How the Arab World Came Apart - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/08/11/magazine/isis-middle-east-arab-spring-fractured-lands.html <comment><USER2> How did it come apart? Almost exactly like Dick Cheney thought it would 20 years before cheering for the invasion. From an episode of Meet The Press in 2014[1]:

 _CHUCK TODD:

All right, let me ask you a couple of quick questions. I want to play for you an interesting clip of you 20 years ago about Iraq and Saddam Hussein. Take a look.

DICK CHENEY (ON TAPE):

That's a very volatile part of the world. And if you take down the central government in Iraq you can easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off. Part of it the Syrians would like to have to the west, part of Eastern Iraq the Iranians would like to claim, fought over for eight years. In the north you've got the Kurds. And the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey. It's a quagmire if you go that far._

[1] [http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meet-press- transcript-...](http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meet-press-transcript- december-14-2014-n268181)

<comment><USER3> Eerie he's so prescient there. If only youtube was a thing then we could have all been sending this around.

To give backers of the war the benefit of the doubt, a whole lot of shit changed after that video. Hindsight is 20/20 and we can't back test strategies like the stock market. It would be nice if we could.

<comment><USER2> Hoping this is phrased well by me, but I'm fairly certain some brief dives into historical tales of power dynamics will show that deposing an entrenched "Strong Man" leader results in a power vacuum, which can be filled by another of the same tactic, or, in the case of the region in discussion, a quagmire of sorts. I know an Army Captain (since Middle School), Psy Ops I'm pretty sure, and his experience on the ground in Iraq was that the local populations had no conception of how to function without the Strong Man. Essentially, for most all of their lives, the process was "Saddam says this, we do this," so concepts of self-governance were extremely foreign and somewhat troubling. Anecdote for sure, just hope it fits with our subject!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The NYTimes itself is also a considerable part of the reason, considering Judith Miller, Friedman, Krauthammer and many others propagandized hard for invading Iraq.

<comment><USER5> The invasion of Iraq was stupid. It was likely illegal, based on false pretenses, and well....shouldn't have happened. The invasions initial execution was beautiful (first few days). The US Military performed splendidly. The follow through (driven by political leaders) was idiotic. Stupid decisions like not listening to his generals (Bush), disbanding the Iraqi security forces (Paul Bremer), and the odd focus on turning on the oil taps as soon as possible after the invasion doomed any hope of short term success (yeah, sure, lets pay for the invasion with oil...that'll work, right). Many generals argued for an occupation force in the millions to keep the peace. If the occupation were modeled after the plan for Germany in WW2 where the allies planned for a prolonged insurgency (that never really appeared, see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werwolf](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werwolf)), we should have had more troops than were available in the entire US Military combined. Likely given a real, concerted effort (Marshall Plan-like) to re- build Iraq after we'd destroyed it, we might have had a chance. Oil never lasts, it's not sustainable, and in every country where natural resource mining is dominant, we see a rise of more despotism. We never understood the cultures of Iraq, nor will most people. To defeat an enemy you have to understand them (see Sun Tzu). NYT isn't the only problem. Our pride was the problem. We thought we could fix everything, do it better. The US was led by a person (Bush) who spouted all kinds of wonderful nationalistic straight talk (sounds like somebody that's running for president this year). Bush had no real plans and he unfortunately didn't listen to his experienced military leaders. He, as the commander in chief, is where the buck should stop for Iraq...and the long slow disaster that followed. Sure, we're all to blame for going along, but short of impeachment from our congress there is nothing the American people could have done to stop it.

<comment><USER6> > (sounds like somebody that's running for president this year)

Someone else running for president this year has pledged that the first act of her address would be removing Assad.

Which brings us back at the beginning of stupid actions.

<comment><USER7> Do you have a source? I just searched and see no such pledge. All I'm finding are vague statements from her allies and advisors that they think she'll prioritize Syria.

<comment><USER8> State Department policy on Syria is regime change going back to at least 2011. The method/means is still fluid.

See the article and State Department testimony below, emphasis mine.

NYT, from 2013:

"Last summer, as the fighting in Syria raged and questions about the United States' inaction grew, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton conferred privately with David H. Petraeus, the director of the C.I.A. The two officials were joining forces on a plan to arm the Syrian resistance.

The idea was to vet the rebel groups and train fighters, who would be supplied with weapons. The plan had risks, but it also offered the potential reward of creating Syrian allies with whom the United States could work, both during the conflict and ___after President Bashar al-Assad's eventual removal___.

Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Petraeus presented the proposal to the White House, according to administration officials. But with the White House worried about the risks, and with President Obama in the midst of a re-election bid, they were rebuffed."

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/us/politics/in-behind- scen...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/us/politics/in-behind-scene-blows- and-triumphs-sense-of-clinton-future.html)

From 2011, testimony by Jeffrey Feltman, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, State Department:

"But we take the advent of the [Syrian National Council] very seriously, and we support the broader opposition's efforts to focus on the critical task of expanding and consolidating its base of support within Syria by articulating a clear and common vision and ___developing a concrete and credible post-Assad transition plan.___"

[http://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Jeffrey_Feltman_...](http://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Jeffrey_Feltman_Revised.pdf)

<comment><USER9> > back to at least 2011.

At least to 2006, ten years ago, thanks to the US Embassy cable published by Wikileaks:

[https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/06DAMASCUS5399_a.html](https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/06DAMASCUS5399_a.html)

Some coverage:

[http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/10/wikileaks- cabl...](http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/10/wikileaks-cables-shed- light-on-us-foreign-policy-failures.html)

"The cables also show that U.S. support for efforts to overthrow the Syrian government beginning in 2011 _were not a response to the Assad government's repression of protests but rather a continuation of a years-long strategy by more directly violent means._ "

Without that cable, this would be impossible to prove. Helps understanding why Manning who leaked that was 9 months in solitary confinement, stripped naked:

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/mar/11/stripped- naked...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/mar/11/stripped-naked- bradley-manning-prison)

<comment><USER10> Or you could look at the sanctions the US has had in place against Syria for years. That the US doesn't like Syria is well known.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Long piece , but it fails in that it does not give a coherent message. Pieces of stories here and there are not history. First of all , lets stop calling it Arab Spring. If anything it's the arab Autumn of civil wars, where all arabs are united only in their resentment of the west. Secondly, let's talk about people, their souls, aspirations, and culture instead of political history. Given that these states were built as western protectorates, their history should not be a good guide for their future. Clearly the approach to colonialism/interventionism that the US takes is a failure, compared to the colonialism of the British for example (e.g. Jordan). The arab world has always been far too divided to able to draw clear borders around their states. Their only hope for peace is long-term economic prosperity and transition to secularism. Until then, tyranny worked.

This piece may be fun to get through your flight, but it should offer a holistic perspective.

<comment><USER12> > "where all arabs are united only in their resentment of the west"

Is that how you view the political movements happening in the Arabic-speaking majority world - Sorry for the pedantry - from 2011 onward that we're consumed by resentment toward the West?

It's gotta be about you, right?

> "The arab world has always been far too divided to able to draw clear > borders around their states"

I had no idea that these political movements and the resulting turmoil were about border disputes between states, and not primarily domestic political issues. The more you know ...

> "Until then, tyranny worked."

Could this explain your theory the perceived resentment in the Arabic speaking world towards the West?

At least now, it would be warranted and well earned since you wish on other people harm, maybe you should get paid for this in kind.

The US is likely to be able to dodge the Trump bullet and skirt falling into a populist authoritarian rule coming November but this doesn't preclude this from happening in the future.

Maybe you should get some taste for how tyranny can turn your life upside down and experience it firsthand before you could wish it onto others.

Anyhow, I still don't wish harm on innocent people but if they're full of hate toward others to the point of blinding them to fall into a trap this big and this wide, I wouldn't help them to avert it or save them.

<comment><USER11> I think you know what i mean, but you like to twist my words.

I m not american. This is a cynical view from Europe. Believe it or not it's closer to the truth rather than believing that having elections suddenly would fix all the problems in countries like egypt, libya, syria.

<comment><USER12> If you think that this was an unfair characterization of your comment, can you please refute the points that I raised in my counterargument?

Because just taking your word for it won't cut it, sorry.

> "elections suddenly would fix all the problems in countries like egypt, > libya, syria"

I'd take ballot-box-only democracy and majoritarianism over tyrannical strongman rule or military dictatorships anytime of the day but this is just me, a Middle Eastern native who really cares for the future, prosperity and the welfare of people living there.

