Sony Filed a Copyright Claim Against the Stock Video I Licensed to Them - <AUTHOR> http://petapixel.com/2015/10/25/sony-filed-a-copyright-claim-against-the-stock-video-i-licensed-to-them/ <comment><USER2> I think Mitch Martinez(OP/content creator) did a good job of making it clear to Sony/Epic that false copyright claims are not acceptable.

IANAL but maybe for next time he should include a "false copyright claim" fee (plus attorneys fees) in the original license agreement.

On a related topic, Dreamworks were trying to get a license release for the Noisebridge logo[0], but apparently had difficulty understanding the concept of "fair use". It was pretty funny.

[0] [https://www.noisebridge.net/pipermail/noisebridge- discuss/20...](https://www.noisebridge.net/pipermail/noisebridge- discuss/2013-January/034416.html)

<comment><USER3> What would be great is if you could add a clause stating that any assertion of copyright (by them), including automated systems, would result in a revocation of the license. Then whenever you get a notice from youtube respond by demanding take-down or monetization of their videos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The YouTube notification contains:

        Due to a copyright claim, you are no longer monetizing the following
        YouTube video. It is still playable on YouTube, but the copyright
        owner could choose to show ads on it.

The key phrase is "but the copyright owner could choose to show ads on it".

Google is automatically transferring the benefits of copyright to anyone who files a claim?

That seems ripe for abuse.

Theoretically, you could claim copyright of a video, show your ads on it, and profit until the dispute is settled (if it ever is). A popular video could have hundreds of thousands of views before a dispute is settled and a company the size of Sony could probably claim some form of copyright infringement on thousands of videos.

And there's no downside (other than the effort/costs of filing the complaints), a small content provider won't pursue the perjury clause in the DMCA, it'd be too hard to prove (if they know about it at all). They'll just be happy it's over and go on with their lives.

</tinfoilhat>

<comment><USER5> The tin-foil hat is unnecessary. What you describe is happening, all the time.

It's not even perjury. I was going to describe things that falsely take down videos as "perjury-bots" but then I remembered that major sites such as YouTube and Twitch have set up their own expedited process outside the legal system. They'll even find the content for you.

You just have to say "This sound/video is mine, whenever it appears", and when a sufficiently high percentage of sound and video actually _are_ yours, organizations will believe you whether or not it's true.

So large content companies just claim everything they possibly can, regardless of whether they're allowed to or not. It's all upside (more revenue from videos!) and no downside (nobody will hold you accountable).

<comment><USER4> I agree with your conclusions, the 'tinfoilhat' was for my conspiratorial tone with no citations to back it up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> >Explain that if they do not remove their copyright claim within the time allotted that I will revoke their rights to use my footage in their video due to a terms of use violation.

The DMCA states they are filing the take down under penalty of perjury. It's very slippery though.

If Sony says "This is A, and I own A. Take down Small Time's video." Then all is good so long as Sony actually owns A. If the content is B, it's a great inconvenience to Small Time, but there's really no recourse.

However, what Sony did was say "This is B, I own B. Take down Small Time's video." The content IS B. Sony has misrepresented their ownership of B. Now they've perjured themselves.

My understanding is that perjury is punishable by up to five years in prison. It seems like someone at Sony should now be under investigation for this little 'oops.' Even if Small Time is satisfied with the outcome, it sounds like someone at Sony still violated the law.

<comment><USER7> No one ever gets charged under that, because it requires _knowingly_ filing a false claim. Almost all of these takedowns are automated, and it's hard to say an algorithm knowingly lied.

Even with a human in the loop (for example, the "copyright holder has confirmed the claim" from the article) it's hard to prove someone lied. "Idiot intern" makes a generally acceptable defense.

<comment><USER8> When it comes to criminal law, the standard is "knew or should have known". At the very least, Sony and possibly YouTube are liable for the results of a flawed algorithm causing them to break the law. It's been in (mis)use for many years now, and it's obvious it's a horribly inaccurate method of determining copyright violations. Without human intervention to investigate and ensure each and every claim is legitimate, YouTube and the copyright claimants are committing fraud and perjury on a massive scale.

<comment><USER9> YouTube and its system doesn't issue DMCA takedown requests; what law are they breaking?

It's not illegal to takedown whatever videos you want from your own platform, nor to allow a partner company from choosing videos to take down.

<comment><USER8> YouTube acts upon DMCA requests from companies claiming copyright infringement, using an algorithm that YouTube employs. When said request is known or should be known to be perjurious, the parties involved should be held liable.

While you are correct that YouTube reserves the right to remove whatever they want to from their site, they do not have the right to monetize on behalf of a third party (Sony, et. al.) content you create and own the copyright to, nor claim copyright on behalf of that third party, just by waving around the DMCA. However, that is exactly what they are doing, and are doing it under color of law, and while committing perjury to boot.

<comment><USER9> Why do you say they are using the DMCA? My point is exactly that: if you own the platform, you don't need the DMCA to take down videos from it!

 _they do not have the right to monetize on behalf of a third party (Sony, et. al.) content you create and own the copyright to_

Why not? YouTube can put ads on any video, why couldn't they distribute that income with whoever they want to?

<comment><USER8> > Why do you say they are using the DMCA?

Here's a great example of what I'm talking about:

[https://torrentfreak.com/youtube-deal-with-universal- blocks-...](https://torrentfreak.com/youtube-deal-with-universal-blocks-dmca- counter-notices-130405/)

> YouTube can put ads on any video, why couldn't they distribute that income > with whoever they want to?

It's a matter of trust. YouTube implemented a monetization policy to encourage regular folks to create viral content, and reward that effort with monetization for original works. However, YouTube is gaming their own system and stacking it in favor of Big Content. They are breaking the trust they asked their users to place in them, and breaking their own policies to support their biggest customers.

<comment><USER9> _> Here's a great example of what I'm talking about:_

While the email mentions a DMCA notice, I doubt there was one. Content-ID probably detected it, and UMG blocked it without needing to send any DMCA notice, just using YouTube's backend tools. If you search on the DMCA database that Google/Youtube uses, ChillingEffects, there's no match for a notice sent by UMG: [https://chillingeffects.org/notices/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&te...](https://chillingeffects.org/notices/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&term=rakim&term- require-all=true&sort_by=)

Essentially, my point is that the DMCA is a legal mechanism to force hosting services to comply, but it isn't needed in this case, since YouTube complies voluntarily.

 _> It's a matter of trust._

Oh, absolutely, I never meant to say that YouTube aren't being assholes by behaving like this, but we were talking about _legal_ rights, and I don't see them violating those.

And playing Devil's advocate, I'm not sure YouTube is all that interested in implementing these mechanisms - their customers are the advertisers, not Big Content. I'd say it's more like paying protection money after getting the proverbial horse head in the bed - or in this case, the barrage of lawsuits they got between 2008-2012.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _I recorded all of my phone calls with the person from Epic's legal department. I knew that without his acknowledgment of the recording that the call itself might not necessarily be admissible in court (depending on the state statutes), but knowing how fallible memory is, it would still provide me the ability to revisit exactly what was said on the calls and help me prepare for a legal battle if it came to that._

Besides the question of whether or not the contents of a recorded conversation is admissible in court, is it even legal to record a phone conversation without the other person's knowledge?

<comment><USER11> Yes, in some states it's legal to record telephone calls with the consent of a single party.

I read his disclaimer as "I'm in a one-party consent state, but the person I'm talking to may or may not be - and I have no idea how admissible this would be as evidence but I'm pretty sure I'm not breaking the law."

<comment><USER12> What matters is the state that you are making the recording in.

So if your state is a one party consent state and you are one of the parties it doesn't matter what the rules in the other state are.

Now what could get interesting is if you are in a one party state and you are calling on a cell phone and you hit a tower in another state. So then you claim that you are in State A and if they were to put in the effort to check or cell records they saw you hit the tower in State B then I would guess you would have to offer further proof of actually making the call in State A other than your statement that was the case. (As opposed to a land line where it's clear where you are located).

[http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/recording-phone-calls-and- co...](http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/recording-phone-calls-and- conversations)

<comment><USER13> What if you just route all your calls through a VoIP server in a one-party state, and record the call there?

<comment><USER12> Interesting thought. [1] Probably doesn't fill the letter of the law. Otoh that is what I would call "a leg to stand on". That is it gives some wiggle room and reasonable doubt that you weren't following the law. Would depend on the exact wording of each States law and how tight it was. Ianal but often things boil down to this type of thinking with other things as you probably know.

[1] For that matter what if you conference in a friend and the friend is the one that did the recording.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> At the case closed comments, why is there no discussion of receiving payment from SME? Surely the time and effort chasing down a bad copyright claim is worth more than receiving credit.</comment>


Introduction to Linux Control Groups (cgroups) - <AUTHOR> http://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/14-introduction-to-linux-control-groups-cgroups <comment><USER2> I'd love to see someone make a decent UI for this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, that would be cool. I just searched around to see if anyone did this, and it looks like someone thought about some ideas, and even put together some mockups [1, 2, 3]. This would actually be a really powerful tool via a nice UI, since you have to get your hands pretty dirty to use these effectively, but if this just had a task manager type interface, this would be really slick.

