Ask HN: Switch career if I'm not a polyglot? - <AUTHOR> In job posting I see polyglot thrown around a lot with pride - companies will have an infrastructure comprising of 6 or more languages and they want someone senior who knows all of them - and i'm only 1/6th of that.
It took me a long time to get the nuances of my favorite language down (go). I'm OK with dabbling in others, but it takes me a decent amount of time (months/years) to pickup and be actually fluent in a language - there's almost no way i can juggle more than a few. There's only so much room in my head. I can't even get the nuances of English down.
Should I look into another career? I'm wondering if i'm not cut out for being a developer. Jobs seem to want polyglots (they'll say: "you are a polyglot") and that's not an option (or even an interest) for me. <comment><USER2> There are three main aspects to learning a new language

\- syntax familiarity. This should come to fluency in a few weeks of daily usage (or more for languages with very unique syntax in comparison to what you're familiar with). You'll find yourself discovering new ways to use a syntax expressively or leverage the syntax for correctness for the rest of your career.

\- common libraries and idiomatic patterns. This will take years, but is more linear than front-loaded like syntax. There's always a new pattern or library. My guess is you're judging yourself on this aspect. Don't. Everyone goes at the same pace on this metric.

\- infrastructure. How does it build, how to configure the runtime, when does it blow up or exhaust threads or do random things like spin the CPU for no damned reason or deoptimize a function. No person can be an expert at a language without a solid grasp on these features of a language implementation. You don't go "deep" on a language without it. You should have two or three of these after ten years unless you're weird and like it. But if you're a 10 year dev without one, quit.

More to your question: I expect senior backend/fullstack devs to be experts at at least one language, at least one RDBMS, and at least one extra tech like elasticsearch, mongo, redis, etc. Without that, you'll just get paid less. If you're not expecting to be called a senior developer, then you shouldn't be expected to be deep in any technology. If you're having trouble getting shallow on new technologies, however, yeah you should probably quit.

<comment><USER3> _I expect senior backend /fullstack devs to be experts at at least one language, at least one RDBMS, and at least one extra tech like elasticsearch, mongo, redis, etc._

OP, ignore stuff like this. "Expert" at a language is an extremely high bar, and not very important. Workplaces that focus on language expertise (and other narrow skills like "mongo") tend to not be great places to work. By definition the leadership at such places clearly doesn't understand what's actually important. These are the places where management obsesses over ludicrous metrics and where the worst whiteboard interviews (with questions about obscure language features) are conducted.

There are places where you're seen as a person rather than a bucket of buzzwords. Such jobs value your general intelligence and emotional intelligence a lot more than # years in language X. There's room for you to bring all kinds of skills and expertise to the table and you don't have to worry about fitting some mold.

The real measure of success at such places is getting stuff done, and that's done at the team level. A team doesn't have to be N "experts" at language X and trendy technology "Y".

<comment><USER4> I feel like experts 'get things done' with less tech debt though and are therefore more beneficial to have on a project.

<comment><USER3> I don't agree at all. Being a language "expert" doesn't mean you know when to write tests and what kinds of tests to write (which is mostly a language neutral skill). It doesn't mean you know how to choose between a quick hack and a well thought out design (and again, language expertise is not the most important ingredient to producing a good design).

This discussion reminds me of those about "intelligence" and IQ. Many people believe intelligence is a single measurable metric, when in fact it's a constellation of many kinds of aptitudes.

Being a senior coder is about _a lot_ more than language expertise.

<comment><USER4> Hm. I feel like there's a correlation between knowledge of a language and being able to design well with the language.

I've noticed my design skills go up drastically the more I learn about a language.

For example in most PHP frameworks there's a service container you bind your services into. In RoR that does not exist.

Using asyc/await vs promises makes very different design decisions in js and if you know only one you may not design something optimally.

I could go on. But my point is that lang expertise gives you the knowledge to design things better, and reduces your chances of putting out a quick hack because you know how to do things properly and rapidly due to you expertise.

<comment><USER3> _Using asyc /await vs promises makes very different design decisions in js and if you know only one you may not design something optimally_

Optimally? How would you even define that? Good developers make good use of the tools that are laid out before them, and sure the available tools differ in each language. But: 1\. These languages tend to have more in common than they do different. 2\. These concepts aren't magic. They're relatively easily understood, and you can make good use of them long before you can call yourself an expert in the language. 3\. A good design doesn't _necessarily_ make use of any specific language feature. e.g. a Go library might be well designed and make use of mutex (a very generic and ubiquitous concept). It's not a "quick hack" just because the author didn't choose to use channels.

<comment><USER2> An optimal design is one that addresses the most problem complexity while introducing the least incidental complexity. It's objective, but difficult to measure. If you use cron to implement a hello world program, the design is not an optimal one, for example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Polyglot is code for T shaped people: broad knowledge in general and deep knowledge in 1 or 2 things.

They want someone who explores a bit, checking out what other languages offer, so that he's not always reaching for the same thing to solve every problem, regardless of how appropriate it is.

It's like a carpenter who has his go-to tools, but at least knows when a scroll saw is more appropriate to the task than a circular saw.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm going to answer (or not answer) the question from two separate angles....

1\. I spent nine years at a company where I did some VB, lots of C and C++, Perl, Java, Object Rexx, Classic ASP, a little JavaScript, some C#, and worked with MySQL and SQL Server. I had become a jack of all trades but a master of none. I guess I was a "polyglot programmer". But while my skillset may have been valuable to the company I was working for, it wasn't valuable to the overall market. They wanted someone with a deep knowledge of either Java, C#, or to a lesser C++. My suggestion is to avoid jobs where they want a "polyglot programmer" especially early in your career and focus on working somewhere where you can get experience in one or two related things.

2\. I have no opinion on the technical merits of Go, but if you want to tie your horse to a language, why tie it to a language where there is not as much demand? In my market, there are plenty of jobs for C#, Java, and Javascript and the jobs that want PHP and Python developers pay much less. Guess which languages I focused on after leaving the job I had for nine years.

I am not a polyglot developer (I don't think) but I do try to know at least one language/framework/technology down the whole stack. For me that's JavaScript, C#, most major RDMSs and Mongo, and AWS for netops and devops and a dabble with Python for scripting.

</comment><comment><USER7> Doing a quick check of indeed, I see many refernces to Polyglot. Half of the ones I checked did not use the term properly. One did list it as a 'Like to have'.

In general what I am seeing is they are looking for people who are not tied to one thing. I worked with a guy before, anything you asked the answer was 'Oh I can do that in Cold Fusion'. Another guy 'SQL is the answer'. To be fair, myself I favor C# as it is the most recent language I have done a lot of work in. But I am skilled in SQL, and Cold Fusion, as sell as SharePoint, JS, HTML, LISP and a few others. The important this is to be open to the other possibilities. Sometimes C# is the answer, but usually something else will work better, but you have to consider maintainability.

The other thing a polyglot shows is you are learning diversity. Not stuck in what you learned 20 years ago at University.

For most jobs they have 3 maybe as many as 5 real needs, but usually it is 3. You need to identify those and talk to how you match their NEEDS. Then look at the others and see how you can talk around them.

<story> A number of years ago I was working for a company and we were going to hire another devloper to work with me. My boss created a job posting, without vetting it through me. I was surprised to see the list of langauages. C / C++ / C# / JS / Java / Ada / Assembly (2 specific versions), I think there were a couple more languages listed. These were all 'REQUIRED SKILLS'. I asked my boss why she did this, since no one in the company knew all those languages (I knew 5 of them, but I was an oddity, most only knew 2) and we only used 4 of those (C, ada and the 2 assembly languages). Her answer was 'Would it not be cool if we had someone who did?'. My answer was they either knew very little about each or were a compulsive liar. Most likely the compulsive liar. </story>

</comment><comment><USER8> You should look into a new career if you are afraid to learn new languages. However, something to keep in mind is that learning a new language is generally not very difficult if you know a similar language in terms of semantics (i.e. NOT syntax).

For instance, since you know Go, learning Java should be pretty easy since they have very similar semantics since they are both garbage collected languages used primarily for writing server side programs.

</comment><comment><USER9> I have programmed in lots of languages over a couple of decades long career, including FORTRAN and COBOL, etc. But I wouldn't consider myself to be a polyglot - I only consider myself reasonable with C, JS and Python. It is my ability to fully comprehend requirements, design solutions, document everything that is the core of my success. Whether I write much code or act as a team leader is a project specific issue.

I hold very serious concerns about any project that requires the use of 6+ languages. Even in an enterprise setting with lots of legacy systems, I would expect different people to be competent with subsets of all the languages in use.

Go is an excellent language with a rapidly growing ecosystem. It might be a good strategy for you to be known as the Go expert instead of a jack of all languages who is not an expert in any of them. Besides it is not the language, it is the libraries, the tools and the ecosystem that takes a lot of effort to be competent with.

</comment><comment><USER10> There's also tons of single-language/single-stack jobs out there, and tons of developers in those jobs. Go might be a bit different, because it isn't as mainstream yet?

b) in the vast majority of cases, I suspect companies using 6 languages don't have everyone working regularly in all 6, but being able to read or do small tweaks to code in all of them is useful. I don't recall really seeing job postings requesting advanced knowledge in many languages, it's more typically to have one or two and then "nice to have" of further ones.