I think that I also have the right to express and strive to achieve these political goals without interference or the "guardianship" of outside players. Since I can't tell you how you should run your countries, I expect this to be reciprocated too when it comes to running ours, and I think that this is a small thing to ask for.

It's very intriguing that for "Arab Spring" skeptics to only focus on failures like Libya and not success stories like in Tunisia. It just detracts from their credibility and makes their viewpoints look very partisan.

It is not the fault of the countries in the Eastern part of the Arabic speaking world that they're surrounded by reactionary forces in the region like the oil sheikhdoms or nationalist-led Israel that they would do everything they can to undermine the then-nascent democratic experiments to protect their interests and save their thrones but this is the topic of another article.

<comment><USER13> >It is not the fault of the countries in the Eastern part of the Arabic speaking world that they're surrounded by reactionary forces in the region like the oil sheikhdoms or nationalist-led Israel that they would do everything they can to undermine the then-nascent democratic experiments to protect their interests and save their thrones but this is the topic of another article.

Woh, woh, woh, what on Earth does _Israel_ have to do with this? Israelis haven't done anything to undermine the "democratic experiments" in any of its neighbouring states. In fact, Israel is the only regional country to consistently support Kurdish democracy, which it has done for decades.

<comment><USER12> Are you really denying that the Israeli govt had nothing to do with supporting the military takeover in Egypt back in 2013 and then the military-led regime that took shape after that whether internally or abroad?

If so, I don't see that there's any point of arguing over facts like these.

It's OK to have reservations about the democratic experiments in the region but if you could call "Talibani vs Barazani" a democracy, then I think it's fair that I get to call what happened in Egypt or Tunisia a democratic experiment.

Speaking of Kurdish democracy, I believe that opening channels with other players in the region is good strategy to secure the interests of the Kurdish people or elite, but excessive pandering to one particular player at the expense of others in the region would be very shortsighted move esp if you're planning to stay in this neighborhood for long time.

A balanced and well thought-out approach to foreign policy in the region would be a better alternative to the Kurdish people for whom I wish good luck for their legitimate political aspirations.

<comment><USER13> >Are you really denying that the Israeli govt had nothing to do with supporting the military takeover in Egypt back in 2013 and then the military- led regime that took shape after that whether internally or abroad?

Yes. That's a ridiculous assertion. To think that Israel (population: 7 million) has the power, influence, or will to "undermine the then-nascent democratic experiments" of a country like Egypt (population: 82 million), is ludicrous enough. To assert such a ludicrous statement as fact, without _any_ supporting evidence is a wild conspiracy theory.

Your last three paragraphs have virtually nothing to do with the argument at- hand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My view on the Middle East: it has been a playground for the powers of the world to muck around. The fall of the Ottoman Empire at the end WWI allowed the region to be carved up between the French and the British. Secret agreements like Sykes-Picot cemented borders that should never have been there. After WWII a considerable amount of support was put behind Israel (and rightly so). However, the ongoing conflict and lack of a 2-state solution to this day continues to be a rallying call for millions of Arabs against the West. To keep the Arabs in check - the West continuously undermines their governments (which may be led by strongmen - but this is better than the alternative which we have seen). In addition, the West assumes it understands the intricate complexities of the demographics on the ground. Mucking around only exacerbates the problems.

<comment><USER15> Pretty accurate description for the last 100 years. But this fighting has been going on for thousands of years between the 3 Abrahamic religions, perpetually fighting over the Holy Land and between their own respective sects.

<comment><USER16> And even before that: the epic Roman-Persian and Greco-Persian wars.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So far this is good. There's a lot of depth.

One nit:

 _" Much as the United States Army and white settlers did with Indian tribes in the conquest of the American West, so the British and French and Italians proved adept at pitting these groups against one another, bestowing favors — weapons or food or sinecures — to one faction in return for fighting another. The great difference, of course, is that in the American West, the settlers stayed and the tribal system was essentially destroyed."_

I think it's a mistake to only back up to the end up WWI and start running the tape there. The Arab world has a rich and nuanced history full of the exact kinds of tribal tensions we see now going back hundreds of years. There's a reason the Ottomans were the way they were -- and it has nothing to do with Colonialism. There are also great parallels between what's happening with the Arab spring and what happened when other great powers consolidated their hold over the Arabs and then left. Just citing one example seems like a tremendous disservice to the history. Also the meme of "It was the Sykes–Picot Agreement" has some truth but is extremely easy to lean too much on. With this amount of verbiage being produced, I'm expecting some alternative lines of reasoning to be explored.

Looking forward to more of the series!

(Apologies -- looks like the entire thing is here? Wow! I've heard of long- format writing before, but this is kindle material. Tremendous amount of work here.)

<comment><USER18> The problem with blaming Sykes-Picot for everything is that almost none of the modern borders are due to that agreement (well, the Jordan-Syria border does seem to match up, but that's it).

More likely a better explanation lies in the importation of the Western idea of a nation-state (that a country should be coterminus with cultural boundaries), which tends to strongly reject the idea that countries can have multiple countries, combined with the failure of the Ottoman Empire to synthesize a durable Ottoman culture. The latter failure is arguably due in large part to, you guessed it, European meddling: the Ottoman state had largely functioned, and kept peace among fractious religious sects, by keeping its Islamic nature as a core of its identity (basically being a dual Turkish- Arab state). One aspect of this was the basis that most obligations of civic duty (particularly military duty) was borne solely by Muslims, with the non- Muslims (predominantly Christians) paying an extra tax, an arrangement generally accepted by both groups. European powers considered this intolerant [1], and forced a series of capitulations on the Ottomans in part to guarantee the security of Christians (which basically leads to the Armenian Genocide).

With the idea of a state centered on Islamic identity increasingly a failure, the Young Turks instead focused on a narrow, Turkish-based state, which alienated pretty much all minorities (including the Arabs) save the Kurds (their bid for nationalism started mostly post-WWI). After the Armenian Genocide, many Arabs suspected that similar treatment awaited them, but they largely kept to showing support for the regime during the exigencies of WWI. The Iraqis in occupied Mesopotamia didn't cooperate with the British (not that it saved them from retribution), for example. The Bedouin did offer support to both sides, but they were not reliable allies to either side. Only the Hashemites (who controlled Mecca and Medina) revolted, successful only due to the aid of the British, who gave them Jordan and Iraq as victory spoils (their original Kingdom of the Hejaz was conquered by the Saudis, another British ally, in the interwar period).

[1] Side note: the Ottomans generally forbade the Muslims from proselytizing to the Christian groups, whereas the capitulations generally forced the Ottomans to accept Christian missionaries attempting to convert Muslims.

<comment><USER17> Thank you. Much-needed context.

This rabbit hole goes down deep. Too much for HN. There's a lot of ground to cover: gates of Vienna, and the fall of Constantinople, the Second Crusade, and so on.

As one can imagine, depending on where you choose to focus, you can fall back on western meddling or not. Sadly, this is the case for most arguments in the Mideast. Some things never change.

Suffice it to say that we could continue. For some time. It's a mixed bag, and nobody is either entirely innocent or entirely culpable. Simplifications -- even those in comment threads like ours -- invariably give the wrong impression.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This piece was a huge waste of time. Following the personal stories of a number of individuals in most of the Middle East countries does not give any information to the reader about any of the geopolitics or power plays in the region. It just leaves the reader confused and depressed that nothing can be done and we should probably leave this matters to people more knowledgeable. Is this some new form of journalism. And to see this in a NYT publication...

Also NY Times has so much *to answer for in their coverage of the events that it kind of make sense that they are avoiding any real analysis of the issues.

<comment><USER19> To expend further - not a single mention of Saudi Arabia as a major actor and sponsor of radical Islam (Wahhabism), Israel is mentioned in passing and Turkey is only mentioned as an emigration destination and a "porous" border, not a major actor with huge interest and ambition in the region. Full disclosure: I stopped reading after part 2 and searched for the relevant actors and that's what I found. Correct me if I've missed some hidden gem of insight from the NYT "journos".

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> tl:dr 100 pages:

1) People are fucking poor and hungry (extreme wealth inequalities) 2) Salafi/Wahhabi (Saudi) funding of islamism 3) Antediluvian hatred between people (it goes, way, way, way farther back than Sykes-Picot)

<comment><USER21> It seems they are missing an important factor, namely 4) the personal, cultural and economical impairment due to the religion of Islam. Nobody has time to thrive when they have to pray five times a day, when almost every thought and action is dictated by an old book and when half of their human potential is hidden in cloth bags.