[1] [http://mairin.wordpress.com/2011/05/13/ideas-for-a- cgroups-u...](http://mairin.wordpress.com/2011/05/13/ideas-for-a-cgroups-ui/)

[2] [https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Design/CGroupsUI/Draft1](https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Design/CGroupsUI/Draft1)

[3] [https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Design/CGroupsUI](https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Design/CGroupsUI)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's the deal with Common Lisp? - <AUTHOR>

So I'd really like to try using Common Lisp more often, but I'm having a hard time getting into it. To start with, I thought I'd install SLIME, but of course it turns out the SLIME that ships with Debian is broken, so I have to check out the repository version. No big deal. Then, I thought I'd try fiddling with an IRC bot, everyone's favorite programming project. CL-IRC couldn't install (using ASDF-install) because one of its dependencies wouldn't build. Ok, I said, I don't mind working at a socket level. Oh, wait, here's half a dozen different socket libraries, some unmaintained, some still works in progress. I finally settled on usocket. Then, when Freenode's MOTD included a pound sign, which caused my reads to crash, I had to fiddle about some more until I finally found flexi-streams, which seems to be working ok for now.<p>Right now, Lisp is feeling like a massive twisty world of broken dependencies and half-finished libraries. Have I just hit a bad corner of the Lisp world? C may not be fancy but at least the standard libraries can talk to the network. I'd appreciate hearing from other people who came in, were similarly disgusted, but have come to understand the whole thing better. <comment><USER2> (Note, I myself started with Lisp prior to Common Lisp by a few years, but I used it near its inception and have vaguely followed it since then (I soon switched to Scheme and now am playing with Clojure).)

" _Have I just hit a bad corner of the Lisp world?_ "

Yes, you have; for the things you want to do you should try either a Scheme that has the libraries you need (I'm not sure if there are any (probably not, but maybe try one that e.g. already has IRC stuff?)) or Clojure, which by virtue of sitting on top of the JVM and having fast and clean interoperability handles the libraries problems.

Dependencies are handled by existing parts of the Java ecosystem and/or the relatively new Leiningen system (the name is a play on ant, the first Java build system).

Warning, in terms of functional programming, there's a continuum of CL < Scheme < Clojure. Unlike the others, Clojure is not multi-paradigm, you _will_ use it functionally (well, unless you use it as syntactic gloss for programming in Java, which misses much of the point).

Here's the most recent HN item on getting up to speed with Clojure: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1086562>

Note that getting SLIME up at this very moment might require a bit of trickery, a recent SLIME commit broke it for Clojure's use of it. Be sure to check out the Clojure Google group and feel free to ask any sorts of questions on it if you get stuck (the community is a lot better than CL's).

(Historical notes: CL is bad for networking and concurrency because it was formalized before there were standards for those areas and it has been stuck in amber since then. Various implimentations have non-standardized libraries for them (there may be something of a standard for threads, I forget, but in many CL implementations threading support itself is iffy at best). And you already know the networking story (which CL are you trying?).

Scheme standardization is _very_ slow; it is progressing, there are optional SRFI (Scheme Requests for Implementation) standards for each of the above (I think, not sure about networking), but I can't recommend it for what you're trying. If you e.g. wanted to start from the bottom up by going through the SICP or another book, that would be fine, or if you wanted to research language stuff it's great, but it just doesn't yet have a general modern programming ecosystem and won't for some years if ever. In general, you match your needs with the implementation and its packaged libraries and go from there. If you want to try that route anyway, ask me for some pointers.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Bad corner of the Lisp world? Socket libraries are the Skid Row of Common Lisp.

The reason it's hard to create a good library comes from an interplay of 3 things: streams, lack of standard character representation, and lack of standard foreign function interfaces. The latter two are sort of advantages in that if they were standardized in 1989 or whatever, we would probably have wound up with something stupid involving DOS code pages and Fortran on VMS.

Streams are convenient and most CL functions expect them. They're also a really inefficient way of using BSD sockets. Especially when your Lisp implementation's character encoding isn't UTF-8. So if you want to write fast network code in Lisp you basically need to use the raw POSIX FFI functions and byte arrays.

Then you get into fun stuff like vectored I/O (which you may or may not be able to do depending on whether your GC moves arrays around), and event-based I/O (which people disagree as to how to do properly). But it's ok, because none of the existing socket libraries try to support this anyway, so you're back to calling POSIX functions via FFI.

(I gave a presentation about this stuff last year: [http://carcaddar.blogspot.com/2009/11/november-montreal- sche...](http://carcaddar.blogspot.com/2009/11/november-montreal-schemelisp- user-group.html))

If your socket library is dependent on any third-party libraries, pray that the latest versions will not completely change their interface and make your library fail to compile. Then multiply all this by the half-dozen or so Common Lisp implementations people expect to be supported.

Just like Skid Row, this has been a recognized problem for many years (well over a decade for certain), and it's kind of hard to make it better. Flexi- streams over usocket is the best off-the-shelf solution, so you're probably doing the right thing.

</comment><comment><USER4> _I'd appreciate hearing from other people who came in, were similarly disgusted, but have come to understand the whole thing better._

Ok. The larger CL world is terribly fragmented. There's a smaller world inside the larger world which is really good. The trick for the beginner is distinguishing between the two, i.e. between what is detritus to be ignored ("massive twisty world of broken dependencies and half-finished libraries" describes that perfectly) and what is the real stuff (e.g. Edi Weitz's libraries like flexi-streams). Once you find your way to the smaller world, the fragmentation and dependency issues don't go away, but they become minor and occasional relative to the mind-blowing amazingness of what CL is good for.

How do you find your way to the real stuff? Trial-and-error and asking questions. Is that an acceptable answer? No; many people unfortunately never get over the confused/disgusted stage and bail. Does it work? Yes, very well, _if and when_ you get over those initial hurdles.

I fully agree that the above situation is upsetting when you compare it to things that just work out of the box. There's so much half-baked and half- working stuff in the CL world that I can only compare it to spam. A lot of Lispers are unhappy about this, and many attempts have been made to fix it, but it isn't quite clear what a definitive fix would require.

My personal hope is that the work being done by the Clozure-with-a-Z people (CCL) will blossom into a well-functioning, self-sufficient, obvious place for people to begin with Common Lisp. They do seem to be getting there. Importantly, they have the nucleus of something that CL has been lacking for a long time (since, I suppose, the implosion of comp.lang.lisp into various forms of nastiness): a nice, normal community.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm no expert in any of the Lisps, but find that the learning curve with CL is massive. Of course, the return on your investment in learning is huge as well.

Depending on what your applications are, you might find something that really hangs together well, like newLISP a better fit. And it's very simple to intergrate libraries written in C.

<comment><USER2> I'm a bit concerned by any Lisp that still uses dynamic scoping (Emacs Lisp is the only other current Lisp dialect that does). I gather that newLisp tries to mitigate the issues, but I'm not sure how well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Have I just hit a bad corner of the Lisp world?"

Sort of.

The real problem is that it is difficult to know what the current 'best' implementations of different libraries are, and what versions of common lisp they are intended to build under (and operating system!)

This is compounded by the fact that the higher level libraries have more dependencies.

As there are dozens of libraries and a smallish CL community, this leads to the problem where author of sub-library a makes change which breaks dependent library b, and no one realizes this for months and months. When someone such as yourself comes along (even if it is possible for the library to work quite well with minor changes), the build process fails is not so obvious about what is wrong. Your reaction is to say 'CL is totally fucked' and run screaming to the hills is only natural.

That said, I have a few tips:

1.) If you are going to use an open source lisp, linux is generally the easier operating system to run it on.

2.) If you are going to download a library, don't use asdf-install.

ASDF itself is great for actually structuring the project and laying out your directories in a coherent manner (managing dependencies), but asdf-install is a waste of time (in my opinion, anyway, I'm sure someone will disagree with me).

Instead, go to the library's page/repo and download the latest version.

Make sure that someone has been working on the library recently (I try for < 1 year since last update). (Another good way to check if a library works is to search Github... EX: [http://github.com/search?type=Code&language=common- lisp&...](http://github.com/search?type=Code&language=common- lisp&q=IRC&repo=&langOverride=&x=0&y=0&start_value=1) ).

Once you get a version that works, hang onto it somewhere in case the guy working on it breaks it with an update. If you can find a version that almost works, it is (a lot of the time) worth it to salvage it and push the updates.

Just read the error messages very carefully and it should be fixable.

asdf-install is great in theory, but there are too many synchronization issues, and not enough humans pushing fixes/updates to manage them.

3.) Keep your lisp image up to date. The people developing libraries are generally using the latest build of clozure/sbcl/etc. You should too.

Scheme implementations don't have these problems because there is no expectation of write once run anywhere with regard to libraries. Different implementations have their own package managers and BDFLs.

Clojure doesn't have this problem because it hasn't been around long enough to have a lot of dead libraries.