</comment><comment><USER11> people building "polyglot" software aren't necessarily "fluent" in all the languages used in a software project, and it's way more important that you know problem solving and programming and how computers work to make code as efficient as you can than just knowing a bunch of programming languages, that said, you should know at least one language very well, and should occasionally see what makes others languages attractive or useful

so if you know go very well, you could read code written in something different, I think you can learn a lot from reading code in an entirely different paradigm, so for instance, you could read a program written in Lisp, or Assembly, or Prolog, just as a learning exercise, you don't have to become an expert

for example, why do people program physics engines in C/C++, but do GUI in Java or Python? because each language has its strengths (in this example, performance for the engine, simplicity and expressive power for GUI)

why do languages like Prolog exist? because they are useful for things like AI or reasearch

now, because a lot of languages sort of inherit from the C language, learning C is a good way to make it easier to get used to the syntax of those languages, because it's going to be fairly similar to C, Go itself inherits a lot from C as I understand it

</comment><comment><USER12> How about focusing on a domain rather than languages? Say you're interested in Natural Language Processing. Pick a language and become an expert in NLP only. You'll be valued for your domain knowledge even if you're not that good of a programmer. That way you're not pressured to pick up a handful of languages, which pretty much do the same thing anyway.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm technically "a polyglot" just because I've learned different languages over the years. Trying to use them all at the same time would suck though.

I do a lot more Devops type work now and the knowledge of how different languages run comes in handy. Realistically though, that much Go experience should lend you to plenty of opportunities. At the same time, it never hurts to branch out.

One of the great things about going deep with a single language before learning others is that you know how to experiment and push things. You know more about what to look for than a brand new programmer that decides to learn 1 language a month at a surface level. It's a benefit, not a hindrance.

Don't bite off 6 at a time, but definitely find something else and learn it just to broaden yourself.

</comment><comment><USER14> I would guess that the person who gets the job isn't an expert in those 6 languages. Maybe 1 or 2 of them and the rest they have a basic knowledge of. It could be doable to get to 3 though. One being JS and the other two being for the same 'VM' e.g. Kotlin and Java (so you are learning the same libraries). Or C#/F# as another example.

</comment><comment><USER15> Being a polyglot is like magic, but it's not the Harry Potter kind of magic: it's the David Copperfield kind of magic. We look like we're doing one thing, but we're really doing something else.

Most polyglots are only really strong in two or three languages at a time. They may be passable in a few others, but they only remember bits and pieces of most of the languages they've worked with. They only have so much space in their head, just like you; the difference is in how they manage it. They organize their headspace differently, and there are upsides and downsides to that.

There are four main skills to being a polyglot. The first is knowing how to separate programming from coding. Your first language is always the hardest, because you're actually learning two things at once: you're learning the mindset and methods to create programs, and you're learning how to write down what you create in a particular language. When you go to relearn your second language, you don't have to relearn programming: you already know how to do that. This makes your second language, and later languages, easier than the first.

The second skill is understanding when and how it's okay to forget. There is only so much space in your head, and you forget things you aren't using. You mention this as a problem, but polyglots are no different. The trick is that almost every programming language was created because its author thought something was too difficult in the lanuages of the time, and wanted to program that thing in a way that flowed more naturally in the way they thought about it. These are the areas where you want to focus your attention: learn them as thoroughly as you can, and incorporate the concepts behind them into your general knowledge of how to program. The rest can be forgotten unless you're using the language often.

The third skill is how to draw connections between languages. As you learn new languages, focus on figuring out how to do the things you already know how to do in other languages. This will help you learn them faster, and relearn them faster (because you're going to have to relearn things you've forgotten sometimes). There's a book called "Seven Languages in Seven Weeks" which is good practice for this: you will not become an expert in any of the seven, but that's not the point. The real goal of the book is to teach you how to evaluate a new language and break it into parts that are easier to understand.

The last big skill is getting help. A polyglot is never going to have the same depth of knowledge in a language's libraries as a single-language expert will, so you need to know where to go when you don't know something. The official documentation is good. Other people are better, but not always available. You need to be able to have a sense of what you're looking for, where to get that information, and how to get it from there. You get faster at this with time.

That's most of it, really. And note that last paragraph: it's important to rememver that "polyglot" doesn't just mean "awesome". Polyglots get the job done and they look good doing it, but there's a price to pay for that. A single-language expert may or may not produce code that's any better than a very careful polyglot's. But the polyglot will take longer -sometimes much longer- to produce the same code, due to the overhead of relearning. This makes experts great, when you can find an expert that can do what you need. But sometimes, especially when your needs are very specific or demanding or the language you want to use is very new, it's not feasible to find an expert. That's where the polyglot shines: if you can't find an expert able to do what you need, the polyglot will _become_ able to do what you need. Experts sculpt the language; polyglots sculpt themselves.

You're worried about whether or not you're cut out for this career, but I think you can succeed. If you want to become a polyglot, I think you can do that: it's a skillset you learn, not a talent you're born with. If you would rather develop as a Go expert, that's also feasible: Go is gaining a lot of popularity and seeing a lot more use than it used to, and there's a real need for experts. There are ways to branch out and carry on a good career with either path.

But in the end, it's your decision. This is a big step, and I can't tell you what's right for you. You don't have to change careers, but you can. You don't have to become a polyglot, but you can. You don't have to stick with this one language, but you can. You are not trapped.

<comment><USER16> As someone with at least 30 if not 40 languages behind me, this rings true. Except maybe that language specialists struggle if their language isn't designed for the problem in front of them and are slower in such cases. So called "polyglots" tend to be better when the problems are ill defined or exploratory, where actual invention and creativity are necessary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't think you need to be looking into another career.

You have said that you know the nuances of Go, and with that you probably have touched the outside world like databases, caching, HTTP, TLS. And I think this is much more worthy to grasp the overall concepts from end to end and knowing how to integrate your parts you have done in Go into the rest of the infrastructure.

Of course it is always good to dabble around in other languages and reuse insights across different languages, but having a good understanding across the infrastructure stack is in my opinion more helpful.

</comment><comment><USER18> There are lots of Go specific jobs out there, I've found. I don't work for them, but here's an interesting example -- [https://jobs.lever.co/geckoboard/27c7e6ff-a02a-4221-a02f-e19...](https://jobs.lever.co/geckoboard/27c7e6ff-a02a-4221-a02f-e1921dc8c804)

</comment><comment><USER19> >"... companies will have an infrastructure comprising of 6 or more languages and they want someone senior who knows all of them - and i'm only 1/6th of that."

I would ask them to clarify the statement "knows all of them." If they simply mean "had exposure to them" I could maybe see that, although 6 sounds high even given that.

If a company says that a candidate must be "proficient" in all 6 languages present in their entire infrastructure I would take that as a "red flag" and not bother applying.

</comment><comment><USER20> Most candidates for programming jobs can't even write Fizzbuzz in whatever language they identify as their strongest language. If you can write FizzBuzz without help, in even one language, you should be fine. Keep doubling down on Go if you like it, and pick up a modest level of knowledge of a couple of other languages.

If you're applying to a company that expects you to know 6 languages, I posit that you're applying to the wrong companies. Find somewhere sane to work. If you're focused on the SV startup scene, maybe broaden your horizons a bit.</comment>


Ask YC: How successful has your startup been with press releases? - <AUTHOR>

Just wondering how successful other startups have you been with press releases? Also, what service did you use?<p>We've been looking at PRWeb, where one of the options include distribution via the Associated Press as well. Thoughts? <comment><USER2> The key to dealing with the press is to call them yourself. If the big press is ignoring you, then go smaller, until you can talk to someone + get them to write about you.

Press people sometimes have to dig for news, so if you send them as much pre- written stuff as possible, it can make their job a lot easier. Especially if they hit a slow day.

I would hire a good press relations company who is familier with your market before a marketing person. You can turn them off if cash get's low, and they should already know all the right press people in your industry.

Often times the Press people are not all that technically savvy. I've spent hours on the phone educating them about my industry, what makes us unique, and why people buy our product. They often appreciate this and we will get more coverage.

But don't be annoying. As with anyone you are selling to, always ask when you could call back if they are busy. i.e. "sounds interesting, but we're really busy right now" "I understand. Would you mind if I contact you at the end of the month? We're coming out with a new version + I'll update you on that".

They will appreciate you giving them control of how often you bother them. Personal contact from the founder/inventor will always be more effective than some PR service.

</comment><comment><USER3> We were only moderately successful. The press releases were written and distributed in-house because of budget restrictions. Our successes were numerous in smaller media (decent traffic blogs, etc), but lacked in mainstream areas.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just to give our background, we haven't put out any press releases yet just because we have this idea that they aren't very effective. However, we're thinking about doing it for our public launch thats coming up soon.</comment>


Ask HN: Are parents essentially AI researchers? - <AUTHOR>

Doesn't parenting give insight into AI and vice versa? Are similar methods used? <comment><USER2> To paraphrase Eliezer(1), The design space of minds-in-general(2) is so freakin' huge that it's misleading to use human minds as analogies; in doing so you immediately fall victim to the detached lever fallacy(3).

(1) <http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Eliezer>

(2)[http://lesswrong.com/lw/rm/the_design_space_of_mindsingenera...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/rm/the_design_space_of_mindsingeneral/)

(3) <http://lesswrong.com/lw/sp/detached_lever_fallacy/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Are plants AI researchers? Reproduction and parenting isn't limited to humans.