<comment><USER22> Is there much evidence for the specific choice of religion as a casual factor? Methods of blending a traditionalist religion with modern life seem much more important than which religion you start with. For example, Judaism imposes an extremely strict set of rules that govern almost every conceivable aspect of daily life. And indeed you find that strictly observant Orthodox Jews are mostly unable to function in a modern society; a large percentage of those living in Israel are unemployed and supported by state funds. However a large number of Jews have chosen to be somewhat looser in their adherence to Jewish law, which seems to be the key, rather than Judaism itself being more compatible with modernity.

<comment><USER23> There is clear evidence that Catholic areas have lower levels of economic growth than Prodestent areas even within same country. So, religion really does impact economic growth. But, I don't think there is hard evidence to brake it down to specific causes within each religious group.

PS: While you may disagree with this, there is a lot of research into this topic: [https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=religion+economic+devel...](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=religion+economic+development&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiKqM7dw7nOAhXGOxQKHfyoARIQgQMIHDAA)

<comment> maze-le Do you have any sources for that claim? I would be genuineley interested in the methodology of this research. Its just anecdotal, but here in Germany it is the other way around. The Catholic south is prosperous, whereas the protestant north (east) is poor. I can think of examples where the opposite is true (Belgium) but I highly doubt that there is a casual connection. In Belgium for example the catholic (and more important industrialized) wallonia was very prosperous during the 19th century, in opposition to the more agrarian flanders. Nowdays its flanders that is more prosperous, and the old industrial regions in the south suffer from the effects of deindustrialisation.

<comment><USER24> The Protestant northeast suffered from being part of East Germany. A hundred years ago Prussia was much more powerful than Bavaria.

<comment> maze-le This may be true, but Bremen, Niedersachsen and Schleswig Holstein are not in a very good shape either (at least compared to Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg). But what all of this shows, is that there are a whole bunch of historical and socio-economic factors at play that have no connection with religion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> For me it is extremely simple: They have an extraordinary amount of oil:Iraq,Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, natural gas: Libya,Iran or they are in the middle of strategic places to build oil ducts: Syria, Afghanistan.

[http://www.energybc.ca/images/profiles/oil/reserves.jpg](http://www.energybc.ca/images/profiles/oil/reserves.jpg) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_natural_g...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_natural_gas_proven_reserves)

The West needs much more energy that what they have. They have industry and without energy their society will collapse.

Anything else is secondary. Most of those places are desert, and have not enough technology to protect themselves from Western (or Eastern)plundering.

Those countries can only life in peace as protectorates from powerful industrialized countries, like Saudi Arabia(de facto protectorate of USA, its oil can only be paid in USD), or Iran(protectorate of Russia and China) or Syria(Russia).

Libya itself had a lot of Chinese civilian presence, but not military. So UK, USA and France thought it was going to be easy to take the country by force, like they did.

They also tried with Syria, but Russia had an army there. They tried hard, remember Assad having chemical weapons so the West needed to "save" and "free" the country? Putin reacted fast to that. The need of creating a fly exclusion zone(prior to the invasion, like in Libya), again Putin reacted faster sending his own airplanes.

<comment><USER25> One of the most interesting things traveling to African countries is lots of locals considering oil a curse.

There is a great relationship between having huge resources and war, violence and crime.

The countries in Africa with less resources are the richest ones, because they had peace for a long time. War destroys any wealth people have and give it to a few guys. It also destroys al civilization and social structures.

<comment><USER26> > One of the most interesting things traveling to African countries is lots of > locals considering oil a curse.

Don't see any of them in a rush to give up their 'curse'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is just another propaganda piece to obscure what is really happening.To make sure that no Arab spring takes place, the US has sold all its allies all the weapons they might need to crush any opposition to their fiefdoms. The New York Times never explains to us who those moderate rebels are. "The alliance says it is fighting "terrorists," a name it uses for all of Mr. Assad's foes, from the extremists of the Islamic State to more moderate rebels who came out of the Arab Spring protest movement against his rule." [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/16/world/middleeast/syrian- fo...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/16/world/middleeast/syrian-forces-and- russian-jets-attack-rebel-held-towns.html?ref=todayspaper) "Donald Trump Praises Dictators, But Hillary Clinton Befriends Them" "Clinton has described former Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak and his wife as "friends of my family." Mubarak ruled Egypt under a perpetual "state of emergency" rule that involved disappearing and torturing dissidents, police killings, and persecution of LGBT people. The U.S. gave Mubarak $1.3 billion in military aid per year, and when Arab Spring protests threatened his grip on power, Clinton warned the administration not to "push a longtime partner out the door," according to her book Hard Choices. After Arab Spring protests unseated Mubarak and led to democratic elections, the Egyptian military, led by Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, staged a coup. El-Sisi suspended the country's 2012 Constitution, appointed officials from the former dictatorship, and moved to silence opposition. Sisi traveled to the U.S. in 2014 and met with Clinton and her husband, posing for a photo. The Obama administration last year lifted a hold on the transfer of weapons and cash to el-Sisi's government....Egypt is far from the only military dictatorship that Clinton has supported. During her tenure as secretary of state, Clinton approved tens of billions of dollars of weapons transfers to Saudi Arabia – including fighter jets now being used to bomb Yemen. Clinton played a central role in legitimizing a 2009 military coup in Honduras, and once called Syrian dictator Bashir al-Assad a "reformer." And in return for approving arms deals to gulf state monarchies, Clinton accepted tens of millions of dollars in donations to the Clinton Foundation. Clinton has also boasted about receiving advice from Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who was notorious for his support of dictators. According to records from the National Security Archive, Kissinger oversaw a plot to assassinate the Chilean President Salvador Allende and install the brutal dictator Augusto Pinochet."

<comment><USER28> So did the US foment the Arab Spring or did it try to stop it? I'm having trouble getting all these conspiracies straight...

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Ha ha ha ... ha ...

The 'Arab World' was never together. Ever.

All of the 'Anti-American Imperialism' kids here should remember that the bulk of the 'Arab World' is 'Arab By The Sword'.

Arabic is spoken across North Africa, in particular because of _Arab Colonialism_ of the 9th-12th centuries.

Not since then has the 'Arab World' been anything resembling 'together'.

The Turks kept them (and there was not much of them) under the thumb, after that the Europeans tried to maintain some degree of balance, now the Americans.

The most recent and damaging decision by the US was Obama's withdrawl of troops in Iraq. Of course, invading in the first place - but Obama simply by virtue of having 10K soldiers sitting on a base 'behind the wire' doing nothing, could have kept forcing Malaki to play nice with the Sunnis. The moment Obama withdrew, Malaki purged Iraq of Sunnis, and the Sunni tribes decided that ISIS was 'less worse' than their own government and there you have it.

As far as Syria ... this is a function of the 'Arab Spring' more than anything, and I don't think anyone can say anyone else is directly responsible for that. Other than the standard: Assad, Saudis, Iran etc...

Once things stabilize in Syria, maybe things can start to settle down.

<comment><USER30> > Once things stabilize in Syria, maybe things can start to settle down.

OT, but do you see this happening soon? The only way it seems that Syria can stabilize is for the regime to retake control. That's beginning to look like the most likely outcome. Could there ever be a path back to pre-Spring peace? Anything is better than what they have now :(

<comment><USER11> 290.000 deaths later and 1/3 of the population fleeing the country. Even if the US knows that the return of Assad's tyranny is the only quick path to peace, they (US) will not be willing to bear the blame of the damage created.

<comment><USER31> US is not really to blame directly in this case. The US by now is willing to accept Assad for a limited time. Russia has also shifted and might accept that Assad has to go in the middle to long term. Their is a chance that they could agree.

However local powers, Turks, Saudis, Iranians are not that flexible. Iran really needs Assad in power, they really want to crush ISIS. The Turks don't want the Kurds to form their own country. The Saudis want Assad gone and don't want ISIS completely destroyed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Slightly off topic:

Clicking "Simplify Page" on the google chrome printing dialog makes this a fantastic formatted PDF. I'm impressed (be it Chrome's doing or NYT's).

<comment><USER33> Reader view in Firefox looks better the original layout too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> "The Arab World" \- What does that even mean? Arab is a language distinction, a language of which there are many dialects. As Arabic is spoken from Western Sahara all the way east to Oman that pretty much disqualifies Arab World from having geographical significance. Arab also does not denote religious faith as there are Arab Jews, Arab Christians(Coptic) and of course Arab Muslims.