I'd like to point out that it is perfectly reasonable to program functionally in common lisp. I take a fairly functional style in most of my code.

edit:punctuation, grammar...

<comment><USER2> " _I'd like to point out that it is perfectly reasonable to program functionally in common lisp. I take a fairly functional style in most of my code._ "

Absolutely; my point on FP WRT these three Lisps was that you don't have any (realistic) choice not to go all-in functional with Clojure, whereas Common Lisp is the most multi-paradigm and you can get away with an imperative style should you so choose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't know mcuh about LISP. But what I know about OSes means I know the advantage of Everything is a File.

On Plan9 if you can open / read / write / close / remove you can do almost anything : networking, graphics, serial, debugging, mouse control, the list extends by design.

We have a few Schemes ported for those who had a personal itch. ALISP claimes a port but their site is down for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have a few Schemes installed on my Plan 9 system, but I haven't really done anything with them. I'd really like to see an example of integrating a Scheme with devdraw; I've seen everything else in your list done by file operations but only used regular library calls for graphics.

<comment><USER7> Forth is in the same boat, no-one is going to make C based Plan9 libs for it. The one I use 4th only has file ops anyway so I plan9 to do something with it but it is the perennial todo list problem :)</comment></comment></comment>


Why i left. - <AUTHOR> http://fahd.im/post/59277093553/why-i-left <comment><USER2> Rather entertaining contrast in the article:

"we need to chase after ambiguous and unsolved problems; not the problems of today, but the problems of tomorrow. we need to chase after our perception of "the future"."

compared with

"over the next year, i want to focus on consumer web: local buy-sell, event planning, recipe sharing, and reliving shared memories."

Yes, because these are truly futuristic and untapped problem areas. C'mon, dude, try something else.

</comment><comment><USER3> I take it that the "golden handcuffs" were longer than the 4 months he stayed. Cheers on following his vision.</comment>


Love hotels and Unicode - <AUTHOR> http://www.reigndesign.com/blog/love-hotels-and-unicode/ <comment><USER2> I loved the idea of the slides _interspersed with text_. Just posting slides is usually lame, because you lose out on the actual talk, which contains most/much of the actual information.

<comment><USER3> This really ought to be the standard way to post presentations online. Unfortunately, it's more work than uploading to the awful _slideshare_.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, it's an interesting format I've recently started experimenting with for some of my own talks (though only preliminarily). It seems sort of halfway between the "throw up slides" non-solution, and the traditional academic solution, which is to accompany a talk with a written paper. Then the paper would serve as the "durable" version of the talk suitable for archiving, laying out the same material but in a way more suited to text, and usually a bit more formally, with more details (e.g. to enable someone to actually reproduce the work).

The slide interspersed with text format could be seen as a more heavily illustrated, easy-reading sort of paper. More similar to the talk than a traditional accompanying paper would be, but not _just_ the slides. But I think it's still non-trivial work to make a good version, which is why people often just throw up the slides, because that's almost literally no additional work.

You basically have to take the same source material and think how you would write it up into a blog post, which is not 100% the same as thinking of how to give it as a talk. Though I guess a first-cut solution could be to just record the talk and type up a transcript in between the slides.

<comment><USER3> You could probably do a lot worse to prepare for a talk than writing such a text+slides version of it, then distilling key words as notes from the prose and then practicing and giving the talk based on those.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> i had never before read about the unicode flags, and the rather (politically and technically) brilliant end run around the problem. fascinating.

<comment><USER6> I am torn between it being brilliant, versus it should have been taken as a sign that adding all those symbols was just a waste of time. I sort of feel like Unicode 5 is jumping the shark here. At the point where you're arguing about how to refer to the color of the hair on one of your "graphemes", may I humbly suggest that the goal of creating a complete global encoding scheme is apparently done and the committee ought to disband. Unicode has apparently ceased being about being a universal encoding for human text and expanded its mission into becoming a universal icon catalog. This is just silly. Next up in Unicode 7, we deprecate the face icons in favor of a series of combining characters that allow to mix and match hairstyles, face colors, eyes, noses, etc., to create arbitrary faces, why not.

<comment><USER7> Or you could consider that 140million Japanese (not sure about other countries) have been using emoji every day for the last 10+ years on their cellphones.

They've become part of the language and it would be culturally insensitive to give them a big "fuck you, us westerner's don't need your damn icons, either keep those to yourself and hence don't be able to inter-operate with everyone else or stop using them even though they've been a big part of your culture for 10+ years"

<comment><USER6> You're trying to make me feel bad, but you're doing it with a false dilemma: _Either_ we stick emoji in Unicode _or_ the Japanese are screwed and we told them to "fuck" off. This is a false dilemma, and exactly the sort of thinking that worries me as we fuzzily expand the charter of Unicode beyond a universal grapheme repository. I say there's plenty of third options, many of which are better choices than jamming it into the international all-purpose standard.

Unicode is supposed to be the central hub for all graphemes, but I would certainly like to see some argument that emoji are actually graphemes. For one thing it's quite bizarre that suddenly Unicode appears to be specifying colors as well as shapes, which is one bright line I'd be concerned about. (There may have been colors before but they would be much more exceptional, and I'm not aware of any.) Unicode was _ambitious_ as the all-grapheme repository, it's simply a guaranteed failure if it tries to become the repository of all vaguely iconic/smilyish/little pictures in the world.

<comment><USER8> Japanese do mix emoji with kanji and kana. Are emoji any less graphemes than the mor pictographic han characters? I don't think the colors are normative though, any more than the exact shape is. A different representation of a love hotel ought to be fine.

<comment><USER6> The colors I'm referring to are the ones in the names of the code points, such as the ones the Germans complained about It doesn't get much more normative than that.

<comment><USER8> Ah, that grapheme doesn't actually have color IIRC, but the hair is not filled, thus giving the impression of a fair-haired person (rather than dark haired)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Every character, or to be more exact, every "grapheme", is assigned a > Unicode code point.

Every character is assigned a Unicode code point. The Unicode consortium defines a grapheme as a "user perceived character", usually made up of one Unicode code point, but sometimes two or more. A base character can be followed by one or more non-spacing marks, together forming a "grapheme", the most common of which usually have a "canonical mapping" to a single character, but need not.

</comment><comment> guard-of-terra Minor point: I see copy-paste from wikipedia about ISO-8859-5. It's unfortunate since nobody ever used ISO-8859-5. They probably should change it to ISO-8858-something-else in the wikipedia article.

<comment><USER3> It also entirely glosses over the fact that before the ISO-8859 standards, there were the horrendous code pages in DOS and numerous other encodings on other platforms, which made things hard even for Europeans, let alone languages with a non-latin-derived alphabet.

<comment><USER10> And before that, you get into encodings like EBCDIC, RAD50, SIXBIT, FIELDATA, and even more failed schemes now largely forgotten.

Why should a brief overview go back even to the pre-ISO-8859 days except to mention ASCII? None of them are directly relevant: The world we're dealing with now on the Web begins with ASCII, moves through a Pre-Unicode Period, and finishes up in the Land of Unicode, where it's at least possible to do things Right. All history tells a narrative; when it comes to character encodings, that's a good default unless you really think your audience cares about why FORTRAN was spelled that way back in the Before Time.

Tom Jennings has an interesting history:

<http://www.wps.com/projects/codes/>

<comment><USER11> _"The world we're dealing with now on the Web begins with ASCII"_

I know nothing about the implementation of early web browsers/gopher/etc, but I doubt there ever was anything on the web that used ASCII. 7-bit email may have been around at e time, but I would guess Tim Berners Lee just used whatever character set his system used by default (corrections welcome; being snarky isn't the only reason I write this)

<comment><USER10> > I know nothing about the implementation of early web browsers/gopher/etc, > but I doubt there ever was anything on the web that used ASCII.

All headers, HTTP, email, or otherwise, are 99% or more ASCII. HTML markup is over 99% ASCII for most documents, especially the complex ones.

ASCII is the only text encoding you can guarantee everything on the Web (and the Internet in general, really) knows how to speak. Finally, guess what all valid UTF-8 codepoints in the range U+00 to U+7F inclusive are compatible with: ASCII.

<comment><USER11> I know that, but "over 99% ASCII" = "not ASCII". For many users, UTF8 is over 99% ASCII, but it is not ASCII.

<comment><USER10> > I know that, but "over 99% ASCII" = "not ASCII"

No, that's not what I meant. I meant that all of the essential bits are ASCII, all of the software that generates those important pieces as to know ASCII, and it's entirely possible for software that speaks only ASCII to handle it as long as the filenames (the main source of non-ASCII characters) being served are also ASCII.

Read the HTTP specification sometime.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Mirror from Google cache, but unfortunately text only:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.reigndesign.com/blog/love- hotels-and-unicode/&hl=en&strip=1)

<comment><USER13> The Coral cache has images: [http://www.reigndesign.com.nyud.net/blog/love- hotels-and-uni...](http://www.reigndesign.com.nyud.net/blog/love-hotels-and- unicode/)

</comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 Does anyone happen to know what the arguments for big-endianness versus little-endianness in the Unicode format were?

