AUTHOR> http://www.exampler.com/blog/2010/09/01/editing-trees-in-clojure-with-clojurezip/ <comment><USER2> this is a pretty hand wavy introduction to zippers.

A Zipper is many cool things, but most importantly it can be thought of as a really nice way of supporting arbitrary traversals of tree-like data structures. On the theory side there are cool papers such as www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~ctm/diff.pdf which talk about some of the interesting relationships between zippers and certain types of recursive data structures.

Also, earlier this summer someone released a really wonderful generic zipper library for haskell [https://www.cs.indiana.edu/~adamsmd/papers/scrap_your_zipper...](https://www.cs.indiana.edu/~adamsmd/papers/scrap_your_zippers/) that is quite nice.

I've actually spent a few weeks this summer thinking very hard about how to add some cool functionality to the zipper abstraction layered on top of the scrap your zipper library.

Either way, if you're doing anything algorithmic on a tree that is more complicated than a left or right fold, if you're not using a zipper, you're probably making things overly difficult for you self. Save a programmer (week), use a zipper! :)

<comment><USER3> I was hoping to find some resources on the "zipper" - The article that you reference in your comment has cited this one - [http://www.st.cs.uni- saarland.de/edu/seminare/2005/advanced-...](http://www.st.cs.uni- saarland.de/edu/seminare/2005/advanced-fp/docs/huet-zipper.pdf) [PDF Link] which seems pretty relevant too.

Thanks for the pointer</comment></comment>


Selling a Story - The Cocktail Creationist  - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/bizfinance/biz/features/10816/

<comment><USER2> "Spirits is an image-driven category," says Branca. "We're acutely aware of what we're drinking in the presence of others. That's why it's so important to have strong on-premise promotions with influential consumers."

"He says brand creation is simple: product, package, name, marketing plan."

"And now the most important piece of the story—the twist that brings it all together: Grey Goose costs way more than other vodkas. Waaaaaaay more. So it must be the best."

</comment><comment><USER3> Article is from 2005, and while I don't claim to be an expert, I've never heard of their new tequila Corazón. Maybe not as simple as they say.</comment>


2025 Predictions by an Accenture Managing Director - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jhammant/my-2025-predictions-dcf079c01270 <comment><USER2> Interesting to see this: "We need to start preparing our children for a world where the only certainty in their working life will be change. It also gives some great opportunities to shape your life they way you want it."

Change and Stability are at odds with each other. I wonder about the rate of change and the sustainability of societal norms...example often the first question people ask to assess value today is "Where do you work?"

If there's going to be a different answer every time due to rapid job changes, I wonder if much like how today's rampant spam phone calls have made telephones nearly useless, will be some other first question we will ask as a societal norm, something like "so what's your bitcoin address?"

Another great question in your article: "We'll need to understand what we do with the large swaths of newly unemployed people who cannot find work (and their future chances of work are decreasing). How do we manage this as a society?"

I truly wonder about societal cohesive...for example...if I can have a driver- less car drive me to Montreal for work...across the US border seamlessly then what cohesion is there for paying taxes to fix roads the roads in my home city of Boston?

Last observation from your article, "It's going to be interesting and we're going to need 10,000s of new people to act as CEO's for their own mini- businesses (either individually owned or within Portfolio organizations)."

10 thousand CEOs each earning say 30k a year on short term CEO assignments (metered out by algorithms) again is going to be interesting on the change versus stability front.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great feedback - appreciate it.

I think the constant job changing is going to be really interesting one - because 1) it's already happening 2) it makes the tasks more ideally suited for eventual replacement by machines. There's a lot of people out there in regular white-collar jobs who don't want to change - it will take a lot of work to make them change their mind on that (and some simply won't).

Unless we start to manage some of these future risks I think we're going to see a number of problems. Interestingly I think the easy answer (and the one we're already seeing) will be to blame the traditional ones (immigration, other people not like us). We're already starting to see this in multiple geographies.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm a Managing Director in Accenture - currently running DevOps for UK & Ireland. I get a pretty unique view of projects/plans from people/companies.

I've documented roughly where I see things going over the next 5-10 years based on a number of things I'm seeing at the moment. Feel free to ask questions

<comment><AUTHOR> At a high level they are: 1) The nature and shape of work will change dramatically 2) AI will start to make a real impact to the world in both positive and negative ways 3) Algorithmic choice will become an important thing 4) Traditional large organisations will die and the rise of the "Portfolio" company 5) Personalised health 6) 5G, LEO Satellites and the changing location of computing 7) Climate Change and why paper straws don't matter 8) Governments, Globalisation, Nationalism, the shrinking middle, basic income and the rise of disruption</comment></comment>


How to Learn (But Not Master) Any Language (not programming) in 1 Hour - <AUTHOR> http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/11/07/how-to-learn-but-not-master-any-language-in-1-hour-plus-a-favor/ <comment><USER2> OK, I actually am a big fan of Ferriss, but with this one he's topped the silliness of even his "Gain 30 lbs. of muscle in a month" post.

In a nutshell, the title of this post should be "How to evaluate how difficult learning a given language will be for you in 1 Hour."</comment>


Tinder privacy issues - <AUTHOR> http://www.shakedos.com/2013/Nov/23/tinder-privacy-issues.html

<comment><USER2> Having people name, approximate location and a couple of likes you share it is usually enough to yield a small list of candidates. With the photos is easy to find the actual person.

And that is not something Tinder can fix, since that is a product vulnerability.

</comment><comment><USER3> Tinder could just remove the facebook profile ID from the fields they return for each user, couldn't they? This might be a simple fix.