There was once briefly a concept of Pan-Arabism but that died when Gamal Abdel Nasser died in 1970.

Does a Muslim Arabic speaker from Morocco really have any sense of kinship with an Arabic Christian(a Coptic) from Egypt? I am going to say probably not. Probably not any more than two Slavic language speakers in different parts of Europe do. Have the Saudis taken in any Arab refugee "brothers" from Syria and Iraq? No. Have the Arab Emirates? Again no.

So what is this "Arab World" that the NYTimes and the rest of the media are so fond of using as a point of reference? Countries carved up as part of the Sykes Picot agreement? Can they not come up with a more meaningful distinction? This matters.

<comment><USER35> are you actually confused about which people are being referred to though? seems like you're just getting pedantic here.

Every single country profiled in the piece is majority Arab (ethnically), majority Arab (linguistically), and majority Muslim (religiously).

what more meaningful distinction would you make that clarifies things? "Middle Eastern countries currently on fire"? They are certainly all countries that can be fairly described as Arab.

<comment><USER34> I am not confused at all. I am pointing out that it is a BS term, with no accepted definition. That's hardly pedantry.

And no you can't just say "Middle Eastern counties, the countries of the Mahgreb are "on fire" and they are not geographically part of the Middle East.

So according to you the meaningful distinction is that its "currently on fire"? What happens if its not on fire or stabilizes politically? Does its status change?

How about Mauritania, the Comoros, and Morocco. Majority Arab and Muslim and generally not front page news.

Why does this matter? Because it's incredibly reductionist. There are tribal dynamics at work in all of the countries mentioned in this article that extremely difficult for a casual observer to understand. These are tribal affiliations that predate Islam. And there is no analog for them in the Western world from which the term "Arab World" springs. It's very hand wavy to just say "The Arab World" and this propagation of an Arab singularity is itself a source of problems.

<comment><USER35> yeah yeah I've read Edward Said as well. Sure, its Orientalism and Imperialism crystalized into a language idiom. That's how language and culture works. We can find it distasteful all day but there's not much good to come from arguing semantics on the internet.

<comment><USER34> You are the one that suggested pedantry and then when given a a response now want to go suggest semantic arguments. It's as if you arguing with yourself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Just last week, I watched this documentary called "Saudi Arabia Uncovered" to understand its current state. Its on youtube.

<comment><USER14> Yes - its quite well done. It is a PBS Frontline Documentary: [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/saudi-arabia- uncovere...](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/saudi-arabia-uncovered/). Also, more salient to the NYT article, I would strongly suggest [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/the-secret-history- of...](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/the-secret-history-of-isis/) . The synposis on the latter is: The Bush Administration was so intent on proving the existence of WMD's in Iraq that they inadvertently gave power to what was soon to be ISIS.

<comment><USER9> Also worth seeing is "Why We Did It" \- The Invasion of Iraq.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> To get pictures in the article, remove the last part of the url: [http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/08/11/magazine/isis-...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/08/11/magazine/isis- middle-east-arab-spring-fractured-lands.html)

</comment><comment><USER38> Triffin dilemma. [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-05-30/the- untold...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-05-30/the-untold-story- behind-saudi-arabia-s-41-year-u-s-debt-secret)

</comment><comment><USER39> I wish long form, informative articles like this had a way to donate a small amount of money to show appreciation. I don't read any particular news outlet enough to get an exclusive subscription with them, but I'd love to reward them for good individual pieces.

<comment><USER40> Blendle is exactly like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I really hope this gets put into a podcast/audio format, would love to ingest it on a commute

</comment><comment><USER42> I think even farther back with the overthrow of the Shah in Iran it started

</comment><comment><USER43> It's fun to see the armchair historians and political theorists pop up. HN is becoming more like Reddit by the day. Stick to discussing technology guys ;)

</comment><comment><USER44> tl:dr

</comment><comment><USER45> I recommend to read Raphael Patai's classic "The Arab mind" to try to understand. Don't drink the NYT koolaid.

<comment><USER46> Some sources claim the book is racist and not backed by solid research. Any opinions on this? (looking for a good book on the topic).

<comment><USER47> > _Some sources claim the book is racist_

Funny thing - given how easy it is to get an "racist" label these days, I'd treat this as a signal that the book may be touching on some controversial topics or reaching unpopular conclusions.

<comment><USER46> Funny, I get the exact opposite vibes. Given how crackpot racism has a strong historical background it's very hard not to treat it as a signal of being a produce of crackpot racism.

"Race" does not explain anything - although, many people would love it to because that would make it easier to comprehend the world. There is very dark history of this in european pseudoscience. There is far more genetic variation in average within population groups of same 'race' as there are between 'races'.

There are cultures with obviously harmful practices - take female circumsision for example - but to the way to respond to those is to make it clear it is not acceptable, and not to use it as an example of the barbarism of individuals belonging to the culture in question.

There are wide variations in cultural sensibilities, and actual painpoints between interactions of populations. There are well known, and actually difficult problems to solve. Adding crackpot theories to the mix based on opinion and imagination does not really help the world to evolve.

<comment><USER47> I"m not referring to racism per se, but to _accusations of racism_. It's way too easy to get a "racist" label nowadays.

<comment><USER46> But that generally does not happen in mainstream literary critique of academic texts, unless for a reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Just ask Lawrence. Same shit, different day.

<comment><USER49> Who is Lawrence?

<comment><USER50> Lawrence of Arabia.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Anyone have a FFFFound.com invite? - <AUTHOR>

I am getting frustrated looking for a ffffound.com invite, it's been over a year now searching on Reddit, inviteshare, and other dead ends. I can trade a Spotify invite if anyone wants one? Other than that...I'm still looking for a Demonoid invite also. Thanks <comment><AUTHOR> If anyone has any pity....nicholas1987ucsb at gmail.com</comment>


Free social media management? Register now folks - <AUTHOR> http://knotlink.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the inputs! Help me spread the word folks!

</comment><comment><USER2> This is well in line with the IndieWeb movement[1]. You'd do well to check out one of their members' brid.gy as well.

[1] [http://indiewebcamp.com/](http://indiewebcamp.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Hey this looks like an interesting idea. FWIW, your images for facebook, google, twitter, and yahoo are broken on this page: [http://knotlink.com/about](http://knotlink.com/about)</comment>


Mistakes I made while launching Non-app Calendar - <AUTHOR> http://www.entrepreneurloop.com/7-mistakes-I-made-while-launching-Non-app-Calendar/

<comment><USER2> I think it might be harder than you think to capture non-conversions - I am personally wary of PDF/eBook/non-software downloads that want my email address as a primary capture. But I may be wrong.

There's also a weird thread that runs through most products that actually sell - if it sold, people must be willing to pay more. You'll have to balance 5 people at $5 vs 1 person at $25, and what that's worth to you. So often people tell other entrepreneurs to raise their prices! Raise them again! But there is a sweet spot, and good sales don't mean the price was too low.

I bought Non-app Calendar. I liked what I saw, but I doubt I would have paid more for it. It's a nicely constructed PDF, not a book or game or SaaS or web hosting or any number of other things that cost around or below what I paid for NAC. (Write a companion book on project planning with a fresh take and maybe it would be worth more.)

That's not to say I don't like the product. I really do. I've recommended it to friends and we use it as an exercise tool for planning at the office. So, thanks for the good work, I'm just not sure I'd listen to every opinion that comes your way. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks a lot for the comment. I agree on your points. I would probably not double the price or anything. But at one or two euros more, I would have probably sold the same amount.

Regarding capturing non-conversions, you're right: it's probably more tricky than it seems.

<comment><USER2> You're right. I would have happily paid €6, in the end. Forgive my ranting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The mistakes you listed make it sound like you're trying to move too fast. Moving fast is good when it comes to product development. But not on the business side. Just focus on these two things:

1) Find a few users who _love_ the product

2) Improve it to the point where they start telling people about it

Forget about analytics, pricing pages, press, etc etc. If you can't get some family and friends to rave about it, you won't get the masses.

Realistically, it will probably take years to really nail 1) and 2) above. But once it happens, you'll very quickly become the next big thing. Read up on the history of Pinterest for a great example of this.

</comment><comment><USER4> All of them are very common mistakes that when avoided can have a significant impact on the ROI. Even if it is just a side project app you should take promotion and marketing as part of the development of your app.

What worked wonders for some friends who launched a small pet project recently was to get very specialized and local blogs to publish a review of their app for the launch date. It's an easy way to reach an audience of potential early adopters.