I've never really understood the advantage of one over the other, but this section on Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endianness#Optimization> helps explain that there are optimizations that can be made at a hardware level when performing arithmetic on little-endianness values.

Is the argument for using LE in Unicode similar?

<comment><USER14> If you're using, say, UCS2 (not UTF16, lest we get too confused), it's awfully nice if the wide character (i.e. a C short) for "A" can be equal to the literal 'A' and not 0x4100. Making that work depends on the endianness of the host architecture, not just the data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15>
      ASCII was actually invented in the US in the 1960s, as a
      standardised way of encoding text on a computer. ASCII
      defined 128 characters, that's a character for half of the
      256 possible bytes in an 8-bit computer system.

Uh? Wouldn't it be easier to just say that it's a 7-bit coding system? And what does he mean by "256 possible bytes in an 8-bit computer system"?

<comment><USER16> "7 bits" versus "half of 8 bits" are two slightly different things. One has a padding, the other does not. So the file size for a 7 bit encoding would be slightly smaller than an 8 bit one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The one thing he forgot to say is, "If you have to choose an encoding, use utf-8."

Someone who doesn't know the difference between utf-16, utf-8, etc. might not know which to use.

</comment><comment><USER18> i'd've noted that endianness is hardly unique to unicode.

</comment><comment><USER19> This was a fantastic read. Thank you!

</comment><comment><USER10> When he says byte-order marks are optional, does he mean just in UTF-8 (where they are) or also in UTF-16 (where I strongly suspect they are not)?

(Yes, you can use heuristics to guess which endianness is in use. The problem is that while this is trivial for Western languages I don't even know how you'd begin when presented with arbitrary text using an East Asian or African written language.)

<comment><USER20> _The problem is that while this is trivial for Western languages I don't even know how you'd begin when presented with arbitrary text using an East Asian or African written language_

Not actually that hard.

Consider a document which is encoded in either a) ASCII like you know it or b) ASCII where the top 4 bits and bottom 4 bits are transposed. How would you tell the difference? Well, one can imagine creating a histogram of the bits for each half of the bytes and comparing them to expectations based on the distribution of bits in naturally occurring English text. The half with most of the entries in the 0x5, 0x6, and 0x7 is the upper order half.

If you don't know what naturally occurring e.g. Japanese looks like in Unicode code points, take this on faith: flipping the order does not give you a document which looks probably correct. (Also, crucially, Japanese with the order flipped doesn't resemble any sensible document in any language -- you end up with Unicode code points from a mishmash of unrelated pages.)

P.S. Why care about that algorithm? Here's a hypothetical: you're a forensic investigator or system administrator who, given a hard drive which has been damaged, need to extract as much information as possible from it. The BOM is very possibly not in the same undamaged sector which you are reading right now, and it may be impossible to stitch the sectors without first reading the text. How would you determine a) whether an arbitrary stream of bytes was likely a textual document, b) what the encoding was, c) what endianness it was, if appropriate, and d) what human language it was written in?

<comment><USER21> Sounds hard to me.

<comment><USER22> How about this simplified version:

1\. Try both byte orders

2\. If one produces valid text and the other does not, choose that one (this will get you the correct answer almost every time, even if the source text is Chinese)

3\. If both happen to produce valid text, use the one with the smallest number of scripts

(Note that this just determines byte order, while Patrick was talking about the more ambitious task of heuristically determining whether a random string of bytes is text and if so what encoding it is. My point is just that you really don't need to be told the order of the bytes in most cases.)

<comment><USER23> Simple in theory, but hard enough in practice that companies like Microsoft screw it up from time to time.

Try saving a text file in Windows XP Notepad with the words "Bush hid the facts" and nothing else. Close it and open the file again. WTF Chinese characters! Conspiracy!

<comment><USER6> That's not Microsoft "screwing it up", that's you not feeding the algorithm enough characters for it to be really sure. While that short string is below the threshold, the threshold is actually quite surprisingly small; if I remember correctly it's just over 100 bytes and any non-pathological input will be correctly identified with effectively 100% success.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Queen's Brian May Hates Apple's USB-C Cables - <AUTHOR> https://www.cultofmac.com/592222/is-this-just-fantasy-queens-brian-may-hates-apples-usb-c-cables/ <comment><USER2> I believe the EU's demand for a universal charging connector is why magsafe disappeared...

<comment><USER3> I thought magsafe was only on the laptops.

The EU demand is only for mobile phones, yes? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_external_power_supply](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_external_power_supply) .</comment></comment>


A new resume template for Programmers - <AUTHOR> http://www.javapubhouse.com/2012/04/experiment-with-resumes.html

<comment><USER2> That resume looks like it was made by a computer, for a computer. Perhaps it would be more efficient to specify a DTD, a few microformats (e.g. hOrgChartPosition), and then just ask for it as validated XML.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hm, interesting. It might be very functional, but this really answers questions like, "What source control software you used in your past three jobs", or allows you to compare side-by-side what technology/language you used across jobs. I do find that the format helps me answer those questions I usually have when reviewing resumes. It might not be as skim-friendly (it's packed to the gills with info), but don't find it particularly obtuse; maybe not as 'pretty' or breathable and it's definitively not traditional (wonder if that is what makes it look uglier)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Polar 1.5 /w Cloud Sync. Manage your reading /w annotations and tagging - <AUTHOR> https://getpolarized.io/2018/12/16/polar-1.5-with-cloud-sync.html <comment><AUTHOR> This is a big release for us.

You guys really liked our first release:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18219960](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18219960)

... It's been really exciting seeing everyone dive in and suggest features and bug fixes.

This release has a TON of fit and finish (bug fixes) but we're also announcing cloud sync with this version as well.

Cloud sync enables you to keep your document repository and annotations consistent across all your computers (MacOS, Windows, and Linux).

It's also real-time. If you make a change (add a tag, comment, highlight, pagemark) it's immediately reflected across all your other devices.

We also released a chrome extension as part of this release:

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/save-to- polar/jkfd...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/save-to- polar/jkfdkjomocoaljglgddnmhcbolldcafd/)

which allows you to save directly to Polar.

...

We have a bunch of ideas for future features for Polar but we're mostly community driven so I'm waiting to hear back from our user base now that this is out the door.

Some ideas on the road map include:

\- Document discovery based on publicly shared documents by other Polar users.

\- Mobile support

\- Firefox plugin support (not a ton of work and might already work)

\- Annotation browser so you can manage your annotations as first class objects like you can with documents.

... would LOVE to hear your thoughts here. Hacker News was very helpful in getting this out the door and I really appreciate it!

<comment><USER2> Really looking forward to the Firefox extension being available, thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is a great application and I feel it deserves more eyeballs. Early in the development process is the time to make suggestions which may influence the direction of the project.

I have always thought it would be great to read articles in an application in which I could track progress, add annotations and make comments on those annotations.

Some applications get close, but there isn't much out there for reading AFAIK. Most seem to not get much love.

Thanks for the great work!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks.. I agree... This is a tool that needs to exist which is why I was amazed and really really frustrated that it didn't.

It's almost shocking really...

But the community has given an amazing amount of productive feedback. Making great progress here!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Dude finally! I've been waiting for an app that can store web pages offline.</comment>


Daily Routines - <AUTHOR> http://dailyroutines.typepad.com/daily_routines/ <comment><USER2> This is a fascinating site, I only wish the headline was sexier to draw people in to what it's all about.

Daily routines of famous and intelligent people!</comment>


Node.js Examples – How Enterprises Use Node in 2016 - <AUTHOR> https://blog.risingstack.com/node-js-examples-how-enterprises-use-node-in-2016/ <comment><USER2> > Because of the way Node works we can attach debuggers, and set breakpoint > steps through the code. If you wanted to debug these groovy scripts in the > past, you would make some code changes upload it to the edge layer, run it, > see if it breaks, make some more changes, upload it again, and so on

Can anyone expand on this? I haven't worked with Groovy, but most languages have debuggers that let you attach to an existing process. Is this something especially great about Node, or something especially horrible about Groovy?

<comment><USER3> Apache Groovy (around v 1.0 or 1.5) used to produce bytecode that could easily be decompiled to Java code, but since version 1.6, the bytecode generated was changed so it couldn't be decompiled with the tool I was using at the time -- I forget what it was, could have been JAD. I know the JVM situation has changed a lot since then, but that breaking change was just one of those many little things that put people off using Groovy for anything more serious than quick'n'dirty scripting. I wouldn't imagine it would be easy to write a Groovy debugger if the bytecode generated is still so non-standard it can't be decompiled to Java source.

<comment><USER4> Why would you need a decompiler to write a debugger for Groovy? The groovy compiler supports including source code line numbers and variable names in compiled jar files (just like Java). As a result you can use any Java debugger to debug Groovy.

Also, why would you expect that Groovy can be compiled and then decompiled to Java? This doesn't even work 100% going from Java to Java, and Groovy is going to have idioms that doesn't map easily to Java idioms.

<comment><USER3> > The groovy compiler supports including source code line numbers and variable > names in compiled jar files

I haven't used Groovy since v 1.8, and certainly didn't know about this facility then.