<comment><AUTHOR> Humans have the most powerful brains and hence the greatest opportunities for learning. This makes parenting different for humans.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> FWIW: My sons would like to rewrite AI. We've discussed AI in terms of how I raised them, which is rather different from how most parents seem to raise kids. For us, your question makes sense. But we are just one family.</comment>


Show HN: real-time map of Kickstarter projects - <AUTHOR> http://www.thingswestart.com

<comment><USER2> Fantastic! One UI issue: When i zoom in on an area, and click a location, it automatically loads the video. I'd much rather see the project "popup" on the map and then have the option to see the video.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback, I think you're right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Does google maps do the fanning out of many POIs in a circle automatically or did you have to do that yourself?

<comment><USER4> I believe they are using ([http://google-maps-utility- library-v3.googlecode.com/svn/tru...](http://google-maps-utility- library-v3.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/markerclusterer/examples/simple_example.html))

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very nicely done. I expected for film projects in LA than the SF bay area but not more technology projects too. Love to see the wide reach of Kickstarter as a funding platform.

</comment><comment><USER6> How are you getting the location data? Are you just scraping Kickstarter's site? Can't find any docs on their API...

</comment><comment><USER7> Super gorgeous...love being able to visit communities and get a pulse of the World of Kickstarter. Congrats!

</comment><comment><USER8> The infographics look AWESOME! Nice work on the video browse, too...

</comment><comment><USER9> Thanks! Where are you getting the feed of projects from by the way? I find Kickstarter terrible for discovering new projects, its seems a lot of stuff gets buried.

</comment><comment><USER10> lookin' good! scouting the map is a great way to get the creative juicing flowing.

</comment><comment><USER11> Very cool work. Thx.</comment>


The Ever-Shrinking Role of Tenured College Professors - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/the-ever-shrinking-role-of-tenured-college-professors-in-1-chart/274849/

<comment><USER2> Education has been on a lets get as top heavy as we can kick for years. Go to any educational institution, anywhere in the US. Check out the oak paneling in the administrative offices. Check out the explosion of administrative positions. Check out the rise of administrator salaries. That is where the money goes while class sizes increase, teacher salaries nosedive, and essential core subjects get trivialized or cut.

<comment><USER3> Yes, well, that's what the corporate-capitalist model of enterprise does for you. The people who control the means of production (in a university, that's the administrators who control resources and staffing) are more important than everyone else and will eat as large a portion of the pie as they can grab.

There are really only two ways out: labor struggle or cooperativization. I recommend the latter, on grounds that it's actually the model traditional universities used: the faculty ran the university in check and balance with the trustees, who made ultra-high-level administrative decisions on behalf of the public and the future. There's no reason not to simply undue the neoliberalization of academia and go back to the proven model.

In fact, and I want to EMPHASIZE this, the only reason any shift ever took place _away_ from the proven model was a _concerted political attack_ against academia during the Culture Wars. Whatever you think of my obviously left-wing views in general, you have to admit that until politicians started getting elected on a platform of Stick It To Students, academia ran very well as a public institution funded by taxpayers and capital-asset grants (like land- grant colleges in the USA) and accountable primarily to voters, donors, and academics themselves.

<comment><USER4> > The people who control the means of production (in a university, that's the > administrators who control resources and staffing) are more important than > everyone else and will eat as large a portion of the pie as they can grab.

This reminds me of my current place of employment. A minor perk at many offices is a reserved parking space. Before my time (90s, early 00s) the head of the organization had a reserved spot, the rest were for the top engineers with some spots rotating out based on quarterly or annual awards. In the early 00s the other managers began whining and eventually got their own reserved spots. With 100+ reserved spaces at the front of the lot someone realized they'd gone overboard. So they removed the engineers' reserved spots.

<comment><USER3> _This reminds me of my current place of employment._

It's the Marxist description of capitalist employment, so you're supposed to be reminded of your day-job.

<comment><USER4> Good point. Interestingly, I work for the government[1]. It wasn't until this facility started operating 'like a business' that a lot of the promanagement, antilabor activities took off[2]. I'm always amused by my small government libertarian colleagues that keep moaning about the government cutting spending on us, but also want all food aid and social welfare gone. One day they'll realize that we're on the government dole. Fortunately, I've developed a good poker face.

EDIT:

[1] US since I shouldn't assume anything about my audience.

[2] I'm speaking about this facility, can't speak to government operations in general.

<comment><USER3> An additional point: contrary to a lot of orthodox left-wing views, it is possible for major enterprises, especially public or nonprofit ones like government agencies and universities, to run like something _other than_ a capitalist business. A good summary of the 30-year ideological project known as neoliberalism is, "The project to make _everything_ run like a capitalist business, whether that works well or not."

<comment><USER4> I think I'd enjoy having more discussions with you, and maybe when I'm less distracted my input will be more than anecdotal observations. Look forward to seeing you around the discussion board.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The percentage decline in tenure track faculty might be fine. Straight-up instruction (non-tenure faculty) is also important; it provides employment for those who don't make tenure.

Tenure level academia is demanding:

a) Once you've made it, you have a solid reward: a sustainable lifestyle salary, freedom to work on what you wish, and, notoriety.

b) To make it, you have to work insane hours for about a decade or more (PhD, post-doc, 5-years) -- where the first few years (5-8) pay very little, if anything.

c) The odds of making it are against you -- many drop out in their PhD ("ABD"), fail to get post-doctorate work, fail to get a tenure track slot, or, fail to get tenure.

The promise of tenure is the carrot that feeds expectations that can only be met by talent and hard work.

<comment><USER6> _The promise of tenure is the carrot that feeds expectations that can only be met by talent and hard work._

... and luck. Many talented and hard working people don't get tenure.

<comment><USER7> This is deeply true, and one of the major underlying problems is that the shift toward non-tenure-track teaching positions is much more about cost cutting than it is about providing teaching opportunities to those who just weren't talented or hard-working enough to make tenure. It's a racket.

<comment><USER8> It's not just tenure, it's benefits. Many institutions are keeping junior staff part-time. Not only is the pay worse; you get no benefits.

This is not a recipe for social stability, e.g. enabling staff to raise families, etc.

When the system goes this far, I'm sorry, but I have no other word for it than "exploitative". (This is without delving into the topic of student debt, etc.)

P.S. And many people spend an inordinate amount of time commuting between multiple part-time instruction gigs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think this is old news. Tenure as a whole likely costs the system more than it brings in intellectual freedom benefits. It's a fallacy to think that more experienced tenured teachers are better educators, when it's research success that got them tenure.

Jeff Selingo (<http://www.jeffselingo.com/>) writes extensively about how colleges are reacting to changes in demographics and technology. He doesn't think Yale or Harvard will need to change, but the public and private schools a tier below will need to. His book ([http://www.amazon.com/College-Un-bound- Education-Students/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/College-Un-bound-Education- Students/dp/0544027078)) is a good read for parents.

<comment><USER10> I think you are agreeing - It is the _research_ that matters. Newton for example was a spectacularly bad teacher. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_life_of_Sir_Isaac_Newton#...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_life_of_Sir_Isaac_Newton#Academic_career))

<comment><USER9> For tenure and societal benefit, yes. Was so for teaching though undergrad research can be a good experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What is the trend for the overall number rather than percentage of tenured college professors? Surely a large part of this is explained by the explosive growth of higher education as a consumer commodity. We should not expect the percentage of professors to increase if the demand for academics is being driven by an increasing number of lower quality colleges.

</comment><comment><USER10> Meh.

There are two roles for Tenured College Professors:

      * Making intellectual bets that might not pay off for decades

      * Making Graduate students work hard

Everything else is gravy. The university and country that puts most effort into these two will over the long term get the most out. The important thing here is _tenure_. The next most important thing is you get to be a professor because all the other professors think you might make a good one.

Just pay up the money, and make the empirical sciences better paid. Its like a magic machine is edication. Put in money get out more.

If you want to see my poster-child for College Professors (#) go <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sddb0Khx0yA>.

(#) No, not _that_ Playboy spread. Different poster.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think their role is a bit more complex than that. In most universities, there is a teaching and mentoring role to undergraduates, which I think can play a huge role in the direction of those students careers. There is also a domain expertise that gets built around these people - they become walking encyclopedias of their field which has value for society, government, and industry to take their advice. Also, like your TED link, I think there is an 'incubating' role for tenured professors - some profs have an incredible amount of innovation that gets inspired by and spin-off from their labs. Particularly if the prof has entrepreneurial tenancies or at least values commercializing and/or implementing outcomes of their research.

If you want to get university or country success compared to production of tenured professors, its becomes even further complicated. I would argue that the opportunity for collaboration and funding for students and equipment is close in importance to skill of the tenured prof. This is probably what you are saying with paying more to the empirical sciences (along with more tenure spots) - and I agree with you on that.

The reason I posted is as an interesting addition to the common conversation on HN of the role of academics. I think a tenured professor is a quite good job and role. In contrast, nontenured senior academics are IMO not that well compensated (salary or otherwise) for the amount and skill of work they do, at least compared to industry or entrepreneurship.

(Background: I am a PhD student, but looking at entrepreneurship rather than academia long term. I find it concerning the number of my friends and colleagues planning academic careers vs the number of positions that will be open).