</comment><comment><USER5> The email robot as teaser who would have dispatched drops of info in 4 days before sending the link to buy could have been an interesting scenario to test.

<comment><AUTHOR> agreed Steve. But you know.. sometimes you gotta stop trying to reach perfection and launch! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Most insightfull, thank you. What is the 'proper analytics' approach to website user tracking if google analytics does not cut it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey! Thanks for the kind words. GA can do the job, but if you take time to set up a goal etc. If you just include the snippet, you're missing some precious information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been looking for something like this. I'm actually going to buy it right now.

Feedback:

● It's hard to buy because there aren't any full screenshots or product pictures of the actual calendar. I can't see exactly what I'm buying. I know you don't want people to rip off your design and re-create it in excel, but a lack of screenshots is what really made me doubt purchasing N-AC.

● Your call to action button isn't at the top, instead it's somewhere in the middle and end of the page. This just adds purchase "friction". It should always be at the top above the fold, and even in the top menu for single product sites.

● Instead of a blog format, you should stick to a traditional webpage design for selling products and services: [Anchor links menu] at the top, then above the fold right where the reader can see it [screenshot] on left [description and call to action button] on the right, with [testimonials] underneath and further info below that.

● You use way too much text to explain your product. If you use more images customers will be able to see what you mean instead of reading what you're trying to say.

● Use pictures of your testimonial authors next to their testimonials. A/B testing has shown time and time again that people trust pictures of faces over text and descriptions.

● Change "Get it now!" button to "Instant Download"

● Change the purchase button color to the same color red as the word "calendar" at the top.

● You may want to switch to GumRoad or at least A/B test it. People not only trust it more but its checkout process is a lot more smooth and doesn't take your customers away from your site.

● Include American currency in the price: From: [4€] to [4€ | $4.50], You'd be surprised by how many people get scared off when they see a Euro sign.

● Include your full name, your email, and the name of the country next to your flag (Sweden?). I don't know who you are. Your picture looks very professional and I feel like I'm getting a high quality product designed somewhere in Europe but there's too much information left blank. More information about you builds trustworthiness.

● After printing it out I just realized, it's not really a calendar. It's a planner. A calendar tells you what day of the week a date falls on. It's no big deal but it doesn't really need to be re-designed every year to be updated. So you could just leave the "2015" spot blank and people can write in whatever year they want.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello! First, thanks for purchasing. Also, thanks for your feedback: very interesting to read.

\- I'm a bit surprised that you say there are no product pictures. I included the whole product in pictures where I describe the process. What do you mean?

\- I used to have a "buy" button before the fold. I removed it because it caused losing sales. People where getting right to the price without reading the benefits of the product.

\- The sales letter format is a choice. I could have used a traditional webpage but didn't want to. Still a valid point and I understand that it isn't your favorite.

\- Agreed about the pictures next to the testimonials, that's something I should do!

\- I'm not happy with the current copy of the purchase button. Although I don't think I like "Instant download" much more. I might try something in between whenever I have the time.

\- Gumroad doesn't handle the VAT mess (for now).

\- Good point on the currency, I've had some other feedback stating the same point.

\- Again, good point. I should improve the "About" section.

It's "just" a side project and while the sales page has performed really well, there's definitely room for improvement :)

<comment><USER7> Ah, I see. If the "buy button below the fold" and "sales letter format" works then ignore my first three feedback points. I based them on general design principles and A/B testing I've seen over the years but you're right, they don't work for all startups.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask YC: What resolutioon do you design websites for? - <AUTHOR>

I usually develop sites for 1024 x 768 resolution. But am wondering if its time to increase that baseline? What do you guys think? Thanks. <comment><USER2> I try to make my layouts scalable (measurements in ems) and fluid (the least fixed dimensions the better) to avoid problems. I'm pretty confident my (unreleased) site should be able to handle less and more than 1024x768 which is my resolution (if I wanted to scale down to mobile devices I'd make a version of my site specifically optimized for them).

</comment><comment><USER3> Even though every screen I use on a daily basis runs at least 1280x1024, in general, I still tend to work off 1024x768 as my baseline.

My feeling is that - as with 800x600 - I will likely stick with 1024x768 as the baseline for a little longer than I should... Just to be sure. A site that takes up a bit to little room is less annoying that a site that takes up too much, IMO.

See here for a somewhat old but useful discussion on the topic: <http://www.cameronmoll.com/archives/001220.html>

Then yeah, there's the whole fluid width angle too... Most of the sites I have designed are actually fluid width (useable at 800x600 and up) rather than fixed. Fixed width is something that I have only more recently started experimenting with.

</comment><comment><USER4> Definitely depends on the audience. If you know your site/app will be used on older machines or by less tech savvy folks, it's often safer to stick with 800x600 in those cases. Otherwise, do some assessment and decide based on that.

If there's no reason to exclude people though, then you may as well include as many as you can. Older browsers (IE6 anyone?) can be cut on newer things as well if the time to test and ensure it works in them isn't worth it, but that depends on your audience again.

Then there's the accessibility question. You're not developing for users within public or govt institutions are you? ;)

</comment><comment><USER5> 1024x768 is #1, but the surprising fact is the use 1280 x whatever is now #2 (instead of 800x600)

Thank the laptop/LCD boom for that.

I mockup up all my designs at 1000 pixels wide.

<comment><USER6> I do my designs at 1000 pixels too. The horizontal scrollbars at 1000px should disappear. So in short I design based on 1024 but the max width I work on Photoshop is 1000px. Even on fluid designs, I do this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I recently fixed up the project I was working on to work at 800X600 exactly. The reason is so that folks running at 1024X768 don't have to maximize the window. Even if they did, thanks to Google bars and Yahoo bars and tabs and bookmark bars etc. etc... the height would not be anything close to 768.

And since this is a flash app, it HAS to all fit!

</comment><comment><USER8> Yeah, I've aimed at 800x600 for my general-focus sites. I feel sorry for the 5% of our audience that still uses it and it hasn't hurt us so much yet.

For my gaming sites, less than 1% of our visitors use 800x600 or lower.

We'd probably go with 1024 in the future for all our sites if we have a compelling design that needs it.

</comment><comment><USER9> Our current website is comfortable at ~800 (I believe the content is 780 pixels with some elements that overflow), but the next iteration will be designed to be comfortable at ~960.

Just remember that really wide text is hard to read, and break it down into a readable column width for text, plus other elements.

</comment><comment><USER10> I guess it's most reasonable to design for a minimum of 1000px width. Few apps/websites really need more _minimum_ width.

P.S. yes, peple have larger screens, but it does not mean they maximize the browser window. It's especially true of Mac users.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've started designing primarily for 1280x1024, mostly because I use 1920x1600 and 1024x768 design is so shoddy on it. Of course, most of my designs are dynamic/fluid and change size to fit the page so its not really an issue.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's okay to design with 1024x768 in mind, but you have to also consider those who are using handheld devices, screenreaders, and don't forget the bots. Make it good for the most common, but don't let it break for the rare.

<comment><USER13> With the rise of the iPhone and other mobile/desktop browsers, this seems more important than ever.

What does everyone here think of creating a separate .mobi type site versus taking the time to make your regular site "mobile-friendly"?

<comment><USER12> To justify a parallel, separately-designed .mobi site, it takes a lot of traffic from handhelds AND serious design reasons to make the main site low- resolution-non-compliant (loreznoncom! I made up a Web 3.11 word!).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I set my browser window size to 1024x768 and I test in opera, ff, and konqueror (probably test graphic links and epiphany too). I don't worry about the height that much though.

</comment><comment><USER15> Depends on your target audience. Generally, I am like you and develop for 1024x768.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks you guys! This is helpful. loreznoncom is a pain! :)

</comment><comment><USER16> 646px. Woohoo for facebook's tiny window! :(</comment>


The robots are coming for your job, too - <AUTHOR> https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/08/24/politics/economy-us-workforce-automation/index.html <comment><USER2> High level programming languages automated assembly language programming, by the way. Generally speaking. For instance, with the use of a high level programming language like Python or JavaScript, the operator or user does not need to be concerned with the management of computer memory or processor registers (notwithstanding the fact that such low level abstractions differ between processor architectures as I'm speaking generally).

So even software development is susceptible to the phenomenon of automation.

Anyone got any examples of other kinds of automation?