> why would you expect that Groovy can be compiled and then decompiled to > Java?

It worked in Groovy 1.0, and the decompiles to Java were useful back then when Groovy often had unexpected behavior.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >"Instead of two teams, one is a pure back end, and one is a pure front end - consisting seven people overall - a ninja team of five can do both."

...said the manager.

</comment><comment><USER6> I really don't like it when a framework is touted to be the be-all-and-end- all. The article tries to put this idea across. Node.js is nothing more than a tool, it is good at some things and bad at others. It is not the ultimate solution that "enterprise" developers can use for any problem.

<comment><USER7> It seems to attract the crowd who do tout it as a tool for everything, which in turn puts me off learning it.

<comment><USER8> I've been using Django for some years now and have taken an interest in Node.js. In spite of Django (IMO) being simpler to get up and running. Node.js is now everywhere and is making progress in the enterprise stack.

What I'd like to know (or make happen) is a Django equivalent in Node.js. Something with a built-in Admin, ORM, and (server side) templating system. Anything stable out there that fits my requirements?

<comment><USER7> Won't Django channels cover the same sort of tasks?

<comment><USER8> I've been doing small projects to get settled with channels and it works very nicely. The big difference with node and django is that Node is backed by bigger entities than Django/Python. I love Django, and use it for many things, but JS and node are winning a lot of ground.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _How Node.js affected developer productivity at Netflix?

The developer productivity comes from breaking down the monolith into smaller, much more manageable pieces._

How is that directly related to nodejs only? I mean, you can have a monolith in one language and still break it down into smaller, more manageable pieces in the same language.

<comment><USER10> Marketing and mindshare. Node.js encouraged that architecture as the proper way to compose services, and you got async libraries for free. You could do the same thing in Java, but with frameworks and libraries that weren't as well-known before Node.js became popular.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've been a Node.js developer for a couple years now and one thing I've noticed is I've never come across a company that actually uses it for their core api. There always seems to be a Java based (or another statically typed typically 'monolith' language) backend api server that smaller node.js microservices/apps communicate with.

<comment><USER12> As someone who has been writing core APIs in Node.js for a few years now, one thing I really miss is a good ORM. The best one is probably Bookshelf.js but it's poorly maintained and lags behind more mature ORMs like Active Record in terms of features and stability.

<comment><USER13> Not to go too off-topic, but Sequelize is worth a look if you haven't played with it already.

<comment><USER12> I used Sequelize for a while before Bookshelf was released and haven't used it since so I'm not sure how it compares these days. One thing I like about Bookshelf is that the query builder (Knex.js) is fairly decoupled and it's not that scary to drop down to the SQL layer. I still feel it's not quite as good as it could be.

<comment><USER14> This might not be objective because I hate sequelize but sequelize sucks! I never understood its API. Is so clunky compared to Bookshelf.js.

Bookshelf is less opinionated on the way you integrate it with your web app with makes it good to work with if you have strong opinions on how it should integrate with your codebase.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Node is pretty viral in the "enterprise". My company is listed in the article and I've seen node sneak into big java projects, you know just to run unit tests for the frontend code. Then it takes on more and more responsibility until the project is a node project with a little java rather than a java project with a little node.

<comment><USER16> Well when the options are Java and Node, even I would choose Node.

<comment><USER17> I would choose Java. Java 8 with lambda functions and streams library, is a much more pleasant experience than previous versions. If you take the same library over framework approach with Java as you might with Node, you can build microservices just as easily, and docker equalizes the deployment effort. The main advantage I see with Node is working with JSON and a more simplistic concurrency model but to me Java is getting on the reactive bandwagon and beats Node by having more mature and stable libraries and by being statically typed.

<comment><USER9> What Java libraries are you talking about in this case?

<comment><USER18> Jackson combined with JSOG is great. Resteasy as the endpoint layer with Guice as the DI framework. Project Lombok to remove the java boilerplate. Run that on AppEngine and you have an infinitely autoscaling application with zero downtime. Use Objectify for the ORM with the Datastore. =)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Mostly testimonials, but interesting examples for me to see considering I've just got 6 months of full-time Node.js under my belt after many years in Java and Ruby. There's a link from this blog post to the Node Hero Tutorial and I don't remember coming across this recommendation to organize file structure around features rather than roles:

[https://blog.risingstack.com/node-hero-node-js-project- struc...](https://blog.risingstack.com/node-hero-node-js-project-structure- tutorial/)

It looks like a good option to me. I just finished a standalone notification system in one of our Node.js apps and all the files are organized more like this than the typical Rails file structure.

</comment><comment><USER20> Is node.js really ready for mainstream? I've coded javascript for 10+ years and I sometimes laugh at the state is in right now. There's a reason why we are experiencing javascript fatigue and that's because it's not mature to the point it should be mainstream yet. Recently the language tried to tackle the callback hells with es7 async/await but it's way too hacky and I believe it's got quite a ways to go before the language can be used to develop elegant/pragmatic codes.

</comment><comment><USER21> > GoDaddy started to use Node for the front-end

I don't get it. Do they mean asset compilation etc. How can one use Node in front-end?

<comment><USER22> I assume they mean they use it to build and serve their web pages, but not necessarily their backend services. Ironically, Node is much better suited for data APIs and backend services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> > Ferenc Hámori > PR & Marketing @RisingStack.

Confirmed: NodeJS is pure hype.

<comment><USER24> I can't tell if you're being cheeky or not, but the fact that a marketing person wrote this does not confirm anything. Also, why would it even matter?

<comment><USER5> To be fair, RisingStack basically exists because of Node hype. It's literally their name. They've been putting out sensationalist articles like this for years.</comment></comment></comment>


Unpublished and Untenured, a Philosopher Inspired a Cult Following - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/26/books/review/irad-kimhi-thinking-and-being.html <comment><USER2> What I've seen of kimhi's drafts has been pretty dense, harder to read than Kripke(!), but important. In particular (IMHO) he ties a common thread from hermeneutics, continental deconstruction[+] and, for me, modern computational semantics, without the rigid and, IMHO, artificial platonism of American analytical philosophy.

Why do I think it's important? When your cars have hand-built planners you can't really call them (except metaphorically) "self-driving" no matter how many CNNs you put in their vision system and to do so fakes you out to the point where you end up running over women pushing bikes because nobody thought to put in a handler for that case.

[+] I mean the point of early Derrida, not the fatuousnes of most deconstructionist writing.

<comment><USER3> "IMHO, artificial platonism of American analytical philosophy"

Platonism has a meaning (or maybe more than one), and none of them describe any shared assumptions of 20th century/contemporary American philosophy. Please find a different term of abuse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "It is raining, but I don't believe it is raining" is certainly valid if I propose it as one possible thing happening in the world, and yet if I make that statement with the added context of "[I am asserting that right now] it is raining..." then it is clearly contradictory. Stripping away context makes the statement naturally ambiguous, and yet some decision is being made about what kind of context is "correct" or "logical"? Am I missing something here?

<comment><USER5> I think, this is really an everyday phenomenon. There are a number of scenarios where this may apply:

Suspension of disbelief: I'm collaboratively participating in a narrative and asserting certain truths is a premise to this collaboration, which is the very act of making meaning. At the same time, I do not believe in the reality of what is actually my psychological reality. This is a certainly a matter of context switching, which is not reserved to art, but may also be observed in real life.

In certain cases, the narrative which is the description of the real world, which we wholeheartedly assert, becomes complex to an extent, where, while we still acknowledge the correctness of this description, we find it increasingly difficult to believe in, even on the basis of a working model, while still working in and with it. Compare quantum physics, certain aspects of cosmology, etc.

Parallel acknowledgement of contesting messages regarding the state of the world or facts therein, especially in politics or systems of belief. I do know that the regime I was asserting did this and this, but still I do not believe that the leaders would have done so. (Compare German citizens guided through concentration camps after WW II; I see it, I do know it to be true, but I do not believe it.) Or, by the example of current SCOTUS hearings, I may believe a certain witness (i.e., assert the content to be true), but still do not believe that the other person would have committed the incriminated act, still, I assert the testament of the witness as truth, which implies that the act has been committed by this person, etc. (All kind of distortions arise from this, some are even part of what we regard as objective history.)

<comment><USER6> It's not reality and it's a logical contradiction. The question is to reason about how to reason things you do not have a direct experience with.

<comment><USER5> No proposition -- with the notable exception of a priori statements, which are about constitutive elements of our internal reality -- is about reality, but about our notion of reality – compare Kant. Reasoning is about synthetic propositions, which are necessarily only as conceived and represented in our internal reality. Logic is about what may be generalized in this, i.e., about forming synthetic judgements based on a posteriori data. Regarding this data, there is no chance to relate directly to reality, since nothing in our experience relates directly to reality, but is formed by our inner and outer senses. The same is true for any shared experience, commonly related to as 'reality' or 'truth'.