Thanks for the TED link, I hadn't seen this one and its a very interesting field. I'll have to restrain on comments to keep this on topic.

<comment><USER10> Why should you be the only one to keep on topic on an HN thread? :-)</comment></comment></comment>


Rust: Enable WebAssembly backend by default - <AUTHOR> https://www.hellorust.com/news/native-wasm-target.html <comment><USER2> This makes me so excited! Great job to Alex and the entire team getting this done.

I know Rust is not the most perfect language for some. For me, it's really exciting that there is finally a high level language which can scale for every potential use case.

Rust is great for kernels and the embedded space; Excels in the systems space; Is gaining traction in the native application space; Has great tooling for web backends; and, now, with WASM, it's capable of targeting the web (Yes, without DOM access this is limited, but my understanding is that is coming at some point in the future).

Are there any other runtime free, memory safe languages that can target all of those use cases?

<comment><USER3> I think another contender here would be OCaml/Reason, which has both JavaScript and WebAsm targeting, is used in systems space (eg Mirage). Its a bit different in technical choices (functional, GC, for example). Facebook is using Reason for Messenger for example, on mobile.

<comment><USER4> Honest question, Is reason really targeting wasm right now? Do you know a resource describing this? I cannot find anything about this.

<comment><USER5> [https://github.com/sebmarkbage/ocamlrun- wasm](https://github.com/sebmarkbage/ocamlrun-wasm)

reason == ocaml

<comment><USER6> Yes, but a byte code interpreter ported to wasm via emscripten != a compiler with a WASM backend.

<comment><USER5> Isn't the stuff that comes out of the OCaml compiler byte code?

As far as I can tell, OCaml has a GC and WASM (at the moment) doesn't so this seems like the only viable solution to me.

<comment><USER7> OCaml also has a native x86 backend, which produces quite efficient code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> We switched from Go to Rust in production. After the initial ramp-up time, it's really a lot more productive than Go for us, at least.

<comment><USER9> May I ask what "production" is?

<comment><USER8> Real-time fraud detection as service for adtech companies. We started with Java but got tired of GC pauses, perhaps due to an inexperienced team but we were not able to tame it. Then we moved to Go and now we are in Rust.

<comment><USER10> that sounds like data science. why aren't you in python?

<comment><USER11> He mentioned GC pauses being an issue. Python's GC is significantly less sophisticated than Java/Go, which were also not satisfactory enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm so so so excited to see this land! I have a little hello world demo: [https://gist.github.com/steveklabnik/d86491646b9e3e420f8806a...](https://gist.github.com/steveklabnik/d86491646b9e3e420f8806a286ec8e92)

To give you an idea of file sizes, the above produces a 116 byte wasm file. If you leave off the no-std stuff it produces a 3059 byte wasm file.

EDIT: I'm actually being told that there was a bug in wasm-gc that's since been fixed, even with libstd it should be able to eliminate all of it and get the tiny file now.

<comment><USER13> That's gorgeous. How much bigger does it grow if you heap allocate? Does it include 2mb of extra code like in normal desktop builds?

<comment><USER14> This Rust code [1] heap allocates some things (e.g., a string with `String::from`), and results in this [2] WASM file, which is 65kB, or 25kB after `gzip -9`.

[1]: [https://github.com/killercup/wasm- experiments/blob/bf3b30eed...](https://github.com/killercup/wasm- experiments/blob/bf3b30eed6ca73bfc7809f1d87b6604901d3a0b1/examples/hello.rs)

[2]: [https://github.com/killercup/wasm- experiments/blob/bf3b30eed...](https://github.com/killercup/wasm- experiments/blob/bf3b30eed6ca73bfc7809f1d87b6604901d3a0b1/hello-wasm.gc.wasm)

<comment><USER13> Thats much smaller than I expected, especially given how large rust native binaries usually are. What allocator does that use? Does that 65k include its own malloc implementation like we needed for asmjs, or does WASM expose a system malloc library or something?

<comment><USER12> wasm exposes "memory sections", which the module states up-front how much it wants. It can also generally call a "grow memory" function that makes this space bigger. That's it, from the direct wasm perspective.

That said, this target uses [https://github.com/alexcrichton/dlmalloc- rs](https://github.com/alexcrichton/dlmalloc-rs)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So when will servo become a webapp so we can run it inside firefox?

To clarify, this is sarcasm. What I really want to say is when can we run firefox inside firefox? But it's not entirely written in Rust. The point of that question is to illuminate some of the absurdity of web apps. i.e. what function does the outer browser serve in this scenario and why do we need it?

Edit: All the answers point to the outer browser as providing a sandbox. I contend that is supposed to be an OS function. I also think that tabs in the browser came about because OSes didn't provide a decent way to handle multiple instances of applications. See what's happening here?

<comment><USER2> Your question is related to the technical aspects of the ecosystem, but not to the way that people use computers in general.

A good rhetorical question in response is, why is the web so much more popular when using computers than installed applications?

The implication you've made is that there is no benefit to the web, but that is obviously not true, as web usage far outstrips installed applications (besides the browser) at this point. Given this, it becomes necessary to have common tooling to target the different browsers out there.

Getting back to the core of your question, if there was a framework for which you could target all users on the internet (with a single codebase), it ran natively on all platforms, was easily run by everyone merely by clicking on an icon, which then cleans itself up after running... then maybe native apps would be a good avenue for delivering all applications.

<comment><USER16> What is the advantage of wasm over Java and Flash? I don't really see technical advantages. There is only the social/legal aspect: wasm is not controlled by a single corporation.

<comment><USER17> There is an immense technical advantage: wasm doesn't enforce a high-level memory model like the JVM's classes or Flash's ActionScript. It allows straightforward use as a compiler target for low level languages which do not use a bytecode verifier for safety.

Any attempt to use those languages or their existing ecosystems of code on the JVM, Flash, or Javascript will be incredibly fragile and convoluted.

<comment><USER18> The WASM memory is just a Uint8Array in the JS VM. You can use a big byte array and du manual memory management in JVM too. It's a well known pattern on the JVM.

<comment><USER17> That's entirely unhelpful for the call stack, values stored in registers, loading and storing other sizes, atomics, etc...

Wasm solves that because it's aware of what it's doing. Java et al do not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Maybe I just can't find it, but the largest blocker for using Rust on the web for me is a lack of a exposure/binding system (like embind).

I'm not particularly interested in writing entire webapps in Rust but I do see it being useful for smaller self-contained modules inside a larger JS app. Not having a robust binding API makes that difficult.

EDIT: But unrelated criticisms aside, congrats on the progress! I'm excited to see more first class support of WASM from languages other than C/C++.

<comment><USER20> I think the real issue is the lack of DOM access rather than binding to JS.

<comment><USER21> Isn't the point of the whole architecture that from a security perspective all IO will always be through JavaScript.

Replicating the attack surface of the browser in JavaScript land in WebAssembly land goes against the whole design of it.

It's for the community to make nice libraries that expose the browser features to WebAssembly land in JavaScript. It's also the right place to deal with cross browser differences.

<comment><USER20> Well the IO is ultimately handled/sandboxed by the browser not by JavaScript so as far as security is concerned JavaScript and WASM should have the same access to IO/Web APIs. I think the attack surface you are talking about is really a implementation detail and browsers could use a common middleware that both JavaScript and WASM can use.

In a distant future I would see JavaScript actually compiled to WASM(maybe the browser would pipe it directly into a WASM compiler before to execute it) to reduce the maintenance costs and perhaps also the attack surface you are talking about.

The whole point of WASM was to cut off the middle man (i.e. JavaScript) so that we can reach native-like performance. WASM should be the ultimate dominator not JavaScript.

>> It's for the community to make nice libraries that expose the browser features to WebAssembly land in JavaScript. It's also the right place to deal with cross browser differences.

I believe the community could make nice libraries compiled to WASM that anyone can use regardless of the programming language. JavaScript would be just another language(albeit a popular one, at least due legacy reasons).

<comment><USER21> >I believe the community could make nice libraries compiled to WASM that anyone can use regardless of the programming language. JavaScript would be just another language(albeit a popular one, at least due legacy reasons).

I understand and respect the aim -- the browser should be ambivalent about programming languages.

But this is not intention, because it is quite unfeasable. WebAssembly allows one to target the web with much more low-level languages, but that also means that the languages dictate the memory structure of things. In WebAssembly world there are no 'javascript arrays' or 'object hashmaps'.

Imagine mapping the Javascript DOM API surface (with all its dynamic datastructures and callbacks) to C++, Haskell and Smalltalk. Three languages that may compile to WebAssembly, but would have drastically different internal datastructures. And all of that data marshalling that you would need to do, would need to happen for every dom feature for every language that compiles to WebAssembly.

OR! We just implement an API that does nothing more than interop with JS land. This doesn't change often and it will be easy to support many different languages quickly.

Think of Javascript as the BASH of the web. In a shell script you would pipe the output of one written-in-c program to the input of a written-in-rust program. With HTML+JS you would hookup the heavy part of the application and plug the IO's exactly how you want them. Its closer to configuration, really, much like a shell script.

So there needs to be some glue language, and we need to support Javascript and its DOM operations in a way that is completely backwards compatible, and at least as fast (read: tighly coupled) as it is now. And we want to limit the attack surface. There is no other choice than that Javascript will be that glue language.