<comment><USER3> Custom-written number crunching software ==> Spreadsheets

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Keynes, 1930: _" To those who sweat for their daily bread leisure is a longed- for sweet -- until they get it,"_

Later adding: _" man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem -- how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well."_</comment>


How to Scrape Data from Facebook Page Posts for Statistical Analysis - <AUTHOR> http://minimaxir.com/2015/07/facebook-scraper/ <comment><USER2> Cool post.

Any idea if it is possible to search the open graph to find out who shared a given link?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's definitely not possible as that would be an incredibly privacy violation.</comment></comment>


A Facebook War: Libyans Battle on the Streets and on Screens - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/04/world/middleeast/libya-facebook.html <comment><USER2> In the wake of Iran's unsuccessful Green Revolution, the government was able to use the tracks left on social media to identify and hunt down dissidents. Libya at present is fractured, but as we see in this article, the same thing is happening on a regional level.

While social media makes it possible for people to come together more easily than in the past, it also serves as an omnipresent surveillance tool.

Is the age of popular uprisings coming to an end?

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder if you could use AI to promote messages of tolerance rather than the tendency of existing algorithms to promote conflict?

<comment> Iwan-Zotow Been there, done that.

You see, in Civ5 there was famous ruler called Gandhi. He loved peace, he loved people, but (due to software bug, he-he) then suddenly he always went berserk and start nuking neighbours.

Infamous "nuclear Gandhi"...

<comment><USER3> I learned something new there. 8 bit underflow apparently. Though that wasn't quite what I was thinking of.</comment></comment></comment>


Seeing Like A State: The Psychopathy of Strategy Games - <AUTHOR> http://futurismic.com/2011/03/02/seeing-like-a-state-why-strategy-games-make-us-think-and-behave-like-brutal-psychopaths/

<comment><USER2> Tangentially, one gameplay problem with strategy games is that you don't act enough like a state - micromanagement. In [http://erehweb.wordpress.com/2009/04/22/civilization-3-and-i...](http://erehweb.wordpress.com/2009/04/22/civilization-3-and- its-discontents/) I relate this to Matthew 8, verses 5-10</comment>


Render realtime RethinkDB results in React - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mikemintz/react-rethinkdb

<comment><USER2> I've got a toy RethinkDB+React stack too, here's an example application: [https://github.com/tinco/celluloid-rethinkdb- chat](https://github.com/tinco/celluloid-rethinkdb-chat)

It's Ruby+Celluloid doing subscriptions on RethinkDB, and it uses Meteor's DDP protocol to talk to the React client side.

Was pretty easy to build. All the modern technologies fit really well together.

Unfortunately in the Ruby world live webservices like this haven't really taken off much yet, so I had to write some low-ish level things myself (The DDP server implementation, which I think is the only non-Meteor DDP server implementation out there, and the celluloid-websocket implementation, which was easy because there's a great ruby websocket library by the faye people)

<comment><USER3> > Unfortunately in the Ruby world live webservices like this haven't really > taken off much yet

And they probably never will, whatwith blocking I/O being the norm and no decent concurrency primitives. Too many better alternatives at this point.

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure where your opinion comes from and what concurrency primitives you are missing in Ruby, but Node.js simply no concurrency primitives at all and it's doing just fine. The I/O framework I use in that RethinkDB example is Celluloid, which implements actors, a concurrency model that is widely regarded as superior to the callback style.

That they never will has more to do with the general attitude of Rails programmers, and their commitment to the REST request/response model. Libraries that offer more flexible interactions are simply not very visible yet.

Slightly related but not relevant now, Ruby 3.0 is expected to have some concurrency construct fundamentally integrated into the language.

<comment><USER4> Never did any Ruby, nor Node.js, so take this with a grain of salt.

What I understood the OP to mean, and what I experienced myself, is that a language needs to actively promote (OS-level) async I/O for it to be usable, not just support it. If sync I/O is the default, too many libraries will use it (it's easy and works fine, until it doesn't).

Because Node.js has no threading, async I/O is the only choice. Result: 100% of the libraries are async I/O.

Because Go has M-N threading, all I/O is inherently async for the OS, even if it's sync for the semantic threads. Result: 100% of the libraries are async I/O.

Scala and Java have Futures and all the other goodness you would theoretically need to make async HTTP requests. But, as an example, the official AWS access library (a wrapper around the AWS REST API) is synchronous. Result: communicate with AWS in your backend during a request? Block an OS thread, or write your own AWS library.[1]

Even having async I/O as an option at all splits your language in two. Most libraries will fall in the sync category, and their mere existence lowers the incentive to write an async one. E.g.: if there were _no_ AWS library for Java / Scala, I would be much more keen to write an async one myself. But now? Ah well, // TODO: async, and continue.

This is the beauty of Go and Node.js on the server.

[1] Or choose an unofficial and, I'm rudely assuming, less complete / audited / reliable library.

<comment><USER3> This is exactly my experience as well.

If you provide synchronous, blocking interfaces and no concurrency primitives or expectation of non-blocking functions, IO, etc., people will use them.

In languages where concurrency is a built-in, understood pattern (Go, Erlang/Elixir, Haskell*, to name a few) people don't need to care.

Ruby has the worst of many worlds (sync I/O by default, incredibly expensive memory model, incredibly expensive lambdas, first-class functions aren't normally used beyond the "do block"\-- nobody is passing them around, chaining, etc.)- I just don't see the reason to keep trying to squeeze blood from this turnip.

<comment><USER2> Not to make this discussion personal or anything, I'm curious have you ever worked in Ruby? You say things like "why bother" and "trying to squeeze blood from this turnip" as if you don't understand why someone would love Ruby.

Anyway, I do agree with your argument. Unfortunately Ruby is from the generation of programming languages in which I/O was just seen as an api, so the sane thing was to just map to the system api directly.

JavaScript is from that generation as well but got lucky because its requirement to run in the browser forced it to have I/O fully abstracted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've built a RethinkDB-Meteor integration using ReQLite and Meteor's stack: ([https://github.com/Slava/meteor-rethinkdb](https://github.com/Slava/meteor- rethinkdb)).

I see that your TODOs list has "Optimistic UI updates", I worked in this direction and figured there are multiple things blocking such architecture in RethinkDB:

\- [https://github.com/rethinkdb/rethinkdb/issues/4307](https://github.com/rethinkdb/rethinkdb/issues/4307)

\- [https://github.com/rethinkdb/rethinkdb/issues/2727](https://github.com/rethinkdb/rethinkdb/issues/2727)

Something you might want to consider when you decide to implement it.

<comment><USER6> Hi Slava! Your project was immensely helpful for me to figure out what's possible. Optimistic updating is definitely the biggest and most challenging feature on my roadmap. I figured I'd save it until last so that by the time I start working on it some of those kinks would be figured out :) but I'm going to take a close look at the blocking issues.

Even when those RethinkDB issues get resolved, I still have some conceptual questions understanding how to make arbitrary queries update optimistically. For example, say that I'm subscribed to:

      r.table('proposals').pluck('name')

And I issue the following update:

      r.table('proposals').filter(r.row('votes').eq(0)).delete()

On the client side, because I used the pluck('name') operation in the subscription query, we can't possibly know which rows to optimistically delete since we didn't download the 'votes' field.

Do you know how this issue is addressed in meteor? I'm currently thinking I'll have to limit optimistic updating to queries that follow a simple structure, but I'd love a more general solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am excited about rethink and I use react (via cljs + reagent [1]) every day. The FRP approach of reagent combined with subscribing to rethink for updates is very appealing.

[1] [http://reagent-project.github.io](http://reagent-project.github.io)

<comment><USER8> Are you writing big projects with this combination?

<comment><USER7> Our project has 2.5k loc. You can checkout our staging server at staging.fetchh.io/app if you'd like to poke around

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > This is similar to solutions like Meteor, Parse, and Firebase. Rather than > writing database queries in the backend and exposing API endpoints to the > frontend, these solutions allow the frontend to directly access the data > layer (secured by a permission system) using the same query API that backend > services have access to.

This is a Meteor.js killer right here folks!

<comment><USER5> I think it explicitly says that it uses the same idea as Meteor's:

> Rather than writing database queries in the backend and exposing API > endpoints to the frontend, these solutions allow the frontend to directly > access the data layer (secured by a permission system) using the same query > API that backend services have access to.

<comment><USER9> I don't think so because in Meteor.js you rely on iron-router and need to painsteakingly define and manage who can do what, and subscribing to new documents coming in the wire?