Since the truth of a proposition relates to a state of the world (reality), the notion of a contradiction relates to this as well. Hence, we have to shift our attention to the very nature of this world/reality and its representation, when facing a contradiction. A contradiction just refers to an ambiguous state, expressed as a non-exclusive duality of logical values. Now, we may ask, is it the world, which is ambiguous, (we may never know), or is it our representation, or, is there possibly more than a single representation/context at once?

A (very simple) example: If we subscribe to the notion of color as a property of an object, a solid colored object _is_ of a color, meaning, it may be either blue or red, but not both at once. But, if our description of the world includes the notion of a spectrum and mixed colors, it may be both blue and red at once, commonly related to as a shade of violet or purple. The very context may include the spectral description or not, it may be even ambiguous about this.

<comment><USER6> Well this is effectively meaningless. I can see why everyone went over to analytical philosophy. Color is the absence of light and all that. Anything you propose willl have some categorical membership grounded in something measured and observed. The only thing you get in the interpretive weirdness are rules that may or may not be consistent. Not to mention the more serious issue of incompleteness and undecideability. I think that's the whole issue.

<comment><USER5> However, a proposition, like, "A says she knows it is raining, but A says at the same time that she does not believe that it is raining", is about a state of mind and a question regarding its logic is about what may be generalized. I can't see where analytical philosophy may be of help here, as the proposition would be just meaningless. (Let's say, Wittgenstein I wouldn't be of help, Wittgenstein II maybe. But I wouldn't consider the latter as analytical in the strict sense.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Assuming the article is correctly summarising his argument, this is the same critique that Hegel put forward of the distinction of Force and Expression:

> It is often said that the nature of Force itself is unknown and only its > manifestation apprehended. But, in the first place, it may be replied, every > article in the import of Force is the same as what is specified in the > Expression: and the explanation of a phenomenon by a Force is a mere > tautology. What is supposed to remain unknown, therefore, is really nothing > but the empty form of reflection-into-self, by which alone the Force is > distinguished from the Expression — and that form too is something familiar. > It is a form that does not make the slightest addition to the content and to > the law, which have to be discovered from the phenomenon alone. Another > assurance always given is that to speak of forces implies no theory as to > their nature: and that being so, it is impossible to see why the form of > Force has been introduced into the sciences at all. In the second place the > nature of Force is undoubtedly unknown: we are still without any necessity > binding and connecting its content together in itself, as we are without > necessity in the content, in so far as it is expressly limited and hence has > its character by means of another thing outside it.

\- G.W.F. Hegel, Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences, § 136

</comment><comment><USER8> I haven't heard of Kimhi before this article, so my knowledge is only based on my reading of it, but I don't understand why we would want to collapse logic and psychology.

Logic involves formal systems. Whether or not these formal systems provide a sound basis for thinking about actual causation in the world or even for thinking about our own thinking about causation is a separate issue.

<comment><USER9> When is a formal system a logic and when is it not?

<comment><USER10> Formal Systems can have non-logical axioms, which would make it non-logical?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> But a lot of this dealing with assertions that may or may not be true in logic has been dealt with in a more rigorous way already as far back as the 1960s: Fuzzy Logic [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_logic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_logic).

A belief like "I think it is raining" can be encoded as a 75% chance of it raining.

<comment><USER12> I see your point, but the phrasing is confusing: fuzzy logic is not the same as probability. "A 75% chance of it raining" typically means that it _either_ rains or _not_.

In a fuzzy setting, "I think it is raining" would be encoded as "the current weather is partially included in the _Raining_ set, with membership greater than 0 but smaller than 1".

<comment><USER6> This probably becomes Shrodeniger-esque. The observed and to act upon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Amusingly, the works of Epictetus we have are because one of his students, Arrian, recorded his teachings.

<comment><USER2> Socrates/Plato as well.

<comment><USER14> More contemporarily, George Herbert Mead's influence is based mainly on his transcribed lectures contained in _Man, Self and Society_. Mead wrote a good deal during his lifetime, but always relatively short pieces that he never bothered to compile together into books or programmatic statements of his philosophical position.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My leg is being pissed on, therefore it must be raining.

</comment><comment><USER16> I've been saying this for a decade. A statement contains an implicit statement of knowledge. But it's funny that this chap is lauded for it. I always get downvoted hard for it. Maybe because of who I'm saying it to in what context.

<comment><USER16> haha

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Dang, this guy would understand my argument for what IS tested in science versus what people WANT to test with science. There is a huge gap especially in medical PRACTICE and drug DEVELOPMENT. I.e. What IS practiced versus what could be practiced if we (the participants) were safe and capable of developing. I.e. Often we try to prove something is correct and overlook proving something is incorrect.</comment>


Bypass Paywalls Clean for Firefox/Chrome - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clean/blob/master/README.md <comment><AUTHOR> Refactored extension/add-on with lots of new sites, bug-fixes, add custom sites and update-notification.

[https://github.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox- clea...](https://github.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clean)

[https://github.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-chrome- clean](https://github.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-chrome-clean) (no google analytics)</comment>


Ask HN: Best practices around fingerprinting a virtual machine for licensing? - <AUTHOR> What's a solid way to "fingerprint" a VM instance? I can't really find a good metric to use that can't easily be confgured... <comment><USER2> If MSFT don't do it, and use audit licensing instead, that might be a clue that it's not a sustainable and reliable mechanism for license enforcement.</comment>


Ask HN: How secure personal information is in Quantum Supremacy world? - <AUTHOR> Google confirms 'quantum supremacy' breakthrough. And, what it means to RSA and other security algorithms that rely on the practical difficulty of factorization. With Quantum Supremacy, these practical difficulties will be gone within month or year.
What will happen to our personal information saved on various websites? They are becoming more vulnerable.
1. Habits, Interest can be hacked easily and we could be targeted and exploited. 2. Financial information like credit card info, bank account info, etc can be scraped off easily, Even from HTTPS (TLS) sites.
How ready we are for new world? <comment><USER2> You are way off.

Google's new quantum supremacy device has 1,113 single-qubit gates and 430 two-qubit gates.

Consider recent improvement in RSA factorization "How to factor 2048 bit RSA integers in 8 hours using 20 million noisy qubits" [https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.09749](https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.09749)

Actual implementation of the device mentioned above requires 2.7 billion Toffoli gates gates for 2048 bit input and it could factor just one key in 8 hours. Microprocessors reached that high MOS transistor count less than 10 years ago. For example, 8-core Core i7 Haswell-E has 2.6 billion transistors (2014). If quantum computers follow Moore's law like conventional IC, it will take 40-years before they can factor 2048 bit RSA.

Symmetric cryptography is already safe against quantum computers. Algorithms for Post-quantum_cryptography are under development and you might expect to see them adopted within next 10 years or so. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post- quantum_cryptography](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-quantum_cryptography)</comment>


I started a business selling swim trunks made from recycled plastic bottles - <AUTHOR> https://www.starterstory.com/recycled-swimwear <comment><USER2> Just like how the fastest function is the function that is never executed, the most environmentally friendly discretionary purchase is the product never bought.

<comment><USER3> Or never needed in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Their front page seems weirdly aggro towards two of their largest potential markets, eco-minded people and surfers.

<comment><USER5> > _We 're not the first to do so but we felt that all the brands out there > tended to cater to tree-huggers and surfer bros. We wanted to make something > different..._

Cool. I'll just stick to the brands that cater to me, a simple one dimensional surfer bro then.

Everyone has these by the way.

[https://www.vissla.com/shop/eco-lastics/](https://www.vissla.com/shop/eco- lastics/)

[https://www.volcom.com/products/deadly- stones-20](https://www.volcom.com/products/deadly-stones-20)

[https://www.quiksilver.com/repreve-boardshorts- collection/](https://www.quiksilver.com/repreve-boardshorts-collection/)

Billabong is claiming all their new boardshorts are recycled: [https://www.billabong.com/mens-boardshorts/](https://www.billabong.com/mens- boardshorts/).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> FWIW, there are yarn companies in the US that do recycled plastic yarns. [http://www.patrickyarns.com/green- recycled/earthspun/](http://www.patrickyarns.com/green-recycled/earthspun/) does it, they've been sold via companies like PuraKai for shirts.

This said, I'm not sure if this is a good idea in the first place if it just leaches out microplastics per Tharkun's comment.

If they wanted to be more open, Junk in your Trunks could consider showing their full supply chain, similar to what services like [https://www.sourcemap.com](https://www.sourcemap.com) do.

<comment><USER7> This was actually the first thing that came to mind. I thought a lot of the microplastics came from these kinds of recycled plastic fabrics

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Do their products leach microplastics into the environment when washed?

<comment><USER9> My first thought as well. Plastic bottles are quite hard and almost unbreakable (and when they break, the pieces aren't micro); in contrast, clothing fibres made of plastic bend a lot, presumably break a lot and are very micro...

<comment><USER10> The larger plastic pieces turn to micro over time.

"Secondary plastics are small pieces of plastic derived from the breakdown of larger plastic debris, both at sea and on land. Over time, a culmination of physical, biological, and chemphotodegradation, including photodegradation caused by sunlight exposure, can reduce the structural integrity of plastic debris to a size that is eventually undetectable to the naked eye"[1]

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> tldr: They worked with an Alibaba manufacturer that already made recycled shorts, and a designer to make their design. The rest is branding.