But its fitting, because Javascript like BASH is a language whose strongest competitive advantage is compatibility. Like BASH it will be the glue language and shell of a platform.

<comment><USER20> The web APIs are described using the Web IDL and I believe that could be translated to C++ , Haskell and pretty much any language with more or less effort. In fact I think there are bindings for some languages such Python and Objective C though they are not open. I see no reason why a WASM interface could not be exposed (the code itself could be developed in C/C++ and compiled to WASM)for the web APIs and exposed to the client.

[https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Co...](https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/DisplayWebContent/Tasks/DOMObjCBindings.html)

[https://www.gnu.org/software/pythonwebkit/](https://www.gnu.org/software/pythonwebkit/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I would like to code WebAssembly by hand. Are there any good tools / tutorials on this?

<comment><USER23> Do you mean something like this? [https://mbebenita.github.io/WasmExplorer/](https://mbebenita.github.io/WasmExplorer/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> And there is already a browserify transform to compile inline rust to webassembly for browser code: [https://github.com/browserify/rustify](https://github.com/browserify/rustify)

</comment><comment><USER25> Great. I like the way Rust is going on about.

</comment><comment><USER26> What is the Rusty way of handling memory management for a game engine client deployed on WebAssembly? When a program is running a game loop, there are certain entities which will stick around across frames, and there are certain entities which definitely will not. Is there a way to enforce that most of the implementation of the game reside in pure functions, while making memory management nearly bulletproof?

<comment><USER12> Nothing about this is specific to WebAssembly; you'd write the same Rust code as you would for any other target.

<comment><USER26> In that case, what's the Rusty way to handle a game loop, in which one wants to encourage the use of pure functions? I must confess: I'm thinking of using Rust and a few other languages as a compiler target for a unified Web Client + Server game engine. Is there a particular way in which Rust could support this better than other languages compiling to WebAssembly?

<comment><USER12> Rust is not super worried about purity. That said, Rust is also more pure-ish than not; the large control over mutability and sharing helps. Controlling allocations is also generally easy, as there's no special things that are doing allocation behind your back. Arenas/memory pools are well supported too.

> better than other languages compiling to WebAssembly?

The best supported languages for this are C, C++, and Rust. So that's really the comparison here, IMO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Such a great news!

I'm looking forward DOM integration with wasm, and potentially a way to compile from scala native to wasm.

</comment><comment><USER28> Once rust is implemented in rust, I can run rustc in browser and get binaries for windows, for example?

<comment><USER12> Rust is written in Rust, with the exception of LLVM. C++ can be compiled to wasm too though, so that's not the blocker.

The bigger issue is that rustc uses features that aren't in wasm yet, like threads and file loading and such. It'll happen eventually, but not just yet...

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Rust glued to React Native or the latter actually ported to Rust sounds like Nirvana.

<comment><USER30> And webrender as rendering layer for desktop apps to replace electron

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Has anyone given any thought to dynamic linking wasm objects to save bandwidth?

<comment><USER12> It totally works, it's just not particularly easy to do. wasm modules have import and export sections; you'd instantiate the std module first, the instantiate the module that depends on it, pointing its imports at std's exports. I don't know of any tooling that makes this super easy at the moment though, you basically have to do it by hand as far as I know.

<comment><USER32> I don't think you can at runtime from wasm though. Imports are resolved at load time. Sure there are call indirect that let you dynamically change the function index but not the import/export. Now if you were willing to reload, you could use the JS API to create modules at runtime with dynamically downloaded pieces, but once created, that's it I think.

<comment><USER12> Sure, I'm talking about "instantiate one big module" vs "instantiate several smaller modules, then finally the last module". Which is a bit different than what you're talking about; you're right that after you've instantiated, you can't change imports.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> How does the performance of WASM compare to JIT'd JS code?

<comment><USER34> This makes me wonder: does WASM allow a JIT (specializer)? I.e., does WASM allow self-modifying code or code to write code?

If not, then JIT'ed JS could still be faster than WASM.

<comment><USER12> Wasm code is normally JIT-ed by the JS VM. That is, browser implementations don't have an entire separate VM for wasm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Actually, I don't know why so many people are so excited about webassembly. Yes, it is faster than JS, but JS itself is not that slow and on the other hand we loose the open nature of the human readable web.

<comment><USER36> Minifiers don't output any readable JavaScript anyway. Yes, it can be "decompiled" back to something readable, but so can WASM.

<comment><USER35> Actually, with minified JS you do not have to "decompile" anything. It is just pressing the pretty print button in your dev-tools and you can use your normal debugger (just without propper names) to step through the code.</comment></comment></comment>


Enter the dragon on the road to a trade war - <AUTHOR> https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/08/article/enter-the-dragon-on-the-road-to-a-trade-war/ <comment><USER2> This article reminds me of the mini-trade war between Uruguay and Brazil in the 1990s (I was very young so I don't remember exactly when it was). Brazil decided to close the land border for 2 weeks. In the meantime, Uruguay's dairy exports sat on the border waiting... The products expired, and the government had to bail out the milk cooperative.

They still had a free-trade agreement.

Agreements don't mean anything except in the US, Canada, parts of the European Union, Japan, Singapore, Australia, and a couple of other countries.

Non-tariff barriers are way pretty effective in slowing trade:

US could easily block any food imports until pests are no longer an issue in Chinese food supply chain. [https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/08/voracious-pest- threatens-chi...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/08/voracious-pest-threatens- chinas-crops-could-boost-need-for-imports.html)

US could easily block any products from factories that haven't passed US safety inspections. [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health- pharmaceuticals-ch...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health- pharmaceuticals-china/eu-officials-clash-with-chinese-firm-on-drug-factory- inspection-idUSKCN1LS25J)

<comment><USER3> > US could easily block ...

But does the US even have enough inspectors and inspections, enough bureaucrats, enough reliable data about all those factories and farms and goods? The fact is that the US doesn't even know what's being imported.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This story is crazy. They also forgot to mention that the captain, Zhan Qixiong, was supposedly drunk[1]. To add more ridiculousness to it.

[1] [https://books.google.nl/books?id=tymWDwAAQBAJ&printsec=front...](https://books.google.nl/books?id=tymWDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=nl#v=snippet&q=captain%20was%20drunk&f=false)

<comment><USER5> ah, that was my assumption because it seems such an obvious explanation of trying to knock out another vessel with your own. It does remove a bit of the "china invaded japan" feeling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The comment section on the linked 2010 Chinese trawler ramming into the Japanese Coast Guard boat video is quite entertaining, nothing like international disputes on YouTube (some of the brave ones are even claiming the coast guard was the one who purposefully turned first!):

[https://youtu.be/1ZbsmKrjxXk](https://youtu.be/1ZbsmKrjxXk)

I love these long form stories that mix relevant history with informed analysis. Instead of poorly masked politicized version of some current event presented as news, which gets exhausting after a while.

I need to remind myself to read more of this type of stuff and there's plenty around.

</comment><comment><USER7> The US was already in a trade war with China by the time the US decided to act.

</comment><comment><USER8> China is learning ways of US.

</comment><comment><USER3> calling these things a trade "war" is, IMHO, not all that useful. it doesn't help us much to understand the phenomenon. in a true war, people are actively killing other people, and violently destroying infrastructure and capturing geographical territory. many many lives are lost quickly.

IMHO, we might better call it a tax hike, a new regulatory regime, new trade restrictions, a rebalancing of domestic priorities, an attempt by government to increase or reduce a trade deficit, or something else. and we may well decide it's foolish and bad and stupid. but it's not really a war in the true sense.

<comment><USER9> It's called a trade war because historically people were actively killing other people, starting with the Anglo-Dutch wars in the 17th and 18th centuries.

We've now largely abandoned the practice of actively killing over trade, but the nomenclature remains by precedent, and is understood by all.

<comment><USER3> +1 Thanks for the informative historical comparison. I appreciate it. Interesting. I do have a bit of trouble drawing parallels though.

I mean, the US is not requiring, say, that goods imported to US ports be exclusively carried by US ships, as the English did. The US is not taking possession of any of the many Chinese owned port facilities which currently operate in a large number of US cities. The US is not demanding that only US merchant ships be allowed to carry cargo across certain regions of the world's oceans. And, China has not, for instance, sailed up the Potomac and stolen any US vessels.

Most of this is playing out in terms of taxes and tariffs. It is almost totally bureaucratic and regulatory in nature.

<comment><USER9> It's using whatever means to apply pressure to a foreign government in order to make them capitulate on a trade matter. In the old days it was done with guns, then later with overt rules set forth by dominant parties, and now via internal policy decisions that affect outside parties. It's simply applying the same pressure by more subtle means as time goes on. China is the only one so far taking it to its logical conclusion: giving the outward appearance of doing everything properly while secretly discriminating against and sabotaging your opponent. Western democracies do this internally, but not to such a degree internationally (yet).

And in fact they may not do it ever, because such tactics require an opaque bureaucratic system and large-scale centralized control that Western-style countries simply don't have.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Cryptonomicon: Concentration vs. Ejaculation/BeingInLove analysis - <AUTHOR> http://www.euskalnet.net/larraorma/crypto/slide63.html <comment><USER2> Hi, forgive me if this is a bit of a "noob" question, but could someone explain in layman's terms, what is going on in this website? What's the purpose? I'm having a hard time following the point of the discussion on this page, and frankly it also makes me feel uncomfortable.