<comment><USER5> The concept of subscriptions is completely separate from the router you use. At some point you would need to define who can subscribe to what documents, in any system with private data. It is called ACL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting approach.

I would still rather connect to RethinkDB with a frontend service and push those to stores and have the component watch the store.

Because while this might work for a small use case, a real world usage will quickly outgrow that and you will wish you hadn't stuffed such functionality in a display component.

So this is probably most useful for quick sketches and debugging stuff.

<comment><USER11> Could you elaborate on this? This project seems to be moving in the same direction the React team is with Relay and GraphQL – the component describes the query it requires to render itself, and a query/caching layer executes the query automatically.

<comment><USER10> What I described as a Service would be what this query/caching layer is. I would just rather not have it embedded in the Component, making it harder to follow what a Component does. The beauty of them is that they are simple to read and understand. The more mixins you use, the more esoteric it gets and you have to read a bunch of code to understand why the render function magically has these properties to display with.

Another point would be that the service or store could be re-used in more than just react, and it can be tested without having to consider the UI.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I guess this is intended for trusted clients?

<comment><USER13> Is there such a thing? ;-)

This file shows how they authenticate users: [https://github.com/mikemintz/react- rethinkdb/blob/master/exa...](https://github.com/mikemintz/react- rethinkdb/blob/master/examples/chat/server/AuthManager.js)

<comment><USER14> I think the issue is that the client code is running actual database queries on the server, and I don't see any restrictions on what queries can be executed.

So if you log in and authenticate (through that file), it seems like you can just open the javascript console in chrome and run any type of db query you want.

<comment><USER6> DB queries are validated through a whitelist on the server, so it should be impossible to run an unauthorized query when it's locked down. E.g. [https://github.com/mikemintz/react- rethinkdb/blob/master/exa...](https://github.com/mikemintz/react- rethinkdb/blob/master/examples/chat/server/queries.js)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Looks like everyone's hopping on the React bandwagon, trying to grab a piece of the hype.

<comment><USER16> I'm not sure that grabbing yourself a slice of the hype-pie is necessarily a bad thing. Learning is good for the soul, right?

I do get your point, if you had one. It does feel like there's a must-have new shiny thing to prod every other day. However, React seems to be even shinier than others as of late -- I know this because I even read the documentation and played with the tutorial! I do admit that I can't really come to any solid conclusions about how shiny React realistically is because I'm not much of a sample size.

I do find the React docs to be excellent though which means I'm more likely to keep playing with it. Nothing turns me off faster than awful documentation.

<comment><USER17> React is so shiny that it sucks your entire application (HTML and CSS included) up into it's non-standard JavaScriptified web-page format.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Holy "shiny new tech buzzword compliance" batman! This is hipster dev certified!

<comment><USER19> Now that you've gotten the Reddit out of your system, how do you really feel about this project?</comment></comment>


Rapid iteration with hardware - <AUTHOR> http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2010/10/case-study-rapid-iteration-with.html <comment><USER2> Meh. This was a nice anecdotal story. But, I was expecting more of an extracted lean/agile process from it though. I'd like to know how you could apply such techniques to build devices like this: <http://www.picarro.com/gas_analyzers/ch4_h2s></comment>


Google adsense low return blacklist - <AUTHOR> http://www.adsblacklist.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Does anybody here have experience with this?

How well does it work?

Is it up-to-date?</comment>


Inside a $34 smartphone - <AUTHOR> http://projectgus.com/2015/05/inside-a-34-dollar-smartphone/ <comment><USER2> I have actually done a lot of development on a very similar device, based on the Spreadtrum 6821 (the famed $25 firefox phone). Its a pretty neat device - 128MB RAM, 256 MB Flash, support for upto32GB microsd card, dual SIM (EDGE only), Bluetooth, FM radio, replaceable battery, 320x480 lcd touch screen, a seperate touch "strip" which you can configure as capacitive buttons, three hardware buttons (V+,V-, power).

I did a full kernel build, wrote the device driver for the LCD screen, am currently writing the driver for the SIM. I have a debian rootfs running on it - its a nifty little linux gadget. I am currently using a bunch of these as part of a linux kernel hacking tutorial for college kids.

I believe there is a lot of potential for these as alternatives to RPi and its brethren for certain applications. If you try to add all the above peripherals to RPi we quickly cross $500 (of course, you would probably not do so in reality).

If any one is interested in more info, message me.

Shameless Plug: I am also looking for consulting ops on such and similar (I have a LOT of embedded and electronic design experience - from vague user spec to full design).

<comment><USER3> "Eval" boards and systems like this have been available in the era before the raspberry-pi revolution, but rPi got a lot of hype for itself by actually shipping in large numbers.

These little systems are quite capable indeed! I remember compiling the Linux kernel on a 1ghz machine with 32Megs of RAM, back in the day .. and here we are with these little machines in our pockets. Fantastic stuff to be teaching kids to use ..

<comment><USER4> Pi also aimed at a different market. Most eval boards was either direct order or via B2B distributors. Pi aimed at kids and education, and went into the general consumer market.

<comment><USER3> There were eval and computing-platforms aimed at kids before rPi. None had the momentum of the nascent crowd-funding movement quite so potently as the rPi.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Removable batteries are still the norm in the low-end Chinese Android market. There's a lot of commonality and standard sizes between them too, because these are all based on the same reference designs and the manufacturers don't see much point in changing things like the dimensions of the battery since that requires effort and would make parts sourcing harder - they're not after exclusivity or vendor-lock-in.

I remember the time when Mediatek was considered ultra-low-end and relatively unknown, and sellers would be selling MTK phones faked to show Qualcomm and other more "prestigious" brands of SoC. Faking MTK would be unheard of, because there wasn't anything below them (there were still fakes between the different SoCs models from them, and that still continues today.) Now that MTK has grown past that point and others have appeared below them, they've become a lot more desirable. I'd consider the fact that someone wants to fake some other brand as MTK evidence of that.

The interesting thing about the MTK platform is that it's "unofficially open" \- various people have leaked detailed technical information on the SoCs, which doesn't seem to bother MTK; maybe it's somewhat deliberate. Many devices are also rooted by default, and it's really easy to root one (there's no bootloader locking, and being able to read/write the entire internal storage in raw format via the official SpFlashTool means they're practically unbrickable.) This means they're quite hackable, and the low price also helps. MTK themselves won't provide any support, but a whole community has formed in its place.

Perhaps the same might happen to Spreadtrum in the future, but the last time I looked there was not nearly as much information available for SC devices and rooting was not easy.

The "Time Switch Machine" is scheduled power on/off. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_switch](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_switch)

<comment><USER6> I wrote an editorial on Mediatek[0] that you might be interested in. I disagree with Mediatek being "open" though, they're so closed source that they basically violate GPL.

The rooting is definitely to do with company culture though, the Jiayu S3 I recently played with[1] (and has become my daily driver) actually has a root toggle in the settings menu. Great stuff.

[0] [http://www.neowin.net/news/the-qualcomm-reign-on- smartphones...](http://www.neowin.net/news/the-qualcomm-reign-on-smartphones- and-tablets-is-almost-over-all-hail-mediatek)

[1] [http://www.neowin.net/news/review-of-the-jiayu-s3-hands- down...](http://www.neowin.net/news/review-of-the-jiayu-s3-hands-down-the- best-smartphone-you-can-get-for-under-200)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think there is a market for honestly low-spec smartphones, as there are some interesting uses for them, for example, a IP camera (plenty of apps for that), a dedicated XMBC/Kodi remote, or a home automation controller. You can think of them as Raspberry Pis but less hacking friendly (usually the source code of these things is not easily available/buildable), that cost more but also get you two cameras, speakers and microphone, a screen and a (sometimes dual-SIM) GSM modem, which if you're lucky can do 3G.

By the way, the fact that the author of the blog could not get past 2.5G could be because the phone only supports 3G in one of the SIM slots and the only SIM was inserted in the wrong slot. This is the kind of thing that can be confirmed by looking up the datasheet of that SC6825C SoC, to see if it supports 3G at all. The main problem is, before buying you can never be really sure what SoC it has...

The "Timer Switch Machine" is probably a function to turn the phone on and off automatically at given times. Most Mediatek chips support this (as well as ringing alarms when off), so it'd make sense if their competitor's chips also did this.

</comment><comment><USER8> The little bubble thing is a weird chinese quirk - [http://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-use-assistivetouch- on...](http://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-use-assistivetouch-on- iphone-2015-5) if you're interested on that

<comment><USER4> Reading about what assistive touch does on the iPhone, i find myself thinking about faucet design.