<comment><USER12> Thank you.

I do wonder what a small business process and product would look like if it was (a) made closer to the source of bottles, ie not offshore, and (b) not a garment but something else useful.

The garment industry is highly unscalable and labor intensive so it's probably out of the question for a first world startup. But maybe some other household article, like sandals or furniture.

<comment><USER13> I'm learning how to make 3d printed robots with useful printed gears etc. My hope is that in the future I can use recycled materials. The PETG I print with is the PET most bottles are made out of, plus the addition of glycol which I believe makes it tougher.

However making PETG from PET bottles, assuming it is even possible, does not seem like the best way to reuse plastics. I have wondered if you could make building wall panels by dumping a bunch of used plastic bottles in a press and using heat and pressure to fuse them together without ever chopping them or doing any chemical reprocessing. I've also seen a company that sells a machine to reprocess used plastic bottles in to plastic bricks. Using old plastic as a building material sounds really interesting to me.

<comment><USER12> Something like that is possible with plastic milk jugs. Just apply heat and you end up with something like taffy that can be molded. Maybe wall panels (with some filler like sawdust?) are feasible?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdKmq7Kjt0I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdKmq7Kjt0I)

<comment><USER14> Milk jugs are usually HDPE, which is much more easily recyclable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> ...but will the trunks be recycled?

If not, then it is just delaying the inevitable.

</comment><comment><USER16> For people that treat themselves like trash? I don't get it.</comment>


Show HN: High.py, get emails of people involved with github repository - <AUTHOR> http://kray.me/2017/04/high-get-github-repo-mails/ <comment><USER2> Please don't do/use stuff like this. It's spam.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you put your public email on your github profile, or put your email on public issue comments, you may be contacted regarding news of the repository you showed interest to. Like getting feedback, you know.

Personnaly I would be pretty pleased that a maintainer made that effort. I can totally understand that others person consider that spam ... Well just don't make your email public in that case.

It has nothing to do with the tool in itself.

<comment><USER2> Someones e-mail being public does not give you the right to send them spam (=which I consider this, under the common definition of "unsolicited mass-e- mail"), and having starred a GitHub repo does not imply consent to that. If someone wants notifications, there are tools for this: they subscribe to your repo, individual issues within it or a newsletter.

<comment><AUTHOR> Added a disclaimer on the repo README.md to clarify the original motive.

But again, at the end of the day, if you don't want to receive emails from nowhere, just don't put your email on your GH profile. As simple as that.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A powerful help desk that's 100% free - <AUTHOR> http://Heart.wrrk.com <comment><USER2> Without screenshots and/or more information, there's zero chance I'd sign up to get a better feel for what's involved with this. By all means try to get early customers as you flesh out the site, but I wouldn't recommend pitching to HN until you've done a bit more work otherwise your conversion rate is likely to be poor.</comment>


A New Explanation for One of the Strangest Occurrences in Nature: Ball Lightning - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/a-new-explanation-for-one-of-the-strangest-occurrences-in-nature-ball-lightning <comment><USER3> One of these scared the heck out of me as a kid. I had just gone to bed and was staring up at the ceiling and a small ball of intense light with crackling tendrils around it flared in the middle of the room and was gone. I ran out and got my parents, and I was so obviously scared my Dad eventually climbed into the attic above my room and reported a burning smell in the air but couldn't find anything out of place.

</comment><comment><USER4> There was evidence that Nikolai Tesla not only understood what caused ball lightning but could create it on demand. It is not one of his experiments that have been replicated however and so often it is consigned to the "myth" part of his reputation. An interesting extract on it is here: [http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/tesla/esp_tesla_20.htm](http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/tesla/esp_tesla_20.htm)

<comment><USER5> he did a lot of weather research at his colorado springs lab, which burnt to the ground. so many of his papers and experiments were destroyed in that fire.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ball lightning is one of my earliest memories as a child. I was in the basement in our farmhouse when it came in through our window during a storm and "popped" next to me. My mother also remembers this experience. I don't remember if the window was open or not (we didn't have air conditioning down there - I think the storm was just starting). No damage. But it freaked us out and we went back upstairs in a hurry.

<comment><USER7> Im surprised this theory took them so long.

making ball lightening in the kitchen is one of my childhood memories.

light a candle and stick it in the microwave for a few seconds. the tip of the burning candle will spit out ball lightening that will then happily float around the microwave for a few seconds.

be interesting to know if that is the same as what you saw in your basement.

if you dont feel like doing it yourself

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=G7lfzA7WzVI](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=G7lfzA7WzVI)

<comment><USER8> That sounds like burning vaporised wax... Presumably quite different to what is being suggested here.

<comment><USER7> considering the video uses only a match. definately nothing to do with the wax.

you get an electrical arc inside the flame then it spits out balls of plasma.

if you time it just right so it doesnt hit the sides the plasma can last for quite a while after the microwave is shut off.

pulling a mocrowave to bits and doing it uncontained is still on my todo list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> When I was about 11 I remember sitting in my parent's living room at our computer when a small marble sized ball floated slowly across the room. As it got close to me it electrocuted my right hand with what seemed to be a small lightning bolt shooting off from the main body of it, burning my hand. It freaked me out quite a bit and I still have no good explanation for what happened.

<comment><USER10> Minor nit: shocked, not electrocuted, since you're thankfully still with us. :)

Electrocution is death by electric shock (that's the '-cution' part, like execution).

<comment><USER9> Interesting, I thought it could pertain to injuring as well. OED seems to allow for injuring, but it's probably a more modern use (due to misuse). Thanks for pointing this out!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Microwaves trapped in balls of plasma. Electrons accelerated fast enough to pass through sheet aluminum, but able to slow down and form a ball on the other side. Electrons accelerated to high relativistic speeds, producing nothing more potent than mere microwaves when decelerated.

I am no physicist, but these explanations seem really messed up. I don't think this guy got us any closer to understanding ball lightning.

<comment><USER12> None of that sounds implausible to me.

• Plasma is opaque to electromagnetic radiation (including microwaves), it could totally be trapped: [https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/26jxu6/why_is_p...](https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/26jxu6/why_is_plasma_opaque_to_radiation/)

• Beta radiation (electrons) are known for passing through several millimeters of aluminum (³²P beta radiation penetrates to a depth of 3/8th of an inch or 9.5mm): [http://www.alpharubicon.com/basicnbc/RadiationPenetration.ht...](http://www.alpharubicon.com/basicnbc/RadiationPenetration.htm)

Besides, radiation penetration isn't discrete, it's an exponential falloff; even if only 0.1% makes it through a particular sheet of aluminum, well, one thousandth of a lightning strike is still a serious amount of radiation.

• If you've ever sat in front of a CRT TV or computer monitor, electrons were accelerated to relativistic speeds right at your face in the span of a foot or so, about 1/3 c: [https://au.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=201011010306...](https://au.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20101101030617AAGm7aD)

Maybe 1/3 c doesn't count as "high relativistic" in your book, but clouds are huge compared to CRT monitors, any free electrons would be in much stronger electric fields and would be accelerating over much greater distances.

<comment><USER13> I don't doubt that lightning launches electrons at high speed. I doubt that those electrons can pass through a metal sheet at high speed and then immediately come to a stop on the other side before travelling the dozen or two feet across the plane and out the other side.

<comment><USER14> Plus rapidly decelerating electrons produce x-rays.

<comment><USER12> "For high atomic number materials, there is a chance of the beta particles loosing energy by producing some x-rays. In water, the x-ray production from a beta particle is quite miniscule."

[http://www.alpharubicon.com/basicnbc/RadiationPenetration.ht...](http://www.alpharubicon.com/basicnbc/RadiationPenetration.htm)

By "high atomic number materials" they mean stuff like lead, 82. Aluminum is 13.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> When I was about 16 I was in our half basement with full size windows at ground level playing SNES. It was mid-morning, and there had just been a light rain, but it was sunny out. I saw something bright out of the corner of my eye and turned just in time to see it hit the answering machine that was sitting on the window sill. There was a fairly loud pop, and it tripped the breaker and shut off my game. The answering machine was fine.

<comment><USER16> This thread brings up old memories: I, too, am a ball lightning witness. It'd been so long since I'd replayed it in my mind [0] that I'd probably describe it better if I slept on it. (Slow Retrieval == AWS Glacier).

I was around eight or so, and was idle on the sidelines at a practice; American football, iirc, with an open field adjacent to the one we were scrimmaging on. It was after dark, hot and humid, with thunderstorms in the vicinity (aka, Georgia in springtime).

I don't remember if it was concomitant with a thunderclap, but I was looking around (not at the active play) and on the open field a bright, blue-white ball descended into the field maybe 75m from me, appx 75 cm in apparent diameter. When I say "into" I mean it was proximal but not tangent to the field; hovering, as it were, but only for a second. Then it raced off, but seemed to dissappear more quickly than you'd estimate based on the rate of angular velocity wrt my eye—almost as if it evaporated.