One example snippet from the page:

>So much for the basic theory. Now, when he was at Pearl Harbor, he discovered something that, in retrospect, should have been profoundly disquieting. Namely, that ejaculations obtained in a whorehouse (i.e., provided by the ministrations of an actual human female) seemed to drop [sigma] below the level that Waterhouse could achieve through executing a Manual Override. In other words, the post-ejaculatory horniness level was not always equal to zero, as the naive theory propounded above assumes, but to some other quantity dependent upon whether the ejaculation was induced by Self or Other: [sigma] =[sigma sub self] after masturbation but [sigma]=[sigma sub other] upon leaving a whorehouse, where [sigma sub self] > [sigma sub other] an inequality to which Waterhouse's notable successes in breaking certain Nip naval codes at Station Hypo were directly attributable, in that the many convenient whorehouses nearby made it possible for him to go somewhat longer between ejaculations.</comment>


Google wave is closing sevcie on 30th April 2012 - <AUTHOR>

Here is the mail that I just got:
Dear Wavers,
More than a year ago, we announced that Google Wave would no longer be developed as a separate product. At the time, we committed to maintaining the site at least through to the end of 2010. Today, we are sharing the specific dates for ending this maintenance period and shutting down Wave. As of January 31, 2012, all waves will be read-only, and the Wave service will be turned off on April 30, 2012. You will be able to continue exporting individual waves using the existing PDF export feature until the Google Wave service is turned off. We encourage you to export any important data before April 30, 2012.
If you would like to continue using Wave, there are a number of open source projects, including Apache Wave. There is also an open source project called Walkaround that includes an experimental feature that lets you import all your Waves from Google. This feature will also work until the Wave service is turned off on April 30, 2012.
For more details, please see our help center.
Yours sincerely,
The Wave Team <comment><AUTHOR> Here is the URL for the same announcement:

[http://www.google.com/support/wave/bin/answer.py?answer=1083...](http://www.google.com/support/wave/bin/answer.py?answer=1083134)</comment>


Original Interview with Edward Snowden in English - <AUTHOR> http://mediathek.daserste.de/sendungen_a-z/3304234_ard-sondersendung/19295624_edward-snowden-interview-in-english

<comment><USER2> Can you verify whether that URL is geo-IP restricted to germany? I've read it is (but can't easily verify it here). Consider linking to the copy on archive.org:

[https://archive.org/details/snowden_interview_en](https://archive.org/details/snowden_interview_en)

or on Vimeo:

[http://vimeo.com/85155978](http://vimeo.com/85155978)

</comment><comment><USER3> As Jeff Jarvis wrote: Yo, @ndr, if you want to change the world with your journalism, you have to let the world see it!

[https://twitter.com/jeffjarvis/status/427803809688338432](https://twitter.com/jeffjarvis/status/427803809688338432)</comment>


What should I do to get hired by Facebook/Google? - <AUTHOR> I am an average PHP and front end developer with   3 years of experience. I want to take a year to dedicate myself to learn skills required to land a job at Google/Facebook. How should I proceed? <comment><USER2> Getting hired by FB/Gogle/etc is roughly a 2 step process:

\- get past resume screening to the phone screen

\- do well in your interviews

The first part can be done in a bunch of ways, including having interesting projects on your resume or getting a referred by a current employee.

The second question is largely things that are covered by the book "Cracking the Coding Interview". People report that studying this book and related online resources for a month or so is enough to do well in the interview process.

I don't really know how they review resumes, but you should apply to some jobs to see if you can get a phone interview; if you do, then all you really need is to do well in your interviews.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. My resume got reviewed by Gayle who is the writer of cracking the coding interview in 2013. [https://www.quora.com/How-does-this-resume-sound- for-a-job-a...](https://www.quora.com/How-does-this-resume-sound-for-a-job-at- a-Silicon-Valley-company-like-Google-Microsoft-etc)

<comment><USER2> Have you tried sending your resume in yet? If you haven't, you really should.

Also, if you are not getting through at the resume screening stage, but feel like you can crack the interviews, consider using a middleman like interviewing.io or TripleByte. Google doesn't seem to use these, but FB does, and a bunch of smaller high profile companies do, so that may be a useful path.

Also, consider that companies can be pretty stupid about their recruiting (because they do get so many resumes) and focus on things like the companies you've worked at before, so it may be useful to work at another respected company for a little bit and then try again.

If getting interviews isn't an issue: study up on CTCI, and depending on seniority "design interview" questions (which tend to be, how well do you know software end-to-end).

Also, don't get hung up on these companies, they're certainly good places to work, but they're not the only good places to work.</comment></comment></comment>


BodhiLinux - <AUTHOR> http://bodhilinux.com

<comment><AUTHOR> How does this linux look?</comment>


A Bitcoin mine went up in flames, affecting the entire network - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/293418/an-enormous-bitcoin-mine-went-up-in-flames-affecting-the-entire-network/ <comment><USER2> Err... No, the network didn't even notice. There's so much noise in the hash rate that any signal is lost. See [https://blockchain.info/charts/hash- rate](https://blockchain.info/charts/hash-rate) and try to find the "disruption".

<comment><USER3> Wow, rate of increase there is crazy. I don't know a ton about the whole bitcoin ecosystem, but it's pretty interesting that in the past year, the hashrate has grown 100X while the value of a bitcoin has fallen about 66%.

<comment><USER4> The advent of ASICs designed for bitcoin mining made the difference. More hashrate for less electricity, and thus lower costs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is allegedly what a fire in a bitcoin mine looks like: [http://www.jwz.org/blog/2014/11/grim-meathook-mining- disaste...](http://www.jwz.org/blog/2014/11/grim-meathook-mining-disaster/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Wow it did actually go up in flames. I thought that was just going to be hyperbole in the title, but I was incorrect.

<comment><USER7> Me too. Add fires to energy consumption among the perverse results skeptics will harp on for the arbitrary constraints imposed by bitcoin.

<comment><USER8> Are you saying that energy consumption isn't a problem? Why not?

<comment><USER9> Because the blockchain is awesome and the government is bad. They'd use bubble sort, efficiency be damned, if they could find a way to keep the bankers out of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm surprised at the severity of the fire; it doesn't look like bitcoin mining equipment would be comprised of much flammable material - it's mostly metal and silicon and PCBs. The former two are essentially nonflammable, while the latter usually being made of FR-4 is flame-retardant (UL94V0).

<comment><USER11> There's always at least a bit of plastic. That's quite flammable, and produces toxic smoke as a bonus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The article has a sensational title, nothing at all was disrupted, not even slightly.

<comment><USER13> Well, someone's mining rig was disrupted

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm just thinking someone lost a lot of money. I doubt there was any sort of insurance.

<comment><USER15> Agreed. Taking out insurance on expensive facilities requires a degree of intelligence and forethought that one doesn't really expect in the kind of person who builds said facilities with flammable tiles and doesn't include a fire-suppression system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > But Gizmodo suggests it could have spread due to flammable acoustic foam and > suggested that the facility probably lacked in a sprinkler system that most > high-end data centers in the US would have as standard

Are sprinkler systems in data centers really the standard? How well does standard server hardware operate after contact with water from the sprinkler system?

I work at a company that runs a data center that has a nitrogen-based fire suppression system, so that the servers can continue to run uninterrupted. That sounds a lot more expensive, but also seems to make more sense to me.

<comment><USER17> Sprinklers are very common, mostly dry-pipe systems to avoid water leakage. There are some alternatives like HI-FOG, which uses less water and therefore may do less damage to the room's equipment.

It is very undesirable for the equipment in the room to get wet. A sprinkler activation generally results in partial or total loss of the equipment in the room, and even if you can get stuff running again, it's going to take a while. However, it's even less desirable for people to die or the building to burn down.

Fire suppression systems that operate by removing oxygen from the room (such as Halon) can kill people who are trapped inside. I haven't seen a facility with this type of system in a long time.

Also, most datacenters have very strict rules about flammable material (like cardboard) on the datacenter floor. Most sites aren't super diligent about enforcing it, but just having the rules shifts the blame onto you. Imagine being on the hook financially for tens of thousands of servers because something caught on fire in your cage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I sure hope they had an offsite backup or address for their mined coins.

<comment><USER19> I'm sure they do. Unless they had insurance though, the investment into the datacenter and servers will be lost forever.</comment></comment>


Free and Open Source Software Is Dead - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@gr33ndata/free-and-open-source-software-is-dead-8a95bac74716 <comment><USER2> > Which means, if tomorrow, Python and all the libraries I use became closed > source softwares, I wouldn't notice a difference as long as the cloud > provider my business uses will still provide them as part of its package.

AGPL is not mentioned, but it should solve the problem, shouldn't it?</comment>


Einstein wrong? - <AUTHOR> http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-First-Test-That-Proves-General-Theory-of-Relativity-Wrong-20259.shtml This experiment seems to show some factors predicted by the theory of relativity are off by a large amount. <comment><USER2> _"If confirmed, this would be a major breakthrough"_

Well... has it been? This article is from 4 years ago

<comment><USER3> Well, it hasn't been _dis_ proven. <http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0912/0912.1108v1.pdf></comment></comment>


Ask HN: The best way to convert paper drawings to digital images ? - <AUTHOR> I am making an application for exchanging virtual goods. I have someone in the family that is very talented and can draw pretty much any form of art on paper. However, I want these drawings for my application. What is the best/easiest/cheapest way to convert these images to digital format ? <comment><USER2> Scan it, ship it off to your outsourced art talent, tell them what sort of deliverable you need, and let them worry about how they accomplish it. They're the professionals, after all.