These days you find this dual direction (lift to open, left and right to adjust temperature mix) type everywhere. But as best i can tell it was originally designed with handicapped users in mind.

<comment><USER9> A faucet with an interface in terms of the two attributes you generally care about (pressure and temperature) is in theory much better for everyone than one in terms of two implementation-detail attributes (amount of hot/cold water flowing into the mixture).

Unfortunately many of the one-control faucets have terrible mechanical engineering under the interface, and as a result you often can't adequately control either pressure or temperature, and the two aren't actually separated orthogonally (i.e. as you move the control along one axis both attributes change, and to change just one attribute you must adjust the control along both axes)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This device is only running EDGE and not being a 3G smartphone is a big distinction. In practice, the low memory also makes it a very difficult sell to consumers, so I'm not entirely surprised by the marketing deception here.

Shameless plug, my startup wholesales a 3G Android smartphone with 4GB memory running on a Spreadtrum chip that costs $30: [https://www.voxsupplychain.com/shop/users/#/shop/product/and...](https://www.voxsupplychain.com/shop/users/#/shop/product/android-3G/\(\))

We have found that there are some natural dividing lines on low-end Android specs. If you cut more corners, it really impedes the user experience.

<comment><USER11> Are you sure that 3G license fees are paid on this phone? From my experience sourcing cheap phones this price is not possible unless you avoid the licensing.

Lowest we could go for a SC7715 was about 35$.

<comment><USER10> Yes, it is all rolled up into the price of the device. This pricing is just for delivery to a port (CIP incoterm), so doesn't include customs clearance, duties, VAT or a retail markup.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> tl;dr: It runs Android 4.0.3/ICS, has 200MB ram, just two cores, possibly only 2G/2.5G, is clunky but works -- despite advertising 4.4/KitKat, 8 cores and 4G.

</comment><comment><USER13> A hardware engineer told me in discussions on chip subversion that BS like this is common in SOC's, too. He said they're so expensive to develop that vendors often include the functionality of all their chips in one design. Then, they flip a switch on the chip to enable or disable specific functionality. This means they all cost the same to make but they can give you specific features at specific prices. Hard disk makers do it too where you bought a "120GB" drive that uses same eg 1TB platter as the rest but firmware restricts user to 120GB.

You can't be sure whats in it unless a company such as Chipworks tears it down piece by piece and wire by wire. Sneaky is the norm in hardware.

<comment><USER14> >Hard disk makers do it too where you bought a "120GB" drive that uses same eg 1TB platter as the rest but firmware restricts user to 120GB.

Why isn't some smart hacker buying these in bulk, reverse engineering the firmware to enable the full 1TB, and reselling at a 1tb price point? Would that be a good business?

<comment><USER15> It would be a business that requires people to trust their data to voided- warranty drives. I don't think that'd be popular.

<comment><USER14> I'd buy a new 1tb HD that comes from a known manufacturer if it was much cheaper than any others I could get.

<comment><USER15> It wouldn't be much cheaper, though. A WD Blue 250GB on Newegg is $47. A WD Blue 1TB is $55.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm often keen to buy these super cheap phones, but then I see the outright deception involved and it's off putting.

I hope Mozilla can encourage interesting but honest budget engineering.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, the listed specs are more in line with $200 phones. Then too you need to be careful.

E.g the first one I had in that range was a (physically) near perfect Samsung SIII replica, complete with the dandelion screen saver, and the place I bought it for hinted strongly that you could get it with the Samsung logo if I asked. I knew what I was buying (a much slower MTK based phone), but I saw plenty of places try to pass it off as a genuine SIII too, which at the time was substantially more expensive.

This is often the best way of finding (reasonably) honest sellers: Look for other sellers offering the same phone and assume the worst listed specs are most accurate.

The interesting thing is how they've gotten to the point of faking MTK cheap- ish based phones too, rather than just faking more expensive devices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Bit unrelated, but I hope someone here can help me out - couple friends and I want to develop a 3g-connected IoT appliance and we're looking for a chipset with reference design - if possible, a chipset that could power a today's high-end smartphone. Does anyone have an idea? Mediatek didn't reply to us in two weeks :/

<comment><USER5> If you want to use Chinese you're going to have to learn their customs and possibly the language - MTK will just ignore you if you try asking them unless you're already a huge established company.

Here's some good background reading on the culture of these ecosystems:

[http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=3107](http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=3107)

[http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297](http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297)

<comment><USER18> Actually I don't care much about the exact CPU vendor, all I need is an Android-compatible CPU with 3G support, a datasheet and if possible a basic hardware reference design... too bad none in the team are Chinese :/

<comment><USER19> Sounds like a opportunity for someone to launch a Chinese consulting company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > This Huami H3 smartphone cost me $34US (210RMB) in January. It's sold with a > 5 inch screen, Bluetooth, WiFi, 4G cell connectivity, Android 4.4 and an 8 > core processor. It's very cheap but good. And actually the processor has 2 > cores.

</comment><comment><USER21> While the phone doesn't meet it's stated spec, it's still pretty amazing that tech that'd have been top of the line a few years back now costs less than a night out.

<comment><USER22> Actually it is bit uncanny how you can basically apply a variation of Moores law. The specs of Huami H3 seem to be somewhat comparable to Nexus One, which was released almost five and half years ago. That puts 3.5 18 month cycles between the two devices. $34*(2^3.5) = $400, which sounds about right for "high-end" no-name Chinese phone.

<comment><USER17> $400 on Aliexpress gets you into the range of branded phones from brands like Sony, Xiaomi, Lenovo, Huawei, ZTE, Oppo, Jiayu these days.

Almost none of the phones in that range are truly "no-name" (though beware the fakes) - even Oppo and Jiayu are fairly established brands by now, though obviously nowhere near as well known.

<comment><USER5> I didn't think of Jiayu as being in that range of the market, but apparently their reputation has been good enough that others have been faking their phones.

They have some... interesting models like this one, which is far cheaper than $400:

[http://www.gizchina.com/2014/06/28/octacore- jiayu-g5s-review...](http://www.gizchina.com/2014/06/28/octacore- jiayu-g5s-review/)

I have the quadcore (MT6589) version and have gotten quite a few "is that an iPhone running Android?" questions, which somewhat adds to the experience of owning one. It's slightly bigger than an iPhone though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Wow, only 200 MB RAM built in while Android still mostly working.

<comment><USER24> The Galaxy S shipped with only 256 megs and a single core. It was a capable device at the time, although it can barely run any modern apps. I know this because I replaced mine only a month ago. As recently as 6 months ago it would run Spotify and Runkeeper simultaneously, though with recent versions of Spotify I lost the ability to multitask while not on Wifi. On Uber the only things preventing me using it were the custom text fields, which wouldn't allow me to key data in properly. The biggest memory hogs were recent versions of Google Play at 40 megabytes of ram, so I would keep the Google services downgraded unless I needed to install an app.

The base Android system will run with surprisingly little RAM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> On a side note, i find myself reminded of a TED talk.

Mostly because it held a story about the lady out buying a handbag, and using her detailed knowledge of brands to get the seller to bring out ever better copies of a certain brand from storage.

I wonder how much this falls within a culture of haggling.

(Now lets see if i can find the right one...)

</comment><comment><USER25> We already have $10 smartphones here (US) though they have 3.5 inch screens are run 4.0 not 4.4.

You can get higher spec better screen phones for $75 or less if you send in rebates. In the US we have hit smart phones that are affordable to everyone and can do "most stuff" already.

<comment><USER23> The phone from the article fakes 4.4, it's actually 4.0.

<comment><USER25> I meant that 4.4 is latest version that most higher end phones use (most people have not upgraded to 5.0)

I did read the article and saw the phone in question fakes most of the specs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Heh, i recall using compressed ram as swap during the waning days of my N800 usage.

</comment><comment><USER26> Regarding 'rootability', it'll almost certainly be vulnerable to towelroot: [https://towelroot.com/](https://towelroot.com/)

<comment><USER27> Unfortunately, my tablet can't be rooted by any method I've tried, including towelroot. DAMN YOU HUAWEI!

<comment><USER26> What model is it? (and what kernel?)</comment></comment></comment>


Interactive programming riddles for bloggers - <AUTHOR> http://blog.scarky.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> The blog/site readers will be able to submit the solution and see if their program has been accepted or not. Exemplary usage" <http://sprega.eu.org/index1.php?/scarky/3/1></comment>