And, does anyone else seem puzzled that the observation group is almost completely comprised of young persons? I've read some other accounts of ball lightning since the Internet age, and that seems to be a common attribute. Maybe tweens just stare off into space more/lie awake sleeplessly /etc., but it sure seems strongly correlated (small sample size, admittedly).

<comment><USER16> Oops, forgot my footnote.

[0] One theory is that the $current state of all of our experienced memories is just a copy of the last time we replayed that memory. Like bootleg tapes, N-generations old.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This caught my attention: _" Microwaves also tend to make an audible noise when they encounter a person's inner ear"_.

Say what?

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

<comment><USER18> > This was accompanied by side effects such as dizziness, headaches, and a > pins and needles sensation.

I've felt this sensation in my inner ear, along with hearing pops, twice in my life. Neither involved microwaves, AFAIK.

First, I had a laptop with a power supply that was badly grounded. I would use it on my lap, on a couch that had cushions that would build up a static charge and adhere to me. Every once in a while, touching the metal body of the laptop would run a shock up my body and out the back of my head, and the couch cushion fabric would relax. Sounded and felt just like that.

Second, I've walked in the distant vicinity of a high-power radio antenna before, on a cold day with extremely high humidity—the sort of day that comes before a lightning storm. I felt slight bits of static in the air discharge "through" me repeatedly, heard the pops, and also smelled increasing levels of ozone. I don't think I was anywhere near enough to the antenna tower be getting RF burns, and there was no lightning or thunder yet, so my hypothesis here was that the tower was charging air _above_ the ground, that air was being blown around by the wind, and then the oppositely-charged clouds were sparking against it. It's like I was inside a CRT!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> One time I went up to my local mountain lookout to do some night time photography. It was very dark and I was using long exposure.

During one of the photographs a huge white flash occurred. I turned around and couldn't see anything. It made no sense because I was up on a mountain, and the silent lightning appeared to come from above and behind me.

There wasn't even a cloud in the sky in any direction and it wasn't my camera flash because it was during a long exposure and I was looking at the camera. The photo I took came out over exposed even though it was the same length of exposure I had been using all night.

Don't think I will ever know what it was, but I've always suspected that it's probably something in similar to nature to what the article talks about.

<comment><USER12> It was silent? Could it have been a meteor?

<comment><USER19> Sure, don't see why not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I saw one of these a long time ago. While driving through an area where some lighting was happening a blue-ish ball appeared on top of the powerlines that were parallel to the road. The ball was big enough for me to notice it out of the corner of my left eye. It was fast, too. Traveling at at least the same speed I was traveling down the road. It was spooky but I loved it because I love seeing raw electricity. I never knew what it was until today (I'm making the assumption based on my memory).

<comment><USER21> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBlptPM- pWE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBlptPM-pWE) it was probably something like this, not ball lightning. Just an arc.

<comment><USER22> That might finally explain an experience I had when I was about 6 years old. My room was on the third floor and one night I heard a loud buzzing sound and my room was illuminated by bright, blue-white light. I couldn't actually see what was happening from my bed but I could tell from the orientation of the shadows in my room and the sound it made that it was traveling down the street past my house.

Completely scared the crap out of me at the time. I thought someone was being abducted by aliens.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> And you can create one in your microwave with a sliced grape!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwTjsRt0Fzo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwTjsRt0Fzo)

(I am not sure that this would be the same phenomenon, but it's definitely microwave plasma).

<comment><USER24> Note - you will likely ruin your microwave doing it if it breaks containment.

You can also do it with a fish bowl and a burned toothpick in a cork - <USER2> way you can see the ball like plasma race around the inside. =)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Very nice to read other people's observations! Thank you, everybody.

I saw silvery-white ball lightning from my 7th story window a few years ago. It swooped, turned sharply and touched down maybe 200 meters away. It was a very bright, constant light against a cloudless blue sky in the middle of the day, moving at a constant speed.

The best explanation I have for it is decay products of cosmic rays, resulting in plasma soliton. My estimate of the wattage and energy of its light output would mean it wasn't from a source in our solar system.

I would think that if the source wasn't our sun then events like these would be very easily seen at night, and that my Northern latitude's long dark winters would de-bias opportunities to observe. Meanwhile if the source was our sun, then I would assume observations would correlate with sunspot activity.

</comment><comment><USER26> Everyone seems to have stories about ball lightning. Where is a video?

PS: The video in the article is unconvincing and probably a firefly.

<comment><USER27> I feel like hackernews/reddit has a unusually high number of stories like this. I don't buy it. Another one everyone claims to have is sleep paralysis.

<comment><USER28> Sleep paralysis is why I go to sleep on my side rather than my back every night.

I no longer fear it since I can consistently awaken myself now, but I'd rather not deal with the annoyance.

<comment><USER29> I almost exclusively get sleep paralysis laying on my back too. It's hard for me to fall asleep on my back fortunately, but when I do it's a nearly sure- fire way to end up in sleep paralysis. Is there any explanation for why this is the case?

To GP, it's definitely real. I didn't have it until I was around 25. My first time was shocking -- I'd never experienced anything similar. I rarely have any visual hallucinations, sometimes auditory hallucinations, but the main component of sleep paralysis is the breathless, weighed down sensation of desperately wanting to move but being totally unable to do so. My experiences are always accompanied by the extreme urge to get up and protect myself. I even sometimes have my eyes open during sleep paralysis, and I've confirmed with my wife that I can see my surroundings by, after I come to, accurately reporting her movements around the room during an episode.

<comment><USER30> For me it's only ever happened on my side.

<comment><USER31> I used to find it happened only when I was lay on my front. But just the other day I had it when I was on my back. I've had it more when I've been extremely tired and finding it hard to sleep.

It's only happened a handful of times in my life that I can recall, but it's really unpleasant. It feels like you are trapped, can't move and have to will yourself free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I've seen ball lightning twice, both during my short stint living in rural Nebraska as a kid. It was correlated with, but not directly underneath, the hyper-energetic thunderstorm systems that are typical for that region. It is really interesting to observe because it doesn't follow the rules you intuitively expect.

The most memorable incident was when it dropped out of the sky directly over a little league baseball game I was playing in. Several dozen people saw that one. It hovered, sizzled, zipped off, and disappeared. They called the game on account of weather.</comment>


Perimeter.js - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/e-sites/perimeter.js Perimeter.js is a lightweight script that creates an invisible perimeter around a target element and monitors mouse breaches. Basically it can take conditional loading of scripts to the next level. <comment><AUTHOR> FYI: Perimeter.js is a lightweight script that creates an invisible perimeter around a target element and monitors mouse breaches. Basically it can take conditional loading of scripts to the next level.</comment>


Any tips or tricks for a startup targeting college students? - <AUTHOR>

Complete newbie at this and looking for any tricks of the trade you might have picked up, NOT a marketing strategy.<p>Here's the link without context : http://theboxngo.com <comment><USER2> I wanted to say DO NOT try to build a marketplace for students to buy or sell textbooks. But looking at the site, you made that mistake already.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not a mistake. Just because the numbers are against us means nothing because we are young and have all the time and energy in the world. Thank you for your amazingly helpful comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Limiting it to .edu emails kills your ability to sell this internationally ( Irish student here )

<comment><AUTHOR> Limited test run first, will remove the restriction as we learn not to fuck up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hi Diamons,

First of all, regadless of my opinion about your project, congratulations for deciding to do something and actually getting it off the ground.

Now, regarding <http://theboxngo.com>, the first thing I would personally like to see is a clear statement explaining exactly why I should be using this as opposed to eBay, local classified ads.

To answer your question, your marketing strategy should very much depend on the core value you provide which - to me - is not clear at this stage.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd say the best way is to be in college and seed it among your friends/connections that have their own circles in college. Ex: residences (perhaps a don who can speak to the freshman on their floor), clubs, classes, etc.</comment>


Pixar's Toy Story 2 was deleted twice (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/media/2012/05/21/how-pixars-toy-story-2-was-deleted-twice-once-by-technology-and-again-for-its-own-good/

<comment><USER2> So If I read this right there was an incredible effort to restore the movie after a disastrous delete command, which took over a weekend of non-stop work by everyone involved, after which nearly everything was scrapped again by the higherups?

</comment><comment><USER3> I love `rm *` stories with happy endings.</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone used Estonia's E-Residency for Business? - <AUTHOR>

Hello,
I'd like to know if anyone used Estonia's e-residency[1] for business purposes, like setting up a legal business in Estonia remotely. Please share your experience so far.
Thanks
[1] https://e-estonia.com <comment><USER2> I have applied for the card last month and might use some Estonian e-services in the future. SignWise[0] will save some time when signing contracts with persons from countries with supported e-IDs. Forming a company in Estonia remotely is indeed very easy, however there appears to be little benefit compared to e.g. the UK, which makes online limited company formation just as easy (you do not even need a digital ID card) and has a well-known legal system. Since I am a resident of Germany, my Estonian company would be taxed here and could not enjoy the unique Estonian corporate income tax regime anyway.

[0] [https://www.signwise.me](https://www.signwise.me)</comment>