(Outsourced artistic talent is very, very cheap. Find somebody you like on one of the sites, develop a working relationship, bring them work on a regular basis. Its a win for you and a win for them: you don't waste your super- valuable time doing low-value-added tasks, they don't have J. Clueless Client asking for 15 revisions and then dickering around with actually paying them for services rendered.)

</comment><comment><USER3> If you want vector graphics, my meager experience fwiw:

Some months ago, I used potrace to convert drawings to SVG. Specifically, on a Windows box, if I recall correctly, I used it via the front end Rasterbater (needs .NET 2). I was quite satisfied with the result.

This was for some simple black on white images. The Wikipedia page for potrace (first link, below) has a bit of language about Inkscape being able to do a color decomposition.

        > Inkscape is capable of producing color images by
        > decomposing each channel into several black and white
        > images and tracing them separately with Potrace.

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

<http://potrace.sourceforge.net/>

Link to Rasterbater is under the anchor below (it's a link to a zip of the program; the program doesn't appear to have it's own descriptive page, although the hosting site has a one line description on the default page for the domain):

<http://potrace.sourceforge.net/#other>

Regarding Inkscape, this boingboing page (I happened on while googling Rasterbater) has the following comment:

[http://www.boingboing.net/2007/11/21/web-site-converts- ph.ht...](http://www.boingboing.net/2007/11/21/web-site-converts-ph.html)

        > Inkscape ( http://www.inkscape.org/ ) uses Potrace
        > (http://potrace.sourceforge.net/ ) and optionally
        > Autotrace ( http://autotrace.sourceforge.net/ ) for
        > it's own raster to vector. It costs 100% less than
        > the price of Illustrator CS or Corel, a.k.a free.

</comment><comment><USER4> Scan, and Vectorize with Vector Magic - <http://vectormagic.com/home>

</comment><comment><USER5> recently, i:

1\. used my camera to take photo of an illustrated page from a very old book (copyright expired). i borrowed the book via LINK+, and it was delivered to my local library for free.

2\. used Vector Magic to vectorize (within 2 free "credits" limit) the image.

3\. edited result of #2 with Inkscape, so it's much more "stylized" (much simplified; just a few filled-and-stroked paths).

</comment><comment><USER6> A scanner? If you want it vector then use illustrator to vector-trace it...

There are far too many options...</comment>


Co-working and living spaces in Portland, OR? - <AUTHOR>

Hi HNers,
I'm starting a new blog which will cover co-working and living spaces, as well as the people that use them. I plan on relying heavily on photo essays, textual blog posts, and video; travel will be necessary.
My question is, can anyone here recommend co-working spaces that I should check out in Portland? And if so, could any of you put me in touch with those behind the spaces, so I could get the chance to talk to them and potentially visit their spaces?
For my background on what I'm doing with this project, check out the crowdfunding campaign: http://forcerealfundraising.com/nomadic-hackers <comment><USER2> There are a lot of co-working locations in Portland and I think the list continues to grow. There are all types from small startups, incubators, and hackerspaces. It has been a few years since I was involved in Portland's tech community but here are a few I can remember: OTBC: [http://www.otbc.org/](http://www.otbc.org/) Nedspace: [http://nedspace.com/](http://nedspace.com/) PIE: [http://www.piepdx.com/](http://www.piepdx.com/) Portland Startup Incubator: [http://www.pdx.edu/accelerator/](http://www.pdx.edu/accelerator/) Collective Agency: [http://collectiveagency.co/](http://collectiveagency.co/) Flux: [http://fluxlab.io/](http://fluxlab.io/) ADX: [http://www.adxportland.com/](http://www.adxportland.com/)

Silicon Florist is the premier blog on Portland's startup scene. [http://siliconflorist.com/](http://siliconflorist.com/)

Calagator is an aggregator for events: [http://calagator.org/](http://calagator.org/)

Calagator also provides a list of venues: [http://calagator.org/venues?all=1](http://calagator.org/venues?all=1)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Much appreciated.

<comment><USER2> Sure thing! As for actual people to contact. [http://twitter.com/turoczy](http://twitter.com/turoczy) is the writer for Silicon Florist and has ties to Pie. [https://twitter.com/stevemorris](https://twitter.com/stevemorris) is the director of OTBC.</comment></comment></comment>


I think I just figured out the killer App for the Apple smartwatch - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jason/i-think-i-just-figured-out-the-killer-app-for-the-apple-smartwatch-dc84eb7a2f12

<comment><USER2> That's a great idea even for email or mobile phones.</comment>


Natural and Artificial Intelligence (1988) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://philosophy.cua.edu/res/docs/faculty/rss/Artificial%20Intelligence.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> Written by Fr. Robert Sokolowski, a Catholic priest and professor of philosophy. [1]

Included in "The Artificial Intelligence Debate: False Starts, Real Foundations", published by MIT Press. [2]

[1] [http://philosophy.cua.edu/faculty/sokolowski/](http://philosophy.cua.edu/faculty/sokolowski/) [2] [https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/artificial-intelligence- debat...](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/artificial-intelligence-debate)</comment>


FBI can turn on your webcam without you even knowing - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailydot.com/news/fbi-webcam-indicator-light-surveillance/

<comment><USER2> And here I thought I was being paranoid when I was happy that my laptop came with a plastic switch to cover the webcam with O.o

<comment><AUTHOR> What is the model? I was thinking of smth like that years ago, even as a physical add-on like smth to glue-on. I found nothing like that for thinkpads nor macbooks

<comment><USER3> A webcam can easily be 'disabled' with some tape. I'm more worried about someone enabling the microphone (harder to disable internally)

<comment><USER4> Can't you bypass the built-in mic by plugging something in the mic jack, like spare earbuds, or just a connector cut from some old or broken mic, headphone or spekear?

<comment><AUTHOR> What about macbooks all-in-one headphones and mic port? What about smartphone/tablet cameras and mics?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


'Hijacked' Bank of England audio sold to hedge funds seconds ahead of broadcast - <AUTHOR> https://news.sky.com/story/bank-of-england-cuts-audio-feed-over-hedge-fund-hijack-11890310 <comment><USER2> It's not a surprise. There have been rumours for a long time that one of the large UK banks get the Prime Minister's speeches 30 minutes before they are made.

</comment><comment><USER3> is this really a surprise? I was virtually present (doing techy stuff) at an early morning trading-strategy meeting at an investtment bank many years ago.

The lead asked which way the interest-rate decision later that day was going to go, and he was told, basically, "Not sure, we think ...".

His immediate response was "I pay you to KNOW what's been decided", and the subsequent conversation revealed that he wasn't kidding.

</comment><comment><USER4> I wonder if it's a room with no connectivity otherwise, because I imagine if you're in the room live, sending [UP] or [DOWN] with human latency would give you 6 seconds of relative exclusivity of the information.

</comment><comment><USER5> No criminal charges anywhere in sight.

<comment><USER6> Should there be? This seems more like a civil matter.</comment></comment>


Nancy Pelosi's Husband Purchases Large Blocks of Options on Amazon, Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/pierpont_morgan/status/1066826147042856961 <comment><USER2> I like how everyone in that thread is ignoring the AT&T call in the middle, even though it's worth more than the facebook one. Guess net neutrality on the wireless spectrum is dead for at least the next couple years.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yea, I think most silicon valley employees would be shocked if they found how many members of the House and Senate had been 100 ft away in a secretish meeting at their company.

Also to put this in perspective, these secretish meetings occur at every important financial sector of commerce. We have a real corruption problem in our government.

</comment><comment><USER4> 'Hard for house dems to regulate Silicon Valley when the likely speaker's husband is knee deep in tech derivatives. $AMZN $FB' ouch

<comment><USER5> Wouldn't be hard if these were put options…

<comment><USER6> The tweet says they were call options

<comment><USER5> I know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think it's relevant to see in the title what kind of options (call/put) he's buying.

<comment><USER7> It's literally in the first sentence of this twitter thing.

<comment><USER5> I know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This probably proves Pelosi's family is on the up-and-up.

Not only did he disclose same-day, those trades were terrible ones. . . if there was corruption or advanced insider knowledge, he would have bet the other way. Instead, they will likely all expire as worthless.

</comment><comment><USER9> Fake news. For what reason shouldn't he invest? Is there a conflicting proceeding the US? In that case then he'd close the position or the disclosure would be blocked. Isn't this the point of disclosure? Also, not sure why everyone is so excited over options (the right - not the obligation - to buy the underlying stock), which again has been properly disclosed. This is gaslight hypocrisy.

<comment><USER9> @pierpont_morgan looks a lot like a Russian troll account, too

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why is this flagged?

<comment><AUTHOR> Because it doesn't fit the narrative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> and that side is supposed to stand up to the "pro-business" side. Rotten system, we have. say they are 500 important elections every couple of years.