<comment><USER4> Tech-wise, this would imply using a secondary ID to uniquely identify their users. A simple fix, yes, just that it's often a better way to rely on a third-party's ID when you use said third-party's auth system.

<comment><USER3> Mmm. Good point -- maintaining a separate mapping is harder to implement and can lead to preformance issues. I think I see why they did it the way they did now.

<comment><USER4> Not really harder or bad performance-wise, like esrauch said you can just hash it or anything to get a custom unique value. It's just that to most devs, the first idea will be "I need a unique ID and FB already gives me one, why roll out something else?".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Google's search by image pretty much removes all privacy if you've publicly used a picture elsewhere on the web.</comment>


Microsoft burning the Open Source bridge - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.co.uk/blogs/the-open-source-revolution-10014902/microsoft-burning-the-open-source-bridge-10021746/

<comment><USER2> There is a big difference between open source and the GPL. Open source is loosely defined as allowing access to the source. GPL is a license designed to force openness in a viral fashion. I'm not opposed to the GPL philosophy, but anyone who is surprised that someone like Microsoft would want to avoid GPL'd software on their platform is kidding themselves. This is especially true with regard to the GPL v3. The goal of the GPL is to aggressively expand the protection of "free" software. We're talking the RMS definition of free, which is threatening to lots of companies; not just Microsoft.

<comment><USER3> > anyone who is surprised that someone like Microsoft would want to avoid > GPL'd software on their platform is kidding themselves

It probably isn't even that they particularly care about avoiding the GPL, so much as that GPLv3 intentionally forbids distribution for use in locked-down devices (which, contrary to all reason, apparently is _not_ considered to count as discriminating against a field of endeavor...).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you license your code under GPL, you're simply saying that you don't want to be a product in this particular "app store" business model. GPLv3 in particular seems to be hostile to this type of thing. If you're the author of the code there's nothing wrong with that.

But people are getting upset with Microsoft basically for respecting the intent of the license agreement.

Obviously MS doesn't want to fall into the trap of _distributing_ GPL code and thus being _infected_ at some level of their codebase.

<comment><USER5> > If you license your code under GPL, you're simply saying that you don't want > to be a product in this particular "app store" business model. GPLv3 in > particular seems to be hostile to this type of thing.

Indeed. And even more so, GPLv3 is hostile to that kind of schemes _on purpose_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > _"Microsoft has a deep history of trying to undermine open source software, > and companies that use open source software"_

Some examples would make for a better argument.

> _"I would only have to assume that Microsoft extends these same feelings to > their Windows operating systems on PC hardware as well."_

Why would the author have to assume that?

<comment><USER7> _Some examples would make for a better argument._

Funding an $86M proxy war through SCO is the only example one needs, really.

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

<comment><USER6> Vinod Valloppillil was not exactly a senior manager at Microsoft (and has been gone for over a decade as best I can tell) so it's hard to tie him to the alleged funding of SCO's lawsuit...which was debunked in 2006.

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/10/11/sco_microsoft_black_...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/10/11/sco_microsoft_black_helicopters/)

<comment><USER7> Thank you for that link, I hadn't seen that. It sounds kind of funny to read it, though. Essentially, they admit to wanting to support the suit, and they admit to not wanting to appear to be attacking the defendants, and the admit to large sums of money changing hands to "ensure IT interoperability for UNIX migration technology".

Sounds legit. :-)

<comment><USER6> If one follows the history of the relationship between Microsoft and SCO in all it's previous incarnations it's a tangle of licensing agreements going all the way back to DR-DOS. On the Unix side, it involves ATT providing Microsoft with a license which was then provided to SCO and then licensed back after their improvements - and one should not forget that the one-time powerhouse that was Novell was wrapped up in the mess along with IBM.

To characterize all of that as Microsoft trying to kill off Linux might be deemed a bit of oversimplification.

<comment><USER7> Of course, that's why I lauged: it's so perfectly banal with respect to their history. The key concept behind plausible deniability is plausibility, after all.

So the most one can say is that this tells us nothing.

Well, no, actually there is enough in that article to demonstrate that plausible deniability is exactly what they needed to bridge their admitted desire to help with their admitted reluctance to be perceived as helping.

But no more than that.

<comment><USER6> People point to Microsoft's $16 million license fee as evidence that they were trying to kill open source software but ignore the $9 million paid to SCO for a similar license by Sun. Why? Because saying "Sun tried to kill open source software," just makes a person look ignorant.

<comment><USER7> See, you are no stranger to the concept of plausible deniability: using the third person plural "people point to" (and the hypothetical about Sun) allows you to plausibly deny the ad hominem. It's beautiful how that works, isn't it. Well played, sir.

For the record, I agree there is an absence of evidence (in light of your link). I won't take this as evidence of absence, however.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Actually, the most interesting part of this post is in the first comment, that leads to this post: [http://www.arktronic.com/cms/blog- entries/2011-02-17/relax-m...](http://www.arktronic.com/cms/blog- entries/2011-02-17/relax-microsoft-has-not-banned-open-source-from- marketplace)

TL;DR: Microsoft excludes only GPLv3 software because it forces them to open all their source code in Windows Phones. All other Open Source licenses are still valid.

<comment><USER3> > TL;DR: Microsoft excludes only GPLv3 software because it forces them to open > all their source code in Windows Phones.

Um, _no_. That is entirely incorrect and is not at all what your link says.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The FreeBSD and CC licenses are still very well available. Personally, for most things, I would open source via the FreeBSD license, anyway. The GPL may be the most well known, but there are plenty others.</comment>