500 * $5000 each = $2,500,000. Let's quadruple the amount to $10m to allow giving more to a person or for staff to handle that. That means that every state AG, Governor, Senator, Congressman etc etc can get money from hundreds of US companies and the companies would not have to switch to generic cola to afford it. What's $10 million a year to MSFT, AAPL, Google, Facebook etc???</comment>


Assange, the law of limitation, and the next eight days - <AUTHOR> http://jackofkent.com/2015/08/assange-the-law-of-limitation-and-the-next-eight-days/ <comment><USER2> This is now a prime example in what happens when politics gets involved with justice. The police interviewed everyone involved, including Assange. The district chief prosecutor looked at it and concluded to drop it. Almost a month later, even through there had been no new information available, the political assigned director of Public Prosecution decided to reopen the case and immediately issues a international arrest warrant for Assange who by then had left the country. Assange then later goes into political refugee, while prosecutor refuses to continue with the case for political reasons, which then created a deadlock. A Swedish judge then order the prosecutor to continue with the case, but by then its too late to start diplomatic negotiations to get into the embassy and the case falls through to the statue of limitations.

If the choice had been between the possibility of incompetent police and prosecutor that might cause a criminal go free, or the political mess above, I rather go with the first option. The accused, the potential victims, and the tax payers has all been suffering from this case and the only beneficiary aspect has been the diplomatic relation between Sweden and US. That outcome should be a clear sign that justice and politics do not belong together.

<comment><USER3> I completely agree with your point in the specific case, but completely disagree in general.

Justice IS political. Justices either run for office as political public figures or are appointed by political public figures. The justice system is an attempt to apply a subset of morality for the betterment of society, which is ultimately a subjective political exercise.

<comment><USER4> I don't disagree with your premise, but I can't think of any place outside of the US were judges are running for office and elected. In most places, they are more akin to some sort of civil servant, from an administration independent of the executive and legislative branch.

<comment><USER5> In switzerland (or at least Geneva) judges are elected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Regardless of what you think of Assange (personal take: flawed personality but ultimately heroic)...

Regardless of what you think of the charges against him (personal take: No way to know for sure, but gut feel is he made poor choices and wound up in the grey area of undesired sexual experiences that our society is currently struggling with how to properly define. In our natural humane desire to protect potential victims we are defaulting to deeming it "sexual assault", but the reality is more complex as the assaulter is not even fully aware of their state)...

You have to admit it's super fucked up that Sweden is unable to charge someone with a crime if they can't interview them first? What if the suspect is a non- communitative deaf mute?

Seems like some law should be changed somewhere.

<comment><USER6> What's fucked up? Sweden's justice system seems to be far superior to the US's—both in taking very seriously charges of sexual assault that would probably be ignored in the US, and in taking very seriously the rights of the accused.

Assange has squandered his chance to clear his name, and sure seems to be at the least a creepy dude.

<comment><USER7> A 'comparison' to the US can't prove that Swedens system is not f __u __but only that the US might be even more so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Pretty outrageous that the prosecutor hasn't questioned him in London by now. This has been a huge police cost and is a great disservice to the alleged victims who would surely want the case to progress quickly.

I haven't seen any plausible reason why the prosecutor couldn't question him in London, especially given the exceptional circumstances of the case.

edit: Yes, I have seen the reasons put forward by the SPA mentioned in the article, but these complications were easily foreseeable and it is clear the Swedish prosecutor did not allow enough time to resolve them. Indeed the prosecutor claimed until this march (at which point she changed her mind) that it would be completely impossible to interview Assange at the embassy.

<comment><USER9> Did you read the article? It's not normally acceptable to demand to be questioned in another country, and when the prosecutor agreed to make an exception, a new (and impossible) condition was added. This is what the author of the article called "calling the bluff".

<comment><USER8> Yes I have read the article.

The Swedish prosecutor has had at least 3 years to organize questioning in the embassy but has left it until the last moment. Now it appears there is not enough time to sort out the (obviously complex) details. Whose fault it that?

The obvious counter-argument to 'calling the bluff' is that the prosecutor has kept the case in limbo for 5 years and then left it too late to organise questioning at the embassy. This allows the prosecutor to save face, and maximises Swedish US relations.

<comment><USER10> Since when have suspected sexual offenders been the ones to set the rules on when and where they're interviewed?

Assange has played his supporters and the 'Sweden are going to extradite me to the US' line to avoid facing being questioned over his behaviour

<comment><USER8> Assange is not setting the rules. The Ecuardorians set the rules for questioning in their embassy and the Swedish have no rules against questioning suspects abroad if necessary.

<comment><USER10> Assange is trying to set the rules…

He only claimed asylum when British courts rules he should go to Sweden.

If he was innocent why did he argue against going to Sweden?

He was in greater risk of being extradited to the US from the UK than he was from Sweden!

<comment><USER11> > If he was innocent why did he argue against going to Sweden?

Because if he was innocent, why should some random person in Sweden, in office or not, be allowed to mess up his travel schedule, just because they want him for "questioning"?

If St. Kitts and Nevis were to file an Interpol Red Notice tomorrow, seeking a person going by the alias "youngtaff" on hackernews: would you drop everything and fly there to sort out whatever mess they've made?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Although this particular case is highly political and likely fabricated, the tragedy of such a law of limitation applying to rape is sickening. That's not just in Sweden, but many other jurisdictions, including most of the US states. The real question here isn't about Assange--that's an uninteresting political aside.

The real question is why do states have a statute of limitations on a crime that's sometimes a lot worse than murder and in the best cases, only slightly less bad? Yes, a statute of limitations is incredibly useful for petty crimes like stealing and other small things like that. We're talking here about rape and sexual assault though. As far as I can see, this is still a reflection on how poorly our societies treat women, even in the west. Perhaps the fact that the men in charge don't want to acknowledge the horror of rape? Women, however, are not the only ones getting raped. I truly cannot fathom the reason for this horrific limitation on justice, and I think if men being raped was more of a problem (outside prisons and jails where the authorities generally refuse to accept it happens) we would have no such limitations on rape or sexual assault.

<comment><USER13> As I've understood, the accusation for rape in this case is for Assange starting to have sex with the alleged victim while she was sleeping, without wearing a condom (the "not wearing a condom" is the key part here; otherwise it apparently would have been technically illegal, but "consentual" in practical terms). Are you really saying that that is "only slightly less bad" than murder?

The 5 year limit, btw, only applies to the accusations for "Unlawful coercion" and "Sexual molestation" (times two). The rape accusation will remain open for another five years (unless the prosecutor decides to drop it).

<comment><USER12> Yes, having sex with someone while she/he is sleeping is rape and yes, as far as statute of limitations, it should be treated like murder. The only reason to not make the _punishment_ the same is that it would entice rapists to kill their victims. I think if you ask someone who has been raped how they'd compare that to murder, it'll be pretty damn close.

Even ten years is ridiculous for such a crime in a society that condemns this. What you're saying is that our societies don't really condemn this crime and it's not a big deal to ruin someone else's life by forcibly having sex with them. That's horrific, IMO, but seems to be the majority opinion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Most people here think this article is about Assange being guilty or not. It's not.

</comment><comment><USER7> Well waiting 5 years and then switching to strategy B (interview in London) 1-2 months before the last possible moment was obviously not the best strategy for the (potential) victims.

</comment><comment><USER7> If I went to my professor at university complaining that I waited 5 years and then could not solve the challenges b/c of not enough time left, he would just laugh at my assumption that I'm not responsible for the f __u __

</comment><comment><USER14> It does seem unbelievable that you can in essence go on the lam for five years and then you're free to carry on your life as before.

<comment><USER15> Agreed and very much a case of using the letter of the law to abuse the spirit of the law and in this case, avoid it.

He has argued all along that if he left he would be whisked away for nefarious trials by America and if that was the case then this 5 year date of his hiding will make no difference. Unless he just wanted to avoid the trial for whatever reason.

Still for a trial you need a victim and in this case, that victim was not Assange and we have a trial and victim who will not see justice or any form of trial - fair or not. So can imagine how they feel about this.

<comment><USER14> Even if we leave aside the specifics of the Assange case, I still find it astonishing as a general principle.

<comment><USER13> Is five years evading law enforcement really that much better than ~1 year in prison? (One year based on the fact that the five year limit only applies if the maximum penalty is at most 2 years[1], and presumably a first timer would not spend the whole 2 years in prison (and the actual sentence in this case might be below 2 years anyway))

The general principle, as far as I know, is based on the idea that the need for punishment is lessened by time.

[1] [https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preskription#Preskriptionstide...](https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preskription#Preskriptionstider_i_Sverige)

<comment><USER16> > Is five years evading law enforcement really that much better than ~1 year > in prison?

No, clearly not, especially considering the circumstances of the evasion is similar to a Swedish prison. He probably doesn't have a playstation in the Embassy, but he could have had one in his prison cell.

The only reason Assange submitted himself to being locked up into the embassy for 5 years is because he truly fears extradition to the US. In my opinion, rightly so. Remember Sweden allowed secret CIA extraordinary rendition, aka torture flights only a few years before the Assange event[1].

[1] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2005/05...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2005/05/20/AR2005052001605.html)

<comment><USER17> You don't truly believe that the UK, being "cousins" and with all the "special relationship", would be a less probable actor to allow this dreaded extraordinary rendition, do you?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Disappointing, but at least they might still be able to nail him for the remaining rape charge.

Hopefully his victims will eventually be able to see justice, despite his cowering behind the walls of the Ecuadorian embassy with spurious claims of political asylum.</comment>